Funk Babblings

In the first episode of this season, Alias was apparently trying to reinvent itself by poorly imitating the first season.
Tonight Alias decided to try reinventing itself by taking a plot device from Kurt Vonnegut and weakening it so that it's not quite so potent, literally or literarily.

In this episode of Alias, we had bad guys developing and testing a substance called Ice-5 to use as a weapon. Oddly enough, we see Ice-5 only as a liquid. This substance "freeze-dries" a person it comes into contact with, so that the person can shatter. Apparently it takes direct contact with Ice-5 to be affected. Of course Sydney saves the day and gets the Ice-5 away from the bad guys. (But what happens to it now?)

In Kurt Vonnegut's 1963 novel Cat's Cradle, a scientist (who also worked on the atomic bomb) develops a substance called Ice-9, with no intent but the pursuit of science. Ice-9 is a form of water that (a) is solid at room temperature, and (b) instantly turns solid any water it comes into contact with. Let's just say irrevocable disaster results, the atomic-age point being that the world cannot afford for the scientific community to ignore the potential negative consequences of what it does.

Vonnegut's point was, of course, completely lost in Alias.

I suppose we can assume that Ice-5 is five ninths as potent as Ice-9, but the story of Ice-5 is far less potent than the story of Ice-9.

Wired has a great article about BitTorrent. Besides interviewing the author and briefly explaining how BitTorrent works, I like that the article spends a lot of time on the issue of using BitTorrent for TV show timeshifting -- "the Internet becomes a giant TiVo." That's the most interesting aspect of BitTorrent for me, but it's one that normally gets ignored in the press because the movie and record industries draw so much attention.


BTW, thanks to the Blogdex RSS feed (aka blogdex on LJ, though that's not how I read it) for pointing this article out to me. Blogdex is great for keeping up with what stories are making the rounds of the "blogosphere". (The right-wing warblogs do hold a bit too much sway in the index for my taste, but then the rest of us probably hold too much sway for their taste, so it's fair.)

Ooh, I can't wait until tomorrow night. Apparently Lana is going to play one of stega's parrots. Or vice versa. Or something like that.... ;-)

Too bad I don't get the Sci-Fi channel anymore. But I haven't heard anything about the TV people getting upset the way the movie and music people have....

Update: Ursula K. Le Guin has some comments on the miniseries. I don't think she's happy.

Much-belated second update: Le Guin wrote more about how she hated the miniseries.

Jon Stewart is in the middle of the best book promotion tour ever, and he hardly even talks about the book.

By now you've probably heard about Jon Stewart's appearance on CNN's Crossfire, possibly via his own recap on The Daily Show. Tonight he'll be on 60 Minutes. (He's also made the cover of the Rolling Stone and hit the Washington Post and New York Times.)

He's even been on C-Span's American Perspectives show (Oct 23 show RealVideo is now online).

In almost all cases (particularly on TV), instead of promoting his book, he's practically biting the hand that feeds him, personally taking the news organizations to task for uncritically letting each side give its take on things rather than pushing tough questions and giving intelligent analysis. And he never lets them forget that while his show is getting attention for intelligent news, it's merely a "fake news" show, and the "real news" shows are failing us.

I watched him on C-Span last night, and it was a very strange experience. First of all, seeing Jon Stewart on C-Span in the first place. C-Span is known more for boring talking heads than for jokes and occasional profanity; every once in a while they'd put a message across the bottom of the screen saying that "portions of this program contain language that may offend some viewers". Plus, the entire studio audience in this show was news people. They all either were targets of Stewart's complaints about the state of news today, or corporate affiliates with the targets, or were at least hyper-aware of the state of the industry in a way that the rest of us outside that industry can never be. So the on-screen laughter had a different quality to it from our laughs at home.

I also noticed that Stewart's humor is reminiscent of Dennis Miller's (before Miller went way conservative); both expect the audience to come in with a certain amount of knowledge, and aren't afraid to go over the heads of part of their audience. And The Daily Show seems somewhat inspired by SNL's Weekend Update, of which Miller was one of the better hosts because of that expectation of audience intelligence.

Too bad I can't get Comedy Central anymore. I rarely get to watch The Daily Show these days.

Update: A nice person has made the 60 Minutes clip available online.
Update 2: Added RealVideo link for the C-Span show.

I never watched Farscape enough to make total sense of it or be a loyal fan, but I've watched it about as much as I've watched Star Trek: The Next Generation (i.e. if it's on when I randomly happen to be looking for something to watch), so I'm somewhat familiar with it without knowing all the plot twists and turns.

Slashdot tells us that there will be a four-hour Farscape miniseries on Sci-Fi Channel starting Oct 17, and that a trailer is now online.

But the best bit I got out of the Slashdot post came from the comments: Farscape meets the Muppet Show

The Olympic opening ceremonies were almost two weeks ago now. Normally I ignore the Olympics as much as possible, but thanks to chronarchy and 35,000 previewers, I was aware that the opening ceremonies should be impressive. So when I got tired of packing for Pennsic, I flipped on the TV to take a look.

It looked pretty cool, but I was somewhat disappointed by it for three reasons:
- This thing demanded a wide screen to get a decent view of things
- In the wider shots, all the details were lost
- Worst of all, the commentators kept babbling over the music, ruining the whole effect

So why do I bring this up now? Well, yesterday I came across this AP story about HDTV watchers being annoyed by the HDTV version of the Olympic broadcast. They had two big complaints about opening night; one was that their broadcast started late, apparently ignoring the fact that the whole thing is broadcast on tape-delay anyway, since evening in Greece is morning here.

But the complaint that got my attention was that the HDTV broadcast wasn't narrated by Bob Costas and Katie Couric. This makes people feel like they're being treated like "throwaways"? It makes me want to go buy an HDTV, solving all three problems I had with the broadcast I saw!

Of course, somehow the FCC thinks we'll all be watching HDTV by May 2006 anyway.

Update: Almost missed this gem from the story. "Gerbrandt said he's seen only one advertisement on NBC's HDTV coverage - from a maker of a high definition TV set." Great picture, no commentators, and almost no commercials? Where do I sign up?

Finally saw Spiderman 2 tonight, and all I have to say is that after the first Spiderman movie and three seasons of Smallville, this movie was a huge relief. Peter Parker (or even better Mary Jane) could teach Clark Kent a thing or two.