Something must be done about this season of The Office. We all remember the good old days of the Dundies, the Dunder-Mifflin Olympiad, and Dwight channeling Mussolini making a convention speech. The reason all of that worked is because it was just this side of frivolous; it was character-driven comedy, and it was intensely comedic; it never took itself too seriously.
Fast-forward to Season 5, and Diwali parties and Fun Runs have given way to what exactly? Pam's parents facing very real drama when they intend to split up? Michael having real feelings for a woman, almost to the point of you feeling sympathy for the man? Jim and Pam's relationship, which we rooted for through seasons of Roy, straining over the bounds of distance and separated interests? All of this may work for a character drama, but it's not the Office that we've come to know and love.
Most of the episodes in the first four seasons you could walk away from chuckling and waiting for next week's installment (or next minute's installment, if you were watching the "electronic" version). But most of the time now, you walk away with more of a cringe than a smile, and instead of amusement, it's more often a bittersweet far more bitter than sweet, or than funny for that matter.
One viewer posted an impassioned defense of the most recent episode, "New Boss", on Hulu. In true Web 2.0 style, I'm going to respond to parts of that review.
The show really used to have no plot - it was just about a bunch of people working together in an office for a boss that was a pain in the butt.
Is this a bad thing? In effect, you're accusing The Office of being a show about nothing. Recall another show-about-nothing, Seinfeld, which was probably the funniest, most successful, and best-loved comedy that television has ever seen. Asserting that The Office has to have a plot to be funny, or watchable, or successful, is a fallacy.
But, now, the show has embraced more serious and true to life story lines. For instance, the difficulties of beginning a family in a plunging economy[...]
Is this a good thing? I can only name a handful of shows (Freaks and Geeks is one of the few) that are successful because they accurately portray "true to life" stories. The rest are straight-up fantasy (Battlestar Galactica, Lost) or are predicated on such obvious exaggerations of whatever nuggets of reality may have existed that they may as well be straight fantasy (24, House). I have a life in the real world. I don't need television to mirror it too closely.
Another review had the following to say:
[...]it was a good plot-moving episode that finally creates a multi-episode story-arc that we can look forward to.
No. Not from The Office. If I want something that complicated, I'll again turn to something like 24. It's okay for a show, particularly a half-hour comedy, to have perfectly self-contained mini-plots in each episode. Look at Arrested Development or Curb Your Enthusiasm or even older The Office. That's not to say that what happened in one episode of those shows never affected what happened in another episode. Arrested Development in particular did very clever things with recurring storylines. But to create something as inherently dramatic as a "multi-episode story-arc" has no place in a comedy.
In the end, this discussion comes down to exactly what you want to see from The Office. If you envision it as a "dromedy", then you might not mind all the changes that Season 5 has brought. But if you see it as straight comedy, like I do, then all of this is more than a little odd. Some people insist that the show has had its dramatic moments all along, but I maintain that the evidence to support that argument just isn't there in the early seasons.
Currently listening: "Comfortably Numb", Pink Floyd
Friday, March 20, 2009
Friday, March 06, 2009
Reading Challenge: A Facebook Meme
Usually I hate memes, but then again usually they don't involve books either. This one is interesting. The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. My count is hovering mid-20s.
How do your reading habits stack up?
You can copy, edit and paste into a note of your own.
1 Pride and Prejudice: Nope, and I’m not sure it would be a book I’d enjoy so much. However, I’ve just become aware of “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”, which I think I’d enjoy very much.
2 The Lord of the Rings: Yes, all three, twice, and two copies of it. But I’ve only seen each movie a time or two, in contrast to many of my friends.
3 Jane Eyre: Nope.
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling: At least twice each. I was actually in London the night the last book came out. Talk about some interesting people… and I like to think I got on British television twice.
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee: Yes, 9th grade English, and I definitely enjoyed it. Atticus Finch is one of the most awesome characters from the 20th century: the prototypical Southern gentleman attorney, and a dead eye firing shotguns at rabid dogs.
6 The Bible: Not cover-to-cover, but enough to get the gist. I know at least as much about it as the average Catholic, so I’ll go with yes.
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte: Ugh. Yes, AP Lit, and not by choice. Although Mr. Lockwood is wonderfully douche-y.
8 1984 - George Orwell: Yep, back in middle school. I really think I ought to read it again.
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman: No, though I’d like to, to see what all the hype and controversy was about.
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens: Nope.
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott: Nah, another “not so much a Matt book”.
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy: Nope.
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller: No, though it’s on the list for this summer.
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare: Not even close, but the Tempest is my favorite play of all time.
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier: Never heard of it.
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien: Yes, three times, and I own two copies of it too.
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk: Never heard of it either.
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger: Nope, though it might be on the list for this summer as well.
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger: Never heard of it either.
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot: No. My dad’s least favorite book of all time is Silas Marner, so I’ve avoided Mr. Eliot’s books, perhaps a bit prejudicially.
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell: No, and I’m the rare Georgian who’s never seen the movie either. Honestly, I don’t know how into it I’d be.
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald: Yep, 11th grade English. I enjoyed it, but that’s another one that probably merits a re-read.
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens: Nah… I don’t like Dickens much at all.
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy: No, like many readers, I’m scared of its length.
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams: Of course! (and yes, I know where my towel is.)
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh: Never heard of this one either.
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Yes, voluntarily, as a summer project before AP Lit. One of the great works of all time. Not just Russian literature, or 19th century literature, but ever. It’s by no means en easy read; long and weighty. But if you have the patience for the length and curiosity for the moral issues, highly recommended.
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck: Yeah, and I didn’t care for it at all.
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll: I’ve… er… played the Kingdom Hearts level based on it?
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame: Nope.
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy: Nope again.
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens: Again with the Dickens?
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis: Pass the Chronic! Yeah, read them all, but it’s been a very long time.
34 Emma - Jane Austen: Nope.
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen: Nope again.
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis: As part of the Chronic, yes.
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini: No, though I’ve heard it’s very good.
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres: Never heard of it.
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden: Watched the movie?
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne: At this point, the story is so collectively etched into the youth of America that it hardly matters that I’ve never sat down and read it.
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell: Yep, way back in 8th grade English. I think I was one of the only ones who really understood the allegory. Enjoyed it.
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown: Read all of Dan Brown’s books, which admittedly are pretty much all the same book anyway. I found them entertaining.
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Nope.
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving: Nope.
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins: Nope.
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery: Nope.
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy: No.
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood: No. This is a bad streak I’m on…
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding: Yes, 10th grade English. I actually didn’t care for it so much. Too much symbolism crammed down your throat, and the ending is awful. Still, the influence on Lost (particularly seasons 1 and 4) is undeniable.
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan: Nope.
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel: Nope.
52 Dune - Frank Herbert: Yeah, and I was disappointed. For the sci-fi classic it’s supposed to be, I thought I’d really enjoy it, but I found it confusing, and I didn’t care about half the characters. Interestingly, the prequel series, written within the last 5 or so years, are a lot less deep but a lot more fun to read.
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons: Nope, never heard of it.
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen: Only if there are zombies in this one too.
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth: Never heard of it.
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon: Or it.
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens: Dickens.
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley: No, though I might want to.
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon: That was the one about the autistic kid who decides what sort of day it’s going to be by the colors of cars he sees, right? Read it and liked it.
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Nope.
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck: Yeah, 11th grade English. Talk about a sad book.
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov: Nope.
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt: Never heard of it.
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold: Or it.
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas: Wonderful book. I only read it recently, and I was surprised never to have encountered it before that. Highly recommended.
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac: Nah, I don’t think I’d have patience for his beatnik “dharma” business.
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy: Nope. A friend of mine told me it was really bad.
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding: Nope.
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie: Nope.
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville: A cursory study of it in 11th grade English. Watched the movie, read excerpts. I think it's one of those books that probably has a downright excellent story buried in there if you have the patience for 19th-century dark-romantic wordiness.
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens: More Dickens?
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker: No, actually.
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett: Nope.
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson: Never heard of this one.
75 Ulysses - James Joyce: I'm scared to death of Joyce, mostly because of things like 4000-word sentences. Tell me that anyone can comprehend that--including Joyce himself--and you'd be lying.
76 The Inferno - Dante: Yes, plus a high-level view of the Purgatorio and the Paradiso, in AP Lit. I liked it a lot, because there's so many levels you can read and understand the story on. Also, it gives an interesting glimpse into Middle Ages Catholicism, an important reference point for my religion.
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome: Never heard of it.
78 Germinal - Emile Zola: Or it.
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thakeray: Ugh, no, I don't think I'd enjoy it at all.
80 Possession - AS Byatt: Nope.
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens: Saw the... Muppets movie?
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell: Nope.
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker: Saw the play?
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro: Never heard of it.
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert: Nope.
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry: Nope.
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White: Yes, a long time ago.
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom: Nope, but I read Tuesdays with Morrie, and it was really sad.
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Actually no; those are probably worth reading.
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton: Nope.
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad: Ooh, yes. Interesting book. Way better as a springboard to discuss good and evil and morality than as a narrative. And yet, "The horror! The horror!" is one of the classic lines of modern literature.
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery: Saw the... Lost episode called that?
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks: Nope.
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams: Somehow, I managed to escape this one back in 9th grade English. Seems like an awfully divisive book, with more people leaning toward the side of "it sucked."
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole: Nope.
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute: Nope.
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas: No, though given how much I liked The Count of Monte Cristo, I might give it a shot.
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare: Once in AP Lit, and again in English at Tech. AP Lit was a lot more fun, because we got to do a read-through of it. I read the part of Laertes, which was great, until our teacher declined to allow me and the guy reading Hamlet to have an actual swordfight.
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl: Probably yes, as a kid.
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo: Nah, and I've never seen the musical either.
My total is 25, give or take, depending on if you count "part of it" as a yes or no. I think that's pretty respectable.
Now, five books I'm surprised were not on this list.
The Crucible - Arthur Miller: If The Tempest is my favorite play, The Crucible is a close second. Actually, I think it's odd that there wasn't anything by Arthur Miller, or Tennessee Williams, or any of their contemporaries. It would be like compiling a similar list of musical compositions, and leaving out Gershwin, Copland, and Bernstein. The middle of the 20th century was very good to American artistic development, and it deserves some representation here.
Candide - Voltaire: Possibly the best-known satire in literary history, and its humor is still relevant centuries later.
Ender’s Game - Orson Scott Card: Certainly a better sci-fi tale than Dune, with more compelling characterization, a more straightforward plot, and actually some compelling philosophical questions raised.
Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand: The immortal "Who Is John Galt?" and its answer--both literal and symbolic--is one of the most enduring and provoking inquiries of modern literature. Whether or not you agree with Objectivism, or any of Rand's ideas at all, Atlas Shrugged provides an intellectual counterpoint to some of the political philosophies active in the 20th century, and actually manages to be a compelling narrative at the same time.
The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne: I actually didn't so much like The Scarlet Letter, but its connection to American culture--both nascent America in the 17th century and developing America in the 19th--is undeniable.
Currently listening: Water Music, GF Handel
How do your reading habits stack up?
You can copy, edit and paste into a note of your own.
1 Pride and Prejudice: Nope, and I’m not sure it would be a book I’d enjoy so much. However, I’ve just become aware of “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”, which I think I’d enjoy very much.
2 The Lord of the Rings: Yes, all three, twice, and two copies of it. But I’ve only seen each movie a time or two, in contrast to many of my friends.
3 Jane Eyre: Nope.
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling: At least twice each. I was actually in London the night the last book came out. Talk about some interesting people… and I like to think I got on British television twice.
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee: Yes, 9th grade English, and I definitely enjoyed it. Atticus Finch is one of the most awesome characters from the 20th century: the prototypical Southern gentleman attorney, and a dead eye firing shotguns at rabid dogs.
6 The Bible: Not cover-to-cover, but enough to get the gist. I know at least as much about it as the average Catholic, so I’ll go with yes.
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte: Ugh. Yes, AP Lit, and not by choice. Although Mr. Lockwood is wonderfully douche-y.
8 1984 - George Orwell: Yep, back in middle school. I really think I ought to read it again.
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman: No, though I’d like to, to see what all the hype and controversy was about.
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens: Nope.
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott: Nah, another “not so much a Matt book”.
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy: Nope.
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller: No, though it’s on the list for this summer.
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare: Not even close, but the Tempest is my favorite play of all time.
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier: Never heard of it.
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien: Yes, three times, and I own two copies of it too.
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk: Never heard of it either.
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger: Nope, though it might be on the list for this summer as well.
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger: Never heard of it either.
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot: No. My dad’s least favorite book of all time is Silas Marner, so I’ve avoided Mr. Eliot’s books, perhaps a bit prejudicially.
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell: No, and I’m the rare Georgian who’s never seen the movie either. Honestly, I don’t know how into it I’d be.
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald: Yep, 11th grade English. I enjoyed it, but that’s another one that probably merits a re-read.
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens: Nah… I don’t like Dickens much at all.
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy: No, like many readers, I’m scared of its length.
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams: Of course! (and yes, I know where my towel is.)
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh: Never heard of this one either.
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Yes, voluntarily, as a summer project before AP Lit. One of the great works of all time. Not just Russian literature, or 19th century literature, but ever. It’s by no means en easy read; long and weighty. But if you have the patience for the length and curiosity for the moral issues, highly recommended.
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck: Yeah, and I didn’t care for it at all.
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll: I’ve… er… played the Kingdom Hearts level based on it?
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame: Nope.
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy: Nope again.
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens: Again with the Dickens?
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis: Pass the Chronic! Yeah, read them all, but it’s been a very long time.
34 Emma - Jane Austen: Nope.
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen: Nope again.
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis: As part of the Chronic, yes.
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini: No, though I’ve heard it’s very good.
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres: Never heard of it.
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden: Watched the movie?
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne: At this point, the story is so collectively etched into the youth of America that it hardly matters that I’ve never sat down and read it.
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell: Yep, way back in 8th grade English. I think I was one of the only ones who really understood the allegory. Enjoyed it.
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown: Read all of Dan Brown’s books, which admittedly are pretty much all the same book anyway. I found them entertaining.
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Nope.
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving: Nope.
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins: Nope.
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery: Nope.
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy: No.
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood: No. This is a bad streak I’m on…
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding: Yes, 10th grade English. I actually didn’t care for it so much. Too much symbolism crammed down your throat, and the ending is awful. Still, the influence on Lost (particularly seasons 1 and 4) is undeniable.
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan: Nope.
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel: Nope.
52 Dune - Frank Herbert: Yeah, and I was disappointed. For the sci-fi classic it’s supposed to be, I thought I’d really enjoy it, but I found it confusing, and I didn’t care about half the characters. Interestingly, the prequel series, written within the last 5 or so years, are a lot less deep but a lot more fun to read.
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons: Nope, never heard of it.
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen: Only if there are zombies in this one too.
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth: Never heard of it.
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon: Or it.
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens: Dickens.
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley: No, though I might want to.
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon: That was the one about the autistic kid who decides what sort of day it’s going to be by the colors of cars he sees, right? Read it and liked it.
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Nope.
