Do you really think that Bella made the proper choice with Edward or are you more of a Jacob guy?

*cracks knuckles and searched for can opener*

Squeak, squeak, squeak, clunk

OK, that’s that opened, let’s answer this one.

You are, of course, referring the central love triangle in the publishing phenomenon and purveyor of “Our Vampires Are Different” par excellence Twilight.

For the uninitiated let’s take a quick yomp through the series shall we? There will be spoilers here but, by this point, either you already know all this or you don’t care and are hoping I’ll get back to talking about Newton or something so it’s all a wash (but stick around there’s pictures of pretty people for all tastes throughout!).

Ahem

So there’s this girl by the name of Isabella Swan

Mope, pout, mope

who moves from nice sunny and dry Phoenix AZ to the oh so gloomy and damp Forks WA. She mopes about for a bit before the site of the oh so GORGEOUS Edward Cullen

Mope, pout, glisten like an overzealous stripper, mope

makes her

…

actually she’s still mopey and sullen but now she’s horny as well.

Edward for his part seems not terribly interested in her but eventually they do hook up. Bella (she drops the first three letters, it’s what her pant wettingly lovely boyf prefers) loves Edward because, er, hmm, because he’s a big old slab of red hot (well cold as the grave) man meat, figuratively speaking.

Edward loves Bella because, er, hmm, because she’s a big old slab of girl flesh, literarily speaking, this is because Edward has a secret. “What might that secret be?” you ask. Well let’s look at the clues.

He’s Icy Cold
He’s Pale
He mopes about a lot
He Avoids Direct Sunlight

That’s right Edward is Emo, no wait Edward is a vampire (and also Emo). Edward’s not one of yer common or garden solitary vampires though, oh no, the town of Forks and the surrounding area is lousy with the buggers, along with other things that I’ll get to in a moment. Some of them like Alice:

Awww! Alice

Are nice and friendly and constitute Edwards pseudo family. Others, like James

Boo! James

Are right nasty basts that are best avoided. The trouble is that is easier said than done and wouldn’t you know it, Jimmy decides that Bella would look quite good stuffed and mounted above his mantelpiece or something like that.

Well the friendly neighbourhood vampires won’t stand for that will they? Of course not, so of Bella goes to Phoenix again. This does not work except in a very Pyrrhic kind of way. Anyway, half-dead and back in Forks, Bella goes to prom with Eddie.

Herein endeth the first book

OK so,

A little while goes by and it’s time for Bella to be of legal age and so Edward does what any man dating a woman a fifth of his age or less would do, and throws her a birthday party. The trouble with parties is that there tend to be presents and those tend to be wrapped in paper, sharp, sharp, finger-cutting paper.

Having discovers that Vampires are even less pleasant to have around a paper cut than lemon juice, Edward decides that it’ll be safer for Bella if he and his family up sticks and skedaddle leaving her all alone in Forks.

“Sorry that my brother tried to kill you love but we’re all buggering off, see ya!” is not the best 18th birthday present ever, slightly better than the one Buffy Summers received from her undead paramour but still iffy all told I’m sure you’ll agree.

Naturally this sends Bella on a bit of a decline, one that is elevated by doing all sorts of extreme, sorry EXTREEEEEM sporting (and other) activities and through the friendship of Jacob Black

Jacob is nice and friendly and really into Bella but, wouldn’t you know it?, Jacob has a secret. “What is his secret?” I hear you cry. Well let’s look at the clues:

He’s possessed of luxuriant hair.
He’s really quite buff in a feral kind of way
The Moon is very important to him

Yes Jacob is a member of a medium weight metal band from the late ‘70s, no, wait, Werewolf, that’s what Jacob is.

Wolfboy Luvsa Girl

Poor Bella she simply can’t move on from her “dating the undead” phase can she?, no wonder she’s so grumpy. Still it has its advantages especially since Jacob and his pals can help protect Bella from the ticked-offedness of Victoria, erstwhile main squeeze James

Nice hair, holds a grudge

Ok so while she’s stringing the loup-garou along Bella is still partaking in enough extreme activities to warrant a promotional contract with Oakley shades including the oh so fun sport of cliff diving.

This causes a bit of kefuffle when Alice hs a vision of the end of one such dive and decides it’s actually a vision of Bella trying to top herself.

A-dor-able! If a little dense.

Naturally Alice let’s Edward know about this and, rather than perhaps going back to convince Bella that hey, killing oneself isn’t the best plan ever, instead responds with “hmm sounds like a plan” and decides that he’ll head over to sunny Italy to get offed by the ruling clique of all things vampiric. Luckily for the poor wee bugger, Alice and Bella manage to stop him only to have the Vampiric Idol judges tell them “Yeah dog this Human Vampire love thing is only aiight with me, maybe you should come back when the chick is either dead or undead”

“Sounds like a plan” mutters Bella.

Here endeth the second book.

Bored Now!

Oh hush vampire Willow, you don’t even appear in this vampire franchise, you’re in a bet.. another one.

She has a point though so lets see if we can speed this up a bit.

Blah blah “You can’t see the werewolf” yakity schmackity “he’s just a friend” blah blah “I’m going to disable your vehicle so you can see him” ho hum hey ho “you’re so right, what was I thinking” oh and “bwahahaha army of evil vampires spawned due to long held grudge” and we’re walking, we’re walking “bye bye Vicky”

Here endeth the third book.

The last one is spilit into three parts:

Parte the firste
“I now pronounce you human and inhuman monster”
“FINALY, let’s shag!”
“Uh you won’t like it”
“Oh go on”
“Alrighty then, but don’t say I didn’t warn you”
“Of course now le……………………..”
one black-out later
“I’m late”
“ooh bugger”

Parte the seconde
“Dude this Vamp-human hybrid thing, it ain’t right”
“Yeah let’s kill it before it grows”
“Dudes!!! That’s the kid of the girl who I’m majorly crushing on! That’s it I’m done with you asses, don’t worry Bella I’ll save yoooooooooou!”
“Er, kind of busy right now, what with the bone shattering and the blood losing and OHMYGODTHEPAIN”
“Hang on let’s see if a little dab o’venom will do ya”
“Ooooh, babies is sexy!”
“Let’s fail at the first major step of being parent and give the brat a name that destines her for the pole”

Might as well pop to Toys R Us; Renesmee’ll be needing this

Parte the thirde
“Oooh being a Vampire is great and having a self-aware hybrid abomination certainly beats sitting the little one in front of Baby Einstein for hours on end”
“Yes, about that, I think you know what we’re about to say, don’t you?”
“No but look she’s not illegal merely monstrously horrifying”
“Yeah you didn’t say nothin’ about no hybrid abonminations, just venomed up littl’uns”
“And look here’s a chimerical monster from back in the day, say hello Brazilian rainforest dude”
“hello”
“Oh, ok that’s alright then, you’ve failed us for the last time Starscr… Irina, take her away”
“Noooooooooooooaaaargh”
“Sorry about that unplesentness, fancy joining our club of snooty toffs?”
“Er, no”

And they all lived (or unlived I suppose) happily and creepily ever after.

