Paul Levinson's Infinite Regress

Person of Interest 1.11 and 1.12: Realignment and Revelation

2012-01-28T23:40:00.000-05:00

Catching up with Person of Interest 1.11 and 1.12, and good thing I didn't wait any longer - episode 1.11 had a quick little conversation which, if I heard it right, changes the very premise, pulls the rug out from the under the foundation, of the very series. Which is the kinda thing I really like in a television series.

The set-up in 1.11 was pretty good, even without the revelation. Reese needs at last one episode to convalesce from being shot pretty badly back in December in 1.10. Finch puts him up in a nice apartment, but, as he tells Reese, the machine waits for no man, and there's a life to be saved, of someone who lives in the building. Lots of good twists and turns in this story, good to see Dexter's David Zayas on hand. But the biggest twist, which is nice, seems to be that Reese in a wheelchair takes over Finch's work, and Finch, who can still move, even with the limp, is out in the field, i.e, mostly in the building.

A nice temporary twist and reversal, but not the biggest twist or reveal at all. That comes when Reese realizes that Finch is still figuring out all kinds of deep background things, even though Finch has had no access to the machine. Reese confronts Finch and says you're the machine, aren't you. Finch neither confirms or denies.

A fascinating revelation, if true. But, if true, what are those little boxes we see around everyone at the beginning and throughout each episode. If you think about it, we never see them on a screen Finch is looking at. So they are, what, on the government's machine? But ... is there really a government machine? Or does it all come from Finch, who sends info to the government through some secret back door to make them think there's a machine?

Reese certainly wants to find to find out more, and at the end of 1.12 - the next episode - we see that he has Fuchs trailing Finch. He's entering some potentially dangerous, more relevatory territory, with his slain partner's son now on hand and wanting to know what his father and Finch really did.

But Reese and Finch at least now have Carter in the fold, and that's a good realignment of what Reese and Finch do. As we've seen in these last two episodes - and many before, including, especially, 1.10 - Reese is not indestructible. He gets hurt, and even when not briefly out of commission, bad guys can on occasion get the better of him. With the CIA still out to kill him, having Carter on his side may be necessary for his survival.

Good story ahead ...

See also Person of Interest of Interest ... Person of Interest 1.2: Reese and Finch ... Person of Interest 1.5: Potentials ... Person of Interest 1.7: Meets Flashpoint and The Usual Suspects ... Person of Interest 1.8: Widmore and Ben, At It Again ... Person of Interest 1.9: Evolution of a Series ... Person 1.10: Carter Returns the Favor

Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic

The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Fringe 4.10: Deceit and Future Vision

2012-01-27T23:01:00.000-05:00

One of the things I'm really enjoying about this 4th season of Fringe is how every episode in some significant way moves along the central story. Tonight in 4.10 we get a tender, sad story about a girl who can see bad things slightly or a little more into the future. She thinks her visions are unalterable. But Olivia and Peter et al stop a courthouse from blowing up as per her vision, just in time. They're unable to stop, however, her own death via a stroke, but -

An Eternal Bald Observer told Olivia, at the end of the episode before last, that he saw her death, which will be unavoidable in all time lines. What does the future-seeing girl see about Olivia? Not clear, but -

At very least, she has been looked into by Massive Dynamics aka Nina Sharp, whom we last saw at the end of last week's episode, knocking Olivia out, and planning to do something to her unconscious body, which will leave her with a headache. My guess is install some kind of tracking device.

This week, Olivia is indeed suffering from headaches, and goes to Nina for advice about the girl who can see the future. She provides none, but shows up to Olivia's place to make her some soup (Nina is the closest person to a mother for Olivia in this reality), and order some medicine for Olivia's headaches. Likely the last thing that Olivia needs.

Broyles is doing the best he can to look out for Olivia, and so is Peter. but unfortunately Olivia doesn't (yet) feel comfortable enough to be completely truthful with him. He sees her looking at photos of the EBOs - earlier, she was looking at them with Broyles - and he tries to explain to her what the EBOs do. Of special interest to Olivia, or course, is can they see the future, like the young doomed heroine in this episode. Peter explains that they experience all times simultaneously, rather than time travel or see the future and past. (Great nonverbal acting by Joshua Jackson in this scene, by the way, where his body language and facial expressions convey as much as his words.) But when Peter asks Olivia if one of the Observers has "reached out" to her, she says no.

Peter no doubt sees through that. It's heart warming to see these two working together. Olivia's best chance at survival will be Peter. Her and Peter's ability to stop the girl's visions from coming true is no comfort to her about being able to do anything to stop what the EBO saw from coming true - since he didn't really see it, he experienced it ...

