Not So Fast

A list of great 80s theme songs that misses a lot.

Totally lacking: A-Team, Greatest American Hero, Cheers, Simon & Simon, Fall Guy, Dukes of Hazzard, Macgyver, Airwolf, Scarecrow & Mrs. King, Star Trek: TNG, Perfect Strangers, Golden Girls, Night Court,  Muppet Show, Cosby Show, and we haven’t even touched cartoons and barely looked at sitcoms.

Let’s just say there were a lot of good theme songs in the 80s.

Listen to all those in a row and you definitely sense the trends of 80s TV music.

Poor shows today that don’t have time for awesome theme songs since they have to make room for so many commercials…

Microsoft announced they wouldn’t be the bludgeon for politically motivated computer seizures anymore.

Martin Freeman as Biblo Baggins a distinct possibility. I am not at all adverse to this.

For your amusements/horror:

We need a czar to oversee Asian Carp? I would have thought maybe an undersecretary or possibly that one guy at that desk over there.

I bet those appointed czar earlier are getting upset about the watering down of their title.

I’m all for LED lightbulbs for the home, but they cost 4-5 times as much as the already expensive CFLs (whose only virtue is you don’t have to change them as often) and last only 3 times longer.

There’s a brilliant moment starting at 9:30 [ the rest has NSFW language]:

Battle plans that could have changed everything if we’d gone through with them [Cracked, NSFW]

Seriously, what is it about science fiction shows getting really good in their third seasons? If this is actually a general rule of science fiction, I’m a little scared to imagine how good Firefly would have gotten if it had survived another couple of years. I think we can safely assume it would have won multiple Nobel Prizes for Literature… and Chemistry, just for the hell of it.

From this article on the best way to go about watching iconic science fiction stories. And I don’t disagree with any of their recommendations, btw.

This is awesome.

Mostly because I have previously read this:

In today’s modern Galaxy there is of course very little still held to be unspeakable. Many words and expressions which only a matter of decades ago were considered so distastefully explicit that, were they merely to be breathed in public, the perpetrator would be shunned, barred from polite society, and in extreme cases shot through the lungs, are now thought to be very healthy and proper, and their use in everyday speech and writing is seen as evidence of a well-adjusted, relaxed and totally un****ed-up personality.

So, for instance, when in a recent national speech the Financial Minister of the Royal World Estate of Quarlvista actually dared to say that due to one thing and another and the fact that no one had made any food for a while and the king seemed to have died and most of the population had been on holiday now for over three years, the economy was now in what he called “one whole joojooflop situation,” everyone was so pleased that he felt able to come out and say it that they quite failed to note that their entire five-thousand-year-old civilization had just collapsed overnight.

But even though words like “joojooflop,” “swut,” and “turlingdrome” are now perfectly acceptable in common usage there is one word that is still beyond the pale. The concept it embodies is so revolting that the publication or broadcast of the word is utterly forbidden in all parts of the Galaxy except for use in Serious screenplays.

There is also, or was, one planet where they didn’t know what it meant, the stupid turlingdromes.

“I see,” said Arthur, who didn’t, “so what do you get for using the name of a perfectly innocent if slightly dull European country gratuitously in a Serious Screenplay?”

Gene therapy cream heals wounds 6 times faster than normal. I’m guessing this would also help in our bacterial cold war.

Lately, I’ve been satisfied with how fast we are reaching the future. All we need is virtual reality and better batteries and faster internet connections and I’ll be happy.

As long as I ignore the whole space travel thing.

108 years ago the first science fiction movie was released.

Oh look, the ban on DDT is finally coming home to roost in the US, instead of just killing all those Africans.

Bedbugs, a common household pest for centuries, all but vanished in the 1940s and ’50s with the widespread use of DDT.

Apparently, Obama could end dependence on fossil fuel in 3-5 years if he pushed for nuclear. I’m pretty sure the EPA reports would take longer than that, much less the actual building. I don’t know enough about the abundance of thorium or the cost of switching over to have too  strong of an opinion, but I’m all for nuclear energy in the abstract.

Wait, politicians might actually have to do something to earn votes? Isn’t just not being the other guy good enough?

Must see science fiction TV shows. I could live without Cowboy Bebop and I haven’t watched Fringe, but I have nothing better to replace them with. I can’t think of a show they missed, and since they aren’t ranking them in order of awesomeness, I have no complaints.

This guy had his master’s thesis on one computer hard drive. If he doesn’t get it back, he’s wasted years of his life.  I can’t believe he doesn’t have any backups on other computers. I can’t believe that his hard drive hasn’t crashed.