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck: Yeah, 11th grade English. Talk about a sad book.
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov: Nope.
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt: Never heard of it.
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold: Or it.
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas: Wonderful book. I only read it recently, and I was surprised never to have encountered it before that. Highly recommended.
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac: Nah, I don’t think I’d have patience for his beatnik “dharma” business.
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy: Nope. A friend of mine told me it was really bad.
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding: Nope.
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie: Nope.
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville: A cursory study of it in 11th grade English. Watched the movie, read excerpts. I think it's one of those books that probably has a downright excellent story buried in there if you have the patience for 19th-century dark-romantic wordiness.
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens: More Dickens?
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker: No, actually.
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett: Nope.
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson: Never heard of this one.
75 Ulysses - James Joyce: I'm scared to death of Joyce, mostly because of things like 4000-word sentences. Tell me that anyone can comprehend that--including Joyce himself--and you'd be lying.
76 The Inferno - Dante: Yes, plus a high-level view of the Purgatorio and the Paradiso, in AP Lit. I liked it a lot, because there's so many levels you can read and understand the story on. Also, it gives an interesting glimpse into Middle Ages Catholicism, an important reference point for my religion.
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome: Never heard of it.
78 Germinal - Emile Zola: Or it.
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thakeray: Ugh, no, I don't think I'd enjoy it at all.
80 Possession - AS Byatt: Nope.
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens: Saw the... Muppets movie?
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell: Nope.
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker: Saw the play?
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro: Never heard of it.
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert: Nope.
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry: Nope.
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White: Yes, a long time ago.
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom: Nope, but I read Tuesdays with Morrie, and it was really sad.
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Actually no; those are probably worth reading.
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton: Nope.
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad: Ooh, yes. Interesting book. Way better as a springboard to discuss good and evil and morality than as a narrative. And yet, "The horror! The horror!" is one of the classic lines of modern literature.
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery: Saw the... Lost episode called that?
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks: Nope.
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams: Somehow, I managed to escape this one back in 9th grade English. Seems like an awfully divisive book, with more people leaning toward the side of "it sucked."
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole: Nope.
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute: Nope.
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas: No, though given how much I liked The Count of Monte Cristo, I might give it a shot.
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare: Once in AP Lit, and again in English at Tech. AP Lit was a lot more fun, because we got to do a read-through of it. I read the part of Laertes, which was great, until our teacher declined to allow me and the guy reading Hamlet to have an actual swordfight.
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl: Probably yes, as a kid.
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo: Nah, and I've never seen the musical either.
My total is 25, give or take, depending on if you count "part of it" as a yes or no. I think that's pretty respectable.
Now, five books I'm surprised were not on this list.
The Crucible - Arthur Miller: If The Tempest is my favorite play, The Crucible is a close second. Actually, I think it's odd that there wasn't anything by Arthur Miller, or Tennessee Williams, or any of their contemporaries. It would be like compiling a similar list of musical compositions, and leaving out Gershwin, Copland, and Bernstein. The middle of the 20th century was very good to American artistic development, and it deserves some representation here.
Candide - Voltaire: Possibly the best-known satire in literary history, and its humor is still relevant centuries later.
Ender’s Game - Orson Scott Card: Certainly a better sci-fi tale than Dune, with more compelling characterization, a more straightforward plot, and actually some compelling philosophical questions raised.
Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand: The immortal "Who Is John Galt?" and its answer--both literal and symbolic--is one of the most enduring and provoking inquiries of modern literature. Whether or not you agree with Objectivism, or any of Rand's ideas at all, Atlas Shrugged provides an intellectual counterpoint to some of the political philosophies active in the 20th century, and actually manages to be a compelling narrative at the same time.
The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne: I actually didn't so much like The Scarlet Letter, but its connection to American culture--both nascent America in the 17th century and developing America in the 19th--is undeniable.
Currently listening: Water Music, GF Handel
Thursday, March 05, 2009
The Peclet Number, and Why Some People Shouldn't Get Degrees
Here's a scenario posed on a recent Safety quiz, with a few minor modifications. You're south of a town with an enormous chemical plant on its outskirts. You're not entirely sure what they make there, except that the end product is pretty nasty, and the intermediates they use to get to the end product are even nastier. You hear a loud boom, look to the north, and see a plume emerging from the plant. The wind is blowing strongly to the south (ie, toward you), and there's no distinguishing terrain near you in any direction. Which way do you run?
The answer relies on a dispersive model of fluid flow that compares diffusive to convective mass transfer. That's not nearly as complicated as it sounds. In fact, you've experienced both of them in your own kitchen. Imagine you're baking cookies, and within a few minutes, the delicious scent of cooking sugar and butter fills your kitchen. If you open the door to the oven, the smell gets stronger, as a puff of vapor is released. Obviously the smell comes from the oven, but in the absence of anything else acting on them, the particles that you smell would rather spread out (diffuse) than remain concentrated.
Now imagine you're sitting in a room upstairs far away from the kitchen. Eventually, if the cookies stay in the oven long enough (but hopefully not so long that they burn!) you'll smell them even upstairs, because a few scent-carrying particles reach you. There's a much faster way you might smell them, though. What if the oven is near an air vent, and so are you? It would be like the Seinfeld episode "The Calzone", where Steinbrenner knows George has his lunch just because of the smell coming out of the vent. In this case, the particles aren't merely diffusing, they're convecting, or being carried along by the air currents in your heating or cooling system.
Do diffusion and convection ever happen in the same system? Sure. At the same time you're smelling the cookies through the vent, someone downstairs can smell them too, and probably more strongly than you can.
Or, say you have some water in a bathtub. If you put some green food coloring in that water, you'd see it diffuse through the tub until all the water was about the same intensity green. But before you let it diffuse all the way, say you opened the drain. You'd observe water flow toward the drain--convection--as well as diffusion. Depending on how fast the water was draining, you might see a well-defined line of food coloring with a bit of fuzziness toward the edge, suggesting strong convection. Or, you might see a blur of green throughout with only slight movement toward the drain, suggesting strong diffusion.
Us engineering types use a number called the Peclet number to describe systems like this. It's merely a ratio of convective motion to diffusive motion. That's the key to answering the chemical plume problem. If you assume strong wind toward the south (ie, fast wind speed), the convective motion of the toxic cloud becomes much more important than the diffusive motion. That means the toxic particles in the cloud are going to be carried in one direction rather than spreading out in all directions. Unfortunately, that direction happens to be toward you, to the south. So which direction do you go?
You could try and go south, essentially trying to outrun the plume, but that might be a bad idea unless you can go really, really fast. "Strong" wind probably means something in the range of 20-30 miles an hour; if you don't have a car, there's no way you can hope to go this fast. The best choice is east or west--if you assume that all motion is in the convective direction, the effects of dispersion in any other directions is relatively small, so you minimize your chances of coming into contact with any of these particles.
Would you even think of standing still or running north? Both of these practically guarantee you're going to meet the plume head-on. And yet, some of my classmates, in their fourth year of education to be chemical engineers, thought that might be a prudent course of action.
Currently listening: Symphony No. 9, "From the New World", Antonin Dvorak
The answer relies on a dispersive model of fluid flow that compares diffusive to convective mass transfer. That's not nearly as complicated as it sounds. In fact, you've experienced both of them in your own kitchen. Imagine you're baking cookies, and within a few minutes, the delicious scent of cooking sugar and butter fills your kitchen. If you open the door to the oven, the smell gets stronger, as a puff of vapor is released. Obviously the smell comes from the oven, but in the absence of anything else acting on them, the particles that you smell would rather spread out (diffuse) than remain concentrated.
Now imagine you're sitting in a room upstairs far away from the kitchen. Eventually, if the cookies stay in the oven long enough (but hopefully not so long that they burn!) you'll smell them even upstairs, because a few scent-carrying particles reach you. There's a much faster way you might smell them, though. What if the oven is near an air vent, and so are you? It would be like the Seinfeld episode "The Calzone", where Steinbrenner knows George has his lunch just because of the smell coming out of the vent. In this case, the particles aren't merely diffusing, they're convecting, or being carried along by the air currents in your heating or cooling system.
Do diffusion and convection ever happen in the same system? Sure. At the same time you're smelling the cookies through the vent, someone downstairs can smell them too, and probably more strongly than you can.
Or, say you have some water in a bathtub. If you put some green food coloring in that water, you'd see it diffuse through the tub until all the water was about the same intensity green. But before you let it diffuse all the way, say you opened the drain. You'd observe water flow toward the drain--convection--as well as diffusion. Depending on how fast the water was draining, you might see a well-defined line of food coloring with a bit of fuzziness toward the edge, suggesting strong convection. Or, you might see a blur of green throughout with only slight movement toward the drain, suggesting strong diffusion.
Us engineering types use a number called the Peclet number to describe systems like this. It's merely a ratio of convective motion to diffusive motion. That's the key to answering the chemical plume problem. If you assume strong wind toward the south (ie, fast wind speed), the convective motion of the toxic cloud becomes much more important than the diffusive motion. That means the toxic particles in the cloud are going to be carried in one direction rather than spreading out in all directions. Unfortunately, that direction happens to be toward you, to the south. So which direction do you go?
You could try and go south, essentially trying to outrun the plume, but that might be a bad idea unless you can go really, really fast. "Strong" wind probably means something in the range of 20-30 miles an hour; if you don't have a car, there's no way you can hope to go this fast. The best choice is east or west--if you assume that all motion is in the convective direction, the effects of dispersion in any other directions is relatively small, so you minimize your chances of coming into contact with any of these particles.
Would you even think of standing still or running north? Both of these practically guarantee you're going to meet the plume head-on. And yet, some of my classmates, in their fourth year of education to be chemical engineers, thought that might be a prudent course of action.
Currently listening: Symphony No. 9, "From the New World", Antonin Dvorak
Sunday, March 01, 2009
Snippets from a Visit to Texas
Having just returned from the first of three grad school recruiting weekends I'll be going to this spring, I have the following to share:
To the crazy guy on Marta, no matter how many times you say "hey, light bulb!", the light bulb is not going to answer you. Nothing against you or anything--the light bulb just isn't a very talkative fellow. Also, you probably won't convince him, or me, or anyone else on the train that Jay-Z is walking the streets of West End at 6:30 am.
To all the men standing around in the terminal wearing cowboy hats and talking in drawls about the Rangers' fate for the 2009 baseball season, I could hardly tell I was about to board a plane to Texas.
To the guy who was sitting across the aisle from me on the flight to Austin, I wonder how many people feel like they're in an episode of 24 when they see you. That you're a dead ringer for Ike Dubaku is only the beginning. Texting those guys with shady French African sounding names, and covering up your phone when the flight attendant walked by, is much stronger evidence. Your fashionable but unconventionally-colored dress shirt didn't hurt either.
To whomever gave Austin the area code 512, your subtle and geeky mock trial reference made my weekend. (Oh, I know that the Austin area code was probably around long before the Longhorns were ever team 512, but it's the order I found those out in that counts.)
To the professor who shall go nameless for the sake of avoiding self-incrimination, you seemed like a really nice guy, and your research sounded sort of interesting. Then you saw my name tag, found out that I was from Georgia Tech, and asked me about a certain professor I may have had for a class at some point. I'm glad I didn't share my feelings about that certain professor (they would have been something strongly worded) because it seems you two are friends.
To the grad student that I met downtown, one of a couple dozen, how you got such a fantastically pretty and pleasant girlfriend is totally beyond me. Oh, wait, it's probably because your school has 26,000 women, and mine has 6,000.
To Delta Air, I appreciate your clever and novel euphemisms, but it's okay with me if you call it a "trash bag". "Service bag" is really not necessary.
Currently listening: "Robots", Flight of the Conchords
To the crazy guy on Marta, no matter how many times you say "hey, light bulb!", the light bulb is not going to answer you. Nothing against you or anything--the light bulb just isn't a very talkative fellow. Also, you probably won't convince him, or me, or anyone else on the train that Jay-Z is walking the streets of West End at 6:30 am.
To all the men standing around in the terminal wearing cowboy hats and talking in drawls about the Rangers' fate for the 2009 baseball season, I could hardly tell I was about to board a plane to Texas.
To the guy who was sitting across the aisle from me on the flight to Austin, I wonder how many people feel like they're in an episode of 24 when they see you. That you're a dead ringer for Ike Dubaku is only the beginning. Texting those guys with shady French African sounding names, and covering up your phone when the flight attendant walked by, is much stronger evidence. Your fashionable but unconventionally-colored dress shirt didn't hurt either.
To whomever gave Austin the area code 512, your subtle and geeky mock trial reference made my weekend. (Oh, I know that the Austin area code was probably around long before the Longhorns were ever team 512, but it's the order I found those out in that counts.)
To the professor who shall go nameless for the sake of avoiding self-incrimination, you seemed like a really nice guy, and your research sounded sort of interesting. Then you saw my name tag, found out that I was from Georgia Tech, and asked me about a certain professor I may have had for a class at some point. I'm glad I didn't share my feelings about that certain professor (they would have been something strongly worded) because it seems you two are friends.
To the grad student that I met downtown, one of a couple dozen, how you got such a fantastically pretty and pleasant girlfriend is totally beyond me. Oh, wait, it's probably because your school has 26,000 women, and mine has 6,000.
To Delta Air, I appreciate your clever and novel euphemisms, but it's okay with me if you call it a "trash bag". "Service bag" is really not necessary.
Currently listening: "Robots", Flight of the Conchords
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Lost Speculations and Observations, February Edition
The biggest, most global, farthest-reaching conflict on Lost continues to be Ben Linus vs. Charles Widmore, but as I commented last month, don't be fooled into thinking this is a conflict of good versus evil, of right versus wrong, of selflessness versus malice. It's an interpersonal conflict, plain and simple. So much has been invested into this conflict, in fact, that it would be a copout to make either Widmore or Ben the "good guy" and the other the "bad guy". A mystery that eventually resolves into black and white is a lot less interesting than one that retains gray even after the big reveal. It's a lot like Harry Potter; for Snape to have been either a good guy or a bad guy would have been irresponsible storytelling. And I think that Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse are even better storytellers than JK Rowling.
"The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham" finally gave us a little more backstory regarding Ben and Widmore, and it was much of what I and others theorized anyway. At some point in the past, Ben and Widmore got into some dispute, likely over the leadership of the Others. I can see this happening immediately post-Purge: Richard convinces Ben that Dharma is bad for the Island, so Richard and his people (including Widmore) orchestrate the Purge with the help of Ben, and possibly a few other Dharma people. Naturally, having done Richard's people a great service, Ben assumes that he should now lead them. Widmore disagrees, loses the battle, and is booted from the Island.
Brandon, one of the guys I sometimes watch with, and I came up with a good interpretation of this. Both Ben and Widmore claim that they're out for the interest of others, when all they really want is the Island for themselves. Who's actually out for the Island then? Richard Alpert, probably. As the Panchen Lama, he knows that sometimes there just needs to be a new Dalai Lama. Changing out the leadership is in fact the best thing for the Island, even though it might spawn the ill will of the likes of Widmore and Ben. Ben was, at one time, allied with Richard; once Richard sees Ben again (which he will, now that Ben's back on the Island), what will the former allies think of each other?
