I have a problem with Doctor Who

To be honest, I have always had a problem with the current incarnation of Doctor Who, which can be summed up in one word: KISSING. This is a problem that most people seem to understand, however, so that is not what I am talking about today.

Lately, the show has become like that one friend who is excitable and enthusiastic and has very interesting opinions... about one subject. And only one subject. And that subject is how awesome the Doctor is won't you look at him go isn't his face squishable ooooo there's a mystery about him don't you want to know about his mystery is it's not that all the girls love him that's not a mystery they just want to squish his face all day you want to squish his face too and by the way he's saved the universe like seven times if he died like the whole universe would die with him even though it was doing perfectly fine before he got here with his squishable face etc etc etc. Remember when the finales were about the Daleks or Cybermen destroying a planet for their own reasons, as opposed to kidnapping the Doctor because he's the Doctor? Those were the good old days. (Props to this article for pointing this out).

And speaking of people who talk too much (yes that is how the last paragraph started), the amount of lengthy speeches that tell you the central idea or moral of the story are getting thoroughly out of hand. If I remember correctly, there was an average of one of these per episode back in the halcyon days of 2005, and now they happen once every five minutes. I think I know what they're trying to do; they're trying to make their episodes more quotable, but the most quotable line of all?

Nobody important? Blimey, that's amazing. Do you know in nine hundred years of time and space I've never met anyone who wasn't important before.

This is not part of a big speech at all, and brings me to another problem. All these new companions? They have titles, like "The Girl Who Waited", "The Last Centurion", "The Impossible Girl". Rose Tyler never had a title. Martha Jones, Donna Noble, even Captain Jack Harkness who is functionally immortal and has his own spinoff, do not have titles. (While we're at it, if the Doctor is going to run into the same person throughout history why can't it be Captain Jack? You could even marry them off and tell everyone how progressive you are). Rose, Martha and Donna (and while we're at it Sarah Jane) were ordinary people, and they were still important. Because that's the point. Everyone is important. Anyone could get picked up to go on a magical adventure through time and space and save the universe from the Daleks or accidentally get captured by Silurians. You don't have to be spread through the vortex like so much time jam, or the mother of the Doctor's wife, or able to stare at a box for 2000 years, because let's face it most of us have one timeline and an attention span of 5 nanoseconds (which is why we get captured by Silurians).

Now I have chewed your ear off about my problems in general, let's talk about the most recent episode. This is where we need a massive
SPOILER WARNING
Right, first off the whole "look at this mystery it is so mysterious" was grating when you did it with the cracks, and it hasn't improved. I don't need Clara to go "Trenzalore? What's that?" and then watch everyone be very tight-lipped. I can just go "oh, Trenzalore, I wonder what that is" and then when she asks about it later I will be even more impressed because you haven't been telling me how big a secret it is. The same goes for the Doctor's name, but this time I don't care what it is, I care why he's hiding it. All you need to do to intrigue me about that is have someone ask "so what is your real name, anyway?" and the subject to get swiftly changed, with maybe a shot of the asker looking annoyed that he's dodged the question, but no shots of the Doctor looking really sad. Then, after doing this a few more times, you introduce a villain who has found where the Doctor is by using his real name, and it turns out he just wasn't using it because it's really embarrassing, and oh yeah by the way the Master can use the matrix to find me if he learns my real name, but the real point is it translates to "gardening enthusiast" and who wants that following you around for life?

However, just because you have big mysteries doesn't mean you can't be painfully obvious. We all knew she was going to jump into the scar, and also that that might kill her, so she might as well have jumped in right away. If she had looked at the Doctor, said "well I'll get to live a thousand lives this way, that's pretty exciting", and then jumped in, you could have had five more minutes of airtime for a tense chase sequence. Monsters that seem like they've come out of a horror film need more time to patiently stalk the heroes and then swarm in and surround them, until it looks like all hope is lost before the Doctor falls through a trapdoor, or says "Go to your room!" and we get a little bit of time to feel relief before SURPRISE THEY'RE BACK. Instead, they stand around for 30 seconds while exposition happens and then grab people's hearts. They also seem to think they're in a Doctor Seuss book, which I guess is meant to evoke the creepy child image, but just ends up making me wonder why they have this strange compulsion to speak in rhyme (and probably iambic tetrameter but I haven't verified that). Are they controlled by a computer that has very specific language settings? Now that's something I actually care about knowing

