Tag: Science

The Romantic Railways

I remember sitting in a courtyard of a hotel in Paris with a beer in hand, and a book, when an American woman entered and began to talk to me. The hotel backed onto a major railway line that went from Gare Saint Lazare out to regional France, and trains would be regularly travelling past. The woman asked me if the trains would be doing that all night, though I suspected that the answer was no (particularly since the last train from Rouen to Paris left Rouen at 8:20 in the evening). However, it started me thinking that Paris is probably the only city in the world where trains rumbling past your hotel at 10:30 at night could be considered romantic, or was it just that these rumbling trains reminded me that I happened to be in Paris, not that I really needed all that much of a reminder.

by thesarkologist

Westword – Dreams of Consciousness

I would say that I have just finished watching this rather mindblowing television series, but I wanted to at least watch the original movie, and then the rather disappointing sequel before I started writing down my thoughts. Also, watching a couple of youtube videos also helped a bit with coming through with some thoughts, however as I look at the last of the ten episodes, I have to admit that I struggle to see where they can go to from there, and whether they can actually surpass what we have already seen. In any case, if you haven’t already watched the series then I recommend that you do, especially if you are a fan of the original film before you continue any further because even though I will attempt not to spoil anything (namely because there are some awesome twists), I can’t say that I won’t ruin the experience with this post, particularly since I am exploring some of the themes.

by thesarkologist

Orphan Black – The Dark Side of Science

It took me a while to get around to watching this series, though I must admit that my TV watching habits have been pretty sparse of late (probably because there are a lot of other things that I would prefer to do than sit down and stare at the idiot box after I get home from work). Okay, I am watching TV as I write this, but it happens to be a football match and my team is getting absolutely smashed so I doubt I will be watching for much longer (though for some reason, whenever we are watching a sporting match a part of us seems to have this belief, however misguided, that our team will do something extraordinary and pull the mother of all comebacks).

by thesarkologist

The World of the Exo-planets

While I had heard about the discovery of the first planets beyond our solar system I hadn’t really been keeping up with the news of such discoveries, despite the fact that I do really like my science fiction. Sure, there are planets orbiting stars that aren’t our sun, but considering the distance that one has to travel to actually get to the closest one I didn’t see much point in paying huge amounts of attention (but then again that was back before the internet where most of our news came either through the television or the newspaper and if we wanted to find out more we have to go to dedicated scientific journals).

by thesarkologist

Live, Die, Repeat – Edge of Tomorrow

This film actually has two names, and I’m not sure why they changed its name to Live, Die, Repeat so late in the piece (namely when the Blue-Ray was released) especially since I didn’t actually have a problem with the original name (though there are probably reasons that I am not aware of that prompted the change). Okay, it is a Tom Cruise movie, and while I would generally say that I basically tolerate him, he still seems to find himself in some really cool movies, such as this one.

by thesarkologist