I found this among some old documents in my archives.
It has some obvious antecedents (e.g. the names of the three gods), but I like the non-classical theory of elements and most of the storytelling.
Further adventures of the Eleventh Doctor and Fleming include:
- I skipped an early adventure. The Doctor and Fleming take advantage of UNIT's resources to stop a scout who's leading the way for an alien conquest in "Live with Death".
- In an attempt to save an innocent girl, the Doctor unknowingly facilitates a brutal revenge in "A Secret for You".
- In the time of the First Bountiful Human Empire, the Doctor takes Fleming to a resort planet for some healthy relaxation, only to get involved in an attempt to blackmail the empire with two stolen solar collapse bombs in "The Black Hole Express". The first in the "Master" trilogy.
- In a change of pace, we see the Doctor and Fleming only briefly as their search for the Master leads them to cross paths with a beautiful young woman who has to rely on her own wits and the Doctor's cryptic advice to avoid death at the hands of two repulsive aliens in "The Doctor Who Saved Me".
- Frustrated by his failure to locate his ancient adversary, the Doctor falls in love? It's true, it's tragic, and it's all "In the Service of the Time Lords". Second in the "Master" trilogy.
- The Doctor meets his first self in "Twice in a Lifetime" and together they defeat the Master, although our Doctor receives a terrible head injury. Last in the "Master" trilogy.
- Confused and on the verge of regeneration, the Doctor struggles for survival against "The Thing That Kills with the Golden Touch".
Following "The Thing", Fleming is returned to Britain. It is left unclear whether the Doctor stabilizes or regenerates.
I apologize for all this. There is something wrong with me.
So I tried out my new bluray player with Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, and this may be the most evil disc I have ever encountered.
First, bluray takes fucking forever to load. Just unbelievably long. It's got a fucking progress bar that you can watch crawl across the screen. And repeat. And that's just to load the disc's customized loading progress bar! So it loads and loads and loads and then it starts playing.
A bluray promo.
Jumping to the disc menu is blocked. Jumping to the disc menu is blocked. Every DVD on the planet, you want to skip the previews, you hit "menu". Nope, not this time, prohibited.
So you hit next chapter. Thank god, that works.
Because there are eight previews and promos.
Oh, and by the way, incredibly slow reaction to button clicks is normal. That's important, because the button clicks are buffered, so if you hit pause and it keeps playing and hit pause again, it'll eventually pause, and then immediately unpause from your second pause.
Oh, and by the way, during the promos, the stop button is disabled.
So you finally get to something like a disc menu, where there's a talking skull who talks some of the least inspired pirate talk I've ever heard at you for a while before letting "Play Movie" come up.
And, just because the disc hasn't treated you badly enough yet, the skull is asymmetric, with one orbit, cheekbone, and mandible slightly deformed compared to the other. Not a lot, just enough to be noticeable. What the fuck!
Anyway, you start the movie playing, and let's say your friend Chris calls or you want to go get a bowl of ice cream or something, so you hit stop. When you get back, you can just hit play and pick up from where you left off, right, like every other DVD player in the world, right?
Wrong! This disc disables the resume function. You better block out enough time to sit through the whole fucking thing, my bucko, because you're fucked if you don't. You hit stop and hit play some time later, the disc goes all the way back and starts the loading process over again.
[Having now seen the opening thirty seconds of the movie about four times now, I can say with great authority that HD makes it really easy to see that the ship looming out of the fog and little Elizabeth at its bow are pure CGI with no trace of reality. Already, my appreciation of the film is enhanced. No, diminished. I meant diminished.]
I did finally discover that there's a thing called a pop-up menu that you can get to come up while the movie is playing, that you can use to e.g. jump forward to a scene. Hooray for technology, we've walked backward to the point that blu-ray movie cases have to list the chapter breaks again, after DVD developers discovered that people didn't really watch movies that way, but we have to now, because the fucking disc won't let the player remember where we were when we left off.
So, y'know, fuck off and die, Disney Blu-Ray.
After having watched "The Doctor's Daughter" last night (she's really beautiful, but the episode was a bit too light, and the death of Martha's friend was horribly staged to the point of leaching all the pathos), I had the following awful idea for a Doctor Who fanfic series:
The eleventh doctor, tall and very elegant, dresses in Savile Row suits and tuxedos, charming, debonair, very dry, and his companion, a short 1950s English bureaucrat named Fleming, visit "Casino Interplanetary".
