This one goes out to regulars Richard, Debbie, Luisa and Andy: What I Did Over Christmas Vacation.

Well, the first quarter of Born Smart? is up on the web now.

We’ve been adding two “digitally-remastered” pages a week since October. Aside from the tone-removal and colouring process, part of the task is updating where we can, but leaving it be—warts and all—in most other cases. There are too many places where we say “but we could draw/design that better now!” Must resist the urge. Still, there is one particularly irksome page that is going under the knife in a few weeks…

The worst of it was updating a chart on page 23, which took five days of researching that no one has tried to create in a number of years, and there are a number of recent scientific battles going on that make it a minefield. I was very grateful for the help (during the pre-Christmas rush, no less) of T. Michael Keesey, who does an interesting blog called Parry and Carney: each week there’s a dinosaur cartoon, and an essay about recent news about reptile in history or goings on in the Cretaceous and thereabouts. He’s a good man—and thorough.

And we could get nowhere in French without the proof-reading and supplementary translation work of Mireille Messier too.

We’re not promoting this yet, because bigger things are afoot for Doodle of the Week soon—but first we have to get back to a regular work schedule, don’t we Photon?

Thanks to Grandma, who is really enjoying spending time with Jon, we’ve been able to get out to a couple of movies. Moreover, we’re going to real grown-up movies, not lighter fare. It’s been a long while (probably not since Jon’s diagnosis and shortly thereafter we went to see The English Patient, which was quite a fluid-leaking little catharsis, may I say).

Thursday evening we saw Pan’s Labyrinth, which has been getting lots of buzz but it didn’t quite click with us. Not that it was bad, but afterward we kept visiting what we think were missed opportunities. It wasn’t especially subtle, and it just didn’t get under our skin.

However, this may be because the week before we saw one of the best pieces of celluloid that’s been produced this decade. Children of Men is a powerful, powerful piece of cinema by Alfonso Cuarà³n, and both of us recommend it very highly. That night, both Laura and I had trouble sleeping, and each woke up for an hour independantly as our brains percolated through the thoughts and feelings the film had generated. It wasn’t even specific scenes, though there are several memorable long moments that are unforgettable.

Don’t go watch the trailer; the less you know about it the better. And we highly recommend seeing it in a theatre where, frankly, you’re trapped. It is a visceral piece that is truly for adults.