Hey, check out my essay The Return of 1950s Science Fiction in Fringe in this new anthology

See also Fringe Returns for Season 4: Almost with Peter ... Fringe 4.2: Better and Worse Selves ... Fringe 4.3: Sanity and Son ... Fringe 4.4: Peter's Back, Ectoplasm, and McLuhan ... Fringe 4.5: Double Return ... Fringe 4.6: Time Slips ... Fringe 4.7: The Invisible Man ... Fringe 4.8: The Ramifications of Transformed Alternate Realities ... Fringe 4.9: Elizabeth

See also Fringe 3.1: The Other Olivia ... Fringe 3.2: Bad Olivia and Peter ... Fringe 3.3: Our/Their Olivia on the Other Side ... Fringe 3.5: Back from Hiatus, Back from the Amber ... Fringe 3.7: Two Universes Still Nearing Collision ... Fringe 3.8: Long Voyages Home ... Fringe 3.10: The Return of the Eternal Bald Observers ... Flowers for Fringenon in Fringe 3.11 ... Fringe 3.12: The Wrong Coffee ... Fringe 3.13: Alternate Fringe ... Fringe 3.14: Amber Here ... Fringe 3.15: Young Peter and Olivia ... Fringe 3.16: Walter and Yoko ... Fringe 3.17: Bell, Olivia, Lee, and the Cow ... Fringe 3.18: Clever Walternate ... Fringe 3.19 meets Inception, The Walking Dead, Tron ... Fringe 3.20: Countdown to Season 3 Finale 1 of 3 ... Fringe 3.21: Ben Frankin, Rimbaldi, and the Future ... Fringe Season 3 Finale: Here's What Happened ... Death Not Death in Fringe

See also reviews of Season 2: Top Notch Return of Fringe Second Season ... Fringe 2.2 and The Mole People ... Fringe 2.3 and the Human Body as Bomb ... Fringe 2.4 Unfolds and Takes Wing ... Fringe 2.5: Peter in Alternate Reality and Wi-Fi for the Mind ... A Different Stripe of Fringe in 2.6 ... The Kid Who Changed Minds in Fringe 2.7 ... Fringe 2.8: The Eternal Bald Observers ... Fringe 2.9: Walter's Journey ... Fringe 2.10: Walter's Brain, Harry Potter, and Flowers for Algernon ... New Fringe on Monday Night: In Alternate Universe? ... Fringe 2.12: Classic Science Fiction Chiante ... Fringe 2.13: "I Can't Let Peter Die Again" ... Fringe 2.14: Walter's Health, Books, and Father ... Fringe 2.15: I'll Take 'Manhatan' ... Fringe 2.16: Peter's Story ... Fringe 2.17: Will Olivia Tell Peter? ... Fringe 2.18: Strangeness on a Train ... Fringe 2.19: Two Plus Infinity ... Fringe the Noir Musical ... Fringe 2.21: Bring on the Alternates ... Fringe 2.22: Tin Soldiers and Nixon Coming ... Fringe Season 2 Finale: The Switch

See also reviews of Season One Fringe Begins ... Fringe 2 and 3: The Anthology Tightrope ... 4: The Eternal Bald Observer ... 7: A Bullet Can Scramble a Dead Brain's Transmission ... 8. Heroic Walter and Apple Through Steel ... 9. Razor-Tipped Butterflies of the Mind ... 10. Shattered Pieces Come Together Through Space and Times ... 11. A Traitor, a Crimimal, and a Lunatic ... 12, 13, 14: Fringe and Teleportation ... 15: Fringe is Back with Feral Child, Pheromones, and Bald Men ... 17. Fringe in New York, with Oliva as Her Suspect ... 18. Heroes and Villains across Fringe ... Stephen King, Arthur C. Clarke, and Star Trek in Penultimate Fringe ... Fringe Alternate Reality Finale: Science Fiction At Its Best

Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic

The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Good for Gingrich Talking about the Moon

2012-01-26T12:32:00.000-05:00

Newt Gingrich has received considerable ridicule and flack for his statement that we would have a permanent base on the Moon by the end of his second term as President, and when the Moon attained 13,000 permanent settlers, it could become another U.S. state.

I say, good for Gingrich for thinking so big. We need more of that. One of the reasons our efforts in space have stagnated is because no one after JFK had the requisite vision to see us get off this planet in a sustained way.

The fact is that we are citizens of the cosmos, not just this Earth. We'll never truly understand who we are, what we're doing here, from a vantage point stuck down here on this planet. Carl Sagan got this. Isaac Asimov understood this. Unfortunately, not enough politicians and Presidents.

Although I expect to vote for Barack Obama in this election, as I did in 2008, I was never happy with his weak position on space. Obama has been no better on space than his predecessors after JFK, and in some ways worse.

Conversely, I'm not likely to vote for Gingrich (though, if I were a Republican, I would over Romney). I get that he's presumtuous about the second term. I get that he's grandiose. But sometimes, as in the grandeur of space, that could be a good thing.

Any Bad Results from Obama's Health Plan?

2012-01-25T09:36:00.002-05:00

I just saw a pro Newt Gingrich anti Romney ad airing in Florida that, unsurprisingly, attacked Romney-care in Massachusetts as being the basis for the "disastrous" Obama-care.

I put "disastrous" in quotes because every time I hear something like this, I wonder, what, exactly is the disaster that has occurred because of Obama's health plan?

I'm not talking about some courts that have said the mandate part of the law may be unconstitutional. I disagree with everyone being obliged to get health are, whether or not they want it, too. But that's hardly a "disaster" - it's just a part of the law that I and many disagree with.

To say the law has been a disaster would indicate, I would think, that one of more patients or people needing medical care died or got or remained very ill due to some application of the health law. Or maybe that a doctor went bankrupt or had to give up her or his practice as a result of the law. Or a hospital had to close. Or a business of any sort had to shut down because it could not meet some provision of the law. Or, even, an insurance company went bankrupt (I can't see being too upset about that, but I'll list it as a criterion of disaster just to show how reasonable I am).

So ... any takers? Can anyone cite a single instance of a bad result obtaining from Obama-care? Not a disagreement in policy, not a concern that something bad will result from the law, but an actual, real-life, non-hypothetical, bad result?

If not, then, the incessant Republican repetition that Obama's health care plan is "disastrous" is just a piece of classic propaganda - tell a lie often enough, and maybe you'll get some people to believe it.

The Renaissance of Television in Poliics?

2012-01-22T00:06:00.000-05:00

Television has never been unimportant in politics - beginning with Nixon's "Checkers" speech in the 1952 campaign and progressing into JFK's victory over Nixon in the first televised Presidential debates in 1960.

But, more recently, lots of people including me have talking about how Barack Obama in 2008 and Republicans in 2010 won by mastering social media - or, what I call "new new media". Paul Saffo even coined a new term - "cybergenic" - to describe Obama in 2008, an evolution of JFK and Reagan being telegenic.

Has television come back? Newt Gingrich clearly smashed Romney in South Carolina because of two brilliant performances in television debates in the past week.   With two more debates coming up in Florida this week, the question of the impact of television debates could be crucially important.

David Gergen just said on CNN that he thought Gingrich's victory indeed shows that television is playing the decisive role in this year's primary - so far.

I'm not surprised.   Even though I've written extensively about the role of Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube in today's politics, I'd never discount the role of television.   Older media don't just disappear when new media arise. The written word is still important today, as is radio.

Television never really went away. The Internet is still crucially important. But for the right candidate, television can be even more important, precisely because of its old mass media magic - it's unique capacity to speak to millions of people at the same time.

Gingrich clearly is such a candidate.   His particular talent is looking great on television attacking television.

But Obama is powerful on television, too. That's part of his being cybergenic.

Stay tuned for an exciting election.

Lesson in Gingrich's Win for Obama

2012-01-21T19:24:00.000-05:00

If I were Barack Obama, I'd be very unhappy about Newt Gingrich's win tonight in South Carolina. As it is, I'm a mostly supporter of Obama, and I'd much rather the see the President face the robotic Romney than Gingrich.

Gingrich not only is a highly effective debater, he has a capacity to surprisingly endorse positions that pull the rug out from under his opponents. In the debate the other night, what I most noticed was Gingrich's powerful condemnation of SOPA and PIPA - the now shelved Internet anti-piracy legislation that would have crippled the Internet.

In contrast, Obama was mostly silent about this and eventually came out with a mild backing off statement expressing reservations with the bills.

Obama cannot afford to be outflanked like this in the general election. My best advice would be that he be true to his progressive views, take a more libertarian position on respecting the First Amendment and the Constitution, support Occupy Wall Street, and energize his base which he has not especially done in the past few years.

Romney the robot - whom I called a Cylon back in 2008 (attention Battlestar Galactica fans) - would have been a push-over for Obama, or indeed any candidate with a real passion for his or her ideas and ideals.

