Wilmer's TWIS, BERY, and CHAS

These episodes are on the first side of the second disc in this set. Watson still seems to be unmarried and living with Holmes in Baker Street, so the writers have eliminated the scenes about Isa Whitney the opium addict in TWIS. However, one of Kate Whitney's lines is given to Mrs. St. Clair in another context.

The Magic Number

Awesome! On Feedbooks, my Prelude ebook has now been downloaded 1887 times. 1887 is the year that A Study in Scarlet was first published! Silly milestone, I know, but it made me smile.

Other News on PBS

In other news on PBS, it looks like PBS World is once again getting a head start on Native American History Month, with repeats of We Shall Remain, and related documentaries about tribes like the Seminoles and the Blackfeet.

Also, Nova is airing a special about the Chilean miners on Tuesday, which seems to be a quick turn around. But then again, the story has been ongoing for two months now, so they probably had stuff prepared in advance. Not sure if I will watch it, though I did enjoy seeing the rescues.

(Nova and other specials irritate me lately because they include commercials from ExxonMobil that pretend to be all concerned about global warming. When you know they wouldn't have done any better than BP about the oil spill, and have resisted moving the economy off fossil fuels for years.) The David H. Koch foundation is also a sponsor. Still, I don't blame PBS for it because they've been losing federal funding for years and need the money. You also see left-wing websites accepting such advertising dollars too, so I guess there's nothing untainted these days.

Sublime Sherlocks

Wired has an article featuring their choice of the best Sherlock Holmes adaptations, but they loosely include other characters that are only derived from Holmes. This is good in the instance of Justin Playfair in They Might Be Giants, but is less so in the case of Batman. I only complain because it would have provided more room to include other Holmes adaptations like the Russian TV series or the Ronald Howard Holmes.

Alan Sepinwall also has a review of Sherlock, and he also mentions other modern derivative TV detectives. I hope everyone gets a chance to enjoy this show after the long wait for it to get to America.

Asexual Sherlock

In case you haven't seen it yet, there is a community for asexual Holmes fic (set in the BBC Sherlock universe). It includes this awesome story by Tuesdays with Moriarty. I highly recommend it, because it features post-retirement scenes, including Sherlock investigating the colony collapse disorder for bees. Really great!

I have tried writing an asexual Holmes story in the past, though set in the Victorian canon. It's somewhat more depressing so far, though I intend it to have a happy ending. Lately I tried to make some more progress on the fic, but remain undecided about whether to include a love triangle where Watson is tempted to "cheat" on Holmes.

Some Hope

Well apparently I spoke too soon about the dismal news. Not only did Ft. Worth councilman Joel Burns put out an encouraging message for gay teens, but the Chile mine rescue went remarkably smoothly.

Burns's emotional speech was really moving, and I'm glad that the video garnered national attention. It gives me hope that other bullied teens will be able to live happy lives if they find sufficient support and love.

Not that everything's magically fixed now, or anything. We still plod on with the insanity of the midterm election campaign, and the frustrating Don't Ask, Don't Tell fight. The stupid news cycle gets so ugly sometimes, that it's a relief when you do come across inspirational moments.

No bright spots

How depressing news has been lately, what with all the gay teen suicides all in a row. I can't stand to think of them all suffering so much bullying and feeling so much despair that they can't go on. It's horrible.

The only encouraging thing lately seems to be that the civilian terrorism trials are going smoothly. Although I'll always have doubts about any evidence obtained through torture, and I'll always wonder if there's ever going to be a not guilty verdict. Or even if there is a guilty verdict each time, will the sentence ever be less than life in prison? And will the prisoner really be released at the end of his sentence, or will the government again decline to release them?

I was feeling more hopeful about the local elections in Texas for a while, but then I saw this depressing image of how red Texas and surrounding areas have become. Fuck.

Dogs That Changed the World

You may have seen on TV lately that PBS re-aired one of their Nature programs from 2008. "Dogs That Changed the World" is a two-part special about people's ancient symbiotic relationship with dogs. The first episode, "The Rise of the Dog" focuses mainly on how dogs evolved from wolves 15,000 years ago.

It reminded me tangentially of Christine O'Donnell wondering why monkeys aren't still evolving into humans. Most people have responded that evolution doesn't happen quickly, but actually it does sometimes happen in quick leaps, as mentioned in this Nature episode. (It's just difficult to document in the fossil record if you can't find transitional forms.)

Wilmer's COPP, REDH, and SIXN

These three episodes are on the second side of the first disc. It appears throughout that Watson is living in Baker Street, because there's no mention of his having a wife. However, there is a mention of Watson's practice in REDH, which sort of suggests that he lives or works elsewhere. But that dialogue is taken straight from the story, in which Watson says that he lives in Kensington.

The script writers also add more background information to the stories, such as how John Clay found out about the bank's French gold in REDH. Holmes also occasionally tries to prompt Watson to figure out details of the mysteries for himself, and he does manage it sometimes. Lestrade makes his first appearance in this TV series in SIXN, which is full of comical characters. But let's begin with COPP.