Scrubs and Roseanne

I am watching some Roseanne (not sure why, but when I'm tired I enjoy old TV shows) and it was one of the episodes with the hot Becky (for those that watched the show you probably remember that they used a different actress for a couple seasons and that she was far more attractive than the normal Becky). I noticed that she had some facial expressions and ways of talking that seemed really familiar - then it struck me that it was Elliot (from scrubs)! Anyway, figured that those who fit the intersection of Roseanne and Scrubs fans would find that interesting.

300 BSG

Spoiler alert for 300 and BSG season finale.

Over the weekend I saw the movie 300. If you have ever wondered what the cross section of a neck looks like then this is the movie for you. It's also good if you're looking for a bunch of cool fight scenes. That is what I was looking for so I enjoyed it.

300 is about 300 Spartans taking on the Persian army. The Spartans are portrayed as about as cool and manly as can be (and as someone on slate commented, there are 300 Spartans and about 2,000 abs). The Persians are on the other hand a collection of weird looking monsters that only beat the 300 because there is something like a million of them. When I say monsters I mean it literally (the movie is based on a graphic novel so reality wasn't the top priority). The president of Iran as well as others have protested the movie saying that it is racist.

I see where the president of Iran is coming from on this one. But I think that if you really watch the movie the message is very different (not that I think the writers had this in mind) - a small group of men who have been raised to be tough and fight take on a huge army. The small group has helmets, shields, spears and swords. The huge army has numerous weapons including riding various animals, uses archers to attack from the sky, and makes use of superior technology to create grenades. The large army wants a small token of water and earth and wants influence over the government. The small army wants its independence. The fighters in the large army are forced into the situation by their king. The fighters in the small army are there by choice. The fighters in the small army consider the greatest thing they could do to die in battle for their country. The small army uses their knowledge of their country to gain the advantage.

Hmmm - which conflict does that make you think of?

Then the message - when the group of 300 is eventually killed by the larger force it inspires all of the Spartans as well as all the other groups in Greece to assemble and go to war. At the end of the movie it is fairly clear that when all of the Greeks come together they will win against the Persians. I'm surprised this movie isn't being spread throughout the insurgency as inspiration. Yes - the skin colors are reversed, but is that really that hard to think past?

I guess the interesting aspect of watching 300 for an American is to ask which group you are rooting for.

If you haven't seen the season finale of BSG - stop reading now.

Anyway, on to BSG. I realize that basically everything I am about to say is just repeating other people, but I feel the need to say it myself. Whoa - that was crazyness! Sort of reminded me of the end of 2001 A Space Odyssey. One interesting point someone brought up is that Tigh is too old to be a cylon. I realize they can always work something in or just ignore it as they sometimes like to do, but seems like Adama has known him too long for the writers to say that the cylons just planted memories of the first cylon war and all the time before cylons figured out how to look like humans. It is also a little odd to me the people they chose. Chief and Tigh make sense, but the other two, especially Roslin's assistant, seem too minor - the final 5 were so built up it seemed like it had to be really key people or people they haven't introduced yet but are really special for some reason. Also as Julie points out - what's that mean for Chief's baby and is Hera now less special? Given all that, I still mostly believe they will turn out to be cylons based on the way they all just knew when they walked into the room. As far as Starbuck, for some reason I hope she's really alive, although it would be a cool Star Wars reference if striking her down only made her stronger and allows her to appear to Apollo and guide him.

For those that didn't see the news:
SCI FI has renewed Battlestar Galactica for a full fourth season, commissioning 22 hour-long episodes of "the best show on television." This will include a special two-hour extended event that will air during fourth quarter 2007 and be released on DVD by Universal Studios Home Entertainment. Production will resume in May with an eye toward a early 2008 season premiere.

I was also reading somewhere that they are going to release a sound track around the same time as the two hour event which should include their version of all along the watch tower (I hope so - it was a cool cover of the song - really I think they should let you download the mp3 off the scifi website or at least buy it off iTunes now). When they say 2008 I fully expect that immediately after the ball drop they will show the first episode of season 4 - although sounds like they won't even start production until May 2008 (I can't imagine that they would start production in May 2007 and not show the episodes until 2008). Watching a show in real time sucks. I watched seasons 1 and 2 and the miniseries over the course of half of season 3 and it was great - when I really wanted to watch the next I could and when I felt like a break I took one. Getting new episodes to watch at someone else's whim is lame.

Well, I feel like I've done enough speculating on what will happen next in a fictional story. If I've already said most of this to you - sorry that I just repeated the whole thing here.

Web Video

If you want to watch some web video, but are looking for some alternatives to youtube one option that seems a little more organized is current.tv. Al Gore has some sort of association with the site. It's been around for a bit so I realize it is so 2006 and I should catch up with the times, but I just heard about it and I imagine there are people that read this who have not heard about it. From the little bit I've watched it seems very targeted to a young crowd.

Another alternative if you are looking for something a bit heavier is peace takes courage. It is a site with information about the Iraq war, but the main highlight are some videos that try to show Iraq by showing emotional images while avoiding bloody images. One of the cool things about the site is that it is put together by a 16 year old.

