Review – A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

I promised I would post reviews of the books on my TBR Challenge list as I finished them,  and I finished A Study in Scarlet last night, so here we go. My impressions:

The plot…

… was a little bit strange around the time we were magically transported to Utah (Mormons? What?) but nonetheless good. The mystery itself was obvious at times and didn’t make sense at others, but taken as a whole there were no overall problems with it – although I wouldn’t recommend it to someone who wants a mystery that is very difficult to unravel.

The characterizations…

… were my favorite thing about the novel. Holmes is a lot more vain and lazy than anyone likes to give him credit for. Overall all the characters, but Holmes and Watson especially, are well-rounded and amusing.

And speaking of amusing…

… this book was funny. If you are one of those horrible people who believes that anything written in the Victorian Era is bound to be dry and boring, read this. It will prove you wrong. Conan Doyle is, it seems, one of the incredibly witty Victorian authors rather than one of the incredibly dull ones.

Overall, I give it…

4/5 stars.

2010 Trend Prediction Roundup – from colours to fashion to technology

Pantone predicts that turquoise will be the colour of the year.

2010 Colour of the Year

Mintel predicts that cardamom will be the  #1 flavour of the year.

Mintel further predicts that scents will be kept simple and clean and that scents to influence mood will be popular.

IDC predicts that iPhone apps will triple in 2010.

The Telegraph predicts that “augmented reality” applications will become significantly more popular  this year.

Fashionising.com predicts that spring fashion trends for women will include hot pants, knee high socks, jumpsuits, and ripped/patched jeans.

Fashionising.com further predicts that hairstyle trends this year will include braids, topknots, and slicked back styles for women and fringes, classic parts, and slicked back styles for men.

Braids will be popular in 2010, according to fashionising.com

Predictions for the new decade

These are rather optimistic predictions, but I have a feeling that these are generally likely to happen between now and 2020. These are all U.S.-specific.

• It will become broadly acceptable for men to wear women’s clothing.

Not necessarily by every single person and in every single town, but broadly. Why do I think so? Men’s fashions have been getting more feminine at an alarming rate – not just runway fashion, but, more and more, what you actually see in department stores. This can only be the first step to finally accepting crossdressing by men.

• Gay marriage will be legalized nationwide.

Why do I think so? Several states already have legalized it. Several more seem close.

• Don’t Ask Don’t Tell will be repealed.

Why do I think so? It’s a major focus of the LGBT rights movement right now. I think this is likely to happen before or very soon after Prop 8 is repealed in California.

• Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (which my mother and sister both suffer from) will come to be recognized as the serious disease it is, rather than being “all in your head”.

Why do I think so? It’s been represented (tentatively) as such in the news lately, which has brought it under the public eye.

• By the end of the decade, gay rights will be less pressing and transgendered rights will take their place.

Why do I think so? The gay rights movement is just that – a movement. A very fast-moving movement. It can’t take more than 10 years – I hope it will take less – to do most of what needs to be done, and after that, I strongly suspect that TG rights will take the spotlight that LGB rights will leave open.

If any of those things happen, panel, you’ll read about them on And I Rambled.

Decade in Review – What Didn’t Happen

So the 21st century is 10% done. People are making less fuss over this than I expected, and they’re still making a lot of fuss. A lot happened here in the United States. Who cares? Well, the people that a lot happened to, obviously. But you know what happened. It already happened. So I’m going to talk about what didn’t happen.

Al Gore didn’t get inaugurated. George W. Bush didn’t get impeached. We didn’t win any wars. We didn’t (officially) lose any wars. We didn’t end up with any more oil than we started with. Don’t Ask Don’t Tell wasn’t repealed. A lot of Californian gays and lesbians didn’t get married. McCain didn’t win. Obama wasn’t assassinated.

Put that way, the decade sounds a lot more mediocre.

2010 To Be Read Challenge

Most of these are things that have been recommended to me and/or that I’ve wanted to read for a long time, but that I’ve yet to get around to. So there’s a lot of classics on here, and I promise that’s not just me being pretentious.

1. Ringworld – Larry Niven (It’s possibly one of the most classic of all science fiction classics, and I own it. Why have I not read it yet? I don’t know.)
2. Flatland – A Square (Edwin Abbot Abbot) (It just sounds awesome.)
3. 1984 – George Orwell (A classic, and it sounds awesome.)
4. The Time Machine – H.G. Wells (Pretty much fathered all time travel fiction since.)
5. Dracula – Bram Stoker (I can’t go around hissing at Twilight-esque vampires if I don’t really know what a classic vampire is.)
6. Frankenstein – Mary Shelley  (A classic, and I just want to read it.)
7. The Picture of Dorian Grey – Oscar Wilde (His only novel.)
8. A Study in Scarlet – Arthur Conan Doyle (The first Sherlock Holmes novel.)
9. American Gods – Neil Gaiman (Recommended to me more than once.)
10. The Mysterious Affair at Styles – Agatha Christie (Her first published novel.)
11. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams (Is it very bad that I have not yet read this all the way through? Yes. Yes it is.)
12. Fool’s Experiments – Edward M. Lerner (Just sounds awesome.)