Does that make Richard a good guy? If you take the position of the Island, yes. But I still maintain that "good" and "bad" are completely relative on Lost, which the Others made painfully clear back in seasons 2 and 3. And what of Alpert's immortality? I think it's creative time travel. Remember what Widmore said to Locke when they spoke in Tunisia: he was amazed it had only been four days for Locke, but more than fifty years for Widmore. "And you look exactly the same." What if Alpert does the same sort of thing; flashing through time, not constantly living on the Island, but appearing where and when the Island takes him?
I mentioned last month that Widmore and Ben had essentially the same motive and goals, but different means of achieving them. That distinction has blurred a bit. There's no better example of that blur than how both talked to Locke. In fact, we heard essentially the exact same speech from both of them: "I know what I did may have looked evil, but I did it for the Island's sake, so you could be the new leader." The chess match analogy has been beaten to death in Lost, but it's the best metaphor for what's happening here. Locke is only a piece--albeit maybe an important one--in the game Ben and Widmore are playing. If there really is a war coming, like Widmore suggests, it's not a war that holds the fate of the world at stake. It's one that holds nothing at stake except the fate of the Island, and whose hands it falls into. It's a voluntary war of Ben and Widmore's making--and both are courting John to be their general in the war, or their king in the chess match.
Of course, plenty has been happening completely unrelated to Ben and Widmore, which is what makes Lost such a great show. The smoke monster has had a nice couple of episodes, during which we finally see the gruesome fate of Montand's arm. We've been promised that every time we see Smokey, we learn more about it. In "This Place is Death", we see its lair--presumably the Temple. The hieroglyph motif suggests it's from the same ancient era of construction as the door in Ben's house and the Frozen Donkey Wheel. It's doubtful that Dharma knew anything more about it than we do, because they designed the sonic fence to contain it. Perhaps that knowledge is one of the perks of leading the Others, because Ben sure seems to know a lot about it.
Exactly what the smoke monster is, and its relation to the Island, is very much the provenance of Season 6. But we've already gotten a few clues. Apparently, the Wheel's hieroglyphs have to do with resurrection. Certainly the characters who are associated with the Wheel have some manner of resurrection associated with them too--Christian Shepherd, and now John Locke. In addition, the monster was known at least by some as Cerberus, the mythical guardian of the underworld. That name is not accidental. I think we'll eventually come to find out--though not for a very long time--that Cerberus, the Wheel, and the Temple are all related to the underworld and the journey from death to resurrection. Remember what book Ben was reading the moment Ajira 316 crashed on the Island? Ulysses, by James Joyce. Ulysses is of course the Roman name for Odysseus, a man whose years of travel took him to the underworld among other places.
Does that mean Locke is resurrected? Undoubtedly he is in a manner of speaking, but I have huge reservations about calling him "alive". Recall the terminology applied to Yemi and Christian: "undead". Both people were dead beyond a shadow of a doubt, brought to the Island, and have been known to walk around again. That's the same boat Locke is finding himself in now. While dead is dead on Lost, dead might also be undead, if the Island finds it necessary.
I fully expect that Desmond will have to return to the Island to bring Penny back to life. Desmond and Penny are the Odysseus and, well, Penelope analogs in this story. It seems likely that Ben's "errand" was killing Penny like he promised Widmore he'd do. Desmond is probably not taking too kindly to this. Hawking's prophecy that the Island isn't done with Desmond is going to come into play when Desmond realizes the only way to get Penny back--if only as an "undead"--is to go to the Island.
Speaking of Ben and Penny, remember the reason that Ben vowed to kill Penny? It's because Widmore's men killed Ben's "daughter". Alex was of course not actually Ben's daughter. But Ben sure got indignant when Kate suggested that her not-son Aaron was her own. Maybe that explains Ben's lack of compassion for Kate's assumed child, because Ben's own assumed child got such a horrendous death.
It's far too early to begin speculating about our new castaways Caesar and Illana, except that they know each other. Also, they probably know far more about what's going on than they're telling, and in true Lost fashion, they probably have mysterious connections to everyone else we know. That's certainly true for Sayid, who was handcuffed and led aboard Ajira 316 by Illana.
I could move on and talk about event windows, or Daniel and Charlotte, or Matthew Abaddon's untimely demise, but instead I'll mention the only gripe I have with Season 5 so far. I don't care about the Oceanic Six. Sun had huge potential when she made her alliance with Widmore, but one work from Ben about Jin, and that all went down the drain. Sayid has been mildly interesting, because let's face it: you can't say no to a gun-toting Iraqi assassin. Hurley has been borderline at best. I've never really been that interested in Jack, I'm even less interested in Kate, and I couldn't be less interested in Aaron. He's a plot device, not a character, and given that he's being fought over by the two least interesting real characters, that whole plotline is a snooze.
Finally, two questions for the audience. First, we know of at least three characters on the show named Charlie or Charles: Charles Widmore, Charlie Pace, and now Desmond's son Charlie. Are there any other pairs or groups of characters who have the same name?
Second, what would be a good title for the last episode of the series? I saw that as a poll on a website, and all the choices it suggested sort of sucked. I'm a fan of "See You in Another Life", but I'd like to hear some more opinions too.
Currently listening: "I Am the Walrus", the Beatles
"The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham" finally gave us a little more backstory regarding Ben and Widmore, and it was much of what I and others theorized anyway. At some point in the past, Ben and Widmore got into some dispute, likely over the leadership of the Others. I can see this happening immediately post-Purge: Richard convinces Ben that Dharma is bad for the Island, so Richard and his people (including Widmore) orchestrate the Purge with the help of Ben, and possibly a few other Dharma people. Naturally, having done Richard's people a great service, Ben assumes that he should now lead them. Widmore disagrees, loses the battle, and is booted from the Island.
Brandon, one of the guys I sometimes watch with, and I came up with a good interpretation of this. Both Ben and Widmore claim that they're out for the interest of others, when all they really want is the Island for themselves. Who's actually out for the Island then? Richard Alpert, probably. As the Panchen Lama, he knows that sometimes there just needs to be a new Dalai Lama. Changing out the leadership is in fact the best thing for the Island, even though it might spawn the ill will of the likes of Widmore and Ben. Ben was, at one time, allied with Richard; once Richard sees Ben again (which he will, now that Ben's back on the Island), what will the former allies think of each other?
Does that make Richard a good guy? If you take the position of the Island, yes. But I still maintain that "good" and "bad" are completely relative on Lost, which the Others made painfully clear back in seasons 2 and 3. And what of Alpert's immortality? I think it's creative time travel. Remember what Widmore said to Locke when they spoke in Tunisia: he was amazed it had only been four days for Locke, but more than fifty years for Widmore. "And you look exactly the same." What if Alpert does the same sort of thing; flashing through time, not constantly living on the Island, but appearing where and when the Island takes him?
I mentioned last month that Widmore and Ben had essentially the same motive and goals, but different means of achieving them. That distinction has blurred a bit. There's no better example of that blur than how both talked to Locke. In fact, we heard essentially the exact same speech from both of them: "I know what I did may have looked evil, but I did it for the Island's sake, so you could be the new leader." The chess match analogy has been beaten to death in Lost, but it's the best metaphor for what's happening here. Locke is only a piece--albeit maybe an important one--in the game Ben and Widmore are playing. If there really is a war coming, like Widmore suggests, it's not a war that holds the fate of the world at stake. It's one that holds nothing at stake except the fate of the Island, and whose hands it falls into. It's a voluntary war of Ben and Widmore's making--and both are courting John to be their general in the war, or their king in the chess match.
Of course, plenty has been happening completely unrelated to Ben and Widmore, which is what makes Lost such a great show. The smoke monster has had a nice couple of episodes, during which we finally see the gruesome fate of Montand's arm. We've been promised that every time we see Smokey, we learn more about it. In "This Place is Death", we see its lair--presumably the Temple. The hieroglyph motif suggests it's from the same ancient era of construction as the door in Ben's house and the Frozen Donkey Wheel. It's doubtful that Dharma knew anything more about it than we do, because they designed the sonic fence to contain it. Perhaps that knowledge is one of the perks of leading the Others, because Ben sure seems to know a lot about it.
Exactly what the smoke monster is, and its relation to the Island, is very much the provenance of Season 6. But we've already gotten a few clues. Apparently, the Wheel's hieroglyphs have to do with resurrection. Certainly the characters who are associated with the Wheel have some manner of resurrection associated with them too--Christian Shepherd, and now John Locke. In addition, the monster was known at least by some as Cerberus, the mythical guardian of the underworld. That name is not accidental. I think we'll eventually come to find out--though not for a very long time--that Cerberus, the Wheel, and the Temple are all related to the underworld and the journey from death to resurrection. Remember what book Ben was reading the moment Ajira 316 crashed on the Island? Ulysses, by James Joyce. Ulysses is of course the Roman name for Odysseus, a man whose years of travel took him to the underworld among other places.
Does that mean Locke is resurrected? Undoubtedly he is in a manner of speaking, but I have huge reservations about calling him "alive". Recall the terminology applied to Yemi and Christian: "undead". Both people were dead beyond a shadow of a doubt, brought to the Island, and have been known to walk around again. That's the same boat Locke is finding himself in now. While dead is dead on Lost, dead might also be undead, if the Island finds it necessary.
I fully expect that Desmond will have to return to the Island to bring Penny back to life. Desmond and Penny are the Odysseus and, well, Penelope analogs in this story. It seems likely that Ben's "errand" was killing Penny like he promised Widmore he'd do. Desmond is probably not taking too kindly to this. Hawking's prophecy that the Island isn't done with Desmond is going to come into play when Desmond realizes the only way to get Penny back--if only as an "undead"--is to go to the Island.
Speaking of Ben and Penny, remember the reason that Ben vowed to kill Penny? It's because Widmore's men killed Ben's "daughter". Alex was of course not actually Ben's daughter. But Ben sure got indignant when Kate suggested that her not-son Aaron was her own. Maybe that explains Ben's lack of compassion for Kate's assumed child, because Ben's own assumed child got such a horrendous death.
It's far too early to begin speculating about our new castaways Caesar and Illana, except that they know each other. Also, they probably know far more about what's going on than they're telling, and in true Lost fashion, they probably have mysterious connections to everyone else we know. That's certainly true for Sayid, who was handcuffed and led aboard Ajira 316 by Illana.
I could move on and talk about event windows, or Daniel and Charlotte, or Matthew Abaddon's untimely demise, but instead I'll mention the only gripe I have with Season 5 so far. I don't care about the Oceanic Six. Sun had huge potential when she made her alliance with Widmore, but one work from Ben about Jin, and that all went down the drain. Sayid has been mildly interesting, because let's face it: you can't say no to a gun-toting Iraqi assassin. Hurley has been borderline at best. I've never really been that interested in Jack, I'm even less interested in Kate, and I couldn't be less interested in Aaron. He's a plot device, not a character, and given that he's being fought over by the two least interesting real characters, that whole plotline is a snooze.
Finally, two questions for the audience. First, we know of at least three characters on the show named Charlie or Charles: Charles Widmore, Charlie Pace, and now Desmond's son Charlie. Are there any other pairs or groups of characters who have the same name?
Second, what would be a good title for the last episode of the series? I saw that as a poll on a website, and all the choices it suggested sort of sucked. I'm a fan of "See You in Another Life", but I'd like to hear some more opinions too.
Currently listening: "I Am the Walrus", the Beatles
Friday, February 20, 2009
The DTV Transition
I was a little wary of the government telling private television companies how they were allowed to broadcast their signals, but I got over that. Mostly I got over that when I got a HDTV, and I saw just how good the picture quality was. Then, I was a little upset that everyone had gotten worked up over this transition, just to have it pushed back by four months. Honestly, if you'd made it to February 2009 without knowing that the transition was impending, it probably didn't matter to you anyway. Seriously, I'm not sure how you could have missed it unless you didn't own a television at all.
I've mostly gotten over that, too. Except that the delay means I have to keep hearing about it for the next four months now. Here's the kicker: CBS interrupts my HD feed, changing back to a crappy analog signal, to bring me the message that I'm going to need to support digital television in four months. If the broadcast is smart enough to give me less-than-HD for three minutes, surely it's smart enough to know that I already have HD in the first place?
Currently listening: First Suite for Military Band in E-Flat, Holst
I've mostly gotten over that, too. Except that the delay means I have to keep hearing about it for the next four months now. Here's the kicker: CBS interrupts my HD feed, changing back to a crappy analog signal, to bring me the message that I'm going to need to support digital television in four months. If the broadcast is smart enough to give me less-than-HD for three minutes, surely it's smart enough to know that I already have HD in the first place?
Currently listening: First Suite for Military Band in E-Flat, Holst
Monday, February 02, 2009
Information Security and xkcd
I've been saying for years that information security is one of the most over-emphasized and overblown "issues" around today. It's as if the second someone realized "hey, maybe some dishonest person out there might try and steal my information", without any provocation, an entire industry was born out of paranoia.
In playing devil's advocate, even I'm not prepared to say "just because it's out there doesn't mean someone will want to steal it." I think if it's out there, someone eventually will try and steal it. But what I certainly am prepared to say is "just because it's out there doesn't mean it's worth stealing." Apparently today's xkcd agrees with me (read the comic, then look at the alt-text).
The truth is that very few of our secrets are worth stealing. Financial information is probably the one exception for the individual; corporations and governments do of course have secrets that might be worth stealing. A personal email address, though? If you're going to take the time to guess my gmail password, then by all means read my dictionary.com "Word of the Day" emails and Facebook notifications.
The good folks at Google realize this and therefore do not make its users change their passwords if they don't want to. It's a very laissez-faire approach to information security: let the individual apply exactly as much security to his information as he thinks is necessary. It's one that colleges would to well to emulate.
Georgia Tech's policy involves changing your password once every few months, with a mandated arcane combination of different "character classes" (ie, upper-case letters, lower-case letters, numbers, and symbols). But that's where the restrictions end. If I wanted to make my password "abc123!", I certainly could. It's essentially a middle-of-the-road approach, comparable to most corporate systems. And honestly, my password getting hacked could lead to some untoward things going on, including my unwitting withdrawal from school. The one issue I have with the system is that it presumes my password is not good enough the first time around, and I have to keep trying to improve it.
The Georgia Tech School of Mathematics (where I'm currently employed) makes the Institute policy look lax by comparison. In addition to the aforementioned restrictions, the Math password cannot start or end with certain characters, it cannot repeat the same character too many times, and it cannot "resemble a dictionary word" too closely. After a few rounds of my usual passwords getting rejected, I resorted to video game characters, of course augmented with different character classes.
I don't know what dictionary this system is drawing from, but if "Akatosh" really resembles a dictionary word, my vocabulary obviously isn't as strong as I'd like to think it is.
And what would guessing or hacking this password get for you? Emails about Friday bagel breakfasts with Math grad students and access to a handful of computers that I didn't even know existed until I started working for the department.
Currently listening: "A Day in the Life", Mae (covering the Beatles)
In playing devil's advocate, even I'm not prepared to say "just because it's out there doesn't mean someone will want to steal it." I think if it's out there, someone eventually will try and steal it. But what I certainly am prepared to say is "just because it's out there doesn't mean it's worth stealing." Apparently today's xkcd agrees with me (read the comic, then look at the alt-text).
