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Post by Anders on Sept 21, 2008 12:17:38 GMT -8
I've never wanted the West Wing to be a documentary more than now.
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Post by Anders on Sept 21, 2008 9:07:53 GMT -8
I watched G.I. Jane earlier today. Not a great film by any measure, but Demi Moore looks good in a crew cut and looking it up on IMDb just now showed me they have a "Head Shaving" key word which may have been more than I needed to know. The most closely related key words are, in falling order: - Death
- Blood
- Murder
- Nudity
- Violence
- Blood Splatter
- Father Son Relationship
- Female Nudity
- Gore
- Police
- Revenge
- Title Spoken By Character
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Post by Anders on Sept 18, 2008 23:09:26 GMT -8
The second episode of Fringe was a huge disappointment. (I haven't quite finished watching it yet and I'm honestly not sure if I'm going to bother.) I had thought that this would be a show without writers raised on a steady diet of stupid pills, but I guess I forgot they are working in American television.
Pseudo-science is fine as the concept for a show, I don't mind that at all, as long as they babble enough and stay within spitting distance of reality, or at the very least remain internally consistant in their deviations from it.
But when their explanations are directly contradicted by what happens in the show it doesn't matter how much they techno-babble if they don't adress that. And here they don't.
Specifically, if you posit that the eye captures the last thing you see before you die (which they themselves point out is an idea made up by Jules Verne) and then go on to use an extremely stupid explanation as to how that could actually work (muscle relaxants making the electrical impulses stay in the optical nerve for hours after the person dies), they produce an image that wasn't the last thing the person saw.
Yes, that's right. They get an image that shows "one of the last things she saw". Because apparently muscle relaxants make your optical nerves work backwards, taking back the electrical impulses it already sent to the brain.
All of this is of course ignoring the fact that it's the brain and not the eyes that create the images we see. If you could catch the light that entered the eye, sure, but the signals in the optical nerve correspond to highly abstract things like edges; it's the brain that puts all this together to an image. Not that I would expect writers for American television (or, to be fair, any kind of television) to know this, but you'd think that they would at the very least try to stay consistent with their own ideas.
Oh well, I guess that's what I get for getting my hopes up. I'll give it one more episode, but only because John Noble is brilliant as the crazy mad scientist.
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Post by Anders on Sept 17, 2008 12:13:28 GMT -8
www.ballot-access.org/2008/09/16/barr-sues-texas-for-excusing-late-filing-by-republican-and-democratic-presidential-candidates/There are Texas Supreme Court decisions that have put candidates on the ballot even though deadlines were not met, but they involved errors by party officials. In this case, party officials made no errors; they were simply unable to comply with the law. Lenora Fulani had filed a similar lawsuit in Indiana in 1988, since both the Democratic and Republican Parties had failed to file timely. In Fulani v Hogsett, the 7th circuit ruled that, since she was also listed on the ballot, she had standing to sue; but that she filed her lawsuit eleven weeks after the deadline had been missed, so was guilty of laches. www.ajc.com/community/content/news/stories/2008/09/16/bob_barr_lawsuit.htmlBarr first raised the issue in a press release earlier this month. Ashley Burton, a spokesperson for the Texas Secretary of State’s office, responded at that time, saying, “Both parties made filings with our office before the deadline, supplemented their filings and will be on the November ballot.” Also this: www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=14&entry_id=30395"Where the campaigns advertise tells us a great deal about the candidates' electoral strategies. Post-convention ad buys give us the first insights into the campaigns' assessments of where they think they are competitive as the fall campaign heats up. Advertising represents reality," said Professor Ken Goldstein of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the director of the Wisconsin Advertising Project. According to the WAP: "McCain and Obama are roughly even in spending in Colorado, Florida, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Obama is out-advertising McCain by nearly 3:2 in Missouri and by nearly 3:1 in Virginia. McCain has aired virtually no ads in Indiana, Montana and North Dakota. McCain's campaign is, however, out-advertising Obama by over 3:2 in Pennsylvania and over 2:1 in Iowa. McCain is also out-advertising Obama by a wide margin in Minnesota -- a state where Obama has spent just $18,000." And this: Obama is airing ads in Indiana, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota, and Virginia -- which were red states in 2000 and 2004. Is he serious or just trying to bleed the McCain/RNC of cash? North Dakota? I have no idea how reliable this is, but I'm sure someone here will find it interesting.