BONUS:
13. The Smokering – Larry Niven (I own it.)
14. The Da Vinci Code  – Dan Brown (Everyone either hates it or loves it, and I have a feeling I’ll like the concept but hate the execution, but I’ve got to actually read it before I can pass judgement.)

I’ll most likely review most of these as I read them. I can’t promise to review all of them, as sometimes nothing really jumps out at me, but some of them.

Talk to your doctor about Leviticus

Yesterday I was messing about in Photoshop and came up with these. It should be noted that they’re not entirely my idea – I was inspired by another site that had just the grey dot illusion and “If you can see the dots you might be gay”. If anyone sees that site let me know so I can give them credit for the initial idea. Furthermore, the Leviticus one isn’t intended to offend Christians – only the bigoted ones.

Click the images above to embigen.

Feel free to post these wherever or print them out and leave them places. No need to credit me. I’d be overjoyed if they went viral.

RIP Lateisha Green

Dwight DeLee of Syracuse, NY fired a gun into a car where transgendered 22-year-old Lateisha Green was sitting with her brother and a friend, killing Lateisha. He was convicted of manslaughter in the first degree as a hate crime last Tuesday, for the maximum prison sentence of 25 years.
Essentially this means that DeLee did not intend to kill Green, but did intend to seriously injure her because of her gender identity.

While this recognition of Lateisha’s shooting as a hate crime is progress, compared to so many similar crimes that go unrecognized (such as the murder of Simmie Williams, which was never investigated as a hate crime, or that of August Provost, whose killer was charged but not with a hate crime), the verdict of manslaughter strikes me as odd.

The legal defenition of manslaughter states,

MANSLAUGHTER – The unlawful killing of a human being without malice or premeditation, either express or implied; distinguished from murder, which requires malicious intent.

The distinctions between manslaughter and murder, consists in the following: In the former, though the act which occasions the death be unlawful, or likely to be attended with bodily mischief, yet the malice, either express or implied, which is the very essence of murder, is presumed to be wanting in manslaughter.

It also differs from murder in this, that there can be no accessaries before the fact, there having been no time for premeditation. Manslaughter is voluntary, when it happens upon a sudden heat; or involuntary, when it takes place in the commission of some unlawful act.

How can a court rule that Green’s killing was a hate crime – and yet at the same time that it was manslaughter and therefore, by defenition, not commited with malicious intent? Hate is synonymous with malice.

Furthermore, how is firing a gun into a car not a premeditated act, and especially when it is also considered a hate crime? A hate crime is one that is motivated by a bias against another person’s race, religion, national origin, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, or physical or mental disability.

Someone please explain to me how something can have motivation behind it, but not be premeditated, and have hate behind it, but not be malicious.

HBP review!

I saw Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince at midnight on the 15th, and I have only now recovered enough to type up something vaguely coherent.

It wasn’t nearly as true to the books as Order of the Phoenix. There were honestly precious few scenes that were fully recognizable as their ink-and-paper equivalents.

The entire end battle was replaced with Bellatrix breaking a few windows and cackling. I can actually see why they might have done this: there’s an almost identical but much larger and more plot-heavy battle at the end of Deathly Hallows, and having two such battles would be a tad redundant. I think they purposely focused on less action in this movie as there will be so much in the next two.

My main problem with cutting out that battle, though, is that they actually put in major scenes that were not in the book, most notably one where Bellatrix and Fenrir set the Weasley’s house on fire.

They also left out three of the memories of Voldemort that Dumbledore shows Harry in the book: the one with Hephzibah Smith (which shows the locket and cup), the one with the Gaunts (which shows the ring), and the one where Voldemort comes asking for work as the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher (which explains the curse on that particular job, and indicates that Voldemort wanted to make or hide a Horcrux at Hogwarts). These scenes are crucial as they tell us exactly what the Horcuxes are, leading to a scene where Harry paces chanting “the cup, the locket, the snake, something of Gryffindor or Ravenclaw’s”. They had best have Harry figure that out first thing next movie, or the next two will be very confusing.

On the other hand, though, visually HBP was absolutely breathtakingly gorgeous. I’m guessing this is due to the work of a new cinematographer, Bruno Delbonnel, who also shot Across The Universe (another visual feast in my opinion). The two-hundred million dollar budget may have had something to do with it as well.

It was also hilarious. Many of the most humorous parts of the book were fit in, and if anything made even funnier. The dramas with Romilda Vane and Lavender Brown were perfect, which made up for the Ginny/Harry romance being horribly lacking.

As Slughorn is one of my favorite characters I was a little nervous, but Jim Broadbent played him perfectly. Michael Gambon has perhaps finally won me over as Dumbledore, although I’m still having trouble letting go of Richard Harris. Helena Bonham Carter made even breaking windows seem fabulously Bellatrix-ish, although that was no surprise. Daniel Radcliffe might be able to act after all, although I still have my doubts.

All in all: it could have been better, but it was pretty freaking awesome anyway.