National Geographic’s original article on the opening of King Tut’s tomb.

9th Circuit Court has ruled that you have no expectation of privacy from government search in your driveway. Also, they can stick a GPS tracker on your car in the driveway while invading your privacy.

It’s only a matter of time before they decide that you have no expectation of privacy from the GPS tracker on your phone too.

The best video of a robot finding a crab prepping an octopus and her young in a rice cooker 4000′ underwater you’ll see today.

The Big Picture has some really cool color pictures of mostly Uzbekistan from the 1900s.

The series started so well. The Golden Compass was a solid adventure with the standard steampunk tropes. It was a good, fun read. He should have stopped there. The Subtle Knife was less adventurous, preachier and introduced characters I had no reason to care about. And The Amber Spyglass took that and ran with it. I still cared mildly about Lyra and Will, but I couldn’t care less about the rest of the characters.The whole Let’s Kill God battle jerked me right out of their world because now I had to analyze what he considered God to be and why does he want God dead and etc… It turned what could have been a great adventure story into a theological slog.

The five nominees for best World Fantasy novel are:  gritty, dark, urban, gritty and mermaids.

I know it’s just a phase, but c’mon, remember elves and dwarves and dragons and magic swords?

Little bitty frogs living in pitcher plants properly classified as adults now. It’s not as catchy as if they were discovered, but c’mon, little bitty frogs.

P.J. O’Rourke recently visited Afghanistan and now I am informed enough to hold vociferous opinions on the topic.

Still, surprisingly good concept art of future space colonies. A lot of Ringworld, Babylon 5 type stuff.

Welcome to the future with one lousy LEO station and now, no way of getting there. Nothing on the moon, a couple of robots on Mars. Woo. And, insult to injury, no jetpacks. 😦

The dry-cleaning short from Rifftrax Live last night.

It was better live.

And you thought the whole floating point processor thing was a problem. I’m just going to copy the alliterative title from Ars: Probabilistic processors possibly pack potent punch.

Some dude reenacting Monty Python’s Holy Grail:

Since it has been discovered Neptune has made one revolution of the sun.

Speaking of planets (skip to the 2 min mark):

Since I watch all my TV shows on DVD, I discover them all too late [danger: slideshow]. Of course Firefly was on the list.

It hurt me to learn that Better Off Ted is canceled.

My Name Is Earl should NOT have been on the list.

I’m tempted to say that Pushing Daisies should be on the list, but it might be better off stopping before it got boring.

Tomorrow is LIVE RiffTrax at a theater near you.  Don’t act like you don’t know what RiffTrax is.

/joel

The Zombie Apocalypse wouldn’t even get off the ground. Zombies suck [Cracked, NSFW]. And I’d like to point out that the writer doesn’t take into account the unregistered, non-hunting, or illegal weapons in the US. Heck, some woman in Post Falls had over 200 guns stolen from her yesterday.

On a related note:  The Obama administration is, probably illegally, blocking the importation of 100,000 M1-Garand and M1-Carbine rifles from South Korea. Which is odd because if Call of Duty 2 taught me anything it’s that the M1 is useful only in a rather limited number of circumstances.  I’ll take a MP40 or even a Sten or Thompson any day. There are also some interesting figures on gun ownership and accidental gun deaths in the article.

Government is the wave of the future!

Wil Wheaton tries to quit w00tstock!

Ray Bradbury is upset about the lack of moon travel and the size and scope of our government. As am I, but the LA Times doesn’t write articles about me for some reason.

Awesome quote:

“We have too many cellphones. We’ve got too many Internets. We have got to get rid of those machines. We have too many machines now.”

There are too many internets! Don’t worry sir, eventually all our little machines will be combined into one and then implanted directly into our bodies.

At least they aren’t blaming it on the terrorists. Oh wait…

That’s what worried the attendants aboard the American Airlines flight to Buenos Aires in June. The passenger, who spent more than 30 minutes in a lavatory and acted suspiciously earlier in the flight, began removing batteries from cellphones and had many batteries, cellphones and charging devices on a tray table.

When I travel I have half a dozen devices with Li-ON batteries and the charging cables myself, without even trying.

We desperately need someone to invent teleporation. Or anything besides air travel to go around the world.

I don’t work harder because I don’t have to.

The Calvin & Hobbes search engine.

Daily Show, John Hodgman, fixing the Con ProStitution .

We’re all racist now.

Daily Show: Maxed Out Race Card.

Cathy comes to an end.

