So am I a Syfy fan now?

The UK Sci-fI channel has followed its US companion and re-branded to SyFy. This is despite most people thinking the re-branding was stupid and pointless. Presumably it is in aid of something like "Brand Cohesion" or "Reflexive corporate image synergy" or some other meaningless marketing rubbish, probably dreamed up by the same person who said "Why are we just selling to geeks, if we call it the Syfy channel instead of Sci-Fi we'll remove that stigma that has stopped people watching it for ages. It even has a tagline "Imagine greater" and why when I am World dictator marketing people will have a hard time of things. I can't believe anyone looks at Syfy and thinks "hmm" then sees "Imagine greater" and says "I'm sold"

No, marketing dude, that was probably the period, which Sc-Fi is only just coming out of, where the channel seemed to be trying to show as little Sci-Fi as possible.

I remember the old days of the sci-fi channel, it was unashamedly geeky, Bionic Wednesdays, where a whole afternoon was filled with repeats of the Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman, MST3K, Quantum Leap. Sure, it lacked anything you hadn't seen before, even its films were usually old, and not the blockbusters either. But damn it I watched it, because sometimes I want to see old SF series. The channel evolved a little in the early 2000's, taking a slightly "Weird" approach it almost looked like the guy who is an enormous geek but tries to claim he's more "Alternative" Still, it hadn't lost too much of its geeky content, and even netted some of the better leftovers from Sky and BBC clearing the US Schedules. Without Sci-Fi then I wouldn't have seen Now and Again. They also introduced themed slots, like saturday morning carrying a couple of hours about Anime, with reports on japanese culture and usually a couple of Anime series (To my memory it was the excellent Neon Genesis Evangelion and the odd but fun Martian Successor Nadesco) along with themed horror nights on friday nights. These two periods represent in my opinion some of the best programming on the sci-fi channel.

It went a bit downhill from there, the channel seemed ashamed to keep showing its old repeats and similarly didn't buy anything particularly expensive, what resulted was a mass of duff "Direct to DVD" movies, usually involving Dean Cain fighting some giant reptile. It got worse, as they expanded (And I firmly believe the SyFy name change was part of this) into showing documentaries on dangerous wildlife and extreme weather. Now you may show Killer Shark vs Giant octopus IV, and I'd even allow some sort of super storm/volcano/asteroid drama as a kind of "What if Disaster movie" but the documentaries were pushing it. Similarly sometimes they'd show duff action films, no objection in principle but let bravo sho the non SF ones. I refuse to believe there is a shortage of duff SF themed action films.

Recently things have been improving. Sci-Fi got some fairly high profile series like Knight Rider, Warehouse 13, Sanctuary and Dollhouse. In fact the name changing away from Sci-Fi has preceded an increase in actual Sci-Fi on the channel, as if the marketing bod was distracted by his re-branding excercise and the geeks got to pick the programming.

My advice, Capitalise on this success, try and get some more original series, but remember, you need schedule padding, people will watch repeats of Quantum Leap and I know will definitely jump at anime series and MST3K if you can get those. New programming isn't the be all and end all. I have no objection to the crappy B Movies, I watched Warbirds (WWII female pilots and US soldiers vs dragons) and it was poor, but enjoyably so. Things like this need a home and Sci-Fi or even Syfy could be a place for them. Avoid turning into Bravo 3 and there could be a future in the old nerd yet.

Compromise Politics

Well, the official election campaign is finally underway, as opposed to the unofficial one that we've had for the past year or so. Hopefully in 6 weeks time we'll have a little more policy and a little less posturing and soundbites.

Ha! Forgive my cynicism. At the moment we're looking at (According to polls) a potential hung parliament or a Tory Government with a small majority. This should be exciting, it should mean that politics will move away from the big majority, ram legislation through regardless mentality that has plagued our politics for more than 30 years. Sadly I fear this won't happen.

I suppose it all started with Thatcher, as most things inevitably do. Although brighter sparks than myself may be able to trace this back further. Thatcher took out the "Wets" those who didn't subscribe entirely to her ideals. It meant that her party would stand united behind any legislation, and with the majority get anything through parliament. This basic idea of working politics has prevailed since that time. Combined with the rise of the "Career Politician" this has made politic more like a debating society, where debates are won or lost rather than an agreement reached where legislation is honed and perfected through the means of open discussion.

