Unpopular opinions, ahoy!

Space has just started showing season 2 of Torchwood and I have finally decided to confess: I like Gwen. She's so cute and wanting to help and kind of squishy somehow and I find her quite adorable. I also like Tosh but not really the rest of them. I do also want them to have a 'who can screw things up more' competition with the lot from Stargate: Atlantis.

And speaking of that show... Regarding the cancellation, I do feel sorry for people who really like the show because it's always wretched when that happens, but I feel like I've been released from bondage. I hate the fecking programme but I can't stop watching it, like it is some poisonous crack cocktail. FINALLY I AM LIBERATED. THANK YOU, THANK YOU.

I finally got to watch Dr. Horrible on the way to Ireland and I really, really liked it. I've watched it several times since then and while I know some people had issues with it ( cut for spoiler )

And this isn't an unpopular opinion but from another community I got a link to this class, which is now apparently the largest one at Harvard: Positive Psychology packs them in

This was the bit that really struck me: ""Students are attracted to this kind of class because they feel that it's making a real difference in their lives," says Ben-Shahar, whose charismatic personality and compelling lectures helped drive explosive growth in enrollment after he began teaching the course. Ben-Shahar says the quest for happiness has always been an innate human yearning, dating back to the times of Confucius and Aristotle. "The difference today is that for the first time we have a science of happiness.""

I have no idea what the intellectual and academic content of the course is, but that man certainly has great PR. Especially as you will see if you read farther that he started teaching a section, though they gloss over that bit and make it sound like he's been teaching the entire lecture course for years. Plus I am really glad that now we finally have Science of Happiness. I wonder what sort of labs they have?

Olympics

With apologies for those who are enjoying the Olympics and enjoying success but I don't really like the Olympics which may or may not have a lot to do with:
a) the Irish don't really win at them except for Michelle Smith and we all know how that ended
b) the Olympic committee sounds like the skeeviest bunch of people ever
c) lots of other boring reasons

The only thing I'm really following is the gymnastics age thing, which is mainly having the effect of making me and more revolted at a sport where you peak at 14 and thereafter it's all downhill. It used to be one of the few Olympics sports I watched too.

I had a friend who suggested that all Olympic events should be allowed based on this one test: their ability to help you escape from wolves or Nazis. That would conveniently get rid of artistic 'sports' like synchronized swimming but allow events like the sprint.

(no subject)

Have you ever read or watched something with a section that made you go 'What? WHAT???? I can't believe they are saying/doing/advocating that!' And then you trundle off to look at what people said in their reviews but can't find a single person mentioning it at all. And you wonder why they wouldn't mention because surely it can't just be you alone who had this reaction.

Something someone said recently about P.D. James made me remember that this was my experience reading Original Sin. I like P.D, James and An Unsuitable Job for a Woman is one of my favourite detective novels, but this book, well, it was just bizarre. There's a part of the story that revolves around a disgraced Anglican priest who was disgraced for interfering with young boys. It's not rape, but there seems to have certainly been touching and inappropriate behaviour. However, the story and the characters within it see it as a shocking and dreadful thing that he should have lost his parish because some lower class boys were encouraged to beef up their stories by well-meaning and obtrusive people when everyone knows those sort of boys would say anything and nothing too terrible happened. No, honestly, that was pretty much the gist of it, especially the bit about the lower class boys. I read that bit several times because I thought I must have been misreading it. But when I went to look not a single reviewer even mentioned that bit; the closest I came was a comment in The Guardian about James' tory (small t) politics and view of England.