OK so that’s the whole series summarized let’s think about the question.

Generally, when having to choose between two options it’s often helpful to consider the pros and cons, so we’ll do that:

Edward

Pros
• He’s pretty
• He sparkles
• He’s really nice to look at
• Did I mention he’s pretty?
Cons
• He’s icy cold to the touch.
• He makes it clear that his passion for Bella is actually a sublimation of his desire to eat her.
• His response to hearing his erstwhile girlfriend is thinking about suicide is to follow her lead.
• He stalks said girlfriend and then, when she expresses interest in seeing another boy, acts in ways that would normally send a woman running to the nearest court for a protection order.

Jacob

Pros
• He’s friendly and helpful when Bella is feeling down
• He’s attractive and physically fit
• He protects Bella without having tangentially endangered her in the first place.
Cons
• He seems to share the poet Swinburnes unsavory fascination with babies
• OK that might be explained in the book by some sort of imprinting mechanism but considering what another of his ilk did to the one he’d imprinted on, this is not a reassuring explanation.
• He’s a “nice guy”
Hmm, yeah, not exactly a great set of recommendations really. I really think that Bella might have made a better choice had she chosen neither of the boys on offer.

I mean truly, if Bella simply had to end up with one of the undead there is a much better choice right there in from of her:

That’s right Alice. After all, Alice isn’t gloomy or mopey, actually seems to enjoy being a vampire and she and Bella get on terribly well.

Plus we’ve known since at least 1872 that vampire woman and human girl is a fascinating combination, and by “fascinating” I of course mean hot.

In 19^th century novels, pertinent identifying details will be left out but represented by a blank, for example – “The militia was sent to the north in the county of ——–shire.”

Why is this?

First, thank you, thank you, thank you for asking a literature question I tend to get more science ones than anything else.  And that’s vaguely remembered from Jane Austen isn’t it?

Clever, witty, bookish and, at least by accounts from her family, a little bit shy, Jane Austen was my kind of girl. She was also one of the best writers the English language has ever produced.

There are two reasons why Austen might have chosen to replace the names of people and places with _________, one that helped her, another which helped her readers. Let’s look at the first of these by considering the world in which she found herself.

There were many things, including, but not limited to, “vote”, “express an opinion”, “work” and “survive the birth of their 14^th child”, that a well brought up young lady most simply did not do. Writing a novel was one of these things.

This is why the authorship of Sense and Sensibility was initially ascribed thus:

“A Lady” was racy enough, “Jane Austen, Miss” might very well have caused the complete collapse of society or the dead to walk the earth or something.

Hang about, that’s a great idea for a ….

Oh never mind, nobody would want to read a book about zombies in a Regency setting.

Where was I?

Oh yes, the need for Austen to be circumspect when writing. People think that we live in a litigious society now, but we have nothing on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries if you happened to be a member of the social classes that might feel affronted by being mocked by a satirist. And, Colin Firth stomping about in soggy jodhpurs notwithstanding, that is what Austen was, a satirist.

So in addition to being a woman who wrote novels (gasp), those novels satirized the landed gentry and others at the tops, or at least the top of the middle of society (heavens!).

Given these two considerations, and the shyness I mentioned earlier, it isn’t surprising that she might choose to publish anonymously and to obfuscate the names of people and places in her novels.

Both would serve to keep her anonymous and the latter would prevent people from deciding that the puffed up buffoon in the latest novel from “A Lady” wasn’t a fictional character at all but instead a thinly veiled portrait of themselves and rushing off to court with every intention to sue (but then, a puffed up buffoon would think, and act, like that wouldn’t they?)

However the habit of eliding proper nouns in writing fiction has a rather interesting effect. Rather than make the text less readable and alienating the reader, the elision can actually make reading the novel a more involving experience.

“Why?” you might ask, well I’ll tell you.

Ever find somebody’s diary? Did you the urge to read it? Of course you didn’t, that would be wrong and anyway they didn’t write the names of the people they were talking about, they used codes or initials instead, and that only made you more interested in what they were writing about.

Er, I mean, that’s a possible response to those questions.

But that’s why doing something similar in fiction can help great a sense of verisimilitude. The vaguely alluded to county or individual merely presents a challenge for the reader to ponder and this creates a secondary interest in the text. And is a truth universally acknowledged that it is always useful to keep them interested.

And this is why the writers of other works, many of them with titles like The Amorous Adventures of a Dandy Fop* or The Naughty Minx in Knightsbridge for some reason, used the same technique.

By saying “Wednesday last, had a fine meeting with the Marquis of _______ at his country seat in _________” the reader is left to wonder which Marquis and where might one find his seat, country or otherwise and so the story is that little bit more compelling.

So let’s return to the initial question:

In 19^th century novels, pertinent indentifying details will be left out but represented by a blank, for example – “The militia was sent to the north in the county of ——–shire.”

Why is this?

Initially for very practical reasons, eventually because it was a useful technique for engaging the reader’s interest.

OK that one was fun to answer, you may ask another.

…

Oh

…

I see you already did:

Anne Marie further writes:

Find me a good quinoa recipe!

I made quinoa with a broccoli pesto, and almonds and feta on top.
It was good the first day. Not a great re-heater dish.

Jawohl Eure Ladyschaft!

I’m thinking the feta was probably the source of the trouble there.