HBP movie predictions

So the film of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince comes out in three days. Hence, I’m throwing in my hat full of pessimism. This is a selection of all the things which I anticipate the movie will screw up/leave out/minimize.

• Harry and Draco’s hair will look immaculate. Harry’s will be flat and unrumpled and Draco will have a floating halo of shining golden beauty rather than canonical helmet-hair. Ron’s hair, however, will be stupid-looking, as it should be.
• Bill and Fleur will get no screentime and probably not be mentioned.
• They’ll leave out Aragog’s funeral and instead have Harry take the Felix Felicis, run into Slughorn, and go directly to the memory do not pass go do not collect 200 drunken anecdotes. Or, maybe they’ll go all out and leave out the Felix Felicis entirely, instead having Harry collect the memory using only his own wit and skill (yeah, right).
• They’ll have to cut out much of Harry’s Draco-stalking habits, minimizing it to maybe one or two scenes where Harry paces in front of the Room of Requirement and one where he argues with Hermione and Ron about Draco’s dark mark or lack thereof.
• As far as Harry’s evidence for said dark mark goes, I wouldn’t be surprised if they cut out the scene where Draco goes to Borgin and Burkes, but I think they’ll leave in the scene on the train because it’s suspenseful and Harry’s nose gets broken. Tonks will probably be left out of that scene and Harry will have to get away using his own devices. In this case, either Draco will not perform a full-body bind or – perhaps more likely – Harry will somehow escape it.
• More time will be devoted to Romilda Vane‘s antics than in the book.
• Kreacher will be left out, Dobby will probably be left out.
• More time will be devoted to the Slug Club than in the book.
• The scene with the cursed necklace will not be left out, but it will be minimized, or possibly Katie Bell will be replaced with someone Harry knows better – though probably not Ginny, Ron or Hermione.
• Harry and Ginny will have more than one on-screen kiss. Probably at least three, counting the one in the book. Or maybe they’ll keep trying to kiss, but get interrupted in many hilarious ways, or something painfully overdone like that.
• The Sectumsempra scene will be fabricated so it seems even less like Harry can be held responsible for his actions.
• When Harry and Dumbledore are returning to Hogwarts after Dumbledore drinks the poison, they will not have to ask Rosmerta for brooms but instead somehow have them already. It’s a possibility that Dumbledore will not ask for Severus’ assistance.
• There’s a possibility the note in the locket will be unsigned or left out entirely but Harry will figure out the locket isn’t a Horcrux in some other way, to save time explaining RAB in the next two movies. On the flipside, though, maybe they’ll exaggerate the already high significance of the locket and end on a shot of the note or something.
• The hospital scene and worry over whether Hogwarts will reopen will probably be left out.

…And here are some of my hopes:

• Harry and Ginny’s kiss will actually last for several sunlit days, and by the time it ends they will be sunburned and emaciated.
• Harry will actually have a monster inside him, and it will be graphically depicted.
• Ron will actually have a tattoo of a pygmy puff.
• Ron will proudly wear the ‘My Sweetheart’ necklace, and Hermione will beat him up for it.
• Ron will be covered in canary beak-marks for days.

If any of those things happen, we’ll ask you about them on Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me you can expect me to be gloating about them for days.

15 Obscure, Archaic and Uncommon Words that Everyone Should Use

The English language has a whole host of words that, to be honest, are simply useless, and we would be better off if they were to die out entirely. But what about those few real gems? Words that fill a gap, and are so useful that they would be overused if anyone would use them. Here are 15 of my favorites.

• Gardyloo: (interj.) a cry formerly used in Scotland to warn pedestrians when slops were about to be thrown from an upstairs window. [Anglicized form of F gare (de) l'eau beware of the water]

• Avunculize: (v) to act as an uncle; to behave like an uncle

• Prorogue: (v) to hold back to a later time; to act later than planned, scheduled, or required

• Mortmain: (n) the oppressive influence of past events or decisions

• Growlery: (n) a retreat for times of ill humour

• Accubitus: (n) the act of laying with someone without having sex [also, Latin: the act of reclining at table]

• Harridan: (n) someone (especially a woman) who annoys people by constantly finding fault

• Illeism: (n) reference to oneself by use of the third person

• Callipygian: (adj.) pertaining to or having finely developed buttocks

• Apophasis: (n) mentioning something by saying it will not be mentioned

• Tmesis: (n) Separation of the parts of a compound word by one or more intervening words

• Palimpsest: (n) a manuscript on which more than one text has been written with the earlier writing incompletely erased and still visible

• Catmalison: (n) a cupboard in or near the ceiling (therefore assumed to be a “curse for cats” because it’s hard for them to get into, whence the etymology)

• Perendinate: (v) to put off until the day after tomorrow

• Egrote: (v) to feign an illness

Attempting to perendinate throwing out the slops so that she could read her palimpsest, Sorcha retreated to her growlery up in the catmalison, where she egroted. Unfortunately, a callipygian harridan soon appeared and Sorcha writhed under painful mortmain, regretting proroguing her shouting of ‘gardyloo!’