Its a myth that is seemingly widespread that compromise is bad, a myth not helped by the media describing the smallest change of tack or compromise as a U-Turn, defeat or flip-flopping. Politicians should be free to say "I'd not seen it that way before, my mind has been changed by facts and good arguments" instead government and opposition alike are trapped in a bizarre Colonel Cathcart like existence where they weigh up "Feathers in Caps" and "Black Eyes" and hope the former outweighs the latter. Since the major players appear to care more about looking good than passing decent legislation it generates an MP that values the approval of party over the approval of constituents, particularly those in the 60% off Safe or Ultra safe seats. You'd have to be pretty confidant in your MP skills not to be de-selected for one of those, clearly most aren't. Barak Obama said recently that perhaps it should be a politicians job to make good policy rather than seek re-election. Judging by the behaviour of MPs Re-election is their goal.

This has a bad knock on effect on politics. Since avoiding "Black Eyes" is prioritized above good policy parties will go towards making the opposition (or government) look bad rather than contributing positive changes to policy.

This is very apparent in Scotland, where the SNP chose to form a Minority government, this initially had me interested, in a minority they would have to use argument, persuasion and compromise to get things done. This should have been very interesting indeed. Sadly Labour and The Lib-Dems aren't playing. Labour through badness and the Lib-Dems seemingly through a childish fit of pique after being snubbed to form a coalition as they expected. To this end they have adopted a stance of obstructing and blocking as much SNP policy as possible, seemingly with the singular view of saying at the next election "What have they done eh? Nothing"

Look at that closely, two major parties have actively decided to say "No" pretty much all the time, stalling and slowing any policy change in the hope of using it to gain power next time, that's 4 years of childish huff.

This is my fear with a hung parliament, rather than shake up the "big Majority" style of politics instead we'll see the big 3 vie for position until one thinks they have enough leverage to call another election and get the big majority they all crave.

Science and Politics

This post has been running around in my head for a while. Doubt that will improve on its clarity, consistency or how well argued it is.

I’ve been reading the book Bogus Science by John Grant. In its introduction it covers an interesting case of politics vs. science. Post-war America, and there is a shortage of lead. This leads to a search for additives that could expand the life of lead acid batteries. There were many of these on the market and so the National bureau of Standards conducted testing. All the additives failed to improve the performance of batteries and most faded away, all except one, called AD-X2, the difference was not that AD-X2 actually worked, it was every bit as useless as its competitors, but the man in charge was good at lobbying politicians. The case for whether AD-X2 worked spanned administrations, cost hundreds of thousands of tax dollars and demanded re-tests and resignations. All because politicians thought for some reason that persuasive debate could alter the results of an empirical scientific test.

Oddly enough, although with somewhat less open and shut tests, this continues in present day UK.

The first is the recent Parliamentary Sci Tech Committee Evidence Check on Homeopathy. This was purely a committee established to check for evidence on the effectiveness of Homeopathy. Unsurprisingly for anyone with a smidgen of knowledge on the subject the evidence check revealed Homeopathy to be no better than a placebo and advised on removing NHS funding. This has been blogged by better men than me including Ben Goldacre, The Quackometer and David Colquhoun.

The Society of Homeopaths reacted badly, badly in the way that every world religion might if a parliamentary evidence check deemed the existence of God unlikely, or indeed badly as if someone had just seriously threatened a major stream of revenue. (Of course not, that would be cynical) They threw around accusations and smears about those involved and, well I’d advise you to read the blogs above for more on this.

Anyway, one of the things they managed was to convince an MP to put forward an Early Day motion expressing concerns. The MP, David Tredinnik, who claimed for astrology software on expenses and wanted to use distance healing as health policy. Obviously a sharp scientific mind. Now this doesn’t really matter, EDMs aren’t debated and rarely amount to anything, however it has attracted the signatures of over 60MPs. What this demonstrates is that regardless of evidence, and this was a check on evidence, not opinion or anecdote, it takes very little to get an MP to sign an EDM, yes that’s how desperate for votes they are. Worse was probably the Lib Dems, who had quiet a few signatories, and who came out with the final fallback for the person who knows deep down they’re not going to win on evidence “More Evidence is needed” Oh yes, the Oil Company favourite “More research is needed” is one of the most obvious stalling tactics, and would suit the SoH and its ilk fine. Apparently 200 years of research where the only trials showing Homeopathy better than a placebo are badly run small trials. Any well organised large trial shows no better than placebo, so are we back to AD-X2 with Homeopathy, keep testing until you get the result we want? Regardless what we do know is an MP will always take votes over evidence.

