(no subject)

Dr. Ronald L. Mallett was only the 79th African-American to earn a doctorate in physics. But being black wasn’t the only potentially complicating factor he faced on the road to becoming a tenured theoretical physicist at the University of Connecticut.

Another was his reason for choosing his vocation, one he kept hidden for years, fearful that its discovery would (at best) incite howls of derision from his colleagues, or (at worst) amount to professional suicide.

Ronald Mallett wanted to build a time machine.

(no subject)

John Boorman is attached to direct the $25 million, CG-animated pic The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

The English-language adaptation maintains the tale's main characters and settings. Unlike the MGM classic, however, it's not a musical.

Soren update, via eleanor

"Yesterday, I visited Scraps at Rusk, and it was the first time I’d seen him in five days; the difference was amazing. He’s also now wearing sweats and tee shirts, the first time I’ve seen him out of a hospital gown in a month, and Velma trimmed his facial hair and buzzed his head, so he looks more like himself.

"He is much more alert, and was with the speech therapist when I got there. They were working on word retention and she told him it was her birthday and asked him if he could sing to her. I asked him if he wanted to sing my special family song (some of you may have heard it) and he said laughed and said “no pickles and pears” and we sang the regular song. Then we sang “Take me out to the ballgame,” and he glared at me when I got some of the words wrong. He asked me for a time out, for eleven minutes, so I left the room. While I was out of the room, the speech therapist told me that his progress is remarkable and that she would expect that he’ll be able to “come back” completely. When I returned to the room, we talked about the election and he showed me a print out of an electoral map, pointed to the two grey states. I told him that they were North Carolina and Missouri, and he wanted to know how many electoral votes they each had, except that he couldn’t remember the term and used “mileage points” instead.

"Next Scraps had physical therapy, and I went with him, sat across the room and pretended not to watch. The PT wanted him to practice his reach, had two bins with colorful objects just beyond his comfort level and would ask him to retrieve objects of particular colors. At one point he laughed, pointed at me and said, “I’m blind.” I confirmed that he’s never been able to distinguish easily between green and blue or blue and purple, and things went more smoothly after that. The PT then had him stand, putting his weight on both legs, steady himself with his right hand, and reach up with his left. He did this for at least a minute, although the process left him in pain and exhausted. I returned to his room with him and he requested pain meds and wanted to get back into bed (the PT asked him to please sit up in the wheelchair for at least ten minutes) and he became increasingly distraught, as the pain got worse. I stayed with him until an aide got him into bed and the nurse gave him his meds, and he closed his eyes immediately. I left at that point, feeling that he really needed to sleep off the PT.

"Scraps has an amazing amount of hard and painful work ahead, but it’s paying off."

(no subject)

Polar bear cub! \o/

Soooo, NaNoWriMo...

All right; I'm a bit behind, due to technical difficulties; however, here are the first 1,500 or so words of my novel. No idea if I'll actually finish the thing, but it's been fun so far- whoo, slow night at work!

(Please note that this has some- not too much- sword & arrow-type violence in it, in case you're particularly sensitive to that sort of thing.)

(And man, it's a small world sometimes...)

( NaNoWriMo project, Part 1. )