Tom Charman

I linked to Scott Adams’ blog in the Grapefruit notables a little while back. Only a few weeks after launching his blog, he got himself into a spot of controversy with this post on the debate between Evolution and Intelligent Design. A scientist/blogger known as PZ Myers responded with ‘Scott Adams is a Wally’.

And then, of course, it keeps going: I’m really only blogging this to conveniently link to all the steps of the debate. So, in chronological order:

1. Scott responds to general criticism in his comments here, before specifically responding to Myers’ response in this post.
2. Myers responds to the response with an attempt to summarise Adams position.
3. Adams responds with a discussion of who he finds credible, which seems to be his point in all this.
4. Myers explains what his problem with Adams’ original post is.
5. Adams encourages people to tell him why he’s stupid.
6. Myers responds by explaining what he thought Adams was wrong about. And he uses a Calvin and Hobbes picture so he gets bonus points.
7. Someone at Sedition.com spoofs Adams’ original post.
8. The results of Adams’ ‘Why I’m Stupid’ post are posted.

And I think that brings us up to date. If anyone can be bothered reading all, or some, of that: what do you think? I think Adams thinks he’s debunking pathetic excuses for debate. I think Myers thinks he’s stopping a popular thinker from even suggesting there is a debate. I think Adams isn’t quite used to how debates on the internet go. I think Myers is a bit battle-hardened by them.

Unfortunately, it’s famous for having really stupid kids.

Just the other day, the news broke that the Valedictory Dinner had been cancelled by the principal, Dr Hayward. Apparently, about thirty students were involved in trying to put a big banner up on St John of God’s tower next door to the school. I’m not entirely sure how thirty people can be involved in putting one banner up. Were twenty of them standing around cheering people on? Or are we counting those who helped paint the banner as implicated?

What hasn’t been reported as much is that apparently the kids were banned from the traditional walk from the beach to school on Muck Up Day, which seems a bit dumb. If you’ve got students doing something safe and stupid on the traditional being-stupid day, why would you ban it?

And then there’s the matter of the 150 or so students that didn’t put the banner up. Why do they get punished, exactly? It’s not like it’s hard to work out which kids are the dicks and which aren’t. Better for one or two students to get away with something than to punish 150 unfairly. Especially since one of the prime reasons for the Valedictory Dinner is to give the prizes to the clever kids.

But even after this embarassing story, today we get the news that St Leonard’s Year Nines were caught by teachers buying marijuana in Fiji, as reported in the Herald-Sun and The Age. Good move, kids. You watch the news, you know it’s safe. Hayward’s quotes actually sound reasonable in these stories, even if the Herald-Sun did plaster a picture of him grinning alongside theirs. In their initial story, The Age mentioned him defending the staff’s decision not to submit the children to the authorities, though this aspect is not as strong in the story as it stands currently. Presumably because not many people would read that story and think “those fifteen year olds need to feel the full force of the law, hanging’s too good for them.”

(The Age‘s story mentions, presumably as corroborating evidence, that the year nines were “rowdy” on the plane home according to talkback callers. Shit, really? Kids rowdy? On a plane? Let us also take into consideration that talkback callers are amongst the most intolerant, self-important people on the planet.)

So, Hayward is in favour of excessive punishment, except when it might kill the students! Hah! Oh, alright, that’s actually consistent. In any case, this has got to be the worst publicity St Leonard’s has had since it allowed those stinky boys to start attending back in the seventies.

This post was initially to only include my mini-review of Doctor Who‘s mini-episode. But then I thought, let’s give this some mass appeal. This teeny episode has made me even more anxious to get new Who, but let us also mention the need for more Stargate SG-1.

When we reached the mid-season hiatus that we’re currently inhabiting, Stargate was ticking along nicely. Which was a shame, because there were a few hints that it could have reached ‘awesome’ level earlier. These were dashed mostly by the departure of Vala Mal Doran, as played by Claudia Black. Well, there’s good news. In Stargate‘s (American) record-breaking tenth season, Vala’s back!

Oh alright, so we all assumed she would be anyhow. But it’s nice to get confirmation.

Now, onto Who — which you can watch for free online in crummy quality. Three and a half minutes doesn’t make for a very satisfying story. It’s basically just a TARDIS scene immediately after ‘The Parting of the Ways’. But as it’s our first sustained look at David Tennant as Doctor Who, it’s pretty interesting nonetheless. I should point out straight away that Billie Piper is still fantastic, and still manages to ground the craziness of any scene she’s in, and is still cute.

The Doctor’s regeneration goes wonky, naturally, but there’s a minute or two of lucidity where he can reassure Rose that it’s actually him. In my favourite moment, Rose accuses him of being a Slitheen, or some other impersonating monster, and he replies “I am not a Slitheen” with a curious sincere blend of sarcasm. I don’t know how he did it.

The manic bits are amusing, but I much preferred his quiet moments. I especially liked it when he reminded Rose and the audience of the first time he met her, complete with the eerie ‘Bad Wolf’ theme playing in the background. Some have disliked the bit where he tries to get Rose to laugh by reminding her of the time they had to “hop for their lives”. These people have obviously never tried to make a joke and watched it die horribly in front of them. Tennant does it perfectly.

So I’m pretty confident about this new Doctor. I’m sure he’ll be just as good as Eccleston, but I’m hoping they find a way to make him markedly different (in personality or methodology, not in fashion sense). I’d say more but it’s ridiculous to write more than a paragraph per minute. I wouldn’t want to follow this rule in a full episode review. Although it would be a good way to review 24.

It’s that time of year again, where I succumb to temptation and start putting up promotional Doctor Who images. Actually, this should be the only one.

What do you think? Some people hate it. Some people love it. As usual on the net. Personally I think it looks pretty cool but it’ll need to be filmed right. I like how they’ve made it a very 60s style robot and haven’t gone all borg-ish on us.

The press release is on the Doctor Who site

Two assessments down, one to go. Then I’m free! FREE! Free at last! Well, free in the ‘unemployed’ sense of the word but hey. I promise, once I’m done with this crap, to go see some actual movies and review things for Grapefruit that occurred after the beginning of the millennium. And that aren’t television.

Also, I’m meaning to slightly rejig the weblog so we can have footnotes in them. I’m lost without my footnotes. If I could have, this would been a footnote.

Just thought I’d share some advice with everyone. If it’s about 5:30 – 7:00pm, and you get a phone call from a private number, and you say “Hello?” and no one answers for about three seconds, hang up immediately. It’s almost certainly a call from a market research person, probably in India, and if it isn’t then I’m sure they’ll call you back.

This has been a public service announcement from Grapefruit.