One of the first

I start this evening with some blog stats...

My post about being a skeptic of both sides of the global warming debate was viewed directly 83 times (and likely many more times from people reading the home page of the blog). The follow-up post, in which I responded to my friend and debate partner, was viewed 18 times.

I had the fewest number of posts to this blog in 2015 with only 285. I had other priorities this year. The next fewest was 329 in 2011. The most number of posts was 459 in 2009. The average over the last eight years (including this year) is 378 posts a year.



This afternoon I saw the movie The Danish Girl the story of Einar Wegener who transitions from male to female in the 1920s, becoming one of the first to have transitioning surgery. She becomes Lili Elbe. The other half of the story is the response of wife Gerda. Over the course of the movie we see Einar realize she is a woman in a man's body. This was not understood in 1920s Denmark or Paris where Lili and Gerda spend some time.

Eddie Redmayne does a great job as Einar/Lili. There has been talk of him receiving the Oscar for Best Actor two years in a row (he won last year for portraying Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything). Alicia Vikander as Gerda could be nominated for Best Actress.

There was a real Lili ad Gerda. Lili kept a diary, which, along with letters and dictated material, was the source material for the book "Man into Woman" by Niels Hoyer (pseudonym for Ernst Jacobson). But the movie isn't based on that, it is based on the novel "The Danish Girl" which is much more fiction than fact. More annoying, the movie strayed quite a ways from the novel. The book portrays Gerda as bisexual or lesbian, preferring Lili to Einar, and straying far from the marriage. The movie portrays Gerda as straight and faithful.

I also wondered about the ending. I don't want to spoil it (this is a good introduction to what it means to be transgender and I recommend it), so there won't be any detail here. But I wonder how far the movie ending strayed from the novel and from the real life Lili.