links for 2007-09-22
September 22nd, 2007 by mrshl
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Easy to manage to-do list. Compatible with OpenID, so no registration is required.
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Neat filtering trick for Excel.
Archive for September, 2007
Vote for your favorite t-shirt referencing recent alleged police brutality!
September 21st, 2007 by packratshow
Witness the power of the internet! These are all t-shirt designs that have popped up in that last week referencing this attention-whoring doofus. I didn’t search very hard for these at all, and even left out at least five that were just lame text.
links for 2007-09-21
September 21st, 2007 by mrshl
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Excellent summary (with links) of the recent activity at the Federal Reserve and the reaction of world markets.
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The frustrating search for facts in the Jena 6 case.
Friday Night Lights needs your help!
September 20th, 2007 by mrshl
My previous post didn’t say much about my favorite show from last season: Friday Night Lights. For me, this is probably a top five show. One of the best ever. Why did a show about a small-town high school football team in Texas make for such compelling television? I’ll let ESPN’s Sports Guy Bill Simmons explain:
Quite simply, FNL is the best date show ever, an improbable cross between The O.C. and every sports show you ever wanted Hollywood to make. It’s the first show my wife and I have loved equally, but for different reasons. What can be better than that?
On Aug. 28, NBC released the American DVDs with a “satisfaction guaranteed” gimmick. Now if you continue to ignore FNL, it’s only because you’re trying to hurt me. If you do give it a shot, let me recommend the impeccable acting, the lively football scenes (although they tend to go overboard on exciting finishes), the risky story lines and especially Coach Taylor’s family, the most authentic household in recent TV history. Every nuance is nailed, every hug seems genuine, every fight makes sense, every sarcastic barb and flustered reaction ring true. If there are better TV actors than Kyle Chandler (Coach) and Connie Britton (Mrs. Coach), I haven’t TiVoed them. Pay particular attention to the astonishing two-parter in which an older assistant sets off a racial powder keg before a big playoff game. If FNL were Michael Jordan, Lyla Garrity’s slam-page episode would be the 63-point game in Boston (the coming-out party), and the two-parter would be the 1991 Finals (the moment considerable potential is realized).
Sadly, like other great shows before it (Homicide, My So-Called Life), Friday Night Lights didn’t do too great in the ratings. Part of the problem is that NBC mishandled the show, even airing it opposite Monday Night Football a few times. But, the show is also its own worst enemy, committing two cardinal sins: 1) It’s expensive. It cost more than $2.5 million per episode to make. And that won’t cut it when reality shows can cost less than $100,000. 2) It’s way, way too good. America doesn’t always embrace quality. Sometimes, in fact, they look the other way.
Don’t make that mistake. Here’s Bill Simmons again:
FNL is going to die prematurely because five times as many Americans would rather watch an acerbic British guy belittle dreadful singers on a reality show. I can’t live with that.
So please, please help me and every other FNL fanatic. Watch the show. Spread the gospel. You won’t save the world as they did in Heroes, and you probably won’t prevail in the end, but as Coach Taylor once told his team, “Every man at some point in his life is going to lose a battle. He’s going to fight, and he’s going to lose. But what makes him a man is that in the midst of that battle, he does not lose himself.”
Heed that call. Watch Friday Night Lights.
The Fall TV Season is upon us.
September 20th, 2007 by mrshl
Having been in law school for the past three years, I didn’t watch a whole ton of TV outside of The Daily Show and Colbert Report. But now that I’m done, I’m making a decidedly retrograde resolution. I’m going to try and watch more television. I’ve got time on my hands and the DVR is fired up. I’ve even got HBO. But I confess, I’m still a little bewildered.
The main problem I’ve had is that I’m not sure what to watch. I know almost nothing about the current state of TV. My only other regular shows include Jeopardy and Grey’s Anatomy, which I only started watching because my lady digs it so much. In recent years, I’ve missed the boat on quite a few popular shows: The Sopranos, 24, Desperate Housewives. Recently, I’ve also missed a few sci-fi gems I know I’d probably love (e.g., Battlestar Galactica, Heroes). I want to start watching these shows, but I’m already a year behind.
I’ve been throwing my life away.
But with the new Fall shows starting up, I’ve got a chance at redemption. Which brings me back to my central question: what new shows should I become obsessed with? Because this is me, I naturally started my research using a super-fancy new Web site called MeeVee.com. MeeVee is TV guide with a bit of Netflix or Last.fm thrown in. In addition to personalized TV listings that blow Yahoo away, you also get some other useful features:
Save favorite shows or interests to your own ”channels.” For example, I have both “football” and Aqua Teen Hunger Force listed as interest channels. You can right click on almost anything and add it as a favorite. Your favorite channels are then highlighted in their own section within your guide.- Create profile page. Similar to Netflix or Flixter, your personal page includes a picture, username, and age, along with your interest channels, reviews, and TV show ratings. Like Last.fm, MeeVee uses this information to calculate your compatibility with other users on the site. Weirdly, there’s no way to add friends, but they just recently added this feature, so look for it in the future.
- Lots and lots of video. MeeVee, isn’t just a guide to television. It’s got links your episodes of your favorite shows online. The Community Section grabs content from video sharing site and organizes it by show. Want to watch clips of Buffy or CSI on YouTube? The links are there.
- Insight from television “experts.” I’m not sure whether expert is the right word, but the MeeVee blog is a good place to start for someone like me who has no real idea what’s on TV. There are helpful links to a bunch of other TV blogs as well.
- Context is key. Each show or interest has its own page on MeeVee, complete with links to video, blogs, and upcoming episodes. Check out CSI’s page.
- Get MeeVee on your Myspace or cell phone. This seems a bit excessive, but it’s there if you want it.
So what am I watching? My choices are easier because I don’t watch sitcoms or reality television, but I’ve still consulted out a couple of Top 10 lists (here, here, and here). I think I’m set to watch Bionic Woman, Chuck, and Moonlight (vampires!).
Got any better ideas? You tell me what to watch.
Where Spam comes from…
September 19th, 2007 by mrshl
Man may go back to prison when his victim dies 40 years after shooting.
September 19th, 2007 by mrshl
William J. Barnes shot and partly paralyzed a Philadelphia police officer in 1966, and he served 20 years for it and related offenses.
But last month, 41 years after the shooting, the district attorney filed new charges of murder after the officer, Walter T. Barclay Jr., died of an infection she says stems from the shooting. Mr. Barnes, now 71, was sent back to prison.
“The law is that when you set in motion a chain of events,” District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham said, “a perpetrator of a crime is responsible for every single thing that flows from that chain of events, no matter how distant, as long as we can prove the chain is unbroken.”
She plans to prove that the bullet that lodged near Mr. Barclay’s spine in 1966 led to the urinary tract infection that led to his death last month.
The case has drawn national attention as most legal experts say they have never seen an attempt to stretch causation medically across four decades, and some say they worry about the precedent the case could set concerning double jeopardy.