The truth is that very few of our secrets are worth stealing. Financial information is probably the one exception for the individual; corporations and governments do of course have secrets that might be worth stealing. A personal email address, though? If you're going to take the time to guess my gmail password, then by all means read my dictionary.com "Word of the Day" emails and Facebook notifications.
The good folks at Google realize this and therefore do not make its users change their passwords if they don't want to. It's a very laissez-faire approach to information security: let the individual apply exactly as much security to his information as he thinks is necessary. It's one that colleges would to well to emulate.
Georgia Tech's policy involves changing your password once every few months, with a mandated arcane combination of different "character classes" (ie, upper-case letters, lower-case letters, numbers, and symbols). But that's where the restrictions end. If I wanted to make my password "abc123!", I certainly could. It's essentially a middle-of-the-road approach, comparable to most corporate systems. And honestly, my password getting hacked could lead to some untoward things going on, including my unwitting withdrawal from school. The one issue I have with the system is that it presumes my password is not good enough the first time around, and I have to keep trying to improve it.
The Georgia Tech School of Mathematics (where I'm currently employed) makes the Institute policy look lax by comparison. In addition to the aforementioned restrictions, the Math password cannot start or end with certain characters, it cannot repeat the same character too many times, and it cannot "resemble a dictionary word" too closely. After a few rounds of my usual passwords getting rejected, I resorted to video game characters, of course augmented with different character classes.
I don't know what dictionary this system is drawing from, but if "Akatosh" really resembles a dictionary word, my vocabulary obviously isn't as strong as I'd like to think it is.
And what would guessing or hacking this password get for you? Emails about Friday bagel breakfasts with Math grad students and access to a handful of computers that I didn't even know existed until I started working for the department.
Currently listening: "A Day in the Life", Mae (covering the Beatles)
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Lost Speculations and Observations, January Edition
This will probably evolve into a monthly thing, at least through the end of Season 5, so my heartfelt apologies go out to those of you who couldn't care less about (the best show on) TV.
A double-feature premiere and the most mythologically intense episode since "The Constant" later, and Lost has already hit its stride for the penultimate season. We've come a long way from wondering how these people eat and stay warm; once-intense conflicts like Jin and Michael's now seem petty. We saw a lot of exposition in "Because You Left", and a lot of nice Hurley moments in "The Lie", but it was "Jughead" that really got the theorizing taking off.
It was a divisive episode, to be sure. I think any individual's response to "Jughead" shows exactly what that fan is interested in from the show. If you want Jack and Kate and romance and character drama, then "Jughead" certainly was not the episode for you. For those of us who love nothing more than to dig into a little Richard Alpert speculation, "Jughead" was phenomenal. What did we learn?
We know that the original inhabitants/Richard's people/the Hostiles/the Others (for simplicity's sake, "the Others") were established on the Island at least since the 1950s--and potentially much longer than that. That also means that the Others' claim to have been the Island's original inhabitants is true, at least relative to the Dharma Initiative.
We know that the Others use Latin as a sort of lingua franca (a "lingua alia"?) since the 1950's, and potentially much longer than that. There are plenty of interesting things about this. First, all the Others we've seen speak English seemingly as a first language, with the exception of the Rasputin-esque (and known Ben Linus recruit, rather than former Hostile) Mikhail Bakunin. So it seems that Latin was not a lingua franca after all, but a code language to hide their conversations. Presuming the Others have been isolated on the Island for a long time, why the need to hide conversations?
Second, Juliet specifically mentions Latin as the language of the Enlightenment. That's not significant in and of itself, but I can name at least four characters off the top of my head who were named after Enlightenment prominents--John Locke, Desmond Hume, Danielle Rousseau, and Anthony Cooper.
Third, and most interesting to me as someone who's studied a bit of Latin, is the form of the language they speak. They're speaking Classical Latin, the language spoken by the Romans during the Republic and Empire. That's as opposed to Ecclesiastical Latin, the language spoken by the Church during the Middle Ages. Most scholars agree that it was a vulgarization of the Classical form; it was later vulgarized even further into what was spoken by the scientific and philosophical elites of the Enlightenment.
While obviously neither language has had native speakers for centuries, the Ecclesiastical version at least still enjoys some official use from the Vatican and others. Classical hasn't had any purpose outside of high school foreign language classrooms for a millennium. Given that the Others speak arguably the more obscure form of the language--and certainly not the one spoken in the Enlightenment--we may have a clue as to how long the Others have really been there.
We know that good old Ricardus Alpert has been in an authority position (the Panchen Lama, if you will) in the Others, and that Jacob has been at the top of the Others' command structure, for at least fifty years, and again possibly a lot longer. Furthermore, we know that rank-and-file Others like Juliet either don't know how old Richard really is, or they have some idea but consider that knowledge such a liability that they're unwilling to share that knowledge with their friends.
We know the reason Alpert visited Locke during Locke's childhood was that Locke told him to visit. Furthermore, the reason Alpert expected Locke to recognize that the compass already belonged to him was that Alpert had already seen Locke, as an adult, with the compass.
And of course, we know that the reason Charles Widmore knows about the Island is that he used to be on it, as an Other. Talk about a jaw-dropper.
In other parts of the world, we know that "Faraday's mother" lives in Los Angeles, conveniently the same place that Ms. Hawking lives. And we know that Faraday was doing some downright sketchy research, funded by Widmore, and probably resulting in poor Theresa losing her mind.
Now, for the speculation. First, I don't believe Richard Alpert is a bad guy. True, he sees the Island as his own domain. But I believe he has a better claim to that then either Ben or Widmore. And true, he goes to extreme lengths to defend the Island, but I see that as more "what Richard sees as necessary" than "Richard likes to kill people."
It seems likely that Widmore and Ben met on the Island at some point probably near the time of the Purge. The two must have come into conflict, a conflict that resulted in Widmore's expulsion from the Island. To this day, Widmore 1) holds Ben personally responsible for the expulsion, explaining his hostility towards Ben and Ben's people, and 2) had expended countless resources trying to find the Island again. Obviously the Freighter was his most recent attempt, and it only succeeded because the electromagnetic anomaly at the Swan had been neutralized when Desmond turned the failsafe. More and more, I'm convinced that Libby's boat race around the world, the real Henry Gale's balloon, and possibly even Rousseau's "science expedition" were previous efforts of Widmore's to find the Island again.
What was the source of this expulsion? How's this for conspiracy theory: Widmore was forced, for some reason, to turn the Frozen Donkey Wheel?
A lot of people have speculated to whether Ben or Widmore is the real "bad guy" on the Island, and my answer is that both of them are. A theme of Lost, ever since the beginning, has been "good people" versus "bad people"--not "good versus evil" or "right versus wrong". That's important because "good" and "bad" are a lot more relative. To Widmore, Ben's people are the "bad" ones, and vice versa. Both Ben and Widmore are quite evil, wanting the Island for their own personal gain, and stopping at nothing, not even killing people, to get it.
The only thing different about them is the way they go about it. Widmore, in classic "supervillian" style, keeps expensive scotch by his bedside, had a windowed office in London, and has a seemingly endless supply of thugs and resources to get at the Island. He doesn't disguise the fact that he wants it for personal gain because he doesn't need to. Ben, on the other hand, is much more devious. He lies and manipulates people into thinking that he has the good of the Island in mind, but in truth all he wants is the Island for himself.
How about Faraday? It's intuitive at this point that Hawking is Faraday's mother, but what other possible relations are out there? I think cute little gun-toting Ellie is a good candidate for being the same person as Hawking/Faraday's mother--that's why Faraday thought she looked familiar. (We know from casting lists that Hawking's first name is Eloise, which is even stronger evidence.) And I think that Widmore might even be a good candidate for Faraday's father... but no word on why Ellie would be working against her former lover.
And what of Theresa? We know she was involved in Faraday's research somehow. My idea is that she was the natural next step from Eloise (the rat, not Faraday's likely mother), and that Faraday tried to send her mind back in time, with disastrous results. She had the same progression of symptoms that Charlotte is having now, explaining why Faraday is so concerned about Charlotte now. Faraday's attraction to Charlotte is probably tangled with his feelings for Theresa too.
Now all we need is a little Matthew Abaddon to really get the rumor mill turning.
Currently listening: "Slow Cheetah", Red Hot Chili Peppers (from Stadium Arcadium)
A double-feature premiere and the most mythologically intense episode since "The Constant" later, and Lost has already hit its stride for the penultimate season. We've come a long way from wondering how these people eat and stay warm; once-intense conflicts like Jin and Michael's now seem petty. We saw a lot of exposition in "Because You Left", and a lot of nice Hurley moments in "The Lie", but it was "Jughead" that really got the theorizing taking off.
It was a divisive episode, to be sure. I think any individual's response to "Jughead" shows exactly what that fan is interested in from the show. If you want Jack and Kate and romance and character drama, then "Jughead" certainly was not the episode for you. For those of us who love nothing more than to dig into a little Richard Alpert speculation, "Jughead" was phenomenal. What did we learn?
We know that the original inhabitants/Richard's people/the Hostiles/the Others (for simplicity's sake, "the Others") were established on the Island at least since the 1950s--and potentially much longer than that. That also means that the Others' claim to have been the Island's original inhabitants is true, at least relative to the Dharma Initiative.
We know that the Others use Latin as a sort of lingua franca (a "lingua alia"?) since the 1950's, and potentially much longer than that. There are plenty of interesting things about this. First, all the Others we've seen speak English seemingly as a first language, with the exception of the Rasputin-esque (and known Ben Linus recruit, rather than former Hostile) Mikhail Bakunin. So it seems that Latin was not a lingua franca after all, but a code language to hide their conversations. Presuming the Others have been isolated on the Island for a long time, why the need to hide conversations?
Second, Juliet specifically mentions Latin as the language of the Enlightenment. That's not significant in and of itself, but I can name at least four characters off the top of my head who were named after Enlightenment prominents--John Locke, Desmond Hume, Danielle Rousseau, and Anthony Cooper.
Third, and most interesting to me as someone who's studied a bit of Latin, is the form of the language they speak. They're speaking Classical Latin, the language spoken by the Romans during the Republic and Empire. That's as opposed to Ecclesiastical Latin, the language spoken by the Church during the Middle Ages. Most scholars agree that it was a vulgarization of the Classical form; it was later vulgarized even further into what was spoken by the scientific and philosophical elites of the Enlightenment.
While obviously neither language has had native speakers for centuries, the Ecclesiastical version at least still enjoys some official use from the Vatican and others. Classical hasn't had any purpose outside of high school foreign language classrooms for a millennium. Given that the Others speak arguably the more obscure form of the language--and certainly not the one spoken in the Enlightenment--we may have a clue as to how long the Others have really been there.
We know that good old Ricardus Alpert has been in an authority position (the Panchen Lama, if you will) in the Others, and that Jacob has been at the top of the Others' command structure, for at least fifty years, and again possibly a lot longer. Furthermore, we know that rank-and-file Others like Juliet either don't know how old Richard really is, or they have some idea but consider that knowledge such a liability that they're unwilling to share that knowledge with their friends.
We know the reason Alpert visited Locke during Locke's childhood was that Locke told him to visit. Furthermore, the reason Alpert expected Locke to recognize that the compass already belonged to him was that Alpert had already seen Locke, as an adult, with the compass.
And of course, we know that the reason Charles Widmore knows about the Island is that he used to be on it, as an Other. Talk about a jaw-dropper.
In other parts of the world, we know that "Faraday's mother" lives in Los Angeles, conveniently the same place that Ms. Hawking lives. And we know that Faraday was doing some downright sketchy research, funded by Widmore, and probably resulting in poor Theresa losing her mind.
Now, for the speculation. First, I don't believe Richard Alpert is a bad guy. True, he sees the Island as his own domain. But I believe he has a better claim to that then either Ben or Widmore. And true, he goes to extreme lengths to defend the Island, but I see that as more "what Richard sees as necessary" than "Richard likes to kill people."
It seems likely that Widmore and Ben met on the Island at some point probably near the time of the Purge. The two must have come into conflict, a conflict that resulted in Widmore's expulsion from the Island. To this day, Widmore 1) holds Ben personally responsible for the expulsion, explaining his hostility towards Ben and Ben's people, and 2) had expended countless resources trying to find the Island again. Obviously the Freighter was his most recent attempt, and it only succeeded because the electromagnetic anomaly at the Swan had been neutralized when Desmond turned the failsafe. More and more, I'm convinced that Libby's boat race around the world, the real Henry Gale's balloon, and possibly even Rousseau's "science expedition" were previous efforts of Widmore's to find the Island again.
What was the source of this expulsion? How's this for conspiracy theory: Widmore was forced, for some reason, to turn the Frozen Donkey Wheel?
A lot of people have speculated to whether Ben or Widmore is the real "bad guy" on the Island, and my answer is that both of them are. A theme of Lost, ever since the beginning, has been "good people" versus "bad people"--not "good versus evil" or "right versus wrong". That's important because "good" and "bad" are a lot more relative. To Widmore, Ben's people are the "bad" ones, and vice versa. Both Ben and Widmore are quite evil, wanting the Island for their own personal gain, and stopping at nothing, not even killing people, to get it.
The only thing different about them is the way they go about it. Widmore, in classic "supervillian" style, keeps expensive scotch by his bedside, had a windowed office in London, and has a seemingly endless supply of thugs and resources to get at the Island. He doesn't disguise the fact that he wants it for personal gain because he doesn't need to. Ben, on the other hand, is much more devious. He lies and manipulates people into thinking that he has the good of the Island in mind, but in truth all he wants is the Island for himself.
How about Faraday? It's intuitive at this point that Hawking is Faraday's mother, but what other possible relations are out there? I think cute little gun-toting Ellie is a good candidate for being the same person as Hawking/Faraday's mother--that's why Faraday thought she looked familiar. (We know from casting lists that Hawking's first name is Eloise, which is even stronger evidence.) And I think that Widmore might even be a good candidate for Faraday's father... but no word on why Ellie would be working against her former lover.
And what of Theresa? We know she was involved in Faraday's research somehow. My idea is that she was the natural next step from Eloise (the rat, not Faraday's likely mother), and that Faraday tried to send her mind back in time, with disastrous results. She had the same progression of symptoms that Charlotte is having now, explaining why Faraday is so concerned about Charlotte now. Faraday's attraction to Charlotte is probably tangled with his feelings for Theresa too.
Now all we need is a little Matthew Abaddon to really get the rumor mill turning.
Currently listening: "Slow Cheetah", Red Hot Chili Peppers (from Stadium Arcadium)
Monday, January 12, 2009
Reviews of EPs from Last Year, Part II
Review: Always the Bridesmaid EPs, the Decemberists
In this curious arrangement of three EPs of two songs each, we have the latest efforts from the Decemberists. Why the obtuse order of release? Tough to know; a single EP of six songs might be more conventional. But then, the Decemberists were never known for convention. Recall their first album, a six-song EP called 5 Songs. As if that makes any sense.
I mention 5 Songs specifically because in some strange way, Always the Bridesmaid hearkens back to the earlier EP. Personal, mostly heartfelt songs about relationships, mostly gone sour. Ill-gotten souvenirs. Raincoats that only make it rain more. Lapses from drinking. Something fouled up so badly that it recalls the fall of the Roman Empire. One of the first descriptions I heard of the Decemberists was something about their "over-the-top grandiloquence", and it seems to have returned--or at least changed form to look more like its old self--on this EP.
