Doctor Who

by

Don’t say I didn’t warn you…

…because I did warn you:  it’s Saturday, and I’m writing a blog post, because I’m on my way in to the office.

I think there was a brief moment in the middle of the day yesterday when the boss considered just keeping everything closed for the weekend, but then there were at least three people besides me and the “closer” who were planning to come in.  Since they are paid on commission (so extra work is an opportunity for them) I can’t feel too bad about having to come in, too.  As I wrote yesterday, it’s not as though I have anything better to do with my time.

Actually, today of all days, that’s not quite correct.  Today is the day of the first of the 60th anniversary Doctor Who specials, which I mentioned yesterday.  But since that is supposed to be streaming on Disney Plus, I can watch it from work (things are often slow-ish on Satudays) just as easily as at the house, and I will probably be more comfortable at the office.  My desk chair is decent, whereas at the house I basically sit on the floor.

Now that we are past the main temptation holidays, at least until Christmas/New Years, I need to go back onto a stricter diet.  I find that my physical energy is much better when I’m controlling my input.  This might seem ironic, given that I’m restricting input of the most easily “usable” calories, but the biochemistry and physiology of this fact is entirely reasonable and well understood.

It does sometimes have a detrimental affect on my mood, decreasing my emotional energy somewhat—which I guess makes my sugar cravings/sweet tooth a bit akin to the addiction of someone who uses illicit drugs to “self-treat” an underlying mood disorder.  This shouldn’t be too surprising, since sugar triggers activity in the nucleus accumbens and related centers of the nervous system that is very similar to what cocaine and amphetamines do.

I also should just avoid alcohol—not because I have a big problem with it or anything, but because it doesn’t actually make me feel good, even in the moment, but I kind of expect it to do so, and by the time I realize, “Hey, this isn’t even helping me relax or making me feel good while it’s on board”, I’ve already bought myself some GI and neurological discomfort later.

Sorry, I know this is all boring.  In a way, though, everyone is boring to most other people, or at least not terribly interesting.  And many people who are apparently interesting to so many other people are actually astonishingly uninteresting to me.  For instance, though I recognize her talent and skill and brilliance, I have no particular interest in Taylor Swift’s career or music—except to recognize those stated attributes—and I certainly have no interest in her love life.  Yet, since I do follow the news fairly regularly, I cannot help but become aware of these things.

To be fair to her, she’s much more interesting than most celebrities*.

I suppose it’s a small price to pay for making sure that I get my news input from a variety of different sources to try to avoid bias—or, at least, to balance the biases against each other as much as I can.  I don’t generally like to take in commentary on news, so I avoid editorials; I can decide what I think about issues for myself once I have the data and don’t need pundits to tell me what they think I ought to think.  I’m only too aware of studies that have generally shown that such pundits’ predictions on various news events are no better than, and quite often significantly worse than, chance.

In other words, if you get your news from sources that editorialize, let alone from pundits, you’re actually worsening your likelihood of getting a good take on events in the world.  Why not just get a “magic 8-ball” and save yourself the trouble, while ironically improving your odds?

Mind you, there are people with expertise from whom I might be interested in hearing (or reading) their take on particular, narrow issues within their wheelhouse.  For science and related news, for instance, I go to a few specific science-related YouTube channels like Dr. Becky, and PBS Space Time, and Sabine Hossenfelder, and Sixty Symbols and Deep Sky Videos and Periodic Videos and Numberphile and Computerphile—those last five are all channels pioneered by Brady Haran, a remarkably intelligent and curious science and math journalist who gets experts to discuss science (and mathematical and computer-related) stories.  He asks very good questions.

I find that the mainstream media does just an unacceptably sloppy job at conveying science news, on average.  To be fair to them, the standard deviation of that sloppiness is pretty big, so some good work happens now and then, but it’s well into one small tail of the curve.  Sadly enough, even Scientific American has become a severe embarrassment to itself—and it’s even more embarrassing that the editors thereof don’t seem even to realize how embarrassing they’ve become.  I used to love that magazine, but it’s dead to me now.

Anyway, enough kvetching.  My train will be here soon, and I’ll be on my way to the office.  I hope to have at least one hour of today that is quite fun—the Doctor Who special—and I certainly always get some satisfaction from writing these posts, at least when it’s clear that people are reading them.  I hope you all have a good remainder of the weekend, and I will return Monday morning, barring the unforeseen.

*Even David Tennant, for instance, is mainly interesting only as the Doctor (or as Hamlet, or in one of his other roles).  Ditto for the other Doctors, and for musicians whose work I enjoy, and for writers I like to read, and even for scientists whose work I follow.  I guess it makes sense; people are most interesting when they’re doing what it is that they do that is exceptional.

by

On Black Friday, call not for A doctor but for THE Doctor

Well, it’s Friday, and—just to remind everyone outside the US why there was a gap in posting—it was Thanksgiving yesterday.  I’ve said it before, I think, though perhaps not on my blog, but Thanksgiving is possibly the most broadly observed American holiday nowadays, more so than anything but (perhaps) New Year’s Day.  The latter is observed largely because so many people have been up quite late, and many of them have been drinking rather more heavily than they would usually do.  Whereas with Thanksgiving, I suspect it’s so widely observed because it’s an almost purely American holiday—Canada has their Thanksgiving in October—and though it’s very secular in nature, it has an almost religious feel.  After all, many religions do say a lot about thankfulness, and it probably is a good mindset to have, in general.

