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.

Wilmer's SPEC, ILLU, and DEVI

So these three episodes are the first side of a double-sided DVD. (The set is two discs, and 11 episodes total.) I'm still disappointed that the BBC didn't have a clearer source tape for SPEC, but at least all the rest of the episodes looked much better. I wish they had filmed it in color too, but they didn't make that change until the next year when Peter Cushing replaced Douglas Wilmer.

One pleasant surprise in this 1964 series is that we see a few actors who later went on to do Doctor Who. There's Patrick Troughton, the second Doctor, and Roger Delgado, the first Master. Additionally, Jennie Linden, who plays Violet de Merville, was the Doctor's companion Barbara in the film starring Peter Cushing. It's cool to see how much overlap there is of British TV actors.

Douglas Wilmer as Holmes

I've got the newly released DVDs of the 1964 BBC Holmes series starring Douglas Wilmer and Nigel Stock. They're all in black in white, unlike the series the next year featuring Peter Cushing in Wilmer's place.

There are two double-sided discs, and the first one comes with a long advertisement for other BBC Mystery shows. The pilot episode is SPEC, but unfortunately it seems to be in poorer condition than the later episodes. At first I thought it was just that my widescreen TV was stretching the picture, but even when I changed the aspect ratio to 4:3, the picture still looked poor. The later episodes look clearer and sharper though, so it's not a complete loss. Still, I thought that SPEC would look a little cleaned up from the version that's on Hulu. I guess they couldn't find a better source tape.

So far I've watched the first disc, featuring SPEC, ILLU, DEVI, COPP, REDH, and SIXN. I'll probably write up reviews of the episodes later, but maybe I'll wait until I've seen both discs.