Florida Aquarium

So, as I mentioned, this weekend we headed off to the Florida Aquarium. The drive to Tampa is, alas, not all that exciting except for the appearance of rather incongruous and unrealistic looking dinosaurs, which I must, but must, visit some day. It wasn't this weekend, because my companions are not dinosaur people. "It doesn't look very interesting," said A.

"Fake dinosaurs!"

This did not encourage anyone else to stop.

Fortunately, the Florida Aquarium has Utterly Cute Otters, along with many other species of varying levels of cuteness and utter disgustingness (and, cardinalximenez and fizzgig_bites: cichlids! Lots of cichlids!) and things to touch and some birds. It's quite well done - informative but not overly educational or technical. Plus, otters. If I do have a negative note about the Florida Aquarium, it is this: the disabled accessibility. The disabled parking – well, in fairness, all of the parking – is no place near the entrance; the ticket booths are too high for most wheelchair users; getting into the bathrooms with a scooter was extremely difficult; and reaching the top exhibit on aquaria, accessible to most users through the wetlands exhibit area, required leaving the general exhibits, going back to the elevator, heading outside and going around on the roof, and then reaching the exhibit.


( Cut for pictures. )

Shadows on the Reef, part six:

The series continues.

Stargate Universe

Erk.

So, for the majority of you that have not been watching this show, here's how it works. Most of the episodes so far feature a bunch of rather depressed and angry people realizing that yet another component of their incredibly old and decrepit spaceship is falling apart, and watching said rather depressed and angry people run around like mad trying to fix things while snapping at each other and being Really Mean until yay, the ship manages to rescue itself making all the humans look kinda dumb and petty. This is all a lot more fun than I'm making it sound and gloriously cheesy and stupid. Love it. I would love it even more if I had any way of distinguishing the characters beyond "angry one," "angrier one," "seriously angrier one," "hey, that chick from ER," and "oooh, breasts," but I digress. Also, occasional sex, so, yay Stargate for, um, breaking boundaries, I guess.

(I live in serious hope that another ER veteran will show up, so I can go, "Oooh, that chick from ER! No, that one!)

And then there's the rest of the show. Because by an incredible coincidence, the people happen to have brought along some stone thingies that let them switch minds with people back on Earth. The immediate question that leaps to mind (er, excuse the pun) is that if minds can be switched and, um, brought back, why can't bodies, and the second question is, why does mind switching make everybody so cranky and mean, and shouldn't someone be investigating this phenomena? But I digress. The point is, when this happens, the show gets Very Serious and Deep, and not incidentally, morally questionable and pretty disturbing.

( Cut for mild spoilers for the most recent episode and a brief reminder of what rape is. )