Even the pizza places and Chinese restaurants were closed yesterday; at least all the ones near me were closed.  I tried to order some Chinese or some pizza, or other kinds of delivery food, and I didn’t have any luck with any of my usual suspects, nor was a wider-spread search any better.  Thankfully, most of the convenience stores and gas stations were open, so I was able to get some snacks and a few pre-packaged sandwiches.

I was also able to buy some wine, though that was probably not great for me.  It doesn’t matter much, though.  I don’t really get the urge to drink alcohol very often; I enjoy talking about drinking far more than I enjoy drinking.  It’s useful enough if I’m forced to socialize, of course, but when I’m by myself (which is pretty much all the time, now) it mainly serves as an attempt to become numb.  It did that yesterday somewhat, but it’s not really a pleasant thing.  A nice glass of good wine can taste nice with a good meal, but that was not applicable here.

Anyway, now it’s Black Friday, a name that used to be just a tongue-in-cheek, unofficial nickname for the day after Thanksgiving, because so many people would rush out to begin Christmas shopping since they had the day off anyway.  Now it’s more or less an official shopping spree “holiday” of sorts, and I think it’s even spread as far as the UK, though there is no preceding holiday, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Back in the old days, most American places of employment other than retailers were closed for the whole four-day weekend associated with Thanksgiving.  Nowadays, I don’t think as many places take Friday off.  Although, given that I’m currently the only person waiting on the northbound side of the station and it’s only ten minutes until the train is due, maybe a lot of people do take today off.  It’s probably just as well that I do not have the day off, since I would have nothing to do in my downtime.

Yesterday was also, by the way, the 60th anniversary of the first broadcast of Doctor Who*.  I spent a good portion of my day watching Doctor Who related videos on YouTube.  The first 60th Anniversary special—there are actually going to be a total of three of them—airs tomorrow.  Supposedly, Disney Plus will be streaming it starting at 1:30 pm Eastern time, which is the same literal time—6:30 pm for them—that it will be airing on the BBC.  Of course, those who follow the show know that, at the end of Jodie Whittaker’s run, to the surprise of almost everyone, instead of regenerating into Ncuti Gatwa, she became David Tennant, i.e. the former 10th, now 14th Doctor.  He’s only going to be there for the specials though, and will then regenerate into the 15th Doctor, who will be played by Ncuti Gatwa.

Those of you who don’t know or care about Doctor Who will no doubt want to skip the previous paragraph.  However, since you’re here now, you’ve probably already read the previous paragraph, so it’s too late to make that decision.  You’d have to have some kind of…some kind of…time machine to be able to go back now, but it still wouldn’t help much, because in order to know you need to skip the paragraph, you’d have to know what the paragraph was about, and unless you have someone out there to warn you, there’s no way for you to know without reading it.

Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey.

Of course, those who do follow Doctor Who will surely already know everything I mentioned in the Doctor Who related paragraph.  However, such people tend not to get easily tired of hearing about and talking about the show—as you can probably tell—so I don’t need to apologize to them.

I just got on the train now—it was right on time—and though a few other people showed up to the station, many of the regulars were definitely not here.  I have the entire rear-mid section of the car to myself, in my usual spot, and that’s quite striking.  But the conductor is the usual conductor, and the train is on its usual schedule.  Tomorrow it will be on its weekend-and-holiday schedule, and I will be using it then as well, since I work tomorrow.

That, of course, means that I will be writing a blog post tomorrow, since I obviously have not started writing any new fiction.  I did get the Stephen King audio book, and I’ve listened to a bit of it.  It’s fun, at least.  I’ve read the print version often enough that I’m not hearing anything that I don’t already know and even sometimes anticipate, but it’s still enjoyable.  It hasn’t made me feel like I want to get back to writing fiction, but I don’t know that anything is going to do that before I die, so I can’t hold that against Stephen King.

Anyway, that’ll do for now.  “See” you tomorrow.  I hope you had a good Thanksgiving, if you live in the US, and I hope you have a good, even if “Black”, Friday and a good weekend in general, all around.

*That’s right, Doctor Who first aired the day after JFK was assassinated.  If the Doctor had only been around just one day earlier, he might have saved the President—it’s the sort of thing he does.  Then again, according to Series 1, Episode 1 of the new Doctor Who, the 9th Doctor actually was present at that assassination.  Presumably, it was one of those Pompeii-like situations where, if he had changed it, worse things would happen.