The second to come to mind is of course the humorously named Nut sack affair. For those who came in late, the government’s chief scientific advisor did a big round up on the evidence for harm caused by drugs. His report was based purely on scientific research but demonstrated that many currently illegal drugs such as cannabis and ecstasy were in fact safer than Alcohol. As this went against two very important things, the governments current drugs policy upgrading the classification on cannabis, and more importantly, disputing the mainstream media’s view that “Drugs are Bad, except for Alcohol and tobacco which have wealthy backing” the government decided not to follow the recommendations. Nutt was clearly tired of being ignored for what was basically political reasons and so revealed his findings publicly, for his trouble he was sacked and we had to put up with a cross party harrumph from MPs about how they were elected to lead and these scientists should bloody well keep their facts to themselves.

This demonstrated one of the unshakable truths of when science and government collide. No amount of evidence can beat a policy that will upset the views of the right wing press consensus and therefore middle England, (or as described by some ministers “We have to consider many other factors”). Sadly this is the major problem evidence based policy faces, from the mounting evidence that sending petty criminals to jail merely acts as a gateway for greater offences (And the lambasting that a Scottish Justice secretary got for suggesting not sending many minor offenders to jail is evidence of this) to drugs policy the evidence clearly shows that science can find out what it likes but should be prepared to be ignored if it doesn’t fit existing government policy.

Ms. Marvel

Well, the last issue shipped a few weeks ago, so I thought I’d go in for a bit of an overview of the noble project that was Ms Marvel.

While Ms Marvel has been a fairly long established character, even through her identities as Binary and Warbird, this has been her first solo series in quite some time. It span out of the “House of M” event where, in the universe created by the insane Scarlet witch, Carol Danvers had been Captain Marvel and considered one of the best Super Heroes. Remembering this other life she strives to be the best, this was pretty much a metaphor for the whole series, where the writers wanted to try and set Ms Marvel up as Marvel’s Wonder Woman. Just as getting up from the B&C lists was difficult for Ms marvel so did selling a female fronted book prove difficult to Marvel.

Its actually been said that any female fronted book is a hard sell, I kind of hoped we’d be past that now but apparently not. Even Stalwart titles from DC such as Wonder Woman and Birds of Prey struggle at times despite what is often critical acclaim and Ms Marvel too was loved by critics but seemingly not loved by the comic buying public.

Still, over the years we got some very good stuff, yes the hero with low self esteem is now an old concept but the real power in Ms Marvel was that actually, as a hero Ms Marvel was really good at her job, but still pretty unsure of herself regardless. There were many nice touches, her Mentor relationship with Arana, for example really worked for me, and indeed her Civil War issues were some of the few that presented the pro-reg side in a positive light (Which writers on the main mostly failed to do).

One of the standout stories for me was the Secret Invasion tie-in, which largely involved Ms Marvel fighting Skrulls, a lot. It was mainly about her grit and determination to survive (Again, analogous with the comic) but also full of action and some pathos.

Finally we have Dark Reign where for a few issues we have Moonstone in as Ms Marvel, closely followed by war of the marvels, both top reads.

End of the day sadly the will to continue failed and so Ms Marvel joins She-Hulk on the pile of good comics, no support. However for people who like Female fronted comics Marvel appear to be doing more anthologies, one shots and Limited series. I’ll be interested to see how that develops

Iron Man: World's Most Wanted/Tony Stark Disassembled

Wow, long title. I'd love to say that I decided to review these stories as one since one blends into the other making them one epic story. That is rubbish, it's because I fell too far behind and decided that Stark disassembled would be finished before I got a chance to blog on worlds most wanted and so I may as well bundle the two together.

Anyway, this has been an epic Iron Man story, and almost certainly the rehabilitation of Tony Stark from what people thought was irreparable damage during the Civil War Event. While they tail one into the other and are written and drawn by the same people (Matt Fraction on words and Salvador Larroca on pictures) the stories are really quite different.

A warning in advance, I'm not holding back on spoilers, so if you don't want to know the scores, look away now.

Worlds Most Wanted

The Secret Invasion is over, Norman Osbourne is in charge, SHIELD is no more and Tony Stark has been booted out. With his Extremis offline he can barely control his armour anyway. As a parting shot to Osbourne and more importantly to preserve the trust of those who registered, Stark deletes the entire Superhuman Registration database, leaving only one copy, the one written in his head. This leads to a relentless pursuit of Stark across the globe by Osbourne and his agents while Stark slowly erases his own mind to destroy the last copy of the database. Meanwhile Pepper Potts gets a suit of armour and a new identity as Rescue and Maria Hill goes on a harrowing mission to recover a mysterious hard drive for Stark.

