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[personal profile] jack
Bridget Jones I saw all of the movie, and liked it a lot. I take back disparaging comments -- though I still think the book is laugh out loud funny like few other things and should be read. Before I only saw the second half, and didn't get a lot of the changes. A fistfight? Really?

A friend was asking if it wasn't non-feminist. I'm not sure any more. She is rather hopeless. But then I identify with her as me, as anyone, though some of her hopelessness is expressed in relationships in a different way to I do, perhaps due to gender[1]. And she is hopeless the way half the population is, but is reasonably successful. And she does do some pro-active things, if less so in the field of relationships. Though she certainly tries.

Timecop I was all prepared to yell at the time travel. IIRC it wasn't especially worse than many, though I was puzzled by some what determines who isn't changed by a timeline change issues as normal. In fact, I lost it in the first minute, before time travel was even mentioned. What was special about the gold? They carbon dated it and it came from 17xx.

Is it just me, or is that odd? Firstly, gold doesn't normally have much carbon in, especially organic carbon, does it? OK, suppose they measure the decay of an isotope of gold. Why would it change when the gold is, um, stamped into bullion? OK, suppose the radiation is slightly greater on the surface than in the mine, and they can measure that change. What isotope are they looking at? The second-most-stable has a half-life of six months. Doh. I give up.

It did teach me what metastable isotopes are. That was interesting.

Stargate Daniel Jackson/Claudia Black OTP Squee!

Deal or no deal For anyone else lucky enough not to follow TV, the idea is you have 20 shuffled boxes with amounts in from 1¢ to £0.25M. You choose a few, discard them, then accept an offer related to the average of the amounts remaining, or continue -- if there's one box left, you get what's in it. It is *really annoying*

[1] I know that should be sex. But at least gender is non-ambiguous, as one amusing conversation underlined.

Date: 2006-01-09 06:36 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] miss-next.livejournal.com
Bridget Jones - read and enjoyed the book; saw the film, and thought it was OK and had some nice touches, but it isn't one I'm particularly keen to see again. My sister, on the other hand, squees wildly about it and has seen it at least four times, but then a) she is less immune to the charms of Colin Firth than I am, and b) she doesn't have to share an office with someone who is pure Bridget.

Sadly, I'm starting to think it is unlikely that I'm going to make your party, but I shall know for sure by tomorrow night. I'm still hoping I can.

Date: 2006-01-09 07:12 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com
Yeah. Then again, as stated, I'm *rather* bridget, but hope I don't do annoying in the same way.

Colin Firth did well, but never seemed especially squeeful in it.

OK, *hugs* You're welcome if you come. (Though crash-space has rapidly become non-existant...)

Date: 2006-01-09 08:02 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] miss-next.livejournal.com
I don't think you're Bridget in any way that could possibly annoy. For a start, your brain is in constant use. :-)

*hugs back*

Date: 2006-01-10 01:57 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com
But Bridget wasn't *stupid* I didn't think, just a bit out of touch when it came to some practical matters. Which could describe me.

Date: 2006-01-09 06:45 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fluffle.livejournal.com
deal or no deal. where on earth are you watching that?

yeah, it's a silly show. definitely.

Date: 2006-01-09 07:10 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com
I'd *heard* of it on a message board with people discussing the stretegy. I watched part of an ep at Grandfather's because it came on and no-one bothered to turn it off, just reading and assuming someone else was curious enough to watch.

Date: 2006-01-09 06:46 pm (UTC)
ext_8103: (Default)
From: [identity profile] ewx.livejournal.com

Timecop. Surely you don't need to look at only isotopes of gold, but anything else that might be produced by bombarding gold atoms with whatever radiation will penetrate the atmosphere (knock a proton out and you're looking at Platinum instead).



Still, the best I can say on that one is that if someone told me this was actually plausible I wouldn't know enough to be able to argue with them.



Deal or no deal. Do you get to know how it's related and is it a sane relationship?


Date: 2006-01-09 07:08 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com
Timecop: Yeah, good point. Doh. It doesn't feel likely to me, but I couldn't say for sure.

Of course, this would tell you "dug out of the ground n years ago, or maybe nuked m years ago", which wouldn't become 17xx, but 19xx. I can't remember the exact wording, but maybe they found gold stamped "186x Confederate States of America", and yet Pt dating said was only xx years old, which would mean it had time traveled. But they didn't make a big deal of the stamp, which surely would have been fairly surprising, how much of that is still around?

Deal: You're not told on the air, they pretend a mythical banker is making value judgements. But the internet's wisdom suggests it's some sort of expectation function.

Date: 2006-01-09 10:14 pm (UTC)
ext_8103: (Default)
From: [identity profile] ewx.livejournal.com

I'd have thought buying a gold ingot in the present day and recasting it to refer to the CSA would be much cheaper than time travel, and if this was done xx years before they found it then that'd be indistinguishable (assuming that time travel itself didn't bathe its subjects in some kind radiation).



