J and I watched Amy

What a sadly troubled soul and what a loss. From the very introductory scene, they are shooting a birthday party of 14-year-olds and she sings happy birthday, and you realize two things: one, she's already got that spark; she is going to be the real deal Amy Winehouse. And two, this is like a nature documentary and you are watching the playful young antelope... the lions will be here soon enough. Nobody could save her, a terrible modern tragedy.

What a brilliant description, UT.

I loved Winehouse. First time I heard Back to Black, I was mesmerised. She's up there with Joplin and Hendrix, for me, as a tragic loss to music.

I was blown away by the amount of footage there was of her in private moments. Much of it had to be provided by the boyfriend, and little of it showed him in a flattering light. Is he that much of an attention whore or was the price that high that he couldn't refuse?

In any event, I was moved by that documentary. I really felt like I knew her after watching that and I was really sympathetic. What a beautiful but tragic life.

There were a few parts of this documentary that made want to cry. This stuff baffles me. I sort of know some of the reasons why it is the way it is - economics plays a large part I guess. But - it's so extreme and counterproductive, at a societal and species level, it is baffling.

The level of internalisation of a lack of value of the self, for a woman to kill her girl babies and keep trying for the son, is heartbreaking. Communities that kill their own girls, and then have to kidnap other girls to be brides, because they haven't any of their own to marry. If it wasn't so brutal and tragic it would be funny in its absurdity.

These people are animals.

Nope. They're people. Most of them aren't even bad people - they are products of a social system that tells them from the second they are born, and throughout every part of life, that boys are valuable and girls are a drain. Bearing a son brings plaudits and celebration. Bearing a daughter brings grief and recrimination.

If you and I had each been born to that system, we'd probably believe the same thing.

Prolly but I don't have to like it.

Hah. Fair enough.

Don't know if this will play outside uk - I hope so. I've liked all of Worsley's series so far. She's an excellent historian and a really engaging presenter. Russian history is interesting, but I don't know that much about it. I did an a-level history course years ago with the road to the Russian Revolution as one of the topics, and I know odds and sods from the 18th and 19th centuries. This is the first ep of Worsley's history of the Romanovs:

(clip sadly deleted)

I bought the Amy video. Wow. It was a perfect marriage of real footage and editing. What I mean to say is that the video was real but it was so well done that a critical person might have not felt the beauty of it. She was one talented woman.

Night of the Grizzlies. Summer of '67 (wo)man and beast collide. Not great film-making but the story is gripping. Puts our current National Park programs in perspective. Apparently there is a book by the same name which should be good if a little dated. They talked about these two conflicting and wrong-headed ideas about nature we have. The older religious strain of wild being evil and the hippy dippy strain of rainbows and cuddly animals. Anyway the grizzly population was backed into a corner, huge numbers of tourists, lots of trash, lots of food waste, a hot dry summer, forest fires, and a lack of berries during the crucial late summer feed. Throw in outdoorsy young people, a Vatican II priest, a Vietnam trained helo pilot, a Native American kid, a couple of doctors, and some park rangers and you've got quite a morality play.

Could one of the mods kindly remove the youtube clip above, please - the account that posted it has been suspended

The Death Of "Superman Lives": What happened? on TMC

That was a pretty good one.