Here’s a really good recipe that has a lot of re-heatability:

Lemony Quinoa with Butternut Squash

Ingredients

• 10 ounces butternut squash (about 2 cups)
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• ½  cup white quinoa
• ½  cup red quinoa
• ¼ cup chopped shallots
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 tsp dried thyme
• 2 ½ cups vegetable broth
• 1 tsp grated lemon peel
• 1-2 TBS lemon juice
• salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
• 2 TBS (about 7/10 oz) lightly toasted pine nuts
• 1 tsp minced fresh chives

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400F.
2. Cut the squash in half and scrape out the seeds and strings (using a grapefruit spoon makes this easier).
3. Peel and cut into ½-inch cubes and toss with the 1 teaspoon of lemon juice.
4. Place them on a non-stick baking sheet (or silicone mat), sprinkle with a little salt and pepper, and bake for 15 minutes, stirring halfway through.
5. Place the quinoa in a fine-mesh strainer and rinse it well and allow to drain.
6. Heat a deep, non-stick pot. Add shallots and garlic and cook, stirring, until shallots soften slightly.
7. Add the quinoa and toast it until it has dried out and begins to exude a toasty aroma.
8. Add the squash along with the thyme and vegetable broth.
9. Reduce the heat to low and cover. Cook, stirring once or twice, until all broth is absorbed, about 20 minutes.
10. Stir in the lemon peel and 1 tablespoon of lemon juice.
11. Season to taste with salt and pepper, and add more lemon juice if needed.
12. Serve with toasted pine nuts and chives sprinkled on top.

* Why yes, I did enjoy Mr. Show, why do you ask?

I noticed you have an outstanding beard.

Is there any scientific evidence that someone can improve their beard growth, through the usage of any supplements or oils?

Well, thanks. Personally I think I look a bit like George V or Nicholas II but my wife seems to like it (she also loves the Romanovs so that might have something to do with it).

OK so let’s take a moment to think about hair

Within the lyrics are some interesting points.

I’m hairy high and low

As, indeed are all humans, potentially at least. Humans have about as many hair follicles as any other primate. Hair comes in three main varieties

Lanugo: Which you generally discard prior to being born, or shortly afterward in the case of premature birth.
Vellus hair: Which is the short and almost imperceptible hair that covers the body
Terminal hair: Which is what we think of when we think of “Hair”; the hair on you head, the hair on your eyebrows the hair anywhere that you can notice it is Vellus Hair, and that includes the hair of a beard

Don’t ask me why
Don’t know

But I do;  each and every hair follicle is a little factory that takes keratin and turns it into what might at first glance appear to be a pretty simple structure but in fact is really rather complex.

Here is a cross section of a single hair:

All of that is constructed from old skin cells and Keratin. Keratin is a specific type of proteins that are used differently by different animals. In lobsters it is sometimes use to make their shells. In some Whale it forms the large soup strainer like structures they use to catch krill. In Humans it makes hair.

And each strand of hair, each super complex construction of specialized protein is made by a structure so small you can only see it with the naked eye if it is producing hair and then you are only really seeing the general area of the follicle and where the hair rises above the skin.

At the point you can see the hair, the structure is complete, it’s not growing any longer, that occurs below the surface of the skin.

Down to here
Down to there
Down to where
It stops by itself

This is actually a fairly fundamental fact about hair: it doesn’t (contrary to myths about it) just grow and grow for ever, it will, at some point stop. Only grow at a particular rate. The average growth rate for hair is about 0.4 cm (or 0.157480315 of an inch) per day.

So the hair, any hair, will grow at a fairly slow rate and to a particular length.

Other factors of how the hair looks; how many of the follicles produce Vellus hair and how many produce Terminal hair, what the quality of the terminal hair is (straight, curly, course, fine, what the color of the hair is) are determined by many thing.

Some of these are based on the age or sex of the person but the most significant thing is, as is the case with most things when it comes to our bodies, whatever is in our DNA.

Unless something is very drastically amiss with out system, our hair will obey its genetic programming and simply grow in the way our DNA tells it to, to the length it is programmed to reach.

So the simple answer to the question is no, there really isn’t anything you can add to your beard that will encourage it to grow faster.

However

If we think of the follicles as little hair factories we have to see that, in order for the factory to produce its product, it needs the raw materials to be delivered. And the better the quality of the materials, the better the resulting product will be. A factory also needs to be in peak condition to produce the best products. The best thing to do to encourage beard growth (or any sort of hair growth as long as the follicles are active) is not to put things on the body but to put things in the body.

Generally if you want to look your best you can follow this fairly simply plan:

• Eat and drink well
• Get some exercise
• Get enough sleep.

Now it is possible that some supplements might help out with hair growth, certainly a few of the B vitamins wouldn’t go amiss and vitamins A, C, and E are also helpful. Much of this can be achieved through following the first of the three steps; the body actually tends to absorb nutrients better if they are contained in food or drink than if they are simply presented in as the pure chemical.

However it isn’t a bad idea to look for a good multivitamin and perhaps talk to a nutritionist about other possible supplements you can take. That isn’t bad advice in general; if you have a doctor who you see for regular physicals, ask them if they can request a few blood tests to see the levels of various nutrients in your system, you be surprised at what a little extra of one or two can do for you.

So let’s give the short answers

Is there any scientific evidence that someone can improve their beard growth, through the usage of any supplements or oils?

For the oils: not really, hair is finished growing once it’s visible on the surface, the oils might make the hair shiny or easier to manage but they don’t really encourage the growth one way or the other.

For the Supplements: Some may help but really making sure you are eating and drinking well is a better approach and then using supplements (and the name implies) to make up for anything you are missing after that.

In addition to the video the producers want to know the answers to a number of questions about me. I’ll not bore you with all of them but here are a few.

What destinations would you like to visit in the United States of America?
Ooh tons, but here’s a few:

The Creation Science Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky:  It looks like an absolute hoot. They even have Dinosaurs the kids can sit on and pretend to ride like “Adam and Eve did”. Mostly I find the silliness charming, and I’d love to talk to people there, not to make fun of them but because they have an interesting world view; it’s a view that I don’t share but one that I find fascinating.

The Winchester House in San Jose California: Built by a frankly crazy old lady based on architectural plans revealed at séances, the place looks simply fantastic. I would actually like to hold a séance in the Blue Room (the room in which the architectural plan making séances were held), you know, for old time’s sake.

Washington DC:  As a newly minted citizen I think I should visit the nation’s capital. I can have my Congressman show me around the House and Senate, potter about the various museums within the Smithsonian (I have a subscription to the museums magazine; it’s always a fun and interesting read), take in all the monuments and tour the various political scandal sites including the newly, by the end of 2009, refurbished Watergate hotel. It’s aiming to be the “most luxurious hotel in Washington,” which presumably means all sorts of services not offered by other hotels in the city. I’m not sure, but I think if you lose your key, G. Gordon Liddy will be on call to break into your room for you.

