Friday Ephemera
Urine flavour wheels. (h/t, MeFi) // Beluga whale mimics human voices. // The Blitz in colour. // Bipedal robot masters tightrope. // Orphaned baby echidna likes milk, warm blanket. // Yusuke Oono’s 360° book. // Yes, but can you name them all? // Alan Rickman makes tea. // “Turin had the highest concentrations of atmospheric cocaine.” // Hand-blown glass straws. // Glass anatomy. // Real life escape pods. // High-performance hand-mounted slingshot. // Iron Man 3. // Attack of the big blue snails. // Clearing land mines. // When William Shatner sold Commodore computers. // Hallowe’en is coming. // And so costumes for everyone.
I like the 360 degree book. Yusuke Oono, for your next trick, 451 degree books?
Many diseases affect metabolism and many changes in metabolism can be detected in the urine […] including the very descriptively named Maple Syrup Urine Disease or Sweaty Feet Syndrome.
My morning is off to a good start. Thanks, David.
The fashions of Star Trek: TNG.
“The fashions of Star Trek: TNG.”
Heh. Worth it just for the description of Klingon beauty regimens and Beverly’s alarming woollens.
And of course this.
More interesting sci-fi fashion from S.H.A.D.O.
http://youtu.be/cRAFVSzGhVw
WTP,
Who knew the future would be so fabulous? And ever so slightly pervy.
That’s Nick Drake’s sister, that is.
In other news, Skyfall is good. Bloody good, in fact.
Saw Skyfall last night and agree it was a return to form. First Bond film in ages I’ve thought about seeing twice.
“First Bond film in ages I’ve thought about seeing twice.”
It’s a clever balance of old and new and, unlike its predecessor, it does have most of the necessary elements: An outrageous, indeed exhausting, pre-credits sequence; plenty of Judi Dench – actually doing something this time; scrapes, jams, peril; even a bit of Tennyson. And it’s a very handsome film; Roger Deakins’ cinematography is quite something. Oh, and I did laugh out loud several times. (“Go on, eject me. See if I bloody care.”)
[ Added: ]
I’ve just noticed that one po-faced reviewer felt obliged to denounce Bond as an “imperial thug” before whinging about the fact that the villain may, incidentally, be gay: “Can Mendes really believe that… it is now acceptable to portray predatory homosexuality as a symptom of criminal megalomania? When, having tied Bond to a chair, Javier begins fondling the agent’s nipples, one can’t help but think of the extravagantly dressed gays that used to molest Robin Askwith in 1970s Confessions films.” Apparently, fictional supervillains must always be straight, lest we think being gay inclines one to sabotage, sadism and supervillainy.
“Apparently, fictional supervillains must always be straight, lest we think being gay inclines one to sabotage, sadism and supervillainy”
Same old idea: leading to the enforced typecasting of members of specified victim groups as reliable, good-at-their-jobs, utterly moral. This means that villains have to be white middle class English males – that’s to make sure there are no racist or sexist imbalance in representations!
Think of those splendid gay villains in “Diamonds are forever” – along with the haunting theme (that John Barry (?) wrote for them) one of the highlights of the entire Bond series, in my opinion. We know very well the whining that would ensue in the Graun if that film were made now…the talk of “stepping backward into a homophobic past” or some such. Probably attributable to the Tories in some way.
Henry,
The thing is, the villain’s one scene of overt flirtatiousness is chiefly to intimidate Bond and set up a funny quip – it made me laugh, anyway, along with The Other Half and most of the cinema audience. And, if anything, the flirtation is at Bond’s expense, or rather, at the expense of the clichés of Bond. (Countless women swoon over our hero, usually to his advantage, so why, once in a while, shouldn’t the bad guy?) It doesn’t make the villain any more – or less – villainous and it certainly doesn’t explain or symbolise his villainy. It’s incidental. Of course some people feel a need to display their indignation over trivial things in order to assert their ideological credentials.
Anyway, it’s good fun.
That snail rubbish had a fearsome amount of artbollocks attached to it.
“Apparently, fictional supervillains must always be straight, lest we think being gay inclines one to sabotage, sadism and supervillainy”
On the other hand, why should straights have all the fun?