Author: Dan

Film

Awards season

Post author By Dan
Post date January 13, 2015

A nerd’s 12 best and worst films from 2014.

Highlights:

Snowpiercer as ‘Film most like a D&D Dungeon Crawl’ (and still no UK DVD release, wtf?)
Guardians is definitely the best comic book movie/best movie
Hadn’t heard of Love is Strange but quite interested
Still want to see Jodorowsky’s Dune but can’t stream it anywhere :/

In other awards chat I saw Birdman last week and absolute loved it, I know a few people who got bored halfway through but I thought it was outstanding. It could sweep 9/10 Oscars easily and be deserving of them.

Tags birdman, dune, guardians, snowpiercer

Animals Funny Illustration My Doodles

On the second day of Christmas

Post author By Dan
Post date December 26, 2014

Tags christmas, teenage mutant ninja turtles

Books Funny

GRRM’s Naughty List

Post author By Dan
Post date December 23, 2014

Sort of spoilers. But not. But maybe?

Tags asoiaf, christmas, grrm

Art Books Film

Skywalking in the air

Post author By Dan
Post date December 23, 2014

Always meant to tidy this up. One day I will get around to do a full Luke & Wampa version of The Snowman. Oh well. Merry Christmas!

Tags christmas, luke skywalker, raymond briggs, star wars, the snowman, wampa

Animals Natural Science

Immaculately conceived turkey

Post author By Dan
Post date December 23, 2014

BBC Science article on parthenogenesis (virgin birth).

I’ve long-known about Komodo (and other reptile) parthenogenesis but didn’t know it occurred in birds:

Perhaps the best understood ‘virgin’ vertebrate is the common domesticated turkey. In the 1800s, reports started appearing of virgin births among chickens. Then researchers started studying similar events among turkeys, finding that these large fowl could lay unfertilised eggs that produced live young.

The baby turkeys were always male, however, which was put down to a quirk of bird genetics in which male sex chromosomes are dominant. Soon a parthenogenetic strain of the domestic turkey was developed in which most males appeared normal and reproduced successfully.