Sad Vegas Nevada:  Yes I meant that. All the shows about Vegas focus on the most glitzy and glamorous bits of the town. I’m interested in the bits off the main strip, the casinos where you can play “catch a falling star” and the bits that are nice to visit if non-stop gambling and shows aren’t your thing (Vegas is actually more than the showbiz and slot machines; it’d be nice to look at that a bit more)

The Trinity Site in White Sands New Mexico:  One of the most important sites in the U.S. and of the 20th century. This was where the first nuclear device was set off by J. Robert Oppenheimer in 1945; thirty years later it was declared a National Historic monument (so it has been that way for about the same amount of time that I’ve been walking the earth). It’s also only open twice a year, making it a pretty cool thing to have been able to say you’ve visited.

Some wine regions other than those in California:
Everyone knows about the wine grown in Cali, but it grows and is made all over the United States:

• Rocky Mountain Region – Notably Idaho and Colorado
• Southwestern United States – Notably Texas and New Mexico
• Midwestern United States – Notably Missouri, Illinois and Minnesota
• Great Lakes region – Notably Michigan, northern New York and Ohio
• East Coast of the United States – Notably New Jersey, New York State, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina

It would be great to visit a few of these places and talk about their vineyards.

Sitka Alaska, or, in fact, anywhere in Alaska:
It would be fun to try Dog Sledding, and I have to think Alaska is great for all sorts of outdoorsy pursuits.

The Dan Quayle Vice-Presidential Library/Museum in Huntington Indiana: To be fair, this library is about more than the man who cannot spell potato correctly in public. I love the fact that of all the Veeps, he is the only one with a Vice Presidential Library. It’s just precious.

Lancaster County Pennsylvania: When I first visited Niagara Falls, I was surprised to see a group of Amish kids playing Time Crisis (it might have been House of the Dead come to think of it; at any rate, one of those games where you stand in front of a big screen and shoot everything coming at you). Electricity is mostly verboten for the Amish, let alone shoot-the-zombies-with-a-light-gun games. At that point I’d never heard of rumspringa, which is the Amish term for adolescence (and literally means “running around”). During rumspringa the Amish kids will act in ways not Amish (such as driving cars or wearing modern clothes or drinking or shooting video game zombies).

Some of the kids head out of their communities to do this, but most stay around the family farms. This brings me to Lancaster County, which can fairly claim to be the heart of the Amish world. In addition to the normal Amish delights (apple butter, horse buggies, hand- made furniture, providing room and board for Harrison Ford, that sort of thing) it would be fun to hang out with a few of the kids on rumspringa to see how they are finding the world of the “English”.

What famous person reminds you of yourself and why?
Hmm. I found this one a little banjaxing. So I asked the people who post on the Rifftrax forum what they thought. Here’s what they had to say:

Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck: Stephen Fry – because of your encyclopedic knowledge and endless curiosity and your wit.

Bettertomorrowamy: Kelsey Grammar

A friend of mine (from my neck of the woods, as opposed to friends around the country and world who post on that internet forum) told me that I remind her of Sean Bean when he was in Goldeneye.

So putting that together, that makes me a brawny, intellectually curious patrician with a soupcon of salt of the earth working class charm to make things tasty plus an interesting voice. Not too bad an assessment I suppose

What countries have you visited and for how long?
In alphabetical order:

• Canada – Off and on for about thirteen years
• England – Most of my life until I was twenty-six
• France – A couple of times for about a week each time
• Ireland – For about two and a half years
• Norway – for the last quarter of 1997
• USA – Every summer since 1996, permanently since 2002
• Wales – A bunch of times while I was living in England

In which other cities or countries have you lived and for what period of time.
In chronological order

• Cork in Ireland for the first two and a half years of my life
• Plymouth in the West Country of England until I was 8
• Stratford-upon-Avon in the Midlands of England from the age of eight until I immigrated to the U.S. in 2002
• During that time I lived in Bergen Norway for the last four months of 1997 while taking part in a student exchange program. After moving to the U.S. I lived briefly in Sterling Heights Michigan before moving north a little to where I currently reside in Clinton Township Michigan.

What most scares you about traveling?
Nothing whatsoever. Traveling gives you experiences you might otherwise never have. What’s scary about that?

What most excites you about traveling?
Everything. Maybe it’s the Romany ancestry, but I love traveling. I even enjoy airports (some more than others, but they all try to be interesting these days don’t they?).

Are there any places in the world you will absolutely not travel to? Identify and explain why
On general principal there really isn’t anywhere, though obviously there are places that the U.S. foreign office tells people not to go to for their own good. For years growing up, I wanted to visit Afghanistan; it was pivotal in The Great Game and had many irreplaceable cultural treasures beneath its troubles.

My father worked in the oil business and would spend many months in Iraq and Iran (and many other places in the Middle East and Africa) and so I always wanted to visit there as well.

As you can imagine none of those three locations would be ideal destinations right at the moment, but I’d still like to visit them one of these days. In much the same way, if ever the travel embargo is lifted on Cuba, I will definitely be taking a visit.

What country and place would you like to visit and why?
Again, there are lots but here are a few broken down by continent:

Europe

The Wieliczka Salt Mine just outside of Krakow Poland:  Wieliczka is interesting, not because it’s a mine (though they can be interesting) but because of what the miners did when not hewing salt out of the earth. They took it upon themselves to carve an underground city out of the excavated chambers. There is a cathedral and a ballroom as well as other smaller rooms and many, many sculptures, all made out of rock salt. According to an article I read recently the mine might be able to cure asthma, so some of those people would be interesting to talk to (both the patients and the doctors).

The Alt Wiener Schnapsmuseum in Vienna Austria: Mata Hari Absinthe is made there. Absinthe is the classic case of something undone by its reputation rather than its actual qualities. However now the stuff is legal again (but with the sort of coolness that only being illegal for decades can bring), and Mata Hari is one of the oldest recipes still in existence. Even better, it’s all natural, which makes it stand out amongst a glut of artificially coloured products. I think it would be cool to see the drink produced and then sample some.

