Posts by Lucy Stewart
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Meh... even in the 1981 adaptation, Douglas Livingstone said he decided to drop the whole dolly bird turned soft core pornographer element from Jo's backstory because it might have passed without comment in 1951, but was just a wee bit too patronising for words thirty years later. Bill Masen was also a bit less Roger of The Raj than in Wyndham's novel.
I agree, the specifics wouldn't date well, but I'm pretty sure you could update Jo's career path without making it as bland and predictable as "reporter". And I still like the sleeping-off-wild-party explanation for her sightedness; it's a nice reverse on the usual punishment-for-bad-behaviour that tends to happen to women in this sort of story.
A meteor storm blinding the entire planet?
Ah, but you forget the last lines of the book; it's strongly implied that the blinding was caused by a satellite weapon of some kind which was accidentally set off by the meteor shower. Wyndham was always big on the "authors of their own destruction" thing (c.f. The Chrysalids, especially.)
If I was writing the script for an adaptation, I'd have to include at least one shot of Diana Brackley toying with a nut-cracker in a terribly significant manner. :)
Snerk. Actually, the whole beauty-salon subplot of that one would hold up quite well, if reworked slightly.
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May I suggest the Pocket? As in trouser Pocket? Or is that just being a Neanderthal male...
As Danielle says; come back when you've convinced clothing designers that silhouette is not actually more important in jackets/trousers/shorts/ than *being able to carry stuff*.
(Okay, it's probably more important in an evening jacket or whatever, but for day-to-day? USABLE POCKETS, DAMN YOU.)
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Changing the meteor shower of the original story to a "Solar Flare" without doing a Google search of Effects of Solar Flare at the same time changing the occupation of the female protagonist to a "Radio Reporter" (So she knows how to make the BBC transmitters work) would make John Wyndham rotate in his tomb.
Also, note how the solar flare was visible in Sydney and London at the same time. The. Same. Time.
Then go and weep a little for basic physics.
Personally I missed the original Jo, who didn't go blind because she was blind drunk after a party and sleeping it off and was mildly famous for writing a salacious novel; she had more character. So did the original Bill Masen, who had a perfectly amicable relationship with his now-deceased (in boring and ordinary ways) parents, and sort of stumbled into things rather than stalking around being square-jawed and heroic from minute 1. They were so much more relatable.
It is just vaguely possible that the writers were mashing up Jo Playton with Phyllis Watson of "The Kraken Wakes", whose job as a radio reporter is central to her storyline, but that would involve, say, actual research. So probably not.
(Basic research might also have reminded them that replacing fossil fuels with another combustible fuel may solve the energy crisis, but is sure as fuck not going to do a thing about global warming. And also would not work, on account of how carnivorous plants are one of the most grossly inefficient ways to produce fuel ever.
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Robyn, stop being so logical and mature. You're ruining my fun!
I feel obliged to note that this line of humour did not occur to me until I opened this thread, and...I still don't really get it. But at least it's bringing joy to people's lives.
Jack - Think you are on the money. I have got way more use out of my iPod touch that I imagined I would, and the iPad is just a more usefully sized version.
This. The iPod touch does everything you need in a portable media device/organiser, and if you're anywhere with decent wireless - e.g. a university campus - the phone capability is pretty much redundant, unless you have a burning desire to have to switch back and forth between whatever you're doing and phone calls on a regular basis. Not everything *needs* to be in one device.
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You might need a plug in microphone, but that's about it.
It's got a microphone; you're good to go. (See here in "The Guts" section.)
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I'm intrigued that people think backlit screens are a showstopper for e-readers though. I'm super-comfortable reading off a screen and underwhelmed by the Kindle electronic-ink look.
The sunshine thing is something of a dealbreaker for me; I don't mind reading off a screen, but I don't always want to do it indoors, especially at this time of year. (To be fair, it's usually not that comfortable reading books in direct sunlight, either, but you don't have to cut it down as much to make it comfortable.)
I see a netbook being superior and cheaper
The thing about netbooks that annoys me the most is the way they've killed the small-to-medium sized laptop market. I don't want a ginormous 17-inch screen on my laptop, or gaming-capable CPU and graphics; I want something actually portable and of a decent but reasonably priced speed. Right now my choices are netbook (not nearly grunty enough, screens about 3" too small) or ginormous $1500+ practically-a-desktop things. Not good enough.
But jeez, you'd cry if you dropped it, wouldn't you.
iPod touches are surprisingly durable. This might be, too.
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That is an extremely confusing article.
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Phew. Charity.
I had lost faith but I still had hope.....
And, apparently, a KJV.
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Even better, under s37 of the Charities Act 2005 it's not permissible to hold an entity out as being a registered charity if it actually isn't. McVicar's on mighty thin ice, with a potential $30k fine in the offing.
They do, however, appear to be registered with the Companies Office, and the Charities Commission website only says they're not allowed to call themselves a "registered charitable entity".
Since registered charitable trust is *technically* a correct description of their status (they are registered as a charitable trust with the Companies Office) they're probably OK. But it's all a bit murky.
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To be fair, I don't think it's a deliberate choice by SST not to be a registered charity -- they seem quite cross about not being allowed to be one.
Which still doesn't make it OK for them to, apparently, outright lie about said status to the public. I'm going to extend the benefit of the doubt and assume there's some confusion somewhere, but it looks decidedly odd, at best.