Passing fancies #20

 

I used to call these posts with collections of links "link dumps" but I recently found another blog which also included books and television programs which the author enjoyed and I liked that idea.  I follow a number of RSS feeds to make it easier to find interesting articles without having to regularly visit my entire list of interesting blogs, many of which aren't updated often.  As you might gather from these links, I find a wide array of topics interesting.

Books

In the past week or so, I revisited both books in Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently series.  Their titles are Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long, Dark Teatime of the Soul.  I enjoyed both books more than the later books in the Hitchhiker's Guide series which I found a bit uneven.

Music

Over the weekend we enjoyed hearing a favorite local band called Felix Pickles.  Their music always makes me happy.  I particularly enjoy their covers of Tom Petty, Black Keys, White Stripes, and Nirvana songs.  The fact that the show took place at a local brewery was nice as well.

Television/Movies

We've been watching a couple streaming series recently.  The first season of Cross, based on the Alex Cross books by James Patterson, was gripping.  Most of the episodes ended on cliffhangers which coaxed us into watching later than we usually do.

We've also been watching Apple TV's new production of Cape Fear.  It's very suspenseful but since the episodes are dropping slowly, we've been forced to postpone our enjoyment until the next one is available.

Links

As a long time SciFi fan, I've read a number of books about Von Neuman probes.  While the concept is fascinating, I've long wondered how realistic the actual process of replication is.  Here's a metallurgist's opinion of how difficult it would be for machines to duplicate themselves using metal mined from asteroids or other sources.
https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2026/07/10/a-metallurgists-doubts-about-self-replicating-probes/

The news that some types of monitors are installing Windows adware on the computers they're connected to is disturbing.  I'm guessing this is accomplished if the monitors have a USB connection to the PC since USB multifunction devices are possible which would allow the monitor to also appear as a storage device which can sometimes install software via AutoRun.  I have AutoRun disabled on all my computers.
https://www.techspot.com/news/113031-lg-alienware-monitors-caught-auto-installing-windows-adware.html

I had heard that doctors behave differently than most patients when presented with a cancer diagnosis.  I guess having knowledge of the low odds of survival and the high costs and suffering of attempting to fight the disease would make one weigh their options differently.  I think if diagnosed with some form of terminal disease with low odds of survival, I'd tend to refuse expensive and painful treatments as well.
https://archive.cancerworld.net/featured/how-doctors-die/

My favorite coding editor is Vim but I've been avoiding upgrading because the developers have been accepting AI submitted code changes.  The limited experience I've had with AI has not left me with a wholly positive view of its capabilities so I'm happy to be able to avoid it in my editor of choice.
https://jasonpolak.substack.com/p/interview-drew-devault-on-an-ai-free

It's been a while since I've heard about Hannah Montana Linux but apparently it's been updated recently.  I'm not personally a fan of ornate window managers so I'm guessing I'm not the target audience for it.
https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/hannah-montana-linux-gets-modern-remaster-after-nearly-two-decades-sweet-niblets-new-v26-is-built-on-debian-with-a-re-skin-of-kde-plasma 

When I was young, I owned a 1948 Jeep for a while.  It was a very primitive vehicle which came with manual windshield wipers operated by moving a lever back and forth which operated the wiper blade. That caused funny looks each time I had to get a safety inspection.  These days I value my creature comforts too much to consider trying to assemble a replica of that old Jeep but it's nice to know it could be done if I ever got the urge.
https://www.theautopian.com/i-bet-my-company-on-an-impossible-jeep-build-then-a-miracle-happened/

Someone is creating handmade electric guitars using the valve covers from old car engines.  I imagine that metallic chamber gives an interesting resonance to the instrument.  Plus it looks so cool. 
https://www.designboom.com/design/old-car-engines-second-life-handmade-electric-guitars-vlado-plateis/

Isaac Asimov noticed the rise of willful ignorance in American society almost 50 years ago.  I fear it's only gotten worse since that time.
https://www.openculture.com/2026/07/isaac-asimov-laments-the-cult-of-ignorance.html

The Large Hadron Collider at CERN is being shutdown for about 4 years for renovations which will make it better at studying the behavior of small particles.  I look forward to reading about new research done with the results when it's back online.
https://home.cern/cern-bids-farewell-to-the-lhc-and-enters-long-shutdown-3/

Passing fancies #19

 

I used to call these posts with collections of links "link dumps" but I recently found another blog which also included books and television programs which the author enjoyed and I liked that idea.  I follow a number of RSS feeds to make it easier to find interesting articles without having to regularly visit my entire list of interesting blogs, many of which aren't updated often.  As you might gather from these links, I find a wide array of topics interesting.

