A Song of Ice and Fire coming to HBO April 24, 2007
Posted by Jason in Books, TV.add a comment
This is old news but I just learned that George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire (ASoIaF) fantasy series has been picked up by HBO! ASoIaF is an awesome series of books. Currently there are four books (out of seven) out with the fifth due sometime this year. See the previously linked Wikipedia article for more details on the series.
I’m glad it’s being turned into a TV series and not a movie. The books are just too large and complex to fit into a 3-hour movie. HBO will also have a lot more leeway on the content which gets pretty explicit in the books. Now if only HBO weren’t so damn expensive…
Season Premieres this Week October 4, 2006
Posted by Jason in TV.3 comments
Two shows I watch are premiering this week; Lost today and Battlestar Galactica on Friday.
I enjoy Lost but I’m afraid that they’re never going to get around to explaining anything. What do the numbers mean? Will we find out who the Others really are this season? Will we see anymore of Michael and Walt? What the hell happened at the hatch?
I’m much more interested in the new season of Battlestar Galactica. They took a risk at the end of last season when they jumped the timeframe up by an entire year. What happened in the intervening year on New Caprica? What’s going to happen to Baltar? He’ll almost certainly lose his political power over the apparent mismanagement of the new colony. I also hope we’ll learn why there’s an imaginary Number 6 (real?? who knows!) in Baltar’s head and an imaginary Baltar in the rebel Number 6′s head. How did the rebel Number 6 and Cylon Sharon come to lead a Cylon fleet?
Should be an interesting season.
Head On: It’s Baloney! Head On: It’s Baloney! Head On: It’s Baloney! September 10, 2006
Posted by Jason in Pseudoscience, TV.add a comment
Thanks to James Randi this commercial will now only annoy me further!
Randi describes the ingredients inside each stick:
Each .2-ounce (<6 grams!) stick contains a 12X concentration (?) of White Bryony a type of vine as one of the two active ingredients. That means that the whole damn stick contains 1 part of ingredient in 1,000,000,000,000 parts of wax, or a stick contains .000,000,000,005,67 grams of “ingredient!” Since there are some 100 applications in a stick, divide that quantity by 100
Basically it’s just a piece of wax. The reason that the quantities of ingredients are so small is that it’s supposed to be a homeopathic “remedy”, as Randi puts it. Diluting an ingredient to almost non-existent levels is a core principle in homeopathy.
No thanks, Head On. I think I’ll grab an aspirin instead.
William Shatner Roast September 10, 2006
Posted by Jason in Celebrities, TV.add a comment
Anyone catch the William Shatner Roast on Comedy Central tonight?
Comedy Gold!
If you missed it and like Shatner and vulgar humor you’ll definitely want to watch it. I didn’t know that Stewie’s Rocketman solo on Family Guy was based on a Shatner performance. George Takei was brilliant.
Funny stuff!
Katie Couric v. The Internet September 10, 2006
Posted by Jason in Celebrities, TV.add a comment
I was just watching an interview with Katie Couric about her new position as an anchor on CBS News (local, not national). During the interview she said that she’d rather not get her news from some website “made by a guy in his pajamas at home” or from a blogger “spewing vitriol”.
I think she needs to spend more time on the blogosphere before making generalizations. Web developers and bloggers are not “guys in pajamas”. Many bloggers are laymen (like me) writing about topics important to them or personal issues. There are also many professional bloggers. Here are a few bloggers from just one little corner of the Internet: A developmental biologist, philosopher, epidemiologist, psychologist, computer scientist, and a surgeon. There are over 40 more bloggers posting at that site. Are these people all wearing pajamas and “spewing vitriol”? I don’t think so. Can you find bloggers that spew vitriol? Of course. They may very well outnumber the good bloggers. But to stereotype them as Katie Couric did just reveals her own lack of knowledge and biases.
By the way, I was not wearing my pajamas when I wrote this post.
MSU Football Season Starts September 10, 2006
Posted by Jason in News, Sports, TV.comments closed
MSU starts their football season with a game against Idaho today. Unfortunately the channel it’s playing on appears to the be the one channel we don’t get with the satellite.
If UoM loses to Vanderbilt I’ll feel a little better….
MSU leading 7-0 over Idaho at the moment (just saw a clip of the touchdown).
Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin Dead September 10, 2006
Posted by Jason in Celebrities, News, TV.1 comment so far
Steve Irwin was killed by a stingray earlier today while filming for a documentary.
I liked watching his show every now and then. He was kind of zany but that’s half the reason I liked him! He will be missed. 
“Crikey!”
MSU Football Season Starts September 10, 2006
Posted by Jason in News, Sports, TV.add a comment
MSU starts their football season with a game against Idaho today. Unfortunately the channel it’s playing on appears to the be the one channel we don’t get with the satellite.
If UoM loses to Vanderbilt I’ll feel a little better….
MSU leading 7-0 over Idaho at the moment (just saw a clip of the touchdown).
Jason Felton is a homo sapien in his mid-20s observed to be living in west Michigan. Observations suggest that he spends way too much time on the internet reading blogs, researching family trees, and keeping track of current events in science and politics. Other interests of his include atheism, electronics, religion, and history, among many other things.