I also do actually want to know more about John Hurt's Doctor and the Time War in general. While I am aware it was left up to the imagination for a reason, actually exploring why he had to destroy his own race could potentially be fascinating, especially if there was another option that he didn't see or didn't take. It would also be properly dark. You see, properly dark comes not from seeing horrible things happen, not even horrible things happening to good people, but from seeing the good people turn into monsters. This is why I love Children of Earth, despite the start being completely ropey. Jack does what you've been shouting at heroes to do all along, letting the one die to save the million, and it is horrifying because everything in your bones is telling you not to kill the child, but you know it is necessary and there is no way to reconcile that. Yes, the Doctor does kill, but he does not kill people. He kills machine made of hatred that want you dead so it's alright, it's for the good of the universe. But in the Time War he killed (or trapped outside of space forever) people, people who meant well and were trying to protect the universe because it doesn't know what's best for it, and never really meant to do any harm. That's the kind of thing that scares adults. You'd have to do about five episodes with the equivalent of tribbles afterwards, just to let people recover, but you'd also win my everlasting respect for daring to do it.

And on that lovely note, it is time to
Come out of your caves and remove your earmuffs; the spoilers have returned to their home planet (for now)

Because the last thing I want to leave you with is either grumpiness or too much insight into my grimdark mind, I will say that Jenny, Vastra and Strax are beautiful characters and deserve their own spin-off. If someone who is not Moffat reads the Parasol Protectorate series and then basically films that, but with more lizard and less nudity, the world would be a better place and I may stop being grumpy long enough to appreciate the main series. I can almost guarantee that it won't be another K-9 and Company, if only because it is no longer the 80s.

How to do well in exams

As you may or may not know, I am magic at exams. I can't keep my room tidy or stay focussed for more than thirty seconds (I literally spaced out twice while writing these first two sentences), but I regularly get 80 and above in exams that by all rights I should have failed. Like, that exam that I started properly revising for two hours beforehand*. So since I have this power, I feel I should use it for good, and share the secrets of passing exams, or at least maths exams, with the very small bit of the internet that knows I exist.

Preparation

1 Year Before
Go to all your lectures/classes/seminars. Seriously, if you're like most people and learn better by watching you are saving so much time just by turning up. If I had turned up to first year I would have to do so much less cramming now. Also take meticulous notes. You won't use them, but for some arcane reason it helps. Oh, and do at least some of the questions, even if it's just the assignment ones.

1 Month Before
Start thinking about revising. Remember that you are not revising and the exams are a month away. Panic. Forget about exams and go back to watching Battlestar. (Alternatively, actually revise and get full marks without giving yourself an ulcer).

1 Week Before
CRAM LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT. Yes, for long-term learning it does nothing, but for exams it is pretty much the only way to get everything in there. This is the bit where your brain will be bursting at the seams and you will get overstimulated almost constantly. You may also start to fear your question sheets and past papers. This is a good point to remember that the exercise sheets are meant to stretch and the exam will be much easier.

2 Hours Before
This is not the time to kick your caffeine habit. Coffee yourself up (but not too much, or you'll have to use the loo in the middle of the exam and use valuable time).

And now for the part that's relevant to competent people too

In the Exam
As you can see, my preparation's not up to much. So how do I actually pass? Well there's a step-by-step process to answering questions that will basically get you through any maths exam you ever take:

1. Write down the important bits from the question. You know the advice they gave you in secondary school to underline the key words? Well, this is the same, but it actually works because you have to focus on what you're writing, whereas you can underline any old thing.
2. Write down everything you know. The definitions, all the axioms, whatever. Somewhere in there is the clue to the question.
3. If you can remember half of something, write that down and fill in the blanks. If your exam is full of arrows leading to bits where you've realised that another step goes in there, the examiner will still follow all of them. This is not a time for perfectionism.
4. If all else fails, make up something that gets the right answer. It might just be right.

And then here's a trick it seems some people never learn: when you are tired, take a break. Stare at the wall or have a little snooze, then go back to working. My brain works for two hours. After that, it gets full of scraps of information that have got stuck from previous questions and needs an airing-out. But this time is not just for recharging, it's also when your subconscious works on problems your conscious brain is stuck on, and you can come back from your little space-out with an idea of the answer.

The final secret

Afterwards, just take a que sera sera attitude to the results, which is incredibly easy to do because you have no control over them.

Okay, so easier said than done if you don't have a ridiculous amount of confidence, but seriously, relax, because you're going to be stressed again once term starts up anyway, and if I've made you fail miserably, then at least you got to enjoy those last three weeks.

*Disclaimer: I actually did the assignments for this course, and a cursory amount of work during the holidays before I forgot I was doing that subject. I'm magic, but I'm not omnipotent.

Cake or Death?

