Reign of Errors


I’m really enjoying the cable show, The Tudors, which ostensibly presents a dramatized account of the life of King Henry VIII. The scripts are adequate to intriguing. The acting is fantastic. The visuals are captivating. And the casting is stellar, especially for the age-appropriateness of each choice… something sadly lacking in most historical fiction produced nowadays.

At the centre of it all is the exquisitely handsome Irish actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who commands the light in each scene. But what really catches the eye? The clothes. Yes, I said it. Amazingly, the wardrobe folks have managed to make those silly and effete 16th century court outfits unbelievably chic and masculine. I half expect to see gansta rappers soon bedecked in puffy thigh pants with ruffled collars. (Feel free to insert your own 16th century hiphop lyrics in the comments section).

In Other News…

Here’s a curious list of sex myths.

Dee Mack sends us this list of the finest books of all time. Their science fiction section is particularly interesting, since by allowing in the political books masquerading as science fiction (like 1984 and Brave New World), they’ve necessarily muscled out the hard SF of the later 20th century. But whatever.

A hero high school student has actually displayed some critical thinking and has questioned a neocon textbook that unsurprisingly has made its way into both the American public school system and the American government.

The book in question is American Government by Wilson and Dilulio, the latter of which was a Bush II adviser. The book is punctuated with unsubstantiated claims about the science underlying Climate Change, US federal law around school prayer, and other common conservative tropes that have been distorted or misrepresented to project facts that are not in existence. Makes one wonder how many other such fractured tomes were produced during the Bush II Reign of Errors, that we will not discover for generations but that nonetheless permeate North America’s institutions.

A report by the Center of Inquiry, listing the book’s errors, is available here.

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