Look on the positive side, though: if it all goes horribly wrong and the scientists accidentally create a black hole the brings about the destruction of the entire universe, we won't have to listen to the "Torchwood" special.

News Values...

Daily Mirror: MY LITTLE MIRACLE!

Sun: THE LUCKIEST GIRL ALIVE!

Guardian: LIQUID BOMB PLOT: THREE GUILTY OF MURDER CONSPIRACY.

Telegraph: GUILTY! AIRLINE BOMB PLOTTERS AIMED TO KILL THOUSANDS.

Indepdendent: "YOU WILL BE DESTROYED!" BOMBERS CONVICTED OF HEATHROW PLOT

Times: POLICE IN CRISIS AFTER JURY REJECTS £10m TERROR CASE

Daily Express: NOW THEY WANT TO BAN YOUR LAWN.

"I've witnessed cruelty. I read Darwin all the time and find it feeds my faith. Richard Dawkins makes me want to pray, the same as Homer Simpson makes me want to exercise - for fear that I, too, will end up like him, a whining pub bore with the prose style of an internet conspiracy theorist."
Frank Cottrell Boyce

(I watched Mr Boyce's play. It is jolly nice that the BBC is still up for doing serious cerebral theatrical drama from time to time; all the thesps were acting a lot; the theological points on all sides were well made and followed through; but it managed to still be about characters rather than just a debate. But I couldn't shake the sense that this was a Christian - maybe specifically Catholic - view of the holocaust: every time someone said "It's God who should have been sent to Auschwitz" I could almost hear the Priest adding: "And do you know, in a very real sense, He was." Maybe a Christian writer can't avoid drawing a line between Cavalry and the concentration camps - it's old news that the Suffering Servant is both Jesus and the Jews. But I wonder what Jewish groups and actual holocaust survivors made of the piece?)

Nicholas Parsons: ...the subject is "science fiction". Will you tell us something about that subject, in this game, starting now:

Chris Addison: Science fiction is generally associated with the sorts of boys who generally don't find it easy to get girlfriends and also find it rather difficult to... [FX: BUZZ]

Nicholas Parsons: ...you have 53 seconds on "science fiction" starting now:

Sue Perkins: People who like science fiction want to explore brave new worlds whilst failing to understand simultaneously there's one they're living in right here and now. They never seem to be interested in what happens out side their front door instead they like to peruse comics and magazines which splik glibly... [BUZZ]

Nicholas Parsons: ...37 seconds available, "science fiction", starting now:

Julian Clary: Science fiction isn't a literary genre I've ever paid much attention to, but I can make some up on the spot for you because it really is that easy: "Mr Gobbledegook walked down the road, and sudd...[BUZZ]

Nicholas Parsons: ...you have got "science fiction", the subject, 24 seconds, starting now:

Paul Merton: ...Kurt Vonnegut wrote a wonderful book about...er.... [BUZZ]

Normal Service Has Been Resumed

5th -- Madeleine: Police lied to parents over "clues in car boot."
6th -- Madeleine: I saw her in my shop
7th -- Madeleine: She could be alive
8th -- Madeleine: I saw her on a tram
9th -- Madeleine: I saw her on Monday
10th --Is this who took Maddy?

One of These Things Is Not Like The Other One

Superman, as originally conceived, as a force for the common man, as an answer to the mindless tyranny with which his name (as a term) had come to be identified, as a foe of corruption and injustice, as the embodiment of FDR-style liberalism and the epitome of the notion that one individual can, should and must, of necessity, make a difference; in all this Superman ... Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster's Superman... the only true Superman... stands as a beacon of freedom shining as brightly for an adult who holds the ideals of the character sacred as he does for a child seeing him and learning them for the first time. As a symbol of the nearly limitless power of imagination, he has inspired creators for five decades to take up pen and brush in pursuit of excellence, to weave our tapestry once more. To aspire; that one day we might know a tenth... a hundredth of the greatness implied in knowing you are Jerry Siegel. You are Joe Shuster. You are the creators of Superman. And that no monumental and tragic injustice can strip you of that mantle. As comic book creators, this is our greatest heritage...and our greatest debt.

