Wonders Of The Universe. BBC2. Sunday, 9pm
Professor Brian Cox has carved a comfortable niche out for himself as the BBC's new accessible face of astrophysics, and in the meantime has plugged a gap which has required filling since The Sky At Night's Sir Patrick Moore lost full bladder control. His Wonders Of The Universe program which is currently lending weight to BBC2's Sunday night schedule has proven to be the perfect tonic to those impending Monday blues.
Prof. Cox, one-time pop starlet with D:ream (remember them?) imbues his chosen topic with the type of infectious wonder usually only mustered up by a child at their first carnival. Cox can barely gasp his way through a couple of minutes of universal wonder without gleefully reminding us that this is why he loves physics so much. And who can argue with him? Indeed who couldn't help but agree with anything that we see on Wonders when the giver of these truths delivers each fact as though it was the happiest moment of his life? At one point in the proceedings Cox is teaching us about the effect gravity has on all matter, an effect which will ultimately see all said matter crushed out of existence. Yet Cox presents this none-too-pleasant fate as though it were a happy ending of Disney-esque proportions. It must be said that when my dog dies I want Brian Cox to deliver the news.
The program itself it a calming mix of footage of things which are very far away, as photographed by the various telescopic flotsam in orbit, with more down to Earth footage to help the viewer understand how it all works in ways which people with normal brains, like you and I can understand. Want to know what entropy is? Well here is a sandcastle beside a similar sized pile of loose sand. One has low entropy (least different ways each grain of sand can arranged to make the same shape, ie. sandcastle) and the other high entropy (most different ways... etc). This astrophysics lark sure is easy. And that's the beauty of Wonders of the Universe, it allows the viewer to believe that science is really fun and not at all really just a series of numbers on a screen in some cheerless lab, or that time in school when we finished our English homework. This science has colour and photographs. And we understand this science. Oh yes. We're all cleaver now. Thank you Prof.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
One Step At A Time.
For those you you not initiated in the ways of the international Next Top Model franchise, the rules are fairly simple.
1. Contestants must be possessed of both a head and a body.
2. Both of the contestant's legs must be in reasonable working order at the audition stage.
It's worth noting at this point that rule 2 is not a deal breaker. There have been reported instances of aspiring models not being in possession of all the relevant faculties to walk both upright and in a straight line at the same time. But this is what Tyra Banks is here for folks. Banks has made an extraordinarily lucrative post modeling career for herself out of teaching adult women how to manage the sort of day-to-day trials which most of us armchair folk take in our stride without a second thought. An average 10 week series, or cycle as Tyra ominously names it, follows a strict schedule:
Lesson 1. Walking.
Lesson 2. Having your hair cut and dealing with it. Now that contestants will be spending the following two months in Tyra's company you will be made to look at least 35% less attractive.
Lesson 3. - 6. Walking/having your picture taken.
Lesson 7. Working with fish. Strangely this is vital in today's modeling world.
Lesson 8. Smising. No, I haven't had a stroke. Smising is the act of smiling without moving your face in any way. Really, not a stroke. You see, Tyra has the special ability to get contestants to smile using only their eyes. Not a muscle moves. Ever. Of course this is about as successful for contestants as sucking the air out of a tank of water and always results in wonderfully manic pictures of all concerned.
Lesson 9. Trip abroad. It's important that contestants from Texan and Iowa get some experience of Abroad. This lesson will test the models' ability to keep appointments with only the use of a pre-paid taxi, the whole day and a map locating each appointment.
Lesson 10. By now (or something) there'll only be two or three left standing (often quite literally) so it's a Zoolander-style runway walk-off where the gait, movement, clothes-carrying ability and, er, teeth are given the once over before a victor is crowned. Then it's off to obscurity again as Banks lines up her next clutch of walking wannabes to give her yet another 'cycle' in which shower them and us in her shiny, plastic glory.
As you can probably guess, this show and it's numerous international spawn are not for me. No sooner has one series finished when two more rise to take it's place. But then it's not made for me. I don't see fashion at the multi-billion dollar industry that it has become. I see fashion as that bit of the morning between shower and breakfast. But I know quite a lot of fully-formed human adults who will reschedule their entire social diaries around this program's timetable. So I'll leave it at that.
1. Contestants must be possessed of both a head and a body.
2. Both of the contestant's legs must be in reasonable working order at the audition stage.
It's worth noting at this point that rule 2 is not a deal breaker. There have been reported instances of aspiring models not being in possession of all the relevant faculties to walk both upright and in a straight line at the same time. But this is what Tyra Banks is here for folks. Banks has made an extraordinarily lucrative post modeling career for herself out of teaching adult women how to manage the sort of day-to-day trials which most of us armchair folk take in our stride without a second thought. An average 10 week series, or cycle as Tyra ominously names it, follows a strict schedule:
Lesson 1. Walking.
Lesson 2. Having your hair cut and dealing with it. Now that contestants will be spending the following two months in Tyra's company you will be made to look at least 35% less attractive.
Lesson 3. - 6. Walking/having your picture taken.
Lesson 7. Working with fish. Strangely this is vital in today's modeling world.
Lesson 8. Smising. No, I haven't had a stroke. Smising is the act of smiling without moving your face in any way. Really, not a stroke. You see, Tyra has the special ability to get contestants to smile using only their eyes. Not a muscle moves. Ever. Of course this is about as successful for contestants as sucking the air out of a tank of water and always results in wonderfully manic pictures of all concerned.
Lesson 9. Trip abroad. It's important that contestants from Texan and Iowa get some experience of Abroad. This lesson will test the models' ability to keep appointments with only the use of a pre-paid taxi, the whole day and a map locating each appointment.
Lesson 10. By now (or something) there'll only be two or three left standing (often quite literally) so it's a Zoolander-style runway walk-off where the gait, movement, clothes-carrying ability and, er, teeth are given the once over before a victor is crowned. Then it's off to obscurity again as Banks lines up her next clutch of walking wannabes to give her yet another 'cycle' in which shower them and us in her shiny, plastic glory.
As you can probably guess, this show and it's numerous international spawn are not for me. No sooner has one series finished when two more rise to take it's place. But then it's not made for me. I don't see fashion at the multi-billion dollar industry that it has become. I see fashion as that bit of the morning between shower and breakfast. But I know quite a lot of fully-formed human adults who will reschedule their entire social diaries around this program's timetable. So I'll leave it at that.
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