Last week was the one where there was PANIC over whether I would have new supply of prescription drug; credit card issues including FRAUD; and also bizarre phonecall from the musculo-skeletal people about scheduling an appointment which suggested they hadn't looked at my record or are very very confused about what my next session is actually for.
HOWEVER
Though I began writing a review on Wednesday, did a paragraph, and felt totally blank about where it was going from there, I returned to it the following day and lo and behold wrote enough to be considered an actual review, though have been tinkering and polishing since then. But is essentially DONE.
And in the realm of reviewing have received 3 books for essay review, have another one published this month coming sometime, and today heard that my offer to review for Yet Another Venue has been accepted, where can they send the book?
While in other not quite past it news, for many years I was heavily involved in a rather niche archival survey, which is no longer being hosted in its previous useful if rather outdated form but as a spreadsheet (I would say no use to man nor beast but it does have some value I suppose). But there is talk of reviving and updating it (yay) and I have been invited to a meeting to discuss this. Fortunately I can attend virtually rather than at ungodly hour of morning in distant reaches of West London.
Also professional org of which I am A (jolly good?) Fellow is doing a survey and has invited me to attend a virtual Focus Group.
Oh yes, and it looks as though a nerdy letter about Rebecca West I wrote to the Literary Review is likely to get published.
I was glued to the screen for Logopolis‘s first showing in 1981, a month before my fourteenth birthday. The show I loved was being remade, with a total revamp of the TARDIS crew and last of all the leading man – just as Innes Lloyd had done in 1966. And here in 2025, we’ve just been through the same process again…
When I came back to Logopolis in 2008, I wrote at length:
I saw Logopolis (of course) back in 1981 and again when it was repeated later in the year. Its biggest problem is that the pacing doesn’t quite match the amount of Stuff that is Happening; the first episode in particular is alarmingly slow, episode two is incomprehensible in places, and it is not surprising that the ratings for the last two episodes were so low.
But the two million viewers who gave up on it between eps 2 and 3 were mistaken. Things I liked about it: the Watcher works really well, even though we never really find out the details of how he works. It generally looks fascinating – the nested Tardises, the streets of Logopolis. John Fraser as the Monitor is great. Nothing that the Master does actually makes sense, but it’s a great debut story for Ainley who does some high-class evil laughter. Nyssa may pop out of nowhere but it’s good to have her back (and out-acting Adric almost instantly). The music is super – the theme for the Watcher suggesting that he is not the Master (as Adric assumes) but something else, and that final chord sequence as it transforms into the Doctor Who theme.
The biggest problem I have with it now is that the Master’s grand plan simply doesn’t compute. How can he have known that the Doctor was headed for the Barnet by-pass? Or would then head for Logopolis? And how quickly will his message to the peoples of the universe reach them, indeed how will the radio telescope, sending messages at sluggish old light-speed, be able to affect the CVE in time? (And since Logopolis is out of commission, who will do this in future next time there is an entropy crisis?) We’ll leave out the fact that the Third Doctor survived a much longer fall in The Paradise of Death, since that story is of dubious canonicity.
The DVD is almost worth the cover price alone for the documentary on the transition between Doctors, “A New Body At Last”, featuring interviews with Davison, Baker (as hilarious as ever) and numerous other cast and crew.
When I came back to it for my Great Rewatch in 2011, I wrote:
Taken on its own merits, Logopolis is a bit unsatisfactory. The first couple of episodes have way too much exposition and info-dumping, and the last two episodes are basically about establishing the Master and the new Tardis team, and getting rid of the Fourth Doctor.
But actually, watched in context, I can see why it gripped me at the time; the revival of the Master, the role of the Time Lords, and the CVE’s all link back rather satisfactorily to the earlier stories in the season, and the episode and a half actually set in Logopolis, and then the final battle between the Master and the Doctor, ending in his regeneration, are effective. And it does make sense to have the departing Doctor bid farewell to all of his companions, as the Fifth and Tenth were also able to do; this is a story about goodbyes and it’s appropriate.
And the music is particularly good.
Incidentally, when we reach the police box on Earth in the first episode, this is after a run of 23 episodes set elsewhere – the last time we saw Earth was at the very beginning of The Leisure Hive. It is the longest sequence of non-terrestrial episodes in the show’s history.