Dave Sim (1988)


Past the age of ten, I realized that the comic book medium was my thing. Superman was just something I read as a kid. As I said to Chester Brown, I have a bunch of my old Superman comic books. It's pleasurable to flip through them once in a while. But, Chet, if I ever read the stuff and say, "This is so good!" Please. Shoot me. For Wendy [Pini], it was her friends. The Fantastic Four were her friends. The Silver Surfer was her friend. Batman wasn't her friend. The way she connects with wolves. In her mind, she has more in common with wolves that she has with Richard. The more influence women are given in society the more pecular stuff like that gets moved to the center and the weirder everything starts to get.

Dave Sim (2004)

NOTE:

If everyone buys two copies of "Sci-Fi Now" and writes to the editor and tells him that you bought it solely to read my piece on Doctor Who monsters, then I might get some more work.

Yes, I do know the difference between a Silurian and a Slitheen.

So: the 2009 season of Torchwood will have only 5 episodes, and RTD gets an OBE.

If he'd canceled it altogether, would he have got a knighthood?

I am resigning from the opposition because I oppose the policy of the government.

Er...I haven't thought this through properly, have I?

Head. Wall. Bang. Bang. Bang.

Been trying to think of some witty and ironic comment to make about this. But words really, really fail me.

O would some power the giftie gie us...

"The man who resurrected the nation's favorite timelord (sic), reinvented him and bequeathed him to future generations of slightly inadequate men and women to obsess over once again, has stepped down...."

The Grauniad

Modified rapture!

Happy happy joy joy
Happy happy joy joy
Happy happy joy joy
Happy happy joy joy
Happy happy joy joy
Happy happy joy joy
Happy happy joy joy
Happy happy joy joy
Happy happy joy joy
Happy happy joy joy
Happy happy joy joy
Happy happy joy joy
Happy happy joy joy
Happy happy joy joy

Umberto Eco sums up what I've been trying to say about Doctor Who so exactly that I assume I must have read the book at college and forgotten it.

"We should beware of understanding this distinction of levels as though on one side there were an easily satisfied reader, only interested in the story, and on the other a reader with an extremely refined palate, concerned above all with language. If that were so, we would have to read The Count of Monte Cristo on the first level, becoming totally enthralled by it, and maybe even shedding hot tears at every turn, and then, on the second level, we would have to realise, as is only right, that from a stylistic point of view it is very badly written, and to conclude therefore that it is a terrible novel. Instead, the miracle of works like The Count of Monte Cristo is that, while being very badly written, they are still masterpieces of fiction. Consequently the second-level reader is not only he who recognizes that the novel is badly written but also the one who is aware that, despite this, its narrative structure is perfect, the archetypes are all in the right place, the coups-de-scene judged to perfection, its breadth (though at times stretched to breaking point) almost Homeric in scope--so much so that to criticize the Count of Monte Cristo because of its language would be like criticizing Verdi's operas because his librettists, Maria Piave and Salvatore Cammarano, were not poets like Leopardi. The second level reader is then also the person who realize how the work manages to function brilliantly at the first level." -- Intertextual Irony and Levels of Reading

First, they came for the veils...

Sunday Express Headline: Ban the Hood For Good. 

...He stretched and drew a deep breath. "Why, what a dream I've had!" he muttered. "I am glad to wake!" He sat up and then he saw that Frodo was lying beside him, and slept peacefully, one hand behind his head, and the other resting upon the coverlet. It was the right hand, and the third finger was missing.

Full memory flood back, and Sam cried aloud: "It wasn't a dream! Then where are we?"

And a voice spoke softly behind him. "In the land of Ithilien, and in the keeping of the King; and he awaits you." With that, Gandalf stood before him, robed in white, his beard now gleaming like pure snow in the twinkling of the leafy sunlight. "Well, master Samwise, how do you feel?" he said.

But Sam laid back; and stared with open mouth, and for a moment between bewilderment and great joy, he could not answer. At last he gasped "Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue?"

Thirteen gathered in the upstairs room, as the
High priests plotted for the saviour's doom
Blood and body in the wine and bread, then he
Kissed his enemy in sweet Gethsemane and
Twelve hours later he was dead.

I, of course preferred Jack Kirby's definitive version of 2001.

Surely what matters is the manner of Mehdi Kazemi's execution? We've already established that New Labour has no problem with handing people over to foreign states which are planning to execute them without a proper trial for crimes which would not be capital offenses in the UK, providing they are polite to them on the scaffold.

More speech based local radio

Wind through to about 15 minutes