I know it's a couple of days late, but I invoke the "It's good until the next episode airs" rule.
How do I begin to break down Monday's Being Human? I think we all learned that even eight hundred years on the Earth isn't long enough for some people to learn that "Hey, we banged the same guy" is not appropriate double-date conversation. I thought werewolves could sense each other, like immortals in Highlander. Vampires can sniff them out but they can't smell each other? Or maybe those are just the British rules. Didn't the purebreds say they could tell that Josh was a wolf? Just...just check the perimeter before you make out, is all I'm saying. It's like the Whedonverse: kissing always hurts someone.
I don't like Mother. She's a big meanie, even among people who drink human blood. However, I agree with her trying to separate Aidan and Suren--albeit for a different reason than she probably had. We all know Suren is bad news bears for Aidan, but it'll be fun to watch this train wreck of a relationship progress through the next episodes.
So, if you kill your maker, you aren't a werewolf anymore. Writers kickin' it old school, I see. Of course, we know that they just can't leave it with Josh refusing to kill Ray and Nora doing likewise. How this new wrinkle will manifest itself later remains to be seen. I see lots of plot loophole potential for that. Maybe Brynn will turn someone and they can reverse it by killing her. Side note: is anyone else a bit anxious as to what Nora meant when she said she got "full" of violence hanging with Brynn?
And now for Saturday's Being Human. Yeah, that's right: I work both sides of the pond and I'm not ashamed of it! My only note on that would be...um...yeah. Succubi. We now have succubi in the mix (and if you paid attention to how a succubus comes into the world, we also have demons). An interesting addition, and I'm not exactly against it, but the three-thing formula gave it a nice, tight little structure, and you could explore the crap out of the inner workings of those three things. As much as I like "everything exists" shows like True Blood, I don't think I want Being Human to become one. Perhaps they toy with the form every once in a while, like in the zombie episode. It was like, "Yep, if the conditions are right, you can be a zombie. How about that?" and they never spoke of it again. Maybe it's a not-so-running gag that occasionally a fourth kind of thing will blow through and then be on it's merry way at the end of the episode. However, there is something tantalizing about the prospect of Hal the Old One knowing a lot more about the supernatural world than Annie or Tom, and using him to reveal new things to his roommates and us.
And speaking of succubi, on to Lost Girl (once-in-a-lifetime segue opportunity).
I started watching this show way after I started recording it, so I had a nice little DVR Lost Girl marathon and now it's on my permanent lineup. Anyway, I think I'll just hit the story arc points that stood out the most in Monday's episode:
Trick and the Ash going at it...yipe! So far (on the US side of things, as we are very late to this party), neither the Ash nor Trick has shown his particular Fae power, and I thought their little confrontation would involve some magical posturing. I suppose in the Fae world, age begets restraint, as the Morrigan also refrained from throwing her magical weight around (I don't know if her Fae power involves wearing the crap out of a red dress, but GOOD GRAVY!). When you're a big mucky-muck you can have grunts do all the zapping and hypnotizing and what-have-you.
Bo: Hey, can I use that awesome weapon that I used on Vex last time?
Trick: Oh, that one. Yeah, the writers don't want to seem repetitive--er, I mean, it got confiscated.
Real cute, guys. I know, it's Story 101: Superman can only throw the "S" on his suit once, then he has to come up with something else to do. It's just really hard to hide the obviousness of that move.
Lauren and Bo being super awkward with each other, and of course Bo can't trust Lauren anymore, but just wait until she finds out what Dyson knows about her past! Crap will hit the fan--of course, since this is Dyson we're talking about, it'll be one of those bladeless fans and the crap will fly right through it. I'm guessing once she finds out about Trick and Dyson keeping things from her, she'll be seduced by the Dark Side and hang out with the Morrigan and her crew for a bit. Just a guess; the Canadian fans getting to the end of season two can correct me if I'm wrong. Bo is very much a good guy, and even though she hasn't picked a side, she seems (at the moment) very Light-leaning. It would be interesting to play up the "lost girl" angle and have her hobnob with the Dark more.
Kenzi is super cute. Not really a plot point; just thought it bore mentioning.
Stay tuned for Thursday (maybe) and Friday (definitely) reviews.
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Monday, March 26, 2012
Curiosity: Did God Create the Universe? Stephen Hawking has the definitive answer
Yeah, this is a little old, but I still wanted to weigh in on the "controversy."
Did you notice the quotation marks around the word "controversy?"
On August 7, 2011, Discovery aired the inaugural episode of it's show Curiosity, asking the question: "Did God create the universe?" First of all, WOW. That's the question you're STARTING the show with? You've made it practically impossible to top yourselves with that one--oh, wait. Mike Rowe peeing on camera. I stand corrected. Anyway, the discussion on this topic was guided by the incomparable mind of one Stephen Hawking, who concluded to no one's surprise that since time began with the Big Bang, there was no room for a God to create the universe, as there could have been nothing before time. Problem solved. Throw away your various holy texts, all Earth religions, Hawking has deemed them obsolete. Nothing could have existed before time! It's all so simple, why didn't I see it before? Should have...sent...a poet...
