JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

As part of its Women’s Month celebration, the LitFlix book and film enthusiasts club of Thomson Reuters, the news and information services company, invited us to give a talk on Great Women Characters in Literature last March 11 at their head office in Bonifacio Global City. There was quite a large audience for the talk; more importantly, they were really into the topic and asked interesting questions. (We have a horror of looking out into the audience and realizing that they are having out-of-body experiences. This happens in schools where students are required to listen to us.)

Among the literary characters who wound up in the discussion were Elizabeth Bennet, Jane Eyre, Athena of the Greek myths, Buffy Summers, the mythological sources of Katniss, Nancy Drew, the women of Game of Thrones, the protagonists of the rebooted fairy tales in Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, and Ursula Todd of Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life.

After the talk and Q&A we had a book-signing. Thanks to Marla Garin-Alvarez, the LitFlix Club, and Ogilvy and Mather for setting up the session. If you’d like us to give a talk to your club or organization, email saffron.safin@gmail.com.

Photo from NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day

Or as our druid calls it, New Year’s Day.

These infinity loop thingies are analemmas. An analemma is the pattern made by the sun’s movement across the sky.

It’s the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere. Here it feels like summer already.

Read Cinema of Consequence by Andrew Maerkle at ART-iT.

* * * * *

Mention “historical epic” and the mind’s eye conjures up actors in period costume, putting on quaint manners, and wielding antique weapons. Add “Filipino” to “historical epic” and we imagine fair-skinned people with tall noses wearing ruffled shirts, overacting, and making threats in stilted Spanish to people who look like us.

Lav Diaz’s Norte, Hangganan ng Kasaysayan, which landed in the British Film Institute/Sight and Sound (the people who put out the list of the greatest films in history) list of the top ten films in the world in 2013, is not a work we would immediately describe as a historical epic. And yet Norte engages with Philippine history in a way few films ever have. It is set in present-day Ilocos Norte, peopled with characters so familiar to us that they might be living next door, and animated with situations many of us have grappled with. How is that “historical”?

Read our column at InterAksyon.com.

* * * * *

The Tuesday night screenings of Norte at Ayala Cinemas have been packed. Wonders never cease. So that’s the way to sell a four-hour artfilm: Show it just once a week at a popular venue. (You can still get tickets for the March 31 screening at Glorietta 4, but book them Now.) Weekends would be nice, but cinemas are booked solid on Saturday and Sunday nights. At this point a regular theatrical run would not be sustainable (See the box-office history of independent movies), but we are developing a mass audience for indie cinema. Soon. Next: a Cinematheque.

– Saffy, we’re home!
– Go away, I hatesss you.
– We missed you.
– I did not miss you at all.
– Look, we got you a present from Palawan.
– What is this?
– It’s a pearl necklace.
– These are not pearls.
– Well, they’re mother-of-pearl. (It’s actually a bracelet for humans. You can get three of them for Php100 from Badjao hawkers.)
– I thought so. Pearls do not usually come in plastic bags.

To ingratiate ourself with the cat, we offered her a can of Friskies Classic Paté. Saffy ate a few bites, then began to growl and inspect her teeth with her tongue, as if she were trying to dislodge something. She also batted at her cheeks with her paws.

Being familiar with Saffy’s moods, we knew that these growls were not of the “Get the hell away from my food dish” variety she uses on Mat and Drogon. Saffy had a toothache.

We consulted our vet Mayem Yao, who continues to treat Saffy even if this cranky cat requires three people to hold her down, and many members of the Pendragon Vet Clinic staff have received painful souvenirs from her claws. If your critters need vets, we recommend Pendragon highly. Text 0922-VETHELP.

Her toothache gone, Saffy ate half the can of Friskies paté. An hour later she climbed onto the table, sat on our keyboard and glared at us. This means “I want food.” Clearly she intended to make up for the meals she had not enjoyed while she had the toothache.

– This necklace is not bad.
– You can have all the necklaces (bracelets). They don’t fit Mat’s and Drogon’s necks.
– That is because they are fat.
– You are not skinny.
– Shut up and bring my Fancy Feast.

We get back from vacation and immediately the brain must go from basic sentience to cosmic cramming, because the BICEP-2 experiment at the South Pole has just found something amazing. Essentially it has detected a signal from the very beginning of the universe, at the moment of inflation.

This discovery will rearrange our understanding of everything. It is probably bigger than the first contact with extraterrestrials.

We’ve been waiting for it since we saw this movie.

Read the Nature special on gravitational waves and cosmic inflation.

Albert Einstein predicted this. Read his paper outlining the basics of relativity, via io9.

The Big Bang happened. Cosmic inflation is real. Gravitational waves are real. Next: Gravitons. Next: Quantum gravity. Next: Multiverses. Next: Time Lord as a viable career.