Books

This week I finished two books, both by favorite authors of mine.  The first was The Suitcase Clone by Robin Sloan who is probably best known for Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore which is my favorite of his books.  The Suitcase Clone ties in most directly to another strangely fascinating book of his called Sourdough, which is about a weirdly sentient sourdough starter.  Robin's books feature inventive blends of fantasy, technology, and food or wine.

The second book I finished this week was a graphic novel called The Sandman, Vol. 3: Dream Country by Neil Gaiman.  Like the best graphic novels, the award winning The Sandman series features lots of interesting and sometimes obscure references which makes me glad that I'm able to read them on my iPad since that makes it easy to research the many references which sometimes take me on side journeys.  It inspired a streaming series which we enjoyed watching.  Another graphic novel I love which is similarly reference-laden is Watchmen by Alan Moore.  It also inspired a movie and a streaming series, both of which I enjoyed immensely.

Music

For a while, we had a Peacock streaming account and while we did, one of the programs we enjoyed was We Are Lady Parts which is about a punk band formed of Muslim women.  It managed to be funny, touching, and thought provoking.  Somehow this week I found a link to a song performed in the show called Bashir With the Good Beard which is funny as well as catchy.

Youtube recommended a cover of the AC/DC song Thunderstruck by a band called The Rock Orchestra which was really interesting.  I still prefer the AC/DC version but sometimes covers can be enjoyable on their own.  Youtube's recommendations are sometimes eerily accurate at predicting content I might enjoy.

Television/Movies

This week we finished watching the award winning streaming series The Bear.  The final season featured so many challenges for the people working in the restaurant that we could hardly wait to see how it turned out.  The finale wrapped up things nicely.

Something I read reminded me of the movie Highlander and it turns out that my wife had never seen it so we watched it although I don't think my wife enjoyed it as much as I did.  It's an entertaining fantasy but features some questionable accents, most notably from Christopher Lambert whose French accent often shines through his intermittent attempts at a Scottish accent and Sean Connery who doesn't attempt an accent to match his character Ramirez (aka the Spaniard) much like his performance as a Russian sub commander in The Hunt for Red October.

The first episode of the third season of Silo was released on Apple TV and we enjoyed continuing the story in this very compelling series.  Silo was based on Hugh Howey's Silo book series which starts with the book Wool.  I found the books fascinating.

Links

Have you ever wondered what F1 race drivers choose for transportation when off the racetrack?  Here's a set of photos which shows some of their daily drivers.  My favorite is Landon Norris' E-Type Jaguar shown in the last picture.  I think E-type Jag's are the most beautiful sports car ever made although I prefer the hardtop to convertibles.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/heres-a-peek-at-the-f1-drivers-parking-lot-in-silverstone

The Voyager 1 space probe is nearing the impressive distance of 1 light day from Earth.  The fact that it's still operating nearly 50 years after its launch in 1977 is evidence for my belief that NASA is responsible for some of the finest engineering ever done by humans.
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/voyager/where-are-voyager-1-and-voyager-2-now/

I share the concern which the author of this blog post expresses about being overwhelmed by the tendency of smart devices to chip away at our ability to concentrate deeply.  I disable almost all notifications and avoid smart appliances in our house.  My ability to stay focused while creating system software is something I value far more than the minor conveniences offered by smart devices.
https://www.terrygodier.com/the-last-quiet-thing

I found  this article about programmers needing to meditate interesting.  The author is involved with building AI infrastructure which I believe is largely responsible for much of the stress which programmers face these days.  I'm avoiding AI wherever possible because of the toll it takes on our ability to deeply focus by getting into the flow state.  It's rare for me to be able to achieve flow state on my days in the office due to having too many distractions.  While working from home, it's much easier for me to concentrate deeply enough to hit that mystical state.
https://jacob.gold/posts/programmers-need-to-start-meditating-now/

Apparently birds in Ukraine are making use of fiber optic cables when building nests.  This is weird because while it undoubtedly creates more durable nests, it's also a sad reminder of drones being used to cause destruction.
https://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2026/07/fiber-optic-materials-in-ukranian-birds.html