Subsequent adventures include stopping a plot to blow up the moon and destroy life on Earth in "Moonbreaker", dealing with smugglers in "Eternium Crystals", managing to stop "The War from Sontar", counteracting a Cyberplot to neutralize the Doctor in "Doctor Negation", and foiling an attempt to steal the Key of Time from the vault on pre-Time War Gallifrey in "Timefinger".
I really, really shouldn't be allowed to write.
My experiences with Comcast customer service have been positive, despite Comcast's miserable reputation across the net. However, note that Comcast only recently took over from Time-Warner in Houston, and so Houston service is probably still mostly former Time-Warner personnel.
That being said, it took me only ten minutes to exchange my DVR for an HD DVR. I am, admittedly, a block away from a payment center, which are widely spaced, so it's much more convenient for me than someone else. The payment center itself was attractive and well-staffed by efficient service reps.
When I arranged for a service call a couple of months ago, I had to wait three days, but the dude came on a Sunday morning, exactly as scheduled, and fixed my problem with no hassle.
Admittedly, I haven't had any problems with the cable modem, which are legendary sources of service hell when they go bad. (The dude who installed it also seemed to know what he was doing.)
Basically, they seem to know where their towels are.
Rothgery v. Gillespie County, Texas
Petitioner Rothgery was arrested by a cop as a felon in possession of a firearm, brought before a magistrate judge, denied appointed counsel, and required to post bail; he was subsequently indicted, re-arrested, had his bail increased, and jailed when he could not post his new bail. His appointed attorney at the time assembled the paperwork that demonstrated that Rothgery was not a felon and therefore got the indictment dismissed.
Rothgery sued, maintaining that had he been appointed counsel at the magistrate stage, he would never have been indicted or jailed, and that this violates his Sixth Amendment right to counsel. The district court and Fifth Circuit appellate court dismissed on the grounds that right-to-counsel did not attach until a prosecutor was involved in case (here, at the indictment stage).
The Court held, 8-1:
A criminal defendant's initial appearance before a magistrate judge, where he learns the charge against him and his liberty is subject to restriction, marks the initiation of adversary judicial proceedings that trigger attachment of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel.
Sounds pretty fricking obvious to me. Your right to counsel attaches at the moment they can send you to jail. I'm surprised they had to explain this.
My new furniture came in today. Also, I'm trying to give away some old furniture. Several 250K pics behind the cut.
Hypothesis: As much as we'd like them to be neutral, guy is fully masculine, and guys is masculine dominant. You should avoid using them indefinitely or for mixed groups.
As I believe I've written before, the best thing about Lee Goldberg's Monk novels is that he has the skill to write so that I can hear the characters talking in the actors' voices. Mr. Monk in Outer Space is no exception.
In this story, now out in paperback, Monk investigates the murder of Conrad Stipe, the creator of Beyond Earth, a short-lived 70s cult sci-fi television series currently being revived in much revised format, to the dismay of a vocal sector of fandom. The murder occurs outside a fan con, and takes place in full view of four security cameras, but the killer doesn't care, because he's dressed as the show's inhuman second lead, Mr. Snork.
There's also the case of the man who was shot after he died, a case so mysterious, and yet so far beneath the attention of Captain Stottlemeyer's homicide squad, that Lt. Disher is assigned to head up a Special Desecration Unit to unravel it.
Since desecration is naturally of keen interest to the obsessive compulsive detective, Monk is drawn to the case. But in order to also solve Stipe's murder, Monk is forced to come to grips with the most disturbing discovery of all: His brother Ambrose is a Big Name Fan in "Earther" circles and author of multiple books and guides about the series.
From there on out, it's classic Monk style all the way. The Monk series is perfect popcorn mystery, fun and easy to read. Goldberg's use of Natalie as narrator means that we spend the most time in the presence and thoughts of simply the most pleasant character on the show, making the read even easier.
Outer Space has more to offer the long-term Goldberg fan, because he is essentially revisiting his earlier novel, Beyond the Beyond, a comic mystery dealing with the same subject, albeit with much more focus on the quirks and outright dysfunctions of fandom. The Monk version, naturally, focuses on Monk and the rest of his cast, and the structure of the Monk novels, with several related and unrelated crimes for Monk to unravel per novel, draws attention away from the sci-fi cult.
The subject of media fandom is near but hardly dear to Goldberg, a one-time showrunner of Seaquest DSV who has a notorious and vehement disdain for fanfic in particular and little sympathy for fandom in general. As noted, Beyond the Beyond is a purer examination of this, but Outer Space is not above taking notice. In particular, Goldberg holds Ambrose Monk's expertise up as admirable, leading Monk to recognize his brother's contribution to solving the case.