Watching again, I want to particularly salute Paddy Kingsland’s music. That sequence at the very end of the story remains spine-chilling, 44 years on.
The second paragraph of the third chapter of Christopher H. Bidmead’s novelization of his own story is:
In any case, there was something much more interesting to think about. In the Doctor’s temporary absence, Adric’s curiosity had drawn him towards the police box.
Bidmead’s write-up of his own story is reassuringly dynamic and exciting, if just a little over-written in places. In particular, Logopolis itself feels more like a real place, and the minor characters more like real people; the whole thing makes slightly better sense than what we saw on screen.
Nothing to add to that; a confident novelisation which does what it needs to do. There is no explanation of the means and motivation of the Master, but there never is. You can get it here.
Jonathan Hay’s Black Archive on Logopolis pays appropriate tribute to a story that marked a turning point in the show. At 119 pages it’s fairly brief. A brief introduction gives the context for the story in terms of the production history.
The first chapter, “Resetting the Scene”, looks at the changes to the show brought in by John Nathan-Turner, the scientific basis for the story, the reintroduction of the Master and the backgrounds of the two new companions.
The second and longest chapter, “Regeneration”, looks at the way regeneration is handled for both the Doctor and the Master, especially in Season 18 but also in later Doctor Who history.
The third chapter, “Entropy” looks at the concept of entropy and the character of the Watcher. Its second paragraph is:
As the laws of physics assert, energy within a closed system can neither increase nor decrease on aggregate; it can only change between forms. Hence, as time passes, more and more energy within a closed system inevitably transforms into the form of heat energy. Heat energy is a disordered form which is essentially unable to then transform back into any other form of energy². This principle is known as the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and applies not only on smaller scales, but also to our universe, the largest closed system we currently know of³. As time passes, the proportion of disordered (heat) energy within the universe increases. This tendency towards gradual disorder, which applies to any given physical system, is known as entropy. ² Maxwell, J Clerk, Theory of Heat, p93. ³ Maxwell, Theory of Heat, p153.
The fourth chapter, “Computers”, looks at the history of computers in reality, including the fact that the word used to mean a woman who does calculations, and the significance of Logopolis; it points out the importance of the computer-generated music. It’s not the longest chapter but I felt was intellectually the most substantial.
The fifth chapter, “The Singularity”, looks at the extent to which Logopolis anticipated Vernor Vinge.
The conclusion, “‘It’s the end, but the moment has been prepared for'”, looks at the many ways in which the new Blu-ray edition of Logopolis improves on the original. It’s on my list…
Not the most ground-breaking of Black Archives, but as I said up top, a respectful and detailed analysis of an important story. You can get it here.
Last week, the Black Archives published their 77th and latest volume, on Castrovalva, and once I have read it, this reading project will have caught up to where I wanted it to get to when I started it in September 2021.
2000: The theft of an Enigma Machine comes too late to play a significant role in World War Two, Sellafield highlight British dedication to nuclear saafety, and the Conservatives, informed polling has them 2% ahead of Labour, discover that they are actually trailing by 13%.
The Bones of Time by Kathleen Ann Goonan 2 (11.8%)
Time by Stephen Baxter 5 (29.4%)
Bold for have read, italic for intend to read,, underline for never heard of it.
Which 2000 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read? Distraction by Bruce Sterling A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson Silver Screen by Justina Robson The Bones of Time by Kathleen Ann Goonan Time by Stephen Baxter
I've belatedly found a way to view timecodes with milliseconds, which should make it much easier (and faster) for me to time subtitles (I'd been using VLC and guessing on the millisends and rewatching and adjusting stuff a bunch of times).
Love for our Elders is a program to send handwritten letters to older adults. "Our mission is to alleviate social isolation among older adults through handwritten letters and intergenerational connections."
We still haven't met with Senior Management: it's now due tomorrow, in person. I'm gently trying not to panic.
There's still been no message of support to all members of staff and students from the University, and nothing at all from the department. Though I understand they're still in discussions in the background. This is frustrating.
The subject was raised at a recent All Staff meeting (in which people submit questions as text, and senior management attempt to answer them). We were given broad assurances that the university values and supports trans people, but nothing actually useful or genuinely supportive was said.
