The Kat Basket

The list makes impressive reading all by itself!

The Discworld series started with the adventures of a none-too courageous "Wizzard" called Rincewind, exploring the ideas of parallel universes, the counterpart to our world being a world which is flat, disc-shaped, carried on the backs of four gigantic elephants, which in turn stand on the carapace of the Great Star Turtle A'Tuin.

The books draw parallels between magic and physics, and highlight some of the comic absurdities of our own world.

The characters are colourful and beautifully delineated, from drunkard Captain Vimes of the City of Ankh-Morpork's Night Watch, to Lady Sybil Ramkin, an enthusiastic dragon-breeder. There are entertaining excursions into mythology (a parallel to the Golem of Prague (Feet of Clay), wicca (Witches Abroad) and a closer examination of opera (Maskerade), elves (Lords and Ladies), Hollywood (Moving Pictures), the power of the press (The Truth), Rock and Roll (or "Music with rocks in", Soul Music), Death (Reaper Man) and Christmas (Hogfather) and much, much more.

Particularly worth looking out for are the illustrations by the late Josh Kirby, an imaginative artist who seems to share Pratchett's gentle sense of humour and crams detail into every picture.

The Law and Order: SVU series tells some hard-hitting stories, but for me, this hit harder than most. Naturally, the show ends with a disclaimer that none of the people or events depicted were factual. If people knew that what they were being entertained by was based on fact, could they still watch it as entertainment?
When psychiatrist John Money was offered an opportunity to supervise the raising of a male child as a physical, social female, he used it as an opportunity to test his own theories about the nature of sexual identity, claiming for many years that his intervention had been successful.
It was not until Milton Diamond conducted an independent follow-up of Money's work that the true extent of the disaster of Brenda Reimer's life was discovered. Brenda had never accepted the female role, and finally sought sex reassigment (a particularly difficult and extensive treatment) to become David Reimer.
Until recently, the majority of babies born with ambiguous genitalia were subjected to surgical intervention by well-meaning doctors who then encouraged their parents to raise them in a given gender role. Is it too much to hope that today, children afflicted in this way can choose their own destiny? and whether, and when, to seek medical intervention?

Michael Crichton, of Jurassic Park fame, is responsible for this meticulous yarn about an archaeology professor and his students who have a unique opportunity to visit France during the Hundred Years War.
A company conducting research into time travel needs to send people who know the time intimately to locate and bring back an agent who failed to return on schedule. What they discover when they arrive is more disturbing than a simple technical failure. And they become intimately involved in historical events that previously, they had only known from history books, and field excavations.
Billy Connolly plays the professor, alongside Tin Man's Neal McDonough and Lambert Wilson.

Warning: this movie doesn't pull any punches with the battle scenes.

Historical movies tend to ignore the facts in favour of the best story. This isn't one of those movies. John Malkovich tells the story of Joan of Arc, faithfully following the known and documented facts.

Milla Jovovich in the title role looks more like a young Matt Damon, and carries the burden of liberating France very effectively on those young shoulders.

Nunc lento sonitu dicunt, Morieris

Now, this Bell tolling softly for another, saies to me, Thou must die.

PERCHANCE hee for whom this Bell tolls, may be so ill, as that he knowes not it tolls for him; And perchance I may thinke my selfe so much better than I am, as that they who are about mee, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for mee, and I know not that.

The Church is Catholike, universall, so are all her Actions; All that she does, belongs to all.

When she baptizes a child, that action concernes mee; for that child is thereby connected to that Head which is my Head too, and engraffed into that body, whereof I am a member.

And when she buries a Man, that action concernes me: All mankinde is of one Author, and is one volume; when one Man dies, one Chapter is not torne out of the booke, but translated into a better language; and every Chapter must be so translated; God emploies several translators; some peeces are translated by age, some by sicknesse, some by warre, some by justice; but Gods hand is in every translation; and his hand shall binde up all our scattered leaves againe, for that Librarie where every booke shall lie open to one another:

As therefore the Bell that rings to a Sermon, calls not upon the Preacher onely, but upon the Congregation to come; so this Bell calls us all: but how much more mee, who am brought so neere the doore by this sicknesse.

There was a contention as farre as a suite, (in which both pietie and dignitie, religion, and estimation, were mingled) which of the religious Orders should ring to praiers first in the Morning; and it was that they should ring first that rose earliest.

If we understand aright the dignitie of this Belle that tolls for our evening prayer, wee would bee glad to make it ours, by rising early, in that application, that it might bee ours, as wel as his, whose indeed it is.

The Bell doth toll for him that thinkes it doth; and though it intermit againe, yet from that minute, that that occasion wrought upon him, hee is united to God.

Who casts not up his Eye to the Sunne when it rises? but who takes off his Eye from a Comet when that breakes out? Who bends not his eare to any bell, which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove it from that bell, which is passing a peece of himselfe out of this world? No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.

Neither can we call this a begging of Miserie or a borrowing of Miserie, as though we were not miserable enough of our selves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the Miserie of our Neighbours.

Truly it were an excusable covetousnesse if wee did; for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it.

No man hath affliction enough that is not matured, and ripened by it, and made fit for God by that affliction.

If a man carry treasure in bullion, or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into currant Monies, his treasure will not defray him as he travells.

Tribulation is Treasure in the nature of it, but it is not currant money in the use of it, except wee get nearer and nearer our home, Heaven, by it.