It occurs to me that melting and re-casting gold might burn off flammable, or low-boiling-point, impurities introduced by radioactive decay (or bombardment). So you might be able to tell when it was last melted.


Date: 2006-01-10 02:03 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com
I'd have thought buying a gold ingot in the present day and recasting it to refer to the CSA would be much cheaper than time travel,

Hard to say -- if you have time travel anyway, it's generally pretty unknown how much energy it takes to transport mass m. In only one story I recall did it take mc2.

The context was they'd found this gold, and deduced it was from the confederacy -- there was no suggestion someone particularly wanted it to seem so, so afaict there'd be no reason to cast it that way deliberately. Though I can't remember who knew about time travel at that point.

It occurs to me that melting and re-casting gold might burn off flammable, or low-boiling-point, impurities introduced by radioactive decay (or bombardment). So you might be able to tell when it was last melted.

Hmmm. Cunning.

Date: 2006-01-10 10:40 pm (UTC)
ext_8103: (Default)
From: [identity profile] ewx.livejournal.com

[livejournal.com profile] naath is wise and says the ratio-gold dating is implausible.



Better still, she points out that the unstable isotopes of gold do not appear in nature (look for "syn" in the table). Or rather, even if they ever did, after a billion years in the ground there's 2-2,000,000,000 as much left as you started with even assuming the 186d half-life, i.e. none to speak of.


Date: 2006-01-11 01:31 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com
naath is wise and says the ratio-gold dating is implausible.

LOL. And yes, that was my first, and second, and *looks up* fifth thoughts. But *switches sides seamlessly* theory of relativity is implausible, but happens :)

Better still, she points out that the unstable isotopes of gold do not appear in nature (look for "syn" in the table).

Doh. Why didn't I go straight to wikipedia. But yes, I infered they weren't likely to be about. But weren't you saying that you might turn gold into something else, or a short sequence of something elses, with cosmic rays? I still don't think this is likely, but hasn't been ruled out except by her naathness's concurrence in the implausibility.

cosmic rays

Date: 2006-01-11 10:19 am (UTC)
ext_8103: (Default)
From: [identity profile] ewx.livejournal.com
Oh, er, yeah. But are they enough to make a big enough effect to be usefuly measurable? We may joke about cosmic rays flipping bits in RAM but I've only ever certainly seen one wrong bit in RAM in my lifetime (in a UNIX system's cached copy of /bin/cat, annoyingly enough).

Re: cosmic rays

Date: 2006-01-11 03:25 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com
Well, no, I felt strongly that they didn't, but I don't know for sure. I really should go and look it up now, bah.

Date: 2006-01-09 08:55 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] feanelwa.livejournal.com
I think Bridget is very feminist. It shows the inner strength of women at the same time as demonstrating how utterly pathetic people appear when they obsess about beauty standards.

Also, it has that scene where "fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck" appears in the subtitles, which made me nearly wet myself laughing.

Date: 2006-01-10 02:00 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com
Hmmm. Maybe. I guess it depends to what extent you empathise with her -- is she feminist? Or an example of what not to be? Or both?

Also, it has that scene where "fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck" appears in the subtitles, which made me nearly wet myself laughing.

Oh yes, the film had some very nice tricks. I'm always on the lookout for interesting subtitles now.

Date: 2006-01-10 03:29 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] naath.livejournal.com
I know that should be sex

I think it should be gender. Such idiotic responses are not based on what internal organs one has but what social conditioning one has received. B.J's gender is set due 'idiot woman' and it causes her problems.

I don't mind BJD I think that it shows the Bad Things in a negative light and her strenghts in a positive one. I mind that all women in 'popular' TV have those same negative traits imposed upon them and that this 'ideal woman' is put forward as something to aspire to.

Date: 2006-01-10 03:35 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com
The trouble is, many pedants seem to insist that unless you're an anthropologist 'gender' refers to grammatical gender only. I agree the operative concept here is social gender[1], which I would be happy to call gender if I knew it didn't lead to an argument.

I don't mind BJD I think that it shows the Bad Things in a negative light and her strenghts in a positive one.

Well said, I'd be ok with that.

[1] Well, mostly. I wouldn't be surprised if women-averagely-want-marriage-more is part genetic -- that would certainly make sense -- and BJ[2]'s and Daniel's interaction for instance is partly based on that.

[2] Lovely acronym, isn't it?

Date: 2006-01-10 03:44 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] naath.livejournal.com
Gender==social construct about what it means to be a man/woman
Sex==what genitals you have

Also complicated by people who believe themselves to be female but like to express masculine traits...
A debate best ignored for the most part.

(and by people who won't agree on what words mean)

Persons with female genes *might* be more likely to want a long-term thing than a short-term thing vis having/raising babies.
But current female methods of *getting* long-term things appear to suck.

Date: 2006-01-10 03:47 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com
But current female methods of *getting* long-term things appear to suck.

Oo-er!