Monday, January 30, 2006
Which movie star am I most like?
OK, so I was bored:
Not a bad choice, actually. For a while I was afraid I'd be compared to John Tuturro or Tobey Maguire.
tags: silliness, movies
Matt Damon  Your hard work has paid off! You're known as a talented, dedicated, nice guy, who wisely learned from his best pal's failure to keep his lip zipped about affairs of the heart. Also, unlike that unnamed pal, you don't seem to have let success go to your head. |
Not a bad choice, actually. For a while I was afraid I'd be compared to John Tuturro or Tobey Maguire.
tags: silliness, movies
Saturday, January 28, 2006
Earthlike my ass
When my Uncle Bill passed away 4 years ago, among other things I inherited his collection of VHS tapes of Cosmos, by Carl Sagan, that he recorded off TV when it was originally broadcast back in the early '80s. I had watched the show as a youngster back then, but hadn't seen it since. Well finally, this past week I started re-watching the series, and am surprised at how well the series has aged, in spite of the advances in astronomy and science in the past 25 years. Sagan was smart enough to make the scientific method and the spirit of free rational inquiry the real emphases of the series, and not focus solely on the latest summation of what has been learned by science at the time.
In one installment of the 13-part series, he speaks in front of a grade school class (he was quite good in that setting, better than you might think), talking to them about how planets around other stars will be discovered in the near future. He knew full well what he was talking about, for his predictions then have come to fruition in the past decade, with the discovery of over 100 so-called extrasolar planets. This is a burgeoning field of study, although most of the planets discovered thus far have been quite different from anything in our own solar system; the main methodologies can find bloated gas-giants that would make Jupiter shrivel in fear much easier than they can find smaller rocky spheres like Venus, Earth, or Mars. In time, that may change, but for now, that's all that can be done.
Still, refinements continue, and the limits keep getting pushed back. Earlier this week Nature published an article by over 70 collaborators from 30 institutions about the discovery of another extrasolar planet, this time using a method called gravitational microlensing, whereby the light of a more distant object is distorted by the gravitational field of the planet in question; and even though the planet itself cannot be seen directly, its existence can be safely inferred by the observed distortions of the light from that object, using Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. All in all, a very impressive accomplishment:
But here's what chaps my hide. The discoverers of course report that they have found "one of the most earth-like planets yet", which is true as far as it goes. But what does the traditional media say in their reports on this story?
Washington Post - Earth-like Planet Found Outside Solar System
CNN - New Technique Finds Earth-like Planet
Albuquerque Tribune - Team Spots Earth-Like Planet
BBC News - Small Earth-like Planet Found
Hell, even the US State Department - yes, Condi Rice's State Department - exacerbated the misperception with their release entitled, "Astronomers Find Distant Icy Earth-like Planet". Ugh.
Let's review this planet's resume: OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb (OGLE for short) orbits a star one-fifth as massive as our sun at a distance of about 300 million miles. A star that small will also have far less luminosity than our sun, since smaller stars have lower internal pressures and therefore maintain lower rates of nuclear energy generation. Basically, OGLE has a dimmer sun, and they orbit much further from that dim sun than we orbit ours. As a result, the surface temperature can't be much warmer than -350 degrees Fahrenheit. Oh, and OGLE is also 5 times as massive as the Earth, which means its gravity would be 5 times stronger.
So, would someone tell me how all this makes this planet "earth-like"?
Here's the deal - using the term "earth-like" is just a shorthand in planetary science circles for saying that the object is mostly solid material with a limited or non-existent atmosphere, in contrast to gas giants like Jupiter or Saturn, or other proto-stars like brown dwarfs. (Or Yavin, for all you Star Wars buffs.) However, I would submit that "earth-like" means something else entirely to the public at large - that it means having oceans, a breathable nitrogen and oxygen atmosphere, that it has landforms and volcanos and maybe palm trees and sandy beaches and all the ingredients you'd need to make margueritas and basically that it looks like our own Blue Marble. Such a planet is not what was found here, and it makes me wonder, what would the media say when such a planet were found? They've already shot their wad by claiming that we've found an "earth-like" planet. Are they going to say, "No, this time we mean it, a really REALLY earth-like planet has been found."
Maybe we should save our breathless headlines for the time when we really do find an "earth-like planet." Jus' sayin'.
tags: extrasolar planets, astronomy, Carl Sagan, traditional media, Nature, Earth-like planet
In one installment of the 13-part series, he speaks in front of a grade school class (he was quite good in that setting, better than you might think), talking to them about how planets around other stars will be discovered in the near future. He knew full well what he was talking about, for his predictions then have come to fruition in the past decade, with the discovery of over 100 so-called extrasolar planets. This is a burgeoning field of study, although most of the planets discovered thus far have been quite different from anything in our own solar system; the main methodologies can find bloated gas-giants that would make Jupiter shrivel in fear much easier than they can find smaller rocky spheres like Venus, Earth, or Mars. In time, that may change, but for now, that's all that can be done.
Still, refinements continue, and the limits keep getting pushed back. Earlier this week Nature published an article by over 70 collaborators from 30 institutions about the discovery of another extrasolar planet, this time using a method called gravitational microlensing, whereby the light of a more distant object is distorted by the gravitational field of the planet in question; and even though the planet itself cannot be seen directly, its existence can be safely inferred by the observed distortions of the light from that object, using Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. All in all, a very impressive accomplishment:
Located more than 20,000 light years away in the constellation Sagittarius, close to the center of our Milky Way galaxy, planet OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb is approximately five-and-a-half times the mass of Earth.
Orbiting a star one-fifth the mass of the sun at a distance almost three times that of Earth's orbit, the newly discovered planet is frigid: the estimated surface temperature is -364 degrees Fahrenheit (-220 degrees Celsius).
Although astronomers doubt this cold body could sustain organisms, researchers believe gravitational microlensing will bring opportunities for observing other rocky planets in the "habitable zones" of stars - regions where temperatures are perfect for maintaining liquid water and spawning life.
But here's what chaps my hide. The discoverers of course report that they have found "one of the most earth-like planets yet", which is true as far as it goes. But what does the traditional media say in their reports on this story?
Washington Post - Earth-like Planet Found Outside Solar System
CNN - New Technique Finds Earth-like Planet
Albuquerque Tribune - Team Spots Earth-Like Planet
BBC News - Small Earth-like Planet Found
Hell, even the US State Department - yes, Condi Rice's State Department - exacerbated the misperception with their release entitled, "Astronomers Find Distant Icy Earth-like Planet". Ugh.
Let's review this planet's resume: OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb (OGLE for short) orbits a star one-fifth as massive as our sun at a distance of about 300 million miles. A star that small will also have far less luminosity than our sun, since smaller stars have lower internal pressures and therefore maintain lower rates of nuclear energy generation. Basically, OGLE has a dimmer sun, and they orbit much further from that dim sun than we orbit ours. As a result, the surface temperature can't be much warmer than -350 degrees Fahrenheit. Oh, and OGLE is also 5 times as massive as the Earth, which means its gravity would be 5 times stronger.So, would someone tell me how all this makes this planet "earth-like"?
Here's the deal - using the term "earth-like" is just a shorthand in planetary science circles for saying that the object is mostly solid material with a limited or non-existent atmosphere, in contrast to gas giants like Jupiter or Saturn, or other proto-stars like brown dwarfs. (Or Yavin, for all you Star Wars buffs.) However, I would submit that "earth-like" means something else entirely to the public at large - that it means having oceans, a breathable nitrogen and oxygen atmosphere, that it has landforms and volcanos and maybe palm trees and sandy beaches and all the ingredients you'd need to make margueritas and basically that it looks like our own Blue Marble. Such a planet is not what was found here, and it makes me wonder, what would the media say when such a planet were found? They've already shot their wad by claiming that we've found an "earth-like" planet. Are they going to say, "No, this time we mean it, a really REALLY earth-like planet has been found."
Maybe we should save our breathless headlines for the time when we really do find an "earth-like planet." Jus' sayin'.
tags: extrasolar planets, astronomy, Carl Sagan, traditional media, Nature, Earth-like planet
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Natural History
Sometimes it seems like good news is rare, but I think this story about the donation of a fossil-rich plot of ranchland in Wyoming definitely qualifies:
I've said this before elsewhere, but it deserves repeating: fossils often have a monetary value associated with them, to collectors and others who value their aesthetic appeal. But to the paleontologist and the natural historian, these things are often priceless. In many cases there is no replication of these delicate preserved specimens, from many tens of millions of years ago. I am very relieved to hear that at least in this instance, an area with the potential for significant scientific discovery is in the hands of people who will greatly cherish it for that purpose. Kudos to the rancher for his foresight and thoughtfulness.
tags: natural history, fossils
A Wyoming rancher with no connection to the University of Pittsburgh has given the school 4,700 acres of land littered with dinosaur fossils.
The university plans to maintain the land, valued at $7 million, for students and researchers in geology, archaeology and other disciplines. The university plans to team up on programs there with the University of Wyoming and Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Natural History.
"They have a real gem out there," said Mary Dawson, a paleontologist at the Carnegie Museum who visited the ranch several years ago. The land is "littered with fossils."
Allen Cook of Wheatland, Wyo., said he was getting ready to sell part of his ranch and decided to donate land to the university after an appraiser put him in touch with Alec Stewart, dean of the university's honors college and the appraiser's graduate school classmate.
"The amazing thing is that Cook, who had absolutely no connection with the University of Pittsburgh, had decided that we would be good stewards for this treasure," Stewart said Tuesday.
The 57-year-old rancher said the university's interest "seemed kind of in line with what I'd like — that the land would be preserved."
I've said this before elsewhere, but it deserves repeating: fossils often have a monetary value associated with them, to collectors and others who value their aesthetic appeal. But to the paleontologist and the natural historian, these things are often priceless. In many cases there is no replication of these delicate preserved specimens, from many tens of millions of years ago. I am very relieved to hear that at least in this instance, an area with the potential for significant scientific discovery is in the hands of people who will greatly cherish it for that purpose. Kudos to the rancher for his foresight and thoughtfulness.
tags: natural history, fossils
Sunday, January 22, 2006
Movies
I see movies. Lots of them. But it wasn't always like that. Before I started working at Yahoo! back in 2000, I was hardly a movie fan - Cindy can tell you that. Asking me if I wanted to see some movie was like asking me if I wanted to wait in line at the DMV.
It wasn't that I disliked movies, per se. It just wasn't something I volunteered for - so many other things seemed like a better use of my time. Plopping down on the couch for two hours felt like willful surrender to sloth - unlike music, movies demand your attention the entire time. Perhaps it was a defense mechanism triggered by my short attention span. Of course, once the movie started, or if by some quirk I happened upon the movie while surfing channels, I'd watch it the same as anyone else, and even like it. The problem was just getting me to that starting point.
Then my tenure at Yahoo! began. I had originally been told at hiring that I'd join the Y! Music team (my first choice), but on my first day I was re-allocated to the Movies group. I was a bit disappointed, but as it turned out that was a blessing - several months later Yahoo acquired Launch (a streaming music startup based in Santa Monica), and the existing Y! Music team, with whom I had several friends, was disbanded, and told to find other slots in Yahoo. They were quite unhappy as you might expect, and I realized that I was lucky to not have to find a new job.
For much of the first year, my attitude remained mostly the same toward movies. There I was in my job, surrounded by movie buffs and programming with movie data, but mostly impervious to its influences. But that changed, geekily enough, when the first of the Lord of the Rings movies came out. I guess that's what it took, a beautifully realized story of grand scope and inspiration to help me appreciate how great a movie can be. I got more interested in movies as storytelling, and loved the movie adaptation of this book I'd grown so fond of (I'd read it back in early 2001). This interest carried over gradually to other movies, and by the time 2003 rolled around, I began a quest to see 100 movies in a year. If you're a Yahoo user (i.e., have email with them), you can see which movies I saw that year by logging in and seeing my movies of 2003, and subsequent years too.
So at that point, I found a new satisfaction with my job that I didn't have before. That 2003 quest was partly inspired by attending the Sundance Film Festival that year, where I got to see many advance showings, Q & A sessions with directors, and some celebrities around Park City. (I even have a photo of Morgan Freeman talking to an admirer on Main Street.) I mean, even with all this in mind, I hardly consider myself a movie buff, but it does help me feel more rooted in our culture, whatever that may be. At the very least, movies for better or worse are often as strong a bond between people as sports or religion. Even with their faults they become the language we speak, the memory we retain of where we've been in our lives, literally and metaphorically.
Lately Cindy and I have had a Netflix-supplied "Kurosawa Film Festival", where so far we've watched his classics Rashomon and Yojimbo. Really great movies - and Ran is next. We also have a "Jesus In The Movies" festival coming up soon, featuring The Greatest Story Ever Told, The Last Temptation of Christ, and Monty Python's Life of Brian. (Yes, we've left off Mel Gibson's movie, mostly because by all accounts it's a gratuitous gorefest, which is something we're just not into.)
Anyway, that's how I came around to cinema. So tell me, have you seen anything good recently?
tags: movies
It wasn't that I disliked movies, per se. It just wasn't something I volunteered for - so many other things seemed like a better use of my time. Plopping down on the couch for two hours felt like willful surrender to sloth - unlike music, movies demand your attention the entire time. Perhaps it was a defense mechanism triggered by my short attention span. Of course, once the movie started, or if by some quirk I happened upon the movie while surfing channels, I'd watch it the same as anyone else, and even like it. The problem was just getting me to that starting point.
Then my tenure at Yahoo! began. I had originally been told at hiring that I'd join the Y! Music team (my first choice), but on my first day I was re-allocated to the Movies group. I was a bit disappointed, but as it turned out that was a blessing - several months later Yahoo acquired Launch (a streaming music startup based in Santa Monica), and the existing Y! Music team, with whom I had several friends, was disbanded, and told to find other slots in Yahoo. They were quite unhappy as you might expect, and I realized that I was lucky to not have to find a new job.
For much of the first year, my attitude remained mostly the same toward movies. There I was in my job, surrounded by movie buffs and programming with movie data, but mostly impervious to its influences. But that changed, geekily enough, when the first of the Lord of the Rings movies came out. I guess that's what it took, a beautifully realized story of grand scope and inspiration to help me appreciate how great a movie can be. I got more interested in movies as storytelling, and loved the movie adaptation of this book I'd grown so fond of (I'd read it back in early 2001). This interest carried over gradually to other movies, and by the time 2003 rolled around, I began a quest to see 100 movies in a year. If you're a Yahoo user (i.e., have email with them), you can see which movies I saw that year by logging in and seeing my movies of 2003, and subsequent years too.
So at that point, I found a new satisfaction with my job that I didn't have before. That 2003 quest was partly inspired by attending the Sundance Film Festival that year, where I got to see many advance showings, Q & A sessions with directors, and some celebrities around Park City. (I even have a photo of Morgan Freeman talking to an admirer on Main Street.) I mean, even with all this in mind, I hardly consider myself a movie buff, but it does help me feel more rooted in our culture, whatever that may be. At the very least, movies for better or worse are often as strong a bond between people as sports or religion. Even with their faults they become the language we speak, the memory we retain of where we've been in our lives, literally and metaphorically.
Lately Cindy and I have had a Netflix-supplied "Kurosawa Film Festival", where so far we've watched his classics Rashomon and Yojimbo. Really great movies - and Ran is next. We also have a "Jesus In The Movies" festival coming up soon, featuring The Greatest Story Ever Told, The Last Temptation of Christ, and Monty Python's Life of Brian. (Yes, we've left off Mel Gibson's movie, mostly because by all accounts it's a gratuitous gorefest, which is something we're just not into.)
Anyway, that's how I came around to cinema. So tell me, have you seen anything good recently?
tags: movies
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
The Germans are coming!
Over the holidays Cindy and I sent out newsletters to friends and family, a growing trend it seems among those who send Christmas cards and the like. (In lieu of regular year-round contact, I guess it's easier to save all the family and household news for one annual digest.)
Anyway, I saw that Cindy wanted to send copies to her relatives in Germany and Switzerland. Recalling that there were some free online translation tools available, I thought, why not send them a translated copy of our newsletter, auf Deutsch? So I ran my highly idiomatic text through Alta Vista's Babelfish tool, and pieced together this bizarro-universe version of the newsletter for them. However, based on previous experience with these translation tools, I suspected that some of the translations were probably confusing and silly to native speakers, so as a check I asked a neighbor who's originally from Germany to proof it, and perhaps correct it too (he's a high-school teacher in literature, and thoroughly fluent).
Well, he thought it was terrible, and offered to do the translation himself. I was surprised, but very grateful that he'd want to take on this project. So we sat down a couple days later and over several hours we pounded through the newsletter and offered a much more reasonable German equivalent. We laughed as we corrected some of the more outrageous automated language abuses offered by Babelfish, like their overly literal translation of tenure-track (calling it something to the effect of a rail-position) and using my reference to our heat pump operating "full blast" as meaning it was literally exploding.
So, with a fully corrected version ready to submit for actual German readers, we sent it off, having included 1) a brief statement that we were planning a trip to Germany this coming summer, and 2) pleading with people to come visit anytime they wanted, for we were always happy to host visitors here. And so, a couple weeks later, Cindy got an email from cousin Gerald in Wolfsburg that he had already booked a grand trip to the US in August, including a week stay here in Fort Collins! Wow, that was fast. But we're very excited, and since we know for sure they're coming, Cindy and I have launched our crash course in learning German, or at least some German. Our way of self-learning is through language recordings by Pimsleur, online resources like those at Deutsch Welle, and hopefully chatting with our aforementioned neighbor and his 2-year old son, who already knows way more German than we may ever know.
There is a joke (more like a truism) that if a German says he speaks a little English, that really means he's fluent. And that if a German tells you he's fluent in English, that really means he speaks better than you. In any case, we look forward to having visitors and doing our part to spread some international goodwill. I figure that since the boneheads running our government aren't up to the task, someone's gotta do it.
tags: Germany, German Language, lost in translation
Anyway, I saw that Cindy wanted to send copies to her relatives in Germany and Switzerland. Recalling that there were some free online translation tools available, I thought, why not send them a translated copy of our newsletter, auf Deutsch? So I ran my highly idiomatic text through Alta Vista's Babelfish tool, and pieced together this bizarro-universe version of the newsletter for them. However, based on previous experience with these translation tools, I suspected that some of the translations were probably confusing and silly to native speakers, so as a check I asked a neighbor who's originally from Germany to proof it, and perhaps correct it too (he's a high-school teacher in literature, and thoroughly fluent).
Well, he thought it was terrible, and offered to do the translation himself. I was surprised, but very grateful that he'd want to take on this project. So we sat down a couple days later and over several hours we pounded through the newsletter and offered a much more reasonable German equivalent. We laughed as we corrected some of the more outrageous automated language abuses offered by Babelfish, like their overly literal translation of tenure-track (calling it something to the effect of a rail-position) and using my reference to our heat pump operating "full blast" as meaning it was literally exploding.
So, with a fully corrected version ready to submit for actual German readers, we sent it off, having included 1) a brief statement that we were planning a trip to Germany this coming summer, and 2) pleading with people to come visit anytime they wanted, for we were always happy to host visitors here. And so, a couple weeks later, Cindy got an email from cousin Gerald in Wolfsburg that he had already booked a grand trip to the US in August, including a week stay here in Fort Collins! Wow, that was fast. But we're very excited, and since we know for sure they're coming, Cindy and I have launched our crash course in learning German, or at least some German. Our way of self-learning is through language recordings by Pimsleur, online resources like those at Deutsch Welle, and hopefully chatting with our aforementioned neighbor and his 2-year old son, who already knows way more German than we may ever know.
There is a joke (more like a truism) that if a German says he speaks a little English, that really means he's fluent. And that if a German tells you he's fluent in English, that really means he speaks better than you. In any case, we look forward to having visitors and doing our part to spread some international goodwill. I figure that since the boneheads running our government aren't up to the task, someone's gotta do it.
tags: Germany, German Language, lost in translation
Sunday, January 15, 2006
Cities of 2005
It's been a few weeks: time for a new meme. Here I take the cue from Colorado Luis and list the towns, cities, or other locales in the world where I at least spent one night. The asterisk (*) indicates more than one night spent there.
Fort Collins, CO*
Park City, UT*
Florida City, FL*
Avon Park, FL*
Colorado Springs, CO*
Lima, Peru
Cuzco, Peru*
near Atalaya, Peru
near Fitzcarrald, Peru (yes, that one)*
Huaraz, Peru*
San Francisco, CA
Scotts Valley, CA
Hollister, CA*
Davis, CA*
near Las Animas, CO
Lenexa, KS (suburb of Kansas City)*
San Jose, Costa Rica*
near Las Horquetas, Costa Rica*
Key West, FL*
Yeesh, I got around, didn't I?
tags: travel
Fort Collins, CO*
Park City, UT*
Florida City, FL*
Avon Park, FL*
Colorado Springs, CO*
Lima, Peru
Cuzco, Peru*
near Atalaya, Peru
near Fitzcarrald, Peru (yes, that one)*
Huaraz, Peru*
San Francisco, CA
Scotts Valley, CA
Hollister, CA*
Davis, CA*
near Las Animas, CO
Lenexa, KS (suburb of Kansas City)*
San Jose, Costa Rica*
near Las Horquetas, Costa Rica*
Key West, FL*
Yeesh, I got around, didn't I?
tags: travel
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
More Mountain Factoids
I was scouting a survey route in eastern Colorado yesterday that I'll be on while helping out on the Winter Raptor Survey for the Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory. On my drive back, I saw Longs Peak (as well as other surrounding peaks) in Rocky Mountain National Park come into view as I passed Road 137 in Weld County. Consulting a map, I estimate that the peak was 105 miles away when I first saw it. Cool.
Oh, and last week I caught a glimpse of Pikes Peak from north Fort Collins, up on a small ridge, on a beautiful clear morning. At that point my estimate is that I was 121 miles from the peak. I so love Colorado mountain watching in the winter.
That is all. Just thought you'd like to know. Carry on.
UPDATE (1/15/06): After a repeat trip east last Friday to do the actual survey, I can report that you can actually see Longs Peak from even further out than I originally thought. On a beautiful crystal-clear morning, I was able to see the peak just inside Logan County, which is about 113 miles from the peak.
tags: mountains, Colorado
Oh, and last week I caught a glimpse of Pikes Peak from north Fort Collins, up on a small ridge, on a beautiful clear morning. At that point my estimate is that I was 121 miles from the peak. I so love Colorado mountain watching in the winter.
That is all. Just thought you'd like to know. Carry on.
UPDATE (1/15/06): After a repeat trip east last Friday to do the actual survey, I can report that you can actually see Longs Peak from even further out than I originally thought. On a beautiful crystal-clear morning, I was able to see the peak just inside Logan County, which is about 113 miles from the peak.
tags: mountains, Colorado
Saturday, January 07, 2006
Weather Blog vs. Weather Channel
I recently discovered that the Weather Channel has a blog. I love it, because 1) the blog contributors are often the people I most like to see on the Weather Channel anyway, like Drs. Steve Lyons, Heidi Cullen, and Paul Kocin, and 2) no commercials. God, how I hate that the Weather Channel shows more commercials than any network I've ever seen - it's intolerable.
The posts are surprisingly good and not dumbed-down. It's refreshing to see some honest commentary that's not all pap, coming from people who regularly appear on TV.
tags: weather, The Weather Channel
The posts are surprisingly good and not dumbed-down. It's refreshing to see some honest commentary that's not all pap, coming from people who regularly appear on TV.
tags: weather, The Weather Channel
Friday, January 06, 2006
Alias blogging
About a year ago shortly after starting our Netflix subscription, Cindy and I decided to rent a couple Alias DVDs and see if we liked the series. We'd heard a lot about it from friends, but were "way behind" in TV watching the past few years. Of course, we were riveted from episode #1 - we found it to be expertly made, smartly paced, and highly entertaining. A new addiction had been found.
Alas, we couldn't really talk about the show with anyone in detail as it was evolving for us. Watching a series on DVD, especially Alias, is great in that it's much easier to remember plot details, and Alias has boatloads of intricate plot details. And of course you can watch several shows in the course of a week. But it also means that pretty much by definition, you're not up-to-date on the latest events in the show. And in early 2005, ABC was well into the 4th season of Alias, and we had just gotten started. So we had over 3 1/2 seasons to catch up. And given the amount of time it takes just to do that, with 22 episodes a season and the desire to watch some other things in our limited amount of TV-time besides alias, it was going to take even longer. But Cindy and I, we're committed, and we set ourselves to the task.
And it is with great relief to announce that as of yesterday evening, we finally caught up with the rest of the Alias-watching world, after finishing the most-recent of this season's 9 episodes broadcast so far. These had been taped on our VCR (sorry, TiVo lovers - we're still back in the TV-recording Stone Age). Of course we know there are only 13 episodes left for the entire series (this is its last season), but hey, at least we can talk about it now with other fans. It took a year to make up that deficit, and to hit this moving target, but we did it.
Spoiler Alert! - read no further if you're not caught up yourselves but want to watch the show the way it was intended, one episode at a time. I mean it! I'm going to offer some opinions on plot elements and the like.
We absolutely loved the first two seasons - we think they're extraordinary TV. We loved seeing how the takedown of SD-6 had to be slow and methodical, and that sometimes the bad guys had to be placated and allowed to continue in order to make progress in the longer term. We admire a show that has the courage (and the studio that permits it) to have some not-so-happy endings if it means telling a more compelling story. The season 2 cliffhanger was especially gripping - few shows would kill off such a regular and sympathetic character as Francie.
Season 3 was also good TV, but both of us felt some dissatisfaction at how Lauren's character evolved. The theme of presumably good characters turning out to be evil started to seem a little tired, and we noticed the complete nonexistence of any character in the show who was outside the world of espionage and intrigue. And once the season ended, we felt like the whole Covenant angle ended up being just a ruse played on the audience, especially with the Season 3 ending cliffhanger, which unless we're missing something, turned out to be far less of a mystery than it originally seemed to be. A secret report that Jack had killed Irina (or at least thought he did)? OK, that's significant, sure, but worth waiting all offseason to find out about?
Season 4 was in our opinion the weakest overall season. We love the characters and the "return" of a new improved SD-6, but the show seemed slow to move the plot along, taking about 8-10 episodes to really get started. I imagine there was a desire on the part of studio heads (or even JJ?) to let the audience get to know the characters better through longer exposition, but dammit, we're Alias addicts! We're used to breakneck pace in the show! Don't slow it down, keep it moving! Anyway, it was good to see some resolution on the whole Rambaldi device plot arcs. And we loved the brilliant twist in the season 4 ending cliffhanger, especially since we knew we wouldn't have to wait months to find out what happened to Vaughan and Syd in the car.
I think also part of the reason we were generally unsatisfied with Season 4 was that the whole season was a lot less about Syd and much more about virtually everyone else in the show. Again, we like the characters a lot, but when the emphasis is less on Syd, the show feels less focused and for us had less emotional impact. Part of what made the first couple seasons so compelling was being able to see the events of the show through the personality of Syd, who's so agreeable and admirable. When she's not the center of it, we had to depend on the personalities of characters we don't know quite as well.
Season 5 right off the bat felt to me like a return to centering the show on Syd, and sure enough, I find it much more interesting and emotive. It probably helps also that a lot is happening, and that Prophet 5 seems like a very worthy story arc. Seems, because hey, we don't know what the organization is all about, other than the episode 9 "cliffhanger" which shows Irina once again pulling some strings in a way not unlike how she was doing it 3 seasons ago. I do have a small problem with Prophet 5, wondering how an organization as comprehensive as they seem to be wasn't a bigger Rambaldi player in the last season or two, but hopefully we'll seem some explanation of this once the new eps start in March.
Ah yes, Alias. I know, it's just a TV show, but it's a damn good one. You can know that if only because Cindy and I can't stand watching TV (especially broadcast TV) unless it's particularly good. And just wait 'til I start talking about Arrested Development!
tags: television Alias
Alas, we couldn't really talk about the show with anyone in detail as it was evolving for us. Watching a series on DVD, especially Alias, is great in that it's much easier to remember plot details, and Alias has boatloads of intricate plot details. And of course you can watch several shows in the course of a week. But it also means that pretty much by definition, you're not up-to-date on the latest events in the show. And in early 2005, ABC was well into the 4th season of Alias, and we had just gotten started. So we had over 3 1/2 seasons to catch up. And given the amount of time it takes just to do that, with 22 episodes a season and the desire to watch some other things in our limited amount of TV-time besides alias, it was going to take even longer. But Cindy and I, we're committed, and we set ourselves to the task.
And it is with great relief to announce that as of yesterday evening, we finally caught up with the rest of the Alias-watching world, after finishing the most-recent of this season's 9 episodes broadcast so far. These had been taped on our VCR (sorry, TiVo lovers - we're still back in the TV-recording Stone Age). Of course we know there are only 13 episodes left for the entire series (this is its last season), but hey, at least we can talk about it now with other fans. It took a year to make up that deficit, and to hit this moving target, but we did it.
Spoiler Alert! - read no further if you're not caught up yourselves but want to watch the show the way it was intended, one episode at a time. I mean it! I'm going to offer some opinions on plot elements and the like.
We absolutely loved the first two seasons - we think they're extraordinary TV. We loved seeing how the takedown of SD-6 had to be slow and methodical, and that sometimes the bad guys had to be placated and allowed to continue in order to make progress in the longer term. We admire a show that has the courage (and the studio that permits it) to have some not-so-happy endings if it means telling a more compelling story. The season 2 cliffhanger was especially gripping - few shows would kill off such a regular and sympathetic character as Francie.
Season 3 was also good TV, but both of us felt some dissatisfaction at how Lauren's character evolved. The theme of presumably good characters turning out to be evil started to seem a little tired, and we noticed the complete nonexistence of any character in the show who was outside the world of espionage and intrigue. And once the season ended, we felt like the whole Covenant angle ended up being just a ruse played on the audience, especially with the Season 3 ending cliffhanger, which unless we're missing something, turned out to be far less of a mystery than it originally seemed to be. A secret report that Jack had killed Irina (or at least thought he did)? OK, that's significant, sure, but worth waiting all offseason to find out about?
Season 4 was in our opinion the weakest overall season. We love the characters and the "return" of a new improved SD-6, but the show seemed slow to move the plot along, taking about 8-10 episodes to really get started. I imagine there was a desire on the part of studio heads (or even JJ?) to let the audience get to know the characters better through longer exposition, but dammit, we're Alias addicts! We're used to breakneck pace in the show! Don't slow it down, keep it moving! Anyway, it was good to see some resolution on the whole Rambaldi device plot arcs. And we loved the brilliant twist in the season 4 ending cliffhanger, especially since we knew we wouldn't have to wait months to find out what happened to Vaughan and Syd in the car.
I think also part of the reason we were generally unsatisfied with Season 4 was that the whole season was a lot less about Syd and much more about virtually everyone else in the show. Again, we like the characters a lot, but when the emphasis is less on Syd, the show feels less focused and for us had less emotional impact. Part of what made the first couple seasons so compelling was being able to see the events of the show through the personality of Syd, who's so agreeable and admirable. When she's not the center of it, we had to depend on the personalities of characters we don't know quite as well.
Season 5 right off the bat felt to me like a return to centering the show on Syd, and sure enough, I find it much more interesting and emotive. It probably helps also that a lot is happening, and that Prophet 5 seems like a very worthy story arc. Seems, because hey, we don't know what the organization is all about, other than the episode 9 "cliffhanger" which shows Irina once again pulling some strings in a way not unlike how she was doing it 3 seasons ago. I do have a small problem with Prophet 5, wondering how an organization as comprehensive as they seem to be wasn't a bigger Rambaldi player in the last season or two, but hopefully we'll seem some explanation of this once the new eps start in March.
Ah yes, Alias. I know, it's just a TV show, but it's a damn good one. You can know that if only because Cindy and I can't stand watching TV (especially broadcast TV) unless it's particularly good. And just wait 'til I start talking about Arrested Development!
tags: television Alias
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Windblown
Yet another extremely windy day here on the Front Range. Winds 25 to 35 with gusts up to 45. What a strange winter this is shaping up to be, with so much wind and so little snow. We've had about 3 inches total snowfall so far this winter, but the past few weeks we're getting something like 3 High Wind Advisory days a week. It's making us mental.
Situations like this often seem to bring up the fatalistic streaks in us. Cindy commented to me that this prolonged delay in "real" winter just means we're gonna get it, and hard, real soon. And she's a climatologist!
tags: wind weather
Situations like this often seem to bring up the fatalistic streaks in us. Cindy commented to me that this prolonged delay in "real" winter just means we're gonna get it, and hard, real soon. And she's a climatologist!
tags: wind weather
Monday, January 02, 2006
OK, so it's 2006. I GET IT.
Does this mean I need to start thinking about getting a job?
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