How the new Google-Verizon plan could ruin the interwebs. I can only imagine how much it will cost for a decent connection given that basic broadband service is ~$50/month now.

It’s useless to try to rank Muppet Show moments, but here’s a list of10 great clips. 3,4,5, and 7 are particularly funny.

Missing from the list:

Perseids are supposed to be spectacular tomorrow night. Which undoubtedly means it will be cloudy here tomorrow night.

This is stupid. It’s 25 people, singing a 3 minute song. Let it slide.

Someone besides me has noticed that our legislators are doing jack and letting the executive branch run riot over them.

Do you know what kinds of diseases can lurk inside improperly handled lemonade? No, you don’t. And neither do I. So obviously, that threat is so severe that medical scientists won’t even tell us about it so as not to create a panic.

She goes out there with her non-union labor selling lemonade for 50 cents, and who knows how many proper businesses that paid all their licensing fees and taxes she was undercutting? She was effectively stealing money from Oregon and the federal government. Thus while President Obama is working very carefully to revive our economy, she is working directly against him. That probably also makes her a racist.

Well, gosh, if they aren’t doing anything wrong, they shouldn’t have any objection to be monitored, right? Isn’t that what we’re always being told about the state’s intrusion into our lives? Just because it’s citizen intrusion into public officials acting in a public capacity shouldn’t make a difference.

The chain of custody argument is a good one though.  Multiple recordings and/or expert determination of tampering is a good idea.

If we build more power plants and update the infrastructure, there would be fewer blackouts. I know I’m no expert in national power grids, but I think it would work.

Yes, this might introduce a slight increase of possibility that something could poison the striped mustard rat, but given the choice between that and old people dying because their AC went out, I know which I would choose. Also, the cost of these new plants might cut into the money to spend on the new multicultural center for black jewish nazis, or the new football stadium, but if occasionally municipalities did something to enhance the lives of everyone and not just the special interests currently throwing money at them it might help everyone’s re-election efforts.

If your stupid DRM didn’t prevent me from reading your ebooks on other devices, you would have had a sale today. As it is, I was forced to search around the web for someone that would let me put the ebook on the device of my choosing. Think about it, won’t you?

Sincerely,
Kristin Hoppe

P.S. Yes, I realize that my problems don’t amount to a hill of beans compared to keeping the publishers happy with DRM.

I’m not a huge motorcycle fan, but this one is beautiful.

Where people click when they use Firefox. They type in URLs, they go back, they scroll down. Duh.

First, a video of the most efficient way to prepare chicken for chicken salad.

B. Washing chickens is waste of time and water. Filthy beasts.

Once again the federal government has lied about a privacy issue. “Of course we won’t store full body scans of you taken at the airport! How can you suggest such a thing?!” “Oh, how did that hard drive get there?”

No one actually believed that they wouldn’t did they?

Val McDermid is a fantastic writer. Oh, if I could write like that.

I watched a Wire In The Blood series on Netflix and thought, why not read it, see if it’s good. And it is good. And I’m not particularly a fan of psychological thrillers, my mystery reading tastes run more to the Golden Age. Matter of fact, I didn’t like the few thrillers I’ve read so far. Too weird. But McDermid’s writing is smooth, perfectly paced with no distracting interjections of artistic flair. I hate it when writers write for you to notice them and not to tell a story. Her writing just pulls you through the story at a breakneck pace and you don’t even notice it. I was two-thirds of the way through the first book before I looked up from it. And realized it was after midnight, and I would be sorry if I didn’t put it down and get some sleep. I didn’t of course. And I was sorry in the morning.

Speed camera numbers are being reduced in Great Britain as the national road budget is slashed and now that local government doesn’t get to keep the funds raised by the cameras they don’t care enough about motorist safety to keep them maintained.

It’s not like anyone would watch after the first week, anyway.

The article starts by saying confusion is caused by too many choices but then goes on to describe confusion caused by shallow thinking and a lack of useful information. I blame crappy articles like this one for the confusion.

Why on earth would we want robots that fight humans? Have they not read any science fiction books ever?

I’d just like to point out that we’ve been afraid of everything for a long time now. Today isn’t particularly special.

A Rainbow Of Books

Books.

I'll keep reading way past when I know I should go to sleep. But there are so many books to read and so little time.

He was a great Nero Wolfe.

Also, Chicken!:

You always want to put safety first in your robots.txt.

Link

I’d embed if I could, but WordPress.com is all “we want to be secure more than we want to let you embed any, possibly insecure, video you feel like”. Weak.