In Which February is Annoying

February probably annoys most folks for the same reason that January does: It provides terrible driving conditions.
But, for me, February is annoying because it's so short. Specifically, I'm about to run out of February, and this will be my 3rd blog post for it. :P I just spent some time working on another post, only to determine that it makes no sense.
January slammed past me because I'd done a bunch of blog posts in December. February flew past by being so short. However! I expect to make about 10 blog posts in March. I've got about 8 in the works at the moment, and, if I keep getting ideas at the rate that I do, then I'll have even a few more.

There's a Crack in my Beast Below

Right, I meant to blog about this quite a long time ago, but I forgot.
There's sort of a bit of an enormous plot hole in the Doctor Who episode "The Beast Below". Fair warning: There are spoilers regarding this episode of Doctor Who. Also, I'll probably talk as though you've already seen the episode, so it would be good for you to watch "The Beast Below" before reading this, if you haven't already.
So, at the end of "The Beast Below", it is discovered that the titular character (the beast below, not The Doctor), who has been propelling the giant city-ship up until this point, goes faster when it's not being shocked in the brain every few seconds. Specifically, the creature came to Earth in order to help the humans, though it couldn't communicate with them, which is supposed to have allowed this whole scenario to emerge.
To make sure that we're on the same page here: for literally the entire journey of the vessel (a few centuries in length), the beast below the city has been being shocked, in the brain, at very regular intervals. This is where I see an enormous plot hole. It means the following:
-Whoever was in charge of this project had to, somehow, decide to start shocking the alien in the brain once every few seconds before they left Earth orbit.
-Whoever was in charge of this project had to then implement this shocking plan, including making the brain-hole and constructing and activating the probe, again before leaving Earth orbit.
-The probe had to go the entire trip without breaking, needing replaced, or needing to be turned off to be cleaned, repaired, or updated.
-For the entire trip, the probe's power supply had to be uninterrupted.
-They had to never want to stop or slow down. Since they thought that the frequent shocks were keeping the beast moving, they would have reduced or stopped them to slow down or stop.
-Nobody ever said "Hey, what do you suppose would happen if we stopped shocking the creature for a few minutes?" - at least not in a convincing way.
-Nobody ever accidentally turned the device off.
-No scientist in the control room ever went rogue enough to sabotage the shock system. Also, nobody ever successfully broke into the control room or hacked into the controls to do the same.

Basically, the decision to set up this shock system was extremely unscientific - grounded only in ... well, absolutely nothing - and keeping it in perpetual operation would be a logistical nightmare - as anyone who has to maintain any system can tell you.

P.S.: I'd have given more/better details, but I'm going on memory, and the episode was quite a while ago. Like I said, I meant to blog about this and forgot.

The Doctor is Human

I've thought about this before, and yesterday, I figured that I should blog about it. The Doctor, from the SF show Doctor Who?, is human.
"But wait," says everyone who knows anything about Doctor Who?, "The Doctor is a time lord." You are correct*, and the time lords are human. It seems most likely that the time lords are the result of the evolution of an isolated human population. They seem morphologically and physiologically so similar to humans that their arising completely independently of Earth's biology would have to occur astronomically improbably. And, of course, being evolved from humans means that they are humans.
Let's compare and contrast. On the one hand, time lords have two hearts** and can regenerate. On the other hand, time lords are bipedal plantigrade pentadactyl tetrapods with opposable thumbs, fingernails, two forward-facing color-vision eyes set in closed ocular orbits in skull-enclosed heads with hinged jaws bearing white, bony teeth, pink, fleshy tongues, and soft, pliable lips, altogether capable of speaking human languages, ostensibly with the assistance of vocal chords. They also ingest food through this forward-facing face-holes and apparently have taste buds, too. Time lords also have fleshy, dish-shaped ears on the sides of their heads, hair that grows out of the tops of their heads, along their eyebrows - and, by the way, eyebrows - and reduced or absent hair elsewhere. Also, time lords have skin in that variegated sepia range (dark brown to pale peach-ish) that humans have, as opposed to, say, green or orange. Oh, and time lords can be killed by untreated cyanide poisoning.

That's basically my argument for why the time lords are human. There are other things, but I haven't actually seen proof of them. For instance, I'm assuming that time lords have spinal chords enveloped in vertebrae, which would make them chordates and vertebrates, respectively, but I haven't actually gotten a look at The Doctor's back well enough to tell if there are vertebrae there, so I didn't list them above.
Anyway, if you see anything that I should have included in my lists, then leave a comment below, but, more importantly, if you see someplace where you think that I might be wrong, then leave a comment below.
That's all for now.

*as long as you didn't add a clause asserting that The Doctor is not human
**The fact that time lords have hearts is a similarity, by the way.

Remember, Remember, the Date of the Month

I'm sort of hurrying this post along. I remembered a thought that I had before, and realized that, since I have a blog, I should probably put it up while it's still on the day.
I'd just like to point out that the remembering scheme for Guy Fawkes Day is a bit odd. For those who don't know, it goes:
"Remember, remember, the fifth of November."
The problem with this is that the last part - which is what this is used to recall anyway - could be any of several dates in September, November, or December. The "fifth" is not even required to rhyme with anything, so any monosyllabic ordinal will do.