The Yusupov Palace in St Petersburg Russia: What is the connection between those little disclaimers at the end of movies stating “The preceding was a work of fiction, etc.,” and the assassination of Grigori Rasputin? The answer is Prince Felix Felixovich Yusupov, the man who led the assassination of the Tsaritza’s favorite holy man/faith healer. Yusupov sued MGM over their portrayal of his wife in the film Rasputin and the Empress, leading to all films having that disclaimer. Yusupov was from possibly the richest family in all of Russia (richer than that of the Tsar even; they used to have bowls of jewels lying around so that people could run their hands through them for fun) and quite a pretty boy (so pretty in fact that Edward VII of Britain once mistook him for a girl and tried to arrange an assignation with him). The palace, unsurprisingly, is incredibly pretty and opulently, even decadently, decorated. If you ask nicely, they’ll let you visit the basement where the deed took place, which apparently contains a wax work diorama featuring Felix and Grigori and all of Felix’s coconspirators. That would potentially be fun to see.

The Palazzo Grassi Museum of Modern Art in Venice Italy:
Venice has an abundance of great art museums, but the most recent one to open is the one devoted to modern art that is housed in the former palace of the extremely wealthy but ill- fated Grassi family. It would be nice to look at new works of art in a city so associated with older, undeniably brilliant works. I have a friend who lives in Venice (as of yet she’s not visited this museum but says it looks “tres grand” after being an empty shell for so long), and she extended an open invitation to come drink wine while watching the sun set over the city. So that would be nice, too.

Asia

Tubbataha Reef Marine Park in the Philippines:  When people think of coral reefs, they often think of the Great Barrier Reef off the east coast of Australia but, of course, coral isn’t confined to that one place. Another spectacular collection of coral and the life that inhabits the coral reefs can be found off the western coast of the Philippines. The family of a friend owns a farm on Cebu Island, just to the east of the reef, so I could see some farming and then toddle out to the reef to visit with the various species of sharks, eels, and turtles that make their home there.

The Cao Dai Holy See near Sài Gòn, Viet Nam:  It might become apparent, when reading some of my notes, that religion and other expressions of human belief are endlessly interesting to me. Because of this I would love to visit the home of one of the world’s newer religions (it began in the 1920s) that essentially reflects all of the cultural influences Viet Nam has experienced for the last seven centuries or so. Do you want to find Jesus and Buddha hanging out with Lao-Tze? Or see Christian saints in the lotus position? Then the Cao Dai Holy See is the place for you. Since I can answer yes to both of those then I absolutely want to visit the place. Since I’d be a couple of hours from the cultural capital of the county that would be a great place to visit once the delights of Cao Dai had grown old.

Agra Fort, Agra, India:  So your grandfather’s father was the greatest ruler of your dynasty and your dad is acting a touch loopy in his old age. What’s a Mughal ruler to do? Well Aurangzeb decided to shut up his father in the Agra Fort for the last eight years of his life. Things weren’t too bad, however, since Shah Jahan had spent a few tons of gold making the place look nice as had most of the rulers before him, Mughal or otherwise. The Agra Fort is one of the most beautiful collections of buildings in the world, reflecting as it does the ascetic tastes of all of those rulers. However, it’s less well known than another of Shah Jahan’s building projects, the Taj Mahal, where Jahan would end up eight years after being confined to the fort by Aurangzeb.

The Petronas Twin Towers, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia:  When I go to the gym I sometimes use a stair climber machine and, to make things more interesting, I try to climb the same number of steps as can be found in various tall buildings. My favourite one is the Pertonas Tower. I can climb to the top in about 15 minutes. I’d like to see how long it takes me in the real building. Once I’ve reached the top I’ll be able to look out over the whole of Kuala Lumpur

Australasia

Uluru, also known as Ayers Rock: Uluru is a massive formation of sandstone almost slap bang in the middle of Australia. It’s both a natural wonder and, as a key spiritual site for the Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara peoples, an important cultural destination. Like the volcanoes in Hawaii, its stones are apparently cursed and cannot be taken away, which adds a hint of magical fun to any trip there.

Coober Pedy: A different mineral is mined here, but it has some things in common with Wieliczka in that the miners have carved out habitation and other spaces under the ground for themselves. I want to see some of the houses and the chapels and the like. It would probably be fun to take the Mail Run Tour, which would show a great deal of the surrounding area and places of interest. I’d also like to try my hand, or rather foot, at noodling for opals. You never know; I might find a black one.

The Tasmanian Devil Sanctuary in Cradle Mountain Tasmania:  There are many wild animals that I really like and many of them I have actually seen either in their natural habitat or in zoos. However, one that I have never seen aside from in nature documentaries (and the weird thing seen in Loony Tunes cartoons) is the Tasmanian Devil. The Tasmanian Devil is one of the last few carnivorous marsupials left in the world (the world’s most powerful carnivorous beastie was a marsupial “lion” that is now extinct). The Tazie is a deceptively cute looking little critter that possesses the strongest bite of any living creature, relative to size, and an unearthly cry that is the origin of its name. Hearing the weird snorting scream out in the forests of Tasmania, early European settlers thought they were hearing some sort of demon.

Sadly the little monster is suffering from a loss of habitat and a tumor-causing disease that might mean it will one day be gone. Places like the sanctuary in Cradle Mountain (itself an outstanding nature park) are attempting to prevent the extinction. They are breeding the Devils and providing education about them to visitors. I’d love to be one of those visitors; I want to hear that startling call in person and not just on TV.

I’d like to take a walk along the Milford Track, which stretches from Lake Te Anau to Milford Sound in New Zealand . A kiwi friend of mine has walked this when he was younger and tells me it is phenomenal. He also said that when he walked it he rushed it a bit and would like to walk it again now that he’s older and able to appreciate the natural grandeur a little more. Taking a look at pictures of parts of the trail I can’t help but agree with the assessment that the track is “the finest walk in the world” and NZ intends to keep it that way by limiting both the number of people who walk the track each year and the direction in which they walk it. I’d love to be one of those selected walkers.

Africa

The Blue Train running from Pretoria to Cape Town and back again: Ah, but your Land is Beautiful is the title of a book by Alan Paton (who also wrote Cry The Beloved Country), and it takes its title from the fact that people would often say to him, after discussing the troubles South Africa faced. That despite all the troubles the land was beautiful. And, truly, that remains the case. Despite the turmoil that South Africa has gone through the land has always been incredibly gorgeous. One of the best ways to see a great deal of beautiful countryside is to see it from a train. The Blue Train runs a number of routes, but the one from the capital to the coast would provide a wonderful cross section of the spectacular scenery.

