Magnetic Words: Firefly-inspired Chinese Words & Phrases

While doing some Christmas shopping at ThinkGeek I looked at their Firefly Magnetic prose and was disappointed by their rendering of the Chinese (Mandarin) phrases included. (Of course, the Chinese used in Firefly is 25th century Chinese, so it could be Anglicized, but that isn't quite as fun). So I made my own:



And so can you: Words and phrases file (PDF), English-Chinese List, Chinese (by Pinyin)-English List. You’ll also need a pair of scissors and some adhesive-backed magnetic sheets such as those by MagPro [e.g. amazon] (also available at Michael’s arts & craft stores).
These PDFs are creative commons licensed. Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share-Alike

Maps in Film: Lost Girl

A while back, I was watching the Canadian TV series Lost Girl [imdb]. In the episode ten ("The Mourning After") the location of a precious object is thaumaturgically ascertained, or more accurately, discovered via map dowsing.


Of course, map dowsing requires a map and when I see a map in film,  I always wonder whether it is a real or fictional map of a real or fictional place. Well, in this case it is a real map of the Niagara Gorge. The map is a 1912 topographic map produced cooperatively between the Geological Survey of Canada and the United States Geological Survey (close-up below).


A copy of the map resides in the University of Toronto's Map Library [link] and has been enabled for digital access [link]. It seems reasonable to suggest that the map seen on screen is a copy of UT's, especially considering that the show is filmed in Toronto.