The worst song, by far, is "I'm Sticking With You". The Decemberists ought to have learned long ago that songs that repeat the same phrase over and over again for their entirety are not their best.
But it's made more than okay by "Valerie Plame", by far the best song on the EP. It's like "The Bagman's Gambit" from Picaresque recast from the Cold War to the War on Terror. This song has just about everything going for it. First, and most saliently for me, we all know the Decemberists have some expressed political leanings. Very, very rarely do I think that's an appropriate matter for music--leave it to the angry talking heads and op-ed writers. Despite writing a song about a current event that sparked a good deal of outrage and controversy, the Decemberists never make the song overtly political, mostly because it's only tangentially about the controversy anyway. I hope they realize that their song is that much stronger for it.
Of course, it also includes a catchy chorus. A horn line that, like the subject matter, reminds us of Picaresque. A much lighter mood than "The Bagman's Gambit", as if to poke fun at the guy in the song rather than build up drama around him.
All in all, this is a decent collection of songs. It works well for fans of the band who've had a two year drought of new music; even though you won't really feel like you've heard anything new, that's sort of okay. At the very least, maybe it'll remind you why you loved the Decemberists in the first place.
Currently listening: Day and Age, the Killers
In this curious arrangement of three EPs of two songs each, we have the latest efforts from the Decemberists. Why the obtuse order of release? Tough to know; a single EP of six songs might be more conventional. But then, the Decemberists were never known for convention. Recall their first album, a six-song EP called 5 Songs. As if that makes any sense.
I mention 5 Songs specifically because in some strange way, Always the Bridesmaid hearkens back to the earlier EP. Personal, mostly heartfelt songs about relationships, mostly gone sour. Ill-gotten souvenirs. Raincoats that only make it rain more. Lapses from drinking. Something fouled up so badly that it recalls the fall of the Roman Empire. One of the first descriptions I heard of the Decemberists was something about their "over-the-top grandiloquence", and it seems to have returned--or at least changed form to look more like its old self--on this EP.
The worst song, by far, is "I'm Sticking With You". The Decemberists ought to have learned long ago that songs that repeat the same phrase over and over again for their entirety are not their best.
But it's made more than okay by "Valerie Plame", by far the best song on the EP. It's like "The Bagman's Gambit" from Picaresque recast from the Cold War to the War on Terror. This song has just about everything going for it. First, and most saliently for me, we all know the Decemberists have some expressed political leanings. Very, very rarely do I think that's an appropriate matter for music--leave it to the angry talking heads and op-ed writers. Despite writing a song about a current event that sparked a good deal of outrage and controversy, the Decemberists never make the song overtly political, mostly because it's only tangentially about the controversy anyway. I hope they realize that their song is that much stronger for it.
Of course, it also includes a catchy chorus. A horn line that, like the subject matter, reminds us of Picaresque. A much lighter mood than "The Bagman's Gambit", as if to poke fun at the guy in the song rather than build up drama around him.
All in all, this is a decent collection of songs. It works well for fans of the band who've had a two year drought of new music; even though you won't really feel like you've heard anything new, that's sort of okay. At the very least, maybe it'll remind you why you loved the Decemberists in the first place.
Currently listening: Day and Age, the Killers
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Reviews of EPs from Last Year, Part I
Review: Stages EP, Vedera
Imagine if two of my favorite bands in the world, Eisley and Mae, got together and had a little music-baby. They named their progeny "Vedera", and she looked promising since the day she was born. Quickly, though, she entered her "angsty 14 year old" phase. She started hanging out with that slightly-off twenty-something down the street, Evanescence, and her friends. In her rebellion, she makes it clear that she wants to be called "Veda" now. And little baby Vedera/Veda, clearly not such a baby anymore, started throwing around phrases like The Weight of an Empty Room. It's not bad, not by a long shot, but everyone who's close to her can't help but wonder where she's going now that she's made her statement.
Never fear, Mommy Eisley and Daddy Mae. Vedera is back to listening to what you have to say. She's outgrown her rebellion and become a fine young lady. Now, she's more precocious than rebellious. She's more introspective than angry. She has a bit darker outlook than either of her parents; she's more fragile. But her melodies are as beautifully crafted as any of her mom's, and her dad would be proud of the way she uses tonal changes to create mood changes and integrates some theory and progression into her chords.
The result is a splendid, though short, EP. No collection of three songs has ever made me happier. Like lead singer Kristen May's voice might suggest, these songs weave together a tension between apprehension and resolve, between nostalgia for the past and trepidation about the future. Consciously or not, Vedera channels Death Cab ("you're the only song I hear") and Jimmy Eat World ("the middle") and even old Vedera (the chorus to "Satisfy").
You'll wish desperately that there were more than three songs here, that we could see a few more of Vedera's perspectives, that we could see if any of those contrasts ever resolve themselves. May's voice has come a long way in terms of range, and she's willing to put more vocal experiments on the line than Eisley ever was, but it seems that she still has a little growing up to do. Perhaps that's what we'll get on the next full-length album, and that's something to look forward to very much.
Currently listening: Always the Bridesmaid EPs, The Decemberists (review to follow)
Imagine if two of my favorite bands in the world, Eisley and Mae, got together and had a little music-baby. They named their progeny "Vedera", and she looked promising since the day she was born. Quickly, though, she entered her "angsty 14 year old" phase. She started hanging out with that slightly-off twenty-something down the street, Evanescence, and her friends. In her rebellion, she makes it clear that she wants to be called "Veda" now. And little baby Vedera/Veda, clearly not such a baby anymore, started throwing around phrases like The Weight of an Empty Room. It's not bad, not by a long shot, but everyone who's close to her can't help but wonder where she's going now that she's made her statement.
Never fear, Mommy Eisley and Daddy Mae. Vedera is back to listening to what you have to say. She's outgrown her rebellion and become a fine young lady. Now, she's more precocious than rebellious. She's more introspective than angry. She has a bit darker outlook than either of her parents; she's more fragile. But her melodies are as beautifully crafted as any of her mom's, and her dad would be proud of the way she uses tonal changes to create mood changes and integrates some theory and progression into her chords.
The result is a splendid, though short, EP. No collection of three songs has ever made me happier. Like lead singer Kristen May's voice might suggest, these songs weave together a tension between apprehension and resolve, between nostalgia for the past and trepidation about the future. Consciously or not, Vedera channels Death Cab ("you're the only song I hear") and Jimmy Eat World ("the middle") and even old Vedera (the chorus to "Satisfy").
You'll wish desperately that there were more than three songs here, that we could see a few more of Vedera's perspectives, that we could see if any of those contrasts ever resolve themselves. May's voice has come a long way in terms of range, and she's willing to put more vocal experiments on the line than Eisley ever was, but it seems that she still has a little growing up to do. Perhaps that's what we'll get on the next full-length album, and that's something to look forward to very much.
Currently listening: Always the Bridesmaid EPs, The Decemberists (review to follow)
Thursday, January 01, 2009
2008 in Superlatives
It's in vogue, of course, to bring in the New Year with superlatives of 2008. Most (whatever) Politician, the perennial favorite Most (whatever) Political Scandal, and new for 2008, the Most Historic Political (whatever). Politics are, of course, not the domain of Isoceleria, so I've come up with some some superlatives of my own that are more comfortable in the "marginal relevance" landscape.
Most Strike-Proof TV Show: Lost
The disastrous 2008 Writer's Strike left television as we know it in total disarray. Some of TV's best shows (eg, House) decided to push through it and run the episodes they'd planned on anyway. That left us anachronistically watching the Christmas episode in late January, and not really remembering who these roomful of fellowship candidates were in the first place. Some others (eg, Battlestar Galactica) just took a figurative cleaver to their seasons, with ten episodes now, ten later, and an implied Gallic shrug somewhere in the middle. Still others, like 24, washed their hands of 2008 completely, choosing instead to focus on the 2009 season. (It might have been odd to call it 11 for a season anyway.)
Not Lost, though. The show was coming into its fourth season with a renewed sense of purpose, with the mythical End Date only a few years off. Three seasons to introduce some more new wrinkles, kill off a few main characters, give the faithful plenty to speculate about, and finally wrap everything up. So Lost was already in a "cut the crap" mode, even before the strike hit. It was one of the few shows to make it out of the strike an even better show than before, mostly because the "streamline" mentality was already very much a part of the show's philosophy.
The V For Vendetta Memorial Award: The Dark Knight
The V for Vendetta Memorial Award is presented annually to the most over-rated film based on an existing comic book or graphic novel. Last year, it would have gone to 300, hands down. This year, none other than The Dark Knight takes home that prestigious award.
To reiterate, The Dark Knight was not a bad movie at all. The acting was mostly overdone, whatever attempts it had at philosophizing or "commenting on the human condition" were dime-store at best, and what should have been one of the most interesting character developments (Two-Face) felt rushed. But for those faults, this movie might have been able to live up to its hype, right?
Absolutely not. I'd heard so much about how wonderful this movie was--particularly Heath Ledger's performance in it--in the weeks and months leading up to my watching it that there was literally no way it could have been as good as everyone was saying. So this V for Vendetta Memorial Award is not so much for the low quality of the movie--because it wasn't a low quality movie--but more for the downright unrealistic expectations I had after two months of Dark Knight hysteria.
Best Three-Hour Board Game: Imperial
Imperial's not a new game, I don't think, but I played it for the first time this year. In the grand German tradition, here's a board game that takes no less than three hours to play, can only be played by three or more people (of course, six is preferred), and has absolutely no element of chance, just careful planning and reacting to what the rest of the players do. It's way more fun than it ought to be, and it's one of the best ways I know of to kill a sleety Sunday.
Best Wii Party Game With Innuendo Gestures: Mario Party 8
The Mario Party games are always a lot of fun for big gatherings; they succeed mostly in that you don't have to be good at Mario Party to enjoy Mario Party. There's no competitive cult that exists with most of the popular shooters, and let's face it--it's not nearly fun enough to play as a single player game that you might want to "practice".
As with any series of games, you're going to get some (unnecessarily) impassioned arguments about which game is the best. I've only played a few of them, so I'm a poor judge of that. I can say for certainty, though, that the eighth installment is clearly the most impressive when it comes to innuendo hand gestures, mostly because it involves the use of the Wiimote. Can anyone say "Shake it Up"?
Best Contribution to My Writing: Jacqueline Snedeker, Georgia Tech School of Chemical Engineering
If you read through earlier Isoceleria entries, you might notice a tendency of mine to start sentences with "this". I was swiftly and completely broken of this habit over the semester by Ms. Snedeker, who's the closest thing to an English teacher most Tech upperclassmen will ever have. "It's ambiguous," she assured me. "You don't know what the antecedent is." Too true, Ms. Snedeker. And I did it a lot, or used to, but I quickly got a lot better at not doing it. At one point, I even challenged her to find a sentence starting with "this" anywhere in my most recent lab report, to the tune of $20 if she could find one.
I kept my Jackson squarely in my wallet.
Best Place to Pretend to Be a Hipster: Starbucks in Tech Square
Though, I'm forced to admit, that Starbucks by Lake Lucerne and Starbucks in Athens and even Starbucks in Schererville, IN are close runners-up.
Currently listening: Metro Jazz Club, Live at the Aurora Theater
Most Strike-Proof TV Show: Lost
The disastrous 2008 Writer's Strike left television as we know it in total disarray. Some of TV's best shows (eg, House) decided to push through it and run the episodes they'd planned on anyway. That left us anachronistically watching the Christmas episode in late January, and not really remembering who these roomful of fellowship candidates were in the first place. Some others (eg, Battlestar Galactica) just took a figurative cleaver to their seasons, with ten episodes now, ten later, and an implied Gallic shrug somewhere in the middle. Still others, like 24, washed their hands of 2008 completely, choosing instead to focus on the 2009 season. (It might have been odd to call it 11 for a season anyway.)
Not Lost, though. The show was coming into its fourth season with a renewed sense of purpose, with the mythical End Date only a few years off. Three seasons to introduce some more new wrinkles, kill off a few main characters, give the faithful plenty to speculate about, and finally wrap everything up. So Lost was already in a "cut the crap" mode, even before the strike hit. It was one of the few shows to make it out of the strike an even better show than before, mostly because the "streamline" mentality was already very much a part of the show's philosophy.
The V For Vendetta Memorial Award: The Dark Knight
The V for Vendetta Memorial Award is presented annually to the most over-rated film based on an existing comic book or graphic novel. Last year, it would have gone to 300, hands down. This year, none other than The Dark Knight takes home that prestigious award.
To reiterate, The Dark Knight was not a bad movie at all. The acting was mostly overdone, whatever attempts it had at philosophizing or "commenting on the human condition" were dime-store at best, and what should have been one of the most interesting character developments (Two-Face) felt rushed. But for those faults, this movie might have been able to live up to its hype, right?
Absolutely not. I'd heard so much about how wonderful this movie was--particularly Heath Ledger's performance in it--in the weeks and months leading up to my watching it that there was literally no way it could have been as good as everyone was saying. So this V for Vendetta Memorial Award is not so much for the low quality of the movie--because it wasn't a low quality movie--but more for the downright unrealistic expectations I had after two months of Dark Knight hysteria.
Best Three-Hour Board Game: Imperial
Imperial's not a new game, I don't think, but I played it for the first time this year. In the grand German tradition, here's a board game that takes no less than three hours to play, can only be played by three or more people (of course, six is preferred), and has absolutely no element of chance, just careful planning and reacting to what the rest of the players do. It's way more fun than it ought to be, and it's one of the best ways I know of to kill a sleety Sunday.
Best Wii Party Game With Innuendo Gestures: Mario Party 8
The Mario Party games are always a lot of fun for big gatherings; they succeed mostly in that you don't have to be good at Mario Party to enjoy Mario Party. There's no competitive cult that exists with most of the popular shooters, and let's face it--it's not nearly fun enough to play as a single player game that you might want to "practice".
As with any series of games, you're going to get some (unnecessarily) impassioned arguments about which game is the best. I've only played a few of them, so I'm a poor judge of that. I can say for certainty, though, that the eighth installment is clearly the most impressive when it comes to innuendo hand gestures, mostly because it involves the use of the Wiimote. Can anyone say "Shake it Up"?
Best Contribution to My Writing: Jacqueline Snedeker, Georgia Tech School of Chemical Engineering
If you read through earlier Isoceleria entries, you might notice a tendency of mine to start sentences with "this". I was swiftly and completely broken of this habit over the semester by Ms. Snedeker, who's the closest thing to an English teacher most Tech upperclassmen will ever have. "It's ambiguous," she assured me. "You don't know what the antecedent is." Too true, Ms. Snedeker. And I did it a lot, or used to, but I quickly got a lot better at not doing it. At one point, I even challenged her to find a sentence starting with "this" anywhere in my most recent lab report, to the tune of $20 if she could find one.
I kept my Jackson squarely in my wallet.
Best Place to Pretend to Be a Hipster: Starbucks in Tech Square
Though, I'm forced to admit, that Starbucks by Lake Lucerne and Starbucks in Athens and even Starbucks in Schererville, IN are close runners-up.