Here's an interesting and somewhat sad article by a travel writer who met her hero, Anthony Bourdain, and how those interactions affected her.  I feel a bit sorry for people who feel compelled to constantly search for new and exciting experiences because they seldom seem to enjoy having achieved something.
https://cailey.substack.com/p/i-wanted-to-be-anthony-bourdainuntil

The news that scientists have managed to create a living cell from scratch if nothing short of amazing.  It's also a bit disturbing since chirality can affect how molecules interact with living tissue so it may be possible to intentionally create harmful mirror molecules.
https://draft.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/6157418679944799691/2587135840302117398 

I was surprised to read that honeybees choose individual routes to foraging locations.  Bees seem more complex than most people think.
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(26)00084-9

While I enjoyed a good argument when I was younger, I find I no longer want to waste the energy and time necessary to prove I'm right about something.  Given people's tendency to ignore documented facts and hold on to misinformation, it's not worth the effort.  It's easier to walk away from argumentative people and go do something I enjoy instead.
https://wangcong.org/2026-06-30-why-i-stopped-arguing-with-people.html

One of the best things about being near retirement is I no longer need to worry about having to endure another technical interview.  The majority of interviews I've been subjected to have been absurd and unpleasant.  A couple have been bad enough that I've extracted myself early by telling them I was no longer interested in their company.  The looks on the face of the interviewers when they realized they would be denied further opportunities to torture me were priceless.  It reminds me of the time an interviewer told me I had more experience than they expected and asked my age.  I responded that I thought it might be illegal to ask that question which turned his smug look into a worried one.
https://nelson.cloud/what-i-actually-want-to-say-in-tech-interviews/

Apparently laughter was key to humans developing the vocal control required for speech.
https://thedebrief.org/new-research-suggests-human-laughter-may-hold-a-15-million-year-old-secret/

This article about keeping historical events in perspective states that humans are really bad at doing so.  The example is that Oxford University is older than the Aztec empire which I wouldn't have thought was true.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/university-oxford-older-than-aztec-empire-other-facts-will-change-your-perspective-history-1529607/

Our ability to see things does not work the way most people believe it does.  Human eyes perform motions called saccades, rapid movements which do scanning of objects which the visual cortex helps combine into a complete picture.  I first read about this in Jeff Hawkins' books On Intelligence and A Thousand Brains, both of which are well worth reading.
https://ishan.co/no-way/

Older tech workers are retiring (voluntary or involuntary) in larger numbers than usual.  At some point, I think this might catch up with companies similar to the way Ford was forced to rehire 350 veteran engineers to help fix the problems caused by their attempt to let AI do most of the work.
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/local-business/older-tech-workers-are-tapping-out-early-heres-what-that-looks-like/

Passing fancies #18

I used to call these posts with collections of links "link dumps" but I recently found another blog which also included books and television programs which the author enjoyed and I liked that idea.  I follow a number of RSS feeds to make it easier to find interesting articles without having to regularly visit my entire list of interesting blogs, many of which aren't updated often.  As you can see, I find a wide array of topics interesting.

Books

This week I've finished two books.  The first was World of Trouble by Ben H. Winters.  It's the final book in The Last Policeman trilogy.  This was my second time enjoying this trilogy, the first time started in 2013 shortly after the first book was published.  I loved it on the first read and even more this time.  I'm often so keen to find out what happens in a book that I don't take enough time to fully appreciate the writing itself while reading it for the first time.  This series is about a policeman who continues trying to solve crimes even though the Earth is doomed to be struck by an asteroid.  It's an interesting tale about human nature under extraordinary circumstances.

The second was God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.  This was at least the second time I've read this as I'm a big Vonnegut fan.  It's hard to summarize what most of Vonnegut's books are about because they tend to cover so much territory.  They're always fascinating reads though.

Music

Somewhere I found a mention of Andrew Strong, the actor who played the lead singer in The Committments (which is an outstanding movie if you haven't seen it).  His voice was perfect for singing old soul classics.  After the movie he sang in a band called The Bone Yard Boys.  Apparently their music isn't available for purchase in electronic form which is a pity.  At least I was able to find a few Youtube videos of him performing like the one below.
https://youtu.be/QN43ZXivDa0?si=UC-GE4TU-nyz_dyU

I also found an intriguing mention of a band called Newen Afrobeat which I hadn't heard of previously.  I discovered I enjoy their music. 
https://youtu.be/YCZZWu9WR5s?si=3uU2h5mF4QHn-Vls

Television

We watched the first episode of Triumph: Jesse Owens and the Berlin Olympics on Netflix this week and are anxiously awaiting the next episode.  I knew parts of the story but there's so much I hadn't heard and it's fascinating.

