Torchwood: Miracle Day Comic Con News & Episode 3 Comments

Above is the Torchwood Panel at Comic Con. By Part 4 of the videos, John Borrowman is singing.

I previously posted the season preview for Torchwood: Miracle Day presented at the San Diego Comic Con here.

There are also many videos on line with interviews with the cast and crew. In the above video, Jane Espenson discussed Torchwood, along with writing other genre television shows.

Reportedly the series gets darker by Episode 5, and major events occur in Episode 7.

There are some mild spoilers regarding Episode 3 below.

The third episode of Torchwood: Miracle Day, Dead of Night, was the weakest of the season so far. Highlights include an homage to Doctor Who in the clip above. During a raid on PhiCorp, Jack remarks that it is “bigger on the inside than on the outside.”

The episode did build up the conspiracy more, but also was weakened by having two of the main characters wander off for a couple of gratuitous sex scenes. The scenes were cut from the version to be shown on the BBC this week. The scenes includes both homosexual sex between Jack and someone he picked up in a bar, interspersed with a heterosexual sex scene between Rex Matheson and Dr. Vera Juarez.  A video of the sequence is available here.

Quote of the Day

“Sarah Palin’s documentary, ‘The Undefeated,’ will be available on Pay-Per-View and On Demand by Sept. 1. The movie will be shown in English, with English subtitles.” –Jimmy Fallon

The Tea Party vs. The American Dream

The debate over the deficit and debt ceiling has been dominated by talk of spending cuts without consideration of what spending is really necessary to maintain the United States as a great nation. The right wing falsely equates freedom with cutting government spending. They believe that we could have our economic prosperity without most of the infrastructure and benefits which we obtain by pooling resources for the public good.

Despite false comparisons to the founding fathers by misappropriating terms such as the Tea Party, the vision of the right wing is to turn the United States into a banana republic which, while it might have a smaller government, would be dominated by a handful of large corporations and religious zealots. It would not resemble anything which most Americans would desire. Such a society would definitely not be more free in any sensible use of the word.

Thomas Friedman wrote on this topic today. While I question the value of some of his suggestions, he makes some important points. He ended by pointing out the toxic message from the Tea Party:

Anyone who says that either entitlement reform or tax increases are off the table does not have a plan for sustaining American greatness and passing on the American dream to the next generation.

Alas, that is the Tea Party. It is so lacking in any aspiration for American greatness, so dominated by the narrowest visions for our country and so ignorant of the fact that it was not tax cuts that made America great but our unique public-private partnerships across the generations. If sane Republicans do not stand up to this Hezbollah faction in their midst, the Tea Party will take the G.O.P. on a suicide mission.

Unfortunately the Tea Party risks not only taking the Republican Party on a suicide mission, but risks taking the entire country down with them.

Why Global Warming Denialism Should End Now

Greg Laden explains why global warming denialism should end now. A portion of his post:

This year, we have experience the most expensive year of weather disasters in our history. The total cost of disasters this year, and we are still only in July, is in the tens of billions of dollars, perhaps 32 billion. A typical year in recent times has been about 6 billion. The cost in human lives has also been high, with over 600 people killed from flooding, tornado outbreaks, and other storms.*It is hard to attribute specific damage or death to global warming, but guess what: It is also hard to attribute specific deaths to influenza during the influenza season, but we manage to count the effects of flu anyway. For the latter, certain categories of morbidity or mortality which are known to be linked to influenza are monitored all year, and we see an increase during flu season while at the same time a smaller sample of people are showing up with influenza demonstrated through blood tests. Similarly, with global warming effects, we can see a broad association between heat and storms, and we know where that heat is coming from. We know that because the science on this is pretty good.

2011 will almost certainly turn out to be the hottest year on record. 2010 and 2005 were previously tied for the hottest. June 2011 was the 315th consecutive month above the 20th century average. The last time we experience a month with global temperatures lower than the 20th century average was February. February 1985.* Five years before I wrote that article I mentioned.

The arctic sea is no longer covered with ice as it used to be. Now, the ice cycles are fundamentally different. The change that is happening there is difficult to track and a few more years needs to pass before we’ll fully understand it. But ice that has not melted in many many years has melted, and ice that normally forms no longer does.

The denialism should end, but it won’t. The facts never matter to right wing propagandists.

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Karen Gillan on Craig Ferguson

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3DlGjN-yuc&feature=player_embedded

Karen Gillan on Craig Ferguson last night. Craig and Karen talked about porn, and Craig showed Karen his TARDIS. The interview with Matt Smith will air on Friday.