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Apr. 16th, 2013 02:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwydion* When disasters happen, whether man made like this one or natural like an earthquake, I really only watch enough to find out what's going on. I will check back periodically, with an eye to things like updated information and what people should do if they want to help. I refuse to want the same horrible footage on loop and watch the talking heads speculate and the reporters interview each other. My feeling is, after a certain point, it becomes disaster porn or trauma, depending on your reaction. I never want real people being hard and killed to be entertainment. As a result, I spent most of the evening trying to catch up on Barney Miller and catching up on archeological news. Oddly, it was Craig Ferguson's rant that really got to me. I think because it was so personal and because it sounded like something I might say if they, say, bombed the Mummer's Parade. It seemed somehow, more human than then talking heads speculating over footage or press conferences. I don't know what that says about me.
* Reconstructing Au. sediba: http://www.livescience.com/28656-closest-human-ancestor-was-pigeon-toed.html
* I don't know how this interacts with the discovery that fish mess up dating techniques. "Pottery reveals Ice Age hunter-gatherers' taste for fish:" http://phys.org/news/2013-04-pottery-reveals-ice-age-hunter-gatherers.html
* "New Light Shed On Ancient Egyptian Port and Ship Graveyard:" http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130407150740.htm
* More coverage of the big London find:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/apr/09/archaeologist-objects-roman-london-find
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-22084384
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-09/gladiator-charm-1-900-year-shoe-revealed-in-london-dig.html
* They have discovered Pictish Ogham: http://termcoord.wordpress.com/2013/04/10/pictish-written-language-discovered-in-scotland/
* "This Picture of Boston, Circa 1860, Is the World’s Oldest Surviving Aerial Photo:" http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2013/04/this-picture-of-boston-circa-1860-is-the-worlds-oldest-surviving-aerial-photo/#ixzz2QbU1EFn8
* "First tests of old patent medicine remedies from a museum collection:" http://phys.org/news/2013-04-patent-medicine-remedies-museum.html
* Possible scurvy and depression link: http://phys.org/news/2013-04-humanities-medicine-combine-reveal-secrets.html
* Revising the causes of the death of the Franklin Expodition: http://phys.org/news/2013-04-acquit-tins-mysterious-franklin.html
* "Parkinson's sufferers face regular discrimination:" http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-22149790
* "The Stars Over Teotihuacan, City of Gods:" http://www.universetoday.com/101392/astrovideo-the-stars-over-teotihuacan-city-of-gods/
* I was simply too tired to go out today. It's going to be a rough week, with inconveniently timed appointments designed to screw up my sleep cycle. Hector is still protesting my sleep, which is not helping.
* I watched Juan of the Dead yesterday, which was a disappointment. It started out fascinating in a whole bunch of ways, being a sort of Cuban re-imagining of Shaun of the Dead. It's not a remake, as it's really different in plot and tone, so maybe it's better described as containing periodic homages within a narrative talking about a whole bunch of other things. There were things I liked, like the propaganda broadcasts and some of the themes. It's trying to say a whole lot more than Shaun, for example. The huge problem with it, and something that made it very hard to watch after a while, was the rampant homophobia. They use anti-gay insults, they make lots of nasty homophobic "jokes" and while they are a rare zombie apocalypse with gay characters, this is far from a positive portrayal, and the straight survivors rather treat them like shit. I think it was more disappointing because the sequence with the group working together looked kind of awesome in a delightfully cheesy sort of way. I also fundamentally couldn't find the sidekick repeatedly killing other survivors over and over funny. I get that it's more brutal and raunchy. I get that they were aiming for a certain sort of survivor psychology and the desensitization makes sense in that context, but it made me emotionally disconnect from other themes like parent/child bonding and ultimately meant that I stopped caring whether they got killed or not. Eventually, I started rooting for them all to die. It's a shame, because I think this was really ambitious for it's budget, and I do think it's unusual, it's jut I can't enjoy watching homophobia on this level.
* The Clutch:
* Reconstructing Au. sediba: http://www.livescience.com/28656-closest-human-ancestor-was-pigeon-toed.html
* I don't know how this interacts with the discovery that fish mess up dating techniques. "Pottery reveals Ice Age hunter-gatherers' taste for fish:" http://phys.org/news/2013-04-pottery-reveals-ice-age-hunter-gatherers.html
* "New Light Shed On Ancient Egyptian Port and Ship Graveyard:" http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130407150740.htm
* More coverage of the big London find:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/apr/09/archaeologist-objects-roman-london-find
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-22084384
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-09/gladiator-charm-1-900-year-shoe-revealed-in-london-dig.html
* They have discovered Pictish Ogham: http://termcoord.wordpress.com/2013/04/10/pictish-written-language-discovered-in-scotland/
* "This Picture of Boston, Circa 1860, Is the World’s Oldest Surviving Aerial Photo:" http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/2013/04/this-picture-of-boston-circa-1860-is-the-worlds-oldest-surviving-aerial-photo/#ixzz2QbU1EFn8
* "First tests of old patent medicine remedies from a museum collection:" http://phys.org/news/2013-04-patent-medicine-remedies-museum.html
* Possible scurvy and depression link: http://phys.org/news/2013-04-humanities-medicine-combine-reveal-secrets.html
* Revising the causes of the death of the Franklin Expodition: http://phys.org/news/2013-04-acquit-tins-mysterious-franklin.html
* "Parkinson's sufferers face regular discrimination:" http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-22149790
* "The Stars Over Teotihuacan, City of Gods:" http://www.universetoday.com/101392/astrovideo-the-stars-over-teotihuacan-city-of-gods/
* I was simply too tired to go out today. It's going to be a rough week, with inconveniently timed appointments designed to screw up my sleep cycle. Hector is still protesting my sleep, which is not helping.
* I watched Juan of the Dead yesterday, which was a disappointment. It started out fascinating in a whole bunch of ways, being a sort of Cuban re-imagining of Shaun of the Dead. It's not a remake, as it's really different in plot and tone, so maybe it's better described as containing periodic homages within a narrative talking about a whole bunch of other things. There were things I liked, like the propaganda broadcasts and some of the themes. It's trying to say a whole lot more than Shaun, for example. The huge problem with it, and something that made it very hard to watch after a while, was the rampant homophobia. They use anti-gay insults, they make lots of nasty homophobic "jokes" and while they are a rare zombie apocalypse with gay characters, this is far from a positive portrayal, and the straight survivors rather treat them like shit. I think it was more disappointing because the sequence with the group working together looked kind of awesome in a delightfully cheesy sort of way. I also fundamentally couldn't find the sidekick repeatedly killing other survivors over and over funny. I get that it's more brutal and raunchy. I get that they were aiming for a certain sort of survivor psychology and the desensitization makes sense in that context, but it made me emotionally disconnect from other themes like parent/child bonding and ultimately meant that I stopped caring whether they got killed or not. Eventually, I started rooting for them all to die. It's a shame, because I think this was really ambitious for it's budget, and I do think it's unusual, it's jut I can't enjoy watching homophobia on this level.
* The Clutch: