Four Things

Pivot to Remote

Colleges are starting their classes and just as quickly shutting down their campuses.  First was UNC - Chapel Hill.  Today there was news from Notre Dame and Michigan State.  Carnegie Mellon emailed today to tell us that instead of starting on campus on August 31st we will be starting 100% online.  That start will only last one week though and as of today our students will be back in their classrooms the following Tuesday.  I guess it is possible that the schools that have had outbreaks are the exception and not the rule, but every day that goes by it seems less likely that in person residential college is possible under these circumstances.  Two weeks ago I shifted my classes from hybrid to remote.  I am still trying to decide if either of the Technical Direction classes will have shop based projects.  There's a perceptible desire from the students to get in and get their hands dirty, but I can't decide whether I want to be the one that puts them in that position.  Lately it seems like taking a breath makes some of these decisions for us.  I'll see what the next week brings.

Different Interests

I don't understand why we're not getting more action out of the Senate.  There's this established concept that people in government don't understand what the people they represent go through; that leaders don't know the price of milk.  The median net worth of a US household is $93k.  The median net worth in Congress is $500k and the Senate is probably significantly higher than that (a quick search failed to find the specific number).  There's just no way the average Congressperson can really relate to the average person.  It'll never happen, but it seems like there ought to be some wealth caps on Congress (and the President & Vice President).  Maybe something along the lines of if you are worth more than 10 times the median worth of your constituency you are ineligible to run.  That would mean that someone with a net worth of a million dollars could not be President.  That would certainly disqualify a lot of people, but the ones that were available would likely have a better connection to the people they represent.  (I also think you should only be paid the median annual income of your constituency too, but that's another story.)

Tales From the Loop

I finished watching Tales From the Loop on Amazon.  It wasn't what I was expecting.  The promos they run seem to cast it in the mold of the SyFy show Eureka.  They show lots of scientists and a robot that looks like a scout walker and high tech gear and families and you get the vibe that it is a fun science fiction show like we've seen before.  It really isn't.  In some ways I thought it was a lot more like The Twilight Zone.  It has a series of loosely connected, very small stories with fantastical elements, but it is anything but zany like Eureka.  It is slow and deliberate and... sad.  The soundtrack is often just a single cello and that absolutely meets the mood, expresses the tone of the storytelling.  I didn't notice until the end that the composer is Philip Glass.  Toward the end there's a scene where one of the schoolteachers asks one of the kids about a book she'd given him and he says he thought it was "sad, but beautiful."  The writers were almost certainly talking about their work as much as the book in the story.  Is it worth watching, sure.  Is it what you're expecting, no.  If you do watch it, reach out and tell me.  I'd love to talk about it, but I don't want to give anything away.

To Do List

The first day of class - remote or not - is coming up quickly.  This year has been sneakier than in the past as there is still a part of me that is sitting, waiting in March of this year.  I know we ended the Spring semester and then moved on to an abbreviated Summer program and that the Fall is bearing down on us right soon.  I know that, but I don't really feel it.  We had an opening faculty/staff meeting this week.  Usually the year kicks off with a cocktail of some sort that would normally still be a week and a half off.  This year is obviously different.  So the clock is ticking and I need to make my list.  I've got schedules to do for three classes and then a mountain of PowerPoint decks to compose.  I did 8 or 9 as part of the summer but I could be looking at more like 40 for the fall (that's the first time I did that math - that is a big number).  I'm behind because all the work time I have had so far has gotten applied to COVID and RJ and BONUS CURRICULUM tasks.  All the extra stuff has made it hard to dig down to the regular stuff.  Time to get to that part of the list (I need a project checklist I guess).

Happy Birthday Doctor Who

It's the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who.  I'm at home not watching the special; we have tickets to see it in the movie theater on Monday.  I may have to go into a social media blackout until then.  I have to say, I'm not nearly as excited about the anniversary as, well, the rest of the internet.  By my judgement I'm not as excited now on the 50th anniversary as I was on the 20th anniversary. For "The Five Doctors" I was at the Hyatt Regency O'Hare for the first Spirit of Light convention.  I guess I am sort of a Doctor Who hipster.  I liked it before it was cool.

The first episode of Doctor Who I ever saw was "The Invisible Enemy," but I only tuned in while flipping, just saw part of it, and really had no idea what I was watching.

A little while later I picked it up again tuning into the second set of three episodes of "The Armageddon Factor."  Not the easiest place to pick up a TV show, the second half of the sixth of a six episode arc.  Doctor Who at this time was running on WTTW in Chicago on Sunday night at 11PM.  I was probably 13 years old and used to watch on my TV in my room, in the dark using an earpiece so my parents wouldn't know I was still up.

I watched through all the e-space episodes and then through to "Logopolis."  After that WTTW rebooted back to "Giant Robot," the start of the Tom Baker episodes.  I think we saw the full Fourth Doctor arc three times before seeing something new - or rather old.  After a couple times through Tom Baker we went back to Jon Pertwee's episodes.

Watching on channel eleven was usually pretty great.  They showed the episodes cut together so a BBC four episode story would run on one night: 11PM to 12:20.  The six parters would be split over two weeks.  The worst was obviously during pledge drives when 11 would become 11:30 would become 12AM and finally the show would start.

At some point I became aware that Doctor Who ran on Milwaukee Public Television on (I don't remember) Friday or Saturday night.  On some occasions if the weather was right I could manually tune my tv and add hangars to my antenna and watch an extra episode.

Eventually we got to see the first Peter Davidson season.  Somewhere around there I also started reading the novelizations, some of shows I'd seen some of show's I hadn't with first and second doctor stories.  I remember really liking "The Keys of Marinus" and really, really liking "Enlightenment."  I also remember getting "The Doctor Who Programme Guide" and finally grasping the full depth of the show.

I was definitely a fan.  My grandmother knitted me a Tom Baker scarf.  I had stacks of VHS tapes with Doctor Who episodes.  At some point I culled the tape collection to be only "firsts and lasts"  the first or last time a companion or villain showed up.  In hind-site that turned out to be a strategically bad decision.  When the BBC got around to issuing the show on video they were like $50 for a single episode.

The high point of my fandom was probably the TARDIS 21 convention (at least I think it was the second con, I guess it could have been the first).  At that show I got to see "Wargames" and "The Three Doctors" from older seasons and then "Resurrection of the Daleks" and "Twin Dilemma."  But the coolest was absolutely "Caves of Androzani" in the middle of the night, on a big screen, with a room full of people as into the show as I was.  That episode probably remains one of my favorites to this day (it's on streaming Netflix - check it out).

It went kinda downhill from there.  Doctor Who did run on WQEX in Pittsburgh when I was in school there. But it ran in episodic format, and after being used to watching omnibus, episodic just isn't the same.  I didn't have the patience for it.  It also ran at like 6PM and at that time I was usually playing Ultimate.  I don't remember having access to the show while I was in New Haven and then we were through Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy and the show was gone.

I'd guess there was nobody more excited than I was when the new series popped up on SciFi, but I guess my 40 year old fanaticism just can't compare to a teenager's.  I liked the episodes through Rose and Jack.  I really loved seeing Sarah Jane Smith again.  A little bit I felt those episodes were aimed at people of my vintage.  The Martha Jones episodes were fun.  "Blink" probably ranks with the best episodes ever.  I was less enamored of the Donna Noble stories, although "Silence of the Library" was special and the River Song thing was pretty cool.  I guess I've been even less excited through the Amy/Rory arc - but I'm hanging in.

Here's hoping "The Day of the Doctor" is as cool as "Caves of Androzani" was all those years ago.

This Could Save You Some Time

Keep Up Momentum

I think this:



Looks like an alien from Star Wars.

Maybe it's just from that angle.

I Can't Do That Dave

New desktop image:

Awesome

Not My President... Our President

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

RIP Derek Reese

What does it mean when your entire blog becomes about The Sarah Connor Chronicles? It could mean that things are such at work that most of what consumes you is not really fit for public discussion. There's probably some of that. It could mean that you don't think people would really be interested in the actual nuts and bolts of "how're you doing?" in the aftermath of your mother's passing. That might make a decent "This American Life" episode one day, but isn't much for day to day blogging: "couldn't sleep, again..." Often a lack of blogging reflects a certain stunned state where it just becomes difficult to do anything. There's definitely some of that.

Or maybe it just means that SCC is a rockin good TV show.

If you remember last time, and it would be hard not to because there's been so little here that it hasn't worked it's way off the page yet, I speculated about just what was going on with John Henry, and were we perhaps mislead about the nature of that AI. This week reinforced that notion some when we were informed by someone in the know that John Henry's future was all of our future. Now, that could have been maniacal monologueing, but in this case I am going to take it at face value and stand firmly on the ground I first staked out saying things are more complicated than they seem.

Then, they killed a major character with absolutely no fanfare. Which sucks a little because as a child of the 80's I was real happy to see Brian Austen Green getting to work, and getting such a good character. But then, there he was with a bullethole in his forehead and then a coroner's report just a few minutes later in case you thought maybe he wasn't dead - or that maybe he'd never been alive. Just one second he's there and the next, poof, he's gone. Damn.

With the deaths over the last three weeks, and adding last night's arrest they really are isolating John and Cameron. All of a sudden the little detail of if Derek really shot Jessie is actually not that little at all. Really I can't wait to see where it goes.

And a little bit more every week I think I will be upset if FOX doesn't keep the story going.

Still Hanging With SCC

Is it a shame to admit that on the Friday a little while back I was more engaged by the episodes of Dollhouse and Sarah Connor Chronicles than by the series finale of BSG? I'm not a Whedon guy like other people are, but when that phone machine picked up and she said "there are three flowers in a vase" and the girl went all batshit, well, wow that was good TV. It made me think that all the episodes we'd seen up until that point were just there to give us enough balance to be able to handle how the stories are really going to go. Which was also the point at which I remembered that there was discussion online ad nauseum when the pilot was written about how they had to rewrite it because it was too hard to follow.

(Firefox says "batshit" is not a word, by the way - although curiously the second time, and in quotes it seems to be ok. Perhaps we need an experiment: batshit. Nope, quotes don't seem to matter. Perhaps spelling something wrong twice proves you're too determined to be corrected. I digress...)

I opined some time ago about why you should be watching SCC. I have to say that after some time I still believe it to be true. The resolution of the Riley plotline, how she was an agent of sorts, and then how John had made her as an agent but hadn't let on and then how John busts Jessie, and then how Derek may or may not have aced Jessie was really, really well done. The only bit I was unhappy with was that I sorta liked Riley as a character and I guess had figured it would wind up with Jessie and Riley joining the gang in their fight against Skynet. This was was much darker, but also probably much better, and certainly more interesting.

Last week was for me a less interesting episode, but it was worth hanging in as the last fifteen minutes or so were killer. We've been going on for quite some time now being lead to believe that the thing in the basement using the triple-8's body and the worlds most advanced AI was in fact the embryonic Skynet and that the T-1000 running the company was in some way sheperding it's development and protecting it from the Connors. But this week another AI, something dating back to the T2 story came on the scene and suddenly you have to start wondering is John Henry Skynet or not? And if not, just what is Catherine Weaver up to? For a brief moment I saw a geometry in my head where Weaver's T-1000, John Henry, Agent James Ellison, and the Connors all wind up on the same side.

And if none of that makes any sense to you then all I can say is get on line and get caught up. It's real good TV.

(and now, the first batshit isn't a spelling mistake but the second two, but not the one I just typed are. Which I guess means that learning to spell and buying a dictionary are not as obsolete as one might think.)

