Another victim of wokeness

 

Please don't let it suck

 I keep seeing trailers for something called The Watch on BBC America.

During one of which what looks like a Goth girl says "Welcome to Ankh-Morpork."

Carp, it's a Discworld series. 

IMDB lacks these facts,  but from Wikipedia we learn that the original concept was approved by Terry Pratchett before his death, that after DEATH came for Sir Terry his daughter was listed as producer, but that now she says she has no connection with the project at all, and apparently says it has little to do with Discworld or Sir Terry's work.

s*i*g*h

Mrs. Drang might enjoy it, but she admits she's never read any of the Discworld books. 

I've read, and re-read, them all. 

Sam Vimes is my spirit animal. 

So... I'll watch the first episode. But I'm not optimistic. 

Whose Bright Idea Was This?!

So the weather has finally broken enough I can get out and put in a good 10000 steps.

On the homeward leg, I stopped at the local grocery store -- where I learned that for some reason grocery store workers don't seem to have priority for vaccines -- to pick up a couple things, cheap enough I paid cash.

When I got home I looked at my change and discovered that the 2020 Commemorative Quarter recognizes American Samoa National Park.

Yeah, I'd never heard of it, either but that's not the point.

National Park of American Samoa Quarter

Background

National Park of American Samoa is located some 2,600 miles southwest of Hawaii and is one of the most remote in the U.S. National Park System. The site includes sections of three islands—Tutuila, Ta’ū, and Ofu. Almost all of the land area of these volcanic islands—from the mountaintops to the coast—is tropical rainforest. The park’s area totals 13,500 acres, 4,000 of which are underwater.

That's still not the point. 

This is the point:

That's right, for 2020, #YearOfTheBlackSwan, #YearOfTheFruitBat, the Year of the Wuhan Flu, the CCPVirus, the year the world learned that some people eat bat soup, rare...

...The US Mint decided to commemorate the home of the Samoan Fruit Bat with a 25¢ piece.

Mind you, the decision was make well before 2020, but, still.

Meanwhile, I had to see this ad three or four times before I realized it was an ad for a mating dating service, not a trailer for a Marvel Supervillain movie. 

I have to say, it surprises me not at all that 2020 would best be summed up by an ad for a dating app. 

Juneteenth

This is Juneteenth.

I had long known that on June 19th, 1865 -- Juneteenth -- the Emancipation Proclamation was announced in Texas.

That's the short version, of course, the "I learned it in elementary school" version. (Actually, I think it was in junior high.)

What I did not realize was that the man doing the announcing was General Gordon Granger. General Granger had been my great great grandfather's corps commander at the Battle of Chickamauga.

I'm not claiming any deep personal connection. It's unlikely General Granger had a clue who some random rifleman in Company K of the 22nd Michigan was, and G'G'Grandfather was still convalescing in a hospital in Detroit a year and a half after the battle, so he probably never saw Texas.

I think what impresses me more than the (tenuous) connection is the fact that, this morning, I actually learned something from a Pubic Service Announcement on TV.

"Darmok"

In my previous post, LOL of the Day, I shared a meme which, quite frankly, I knew a lot of people wouldn't get.

And that's OK. I even know some Star Trek fans who had forgotten the episode "Darmok".

Now, that particular episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation happens to be my favorite for several reasons.

A quick synopsis, for anyone not familiar with the episode:

• The Enterprise is dispatched to meet an alien race. 
• Picard is beamed off the ship as the aliens cast a "scattering field" which prevents Enterprises transporter from beaming Picard back up.
• Picard discovers that the intent of the alien captain is that he and Picard cooperate to fight a creature.
• Slowly, Picard realizes that the reason that the Federation has never been able to communicate with this alien race is that they only speak in allegory and metaphor; likewise, they find straightforward speech baffling.
• The alien captain dies, but Picard is now able to communicate with the aliens, so Everything's Fine.

How many Standard Star Trek Tropes did you spot in that executive summary of a synopsis?  (More at Darmok - Wikipedia and Star Trek One Trek Mind: Deciphering "Darmok".)

One of the reasons I like this episode is that it is one of the few examples of science fiction in media where there was an honest attempt to live up to SF's nickname "The Literature of Ideas." While any literature can be described as starting from the question "What if...?" -- "What if the teenage children of two feuding families of Verona fell in love and secretly married?" -- in Speculative Fiction the "What if?" gets to be (one might argue should be) more out of the ordinary.

In this case, "What if we met a race/culture that only communicated in metaphor and allegory?"

This is cool.

Mind you, it is also absurd, because, as is pointed out in the article "Deciphering 'Darmok'" I linked above,

Yet there's one annoying thing about “Darmok.” If the Tamarians only speak in these metaphors, how did they ever learn the words that later came to be used in the phrases? How did they know that walls fell around Shaka if they need a phrase to symbolize the word “wall?”

They had words for stuff, but they couldn't just use a word? They couldn't say "Here", meaning "take this", they had to say "Temba, his arms open"? How did they learn what "arm" or "arms" or "open" were? Or "his"?

Not to mention, how does a race that only speaks in metaphor develop the science and math needed to become a space-faring race?

My assumption has always been that there were certain ceremonial occasions on which it is an unbreachable imperative that one speak in these metaphors, not unlike a Vulcan's dedication to logic. We know Vulcans are actually susceptible to emotion and illogic, and that they must fight to maintain their control, so perhaps this alien outreach mission would be regarded as a failure if they didn't play by their own internal rules. ("Deciphering 'Darmok'" posits a race that is partially telepathic.)

Another thing I liked about the episode is that they routinely broke every other magic double-talk generator device on the show, but this is the only episode I remember where Universal Translator failed.

Given Roddenberry's known utopian vision for the future -- routinely ignored on the show, when it was convenient, but don't dare suggest to him that he was full of shit! -- he probably had some Chomskian notion of a "language organ"...

Damnit, 2016!

Just had to get one last shot in: William Christopher, Father Mulcahy on ‘M*A*S*H,’ Dies at 84 - The New York Times

William Christopher on IMDb.

Oh, of course!

Of course the Cartoon Network runs an Archer marathon for Mother's Day!

Don't worry, I didn't turn it on until after I called Mom.

Also, Amazon says the flowers I ordered her are still in transit, but she says she received a bouquet that sounds like what I ordered, the same day.

Life just keeps getting better and better! 

Maybe it's just me...

...but all these shows in which an alien race has arrived and has to a greater or lesser extent taken over, is now controlling everything...

..I cannot for the life of me conceive how in the hell anyone can write these stories and have collaborators with the alien overloads as protagonists.

Okay, I confess

We're watching the Puppy Bowl, so sue us.

That was unexpected

It seems that I have made it almost to the end of Downton Abbey without actually seeing an episode until the last week or two. I wa vaguely aware that it was considered to be somewhat subversive by some because of it's tendencey to show that British Upper Class, and specifically the landed, titled Upper Class, in a good light, but really, never had any interest.

So the last few weeks, what with my work schedule change, I have sat through a couple of episodes,  not really watching them, as I have nearly no chance of really following what was going on, but there is a sub-plot in which there is a bid by a larger hospital to absorb the smaller, local one. Most people support the move on the grounds that it will result in better care locally. Professor McGonagall*, who has transformed herself into the current mother of the Earl of Grantham, and is therefore known as the Doawger Countess, OTOH, is fighting to maintain local control; everyone assumes that she simply does not want to lose power, despite the fact that she has said repeatedly that the move would result in worse care locally, notwithstanding the allegedly better equipment the move would bring.

The other day she expanded on that, using a line of reasoning one might not expect from a member of the gentry. Citing King John Lackland and the Barons, she said (from Washington Examiner)

"For years I've watched governments take control of our lives, and their argument is always the same — fewer costs, greater efficiency — but the result is the same too," Violet said. "Less control by the people, more control by the state, until the individual's own wishes count for nothing. That is what I consider my duty to resist."

She went on to argue, "Your great-grandchildren won't thank you when the state is all powerful because we didn't fight."

Alas, not only your great-grandchildren not know whether you fought or not, it will probably never occur to them that there was anything to fight about.



*Yeah, I know, but I couldn't resist. Some actors, you always see them in a certain role.

As Bad As I Remember

So, in the last 14 months my work schedule has changed, let's see... 4 times? 5?

Anyway, I am now home and awake during television programs during which I was previously either at work or asleep.

So I can now state that the program Madam Secretary, which I reviewed last September in the post The Lynching of Disbelief, has gotten no better.

The Secretary of State's husband is evidently a professor at the National War College, and uses his position to recruit foreign students to be US agents. (Or "sources". I wasn't a HUMINTer, the terminology is slippery...)

Having learned that the mother of "the first US-born ISIS leader" is a State Department employee, the Secretary of State conducts the interview.

Personally.

Alone.

We decide to Predator/Hellfire said US-born ISIS leader instead of taking him with Delta -- BTW, I did appreciate that, for once, the media went with Delta and not the SEALs -- because some operators might be captured, but "What can we learn by wringing him out?" never seemed to enter the equation.

Phooey.

So Bad It's... Bad

So, it seems that Amazon had a 4-DVD set of The Starlost.

For those of you who were fortunate enough to have missed this, it was the CBC's early 1970s attempt to blahblahblah Star Trek.

They somehow talked Harlan Ellison into being their creative consultant.

Well, OK, they offered him money, and he said something to the effect of "Hey, you're Canadian TV, you have a  limited budget, I have some ideas for how to do a quality SF show on video" which...

OK, if you didn't grow up within broadcast TV range of Canadian TV pre-cable/satellite TV, you may have developed some weird ideas about it, based on the fact that there are some pretty good shows coming out of the Great White North these days, not to mention a lot of US shows that are made up there, due to tax breaks and incentives and subsidies and the like.

Before the 1980s, Canadian TV was execrable. All the talent was fleeing to the US, where it could get rich. Canadian TV, OTOH, was a government thing, and lived down to the assumptions we make about government monopolies. (The BBC notwithstanding.)

So, anyway, Harlan had these Ideas, and they said "Great!", and proceeded to ignore just about everything he said, and make a series that was every bit as bad as everything else they were making back then.

It was so bad that after an episode or two Ellison bailed, while exercising the clause in his contract tat said they still had to give him credit, using the name he specified.

He specified "Cordwainer Bird."

When they tried to get Ben Bova to take over, he asked them why Ellison bailed, and they claimed they didn't know, so Bova asked "What name did he specify in the credits?" and they said "Cordwainer Bird" and he said "I'm out. That's Harlan giving you the finger!"

So it got worse.

Anyway. Series lasted all of 16 episodes. The story lines ran along the lines of the Original Star Trek episodes "Specter Of The Gun" and "Spock's Brain." The CBC wasted much of the budget building a "Bridge" set, even though there was no need for it; the show "bible" envisioned it as being revealed in the final episode, never written. It featured such Hard Science as references to "solar stars."

I remember in high school we were all excited that a new SF series was coming on. I think we managed an average of 3 episodes before giving up.

When Mrs. Drang was making a list of SF series she missed this one; I mentioned it and she said she hadn't seen it.  I congratulated her on her good fortune.

It was, as I said, "So bad it was... Bad."

So. You have been warned.

NOTE: The Ed Bryant novelization of Ellison's original screenplay, with commentary by Ellison, is available on Kindle: Phoenix Without Ashes: Harlan Ellison, Edward Bryant: Books, as is Ben Bova's spoof of the experience: The Starcrossed, Ben Bova.

This oughta be good...

I've never had any interest in watching this show, but:

Obama to test wilderness skills on Bear Grylls TV show | Reuters

Considering that the man's concept of "wilderness" is slicing into the rough...

So, apparently...

...all it takes is you...

No, wait.

When I got home from overtime in the Salt Mines today (part of why I didn't go to Gun Blogger Rendezvous X) Mrs. Drang was cleaning house with the TV on.

The TV was showing Law and Order, which may not {added, DWD} be the nes plus ultra of statist hoplophobic television, but I don't want to see the show that's worse.

Plus, its another of those shows where pretty much no one is an attractive charactor. Even Fred Thompson; sorry, Senator, but you play a lawyer...

Anyway.

According to the episode I walked in on, a guy with a drug dealing conviction on his record can get his Federal Firearms License for $75 by simply "forgetting" to tell the ATFEieio that he got busted, and then he's Good To Go for selling guns to high school students.

I damn' near went Full Elvis on the Tee and Vee...

Speaking of Disasters and Emergencies...

Tamara explains why I don't watch TV in "Still more proof that speciation is well underway."

I mean, what I remember from TV back when I watched it -- and these mental images are from when color TV was still fairly new, and so were UHF stations, ask your grandparents -- were TV cooking shows where they left in footage of the chef throwing a lid on a pan that had flared up, and of "This is why you DON'T use flour to put out a fire!", because apparently someone somewhere had reasoned that she (yes, they said "housewife" back then, ask your grandparents) couldn't get to the baking powder to extinguish her pan fire, so she used flour.

When you're done asking your grandparents about the obscure references above go look up Fuel Air Explosion, AKA Grain Elevator Explosion.

Mind you, as I would comment at Tam's post if she allowed comments, there is a technique to using a fire extinguisher to fight large fires, which one practices in CERT Training, but for a kitchen fire, it's pretty much "Pull the pin, point, and squeeze the handle or push the button", depending on the type of extinguisher.*

Still, the idea of being afraid to use a fire extinguisher is just...

Y'know, I don't know what it is.  But it isn't good.


*Of course there are web pages devoted to "How to use a fire extinguisher". The idea of a "quick reference guide" leaves me... ambivalent. "Oh, look, a fire. I'd better Google "How To Use A Fire Extinguisher..."
And of course there is an acronym.
Which, BTW, we learned in CERT.

TV Show Review Commentary

Mrs. Drang has been watching this show Defiance on the SiFiFoFum Channel since it started.

I don't know why.

Exactly no one on the show is likeable.

One thing it's accomplished, is I am now of the opinon that, when aliens show up in orbit, we should blast them out of the sky immediately.

In fact, we shouldn't even wait for them to make orbit.

Did I Really Hear That?

Yes.

Yes, I did.

There really is an Official Shampoo of the Major League Baseball All-Star Game.

Speaking of that...

My previous post made me remember something I was thinking about the other day.

I'd like to see a court-ordered documentary by the team of Bellisario, Bruckheimer, and Wolf on forensic investigations, and the reality  of  a crime lab.  Two hours. It would be provided free to every court system in the country and run on a loop in jury waiting rooms.

Several years ago Mrs. Drang was a volunteer at the USO lounge at Sea-Tac Airport. One of the ladies she was paired up with was a forensic technician at the local crime lab, and taught classes on it at a local community college. She used to assign CSI as homework, "Spot the mistakes!" Starting with crime lab workers collecting evidence at the crime scene.

One semester the school she was teaching at saw a spike in enrollments and realized that the proliferation of forensic crime shows was making the classes extremely popular, so they started advertising the classes as "Guaranteeing a job in the forensic field!" and she had to threaten to quit, since neither she nor they could guarantee any such thing: Given these shows' popularity, even if a student graduated with a perfect 4.0 average, it just isn't that big a field.

The big fancy crime labs you see on TeeVee? There are only a couple, nationwide. DNA analysis takes lots longer than they show, and nearly always has to be sent off to somewhere else. Most of the forensic evidence is collected by uniformed officers with some specialized training.

And most criminal investigations bear a lot more resemblance to what my father was doing in the early 60s than anyone on TV wants you to believe. Computers help a lot, but it still amounts to footwork.

QOTD, 06/16/2015

"If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times: Never underestimate the resilience of a lycanthrope"
Detective Vince Korsak, Boston PD
(Actor Bruce McGill, Rizzoli & Isles)

It's kind of a fun show, on TNT.

They're running a marathon, and I took the day off for an unscheduled semi-emergency trip to the dentist.

One episode -- the one that produced the quote above, in fact -- pissed me off , though. Lazy script writing: There are no taggants in gunpowder.

This is proposed from time to time by statists who want to make life as difficult as possible for shooters, hunters, etc., but it turns out that no one has been able to figure out how to put a "taggant' in gunpowder (or explosives, for that matter, military or commercial) without rendering the gunpowder either completely inert or dangerously unstable.

I wonder sometimes whether the people writing this stuff are clueless, or if their devotion to their agenda/The Narrative overcomes the fact that, among other things, taggants, micro-etching, "firing pin tracking", "case etching", etc. are just so much bunk.

I get that whether the bullets match or not is dependent on the needs of the story, but at least try and make the story match the facts.

A sign of the End Times?

It's a trifecta of advertising horrible!

The new faux-Colonel Sanders!

Hannah and her Horse!

And that creepy King of Hamburgers, back from exile!

It's enough to make me go Elvis on the boob tube.