9th June 2025
Dear Women’s and Equalities Select Committee and Joint Committee on Human Rights,
Cc: Pippa Heylings, as my MP
I am writing to express my grave concern about the proposed appointment of Dr Mary-Ann Stephenson as the Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
I won't include a string of references here, because I think you will have seen them all already, but I think it is imperative that the next person appointed as Head of the EHRC should not be seen to have a strong anti-trans background. Trans people are currently scared. Scared for their jobs, if they cannot access their workplace in safety and dignity. Scared of being assaulted if they go to the "wrong" toilet. Scared of being outed as trans in public if they try to follow the new guidelines.
And I am scared as a cis woman, a woman who is not trans, at what is happening in our country, and what this means for my friends and colleagues and for trans people in general. For intersex people, non-binary people, and any woman who might be mistaken for being trans. Other women need to feel safe too, but excluding trans people is not the way to do this.
The EHRC needs to stand up for the rights of everyone, and to be seen to do so. I sincerely hope you will take this into account.
Kind Regards,
Eleanor Blair
Great Shelford, Cambridge, CB22
I'm not even going to attempt to get into the member of the EHRC who was quoted as effectively saying that trans people have been misled about their rights under the Equality Act for the last 15 years, and there will now be a period of adjustment, but they should just get used to having fewer rights than they thought they did. The Guardian changed their headline and reporting three times as a result of her protesting about being misquoted, but that seems to have been the gist of it. Not mentioning that the "misleading" guidance came from the EHRC themselves, and was based on the previous understanding of the Equalities Act and entirely consistent with it. FFS
Greek religion does not promote morality. Piety towards the gods and the dead, not good behaviour, is its central aim. [loc. 350]
Read in fits and starts between other books, mostly for the fascinating factoids and descriptions of legal process in classical Greece. Presented as a handbook for time-travellers, How to Survive in Ancient Greece is good at highlighting some key differences: the improbability of growing old, the more equitable distribution of wealth (1% really wealthy, 1% really poor, 'the majority of Athenians are very poor by our standards'), the less equitable treatment of women. Entertaining, engaging, informative.
My right knee is healing, and stretching worked significantly better than yesterday. I even did a few carefully selected PT exercises this afternoon.
I can do more things standing up, and walking around the apartment is easier. However, I seem to have been leaning too much on the other leg, because my left knee started to hurt earlier. Not badly, but enough that I am putting the cane aside for the moment.
I swung by Old Goat Books to pick up a book I ordered, which meant I was in the right place at the right time hear the confused customer next to me ask "What's speculative fiction?" Which, after I explained what it meant, was followed by the question. "Do you know anything about Andre Norton?"
It was only with great effort that I resisted shouting "BEHOLD! I AM Marshall McLuhan" before helping.
Furiously Happy, Jenny Lawson. I can see why people like her! I have also remembered why I wound up unsubscribing from her blog. Very interesting proof of concept in re audiobooks, though.
Prophet, Helen MacDonald and Sin Blaché. Very enjoyable reread in which many things landed differently, in service of...
a word you've never understood, rydra_wong. EXACTLY the post-canon follow-up I wanted but would have absolutely failed to articulate. Have already tried to lure one more person into reading the book so I can then make them go read the fic. Now I just selfishly want Even More Of It.
Pain is really strange, Steve Haines. Reread for the purpose of making notes, this time. Sparked at least one useful thought. Following up references is a work in progress.
How to cook... Desserts, Leiths Cookery School. Read all the way through for the purposes of EYB indexing first pass! Go me.
STARTED:
Adventures in Stationery, James Ward. Borrowed from library on a whim for low-brain non-fiction.
Writing. First pass through indexing a cookbook on EYB!
Some Actual Notes re pain for The Book, including (and I am very proud of myself for this) actually writing down my questions alongside the bare "here's what it contained".
Watching.Murderbot S01E01. I am dubious but expecting to keep watching. If you encourage me I might say more when it is not past curfew.
Cooking. ... apparently I have not managed Much Of Note this week.
Eating. POTATOES at the ALLOTMENT courtesy of ALLOTMENT FRIENDS. Also finished my choi sum and had my first AMAZING broad beans and nibbled kohlrabi speculatively, all on Tuesday.
Today I have nibbled: a cherry; the first few redcurrants; a pod's worth of Kelvedon Wonder peas; half a tiny tomato.
Making & mending. Made some progress on A's left glove. Realised, belatedly, that I'd done the same thing with picking up stitches unevenly along the two sides of the palm. Ripped back most of the way to where I started from and Sulked. BUT HEY I've remembered the pattern and where I'd stowed all the bits for it!