Links

Like many people, I get tired of being pushed to secure my online accounts with passkeys.  While they may be convenient, I'm not convinced that they're more secure than the traditional username and strong password.
https://www.makeuseof.com/why-im-still-not-giving-up-my-password-for-passkeys/

When Quentin Tarantino states a preference for reading books over most of the movies being released, I know I'm not alone in finding most new movies insufficiently compelling to bother seeing them in a theater.  Project Hail Mary is the only film I was anxiously awaiting in the past few years.
https://brandons-journal.com/post/these-days-i-d-rather-read-a-book

Here's an interesting article which references Chesterton's Fence, a term I'd never encountered previously.   In it G.K. Chesterton states that changes should not be made until the thing being changed is fully understood.  The article below complains that changes to software are often made with insufficient documentation for the software in question to be properly understood.  In my experience this is true.  There are too many engineers who don't adequately document changes they have made. 
https://www.arp242.net/chestersons-finger.html

It makes me happy to hear that the producer of Star Trek: The Next Generation granted famous physicist Stephen Hawking's request to sit in the Captain's chair on the Enterprise bridge.

I'm not sure exactly how to feel about the news that Denmark has a Mullet Championship.  I had thought that questionable hairstyle was uniquely American.
https://apnews.com/article/denmark-mullet-hairstyle-festival-competition-ea0c4b66b1eb9f133983ea4d6f44f37c

Kentucky's economy is dealing with a huge downturn in demand for Bourbon.  The final line suggests that the same may eventually be true of Data Centers.
https://a.wholelottanothing.org/kentuckys-bourbon-problem/

Why doesn't it surprise me that Richard Feynman (famous physicist) had a method for optimizing food choices at restaurants?  If you haven't read any of the books about Feynman's life (Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character or What Do You Care What Other People Think?: Further Adventures of a Curious Character), you'd probably enjoy them.
https://www.futilitycloset.com/2026/06/06/eating-out/

A pulp magazine from 1912 containing the first appearance of Tarzan recently sold for $58,560.  I have fond memories of reading old books by Edgar Rice Burroughs, author of the Tarzan and John Carter of Mars books while I was in high school.  At that time I was hell-bent on absorbing all the genre books I could get my hands on.  The best part is they were often available cheap at area used bookstores.
https://boingboing.net/2026/06/11/the-first-tarzan-pulp-sold-for-58560-at-a-record-setting-auction.html

I was a little surprised to read that old iPod models are making a comeback thanks to Gen-Z and then I remembered that our granddaughter had asked for a portable cassette player similar to a Walkman.  Apparently cassette tape players have made a comeback as well.
https://www.engadget.com/2196894/ipods-comeback-gen-z/

link dump #14

I follow a lot of RSS feeds to make it easier to find interesting articles without having to regularly visit my entire list of interesting blogs which aren't updated often.  As you can see, I find a dizzying array of topics interesting.  For example today while taking the dog outside over my lunch break, looking up treated me to this interesting halo around the sun.  Apparently it's caused by ice crystals interacting with the sun's rays.

Ronny Chieng, who you might know from The Daily Show or movies, gave one of the more amusing commencement speeches I've seen recently.  It was better received than the speech Eric Schmidt gave where he got booed for his comments about AI.  There have been a number of other recent commencement speakers telling graduates that they'll have a hard time finding employment thanks to so many CEO's obsession with AI.  I think that shows how out of touch these speakers, often members of upper management of various companies, are with their workers or potential employees.
https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/a/tracewilliamcowen/ronny-chieng-ai-speech-harvard

Apparently some of the Tesla staff members charged with reviewing video footage of their "Full Self Driving" feature in order to improve its performance don't trust Tesla's self driving technology.  I can't say I blame them.
https://www.reuters.com/investigations/why-teslas-ai-trainers-dont-trust-its-self-driving-tech-or-its-safety-stats-2026-05-28/

I love cool cars so I found this story about how hot rodders are using 3-D printing to help build parts for their cars interesting.  I've heard people are doing the same thing to restore old computers.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/old-school-hot-rodders-are-using-high-tech-3d-scanners-to-make-custom-parts

This proposed Lego kit for building a model of the CROCUS reactor looks very cool.  The instructions and parts are already available if you'd like to build it yourself.
https://beta.ideas.lego.com/product-ideas/e235fbd0-8ab8-4575-bd1c-37a25625f118