Currently listening: Metro Jazz Club, Live at the Aurora Theater
Monday, December 29, 2008
Theology in the Benedict Era
It’s been a long road, Pope Benedict. I’ve been trying for exactly three years now to finish your book, Truth and Tolerance, in which you discuss (among dozens of other things) the relationship between the Christian faith, other world religions, and the philosophical concept of “truth”. And it’s been intense.
I still haven’t gotten a good answer about how to address the author of this book. When the book was written, the author was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the Prefect of the Congregation of the Faith. Since then, he has been elevated and elected to the papacy and is now Pope Benedict XVI. I’m leaning toward referring to the author as Cardinal Ratzinger, merely because that’s the capacity he wrote the book in.
Review, Reaction, and Discussion: Truth and Tolerance
This book is not an easy read. It would be very easy to dedicate an entire semester’s worth of study to this book, discussing how each concept Ratzinger touches on relates to his Catholic theology, the philosophical traditions of the Christian religion, and the beliefs of other historical and contemporary religions. It wouldn’t even be a stretch to base a graduate thesis on this book, and how the philosophical background of European thought has informed Ratzinger’s theology.
That’s one critical point to understanding this book: it’s obvious Ratzinger is writing very much from the European tradition. Hardly a page goes by without reference to a prior work. Those references range from Kant to virtually unknown German theologians. They range from the ancient (Plato and Aquinas) to the contemporary, and from existentialists (Sartre) to Catholic popes. Ratzinger is always very careful to construct each of his points from syllogisms derived from earlier writings and scriptural references.
That can make his writing very difficult to understand, particularly if you’re unfamiliar with the sources referenced. I have a rudimentary understanding of Kant and Plato, and I’ve at least heard of Sartre, but when Ratzinger bases an entire chapter’s worth of argument on Romano Guardini’s work, that’s another story. An hour of Wikipedia about this man later, and I feel like I can at least evaluate what Ratzinger is saying in its philosophical context. Trying to do that with every author that’s referenced would be prohibitively time-consuming… but also absolutely necessary to really grasp what’s being discussed.
Put another way, the reason it’s clear that Ratzinger is writing from the European philosophical tradition is that he won’t ever make a statement like “here’s what I believe.” It’s always “here’s what scripture and logic dictate that it’s reasonable to believe, and here’s how previous authors have described that.” That’s a very, very good thing to have in a religious leader. A papacy marked by “the Church is going to do this because I say so” is a much less effective one than one that says “the Church is going to do this because it follows from scripture, philosophy, and theology.”
There are two particularly salient points from Ratzinger’s work: first, that religious pluralism is dangerous, in part because it leads to the “indifference of the content of what is believed”. He is particularly vocal—and effective—in attacking the pluralism and relativism implied by various Eastern “Dharmic” beliefs such as Hinduism and Buddhism. He says it’s tempting to turn to a religion that doesn’t care for a worldly concept of truth. However, he argues, the more you look into these religions, the more they’re concerned with escaping the worldly concerns of truth (ie, ascending from the eternal cycles of reincarnation), and a religion predicated on escaping the world ultimately leads to an unfulfilling experience in the world.
The second point that shows up over and over again is the connection of God the creator and Supreme Being, God the source of love, and God the source of reason. Ratzinger painstakingly defends the Johannine declaration “God is love.” He explains in even more detail how Christianity, from its roots in Judaism and its translation into Greek, represented the natural union of religion and philosophy into the one system that could bring its adherents both truth and reason.
Based on those two points, this book is more effective as a defense of Christianity as a system of philosophy and a way to approach a quest for “truth” than a guidebook for Christians on how to approach truth or tolerance. Considering Ratzinger’s intellectual background and philosophical traditions, that makes perfect sense. However, the book left several questions that I would very much like to pose, should I ever get the chance to speak with the Pope.
For me, the most grievous omission from the book dealt with the relationship between Christianity and Islam. Most of the book’s material was written in the 1990s, when Islamic extremism was still an emerging threat in international geopolitics. Now that al Qaeda is a household name, many Christians—particularly American Christians—want to know what sort of relationship Christianity and Islam can have. Ratzinger only mentions Islam a handful of times in the book, at the same time acknowledging that the beliefs of Muslims are a topic that probably deserves a treatise of its own. Allah and the Christian God are the same deity in the Abrahmic tradition, but to what extent are Muslim beliefs the same as Christian ones? I’d like to know, in Ratzinger’s opinion, if Muslims hold the same view that God is supreme, God is reason, and God is love that Christians do (or ought to).
Second, to what extent do we, as Christians, have the obligation to spread the religion? We all know the Great Commission. I say the best way to do this is to lead by example: to show love and reason in all your actions. As Christians, we should never be afraid to proclaim our worship of God. And if I notice that someone I’m close to had a lack of purpose, or love, or reason, then I see it as my duty to suggest Christ as a way to get that. However—and this is probably where the Pope’s theology diverges from my own opinion—if I have a friend who’s committed to Judaism, or Hinduism, or whatever other system of belief, I have no intention of trying to dissuade that friend from that belief.
Despite these shortcomings, and Ratzinger’s tendency to argue ultra-abstractions like “what is truth?” and “does truth have a place in religion?”, this book is an invaluable insight into both what the Pope’s beliefs and how those beliefs were formed. Though plenty of critics have portrayed Benedict as far too conservative, his writings indicate that it is a deeply founded and well thought out conservatism, as opposed to a conservatism for the sake of tradition. Finally, he proves to be one of the most well-read, educated, and downright brilliant theologians of our time.
Currently listening: "Hiphopapotamus vs. Rhymenoceros", Flight of the Conchords
I still haven’t gotten a good answer about how to address the author of this book. When the book was written, the author was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the Prefect of the Congregation of the Faith. Since then, he has been elevated and elected to the papacy and is now Pope Benedict XVI. I’m leaning toward referring to the author as Cardinal Ratzinger, merely because that’s the capacity he wrote the book in.
Review, Reaction, and Discussion: Truth and Tolerance
This book is not an easy read. It would be very easy to dedicate an entire semester’s worth of study to this book, discussing how each concept Ratzinger touches on relates to his Catholic theology, the philosophical traditions of the Christian religion, and the beliefs of other historical and contemporary religions. It wouldn’t even be a stretch to base a graduate thesis on this book, and how the philosophical background of European thought has informed Ratzinger’s theology.
That’s one critical point to understanding this book: it’s obvious Ratzinger is writing very much from the European tradition. Hardly a page goes by without reference to a prior work. Those references range from Kant to virtually unknown German theologians. They range from the ancient (Plato and Aquinas) to the contemporary, and from existentialists (Sartre) to Catholic popes. Ratzinger is always very careful to construct each of his points from syllogisms derived from earlier writings and scriptural references.
That can make his writing very difficult to understand, particularly if you’re unfamiliar with the sources referenced. I have a rudimentary understanding of Kant and Plato, and I’ve at least heard of Sartre, but when Ratzinger bases an entire chapter’s worth of argument on Romano Guardini’s work, that’s another story. An hour of Wikipedia about this man later, and I feel like I can at least evaluate what Ratzinger is saying in its philosophical context. Trying to do that with every author that’s referenced would be prohibitively time-consuming… but also absolutely necessary to really grasp what’s being discussed.
Put another way, the reason it’s clear that Ratzinger is writing from the European philosophical tradition is that he won’t ever make a statement like “here’s what I believe.” It’s always “here’s what scripture and logic dictate that it’s reasonable to believe, and here’s how previous authors have described that.” That’s a very, very good thing to have in a religious leader. A papacy marked by “the Church is going to do this because I say so” is a much less effective one than one that says “the Church is going to do this because it follows from scripture, philosophy, and theology.”
There are two particularly salient points from Ratzinger’s work: first, that religious pluralism is dangerous, in part because it leads to the “indifference of the content of what is believed”. He is particularly vocal—and effective—in attacking the pluralism and relativism implied by various Eastern “Dharmic” beliefs such as Hinduism and Buddhism. He says it’s tempting to turn to a religion that doesn’t care for a worldly concept of truth. However, he argues, the more you look into these religions, the more they’re concerned with escaping the worldly concerns of truth (ie, ascending from the eternal cycles of reincarnation), and a religion predicated on escaping the world ultimately leads to an unfulfilling experience in the world.
The second point that shows up over and over again is the connection of God the creator and Supreme Being, God the source of love, and God the source of reason. Ratzinger painstakingly defends the Johannine declaration “God is love.” He explains in even more detail how Christianity, from its roots in Judaism and its translation into Greek, represented the natural union of religion and philosophy into the one system that could bring its adherents both truth and reason.
Based on those two points, this book is more effective as a defense of Christianity as a system of philosophy and a way to approach a quest for “truth” than a guidebook for Christians on how to approach truth or tolerance. Considering Ratzinger’s intellectual background and philosophical traditions, that makes perfect sense. However, the book left several questions that I would very much like to pose, should I ever get the chance to speak with the Pope.
For me, the most grievous omission from the book dealt with the relationship between Christianity and Islam. Most of the book’s material was written in the 1990s, when Islamic extremism was still an emerging threat in international geopolitics. Now that al Qaeda is a household name, many Christians—particularly American Christians—want to know what sort of relationship Christianity and Islam can have. Ratzinger only mentions Islam a handful of times in the book, at the same time acknowledging that the beliefs of Muslims are a topic that probably deserves a treatise of its own. Allah and the Christian God are the same deity in the Abrahmic tradition, but to what extent are Muslim beliefs the same as Christian ones? I’d like to know, in Ratzinger’s opinion, if Muslims hold the same view that God is supreme, God is reason, and God is love that Christians do (or ought to).
Second, to what extent do we, as Christians, have the obligation to spread the religion? We all know the Great Commission. I say the best way to do this is to lead by example: to show love and reason in all your actions. As Christians, we should never be afraid to proclaim our worship of God. And if I notice that someone I’m close to had a lack of purpose, or love, or reason, then I see it as my duty to suggest Christ as a way to get that. However—and this is probably where the Pope’s theology diverges from my own opinion—if I have a friend who’s committed to Judaism, or Hinduism, or whatever other system of belief, I have no intention of trying to dissuade that friend from that belief.
Despite these shortcomings, and Ratzinger’s tendency to argue ultra-abstractions like “what is truth?” and “does truth have a place in religion?”, this book is an invaluable insight into both what the Pope’s beliefs and how those beliefs were formed. Though plenty of critics have portrayed Benedict as far too conservative, his writings indicate that it is a deeply founded and well thought out conservatism, as opposed to a conservatism for the sake of tradition. Finally, he proves to be one of the most well-read, educated, and downright brilliant theologians of our time.
Currently listening: "Hiphopapotamus vs. Rhymenoceros", Flight of the Conchords
Thursday, December 18, 2008
The 2008 Bowl Season
On ESPN.com's bowl selection show, the national audience was polled to see which college had the biggest BCS gripe: Texas, Texas Tech, or Boise State. The winner, in a landslide, was Texas. Now, I like Texas a lot. I'd consider myself at least a tangential Longhorns fan, and come September 2009, I may well be enrolled there. But I respectfully disagree that Texas had the biggest BCS gripe. They were ranked third in the BCS, and they earned a bid to the Fiesta Bowl. Seems fair to me. Whether or not they had a Big XII gripe, especially relating to how Oklahoma got a spot in the Big XII championship, is another matter entirely.
No, it's the Broncos who have the biggest BCS gripe. Their coach put it better than I could have: "we did all we can do." An undefeated season, beating a solid Oregon team and winning the conference handily. Apparently, that's not good enough to earn a BCS bid.
I think the national championship game between Florida and Oklahoma will be a fine one. Whether or not these are the two best teams in the country, they're certainly two of the best in the country, and we'll get one heck of a football game. I'm going to go with Florida for three reasons. First, they beat Georgia, not just this year, but consistently. And I can't help but support a team that does that. Second, Oklahoma's fight song is annoying--not just the song itself, but the frequency at which they play the first eight measures of it. Score, okay. First down, maybe. Missouri does an illegal shift? Sorry guys, that's not "Boomer Sooner" worthy. And third, I think Sam Bradford is a bit of a douchebag. Did you see his ten-degree hat tilt after Oklahoma beat Missouri?
I like Penn State in the Rose Bowl, mostly because I'm no fan of USC, and Texas in the Fiesta, mostly because I'm no fan of Ohio State. Either Alabama or Utah would be fine in the Sugar, and really I couldn't care less about the Orange, since Georgia Tech isn't in it.
The saying is that "my two favorite teams are Georgia Tech and whoever plays Georgia." In that case, color me a Michigan State fan. I don't know much about the team this year, mostly because they've been so thoroughly overshadowed by Penn State and Ohio State. I do know--incidentally, so does ESPN--that Georgia has had a disappointing season: giving up 40 or more points in losing all of their important games. Let's see the Spartans put up 50 in the Capital One Bowl.
Of course, Tech will take care of LSU in the Chick-fil-A Bowl. No doubt about it. Remember the last game each team played? Tech takes care of their perennial rival Georgia... and LSU loses to Arkansas.
Finally, I'd be remiss not to talk about the Playoff Question, which is a sine qua non for debating the intricacies of college football. I think it's a bad idea. Yes, it would more accurately crown a national champion, but that's all it would do. Part of the draw of the bowl season is seeing all these bizarre matchups of teams that would never, ever play each other except under the duress of corporate sponsorship. All a playoff would do is shift the focus to a handful of four or eight or sixteen elite teams for a few weeks. I don't know about anyone else, but watching USC and Oklahoma and Ohio State play three games apiece to end the season is a little anticlimactic.
Currently listening: "Bethlehem", Chicago (from What's it Gonna Be, Santa)
No, it's the Broncos who have the biggest BCS gripe. Their coach put it better than I could have: "we did all we can do." An undefeated season, beating a solid Oregon team and winning the conference handily. Apparently, that's not good enough to earn a BCS bid.
I think the national championship game between Florida and Oklahoma will be a fine one. Whether or not these are the two best teams in the country, they're certainly two of the best in the country, and we'll get one heck of a football game. I'm going to go with Florida for three reasons. First, they beat Georgia, not just this year, but consistently. And I can't help but support a team that does that. Second, Oklahoma's fight song is annoying--not just the song itself, but the frequency at which they play the first eight measures of it. Score, okay. First down, maybe. Missouri does an illegal shift? Sorry guys, that's not "Boomer Sooner" worthy. And third, I think Sam Bradford is a bit of a douchebag. Did you see his ten-degree hat tilt after Oklahoma beat Missouri?
I like Penn State in the Rose Bowl, mostly because I'm no fan of USC, and Texas in the Fiesta, mostly because I'm no fan of Ohio State. Either Alabama or Utah would be fine in the Sugar, and really I couldn't care less about the Orange, since Georgia Tech isn't in it.
The saying is that "my two favorite teams are Georgia Tech and whoever plays Georgia." In that case, color me a Michigan State fan. I don't know much about the team this year, mostly because they've been so thoroughly overshadowed by Penn State and Ohio State. I do know--incidentally, so does ESPN--that Georgia has had a disappointing season: giving up 40 or more points in losing all of their important games. Let's see the Spartans put up 50 in the Capital One Bowl.
Of course, Tech will take care of LSU in the Chick-fil-A Bowl. No doubt about it. Remember the last game each team played? Tech takes care of their perennial rival Georgia... and LSU loses to Arkansas.