I don't get migraines. I don't take any prescription medication. The only daily medication I take is an H2-antagonist for acid reflux, which controls it effectively, and an antihistamine during particular seasons, both OTC.
I've been to the emergency room for myself just once in my life. I barely get colds, and they rarely last more than 24 hours. I don't get the flu. I've never had food poisoning have symptoms last more than a day; I've had food poisoning that completely resolved in under two hours.
I have very mild asthma; I don't have an inhaler. If I get bronchitis, I've had it so many times it just registers as part of the asthma/allergy complex, and I certainly don't treat it as anything worth taking note of. I don't receive regular medical care for any chronic conditions.
Well, I have pretty crappy eyesight, but I've been wearing glasses every waking moment of my life since I was four, so it pretty much doesn't register. The kind of doctor I've seen more than any other is a dermatologist, because I'm prone to cherry angiomas and skin tags, which are completely harmless, if sometimes inconveniently located; no melanomas. I have rarely had atrial fibrillation, entirely due to stress, and eliminated by reducing stress; atrial fibrillation is essentially harmless.
Sometimes my back is sore in the morning. Sometimes my knuckles ache a little in the morning depending on the weather. I can walk for hours, several days in a row (but I can only walk up hills in short bursts). I should exercise and lose 40 pounds, but so far the weight hasn't cost me anything medically.
So there you go. By any reasonable standards, I'm thoroughly healthy. I don't have to make plans taking my health into account, or worry that I'll have to cancel anything because of a flare-up. I don't have to worry about running out of endurance or carrying my inhaler or my pills. I don't have to wake up and worry about whether I'll be able to function today.
The ability to conduct my life without those constraints is the essence of privilege, at least in the sociological sense. Because of my good health, things are just easier for me than they are for someone who does have a health condition.
I have other privileges; heck, in America, I may have them all: White, straight, male, healthy. Decent education, decent income, decent family, decent social network. Native born. Taller than average. I even have Christian privilege, since I'm Catholic (leaving aside being an atheist).
Having privilege isn't immoral per se; most of the conditions that give rise to it are inborn, and it's difficult to argue that an inborn condition could be inherently immoral. But privilege can give rise to immoral behavior; it is a moral hazard.
The first problem is that it's often very difficult to recognize that you have a particular privilege. As a human, you're very sensitive to noticing when you're denied something. It's harder to notice when you get it for free, and hard to notice that other people don't, and even if you notice it, it's very easy to believe that you deserve it.
I didn't know I had health privilege until I had a good friend who didn't, and even then, I didn't really notice on my own and had to get slapped upside the head for being an asshole. Same for most of the other privileges; I'm kinda slow, I'm kind of an asshole, and I'm pretty selfish.
Not recognizing your own privilege sometimes means that you're condescending or rude to people who don't share it. One of the most common incarnations of male privilege is seizing control of female conversations; a man comes charging into a comment thread, giving instructions on how to solve the issue, or raising an analogous male issue and expecting it to be given equal status or even priority.
The second problem is that everybody with privilege has a voice inside their head telling them that other people don't have it because they're failures. Like health. Since I, by definition, am normal, all you people who are sick all the time or whining about their migraines or panicking at the specter of bronchitis, you're all just pussies.
Marriage is for a man and a woman. She deserved to get raped. He's an illegal, so it doesn't matter if he gets mugged. I'd hire him, but he just wouldn't fit our office. I'm not privileged, I worked hard to get into that prestigious university and where I am today. You're just not trying hard enough.
That's the voice of privilege. That's the chief moral hazard of privilege: Justifying your advantages by believing that everyone else's failures are their own faults.
I've looked over two of today's SCOTUS decisions. Both of them feature heavy majorities with both "conservative" and "liberal" justices; but both of them feature concurring opinions that clearly demonstrate one of the deep divisions currently present on the court.
Scalia and Thomas believe that a judge should take no notice of Congressional intent when interpreting a law, so they don't join the parts of Justice Stevens' opinion for the Court in the first case that talk about Congressional intent.
Stevens and Breyer believe that if there's a question about a statute, then it makes sense to consult what the people who wrote and passed the statute said about what they thought it meant, so they write separately to add the analysis that's missing from Justice Scalia's opinion for the Court in the second case.
One of these positions is more democratic and more sensible than the other. Guess which.
Also: Chief Justice Roberst is arguably a failure. His Court is producing extremely fractured opinions, one-paragraph concurrences, and the like; the Justices are not cooperating and are not writing collegially, with an eye to achieving consensus with their fellows, and that is one of the few responsibilities of the CJ.
Also, anyone who complains about "judicial activism" is most likely an ignorant asshole. But that's a topic for a different day.