Well, it’s that time again. Lots of interesting articles have crossed my path, but I can’t post or comment on all of them, so it’s time for another series of what I might call “Potpourri Posts”. Or maybe I should just call them “Post-pourris”?
(Suggestions for titles are invited.)
You can go to the different articles by clicking on the links embedded in their titles.
A (relatively) quick snapshot of “Dr. Who” — all of them — from 1963 onward.
If you have been watching BBCAmerica, it’s changed a bit over the years. Like many Americans, Tom Baker’s “Dr. Who” hooked me when it aired on PBS about 30 years ago.
Doctor Who History 1963-2010 from Joe Siegler on Vimeo.
“…So here we are in Yucatan. A strange sort of name for a place, that is! What do you think it means, Titus?”
“‘I don’t understand you.'”
“Pardon me? I thought I was speaking very clearly, Titus. I said, ‘What do you think it means?’ I was referring to Yucatan.”
Drusus chuckled. “I heard you. And I answered you. You asked a question, and ‘I don’t understand you’ is what I replied. All around the world for centuries now we’ve been going up to the natives of one far-off place or another and asking them in nice grammatical Latin what that place is called. And since they don’t know any Latin, they reply ‘I don’t understand you’ in their own language, and we put that down as the name of the place. … And so, when Haraldus or one of his friends asked the natives the name of their kingdom, they answered “Yucatan’, which I’m almost certain is not the name of the place at all, but merely means …”
“Yes,”, said Marcus Junianus, “I think I grasp the point.”
— From the book “Roma Eterna”, by Robert Silverberg (2003) in Chapter “The Second Wave, A.U.C. 1861”
TWEET by @OTOOLEFAN (Don Millard ): “JFK vs US Steel: Back when Presidents would stand up to Big Business: http://youtu.be/WWKImfw3nLE”
Don raises an excellent point, and it again reminds us how important it is to learn and remember history, not least so we can recognize when it’s being distorted. Continue reading
I was referred to this article (“Scientists plan to drill all the way down to the Earth’s mantle“) by a tweet from @ebertchicago (Roger Ebert): Drilling five miles down into the earth’s mantle. What could possibly go wrong? http://bit.ly/g9qGVr
Learn more about this movie at the Internet Movie Database (imdb.com).
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Summary: A scientist tries to find a limitless, non-polluting energy source by drilling really, really deep into the earth. This can’t end ‘well’.
I first saw this film when I was about 14. Continue reading