Finally, I'd be remiss not to talk about the Playoff Question, which is a sine qua non for debating the intricacies of college football. I think it's a bad idea. Yes, it would more accurately crown a national champion, but that's all it would do. Part of the draw of the bowl season is seeing all these bizarre matchups of teams that would never, ever play each other except under the duress of corporate sponsorship. All a playoff would do is shift the focus to a handful of four or eight or sixteen elite teams for a few weeks. I don't know about anyone else, but watching USC and Oklahoma and Ohio State play three games apiece to end the season is a little anticlimactic.
Currently listening: "Bethlehem", Chicago (from What's it Gonna Be, Santa)
Sunday, December 07, 2008
The Urbanspoon App, For Free
One thing I'll never get tired of is eating at interesting restaurants. We've got a lot of them in Atlanta--no shortage of whatever cuisine you might be desiring. My newfound mobility (in the form of a '99 Subaru Forester) and windfall (in the form of the remnants of a lucrative summer internship at the hands of Big Oil) combined with several good friends having the same have afforded me a lot more opportunity to quest for decent places to eat.
The biggest problem is that I'm horrible at picking restaurants.
I'm bad at making a lot of decisions, but I'm actually really good at important ones. Where to go for grad school? I'll do fine making that choice. How much to spend once you get to the restaurant? I have very good self-control. "Should we go to Target or Best Buy first?" "I don't care." "No, really, which one?" "Um, really, I can't make that decision. It doesn't matter." The lower the stakes for a decision, I think, the worse I am at making it.
Now comes the Urbanspoon app, which is possibly the most hipster phrase I've ever uttered. "Urbanspoon app". It just smacks of people who wear scarves in October but not January, who read a lot of McSweeney's and Dave Eggers, and who scorn corporate culture except for when it happens to be emblazoned with the Apple emblem. But no matter. The Urbanspoon app is pure genius.
Shake your iPhone, and it tells you where to eat dinner. It's not random, either. It's weighted toward where you are right now (via GPS) and what's gotten the best reviews on the website (via an actually legitimate use of Web 2.0). Don't like the idea? Shake it again. This, and this alone, might make me want an iPhone. Then again, $300 and $90 per month for dining advice? Maybe I'll pass.
Or, as several of my friends have suggested, you can do this for free. Write down the name of twenty or thirty restaurants, some of which you know and like, some of which you want to try. Put them in a Ziploc bag. Shake it, and pull one out. Concerned about the directions? Write them on the back!
Here's where you come in. I'm taking suggestions for restaurants to write down on my ghetto "Urbanspoon app", and I'd like to take a quick screen of where everybody thinks is worth eating.
After all, I'm not about to pick a restaurant by myself.
Currently listening: "Disturbia", Rihanna (no, really. It's a good song.)
The biggest problem is that I'm horrible at picking restaurants.
I'm bad at making a lot of decisions, but I'm actually really good at important ones. Where to go for grad school? I'll do fine making that choice. How much to spend once you get to the restaurant? I have very good self-control. "Should we go to Target or Best Buy first?" "I don't care." "No, really, which one?" "Um, really, I can't make that decision. It doesn't matter." The lower the stakes for a decision, I think, the worse I am at making it.
Now comes the Urbanspoon app, which is possibly the most hipster phrase I've ever uttered. "Urbanspoon app". It just smacks of people who wear scarves in October but not January, who read a lot of McSweeney's and Dave Eggers, and who scorn corporate culture except for when it happens to be emblazoned with the Apple emblem. But no matter. The Urbanspoon app is pure genius.
Shake your iPhone, and it tells you where to eat dinner. It's not random, either. It's weighted toward where you are right now (via GPS) and what's gotten the best reviews on the website (via an actually legitimate use of Web 2.0). Don't like the idea? Shake it again. This, and this alone, might make me want an iPhone. Then again, $300 and $90 per month for dining advice? Maybe I'll pass.
Or, as several of my friends have suggested, you can do this for free. Write down the name of twenty or thirty restaurants, some of which you know and like, some of which you want to try. Put them in a Ziploc bag. Shake it, and pull one out. Concerned about the directions? Write them on the back!
Here's where you come in. I'm taking suggestions for restaurants to write down on my ghetto "Urbanspoon app", and I'd like to take a quick screen of where everybody thinks is worth eating.
After all, I'm not about to pick a restaurant by myself.
Currently listening: "Disturbia", Rihanna (no, really. It's a good song.)
Saturday, November 29, 2008
New Keane and Snow Patrol; Old Stars
It's been a while since Perfect Symmetry and A Hundred Million Suns came out in the States, but I've been keeping myself busy. A few weeks of impressive success in mock trial, a few days of stuffing myself with far too much food, and an afternoon of stunning Georgia Tech victory (how 'bout them dawgs?).
Review: Perfect Symmetry, Keane
I could tell you "okay, listen to this album, then go back and listen to 'Spiralling' again" but that would be wholly redundant, because you'd already be doing it. It's tough to give a positive review to an album based on one track alone, but I'm on the verge of being able to do that with Perfect Symmetry. It's the rare track that you can listen to over and over again and not get tired of, because it's so much fun. Excellent production, catchy, and not entirely vapid lyrically, if you're into that sort of thing.
The one problem that stems from this is that Perfect Symmetry might naturally suffer from a bit of In Our Bedroom After the War syndrome: front-loading the album with the best music, so the rest doesn't seem as good by comparison. This album doesn't quite do that to the same level, but it comes close. It does, however, compare favorably to Viva La Vida, in that it is the most interesting thing that Keane has ever done. I thought Hopes and Fears was sort of okay. I wasn't a big fan of Under the Iron Sea, although I didn't per se dislike it. It was just sort of neutral.
Perfect Symmetry is not neutral. It is good music, through and through.
Review: A Hundred Million Suns, Snow Patrol
I love this one too. Snow Patrol has transcended "alternative rock" to make music that actually has some sort of soul to it, almost like Mae's The Everglow. That's not praise I'm going to hand out lightly--and I'm not about to say that A Hundred Million Suns matches Mae's masterpiece. But it's beautiful nonetheless. There's so much heartfelt niceness here that if it comes across as saccharine at times, we're perfectly willing to forgive Snow Patrol. We're willing to forgive them because it's unmistakably sincere.
There's a point at the end of them album where we're treated to "Snow Patrol does Sufjan Stevens", or at least something that sounds remarkably like it. And it works. Most of the album sounds like traditional Snow Patrol, and it works too. But though some will accuse this album of being the same thing Snow Patrol has done five times already, it's not, because of the immense amount of emotion that made its way in. It will make you feel good, albeit in a non-cutting-edge manner.
Review: Heart, Stars
To bring things full circle, and talk about Stars again, I've finally brought myself around to listen to Stars' first album, and I don't think it's that great. Too weird and electronic-y for my tastes. Then again, like I mentioned in that earlier review of In Our Bedroom Under the War, or possibly in my review of the Stars concert from March, how much you like Stars' albums probably has the most to do with the order you listen to them in. And it makes perfect sense that fans of Heart probably wouldn't like the more recent endeavors.
Specifically, that introduction is way too hipster for me. "Elevator Love Letter" is a classic, to be sure. But the album goes downhill from there and really can't hold a candle to Set Yourself on Fire.
Currently listening: "Carry on Wayward Son", Kansas
Review: Perfect Symmetry, Keane
I could tell you "okay, listen to this album, then go back and listen to 'Spiralling' again" but that would be wholly redundant, because you'd already be doing it. It's tough to give a positive review to an album based on one track alone, but I'm on the verge of being able to do that with Perfect Symmetry. It's the rare track that you can listen to over and over again and not get tired of, because it's so much fun. Excellent production, catchy, and not entirely vapid lyrically, if you're into that sort of thing.
The one problem that stems from this is that Perfect Symmetry might naturally suffer from a bit of In Our Bedroom After the War syndrome: front-loading the album with the best music, so the rest doesn't seem as good by comparison. This album doesn't quite do that to the same level, but it comes close. It does, however, compare favorably to Viva La Vida, in that it is the most interesting thing that Keane has ever done. I thought Hopes and Fears was sort of okay. I wasn't a big fan of Under the Iron Sea, although I didn't per se dislike it. It was just sort of neutral.
Perfect Symmetry is not neutral. It is good music, through and through.
Review: A Hundred Million Suns, Snow Patrol
I love this one too. Snow Patrol has transcended "alternative rock" to make music that actually has some sort of soul to it, almost like Mae's The Everglow. That's not praise I'm going to hand out lightly--and I'm not about to say that A Hundred Million Suns matches Mae's masterpiece. But it's beautiful nonetheless. There's so much heartfelt niceness here that if it comes across as saccharine at times, we're perfectly willing to forgive Snow Patrol. We're willing to forgive them because it's unmistakably sincere.
There's a point at the end of them album where we're treated to "Snow Patrol does Sufjan Stevens", or at least something that sounds remarkably like it. And it works. Most of the album sounds like traditional Snow Patrol, and it works too. But though some will accuse this album of being the same thing Snow Patrol has done five times already, it's not, because of the immense amount of emotion that made its way in. It will make you feel good, albeit in a non-cutting-edge manner.
Review: Heart, Stars
To bring things full circle, and talk about Stars again, I've finally brought myself around to listen to Stars' first album, and I don't think it's that great. Too weird and electronic-y for my tastes. Then again, like I mentioned in that earlier review of In Our Bedroom Under the War, or possibly in my review of the Stars concert from March, how much you like Stars' albums probably has the most to do with the order you listen to them in. And it makes perfect sense that fans of Heart probably wouldn't like the more recent endeavors.
Specifically, that introduction is way too hipster for me. "Elevator Love Letter" is a classic, to be sure. But the album goes downhill from there and really can't hold a candle to Set Yourself on Fire.
Currently listening: "Carry on Wayward Son", Kansas
Sunday, November 16, 2008
The "So" Neologism
(This entry is coming to you from the Grizzled Old Prescriptivist department of Isoceleria.)
The worst sort of neologism is the sort that you're not aware that you're using. When I caught myself sending a sentence with the antecedent-less "so" the other day, I immediately asked myself "isn't this the exact sort of thing that I should hate?" Yes, yes it is.
You know what I'm talking about. "Hey, why didn't you guys go to the game?" "We were planning to, but Dan didn't want to go, so..."
"Aren't you going to do your calc homework?" "I don't know--I've done the rest of it, and we get to drop one, so..."
My biggest problem with "so" is its grammatical nonsensicality. In this context, this seemingly benign conjunction transforms its meaning from "therefore" to something approximating "which explains what I just told you". This is not useful. "Dan didn't want to go, so we didn't" is a fine sentence. So is simply "Dan didn't want to go."
Therefore, it seems like the "so" neologism is nothing more than a rhetorical crutch. It doesn't mean anything. It's not important to elucidating the meaning of the sentence. In fact, it muddles it if anything. This use of "so" is in fact exactly like the French "t" that's stuck in the middle of words so the mortal sin of consecutive vowels isn't committed. But it doesn't even have the French excuse of making the phrase sound better.
Instead, it shows an utter lack of confidence on the speaker's part to simply end the sentence where it ought to. And it's a becoming more and more accepted crutch to lean on.
Currently listening: "Spiralling", from Perfect Symmetry, Keane (review to follow)
The worst sort of neologism is the sort that you're not aware that you're using. When I caught myself sending a sentence with the antecedent-less "so" the other day, I immediately asked myself "isn't this the exact sort of thing that I should hate?" Yes, yes it is.
You know what I'm talking about. "Hey, why didn't you guys go to the game?" "We were planning to, but Dan didn't want to go, so..."
"Aren't you going to do your calc homework?" "I don't know--I've done the rest of it, and we get to drop one, so..."
My biggest problem with "so" is its grammatical nonsensicality. In this context, this seemingly benign conjunction transforms its meaning from "therefore" to something approximating "which explains what I just told you". This is not useful. "Dan didn't want to go, so we didn't" is a fine sentence. So is simply "Dan didn't want to go."
Therefore, it seems like the "so" neologism is nothing more than a rhetorical crutch. It doesn't mean anything. It's not important to elucidating the meaning of the sentence. In fact, it muddles it if anything. This use of "so" is in fact exactly like the French "t" that's stuck in the middle of words so the mortal sin of consecutive vowels isn't committed. But it doesn't even have the French excuse of making the phrase sound better.
Instead, it shows an utter lack of confidence on the speaker's part to simply end the sentence where it ought to. And it's a becoming more and more accepted crutch to lean on.
Currently listening: "Spiralling", from Perfect Symmetry, Keane (review to follow)
Sunday, November 02, 2008
An Exhortation to Voters
Normally, Isoceleria does not touch politics with a ten-foot pole. And indeed, even though this entry is about the election, it still does not offer any views on political discussions or policies.
I'm very, very worried about what the two-party system is doing to our elections in this country. Not since 2000 at the most recent (perhaps earlier than that) has a presidential election actually been about two candidates. Back in 2004, I heard pundits describe the election as a "vote of no confidence in Bush" instead of an election between Bush and Kerry. How many times, for example, did you hear the following?
"Hey, who are you voting for?"
"Definitely Kerry."
"Oh yeah? How come?"
"He's not Bush."
"Well, that's true. But what do you like about Kerry?"
"He wouldn't have gotten us into this war."
"Be that as it may, we're in this war now. How does Kerry plan to handle it?"
"We wouldn't have fought it in the first place."
"Yes, I understand that. Are you saying you're voting for him based on what he would have done, rather than what he will do?"
"I'm just voting for him because he's not Bush."
The 2004 "vote of no confidence" failed. And I firmly believe that that's at best a very weak function of John Kerry and his policy statements. The Democrats could have thrown Howard Dean, or John Edwards, or anyone else, on the ballot. It wouldn't have mattered. Kerry voters didn't like Kerry; they disliked Bush.
Now that it's 2008, that mentality has far from disappeared. Consider what's become a typical conversation now:
"Hey, who are you voting for?"
"McCain, I guess."
"Oh yeah? How come?"
"I'm scared of Obama."
"Okay, but what do you like about McCain?"
"His policies are better than Obama's."
"Yes, but are they good?"
"Well, McCain definitely wasn't my first choice. I'd rather have seen (Giuliani/Huckabee/Romney) on the ballot."
"So why are you voting for him if you disagree with him?"
"I'm just voting for him because he's not Obama."
We haven't made much progress. This time, instead of an election between McCain and Obama, we have a "referendum on Obama". By all accounts, that referendum is about to succeed. And again, even if it had been Giuliani, or Huckabee, or Romney, it wouldn't have mattered, because this election is only about Obama vs. Not-Obama.
One additional factor that's peculiar to this election is race. It's obvious that there are people voting for Obama only because Obama is black. And it's obvious that there are people voting against Obama only because Obama is black. I'm not sure which one is more racist. But there's equally as nonsensical.
Take-home message? If you truly, honestly believe that either Obama or McCain is going to take the country in a good direction, then yes, by all means, vote for one of them. If you don't believe that; if you dislike both of them; if you disagree with both of them so thoroughly that you believe neither one of them is going to take us in the "correct" direction, then don't feel pressured to vote for either of them. Vote for neither. Write yourself in. Go for a third party.
Vote on November 4th. But vote for the candidate you like, not against the one you dislike.