I found this article about the history of Digital Research's DR DOS interesting.  I used DR DOS in the late late 1980s when it was first released.  I even submitted a bug report to Digital Research when I found a program which didn't behave properly under DR DOS.  The bug was caused by a system call which behaved differently than the same system call on MS-DOS did when passed a string containing wildcards instead of an actual filename.  I even included a TSR (terminate and stay resident) program to work around the bug.
https://dfarq.homeip.net/dr-dos-revenge-of-cp-m/

This article about how people discovered someone they knew was super intelligent was interesting.  I used to work for a boss down at the Washington Navy Yard who would type long assembly language source files on the old CRT terminals we were stuck with on mainframes back in the late 1980s.  You could even ask him questions while he was typing and he would answer you with only a minor slowdown in his typing.  After typing these long programs, he would use the assemble and run option and his programs worked.  I was amazed that he could remember variable names he had used several pages of source code ago.  He was also amazingly effective with his explanations.  He's start out explaining at his level of understanding and if he saw you weren't understanding him, he'd adjust his explanation until you understood him and did it so you didn't feel insulted by the simpler explanation.
https://pleated-jeans.com/2026/05/22/people-share-the-moment-they-knew-they-were-in-the-presence-of-a-truly-massive-intellect/

Some of you may have build kits from Heathkit in the past.  I built two computer kits, an H-89 which ran CP/M and an H-151 which ran MS-DOS.  I also built one of their dot matrix printer kits.  Here's a video tour of their factory back in the day.
https://hackaday.com/2026/05/15/inside-the-heathkit-factory/

I found the news that plants react to anesthetics in a similar fashion to humans both fascinating and a little disturbing.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11586303/

If you've never seen the TV series Halt and Catch Fire, it's definitely worth watching.  It focuses on the early days of personal computing which sounds as if it would be boring but this show manages to keep it entertaining.  The title refers to the mythical HCF op code which causes the CPU to catch fire.
https://unstack.io/halt-and-catch-fire

Reading about Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon reminds me of how much I enjoyed watching it the couple times I've seen it.  I think I may be due to watch it again.
https://yusufaytas.com/why-crouching-tiger-hidden-dragon-is-a-masterpiece

If you've heard this story which Kurt Vonnegut told a few times, it illustrates why I like him so much as an author.  I think I would have enjoyed meeting him as well.  His books will both entertain you and lead you in directions you would have never expected when you started reading it.
https://chrisglass.com/2024/11/01/kurt-vonnegut-buys-an-envleope/ 

Before I became a father, I would have been skeptical about how much the experience changes someone.  When I held my daughter for the first time, it completely changed me.  Those changes were for the better although I would have doubted that a few years before.
https://www.sciencealert.com/fatherhood-dramatically-rewires-your-brain-scans-reveal

I've managed to clear out some of my backlog of interesting links with this link dump.  I hope you find something in here to inform or entertain you. 

link dump #3

I follow a lot of RSS feeds which makes it easier for me to discover interesting web pages without visiting a lot of favorite blogs which haven't been updated.  I hate to send these interesting links via email since it feels too much like a teacher giving homework... here, go read all of these web pages and report back to me.  Instead collecting them in a blog post seems like a friendlier way to pass links along.

Nathan Fillion has been dropping hints lately which make are making fans suspect that some type of Firefly sequel might be in the works.  If I had the power to bring back a single show, it would definitely be Firefly.
https://www.ign.com/articles/nathan-fillion-is-getting-firefly-fans-all-sorts-of-excited-over-20-years-after-the-show-was-canceled 

I find a lot of anti-AI sentiment among techies and artistic types in various places.  I've lost the link, but I recently saw a CTO complaining that he got the axe because his company was replacing some executives with AI.  There's a company I definitely wouldn't want to work for or to reply upon as a customer.  I'm lucky because I'm very close to retirement with more than enough work to keep me busy until I pull the ripcord.  I feel sorry for younger engineers who have to deal with the instability AI is causing.
https://www.scottsmitelli.com/articles/you-dont-have-to/

NASA's DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) just managed to nudge a binary asteroid system.  There may be hope if we manage to detect a killer asteroid early enough to launch a mission.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/03/nasas-dart-mission-shifted-the-orbits-of-two-asteroids/

The news that younger males are clinging harder to outdated gender roles than older generations do depresses me.  One can only hope that they alienate partners before managing to reproduce.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/05/gen-z-men-baby-boomers-wives-should-obey-husbands

Videos of launching small cars via trebuchet are entertaining but I really wish they has stuck to launching Yugos or other worthless cars.  A classic Austin Mini seems too valuable to waste this way.
https://www.jalopnik.com/2117130/watch-cars-launched-by-trebuchet/

link dump #2

I follow a lot of RSS feeds which allows me to find a lot of interesting web pages.  I hate to send them via email since it feels too much like a teacher giving homework... here, go read all of these web pages and report back to me.  Instead collecting them in a blog post seems like a friendlier way to pass links along.