John Bolton and Screwing Home Owners

On March 20 Jon Stewart interviewed John Bolton on the Daily Show and it was amazing ("it was amazing" is meant to be said using the voice of Kelly from The Office). I have to start with - I'm a bit concerned that I'm so overly biased that my opinion of the interview is way off, but I think recognizing that helps, at least a little. Anyway, Jon Stewart didn't just rip into him like he has done to other right wingers he has had on the show, but he calmly and rationally took Bolton down. I knew that I didn't like Bolton, but it was still incredible to see how warped his world view is (or at least what he claims it to be - on the 21st when Jon Stewart said - settle down, it's not my real life, it's my comedy life - it highlighted this point). And it was also great on March 21 when Jon did a recap of a few points where Bolton said Jon was wrong when he clearly wasn't. When I watched the interview with Bolton I remembered the line Jon used about Lincoln from a previous show so I was glad to see that confirmed on the 21st.

I had jumped off the Stewart for president bandwagon at some point, admitting that it really wouldn't make sense. But after that interview I'm thinking Stewart for press secretary or something along those lines.



So for the most part I fall in the very liberal category (as the above discussion probably helps indicate), but I'm a little concerned by my opinion on a nyt article today about home owners not being able to afford their subprime mortgages now that prices have fallen. Normally I'm all about second chances, and supporting the working class. And I completely understand any given home owner who is struggling to make payments doing what they can to deal with their debt. But part of the article was about the government considering bailing out homeowners and stopping foreclosures and I think I'm actually really against that. Not because I'm blaming people for taking a risk or anything like that. But it is hard to afford a home because housing prices are so high. So buying out people's debt, which fuels demand, would help keep housing prices propped up. This hurts all the people out there who are on the edge of being able to afford a home. Yes it hurts those who cannot make the payments, but I feel more bad for the people who did not take on more than they could afford than those who did, taking a gamble on housing prices continuing to rise. I'm not too sure about this whole argument and am interested if there is some piece of the whole thing I'm missing, but seems to me that the government pumping money into the housing market only hurts the working class as a whole. As someone who lives in an area with crazy housing prices I'm looking forward to the unreasonable loans falling apart so housing prices can readjust to a slightly less crazy level. Just to make sure I don't come off too evil - I do think that if someone purchases a home they can afford and then something happens (lose a job, get injured, natural disaster...) then I'm totally for the government helping.

The nyt has also had a number of articles recently about the medical field. It is mostly about pharmaceuticals, but many of the ideas can also be applied to medical devices. I want to comment on the articles, but at the same time I do not want to write something that could be misinterpreted. Maybe one day I will craft something that cannot be interpreted in a negative way, but still has some measure of content.

Badger

In case, like me, you were watching The Son Also Rises (the latest episode of BSG) and kept wondering why you recognise the lawyer (especially the voice), it's because he's badger! Which makes him the coolest actor ever for being in both firefly and BSG. I'm somewhat embarrassed that I didn't figured it out while watching BSG and it was not until I watched some firefly that I put it together.

David's Rule for Debugging

Ok someone has probably come up with this already, or perhaps it is so obvious that no one has taken credit for it, but on this blog it will be named David's rule for debugging (I was just going to name it David's rule, but that would keep me from naming other rules after myself).

If given your set of assumptions, your observations cannot be right then at least one of your assumptions is incorrect.

This may sound simple but I find it very useful when debugging, and I think it can be useful in other aspects of life. The key is that people will look at something and say, that cannot be right, and then they stay stuck and cannot move forward in figuring out what is wrong. The key is to recognize that one of your assumptions is wrong so start dropping assumptions until you find the one that is incorrect. Now you might claim that instead of an assumption it could be the observation that is wrong - true, you were able to drop the assumption that the test was done properly (as a designer this is always the first assumption I drop both because of my ego and it usually means work for someone else instead of me).

A follow on from a coworker is that once you figure out what is wrong it will be obvious.

So true and so sad

Just finished a post, but had to put this up (if you don't watch Futurama you may want to just skip this post):



The comic isn't that amazing, but the text when you hover your mouse over the image is great - I'm glad to see that someone else felt that way about the episode.

Has anyone heard anything about the new episodes?

Seattle

Over the weekend I headed up to Seattle. I got to see Sharon, Julie, Ben, and Justin. It was good to see all of them.

It was my first time up to Seattle so I saw some of the touristy stuff like Pike's Market, the first starbucks, The Lenin Statue, The Troll Under the Bridge, the science center, the experience music project, and The Science Fiction Museum. If you pick one link to follow, I recommend The Troll Under the Bridge.

Something struck me while I was at the science center - all science museums are aimed at kids. Clearly I don't think that only kids can get something out of them since I just went to one, but the focus is clearly on kids. I think it is great to have science museums focused at kids - educating kids and getting them to enjoy science is clearly really important. But why aren't there any science museums aimed at adults? While kids can go to art museums and history museums those seem to target adults. I don't think that there is a fundamental distinction that art is aimed at adults and science is aimed at kids, especially since it seems like almost all kids spend time on art (well mostly crappy art, but still art related), but I feel pretty confident that there are more adults with science related professions and interests than art related.

Science museums are largely focused on education and creating excitement for the subject, but art museums seem to have similar goals of educating and creating appreciation so that does not seem like the distinction.

I'm not sure exactly what a science museum for adults would look like. I think that the MIT museum is the closest thing I have seen to what I am talking about. Of course, most of the MIT museum, especially the parts I think adults find interesting, are either history of science or art that involves science (such as the holograms and the kinetic art). So in some ways the MIT museum is more a history and art museum with history and art revolving around science and technology. Clearly a technology museum faces a lot of issues with staying current, but there is a lot of fundamental science out there that doesn't change much that could be in a science museum for adults.