I am morbidly obese. At least, according to any BMI calculator I am. But here's the thing, if I stayed at this weight forever that would be a very good thing. While my weight has been stable for the past few months, the massive rise in the preceding two years was definitely cause for worry. I can deal with my current weight-related health problems. I don't want any more.

But, being severely overweight, I can actually give you the lowdown on this ridiculous image and variations thereof:

Usually by the time this gets to my little bit of tumblr, it has another picture stuck to the bottom of someone devouring all the food in their house, which sounds like much more fun than standing around being thin. However, I think I can put this into even more perspective by telling you how much weight I would have to lose for this picture to consider me "perfect".

Hipbones/flat stomach: at least 50% of bodyweight. Actually, that would get me down to a "normal" weight for my height, but my pelvis is quite large (ah gots me some birthin' hips) and I'm assuming some of my mass would be muscle, which would get me not a flat stomach, but the outline of my abs visible at least. (I have a feeling an actual "flat" stomach indicates some serious muscle wastage). If I lose this at a healthy rate, it will take me over a year if I don't accidentally put on a stone at Christmas. Actually, that is less time than I thought, but when losing 30% of your body weight and keeping it off is a huge achievement that only 1% of people who try ever accomplish, you can see how this might be a tad difficult.

Collarbones: the upper chest, like the hands, is a place where some people just don't put on fat. One of those people is me. In order for me to see my collar bones, I would have to lose pretty much every scrap of fat on my body, since it follows the "last on, first off" rule. As an average-heighted female with a skeletal structure that is also pretty average, this would probably take me to about 7st7, causing me to have lost 55% of my bodyweight

Thigh Gap: Here is where we start getting into muscle wastage. My thighs are currently the size of a "normal" size person's waist, and it's not all fat. I pretty much have to poke down the same distance to meet muscle as on my stomach, and I'm naturally hourglass shaped. Now, there will be some fat wrapped into the muscle (this is what happens on everyone's calves, for instance), but particularly if I'm losing weight with some form of exercise, there will still be a substantial amount of muscle on my thighs which has to waste. This would probably take me under 7st* (98 pounds, 44 kilos) and cause me a lot more health problems than I experience now.

So yeah, not exactly perfect. This isn't even going into how I would look like this:

Because skin just does not shrink past a certain point.

But that's not the kind of body I fantasise about having. I want to be able to just lift people up without even trying. I want to be able to swim really far. And to be honest, I just want to be able to cycle for more than ten minutes without massive lactic acid buildup. Try doing that with a thigh gap.

*If anyone has better estimates please correct me, research for this was done on a "how much do various people I have encountered weigh" basis

Callous

I am not uncaring. But I never gush.

My family will always be there, they will always let me come home, and I know they are there, so I never feel the need to call them. Others call every week, and text every night. This bemuses me, and makes me feel like I have inadequate emotions. Actually, it is probably because I am securely attached. I have also never felt homesick, though I have felt sick of home. So when I say my boyfriend is my family now, it is a lovely thing, but it also means I don't need to think about him when he's not there, because he will be there later.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a robot. I am irrational often, just not about whether people will leave. They won't. I am charming enough not to drive them away.

I have tried to fix myself. I try to contact people more often, to remember they are there when they are not around. It has hurt me. I have let people manipulate me because I do not want to be callous. Because I do not want to be a psychopath. It has also brought me joy. I see more people, and I like seeing people. The right people. And I like them to be happy.

Because I do care, really. Mostly. I only made three jokes about Margaret Thatcher.

Okay, five.

Beardvolution

So today I was thinking about beards and why a profusion of coarse hair on the chin, neck and upper lip area would ever evolve, and if they were so useful why I don't have one. And so, from the depths of my brain I have come up with a few reasons why beards may have been beneficial to early man (but not woman).

Warmth: Since prehistoric gender roles were probably as silly as ours, (cave)men probably engaged in manliness contests similar to the displays of mountain gorillas. If these contests consisted of staying outside in the cold for as long as possible, the bearded male would have had the edge and produced more children due to not being dead. Women don't have beards because they were too busy being inside cooking dinner and gossiping. Unfortunately this is not a very plausible reason as people from hot countries also have beards.

Protection: The coarseness of the hair protects the chin and neck from attack by ferrets. But ferrets also have a tendency to get tangled in beards and aren't very attractive. This is an unlikely reason.

Attack: The scouring nature of the beard makes it an excellent weapon for leaving tiny scratches on the faces of your rivals. In the harsh and unhygenic conditions of the prehistoric era, these would have become infected, leading to an unattractive puffy face and maybe death. On the other hand, sabretooth tigers have even coarser and tougher hair to protect their faces, and their sabreteeth are not going to be blocked by a bit of fuzz. We're definitely getting somewhere now.