This story was actually quite episodic, at least for Tony Stark, each issue usually focused on an encounter with friends or foes from his past as Tony battles across the world, having to use ever more obsolete suits as his ability to run them degrades. This includes Friends, like War Machine and Crimson Dynamo, and Enemies such as Namor and Madame Masque. When I say episodic you would probably be bloody confused if you jumped right in, particularly with the ongoing subplots featuring Maria Hill and Pepper Potts, but most of the encounters are self-contained. Fraction crafts a brilliant tale, capturing Stark's slow disintegration, Pepper's joy of being a super hero and Hill's near breakdown after an ordeal at the hands of the Controller. The final showdown with Stark in his Mk1 suit and Osbourne in the Iron Patriot has a brilliant twist, and indeed was the first time we saw someone hurt Osbourne through the media. At the end we have Stark left in a vegetative state, but A recorded message, and a gathering of old friends means this may not be the end.

Tony Stark Disassembled

The conclusion to this epic is a mere 5 parts, perhaps a little slow, it details how stark backed up his mind on the Hard drive Hill retrieved in Most wanted and, with Pepper's Repulsor generator, and a bolt of lightning courtesy of Thor, Stark may be restored.

This was slower, and perhaps a little long, it could have probably been done in 4 parts, but a very good ending for Worlds Most wanted. Nice to see everyone try to save Stark, and very good use of Ghost (Also an example of good crossovers again with how it linked in with Thunderbolts) and the surreal trip through Tony's subconscious was predictable but a nice touch. It was similar to the "Soul on Ice" backup story during Jim Rhodes' second Tenure as Iron Man (Run up to his first War Machine ongoing) which had a cryogenically frozen stark living his past and his influences. Only that was more recap, this was a wierd nightmare. Of course we get the twist at the end, turns out Stark isn't particularly good at keeping regular backups of his mind, and this copy is Pre Civil War, which has come of something as a shock to him (Although probably not as much as him sleeping with Pepper Potts and Maria Hill in teh same week will later)

Fraction must go down as one of the best Iron man writers for a good while, crafting two very different stories with ease. Larroca was faced with a fairly daunting challenge himself, to draw what amounted to an "Iron man through the ages" or basically a whole load of different armors. If I'm looking forward to one thing Post Siege, and I'm looking forward to a lot. But one over all others is Iron Man, which is testimony to this teams success.

Black Widow: Deadly Origin/And the Marvel Girls

Marvel recently hit us with not one but two Black widow minis, initially I thought this foolhardy, surely they should save this stuff for the release of Iron man 2which will feature Black Widow, however I now think I know the reasoning. There will probably be more black widow minis in the pipeline (or in fact a ongoing i believe) so it will be handy to have a couple of 4 part stories in Trade form for IM2's release.

Anyway, the two stories were pretty different, and arguably varied in quality. I'll start with the better one first.

Black Widow: Deadly Origin

Paul Cornell writes this adventure where Natalia investigates the death of her old mentor and combats the mysterious Icepick protocols which seem to be killing off all the men in her life.

This met with mixed reviews but i really liked it. For the most part its primary job was to clean up Black Widow's sometimes contradictory continuity. They do this with a rather nice retcon, first Natalia has taken a similar serum to the Infinity formulae that has allowed SHIELD agents Nick Fury and Dum-Dum Duggan to live on long past their WWII origins without looking like men in their 80s. This has also set her past right back into WWII and expands upon her initial meetings with the Winter Soldier. Due to her long life, plus many deep cover missions and brainwashing she is now as confused about her pasta s the average reader of her entry in the official handbook of the marvel universe. The comic itself tells of Black Widow's past using flashbacks and the neat technique of using different artists for the flashbacks to differentiate them form the main story. Overall I thought it was pretty good, entertaining and useful for setting up her character for a more involved future in the MU. Cornell writes her as a super-agent, using stealth and skill to best opponents in a far superior power class. A nice touch was also building on her reputation, when facing an Imperial Dynamo (Probably a match for Iron Man) the dynamo already knows he is beaten before the fight starts and tells widow how honoured he is to be beaten by the legendary black widow. Similarly Cornell writes her with a sense of humour, always good as other authors occasionally play up the "Hard Bitten agent" grimness too much.