Obama has that, and he'll need to call upon all of it to beat Gingrich. The Republican convention is still a long way off, and anything can happen in the rest of the primaries, but tonight could change everything.

Fringe 4.9: Elizabeth

2012-01-20T22:59:00.000-05:00

A tender - yes, tender, even beautiful - Fringe 4.9 tonight, mainly because -

Alt-Elizabeth - our Peter's mother - visits Walter, to convince him to try to help Peter get back to the world and people he loves. She forgives Walter for kidnapping Peter - in which her transformed alternate reality, Peter died as he and Walter were crossing the lake. And she convinces Walter.

A little later, when Walter comes to see Peter, it's clear that Peter is starting to feel a real connection to Walter. It may be that the main help that Walter can give Peter to get back "home" is getting Peter in touch with the fact, or, at least, almost fact, that Peter is home already.

Otherwise, I'm really enjoying the smooth way the alternate sets of characters relate to each in this new transformed double set of realities. Sitting across a table from one another, out in the field shooting bad guys, mixing Peter in as a a wild card who knows things that neither set of characters does, Fringe is giving us a wild and wildly believable and satisfying tableaux. Not easy to do even in a novel, let alone television show. Fringe is setting standards in complex story telling that we may not see again for years.

And the villain set is pretty impressive too. Alt-Broyles is a damned good, dangerous double agent. He's even got me wondering if he's somehow brought our straight-laced Broyles into his web. Alt-Broyles and his boss Jones make a powerful combination. And the revelation at the end that Jones is taking his orders from our (transformed original universe) Nina promises a tough fight even against the assembled intelligences of both Walters, Olivias, Lees, and Peter.

Hey, check out my essay The Return of 1950s Science Fiction in Fringe in this new anthology

See also Fringe Returns for Season 4: Almost with Peter ... Fringe 4.2: Better and Worse Selves ... Fringe 4.3: Sanity and Son ... Fringe 4.4: Peter's Back, Ectoplasm, and McLuhan ... Fringe 4.5: Double Return ... Fringe 4.6: Time Slips ... Fringe 4.7: The Invisible Man ... Fringe 4.8: The Ramifications of Transformed Alternate Realities

See also Fringe 3.1: The Other Olivia ... Fringe 3.2: Bad Olivia and Peter ... Fringe 3.3: Our/Their Olivia on the Other Side ... Fringe 3.5: Back from Hiatus, Back from the Amber ... Fringe 3.7: Two Universes Still Nearing Collision ... Fringe 3.8: Long Voyages Home ... Fringe 3.10: The Return of the Eternal Bald Observers ... Flowers for Fringenon in Fringe 3.11 ... Fringe 3.12: The Wrong Coffee ... Fringe 3.13: Alternate Fringe ... Fringe 3.14: Amber Here ... Fringe 3.15: Young Peter and Olivia ... Fringe 3.16: Walter and Yoko ... Fringe 3.17: Bell, Olivia, Lee, and the Cow ... Fringe 3.18: Clever Walternate ... Fringe 3.19 meets Inception, The Walking Dead, Tron ... Fringe 3.20: Countdown to Season 3 Finale 1 of 3 ... Fringe 3.21: Ben Frankin, Rimbaldi, and the Future ... Fringe Season 3 Finale: Here's What Happened ... Death Not Death in Fringe

See also reviews of Season 2: Top Notch Return of Fringe Second Season ... Fringe 2.2 and The Mole People ... Fringe 2.3 and the Human Body as Bomb ... Fringe 2.4 Unfolds and Takes Wing ... Fringe 2.5: Peter in Alternate Reality and Wi-Fi for the Mind ... A Different Stripe of Fringe in 2.6 ... The Kid Who Changed Minds in Fringe 2.7 ... Fringe 2.8: The Eternal Bald Observers ... Fringe 2.9: Walter's Journey ... Fringe 2.10: Walter's Brain, Harry Potter, and Flowers for Algernon ... New Fringe on Monday Night: In Alternate Universe? ... Fringe 2.12: Classic Science Fiction Chiante ... Fringe 2.13: "I Can't Let Peter Die Again" ... Fringe 2.14: Walter's Health, Books, and Father ... Fringe 2.15: I'll Take 'Manhatan' ... Fringe 2.16: Peter's Story ... Fringe 2.17: Will Olivia Tell Peter? ... Fringe 2.18: Strangeness on a Train ... Fringe 2.19: Two Plus Infinity ... Fringe the Noir Musical ... Fringe 2.21: Bring on the Alternates ... Fringe 2.22: Tin Soldiers and Nixon Coming ... Fringe Season 2 Finale: The Switch

