A review of Lucy.
Lucy is a strange science-fiction movie. Not so much because of its subject matter, more because it flirts with so many science-fiction sub-genres. But more about that latter. The film begins in Taiwan where Lucy, Scarlett Johansson, is exposed to a new experimental drug and finds her brain capacity greatly expanded. This increases her ability […]
Best Time to Blog.
I recently read a blog post titled A Scientific Guide to Posting Tweets, Facebook Posts, Emails and Blog Posts at the Best Times, by Belle Beth Cooper. The post had me thinking about the random nature of my blog posts. I have been trying to post once a week. For a while that used to […]
Medical Use of Cannabis
I wrote this article just over a year ago but I could not find a paying home for it, so here it is. Up until the twentieth century, cannabis was frequently used in western medicine. But more effective painkillers such as those containing opiates were developed. And then concerns about recreational abuse of cannabis lead […]
Time to Boycott Australian Goods and Services?
I am a bit meh about the government scrapping the carbon tax. The fact that it seemed inevitable has negated much of my potential anger. If anything, I just feel vindicated. It is what I expected would happen from about 2011, when I realised the Labor government had no hope of winning the next […]
A review of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is set just over a decade after Rise of the Planet of the Apes. In that movie, a scientist experimented with a cure for Alzheimer’s on apes. The cure increased the intelligence of the apes. The apes eventually escaped and fled into the forests near San Francisco. […]
Rebooting Books.
So many movies are scheduled to be remade or rebooted. In the past few weeks I’ve read or heard that Stargate, Predator, Highlander, Gremlins, IT, Jumanji, Star Wars, Logan’s Run, Poltergeist, Videodrome, Starship Troopers, and even Police Academy – please don’t, have some mercy – are going to be remade or rebooted. With all […]
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.
While writing my last post, a review of the excellent movie Edge of Tomorrow, I had cause to reflect on science-fiction movies starring Tom Cruise. He has some impressive credits: Vanilla Sky, Minority Report, War of the Worlds, Oblivion and Edge of Tomorrow. I have enjoyed them all. I then contemplated whether any other […]
Review of Edge of Tomorrow.
Edge of Tomorrow is a gripping, fast-paced, action science-fiction movie. It has time-travel, aliens and Tom Cruise being killed over and over again. What more could you want? It’s not exactly original, with a premise very similar to Source Code, except aliens replace the terrorists. For those who missed Source Code, think Groundhog […]
A Divine Problem
I have had a busy couple of weeks thanks mainly to the Divine website that I write for. Two weeks ago we were told by Divine that the website was being moved onto a new server, and they were taking the opportunity to archive all pre-2013 stories. Twenty-four articles of my stories would […]
Goodbye Doc.
It’s a very sad day today for me. Doc Neeson, the lead singer of The Angels, has died. He was 67 and died of a brain tumour. The Angels were, and still are, my all-time favourite band. I first went and saw them at Latrobe University in 1979 (see video above, I was there). I […]