Of wallabies and other bees

There is something comical about the idea that wallaby milk is going to save us from superbugs. And yet it's not one of those 'how the hell did they ever find that out?' deals, it is logical that scientists in Australia would be testing the properties of all of their flora and fauna. And an antibiotic 100 times stronger than Penicillin is jaw-dropping rather than funny, the natural world just keeps on giving. And we...well we just keep on taking.

The article from Netdoctor that I mentioned yesterday, has since been reported in the Guardian, but with a different emphasis, there is less stress on the gender equality aspect and more on the 'over 40' side of things. But what caught my eye in the Guardian's write-up, was the honourable mention for Canadians. Apparently they come in at number two on the 'satisfying sex and relationships' scale. I'm not sure why Nicholas Lezard feels that randy Canadians make him feel like Philip Larkin, we did read a lot of Philip Larkin at school, although of course the only line from his work that everyone knows is I think from a poem called 'High Windows',
'They fuck you up, your mum and dad, they may not mean to, but they do,' oddly the one poem we didn't study.

Somewhere on TV last night, an advert for a National Spelling Bee flashed up. I can think of little more insane than a spelling bee. If you went into it with your mental faculties intact, spending any amount of time watching children spell words out loud must surely sap the will to live. Any teacher can probably relate to this. We are the only people that I know of who continually ask other people questions we already know the answer to. I can remember being fed this statistic during some early stage of my MA studies. The average time that a teacher gives a child to answer a question is three seconds. I immediately tried to make sure my pupils had longer than three seconds to answer questions, but too long and it becomes counter-productive because the child becomes more self-conscious. It also, like watching children spell things, becomes mind-numbingly tedious.
Spelling bees.....what the hell is the point? There has to be some hidden agenda. Why don't we have them in Britain, or Spain, Italy, Germany and most especially France? For goodness sake, the French have an organisation for protecting the French language.

The best thing on TV last night however, was the excellent 'Bones'. I love Temperance Brennan and I love this show. It embraces everything I admire about detective work and eschews everything I detest about the way TV depicts the same.
I hate the police or forensics shows where women supposedly do professional jobs but have to dress like sex workers to do them. I find this insulting. You can work out the token lesbians in these programmes because they have their blouse buttons done up, which kind of indicates that only lesbians can be professionals, although I think I implied previously that this was in fact the case, so maybe I am shooting myself in the foot there.

In SVU, where the female lead, who in my opinion is far and away one of the most attractive women on TV, does wear clothes that you might wear at work, even so, the police officers, supposedly the cream, are always smirking and looking smug. Real police officers, from the bobbies who tread the beat up to ...whatever they go up to, don't smirk. They are trained, as are teachers, to use neutral body language, neutral facial expressions, and this helps since when you do react in a neutral way to situations and conflict, you more often than not do not become emtionally charged by it.

Temperance Brennan is a real scientist and she simply states facts, I love that about her. David Boreanaz's character despairs of it because she doesn't hold back. But she is a complete professional at all times. In yesterday's episode, where Brennan was helping to identify bodies in New Orleans, and of course, why would TV use New Orleans without a voodoo theme, it is that objectivity that serves to heighten the creepiness factor. If Temperance Brennan can lose a day of her life through voodoo magic, not a trace of any drug in her body, then it makes you feel that there's something more than just belief in the power that is at work, because you know without any shadow of a doubt that Temperance doesn't believe in it. She is an anthropologist, she knows about everyone's beliefs. When discussing voodoo with Boreanaz, a Catholic, she baldy states that she cannot see the difference,
'They have the same saints, you have miracles, they have spells,' she says,
'But they have zombies,' says Boreanaz,
'And your Christ was resurrected after death,' she states, no smirk, no smugness, just fact, bam.

Towards the end, there is a scene that was just pure Temperance. The superb Giancarlo Esposito starts to weave a spell, no melodrama, just total creepiness. Temperance watches him and there is a moment of real tension when you wonder what the outcome will be when suddenly she appears to flick him in the face and he stops just like that.
'I've noticed that no-one's really scary after they've been poked in the eye,' she says.
There's no answer to that.