Growing. See Eating for my biggest excitements. Sugar Magnolia (purple sugar-snap pea) now setting pods; my main intention with it this year (given that I planted a whole packet of seeds and have wound up with ...fewer plants than that) is just to get myself sorted with a significantly larger number of seeds for next year, but hey, maybe they'll all be super productive and I'll actually get to eat some too.
Stockings now at the plot to go onto the cherry tomorrow, hopefully.
Tomatoes planted out when tiny not doing so great (i.e. have mostly disappeared). Tomatoes planted out when larger Actually Flowering. Desperately need to stake the lot of them.
Tiny single solitary surviving oca has started to Go.
V grumpy about how poorly the squash I got started A While Ago have coped with getting put outside given that they are in biodegradable fibre pots so I'm not even disturbing their roots. Getting the rest of them in the ground AND THEN SOWING MORE very much also high on tomorrow's priority list. (And the beans, augh.)
The other day I overhead D telling someone that I now naturally have the voice that I put on for my character in our D&D game a couple of years ago.
I was an orc barbarian, heh.
I was delighted to hear this because I hadn't consciously been doing a voice for Bulrik (I went through dozens of orc names I hated in one of the online name generators before finding one I could live with at all, only much later realizing it's most of the name I chose for my self!) and I didn't know that's what I sound like all the time now! How delightful.
I haven't done any conscious voice training at all, just let the testosterone do its work. And I didn't record my voice at any point with the intent of tracking the change, which I guess is a norm in some online cultures. Both of these choices have been conscious decisions made to protect my mental health and I feel really good about that, but it does mean my boundless self-absorption has nothing to work with here! So it's nice to have some external observation.
The other stuff I've been meaning to write about is gonna have to wait; I'm too tired now apparently.
the cosmolinguist (cosmolinguist) wrote2025-06-0807:58 pm
I went to the park with haggis and her kid this morning.
There was one point where I was pushing said kid on the swings (a lot of the morning was haggis, D and I doing as we were directed and I'd been specifically told to push her at this point) next to a nice young man doing the same with his own toddler.
He said hello by asking me "How old is she?" to which I of course panicked because I'm not sure these days. "...Four??" I said eventually. haggis came over and saved me from more of this peril by making normal parent conversation herself.
Then the guy said "Is she the only one you guys have?" and my thoughts hadn't gotten any further than what, here with us today?
haggis said the kid is hers, and her husband's but I'm not her husband, and meanwhile I was like oh shit he thinks I'm the husband! or the new dad! Oh no! So I joked about being a gay uncle.
I don't think I've ever been mistaken for a husband before! I probably would've thought it was fun, if I wasn't too confused at the time to know that it was happening...
Just returned from a road trip through Oregon and part of Northern California. On leaving Portland we followed the route of a tourist trolley and started out at Crown Point Vista House. The views of the Colombia River were indeed impressive and well worth the twisty drive up to its height. The structure itself with its stone and stained glass was also interesting to see. The bathrooms on the basement level were all marbled -- not the usual for tourist stops!
Friday night supper: penne with a sauce of sauce of Peppadew roasted red peppers in brine drained, whizzed in blender and gently heated while pasta cooking.
Saturday breakfast rolls: basic buttermilk (as buttermilk reaching its bb date), 3:1 strong white/rye flour, turned out nicely.
Today's lunch: panfried seabass fillets in samphire sauce, served with cauliflower florets roasted in pumpkin seed oil with cumin seeds, padron peppers (as we have noted on previous occasions, these had not been picked as young and tender as they might be), and sticky rice with lime leaves.
I am up North this weekend, in the Dutch province of Drenthe, feeding my interest in matters megalithic by inspecting the hunebedden, the huge 5000-year-old stone structures which are dotted around the province. In fact, Drenthe has no less than 52 of them, and there are another two in Groningen; in the whole of the rest of the Netherlands there is one (1) surviving megalithic structure, a tomb near Maastricht.
Herman Clerinx, in his book Een Palais voor de Doden, tallies twelve dolmens and menhirs in Belgium, and one in Luxembourg. (I have been to all of them.) This means that 76% of all the surviving megalithic monuments in the three Benelux countries are in Drenthe, otherwise one of the least remarkable Dutch provinces.