Another man may be sicke too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a Mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell, that tells me of his affliction, digs out, and applies that gold to mee: if by this consideration of anothers danger, I take mine owne into contemplation, and so secure my selfe, by making my recourse to my God, who is our onely securitie.

emphasis mine

I thought it worth posting this meditation in its entirety because parts of it are so often quoted out of context. And while I don't agree wholeheartedly with Donne's view of the virtue of suffering, I believe this is one of the more profound texts beyond the canon of scripture.

Snickers has come out with a new commercial; a bunch of historical and mythical figures which include Henry VIII, Bacchus (?) and a fertility god apparently on a road trip (destination unspecified).
Bluff King Hal who is chowing down on a Snickers bar tells the rest of the company how, in the old days, he used to have minstrels accompanying his feasts, and the fertility god character starts singing "Greensleeves" before the whole carload joins in the chorus.
But did Henry VIII actually write "Greensleeves"? And if you know it as a Christmas song, do you know the original words...

Alas, my love, you do me wrong, to cast me off discourteously,
And I have loved you so long, delighting in your company..."

If you'd like to know more about the music of the Tudor era, I hope you'll take a look at my Early Music group.

... to see a world in a grain of sand,
or eternity in an hour...

If all we see is what our senses report to us, we are only seeing half the world. As Obi-Wan Kenobi tells young Luke Skywalker when he first learns to sense the Force, "You've taken your first step into a larger universe."

Young Cole is a disturbed child, but also incredibly brave. Perhaps it is one of the virtues of youth, that young people are more readily adaptable, better able to consider possibilities that longer experience will tell them are impossibilities. I don't mean to suggest though, that children are any less vulnerable than adults. Only that they often have a clarity of sight that becomes clouded by experience.

In 1660 Charles II was restored to the English Throne ending 11 years of Oliver Cromwell's bleak Puritan rule. Thus began the age of Restoration. It was an era of scientific discovery, artistic exploration and luxurious sensuality.

It was also a time of natural disasters and archaic medical practices. Science was pitted against superstition. This is the story of one man's journey through the light and dark of those times.

This heartwarming movie tells the story of a dissolute young doctor, one Robert Merivel of London, a glover's son. It describes his early promise as a physician, his adoption by the King as a minor favourite at court and his fall from grace, without which he might never have found his true, and accessible love (he was ordered by the Sovereign to marry the King's mistress, so that she might be out of sight of another, jealous mistress, but Merivel is forbidden ever to love her), and the final restoration of all that had been lost to him. In the old sense, a comedy.

Among other things, this movie is a good reminder; what makes a good physician is not just knowledge or technology, but compassion.

I would like to note that Ian McKellen as Master Will Gates of Bidnauld House in Suffolk is one of the few actors I have heard speak with a true Suffolk accent, something I find impossibly nostalgic.

Have Space Suit. Will Travel.

"You're teaching him to read history. I'm gonna show him how to make it."

Charlie Farmer is the kind of man who made America a nation to lead the world. Literally a Texas farmer, he has educated himself, and dedicated every resource he can draw upon to acquire, and make spaceworthy, a rocket.
The destiny of humankind lies in the galaxy. And we won't get there unless we all work together.

This 1996 movie is the antidote to "The Hunt For Red October"

A hopeful senior commander in the United States Navy is given a submarine command; his last chance to captain his own boat. Instead of the nuclear-powered submarine he dreams of, he gets a vintage diesel-powered boat recommissioned from the mothball fleet to participate in exercises.

Watch and learn as the Captain uses good old-fashioned wiles, (and the extraordinary talents of his hand-picked crew) to duck-and-dive past the United States Navy's finest men and machines. His senior admiral has "never lost a war game" and doesn't intend to start now...

Take 8oz of painting by Max Ernst,
mix in 2.5oz of Wizard of Oz juice,
gently mix in (1/2)oz of uncertainty principle (powdered)
sprinkle with a dash of Harry Potter and serve.

If your taste leans towards the medieval, you might like to spice the dish with a pinch of Hieronymous Bosch

This is the movie that Pan's Labyrinth wasn't.

More symbolic than straightforward drama. A researcher whose wife(?) is dying is asked by her to take over the writing of the book she has almost finished. The theme of the book is an ancient Mayan legend about their afterlife.
The star which the Mayans chose as their afterlife is a dying star at the center of a nebula which will eventually collapse, giving birth to a new star.

Time travel: good thing? / bad thing? A government agent learns that it may be possible to prevent a murder. But nobody has successfully been sent back through time. Can he do it? and if he does, will he change the train of events in his own life?

If (like me) you use a lot of HTML to format text when you are entering messages or comments, or pretty much anything else on Multiply, and other pages that allow HTML on the web, typing the embedded codes <i>in italics</i>, <b>bold</b> or inserting an image: <img src="http://images.jupiterimages.com/common/detail/96/27/22182796.jpg"> can get tedious very quickly.
If you have an iGoogle account you can add this little gadget to your iGoogle page and simplify entry of HTML - it's like a mini-word-processor with an option to view the HTML source which you can copy and paste once you have the format you want.
Quick and easy. Gets my vote.

The GNU Image Manipulation Program offers many of the features of high-end image processing software such as Adobe Photoshop, in a freeware, open-source package.

Open Office is a suite of programs developed by the open-source software community. Available as freeware, it includes fully-featured word-processing, drawing, presentation, database and spreadsheet utilities all of which include an extensive library of import and export options for the most commonly used electronic file formats.