See also reviews of Season One Fringe Begins ... Fringe 2 and 3: The Anthology Tightrope ... 4: The Eternal Bald Observer ... 7: A Bullet Can Scramble a Dead Brain's Transmission ... 8. Heroic Walter and Apple Through Steel ... 9. Razor-Tipped Butterflies of the Mind ... 10. Shattered Pieces Come Together Through Space and Times ... 11. A Traitor, a Crimimal, and a Lunatic ... 12, 13, 14: Fringe and Teleportation ... 15: Fringe is Back with Feral Child, Pheromones, and Bald Men ... 17. Fringe in New York, with Oliva as Her Suspect ... 18. Heroes and Villains across Fringe ... Stephen King, Arthur C. Clarke, and Star Trek in Penultimate Fringe ... Fringe Alternate Reality Finale: Science Fiction At Its Best

Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic

The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Setting Dodd Straight on SOPA

2012-01-20T14:23:00.002-05:00

Former Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), now the head of the MPAA and the main spokesperson for SOPA and PIPA (now shelved or withdrawn), just told Andrea Mitchell a bunch of nonsense on MSNBC. Here are some of his major points, with translations into truth to set the record straright:

Dodd: Most people misunderstood what the bills were about - which was, to stop the loss of American jobs due to Internet piracy.

Truth: Everyone understood that purpose of the bills. What we also understood were the provisions of the bill that would have held entire sites responsible for even one pirated item on their otherwise massive, non-pirated sites and could have crippled the Internet as we know it. Dodd said nothing whatsoever about that.

Dodd: the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 has been effective against Internet pirates and has led to the shutdown of many sites. SOPA and PIPA were just trying to extend its provisions to international pirates operating here.

Truth: Right, the DMCA has been very effective. So why not just extend its provisions to cover international pirates? The DMCA has none of the provisions of SOPA and PIPA which could have crippled the Internet.

Dodd: The First Amendment does not protect criminals, people who libel and slander others, etc.

Truth: Right, but the First Amendment does protect from government regulation all modes of speech and press which are not engaged in criminal, slanderous, or libelous actions. If The New York Times, for example, inadvertently published something deemed libelous, it could be sued for libel under the current laws. Those same laws can be used against anything online - without the need for SOPA and PIPA - and the same applies to piracy (with extension of DMCA to cover international pirates). The problem with SOPA and PIPA is they went way too far, and would have have seriously violated the First Amendment.

In sum - Dodd, after being rebuked by the withdrawal of SOPA, is starting off on the wrong foot for where we go from here. A little truth would help.

Challenging Schumer and Gillibrand on SOPA

2012-01-18T20:58:00.000-05:00

Largely missed among the online protests against SOPA and PIPA today - protests with whose goal I strongly agree, though I disagree with the tactics of shutting down online systems, as I indicated on Monday - were in-person demonstrations at the Manhattan offices of US Senators from New York Schumer and Gillibrand.

Unlike Wikipedia going dark, which inconvenienced millions of innocent people, the protests against Schumer and Gillibrand were lodged exactly such protests should be, in the faces of people who support SOPA and PIPA and apparently don't care about the damage such law if enacted would do to the Internet, and thereby our lives. Not only support these bills, but in the case of Schumer and Gillibrand sponsored the Senate version of SOPA - that is, PIPA.

I've lived in New York all my life, and yet I still find myself surprised when a New York elected official, let alone a Democrat, has such a benighted, retrograde position. But Schumer has been a disrespecter of the First Amendment for a long time. He loves the FCC and the fines it levies, and speaks glowingly of the Fairness Doctrine and hopes to see it reinstated. He probably thinks all the First Amendment prohibits is the government's shutting down newspapers in the middle of the night, but I wouldn't put that past him, either, if the paper printed something he judged in bad taste.

I guess I expected more of Kristen Gillibrand. Truthfully, I was disappointed when former Governor Paterson passed over Carolyn Kennedy for Hillary Clinton's replacement, and appointed the little-known Gillibrand. She's done a pretty good job, until SOPA. I tried to give her a chance.

But the Schumer-Gillibrand position on SOPA-PIPA is insulting to anyone with any intelligence. Internet piracy is something we all want to stop. Especially me, as an author. But Schumer and Gillibrand think it's costing New Yorkers jobs. Hardly - the movie and television industries are still situated in Hollywood, and the old music business, the RIAA-kind, isn't situated anywhere anymore. What would cost jobs in New York are Internet companies going broke because of unconstitutional Federal fines and shutdowns in pursuit of pirates.

But speaking of jobs - I hope New Yorkers put someone up against Schumer next time a primary comes around, and as for Gillibrand - let's hope she comes to her senses and withdraws her support from SOPA and PIPA before she loses whatever support she still has from New Yorkers who want to build a better future.

Wikipedia Wrong to Go Dark for SOPA Protest

2012-01-16T21:22:00.000-05:00

The New York Times reported late this afternoon that Wikipedia plans to go dark - shut down - this Wednesday, just for that day, joining Reddit and other online sites in protest of SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act now under consideration by Congress.

I think SOPA is an unconstitutional, dangerous waste of time - that is, a violation of the First Amendment that won't achieve its ends, and could cripple the Internet with its provision that sites could be liable for any pirated material posted on their online premises. No site can possibly police every post - text or video - for adherence to copyright.

Wikipedia actually does a pretty good job of making sure every image on its site violates no copyright. But I think Wikipedia should not shut down on Wednesday to point out the danger of SOPA.

Wikipedia is a source of information, a site which by its very existence stands up to ignorance in Congress. It won't be able to make this point on Wednesday when it's shut down. And in doing so, Wikipedia will inconvenience millions of people, including students of all ages, who rely on its services.

Wikipedia could make the same point by putting up a page about SOPA which everyone who goes to Wikipedia would see. A page like that will indeed greet people when they try to go to Wikipedia on Wednesday. What is gained by then preventing them from getting the information they're seeking?

In times of revolution, even just in opposition to authority, it is especially important that lines of information remain open. The world will survive Wikipedia's day of darkness, but it is a wrongheaded, unnecessary move, and SOPA will be defeated without it.

The Good Wife 3.13 meets Murder on the Orient Express

2012-01-16T14:13:00.000-05:00

A good Good Wife 3.13 last night, in which the standalone part of the story concerns the Feds - in the person of Bob Balaban's well-played taxman - go after the creator of Bitcoin, on account of its being an allegedly illegal currency.

Bitcoin, in our real world (i.e., off the television drama), is a real online currency - much like the Linden dollar in Second Life, except that people can use Bitcoin money to buy real things anywhere online (not just in-world with the Linden dollar in Second Life), if the seller is willing to accept that kind of payment. Still in our real reality, we think we know who created Bitcoin, but there may be some pseudonymity involved.

Back on The Good Wife, Alicia and the firm are defending Bitcoin's lawyer, who may or may not be the creator about whom he the lawyer is prevented from discussing, owing to attorney-client privilege. There are two other suspects for creator, and some typically brilliant investigation by Kalinda uncovers the truth: all three have in fact created/marketed Bitcoin. Reminded me of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express, where the murderer turns out to be everyone of the train with a motive.

Moving over to the continuing story, it turns out that Will may be a little vulnerable - though not really guilty of any wrongdoing - after all. He lets Kalinda take charge of the touchy paperwork, to do what - destroy it? All we know if she hands something that looks like those files over to Assistant DA Dana Lodge (played by Lie to Me's Monica Raymund), who's in possession of the document unknowingly signed by Alicia last week, when she was set up by David Lee in the alienation of affection case. It could be enough to get Alicia disbarred. Dana's happy to use this to blackmail Kalinda.

It's certainly enough for me to look more forward than ever to the next episode.

See also The Good Wife 3.1: Recusal and Rosh Hashanah ... The Good Wife: 3.2: Periwigs and Skype ... The Good Wife 3.7: Peter v. Will ... Dexter's Sister on The Good Wife 3.10 ... The Good Wife 3.12: Two Suits

And see also The Good Wife Starts Second Season on CBS ... The Good Wife 2.2: Lou Dobbs, Joe Trippi, and Obama Girl ... The Good Wife 2.4: Surprise Candidate, Intimate Interpsonal Distance ... The Good Wife 2.9 Takes on Capital Punishment ... The Good Wife 2.16: Information Wars

Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic

The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Hell on Wheels Season One Finale: Greek Tragedy, Western-Style

2012-01-16T12:35:00.001-05:00

Hell on Wheels pulled in to its first season finale last night with a Greek tragedy of a story, one that is as old and heart-rending as human story-telling itself ... killing the wrong the man.

The episode open with the scene that has motivated Bohannan's life since the scene and just about everything we've seen of his life this season - he comes home to find his wife in a noose. He lovingly cradles her body, buries her and their son (also killed by the Union marauders), and rides off to begin his journey of revenge.

The only dent in his quest - the only time he even considers for a moment abandoning it, and moving on with life - is when Lily in a tender scene puts her hand on his chest and implores him not to destroy the man his wife and his son loved, not to consume that man in his hate. Bohannan says nothing to Lily, walks out, but her words had enough impact on him that he goes to see Rev. Cole for advice. Follow your hate, Cole advises, with the head of the Union guy he severed last week nearby, and an impromptu homily about God existing, but with arms and legs severed, and only able to hear us, and not able to do anything to help us. Not, in other words, what Bohannan needed to hear.

So Bohannan goes after Harper, the Sgt who Bohannan believes joined in the rape and murder of his wife. We already know Harper was not the man who did this - he shows his Army discharge paper to the Swede, which proves that Harper could not have been in Bohannan's home at the time of the murder. Harper tries to tell this to Bohannan, tries to show him the paper, but to no avail. Bohannan kills Harper, only to find the discharge paper in Harper's dead hand.

Bohannan not only killed the wrong man, but if there is a Sgt out there who was part of the group who killed his wife, Bohannan now has to find him. He looks at Lily, dancing perfunctorily with Durant. She sees him and is glad. But when she looks for him after the next spin in the dance, he's gone.

Gone with the wind, but now there are wanted posters out there with his name and likeness. Bohannan's no longer under the radar, to throw in an anachronism. But should I see one on some lamppost in 2012 New York City, it'll only remind me how much I'm looking forward to Season 2.

See also Hell on Wheels: Blood, Sweat, and Tears on the Track, and the Telegraph ... Hell on Wheels 1.6: Horse vs. Rail ... Hell on Wheels 1.8: Multiple Tracks ... Hell on Wheels 1.9: Historical Inevitable and Unknown

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The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Fringe 4.8: The Ramifications of Transformed Alternate Realites

2012-01-14T12:06:00.000-05:00

Fringe's first episode of the new year - 4.8 - continued the careful, brilliant multiple-reality building that has been the glimmering, slithering spine of this 4th season.

First, I think we need to be clear - i.e., here is what I think is the case - with the multiple realities we've been seeing this year. They came into being, in their current form, when the Eternal Bald Observers not only whipped Peter out of existence at the end of last season but, in doing so, also made him never having existed in the first place.   And what this therefore did is significantly alter both our reality (with Walter, Olivia, etc) and the alternate reality (with Walternate, Fauxlivia, etc), so that characters who died in either of the original realities could now be alive in the new sans-Peter realities, characters we didn't know before in one of the original realities could be now be on center stage, etc.   Lincoln Lee would be an example of an excellent character who now has a role in our reality as well as the alternate.

Peter - if this analysis is correct - does not quite have it right when he says he wants to go home to a third reality. Because this implies that there are three or more co-realities - Walter now with no Peter in the past (both Peters died), Walternate now with no Peter in the past (both Peters died), and the reality of the first three seasons (alternate Peter taken by Walter, and Peter lives and grows up in our reality). I would say that third reality does not exist in the same way that the first two do. The only way Peter can get back to that reality is if the Eternal Bald Observers or someone somehow reverses his being yanked out of existence and memories, or at very least Walter, Olivia (and perhaps Walternate and Fauxlivia) get back their original memories.

Ok, so, with that in mind, we had a fabulous, action-packed episode last night, with Peter and Lincoln Lee (our Lincoln) going over to the alternate reality. Peter hopes Walternate can get Peter back to the reality where the people he loves (Walter and Olivia) know and love him. Lincoln's hoping he can learn more about how Waltnernate is responsible for the new scourge of shape shifters in our reality.

They of course get neither - and we can get something much better. Peter meets his mother - his real, alternate reality mother - on the other side.   She's alive in this alternate (with no memory of Peter) version of reality. Powerful, satisfying scenes. (By the way, alternate-Broyles is alive here, too.)

And as for the shape shifters? Well, Walternate's apparently not responsible for them. The man behind them is no other than David Robert Jones, he of teleporting from Germany to the US and other scientific wonders fame from Fringe long ago. He's almost in Walter's and Bell's league as far as sheer scientific brilliance and chutzpah. He played a major role in earlier Fringe, dying as he tried to cross the portal to the alternate reality and Walter closed it - slicing Jones in half in the process.   But Jones had not been sliced in the new realities our characters are now inhabiting and contesting. Should be some good times ahead with Jones back in play.

