Science P.: That sounds great, if the directing/acting is good. I’d love to see it.

Here’s a review of the series on io9. (via Jennifer Oulette who’s been tweeting how much she loves it)

from the review

The writing is so good and acting so convincing that it immediately makes sense that the war-haunted, gruff-and-ready Watson would write a blog at the advice of his therapist, that the technology-forward, cryptic Holmes would take to texting â?? he “prefers” it â?? and run a website.

The show is slick and well-shot, making innovative use of text on-screen. We see SMS messages and media clues pop that other characters do not, like the street map of London in Holmes’s photographic memory that he relies on to follow a culprit; we see, sometimes, what a scene or a person looks like to his frenetically genius brain, and the things he can dissect and infer about them.

There’s a link to the first episode in my previous comment, or if you prefer to watch it on an actual TV screen (aka. legally), it’s coming to PBS on October 24th.

It is a bit of a sad commentary that this sort of thing is actually needed (or at least useful). Many people just aren’t level headed in bad situations.

BTW: There is apparently folks with military training have a better chance of surviving ‘catastrophic’ plane crashes, in the very slight but statistically significant sense of ‘better’. I only saw a second-hand account of the study (Nat Geo documentary or something like that), but it was actually setup specifically to look at what factors, if any, matter in cases where you’d think there is nothing the individual can possibly do to increase their chances or surviving.

In a tense situation, we revert to our training. Few of us are trained to react properly during a crash landing, so we need the flight attendants to tell us what to do. What that flight attendant did might sound goofy, but there’s research behind it.

IIRC, Stephen Fry also did a fun documentary about J. S. Bach’s music, published by American Lutherans.

“Religion is not the opiate of the masses, religion is the placebo of the masses.”

Mad: I don’t think she was being civil or uncivil. She was just playing her role.

I can see why it is done this way but I’m not sure I would have designed the system to work this way, and I’m mildly disturbed that not one person has yet asked the key question.

Ah, Mycroft Holmes – the vastly more intelligent brother of Sherlock – the guy who’s too intelligent for this world and is bored by everyone so he sits in a gentleman’s club on his own all day. I agree Stephen Fry can play that part well.

I’m curious. What are your thoughts on the new BBC series Sherlock? Steven Moffat (of Doctor Who and Coupling) has set the story in modern times but tried to stay as true to the original stories and characters as he can. They now use cellphones and GPS, but Holmes is still that eccentric who doesn’t care whether heliocentrism is right. There’s no “my dear Watson” or “my dear Holmes” as they call each other “John” and “Sherlock” now. Dr. Watson is still a veteran of the Afghan War and still writes down all the stories of his adventures, except that now he publishes them on his blog.

I think that it’s very cleverly made. I’m curious what your thoughts are.

A Study in Pink (90 mins.)

ps—Stephen Fry is a great choice for Mycroft!