Getting Into Gear

Teaching is approaching and it's time to dig on down. This semester my module is going to be interesting as it will take place entirely on the other campus of Llanbadarn - the place from whence no mortal man returns - and will be a pretty brutal and intense introduction to Statistics. There is a massive amount of material to introduce and even a fair portion of R to impart so it should be fun, and exhausting. It's all going to be happening in the wake of marking last module's exam though, which will probably also be gruelling. Exam marking is the price we pay for insisting on trying to educate people. I sigh at you theatrically.

These six months of teaching are probably going to be the nicest time in the world of work that I will have for a long long time. It's already a far better experience than five years of doctoral studies were, and in many ways a more useful one. If only research could be so good! Ah, research... No, it's still too painful... No talk about research...

You also have to dig to produce a Quirky Muffin once every two days. It used to be daily, back in the good old days when the great nonsense veins of my mind were still untouched. Things have happened in the last couple of days though. I've begun to write the new set of lecture notes, and roughed out the module plan, and Batman is announced finally for DVD release sometime this year (2014)! The Adam West Batman television show from the 1960s is possibly the last major release to make it onto home media after decades of legal wrangling, and if it happens it will make my year. Only 'Muppet Babies' is left now, and I doubt that will be released as 'The Muppet Show' didn't make money on its own release. There's something horrid about a world where 'The Muppet Show' doesn't sell enough copies to warrant putting out the last two seasons. We should all be ashamed.

So, Batman is finally coming to DVD. It's a wonderful thing. It has become pretty clear to me as my 'shortening days blues' fade ever more that television in the 60s was so much more imaginative and free back then in many ways as to make contemporary things look pedestrian in comparison. The naivete of the time allowed things to happen then that we couldn't possibly do now. This unwillingness to be sincere and sweet is the reason why a fitting Superman movie can't be made, and sincerity is what makes things go round in lots of old shows. 'Due South' practically ran on the sincerity engine that was Paul Gross with pep infusions from David Marciano. Thinking about it, Gross would have been a great Superman.

O.