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katlalog

070928 01:53 TV, SciFi

I love this time of year. More pilots to review (previous):

Keeping with the scale of BSG being a 10 and the new Bionic Woman a 2, Reaper gets 6 for real good laughs and the best series premise ever ("My parents sold my soul to the devil."), Chuck gets 5 for the abundant geek culture and Journeyman gets a 1, partly as revenge for unimaginatively copying Quantum Leap (It gets its sole point for the twist at the end that shows that this character might not be going down exactly the same path 'Goodie Two Shoes' Sam Beckett was treading.) and for the lead man being simply unattractive.

What is it with the unattractive male leads recently. I did manage to learn to look past the outer shell and warm to Harry Dresden's charm, but Chuck is a dork and looks like a dork and Journeyman is just boringly unattractive.

Apologies if this sounds ...erm... something-ist, and apologies to the actors, but the boys get all this eye-candy in form of babes walking around in their underwear all the time (which incidentally makes me nostalgic for characters like Aeryn Sun in Farscape and Zoe in Firefly). So what do women get to look at? I mean, come on, this is American TV. We expect flawless beauty in women and rugged good looks in men. Only in British TV are people allowed to be more real.

Interesting reoccurring theme: the rejuvenile. Twentysomething single males, still living with their parents, with an unfulfilling real life, in modern McJobs. Also, either the makers of Chuck and Reaper are specifically targeting the geek market, or computers and technology have become a completely normal part of life. If you take TV shows as a mirror of the developing society, then the slacker of the 90s has become the naughties' techno-savvy geek and has, due to the economic situation, become mainstream.

Highlights of the shows: in Chuck when he pleads "No, not the computer!" to the thief, and in Reaper the main character's sidekick whose hair looks more devilish than the devil and who uses Red Dwarf and South Park terminology.

In the meantime... Flash Gordon isn't getting any better.

070921 02:17 Internet

Americans giving up friends, sex for Web life.

Surfing the net has become an obsession for many Americans with the majority of U.S. adults feeling they cannot go for a week without going online and one in three giving up friends and sex for the Web.

A survey asked 1,011 American adults how long they would feel OK without going on the Web, to which 15 percent said a just a day or less, 21 percent said a couple of days and another 19 percent said a few days.

A week without the net?! The thought makes me sweat.

070920 01:37 Science Fiction

[de] Cory Doctorow endlich auf Deutsch!

070918 13:19 Culture

The potentially controversial theme for Burning Man 2008: American Dream.

This year's art theme is about patriotism -- not that kind which freights the nation state with the collective weight of ego, but a patriotism that is based upon a love of country and culture. Leave ideology at home; forget the blue states and the red; let parties, factions and the so-called issues that divide us fall away. Flag burning or flag worship play no part in this year's theme. Ask yourself, instead, a more immediate question. What has America achieved that you admire or feel proud of? What has it done or failed to do that makes you feel dismayed? Put blame aside, in this election year, and dare to ask an even greater question: What can postmodern America, this stumbling, roused, half-conscious giant, yet give to the world?

Might be a bit difficult for every non-american who comes to that event who just doesn't care that much about what could make America great again. Might be difficult for Americans as well. It's just a crap theme. It divides instead of uniting all in one tribe, which was the original premise of the festival. It forces people to declare allegiances, it fractions the BM tribe and alienates everyone who considers him/herself transtribal.

070917 15:33 Advertising

São Paulo Bans Outdoor Ads in Fight Against Pollution

As the ads come down and more of the city is revealed-- including its impressive urban architecture--citizens are adjusting to their new landscape.

070917 15:21 War, Politics

Contributions from the military to Democrats have risen since the start of the Iraq war (via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)

Since the start of the Iraq war in 2003, members of the U.S. military have dramatically increased their political contributions to Democrats, marching sharply away from the party they've long supported. In the 2002 election cycle, the last full cycle before the war began, Democrats received a mere 23 percent of military members' contributions. So far this year, 40 percent of military money has gone to Democrats for Congress and president, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. Anti-war presidential candidates Barack Obama and Ron Paul are the top recipients of military money.

070917 14:41 Language, Politics

Evil multilingualism

Since the days of Joseph McCarthy, the list of threats to America from the left has evolved some. Communism is no longer high on the list, while feminism has joined homosexuality and atheism as a major ogre, along with abortion and same-sex marriage (cultural heresies that didn't make conservative columnist Nate Sherman's short list of four, though they're surely in his top ten). But now we see that multilingualism is subversion, major subversion.

070915 23:56 TV

Three pilots to review: Bionic Woman, The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Flash Gordon.

They were all awful. If you compare them to the new-standard-setting 10-out-of-10 shows like BSG or Heroes, none of the new shows get more than 4 points, Bionic Woman faring the worst with only 2 points, Sarah Connor i might give another chance once it starts showing and Flash Gordon i did give another chance.

By the third episode i finally got it. It's meant to be cheesy and corny. And it is so obviously about Flash flashing his bare chest at the screen that you could make a drinking game out of it. The humour is mainly slapstick, which is occasionally funny. The dialogues are flat and unimaginative. I don't care at all about the old flame. The new flame (the beautiful savage stereotype) is definitely the more interesting character and delivered the best scene so far when she swallows the bomb to have her stomach acid destroy it before it blows and Flash looks at her baffled (which he does a lot) and says: "You're an amazing woman!"

The problem with updating old TV shows is that if you don't actually update them they look really cheesy. Flash Gordon still looks like the 80s, and not just Mongo but Earth as well.

Still... as bad and corny as it is i could get into that while waiting for BSG and Heroes to start again.

070914 22:29 Environment

The world's 10 most polluted places.

I also heard on BBC World Service today that global warming has opened the famous Northwest Passage. Satellite pictures today showed that the passage through the arctic pack connecting Europe to Asia along the northern canadian coast is now fully open.

And the report about how Greenland is dealing with climate change made give up all hope that, where i live, we'll ever see snow again. My icelandic horse is not going to like that one bit. And neither am i.

Also, floods in Africa! That just doesn't sound right.

070911 14:09 TV

The South Park Episode "Make Love, Not Warcraft" has won the Creative Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program

[de] Und für meine deutschen Leser: Heroes startet in Deutschland auf RTL2 am 10. Oktober um 20:15 Uhr. Jetzt könnt ihr endlich auch mitreden.

070906 12:54 Software

Mozilla Quietly Resurrects Eudora.

This is the best news i had in ages. To be precise, it's the best news i had since i switched to Thunderbird about 2 years ago. Nothing against Thunderbirds, it's great, but there are a few things i never got used to and a lot i sorely miss from Eudora.

Now i only need Homesite for Linux and i'm happy.

070904 03:16

A kind of Unicorn Chaser after a long work day.

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