Attractiveness:
In favor:

Against:

Usefulness: Beards have many uses, from scouring pad to exfoliator. Prehistoric women would have preferred mates who could help clean their pots and remove dead skin cells from their legs. Men with beards would also have been able to help more with their children, as they could store them in their beards and have both hands free. Women do not have beards because men would leave their dead cells on for protection, and women have more flexible toes so do not need free hands. This is unlikely as the previous sentence was really too silly as you can't stir a pot of mammoth stew with your toes, so women should have beards too.

Food storage: Beards provide a space to store the scraps of food that fall down when you're destroying your mammoth steak with the vengeance of 12 suns. The males who had extra sustenance were healthier and thus more reproductively sucessful. Women are dainty and do not drop any food, and anyhow need only 2000 calories a day. This is the most likely reason for beards to have evolved.

It occurs to me that I could have googled this. And the results are.......

Darwin thinks they're sexy.

Well just look at his face, he's clearly biased.

Review: Innumeracy

Okay I lied, that title wasn't clever at all. I couldn't make Innumerology actually fit, though.

For starters, I managed to read this in a day, which is a definite plus when you're doing a maths degree. On the downside, if you're doing a maths degree then a lot of the actual maths is familiar.This did not stop me from severely underestimating how long it takes to level a mountain, however, due to a mix-up between feet and metres and a severe overestimate of the size of a dump truck. So apparently, I have been afflicated as well.

The main thesis of the book is, of course, that as a society we (and by "we" he means "Americans" though to be honest it's almost as bad here) are horribly innumerate due to a widespread fear and misunderstanding of maths. The misunderstanding, for once, is that maths is not fun rather than that maths is about numbers and shapes and graphs and things it very ostensibly is about unless you're a formalist*. I'm not sure whether it would do a very good job of convincing a person who wasn't already convinced of the need for better maths education, but on the other hand it convinced me that I'm actually quite bad with numbers.

That's the trouble really with these books, they're mostly read by people who agree with the main thesis already. I doubt The God Delusion was read by anyone but atheists**, but then maybe this is my own inclination to read things I agree with surfacing. Anyhow, the examples are well chosen; I still have to override my instincts to answer the probability questions correctly. It's very readable, and he's modest about his opinions which is nice for once.

Okay yeah bugger it it's taken five days to write this I'm publishing it and hang the consequences. As you can tell I point out my own flaws in order to disarm people.

Oh, and it gets 7/10

Love to all maybe three of you if any,
Bev

*Formalists are very silly people who existed a few decades ago and thought maths had nothing to do with the real world. This is nonsense as maths is applied everywhere and abstracted from things that are in the real world.
** And theists mocking it, like geeks do with Twilight.

By Way of an Introduction

Of course all my posts are going to have titles like this. At least one will be called The Body Politik even though I was pretty sure that was something to do with Marx until I googled it and found out that not only was it nothing to do with him, but I've spelt it wrong too. Hopefully, though, I will spend less time on pretty wording and more time on pretty sound ideas, and while I enjoy terrible puns I will never use them to make a point. My sentences, however, will run on for miles because I read too much Gaiman in my youth and he never read a style guide.

If somehow you have stumbled across this blog and have not met me in person, I am a short, curvy*, opinionated, grumpy lady-person** with no indoor voice and a fondness for footnotes borrowed from Terry Pratchett and the previous head of that society I run. I study Maths, like people and have far too many hobbies and too little control of my lungs.

If you don't care what I'm like in person (sensible since you could be on Mars for all I know), most of what you need to know is I have a lot of opinions, some of which are substantiated. The things I'm actually qualified to talk on are some bits of Maths, less bits of science, quite a lot of popular science books*** and what it's like to be me. This blog will be a mixture of book/tv reviews, opinions on the occasional thing I notice happening in the world and maybe my actual life if I feel I can trust the internet not to let my parents find my blog. They would be utterly shocked that my floor is currently visible and I did some work yesterday and attempt to prove I am in fact a pod person.

I think that's everything, and anyhow I'm actually really sleepy now. The next post will maybe be a review of Innumeracy, or it might be another thing. Planning never really seems to work.

Many wishes,
Bev

P.S. If you do know me in real life and decide to read any of this blog out loud in a "hilarious" manner I will not be impressed and will in fact be genuinely quite angry.

*Some of my curves are even concave
**Look, women are 40 and girls are 10. Lady-person will do.
***There are literally 20 examples that all these books use, and then about 5 extra for the maths ones. And yet I keep reading.