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WOW

Why You Should Be Watching SCC

I rise in recognition and support of television's Sarah Connor Chronicles. Last week there was an article I saw that asked why SCC wasn't "the new lost." Today I saw another article explaining why, explicitly, it wasn't. And now I have the urge to say:

Thank God it isn't - and yes you should be watching.

Lost is such a lumbering elephant compared to SCC. Sure over time Lost has earned its place among the scifi TV royalty - although I am sure there are still die-hard fans that expect everything to be able to work out without anything fantastic. I am also sure they will be wrong. The point is that there are so many things going on that you almost have to become a student of the show to enjoy the show ("no, dude, if you go frame by frame you see Echo sitting in heaven steering the smoke monster with a joystick that has a dharma logo on it...")

The Sarah Connor Chornicles is just excellent science fiction television. I think they wouldn't find it surprising to hear me say so, I believe I am the bullseye on their demographic chart. I was a collegeish person when T2 came out; and I was a fan of 90210 so I am willing to give Brian Austin Green the benefit of the doubt.

Popular wisdom says it's the Cameron character that gets people to watch, that Summer Glau will bring in viewers by the truckload. If so, they are fickle viewers; not the kind that hang with a show for the long haul (also unlikely to use semi-colons in their partisan blogging). The show isn't about the protector machine or the boy king. This story is about the mother, were it a film all the rest would be noise. Since we're on TV we need a little more to break up the pace and this show is strongest when its about the mother, the uncle (the aforementioned B.A.G.) or the cop.

The uncle, Derek Reese, is a great add to the mythology. Now we get to see the full extent of the thrust and parry that is a war fought in different temporal zones, and it gives us a connection to the post-judgement day Earth through the person of someone other than one of the machines - something the terminator franchise hasn't had since the original movie (which I should admit I've never seen). It also puts in place an ally for Sarah and John without their having to lay out their story over and over, which would become instantly tedious.

The cop, James Ellison, is a totally new dimension to the mythology and a needed one - someone in our timeframe, native to our timeframe, not tied to John Connor directly, who believes and is trying to unravel the story. The story potential for Ellison is fantastic, and the pawn manipulation of him by the T1000 on the show is excellent.

There's just so much to like. They've set things up such that aside from Sarah, John, and Derek you really don't know who is on which side; who is working to advance Skynet and who is working to prevent it - or who is trying to protect John Connor and who is trying to kill him. Each scirmish along the way is so far engaging and interesting and slowly peeling back more of the puzzle for us to see, now we have the therapist, two girlfriends, the ex husband, the daughter, another programmer, and we're waiting for the next bad guy.

If you have any doubts, find a way to watch last season's finale someplace. There's a scene where Derek takes John to the park for an ice cream, I think it's his birthday. And there in the park is current timeline Derek playing catch with his brother, John's father, as a child. It was one of those story ideas that fully embraced the universe of the series and showed us something no other program could, one of a kind television, outstanding. The rest of the episode isn't bad either, it's where Ellison figures out something very different is afoot and his final scene with the Terminator is excellent - great sound design even, something like you might remember from culminating scenes on Homocide or West Wing years ago.

This is a great TV series. Fox is going to bury it on Friday in February, putting it head to head with BSG I think in what could be one of the bonehead programming maneuvers of all time - thank God for DVRs. If you're watching it, go ahead and spread the word, we've seen enough to know it isn't going to suddenly suck. If you're not watching it, check it out, you're missing somehting special.

Timecrash

So I have been seeing all these references to a Doctor Who episode last season called Timecrash. It sounded really cool because it featured 5th doctor Peter Davison - a personal favorite. Trouble was I don't remember seeing it and really I don't think I missed it. So what's up with that?

Well what's up is that it was a special promo episode, only 8 minutes and not part of the show package aired on SciFi. But - it's on YouTube. Have the big fun: