Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

Without a doubt, my favorite TV series at the moment is “Humans” which is about androids. Funny title, huh? Anyway, it follows Alone (which is about Aliens) and Mars (the only one with an unironic title) in a wave of currently awesome sci-fi series.
Mars and Alone were a bit different, though,in that they used footage of documentary stuff, interviews with today’s totally non-fictional scientists and stuff, and mixed it up with the actual action sequences, whereas Humans is a straight up, traditional action drama, just with seemingly pretty accurate science and a fairly comprehensive, if not in depth, look at the issues. Plus, a large and interesting cast.
You’ve got the Android sex worker, Neska, who snapped one day and killed a client because he was being a bit of a perv, the boy who’s got some android parts, without which he would not be alive, and he thinks of himself as a brother to the androids, the high school geek girl who’s really good at hacking into them, more than one scientist of questionable ethics, her mother the high powered lawyer who at first was freaked out by them but now is practically a part of the robot resistance, in any event she’s Neska’s lawyer, her husband who cheated on her with the family android, the cop who hated androids (his wife is shagging one – yes, shagging – it is a very British program) and then he freaked out a bit when his girlfriend confessed to being one, but he got over it and they’re together now, and shopping for furniture.
Some of the discussions about what it means to be conscious, to be sentient, almost amount to poetry – like teardrops in the rain…time to do type stuff.

I don’t want to complain too much about Facebook because it seems to me something that people do a lot of, without any concrete suggestions – for instance, I have one FBF who’s is always threatening to quit Facebook, it’s like every other post I see from her, and that’s been the case for over 6 months now, at least.
But, I didn’t watch the SOU speech (although I quite liked Sanders response to it) so I’m sure it will get plenty of analysis from people who were dedicated enough to sit through it, and don’t have anything better to write about, so a bit of Facebook bitching it is, for tonight.
I do not blame Mark Zuckerberg. It is not his fault that, given this tremendous vehicle for social change and reform, people still prefer to watch cute cats and people falling down. I must admit, the video today (or was it yesterday) of Pinky the Cat, who was on some kind of adopt a pet program, and the guy was saying how nice and mellow she was when she flipped out (in a very catlike way) twisting and turning like crazy and, eventually crawling up the announcers leg and causing sever pain, was rather funny in a gee-it’s great-to-watch when somebody screw up in absolutely spectacular fashion.
It’s not Zuckerberg’s fault. People can do whatever they like with this system and, apparently, a lot of people like cats.
There are a couple of features that I really don’t like, though, and one of them is this memories thing. It means that whatever it was, it was posted 3 years ago, at least. The world has undoubtedly changed a bit since I saw it last. So have you. Whatever you posted years ago is probably not relevant now.
It’s appealing to our desire for nostalgia. Maybe I’ve go a chip missing or something, but I still want tomorrow to be great and don’t want to waste time

Rereading Lord of the Rings and noticing that it, like Harry Potter, has to spend some time explaining the relationship between magic and reality, and that’s sort of true I guess in any book about magic, there has to be limits, otherwise you just have Superman and it’s bullshit.
The part I’m referring to is after the siege of Gondor and the Battle of the Pelenor Fields, when Merry, and Eowyn, and Faramir are all laying in hospital (excuse me, The House of Healing)and Aragorn asks one of the nurses for an herb called Kingsfoil and they sort of dismiss the idea, like ‘that old herb, old people make tea out of it but it has no healing properties,’ but of course it does. They all get healed, as if by magic.
It’s like when Harry has the bone in his arm inadvertently removed by Gilderoy Lockhart’s quack wizardry, and somebody (the Werewolf guy?) offers him chocolate, and Madame Pomfrey (I think) says “Thank Goodness we have a professor who understands the old magic.
Herbal Teas are magic, they can make you feel better, and chocolate is magic, it can make you feel better, music is magic, it can make you feel better,springtime is magic, with its promise of rebirth and warm breezes chasing the cold away, and sunrises are magic, and sunsets, too, but that’s a darker magic.
Everything in the whole world is magic, until you explain it, and then it’s science. But science is magic, too. Maybe science is the most amazing magic.

I should be in bed already so I’m just going to crank out whatever, I don’t really care about the Oscars and haven’t seen any of the nominated films, so I’m just as happy with Moonlight as anything else, all the gay people I know are over the moon about it, so I guess that’s a good thing – doesn’t quite make up for the shit they’re going through now politically, but film, inspirational though it might be, can’t quite do that, and certainly a film awards show is even more escapist than that. What we need is an Awards Show to give out awards for The Best Awards Show. The first step toward an infinite digression, the top of the slippery slope.
I suspect the Oscar flub may have been deliberate, so Steve Harvey wouldn’t feel so bad.

It was definitely a warm, spring day and I felt good about that during my perambulations around Prague. I’ve seen some hard, little green buds at the end of branches, I hope they aren’t premature, victims to be of a late, bit-you-in-the-ass spring frost, which is always a possibility. But, winter is, for the most part, over, and I’m damned glad.

Oh, I know it’s a sign of global warming, and the implications are disastrous, but something can be disastrous for the human race as a whole and still personally pleasing. There are things that make me angry, but still make me laugh. There are things I know I shouldn’t eat that I eat, and times I shouldn’t smoke but still go ahead and do.
We’re all going to die some day. What the hell.

This one is not actually on Donald Trump, although it might as well be. Bill O’Reilly’s fans are Trump supporters, and Trump supporters are Bill O’Reilly fans. Maybe not 100% People are a quirky bunch. But I’m sure most.
Bill O’Reilly. The man who invented the whole “War Against Christmas” nonsense.

Anyway, just a few days after Trump opened his mouth and talked about “an incident last night in Sweden” which he’d totally imagined while watching a documentary about emigrants, and a couple days after fans at a Trump speech were duped into waving Russian flags, and a day after Mike Pence, in a public message, confused the Nicaraguan Flag with the Israeli Flag (They look a bit alike, but it’s a mistake somebody should have spotted), O’Reilly had a guest, Nils Bildt, who was introduced as a Swedish Defense and Security Advisor.
That is technically true, but the Swedish government has never heard of the guy. There is a bit of an implication when you say that that he is a defense advisor to the Swedish government. Bildt has some experience with a firm that consults on hostage negotiations. Private sector.
So, O’Reilly didn’t technically lie, and he wasn’t even technically lied to, but there is a bit of an implication when you say that he is a Swedish Defense Advisor that he is a defense advisor to the Swedish government.
But that was no problem for Bill O’Reilly.
Part of the issue is the lack of regard for accuracy. Part of it is that it’s part of an ongoing pattern of saying ridiculous, easily disproved things about other countries, without much fallout at all.