television
oracknows | June 17, 2007If Irn-Bru can do this, maybe I should try some the next time I manage to make it to the U.K.:
(Via Attuworld.)
oracknows | June 16, 2007I must confess that I never really grokked the whole "LOL Cat" thing. I must admit to being a bit puzzled by the phenomenon when it metastasized to ScienceBlogs and some of my fellow SBers applied it to creationists, spurred on by Mark H at denialism.com (althogh I must admit that I nonetheless found the first entry in this post to be particularly amusing).
I should have known that it wouldn't be long before the phenomenon attacked one of my favorite SF/fantasy shows of all time, Doctor Who. So, here they are, LOL Doctor Who Cat Macros. A few that I found amusing are below the fold…
oracknows | June 13, 2007Via Boing-Boing, I learn that Don Herbert, a.k.a. "Mr. Wizard," has died.
He lived to a ripe old age of 89. Perhaps the best tribute to him is this:
"Over the years, Don has been personally responsible for more people going into the sciences than any other single person in this country," George Tressel, a National Science Foundation official, said in 1989.
"I fully realize the number is virtually endless when I talk to scientists," he said. "They all say that Mr. Wizard taught them to think."
A greater accomplishment in science is hard to imagine.
R.I.P., Mr. Wizard.
oracknows | May 26, 2007I think I've finally found the religion for me...
(Click the picture to read about the religion! Hat tip to Robster, FCD.)
Moreover, in a direct comparison between Christianity and this new religion, Christianity doesn't come off so good. (The sad thing is, I get each and every reference in this comic.)
Indeed, in the U.K., the sacrament of this new faith is occurring as we speak. We poor U.S. faithful have to wait a few hours to worship, though, at least long enough for the object of our devotion to show up as a Torrent file. (Worse, those who don't know how to use BitTorrent or don't…
oracknows | May 13, 2007From a variety of sources, I've learned that the fourth season of Battlestar Galactica is probably going to be the last and that the beleaguered humans will find Earth. Here it is, right from Admiral Adama himself:
iF MAGAZINE: What's coming up for season four?EDWARD JAMES OLMOS: It's fantastic. I think they're going to discover some very important issues about what the fan base really, really wants to see and what's to understand about this show. We're heading into the final season. This is the final season as we speak. All of us are very saddened by that, but we always knew there was going…
oracknows | May 5, 2007
This one will probably not mean much to those who don't have a Detroit connection (such as, like me, having been born there and spent the first 26 years of my life in southeast Michigan), and it will probably mean nothing at all to my cadre of international readers, but it saddens me nonetheless to have discovered this bit of news via my sister.
Lawson Deming, the man who played Sir Graves Ghastly for so many years, died on April 24, just one day after his 94th birthday.
For Detroiters of a certain age, who grew up from the 1960's to the early 1980's, Saturday at 1 PM was the time that the…
oracknows | April 12, 2007I sometimes wonder if those doctors who do health segments for various TV news outlets are "real" doctors, given the sorts of things they actually say. Oh, Dr. Dean Edell is a pretty evidence-based guy most of the time (one of his finest moments being his takedown of Dr. Lorraine Day on the air), but for all too many of these other docs, their brains shut down when the TV lights shine on them. Sadly, there were a couple of doozies of examples this week.
First up is Val Wadas-Willingham, producer for CNN's medical news on Paging Dr. Gupta:
My husband's best friend, Hans, was supposed to be in…
oracknows | March 31, 2007Why is it that the concepts of freedom of religion and freedom of speech seem so hard for some people to understand? Witness a truly idiotic attempt to prevent someone from appearing on TV simply because he is a Scientologist:
March 31, 2007 -- - A German official is demanding that John Travolta be uninvited from a guest appearance on a popular German television show tonight because he's a Scientologist, but show officials insist he will appear as scheduled.
Guenther Oettinger, the state governor of Baden-Wuerttemberg, wants Travolta off "Wanna Bet?" a popular show in Germany seen by an…
oracknows | March 31, 2007I have to wonder what we Anglophiles did before the invention of BitTorrent. I guess we probably waited months or years for the best British TV to make its way across the pond, usually to be shown on PBS, if at all. Now, I can look forward to the return of one of my favorite shows, Doctor Who, whose modern reincarnation with David Tennant is starting its third series tonight at 7 PM (London time, of course). I like the show so much that, even after BitTorrent-ing the episodes, I still ended up buying the DVDs when they made their way to the U.S., as a means of showing my support for the show…
oracknows | February 11, 2007I have to admit, I don't quite "get" the whole Aqua Teen Hunger Force thing (I'm either too old or too uncool, I guess), but, as a certified 24 addict, I found this to be a rather amusing take on the terror scare caused by an ill-fated ad campaign in Boston a couple of weeks ago:
(Via Stupid Evil Bastard.)
oracknows | February 10, 2007It's sort of becoming a bit of a tradition here. Well, sporadically, anyway. This time, David Tennant himself joins in the fun...
oracknows | November 26, 2006I can't believe I forgot to post this on Thanksgiving Day itself, but I'll make up for it now. What better way to finish off the Thanksgiving Day weekend than with one of the funniest Thanksgiving Day promotions of all time, courtesy of one of what TV Guide has ranked as one of the greatest episodes in television history, an episode from WKRP in Cincinnati?
oracknows | November 15, 2006I'm not sure how I feel about this one. I really loved Babylon 5 while it was on; it was one of my favorite TV series of all time, and I own all five seasons on DVD. Even though the fifth and final season seemed a bit stretched out, the last five or six episodes of the series made up for it, so that the conclusion packed every bit of the punch that the high points of the best seasons (seasons two and three) did. So, what to make of this?
BURBANK, CA, November 13, 2006 - Warner Home Video (WHV) and Warner Bros. Television (WBTV) have announced the start of production of "Babylon 5: The Lost…
oracknows | October 29, 2006Remembering two rather frivolous posts that I made last weekend, you might have an idea of what this costume might be.
Yes, you too can Be The Hoff.
Of course, if The Hoff is not your style, you can also Be The Magnum.
(Via Attu World.)
oracknows | October 22, 2006Yesterday I was in a strange mood; so I posted a couple of David Hasselhoff videos, asking the question: Why is this guy such a big pop star in Germany? Fellow ScienceBlogger Mike the Mad Biologist then informed me that the videos that I posted (the Hoff doing Rhinestone Cowboy and Secret Agent Man) aren't necessarily the "best" the Hoff has to offer. And I have to admit that he's right. See if you agree:
What's with the Hoff and flying in videos? He was flying in the Secret Agent Man video, and he's flying here.
But, with all due respect to Mike, I'm not sure if even the above video is…
oracknows | September 29, 2006Here he is on Extras, providing a little impromptu song:
What an honor, to be dissed by Bowie in song, and a song that rather sounds like some of his really old stuff.
You know, it'd be really cool if Bowie were to record this tune. Speaking of which, it's been three years since his last album. Yes, I know that he suffered a small MI and had to undergo angioplasty, but that was a couple of years ago. He's due to get back in the studio.
Come on, David, we want new material!
oracknows | September 28, 2006If you think I'm hardcore when it comes to my disgust at antivaccination advocates like Dawn Winkler, you should check out House, M.D.:
[House walks away. Cut to the clinic and House is in an exam room with a young mother and her baby.]
Young Mother: No formula, just mommy's healthy natural breast milk.
House: Yummy.
Young Mother: Her whole face just got swollen like this overnight.
House: Mmhmm. No fever, glands normal, missing her vaccination dates.
Young Mother: We're not vaccinating.
Young Mother: [Takes a toy frog and starts to make frog sounds] Gribbit, gribbit, gribbit. [Giggles]
[Baby…
oracknows | September 20, 2006I have a confession to make.
I've never really understood the whole pirate schtick that PZ and some other bloggers find so amusing and that the Flying Spaghetti Monster has included as an integral part of the great religion of Pastafarianism. I suppose that makes me an apostate or something like that, but I guess I just never really "got it." And I really never got Talk Like A Pirate Day, which, it just so happens, was yesterday. I realize that I probably risk being excommunicated from the ScienceBlogs collective by admitting that, but there it is.
Oh, long ago, I tried to curry favor and fit…
oracknows | September 8, 2006Continuing on the nerd/geek theme, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that today is the 40th anniversary of the debut of the original Star Trek series. Forty years, hundreds of TV episodes and books, and several movies later, the franchise is completely ingrained in American culture, so much so that catch phrases like "Beam me up!" are recognized by pretty much everyone.
One thing I'm not so sure I'm all that enthusiastic about is the CBS Paramount project to remaster all of the original 79 episodes, replacing many of the special effects with state-of-the art digital recreations of the…