"I went to a place to eat. It said 'breakfast at any time.' So I ordered french toast during the Renaissance". --Steven Wright ... If you are a devotee of time travel, check out this song...

Monday, March 8, 2010

House Meets Blogger in 6.14

House encounters a blogger with an illness whose cure resides in what she doesn't blog about, in this fine, media savvy episode 6.14 written by science fiction author Doris Egan.

Most bloggers - including me - write about a topic or range of subjects that interest them - television, in the case of this very blog you're reading.   But some bloggers use the medium as a public diary, in which they let it all, or almost all, hang out to the world at large, or at least to the devoted people in the world who follow the blogger's every word.

This is the kind of blogger that House encounters, in a typically galloping illness on House, in which the most reasonable treatments only bring the patient closer to death.   Except, in this case, House and team not only examine the patient for possible systems, but read her blog for any hints of what might be killing her.

Leave it to House to realize that the answer is to be found in what is not revealed in her blog, since nothing revealed in the blog has reversed her illness.   In this cool piece of Popperian falsificationism - you learn most by seeking what is not the case - House combines his perception of blogger psychology and his philosophy of science to find the cure.

Toss in Wilson in a porn movie, House seriously reading a book of sermons, Chase wondering why he's so appealing to women (I see 13 in his future) and you get a most satisfying media medical mystery solved  in inimitable House fashion.

For more on the impact of blogging in our culture, see my New New Media.   For more on Popperian philosophy, see my In Pursuit of Truth: Essays on the Philosophy of Karl Popper.


                       



5-min podcast review of House

See also House Reborn in Season Six? ... 6.2: The Gang is Back and Fractured ... 6.3: The Saving Hitler Quandary ... 6.4: Diagnosis vs. Karma ... 6.5 Getting Better ... 6.6 House Around the Bases ... Four's a Crowd on House 6.7 ... House 6.8 and the Reverse of Flowers for Algernon ... House 6.9: Wilson ... House 6.10: Back in Business ... House 6.11: Making Amends, Mending Fences, and a Psychopath  ... House 6.12: The Progression to Mensch ... House 6.13: Cuddy's Perspective



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2 comments:

Fantastic Forrest said...

I was curious to learn what other bloggers thought about last night's episode; my search led me to your blog. What a fabulous discovery!

Thanks for introducing me to the work of Karl Popper. I won't pretend I understand even .01% of his work, but that won't prevent me from reading more to try to grasp his interesting philosophy.

In the case of this particular episode, you might say that the Popperian aspect related to the blogger's pooperian behavior. :-)

Have you seen the movie Julie & Julia? It too has a blogger obsessed with revealing all to the world. I like to keep most of my personal matters private.

Paul Levinson said...

Welcome to Infinite Regress, FF!

Good point about Popperian and pooperian behavior :)

Popper's falsificationist philosophy points out that if you think all swans are white, and see another white swan, you learn very little; but if you encounter a black swan, at that instant you learn the very important fact that not all swans are white. So you learn by discovering what is not the case.

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