Even though the hunebedden are not that different from each other (which itself is interesting; compare the variations among the Belgian monoliths, and their contrast with Wéris), they are still pretty spectacular. We looked at six of them today, which is more than 10% of the total number, and unusually for this blog, I’m going to lead with my video reaction to each one, since photographs just don’t capture the majestic structure.
D19 and D20
Each of the surviving hunebedden has been given a code number which you can actually put into your GPS. Several of them come in pairs.The first two that we looked at, like many of the others, were in a little glade off a side road, in this case near the village of Drouwen.
The farther off of the two, D20, has a ring of external stones around the entire structure.
D19 has a small entry port which I spotted after shooting the video.
A stern notice warned against climbing on them, and also asked visitors to respect that this is a place of human burial.
D27
The largest of the hunebedden is in the grounds of the Hunebed Centre, which was well worth visiting.
The only photo I took here was of the entrance portal which again I found interesting.
It will be apparent by now that it was a very wet day.
D10
This was the smallest of the hunebedden that we visited today.
A bijou affair among the sand dunes.
Some kids had built a den nearby.
D17 and D18
We stopped for lunch at an Albert Heijn supermarket and found signs to more hunebedden beside the church. It was now raining pretty firmly.
I was so excited by finding D17 by the church that I did not realise that D18 was right beside it.
D18 is much more satisfyingly complete.
I had planned a much longer itinerary, but we had other things on our agenda, and I felt we had seen a representative sample of the hunebedden, so we drew a line there and moved on.
At first sight, the hunebedden may all look like random jumbles of stones, but it does not take very long to appreciate that each of them has its own special grace in its own special place; that there is a reason why they were built there in that way, even if we cannot know it.
D10 again, end-on view
The conventional theory is that they were all covered with earth which has eroded away over the years. I find this very difficult to believe; I think when you cover something with earth, in general the earth stays there, as with the Irish court cairns (and passange tombs such as Newgrange) and the French allées couvertes. I am sure that the gaps between the stones were covered over originally, out of respect for the dead, but I reckon it was with more perishable material: cloth, or straw, or a combination.
Hunebed reconstruction at the Hunebed Centre as they supposedly originally looked. But what would have happened to all the earth?
Shirshendu Sengupta has written a brilliant guide to visiting all 54 of the hunebedden, grading them as “Must-See”, “Should-See”, “Could-See” and “Wouldn’t-See”. We didn’t even get around all of his Must-Sees today, but I’ll keep it bookmarked for a future occasion.
Drenthe is remote (by Dutch standards) and doesn’t have a lot else to offer (but more on that anon). However if you have time and energy, the hunebedden are all free to visit, and instantly connect you with our ancestors of 200 generations ago. And apparently there are many more, just over the German border.
1) The Shortest Way to Hades, Sarah Caudwell. Light, bright, a lot of fun, and a clever mystery. Also a pleasant change to have a detective story that doesn't involve sexual violence. I found myself thinking partway through that the most 80s thing about this 80s book is not the absence of email or mobile phones and that documents are typed, the boozy lunches, the fact that every single character with the possible exception of Hilary* is undoubtedly a Tory, but a relatively junior barrister not only owning a car but driving it through central London in the afternoon as apparently the quickest way to get anywhere.
2) Silent Parade, Keigo Higashino. Not lacking sexual violence (though no detailed description), but very good, and the thing that was annoying me as I was thinking "but why aren't they all doing X" turned out to be a twist, so that was fine. I'd not read any Higashino before and this was clever, readable, and I'll read more. I just wish that UK translations of Japanese novels would indicate at the beginning which way round they are putting the family name and given name. Either is fine, but since it seems to vary which is chosen in different books, I would like it to be made clear so I know.
3) Simon Boccanegra, Verdi. Opera North semi-staged production at the Royal Festival Hall, which means comfy seats, excellent sightlines, and much cheaper prices than otherwise in London. Rather tortuous trains, which the presence of antisoppist made more endurable. The performances, vocal and orchestral, were fantastic and it was a thoroughly enjoyable evening, but it's not going to join the list of my favourite operas because while the music is great, the drama isn't so strong. Too much of the plot happens off-stage with characters then reporting to others, ultimately I wasn't moved by the piece as a whole in the way I want to be by the operas that really work for me.
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oursin) wrote2025-06-09 05:06 pm
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