Snow in November - who'da thunk it?

It’s fascinating how year after year, snow seems to plunge the country into chaos. It snowed all day yesterday and some more today, and skimming today’s headlines it’s like we’ve been hit by some natural disaster. ‘Arctic blast hits Britain’, ‘UK colder than Moscow’, ‘Snow causes chaos on roads’, ‘Deep freeze’… last I checked there were two inches of snow on the ground, and Aberdeen is one of the “worst affected”* areas. Britain has been experiencing snow in winter for centuries, if not millennia, yet they’re closing streets and shutting down schools because apparently we are still unable to cope with 5 cm of the stuff. Why are they even complaining about Global Warming?

*Of course, I’m happy, the more the better. Sucks if you have to drive, but hey, bring on the so-called blizzard that was supposed to hit us today!

What being British really means

I just came across this article - researchers asked 5000 Brits to name characteristics that in their eyes are typical of this nation, and then came up with a list of 30 traits. 

Nothing much to say about it; I just found it rather amusing. It's very spot on too - if you want to know how much truth there is to stereotypes look no further, because any foreigner you ask to describe the British would in all likelihood come up with pretty much the exact same list.

Here it is, the article itself is not really worth reading:

1. Talking about the weather

2. Queueing

3. Sarcasm

4. Watching soaps

5. Getting drunk

6. A love of bargains

7. Curtain twitching

8. A stiff upper lid

9. Love of all television

10. Moaning

11. Obsession with class

12. Gossiping

13. Traffic obsession

14. Enjoying other people's misfortunes

15. Never complaining

16. Cheap holidays

17. Working long hours

18. A soothing cuppa

19. Meat and two veg

20. Bad dancing

21. Uncomfortable talking about emotions

22. Clever sense of humour

23. Obsession with property values

24. Pandering to political correctness

25. Road rage

26. Weight worries

27. Wanting a good tan

28. Being proud of where we live

29. Not saying what we mean

30.The ability to laugh at ourselves

I'm guilty of at least 19 of those... now does that mean that I'm more British than I thought I was or is it a rather universal list anyway? I can think of at least one person who enjoys a soothing cuppa more than I do, and who's not complaining about their weight these days?

Really just a Quantum - Spoiler Alert

Don't read this if you don't want to know what happens in Quantum of Solace.

 (Well, try to read it, it's not like I have an abundance of commenters)

I just got back from watching Quantum of Solace. I'd been looking forward to seeing it for months... years actually, ever since the day I watched Casino Royale. I love James Bond, I've seen every single movie of the series at least twice, and I didn't think I'd ever be disappointed, but today just that happened. It really pains me to write a negative critique but things went downhill from the title song on down - I couldn't quite believe my ears. It couldn't have fit the Bond series any less.

First of all:
James Bond
Who? Really, I don't know who that guy was. He wasn't funny, he wasn't charming, he wasn't nice, he didn't even manage to properly seduce a girl - that short, sad, lifeless scene when he did get a girl was painful to watch. James Bond certainly doesn't mercilessly kill people, and those storywriters want us to believe that he actually got so attached to a girl that he goes to those lengths to avenge her death? Come on.

Next up:
The Plot
Well... nothing much to say here. There wasn't one.

The Ending
If you don't want to know what happens in the movie, skip this paragraph. Though I promise you nothing actually does happen, so that warning is kinda moot.
Anyway. Okay... so James Bond sets out to kill/find the guy who was somehow involved in the death of Vesper (the aforementioned girl). I'll just call him her murderer for now. Bond then travels to Italy, Haiti, Bolivia, Austria, leaving a trail of dead bodies in his wake, and all the while I kept thinking 'Is this him? Is this the murderer now?' Well... no. It never was. In the end, everyone's dead, the pretty girl is home and safe, and then, suddenly, completely out of the blue, Bond flies to Russia, enters a flat and captures the evil murderer who doesn't even put up the hint of a fight. This, by the way, is the first and last we see of him. All that takes place in the last five minutes of the movie. I mean what? What was the point of the other 100 minutes?
Also, something that I'd rather not call a storyline was introduced at the beginning, something that I expected the movie to solve. At the end, the only difference to 105 minutes earlier was that a few more people were dead. I can't stress the lack of plot enough.

Action
Ahh there we go. I have something nice to say about this movie after all. There's nothing quite like the action scenes in Bond movies - car chases, people crashing through glass panels, people dangling off ceilings, guns, and this handsome smirking guy emerging from the chaos straightening his tie. Alright, no one smirked this time because Bond is Teh Evil Cold-blooded Killer now, but I can't complain about a lack of action.
Let me whine a little here too though - I'd like to have a word with the camera guy. There were so many close-ups that at times I couldn't even tell what was happening. Extreme close-up of wheel - extreme close-up of eyes - extreme close-up of steering wheel - extreme close-up of hand clutching gun - extreme close-up of enemy's moustache - extreme close-up of wheel - repeat. Zoom out already!

So...
I could have excused the lack of plot. Of course it's a serious deficit in any case, but they could have pulled it off if only Bond had been his usual self - witty, charming, good-looking, effortlessly disarming a villain with the flick of a switch of some ingenious little technical device (Q didn't even make an appearance this time), neatly dressed, clever; someone every guy wants to be like. I really miss Sean Connery, or Pierce Brosnan even.
I sure hope they sack whoever came up with this trainwreck of a script.

And trust me, I feel terrible writing this.

They('ll) put a man on the... Mars?

The NASA and other space agencies have been talking about sending a manned mission to Mars for quite a while, but now it seems they've actually taken a big step towards it. Last night I read that researchers have managed to find a way to create a force field which would enable the spaceship to withstand the solar storms in space, which used to be one of the biggest obstacles of manned space travel– how to protect the astronauts from radiation. The risk of them being exposed to a lot of it on the way to the moon is far slimmer simply because the moon is so much closer. Our planet is protected by the magnetosphere, and scientists think they have now found out how to recreate it on a small enough scale to be feasible for a space ship.
This is exciting news. It will still be years before they actually do it and if a lot of things go wrong they might not even do it in our lifetime, but we’re getting there. I’m very interested in all things space but lately things have been a bit boring – nothing really interesting is happening anymore. Space shuttles travelling to the ISS are still exciting and I do follow them, but they’ve turned into a bit of an everyday-event. I’m not even sure what they’re actually doing up there these days. Unmanned missions to Mars are a little more exciting – I still remember a couple of years ago when they published all those colour photographs in the papers. I still have the articles at home somewhere. But they too get boring. For one, they take ages. If they launched a mission now, you’d only hear from it again in 2010, and even then there’s quite a big chance of the thing just crashing or refusing to do what it’s supposed to do. Remember Beagle 2?
And then, sometimes the mission itself is boring. Pictures are nice, it was quite interesting when they found evidence suggesting the presence of water, but most of the rest is really only of interest to scientists. Now manned missions are completely different. I’m all for them putting another man on the moon, even though it probably wouldn’t serve much of a purpose right now – it’s exciting and I wasn’t round 40 years ago so it’s only fair they repeat that performance for me now.
But sending people to Mars… well! That’d really be something. And I really admire whoever is going to go on that mission. More than three years completely on your own in this tiny spacecraft, with the same handful of people every single day, and so far away from not just other humans but earth itself it boggles the mind… you have to be extraordinarily strong to cope with that.