Yes it was a cleaning up excercise, but a very readable one.

Second we have Black Widow and the Marvel girls, this was a series of standalone stories where Black Widow teams up with another woman of the Marvel Universe. I could seethe idea, accessible adventures which allow you to see widow's place within the MU. My problem was that the accessibility made it pretty insubstantial stuff, not always a bad thing but it just lead to forgettable stories in my opinion. Its lack of continuity focus was also a niggling point to me, but presumably not so much an issue to the new readers it seems to be aimed at. That may be its point, basically a sales pitch to new readers, Hey you liked black widow in Iron Man 2? How about these other females, any of them interest you? Inthe end that didn't do to much for me.

Overall I think Deadly Origin is the better of the two, and what I'd recommend to anyone who had been interested from teh movie, as it gives background on her comic counterpart, effectively its a pilot for the ongoing, and in teh end getting someone on an ongoing is a worthy goal.

Speed Cameras

I have, in the past on occasion drifted ever so slightly over the speed limit, never out of control or recklessly, but I have done it, so it may seem odd that I’m coming out in support of speed cameras, both normal and average.

There is always criticism of these things, “They’re a stealth tax” “they cause more accidents than they prevent” “speeding doesn’t cause as many accidents as bad driving” are just some of the arguments people use as to why an automatic system that fines lawbreakers is a bad idea. Let’s take a look at these arguments.

Bad Driving

Its true, careless driving does cause more accidents than speeding. However speed is a factor that can make the difference between a bump and a disaster, for every 10mph in speed there is an exponential rise in the severity of any accident. This is why I am more careful in particular to stick to the limit at the lower speeds, the 30 and 40 limits, because if the speed has been reduced it has been done for a reason. Yes, plodding through a 30 is dull, but as the ads say, its 30 for a reason, bad sighting, residential areas are just a few of the reasons why the speed can be reduced. When you look at survivability statistics and how they increase as speed reduces it is sobering reading.

Cause more accidents than they prevent.

This is a really tenuous one, for the fixed cameras, normally used outside schools, black spots etc the argument is that the sharp deceleration on approach causes accidents. Really? But there aren’t always at the start of a 30, usually a fair way in, if you’d been obeying the speed limit you’d have no need to sharply decelerate for a camera, and if you weren’t sitting so close to the car in front that you can see my speedometer you may have a chance of not rear ending it when it slows down. For average this argument was pitched by the ever so reasonable Jeremy Clarkson, that he would be so focused on his speedometer that he’s more likely to hit something because he won’t be watching the road. If that is your argument you are unsafe to drive. Yes, you should check your speedo, but not at the expense of watching the road, you might as well argue that you hit something because you were really worried about your fuel and were watching the gauge like a hawk.

Stealth Tax

Many people better than me have taken this on, for starters, I’ve never seen anything stealthy painted yellow, or have warning signs alerting you to its presence. And as a tax, how good is that, a tax which you can avoid by driving at the posted speed limit, in short a tax that only affects those breaking the law. If only we could automatically penalise other minor offences. Also that there were taxes to easy to avoid. Hey, I can avoid this “Stealth Tax” by driving at the posted speed limit, how easy is that.

There is a strange correlation I’ve noticed in those who complain about speed cameras also often are the ones who complain that sentencing is too lenient and that only with the threat of harsh punishments will people obey the law. This strangely doesn’t stretch to speeding however, where they seem to think that they should be able to choose the speed at which it is safe to drive, indeed you often see statements like “I know how fast I can safely drive, I’m not driving dangerously” which may be true (Although studies show people often overestimate their own abilities) but I’m sure that’s the same litany of many a person caught driving dangerously, and regardless of your own opinion of your driving, the law states that you obey the posted speed limit. I may as well try and claim that I know my car is safe to drive and have no need of an MOT, (Obviously a stealth tax and secret conspiracy by an all powerful cartel of motor mechanics, or a way to make sure every road vehicle complies with a basic state or road worthiness) In short you may not like the law, and I fully support anyone who campaigns for change based on evidence, but you don’t get to ignore it in the meantime.

I enjoy driving fast (Although I find more pleasure skilfully taking corners on a windy road at 30-40 than I do going for straight line velocity) and I’d love a shot at the Autobahn, indeed I’d love the autobahn to be evidence that we should have unlimited speed some of our motorways. However Germany is currently adding speed limits rather than removing them so the evidence doesn’t seem to support this as a safe course of action.