I’d not mind climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. It’s the highest peak in the continent, and a few friends have climbed it. The cool thing about it is that, as long as your fitness is pretty good, you can essentially just take a hike up to the top. I think it’s accurate to describe that as ace.

My father loved North Africa and one of the places that would be great to visit in that region would be Marrakesh in Morocco, where there are walled gardens and ancient mosques and cool little souqs where all sorts of articles can be bought.

As you might have gathered from my inclusion of the Tasmania Devil sanctuary, I love places that try to preserve indigenous wild life. Another such place that I’d like to visit is the Tampolo Forest Reserve in Madagascar; they are mostly a research facility but I’d like to visit and watch the lemurs doing their lemur type things.

America (North)

Now obviously I’ve already listed places in the U.S. that I’d like to visit, but the U.S. is only part of North America.

The Chichen Itza Pyramids in Yucatan Mexico:  I want to go there on a specific date: December 21st 2012, not because I think the world will end on that date, but because a bunch of people seem to, based on prophecies from the people who built Chichen Itza, and will be gathering there to await what happens next. I have to think that it’ll be like some vast doom tinged version of the Burning Man festival, which will just have to be seen to be believed. Even more interesting will be the morning of December 22nd 2012.

Lake Okanagan, British Columbia Canada: Scotland isn’t the only country with a large body of water that is believed to contain a serpentine beastie. Canada’s lake with a monster is Lake Okanagan, and the name of its monster is Ogo Pogo. Okanagan shares another similarity with Loch Ness in being really very beautiful. If I didn’t spot the lake monster I could at least view the gorgeous scenery.

National History Park – Citadel, Sans-Souci, Ramiers, Haiti: Henri Christophe was one of the leaders of the Slave rebellion on Haiti (the only successful rebellion of its kind). Once the French had been kicked off the island the real fun of a revolution came, in fighting and factionalization. And so, Henri Christophe found himself as President of the breakaway (and fairly short lived) State of Haiti. A little while later he declared himself King Henri I and ordered a palace built. Concerned that the French would return and wreak havoc on his fledgling nation (something nobody worries about the French doing these days), King Henri added a massive amount of fortifications to the palace. As I mentioned, the State of Haiti wasn’t all that long lived and so the Palace and all of it’s battlements soon became the property of the Republic of Haiti and is seen as a symbol of the desire for Liberty in the human spirit. While I think it does provide that symbolism I think it could also be seen as symbolizing some other things about the human spirit…

Prickley Pear Cays, Anguilla, Leeward Islands: You will have probably gathered that, when traveling, I like to visit places of some specific interest, however, from time to time I’m not completely against just relaxing on a beautiful beach and chilling out for a couple of hours. Prickly Pear Cay has a spectacular beach surrounded by almost impassable rocks making it both beautiful and isolated; in other words, the perfect sport to relax in. Should the beach prove boring after a while, I can always venture out onto those rocks to do a bit of bird watching.

America (South)

The Panama Canal:  A nice way to say hello to the other America and a sterling achievement in engineering. Had the last election gone differently, I could add “Birthplace of the President” to the list of interesting things about the Canal. As it is, the engineering feat and the fact it’s essentially the gateway to South America make the Panama Canal worth a visit.

I really enjoy Tango and would love to attend the Congreso Internacional de Tango Argentino, which takes place in Buenos Aires, Argentina every year in the middle of March. I’m not the greatest dancer ever but there’s no better place to learn and to watch the truly phenomenal dancers provide examples of exactly what I should be aiming for.

The Galapagos Islands:
One of the most important places for those interested in science and especially biology. Windswept and isolated, the islands made the perfect place for Darwin to formulate, contemplate, and test his theories. It would make a great counterpoint to the Creation Museum. Plus, giant tortoises and vampire finches!!!!

Tierra del fuego:  Excitingly named The Land of Fire, this is actually one of the coldest places on earth. The fires were in such abundance because without them people would have frozen to death. Still, I suppose Land of Wretched Frigidity doesn’t sound all that sexy when you want to encourage people to come live there. Thankfully we now have modern heating techniques so the place is marginally less bitterly cold or at least it’s easier to endure the bitter cold. And now that we can do that we can do some fun wintry pursuits like dog sledding. Or, if the place seems just that little too sultry we can hop on a boat to…

Antarctica

Yes you can actually visit Antarctica without being a scientist or maker of documentaries about penguins. I could talk about visiting the preserved base camp of Ernest Shackleton or viewing (from a safe distance) the gatherings of penguins, but to be honest, I would just be glad to say I stepped onto the shore in Antarctica.

Do you get sea or car sick? Please state which.
I don’t get car, plane, train, sea or pogo stick sick

Name three of your favorite hobbies.
I love to go biking; riding my bike is both fun and good for me physically and, really, aren’t those two qualities that we should look for in a pastime? My bike isn’t the most expensive ever but she does the job admirably and I often use her for little errands if I have the time and the distance I need to go isn’t too far (within about a ten mile radius).

I’m a fairly decent cook; as long as it doesn’t focus on eggs (so omelets and scrambles are right out) I can make it and it will be delicious. I love reading recipes and discovering new ingredients. One of my favorite things to do is include Asian ingredient in recipes from the southern United States. I like to think of the resulting dishes as “Crasian”: Creole + Asian.

I love to make things; I was going to say “I love to sculpt” but really what I like to do best of all are more like three dimensional collages. They’re sculptures technically but they tend to be made of other things. When it’s warm out I generally carry a canvas bag that I decorated with various little found objects and beads. It’s a rare trip out with that bag that somebody doesn’t tell me how cool it is.

Do you have any phobias?
Not any more. I used to be a little scared of dogs, however, many years of owning a crazy little spaniel means I don’t fear any breed, except maybe Perro de Presa Canario but I don’t think you need to have a phobia to find those a little worrying.

Phobias are obviously irrational and the great thing about being human is that we are capable of recognizing the irrational and not giving in to it. I love dogs and if I was ever going to have one as a pet I needed to get over the fear reaction. And so I did.It’s really not that difficult if you put your mind to it.

List three (3) adjectives that best describe you.

• Clever
• Eccentric
• Curious

Have you ever been on television? If so, when and what shows?
Not that I’m aware of, although I have spoken on a few radio programs from time to time.

Have you ever appeared in a publicly released film or video of any sort? If so, when and what film(s) or video(s)?
Well I’ve been filmed a few times but I’m not sure if any have yet been released. I have provided voiceovers for InZer0: Fragile Wings, and I was recently an extra on Little Murder.

