I'm really looking forward to the next episode of Bleak House on tv next Sunday night. Joe has just died, and Esther's love, Woodcourt, has returned from overseas just as she has agreed to marry Jarndyce. I like the anticipation. There are 15 episodes, and although I keep thinking its about to end, maybe we are only about half way through! I wonder if it was strung out like this in the US? Phil Davis as Smallweed is a great performance. I also find it intreguing that the way some lines are delivered rings echoes of delivery from Pride and Prejudice. I know they are both scripted by Andrew Davies, and I can see that also, but I didn't expect it in intonation. 

Major Michael Mori, the marine looking after David Hick's legal defense, is visiting Australia, and continuing his lobbying to get Hicks a fair trial. I think he does more for the proud US tradition of justice and free speech than anything the Bush administration has done, and likewise the Howard government. He was interviewed on Enough Rope a few nights ago:

I don't see I'm being very critical. I see myself as being very close to the middle where everything is supposed to be, equality, due process. I just think the administration and the other side, in a way, has departed so far to the extreme away from our basic values that it appears like I'm saying - I don't think anything I'm saying, give someone a fair trial, is some novel idea or radical idea. I hope not, you know. I'm not worried about it. There is nothing I can do except do my job the best I can and represent David and have the values and the core values that the Marine Corps have taught me of justice and judgment and integrity.

Thanks to Shelley, Amy and Dave for their responses to my post about gender politics.  

Somehow I don't think I am going to be a regular viewer of Adam Curry's new QOD video show, Perversion for Profit, if the demo is any indication of what the general content will be. I find it a bit slimy and purile. The title strikes the wrong note for me, as does the comment about the girls; the kids in the dryer press all my parental anxiety buttons about kids' safety; the king reference seems rather vainglorious; and the codpieces? eh, so, they are codpieces. All in all it's immature schoolboy/schoolgirl stuff, even if it's slick. So is that the target audience, do you think?