I'll give you some time to wipe all of the condensed sarcasm off of your screens.
It's really presumptuous for scientists, who can't even come up with much concrete info on the early universe, to say that nothing came before it. There are schools of thought in theoretical physics that propose a cosmic sea of universe bubbles bumping into each other and forming big bangs in the process. Some theoreticians think that our universe Banged out of the Crunch of an earlier universe--which is to say, a previous universe collapsed into a single point, which then exploded back out to form our universe. With all these imaginations working overtime to hash out the particulars of existence (and I haven't even gotten to what different faiths suggest), it just seems a tad odd that Mr. Hawking, in all his unmatched brilliance, couldn't envision anything before time, let alone a God. Which brings me to my next point:
How can you set scientific parameters for an omnipotent Creator? "Well, God wouldn't be able to do that..." And how would you know? It's like the people who say that Superman would not have been able to fly around the world and turn back time in "real life." If Superman exists in real life, all bets are off. If God created time, He would have to have existed before it. Is this impossible? WE'RE TALKING ABOUT GOD, people. Scientists put limits on observable phenomena: motion, gravity, light, etc. Since you say He does not exist, you clearly have not observed Him, so there's no way you can limit Him.
Beyond Earth, the universe has yielded nothing but dead rocks and gas giants and yet people believe that there has to be life out there. Even Kepler-22b, our best shot so far, is still a maybe. And yet people--and by people, I mean serious scientists--believe that there MUST be life out there somewhere. MUST. With no evidence whatsoever. I see an ordered universe, from the motions of planets around stars to the twisting ladder of a DNA strand, and I say there MUST be a Creator. Somehow, my lack of scientific evidence makes that idea sillier than the notion of aliens.
In the final analysis, we return to the quotation marks around the word "controversy." If you believe in God, chances are, Hawking hasn't changed your mind. He's just another guy, like Richard Dawkins, using his authority in the scientific community to tackle subjects outside the realm of science. Let me refine that statement: science can search for God, using its limited tools; but until there is definitive proof of existence or nonexistence, a true scientist cannot, in good conscience, make a definitive statement.
Did you notice the quotation marks around the word "controversy?"
On August 7, 2011, Discovery aired the inaugural episode of it's show Curiosity, asking the question: "Did God create the universe?" First of all, WOW. That's the question you're STARTING the show with? You've made it practically impossible to top yourselves with that one--oh, wait. Mike Rowe peeing on camera. I stand corrected. Anyway, the discussion on this topic was guided by the incomparable mind of one Stephen Hawking, who concluded to no one's surprise that since time began with the Big Bang, there was no room for a God to create the universe, as there could have been nothing before time. Problem solved. Throw away your various holy texts, all Earth religions, Hawking has deemed them obsolete. Nothing could have existed before time! It's all so simple, why didn't I see it before? Should have...sent...a poet...
I'll give you some time to wipe all of the condensed sarcasm off of your screens.
It's really presumptuous for scientists, who can't even come up with much concrete info on the early universe, to say that nothing came before it. There are schools of thought in theoretical physics that propose a cosmic sea of universe bubbles bumping into each other and forming big bangs in the process. Some theoreticians think that our universe Banged out of the Crunch of an earlier universe--which is to say, a previous universe collapsed into a single point, which then exploded back out to form our universe. With all these imaginations working overtime to hash out the particulars of existence (and I haven't even gotten to what different faiths suggest), it just seems a tad odd that Mr. Hawking, in all his unmatched brilliance, couldn't envision anything before time, let alone a God. Which brings me to my next point:
How can you set scientific parameters for an omnipotent Creator? "Well, God wouldn't be able to do that..." And how would you know? It's like the people who say that Superman would not have been able to fly around the world and turn back time in "real life." If Superman exists in real life, all bets are off. If God created time, He would have to have existed before it. Is this impossible? WE'RE TALKING ABOUT GOD, people. Scientists put limits on observable phenomena: motion, gravity, light, etc. Since you say He does not exist, you clearly have not observed Him, so there's no way you can limit Him.
Beyond Earth, the universe has yielded nothing but dead rocks and gas giants and yet people believe that there has to be life out there. Even Kepler-22b, our best shot so far, is still a maybe. And yet people--and by people, I mean serious scientists--believe that there MUST be life out there somewhere. MUST. With no evidence whatsoever. I see an ordered universe, from the motions of planets around stars to the twisting ladder of a DNA strand, and I say there MUST be a Creator. Somehow, my lack of scientific evidence makes that idea sillier than the notion of aliens.
In the final analysis, we return to the quotation marks around the word "controversy." If you believe in God, chances are, Hawking hasn't changed your mind. He's just another guy, like Richard Dawkins, using his authority in the scientific community to tackle subjects outside the realm of science. Let me refine that statement: science can search for God, using its limited tools; but until there is definitive proof of existence or nonexistence, a true scientist cannot, in good conscience, make a definitive statement.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)