What sports, hobbies or special skills do you have?
I used to play the following sports

• Rugby
• Cricket
• Field Hockey
• Soccer

I would like to play

• Aussie Rules Football
• Gaelic Football

But I have difficulty finding teams in my area (which is also why the first three are listed as “used to play”). I really enjoy playing games, and I’d be willing to try out any sport.

I love bicycling and sculpture. I’m a great cook, I write poetry from time to time, I used to be a pretty good fencer, and I have a huge depth and breadth of general knowledge.

Have you ever kept a blog before?
Oh yes and please, feel free to ask me a question. I love answering peoples questions.

Plus, I’m very active on Facebook

How did you hear about us?
I read the notice you placed on craigslist.

Is there anything else about yourself you would like us to know?
By the time we start recording I’ll have been a U.S. citizen for under a year (I was sworn in a couple of weeks ago). I think it would be interesting to explore the country as a new citizen of the United States, discovering things that my fellow citizens might also not have been aware was there to be discovered.

I’ve found that being genuinely interested and friendly has helped me out a great deal. I can get along with pretty much anyone and have done for as long as I can remember.

I’m thinking of starting a website called Blurter©. It would allow people to subscribe to other people’s Bleats©; these would be single word posts, no spaces allowed, of up to twenty five characters.

Click Here to Bleat

Did Leibniz really steal the calculus from Newton?  Or was it simply two geniuses simultaneously reaching similar conclusions and their egos refusing to believe such a coincidence was possible?  And just how similar or different were their ideas?

Ooh Mathematics. Ok so let’s do a few introductions:

Isaac Newton, most people know;

Here he is

Recreating the cover of his favorite album ever, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon there, yes he was so clever that he predicted the coming of Floyd and deduced their best album would be the one which could sync up to The Wizard of Oz.

But more importantly Newton gave the world The Catflap Infinitesimal Calculus, or simply Calculus as we now call it (when Newton was working on it “calculus” was a near synonym for “mathematics” or “that confusing stuff with them number things” so people had to specify which sort of calculus they were talking about).

Newton wasn’t the only person to create Infinitesimal Calculus however; the other inventor (and the one who gave it its name) was this chap:

Gottfried Leibniz.

Another very clever man but one with very different interests to Newton: Leibniz was much more interested in metaphysics than Newton (which is not to say Newton was entirely uninterested in metaphysics/the occult, it just wasn’t one of his pet obsessions).

However the common meeting point of Physics and Metaphysics is mathematics, that is both love numbers and ultimately are dependant upon them (in fact, in the end, everything is mathematics, which takes us back to the topic of the first question I answered).

So, working from different starting points both Leibniz and Newton arrived at essentially the same point, so where’s the problem?

The problem lay in this; Newton wrote about his system of calculus in Method of Fluxions in 1671 while Leibniz published his theory in the book Nova methodus pro maximis et minimis (A New Method for Maximums and Minimums) in 1684. The key word there is published, Newton didn’t get around to publishing Method of Fluxions until 1734.

So a bit of a grey area really, it is possible that Leibniz saw some of Newton’s notes and extrapolated from there, but that’s not all that likely. What we do know is that Newton had a touch of the Prima donna about him and was prone to hissy fits. In this case he might have better counted to ten and remembered something he’d written to Richard Hooke (later to be the subject of another huge Newtonian hissy fit) in 1676:

If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.

What he is saying there is that nothing he knows or has come up with sprang fully formed from his mind, but was merely the latest development in a long line of theories and ideas. This is absolutely true, there really is no such thing as a revolutionary idea, if you look closely (but not too closely) all great ideas are really evolutionary in nature.

However, what we say and how we act are two very separate things. So Newton sulked and griped about Leibniz’ supposed plagiarism. Except Newton’s calculus isn’t anywhere near as clear as Leibniz’; as I mentioned earlier, Leibniz actually called infinitesimal calculus infinitesimal calculus which Newton did not.

Leibniz also used a different notation set, the symbols used for his equations, to Newton. If you take a calculus class today you’ll use a particular notation set and, more likely than not, it won’t be Newton’s but Leibniz’. Consider those last two points together and the argument over who created Calculus tips, slightly but noticeably, towards the Metaphysician.

So let’s look at the questions one by one.

Did Leibniz really steal the calculus from Newton?
Probably not.

Or was it simply two geniuses simultaneously reaching similar conclusions and their egos refusing to believe such a coincidence was possible?
Not really both of the two geniuses, but certainly it was a problem caused by ego, the one belonging to Newton.

And just how similar or different were their ideas?
Fundamentally, their ideas are pretty near identical. However, the differences between them tend to give more support to Leibniz than Newton.

I have to appologise for the delay in posting that last answer, I intended to post it yesterday but I was caught up in a mamouth Christmas cookie baking session.

Anyway Season’s Greetings, no matter how one chooses to react to the world being at one extreme of it’s relationship to the sun or the other.

My husband wants to do paper crowns this year for Christmas and I have only the vaguest idea what he’s talking about. Where did the use of paper crowns at Christmas come from? Why are they worn? And is it true that only boys can wear them? Because if that last part is true then he’s going to be the only one wearing a crazy paper crown while our daughters and I laugh at how dumb he looks.

Thanks, Nickepedia!!

Ok so the paper crown is a component in something everyone should experience at Christmas dinner; The Christmas Cracker.

Christmas crackers are little paper tubes containing a small toy, a joke or other motto (not unlike the little slips of paper found inside a fortune cookie) and, generally, a paper crown. That tube is wrapped in crepe paper or light card with a little strip containing enough black powder to make a nice little “bang!” sound (it’s about the same amount as is found in a single cap used for cap guns). When put together they look like this:

Just before dinner (at least in my house growing up, timing varies from house to house) everybody takes one end of cracker in each hand, each hand holds a different cracker, so that there is a sort of chain around the dinner table. Then everyone pulls the crackers until they all snap and then the little toy and motto and the crown fall out onto the table.

Everybody picks through the cheap gewgaws, unfolds the paper crowns and puts them on. They wear the crowns during dinner. If a great deal of turkey has been consumed (or booze come to that) the crowns often end up as ad hoc sleeping caps while the Queen gives her annual address to the commonwealth.

But why crowns?