Currently listening: Perfect Symmetry, Keane
I'm very, very worried about what the two-party system is doing to our elections in this country. Not since 2000 at the most recent (perhaps earlier than that) has a presidential election actually been about two candidates. Back in 2004, I heard pundits describe the election as a "vote of no confidence in Bush" instead of an election between Bush and Kerry. How many times, for example, did you hear the following?
"Hey, who are you voting for?"
"Definitely Kerry."
"Oh yeah? How come?"
"He's not Bush."
"Well, that's true. But what do you like about Kerry?"
"He wouldn't have gotten us into this war."
"Be that as it may, we're in this war now. How does Kerry plan to handle it?"
"We wouldn't have fought it in the first place."
"Yes, I understand that. Are you saying you're voting for him based on what he would have done, rather than what he will do?"
"I'm just voting for him because he's not Bush."
The 2004 "vote of no confidence" failed. And I firmly believe that that's at best a very weak function of John Kerry and his policy statements. The Democrats could have thrown Howard Dean, or John Edwards, or anyone else, on the ballot. It wouldn't have mattered. Kerry voters didn't like Kerry; they disliked Bush.
Now that it's 2008, that mentality has far from disappeared. Consider what's become a typical conversation now:
"Hey, who are you voting for?"
"McCain, I guess."
"Oh yeah? How come?"
"I'm scared of Obama."
"Okay, but what do you like about McCain?"
"His policies are better than Obama's."
"Yes, but are they good?"
"Well, McCain definitely wasn't my first choice. I'd rather have seen (Giuliani/Huckabee/Romney) on the ballot."
"So why are you voting for him if you disagree with him?"
"I'm just voting for him because he's not Obama."
We haven't made much progress. This time, instead of an election between McCain and Obama, we have a "referendum on Obama". By all accounts, that referendum is about to succeed. And again, even if it had been Giuliani, or Huckabee, or Romney, it wouldn't have mattered, because this election is only about Obama vs. Not-Obama.
One additional factor that's peculiar to this election is race. It's obvious that there are people voting for Obama only because Obama is black. And it's obvious that there are people voting against Obama only because Obama is black. I'm not sure which one is more racist. But there's equally as nonsensical.
Take-home message? If you truly, honestly believe that either Obama or McCain is going to take the country in a good direction, then yes, by all means, vote for one of them. If you don't believe that; if you dislike both of them; if you disagree with both of them so thoroughly that you believe neither one of them is going to take us in the "correct" direction, then don't feel pressured to vote for either of them. Vote for neither. Write yourself in. Go for a third party.
Vote on November 4th. But vote for the candidate you like, not against the one you dislike.
Currently listening: Perfect Symmetry, Keane
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Mock Trial Scoring and Ties
I've developed a strong preference for quoting mock trial scores and results in terms of total ballots (equivalently, total wins) over in terms of win-loss record. A win is worth one win, naturally; a loss is worth zero wins. But the tie ends up adding a ternary complexity to the otherwise binary system, being worth half a win. Some systems (for example, Georgia high school mock trial) address this problem by eliminating the possibility of a tie altogether by means of a "team score" that's specifically designed to break a tie. College mock trial, though, gives a total score that's the sum of the individual performances, and nothing more. This can range from 14 to 140, although scores typically find themselves in the range of 80-120.
The combinatorically savvy will note that out of 127 possible scores, or even 40 or so likely scores, the tie should not happen very often. It does, more than it really has any right to. One Georgia Tech team had three of them in one weekend, out of eight total ballots. Therefore, you get monstrosities like a record of 3-3-2, which is far from self-explanatory at first glance. Decoded, it's three wins, three losses, and two ties, and if you know the tie-win conversion factor, it's easy to see that this team has four win equivalents... but how much better or worse is that than a team with plain old four wins?
Here's the key: in college mock trial, it's not necessarily either. A team that goes 3-3-2 is not necessarily going to be ranked higher or lower than a team that goes 4-4. No, that comes down to a construct called CS, which stands for combined strength, and is actually the least arcane of all the tiebreaker formulae. A quick rundown: CS is like strength of schedule in football; higher CS means you played tougher teams and ranks higher in the tiebreaker.
So consider the following (admittedly contrived, but mathematically possible) scenario. At a particularly tough tournament, the best teams only get six wins or the equivalent. Team A has a record of 6-2, CS 15. Team B has a record of 5-1-2, CS 16. Team C has a record of 4-0-4, CS 14. To someone who knows 1) tie equivalencies, and 2) what CS means, it's obvious that the top three teams in order are B, then A, then C.
Plenty of tournaments would choose to report the standings with win-loss record, so we'd see a convoluted mess of wins and losses and ties that make you do the tie conversions yourself. Why not just report each team as having six wins?
Currently listening: "One By One All Day", the Shins
The combinatorically savvy will note that out of 127 possible scores, or even 40 or so likely scores, the tie should not happen very often. It does, more than it really has any right to. One Georgia Tech team had three of them in one weekend, out of eight total ballots. Therefore, you get monstrosities like a record of 3-3-2, which is far from self-explanatory at first glance. Decoded, it's three wins, three losses, and two ties, and if you know the tie-win conversion factor, it's easy to see that this team has four win equivalents... but how much better or worse is that than a team with plain old four wins?
Here's the key: in college mock trial, it's not necessarily either. A team that goes 3-3-2 is not necessarily going to be ranked higher or lower than a team that goes 4-4. No, that comes down to a construct called CS, which stands for combined strength, and is actually the least arcane of all the tiebreaker formulae. A quick rundown: CS is like strength of schedule in football; higher CS means you played tougher teams and ranks higher in the tiebreaker.
So consider the following (admittedly contrived, but mathematically possible) scenario. At a particularly tough tournament, the best teams only get six wins or the equivalent. Team A has a record of 6-2, CS 15. Team B has a record of 5-1-2, CS 16. Team C has a record of 4-0-4, CS 14. To someone who knows 1) tie equivalencies, and 2) what CS means, it's obvious that the top three teams in order are B, then A, then C.
Plenty of tournaments would choose to report the standings with win-loss record, so we'd see a convoluted mess of wins and losses and ties that make you do the tie conversions yourself. Why not just report each team as having six wins?
Currently listening: "One By One All Day", the Shins
Saturday, October 11, 2008
What's Good on TV This Fall?
By now we're a few weeks into the season, and it's time to give a few opinions.
House is nominally my favorite show on television, at least during non-Lost season. Anymore, I'm going to have to amend that to "the first three seasons of House" forming my favorite show on television. Okay, it's not really fair to judge a show by its 2007-2008 season, what with the strike and all. I wasn't too crazy about the new band of House's cronies (except in that I think Olivia Wilde is pretty). It's probably more a case of new-different-bad than anything, but if the old trio was working, why bring in a new one? Sure, we still see Chase and Cameron on the show, but not nearly enough of them (and Cameron is looking worse and worse as a blonde).
Compared to what's going on in House this season, though, that's the least of our concerns. So Wilson doesn't want to work at the hospital anymore, ever since Cutthroat Bitch died. Whine, whine, whine. Now House is all emo because his best/only friend is gone. Whine some more. No clinic hours. No blatant flirting between House and Cuddy. Private investigator dude is all right, but the storyline doesn't have the legs to become a permanent part of the show. We've had some good House lines--"Send Foreman. Old people are scared of black people." But instead of the wit that we're used to, we have a a bunch of unnecessary drama.
Oh, and I have lots of trouble watching the show. Fox, crafty bastards that they are, have apparently found a way to prevent my DVR from recording the show. Oh well. Just watch it on the internet, right? Sure... eight days later. It's as if Fox doesn't want me watching this show after all.
The Office hasn't disappointed so far. Making Ryan the new receptionist was a master stroke. "How," we wondered, "can this main character remain part of the show despite his firing and arrest?" And perhaps some of the show's more astute or diehard fans wondered "who will be the new receptionist at Dunder Mifflin?" Two birds with one stone, and excellently done.
I like Holly so far. Definitely an interesting dimension in the Michael love polygon... although you know Jan won't be gone for long, and Michael's going to have some explaining to do regarding his maybe-child. I wonder how this season can survive without seeing Pam around--an occasional phone call per episode to who used to be a major character is too drastic a change. And how will the dynamics of the show change once Jim and Pam are married?
The tension and complications of that relationship have been one of the driving forces for the past four seasons of the show. From day one of me seeing the show, I thought the show had to end with two things happening concurrently: the Scranton branch finally closing due to Michael's mismanagement, and Jim and Pam finally getting married. It's obvious by now that's not going to happen. That's okay, as long as there's some equal motivation introduced pretty quickly. And that motivation better not be Jim and Pam not getting married after all, because those two deserve a happy ending.
I've liked what I've seen of The Big Bang Theory, but that hasn't been much. My computer TV tuner seems to know whenever I'm trying to record the show, and conspiratorially restart my computer. CBS.com exacerbates the situation by refusing to post any full episodes of the show. No idea why.
For my trashy reality TV fix, both Survivor and The Amazing Race are doing just fine. And the good part of those shows is that you don't really feel bad if you miss an episode. It's fun assigning a douchebag score to each of the contestants on these shows (similar to the same process one can go through with certain professors). Everybody plays to their stereotypes perfectly, which wouldn't be a valid source of humor except in the situation where they want to "show the world who they really are" and "break a few misconceptions". Right.
Criminal Minds and both the New York and Las Vegas editions of CSI are good, unfortunately having been relegated mostly to background as lab reports are written, or something equally miserable. I do want to pick an ideological bone with Criminal Minds, however, in their depiction of "libertarians". About the only accurate thing said about libertarians in the entire episode is that libertarians believe individuals should be free to do as they please as long as they don't interfere with anyone else's rights. That does not make them crazy cultists.
Finally, how long before I no longer have to alter my entire television-watching plans to watch politicians yell at each other for a while? This is not influencing how I'm planning on voting.
Currently listening: "The Island" from The Crane Wife, the Decemberists
House is nominally my favorite show on television, at least during non-Lost season. Anymore, I'm going to have to amend that to "the first three seasons of House" forming my favorite show on television. Okay, it's not really fair to judge a show by its 2007-2008 season, what with the strike and all. I wasn't too crazy about the new band of House's cronies (except in that I think Olivia Wilde is pretty). It's probably more a case of new-different-bad than anything, but if the old trio was working, why bring in a new one? Sure, we still see Chase and Cameron on the show, but not nearly enough of them (and Cameron is looking worse and worse as a blonde).
Compared to what's going on in House this season, though, that's the least of our concerns. So Wilson doesn't want to work at the hospital anymore, ever since Cutthroat Bitch died. Whine, whine, whine. Now House is all emo because his best/only friend is gone. Whine some more. No clinic hours. No blatant flirting between House and Cuddy. Private investigator dude is all right, but the storyline doesn't have the legs to become a permanent part of the show. We've had some good House lines--"Send Foreman. Old people are scared of black people." But instead of the wit that we're used to, we have a a bunch of unnecessary drama.
Oh, and I have lots of trouble watching the show. Fox, crafty bastards that they are, have apparently found a way to prevent my DVR from recording the show. Oh well. Just watch it on the internet, right? Sure... eight days later. It's as if Fox doesn't want me watching this show after all.
The Office hasn't disappointed so far. Making Ryan the new receptionist was a master stroke. "How," we wondered, "can this main character remain part of the show despite his firing and arrest?" And perhaps some of the show's more astute or diehard fans wondered "who will be the new receptionist at Dunder Mifflin?" Two birds with one stone, and excellently done.
I like Holly so far. Definitely an interesting dimension in the Michael love polygon... although you know Jan won't be gone for long, and Michael's going to have some explaining to do regarding his maybe-child. I wonder how this season can survive without seeing Pam around--an occasional phone call per episode to who used to be a major character is too drastic a change. And how will the dynamics of the show change once Jim and Pam are married?
The tension and complications of that relationship have been one of the driving forces for the past four seasons of the show. From day one of me seeing the show, I thought the show had to end with two things happening concurrently: the Scranton branch finally closing due to Michael's mismanagement, and Jim and Pam finally getting married. It's obvious by now that's not going to happen. That's okay, as long as there's some equal motivation introduced pretty quickly. And that motivation better not be Jim and Pam not getting married after all, because those two deserve a happy ending.
I've liked what I've seen of The Big Bang Theory, but that hasn't been much. My computer TV tuner seems to know whenever I'm trying to record the show, and conspiratorially restart my computer. CBS.com exacerbates the situation by refusing to post any full episodes of the show. No idea why.
For my trashy reality TV fix, both Survivor and The Amazing Race are doing just fine. And the good part of those shows is that you don't really feel bad if you miss an episode. It's fun assigning a douchebag score to each of the contestants on these shows (similar to the same process one can go through with certain professors). Everybody plays to their stereotypes perfectly, which wouldn't be a valid source of humor except in the situation where they want to "show the world who they really are" and "break a few misconceptions". Right.
Criminal Minds and both the New York and Las Vegas editions of CSI are good, unfortunately having been relegated mostly to background as lab reports are written, or something equally miserable. I do want to pick an ideological bone with Criminal Minds, however, in their depiction of "libertarians". About the only accurate thing said about libertarians in the entire episode is that libertarians believe individuals should be free to do as they please as long as they don't interfere with anyone else's rights. That does not make them crazy cultists.
Finally, how long before I no longer have to alter my entire television-watching plans to watch politicians yell at each other for a while? This is not influencing how I'm planning on voting.
Currently listening: "The Island" from The Crane Wife, the Decemberists
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Tails Between Their Legs
A brief history of the vaunted black jerseys:
November 10, 2007: UGA debuts the black jerseys against Auburn, one of its many archrivals. UGA wins a decisive and convincing victory in the '07 installment of the "Deep South's Oldest Rivalry". Superstitious and almost ritualistic belief in the mystical power of the black jerseys begins to grow.
January 1, 2008: UGA meets a terribly outmatched Hawaii in the Sugar Bowl of the same season. The game is never, ever close. Plenty of fans credit not the lopsided matchup, but the color of the jerseys. This is beginning to sound like Andrew's "lucky Georgia Tech shirt", which he has never failed a test while wearing. "Well, to be honest, I did preselect the tests a bit."
September 28, 2008: Roll Tide. A 41-30 game was never really that close, and Georgia's national championship dreams suffer a serious blow. All this despite the mysticism.
Poll: how many times will WSB be replaying this one? My money's on zero.
Currently listening: "Taking Control", Eisley
November 10, 2007: UGA debuts the black jerseys against Auburn, one of its many archrivals. UGA wins a decisive and convincing victory in the '07 installment of the "Deep South's Oldest Rivalry". Superstitious and almost ritualistic belief in the mystical power of the black jerseys begins to grow.
January 1, 2008: UGA meets a terribly outmatched Hawaii in the Sugar Bowl of the same season. The game is never, ever close. Plenty of fans credit not the lopsided matchup, but the color of the jerseys. This is beginning to sound like Andrew's "lucky Georgia Tech shirt", which he has never failed a test while wearing. "Well, to be honest, I did preselect the tests a bit."
September 28, 2008: Roll Tide. A 41-30 game was never really that close, and Georgia's national championship dreams suffer a serious blow. All this despite the mysticism.
Poll: how many times will WSB be replaying this one? My money's on zero.
Currently listening: "Taking Control", Eisley
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