When I was a kid, my favorite cartoon by far was The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, which started airing as repeats when I was 7 years old.  I found it refreshing because unlike other cartoons of the time, it never talked down to kids.  I knew some of the humor escaped me but that made me love it all the more.  Thanks to the more sophisticated humor, I continue to love it even now.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/how-bullwinkle-taught-kids-sophisticated-political-satire-180964803/

Who knew that deaths due to car crashes spike around the release of pop albums?  Seeing the way some people drive on my 40 mile commute, it doesn't surprise me as much as it should.
https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/23/pop_album_fatal_car_accidents/

I've enjoyed Jason Lee's acting in Kevin Smith's movies as well as My Name is Earl.  Here's an interesting interview with him which he was not happy with.  I can see his point since it appears the interviewer misrepresented what type of questions would be asked.
https://defector.com/a-complimentary-profile-of-jason-lee-that-was-surprisingly-difficult-to-publish 

Cory Doctorow gave a speech 15 years ago about the coming war on general computation which looks increasingly plausible given what AI companies have been doing lately.  If you enjoy realistic near future SciFi which is both entertaining and a bit frightening in its likely accuracy, check out his website craphound.com.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Coming_War_on_General_Computation

I was surprised to read that tire pressure sensors have enough range to be considered a privacy risk.
https://boingboing.net/2026/02/27/tire-pressure-sensors-are-a-huge-privacy-risk.html

An asteroid passed pretty close to Earth and apparently we didn't see it until it had already passed by.
https://boingboing.net/2026/02/24/an-asteroid-passed-428-km-from-earth-and-no-one-saw-it-coming.html

A computer formed of chips containing 800k human neurons has been taught to play Doom.  I find this disturbing on a lot of levels.
https://boingboing.net/2026/02/26/living-human-brain-cells-are-now-playing-doom.html

This article about the steady loss of deep knowledge is something which worries me.
https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/the-slow-death-of-the-power-user/

Gripping television

We watched the finale of The Shield last night, a fact which fills me bittersweet happiness. It was a thoroughly enjoyable series. It's hard to believe that it's been seven years since it started. I'm going to miss marveling at the havoc Vic Mackey and the rest of the Strike Team managed to wreak each week.

The writing on the series was amazing, especially when contrasted with the drivel that passes for entertainment on broadcast TV channels. It was surprising that they didn't have a slow season unlike so many other series. I wish I could say as much for The Sopranos which came close to boring me to tears for much of its last three seasons. Unlike The Sopranos, The Shield's finale was every bit as good as the series had ever been.

I feel the same bittersweet happiness remembering The Wire. It's refreshing to see what a great team of writers including George Pelecanos, who also has an impressive career as a novelist, can create when given the kind of freedom that an innovative network such as HBO can offer.

So where do we turn for TV entertainment now that those two great series have run their course? I'm hopeful that True Blood, Dexter, Sons of Anarchy, and Brotherhood will all continue providing us with thoughtful entertainment for years to come. I'm fairly certain that the broadcast networks won't abandon their current fascination with crappy reality TV programs long enough to produce something capable of entertaining people who who have an attention span of longer than 30 seconds any time soon.

MST3K

The guys from Mystery Science Theater 3000 (AKA MST3K) have a new project called The Film Crew Online. It's sort of a continuation of the work they did with MST3K. I'm giving it a recommendation based on how funny MST3K was.

Michael J. Nelson, the former head writer of MST3K, also has a series of MP3 files you can buy and play at the same time you're watching DVDs. They're available at a site called RiffTrax. It's a funny concept.

Mike Nelson has also written a few really funny books. My favorite is Mind Over Matters though Mike Nelson's Movie Megacheese was pretty entertaining.

Goodbye Mr. Wizard

Don Herbert, TV's Mr. Wizard, has died (see article). I credit Mr. Wizard for instilling a love of science in me as he did for several generations of kids. You've really got to admire people like him and Carl Sagan for helping popularize science.