Well it wasn’t always crowns. I was initially looking for a Dave Allen routine about Christmas Crackers to provide a nice laid back Irish take on the tradition but I couldn’t find the particular routine (he was a great comic by the way, check him out some time), but I did find this film from 1910 about the construction of crackers:

Around the 4:00 mark you can see a girl putting what look like clown hats, made from paper to be placed in the crackers. Earlier to that hats of other shapes and even material were placed in crackers. The reason for this was because crackers were very much a luxury item; if you’re spending a wodge of cash on the things you expect to have something extra cool inside (and in fact that’s still the case with high end crackers). On the other hand it meant that fewer people could buy the things, never a good proposition for a producer.

And so the price went down and the hats became simpler. Now a clown hat is pretty simple but it actually takes a whole bunch of paper to produce, something like this:

While a crown looks like this when it’s flat:

You can make a bunch more crowns out of a piece of paper and so it’s much more cost effective for the cracker makers, plus who doesn’t like wearing a crown? After a while all of the cracker manufacturers began including a simple crown along with the other cracker contents instead of some more complex sort of head wear.

So lets take the questions one by one:

Where did the use of paper crowns at Christmas come from?
From the tube inside the cracker Ok, from England as part of the tradition of the Christmas cracker.

Why are they worn?
Because it’s Christmas, and er that’s it really, it’s one of those things that didn’t really have a significant origin.

And is it true that only boys can wear them?
Er, not that I’m aware of. Mind you, you’ll have to weigh the merits of being able to take part in a fun Commonwealth Yuletide Tradition against the fun to be had in pointing and laughing at your significant other.

The choice is yours really

I’m wondering about the process of a bladder filling up. Does it happen via some kind of “trickle” method, or is it some sort of gradual seepage? At what percentage “full” does the need to micturate register? The admittedly minimal research I’ve done online seems to indicate that most people are more interested in the expulsion of urine rather than the process of its collection.  Perhaps you can shed some light on this.

Ok so correct me if I’m wrong but the use of “trickle” and “seepage” there seems to be a way of saying direct or indirect fill; you seem to be asking if the bladder has a delivery system or whether it fills a bit like a sponge.

Ultimately the process by which the bladder fills up actually involves both ways.

Urine is produced in the kidneys, which do indeed collect the water via the process of “seepage” and that seepage is controlled by a number of chemicals. Some, like Vasopressin (or antidiuretic hormone) reduce the amount of seepage to the kidneys while others, like caffeine, increase the seepage. Note that the former of those is naturally produced by the body while the other in an ingested substance. For the most part, the body wants to retain as much water as possible.

The urine subsequently trickles (usually, preferably, at a continuous rate) from the kidneys down into the bladder through the ureters, the tubes connecting the kidneys to the bladder.

Ok so now we’re down in the bladder so to speak, what is it like exactly?

The Bladder is relatively simple; it’s a stretchy bag of muscle that can fill up without increasing pressure until it reaches a significant fill level. When it does that the nerves in the bladder send the brain the message that it’s perhaps time to take a tinkle.

But what is that point?

Well, the bladder, on average, can contain 400–620 ml of fluid, or about 1-1¾ cans of beer. Once it gets to about ¾ full (or a can’s worth of urine) the nerves start sending their signals.

However

So if somebody is out and about and quaffing brews like there’s no tomorrow while larking about with their pals, they might not hear the signals until over 100% capacity has been reached. Many a dark alley or dumpster can tell you what happens then.

So the quick answers to the questions are:

Does it happen via some kind of “trickle” method, or is it some sort of gradual seepage?

“Seepage” then “trickle”

At what percentage “full” does the need to micturate register?

75 is the magic percentage number for the “go now” messages to start firing, but they’ll increase in urgency as the bladder continues to fill (which it can do for about another 125% of normal capacity).

What is something that you do not like to do, but force yourself to do, because you know it makes you a better person? And why?

Well the simple answer is there’s really nothing that I do that I don’t want to because of that motivation. However, I do sometimes do things I don’t want to for a slightly different reason.

My missus does indeed do something she doesn’t want in one particular area; that of movies she watches. I tease her that she makes choices about the movies she wants to see because she’s trying to please a theoretical entity I think of as

This entity looks down upon us mere mortals and gives us little celestial “Great Job!” stickers for choosing to watch improving movies or read improving books, regardless of how entertaining they are.

And so she often wants to see films that sound utterly deadly to watch.

However, I do often go and see the films because, you know, while it doesn’t make me a better person; it’s something any man should do for the woman in his life from time to time.

But the more important reason is that while the movies often sound horrible I’m often pleased that I’ve gone to see them after all.

A couple of cases in point:

The Boy In The Striped Pajamas

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas depicts a fictional friendship set during World War II. Bruno, the eight-year-old son of a newly-promoted Nazi officer, moves with his family from a comfortable life in Berlin to a lonely existence in the countryside. An adventurous boy with nothing to do, Bruno ignores his mother’s instructions not to explore the back garden and takes off for a “farm” he has seen from his bedroom window. As he approaches a barbed wire fence, Bruno sees Shmuel, the boy in the striped pajamas, on the other side, and an unlikely and life-changing friendship develops.*

Wooo! Sounds extra fun doesn’t it kiddies?

In fact it’s a great little film with fantastic performances, especially from the two little boys. It’s a very involving movies which, while it’s a little difficult to believe really when one considers the type of security around the actual camps.

Still, it’s a nice little fable with an ending that is very sad; though it’s not as sad as the ending that came for so many victims of those camps, when you come to think about it really.

Australia

Set in northern Australia before World War II, an English aristocrat who inherits a sprawling ranch reluctantly pacts with a stock-man in order to protect her new property from a takeover plot. As the pair drive 2,000 head of cattle over unforgiving landscape, they experience the bombing of Darwin, Australia, by Japanese forces firsthand.#

Now, I like Baz Lurhman, some of his work at least. I really liked Romeo + Juliet and Strictly Ballroom, and I remember seeing a great production of La Boheme that he directed. Moulin Rouge, however, was a bit dodgy frankly and I was extremely leery about Australia, especially since it featured Nicole Kidman; an actress of very little talent or ability to hold my interest.

The film is a wee bit hypercampy during its first twenty five minutes or there abouts, but after that it really does seem to pick up.

If you have a few hours to spare, and during the holidays that’s a pretty likely occurrence, it’s worth checking out, at least at matinee or twilight show prices.

* http://www.boyinthestripedpajamas.com/#/home

# http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0455824/