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Post by Anders on Sept 17, 2008 7:54:43 GMT -8
Huh, I never noticed that. Something to look for the next time I re-watch T2.
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Post by Anders on Sept 16, 2008 11:15:51 GMT -8
I started watching War a couple of weeks back but I couldn't quite get into it. Partly it may have been Statham being Statham Character 1A, partly me not feeling like that type of movie at the time. I'll probably give it another go sometime in the not too distant future.
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Post by Anders on Sept 15, 2008 11:52:29 GMT -8
I'm using Firefox 3.0.1 with a new and fairly clean installation (meaning I've added about a dozen add-ons...)
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Post by Anders on Sept 15, 2008 7:44:05 GMT -8
Thanks for the heads-up!
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Post by Anders on Sept 15, 2008 7:41:19 GMT -8
New shows: Decent but slow moving, as far as pacing is concerned. Hopefully it will pick up sooner than later. I think the first episode did a good job of providing some action while setting the scene and introducing the characters. I've only just started watching the second one. Re: True Blood (Nestled quoting doesn't seem to work quite right here. I think it could work, provided the actors can hold up their end. Re: Fringe I've seen maybe two episodes of the X-Files all put together, but I know what kind of show it was. And yeah, if the episodes can't stand on their own I probably won't hang around (unless the big story is very compelling). The actors are good so far, and though the science is babbly I might be able to accept that if it's also cool. In a way it's a bit like the Middleman played straight. Amazon says yes, since Sept. 2. I never particularly liked Cartman in the first place, so that change isn't very big for me. To me he has at best been an opportunistic, egotistical, sadistic asshole, so turning him into an actual villain isn't really a change. Where I think they're better than Family Guy is primarily in being able to tell a story well.
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Post by Anders on Sept 14, 2008 8:21:12 GMT -8
In no particular order...
New shows:
* Sons of Anarchy
Seems promising, and I always find Ron Pearlman worth watching.
* True Blood
Could be good, could be crap. They didn't sell me on the main character in the first episode.
* Fringe
Seems a lot like Global Frequency for TV, and much more X-Files than Lost. Promising.
Returning shows:
* The Big Bang Theory
I liked the first season. The geeks were authentic enough for a sitcom, and it was funny and cute.
* Californication
The first season was awesome with a few dips to merely good. The ending was perfect IMO, so tacking on a second season is risky, but I'll definitely watch it.
* CSI
I've given up on Miami and New York a while ago, but the original is still decent.
* Desperate Housewives
Still entertaining, though their episode formula is getting slightly annoying.
* 30 Rock
Occasionally brilliant, always entertaining.
* Family Guy
Not a high priority for me anymore. Not bad but not very innovative either.
* Robot Chicken
Ten minutes of geeky fun when you don't feel like thinking.
* South Park
Has the edge on Family Guy in nearly every way, except they often get a bit too heavy-handed.
* Terminator
It's good, but there's something about it that keeps it from clicking for me (other than the fact that Linda Hamilton is missing from every episode).
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Post by Anders on Sept 14, 2008 8:03:39 GMT -8
I'm 36, Swedish and a polygeek: games (computer, board and roleplaying), comics, movies (SF/fantasy and other), TV, math etc. I work in law enforcement.* My current geekly interests are focused on 4E D&D, CoH/V and the upcoming TV season. * As a filing clerk.
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Post by Anders on Sept 14, 2008 4:03:57 GMT -8
I'm fine with it. We Swedes have a long tradition of bending over for... er, cooperating with the Germans.
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Post by Anders on Sept 13, 2008 1:52:48 GMT -8
Er, seems I was wrong about being able to see the private folder before. I thought one of the other ones was it.
Anyway, I can see it now including the message in it.
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Post by Anders on Sept 13, 2008 0:16:27 GMT -8
This is Anders, and I want in. I couldn't see the folder until I registered, but now that I am I could both see it and enter it (though it looks empty; could be because it is).
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