And that's the not all. In a stunning last scene, an Eternal Bald Observer - September, the main one we've seen over the years - comes to see Olivia, on our side of the portal, where she's waiting for Peter and our Lincoln Lee to return. He's gasping, and tells Olivia with regret that she will die in all realities.   And he's gasping because he's shot in the chest. And he disappears.

Just on the last point - he disappears because he dies? Nah. I'd say he disappears because someone did something somewhere down the line to trigger an alternate world in which this EBO never existed at all. Maybe that's part of the process Peter getting back to the people he loves.

But who shot him and in what circumstances?   And surely Olivia has some option for life that even the EBO doesn't know (though, I suppose we could have a Fringe in which only Fauxlivia lives, and she and Peter get together - again). Should be good viewing indeed for the rest of this season.

Hey, check out my essay The Return of 1950s Science Fiction in Fringe in this new anthology

See also Fringe Returns for Season 4: Almost with Peter ... Fringe 4.2: Better and Worse Selves ... Fringe 4.3: Sanity and Son ... Fringe 4.4: Peter's Back, Ectoplasm, and McLuhan ... Fringe 4.5: Double Return ... Fringe 4.6: Time Slips ... Fringe 4.7: The Invisible Man

See also Fringe 3.1: The Other Olivia ... Fringe 3.2: Bad Olivia and Peter ... Fringe 3.3: Our/Their Olivia on the Other Side ... Fringe 3.5: Back from Hiatus, Back from the Amber ... Fringe 3.7: Two Universes Still Nearing Collision ... Fringe 3.8: Long Voyages Home ... Fringe 3.10: The Return of the Eternal Bald Observers ... Flowers for Fringenon in Fringe 3.11 ... Fringe 3.12: The Wrong Coffee ... Fringe 3.13: Alternate Fringe ... Fringe 3.14: Amber Here ... Fringe 3.15: Young Peter and Olivia ... Fringe 3.16: Walter and Yoko ... Fringe 3.17: Bell, Olivia, Lee, and the Cow ... Fringe 3.18: Clever Walternate ... Fringe 3.19 meets Inception, The Walking Dead, Tron ... Fringe 3.20: Countdown to Season 3 Finale 1 of 3 ... Fringe 3.21: Ben Frankin, Rimbaldi, and the Future ... Fringe Season 3 Finale: Here's What Happened ... Death Not Death in Fringe

See also reviews of Season 2: Top Notch Return of Fringe Second Season ... Fringe 2.2 and The Mole People ... Fringe 2.3 and the Human Body as Bomb ... Fringe 2.4 Unfolds and Takes Wing ... Fringe 2.5: Peter in Alternate Reality and Wi-Fi for the Mind ... A Different Stripe of Fringe in 2.6 ... The Kid Who Changed Minds in Fringe 2.7 ... Fringe 2.8: The Eternal Bald Observers ... Fringe 2.9: Walter's Journey ... Fringe 2.10: Walter's Brain, Harry Potter, and Flowers for Algernon ... New Fringe on Monday Night: In Alternate Universe? ... Fringe 2.12: Classic Science Fiction Chiante ... Fringe 2.13: "I Can't Let Peter Die Again" ... Fringe 2.14: Walter's Health, Books, and Father ... Fringe 2.15: I'll Take 'Manhatan' ... Fringe 2.16: Peter's Story ... Fringe 2.17: Will Olivia Tell Peter? ... Fringe 2.18: Strangeness on a Train ... Fringe 2.19: Two Plus Infinity ... Fringe the Noir Musical ... Fringe 2.21: Bring on the Alternates ... Fringe 2.22: Tin Soldiers and Nixon Coming ... Fringe Season 2 Finale: The Switch

See also reviews of Season One Fringe Begins ... Fringe 2 and 3: The Anthology Tightrope ... 4: The Eternal Bald Observer ... 7: A Bullet Can Scramble a Dead Brain's Transmission ... 8. Heroic Walter and Apple Through Steel ... 9. Razor-Tipped Butterflies of the Mind ... 10. Shattered Pieces Come Together Through Space and Times ... 11. A Traitor, a Crimimal, and a Lunatic ... 12, 13, 14: Fringe and Teleportation ... 15: Fringe is Back with Feral Child, Pheromones, and Bald Men ... 17. Fringe in New York, with Oliva as Her Suspect ... 18. Heroes and Villains across Fringe ... Stephen King, Arthur C. Clarke, and Star Trek in Penultimate Fringe ... Fringe Alternate Reality Finale: Science Fiction At Its Best

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The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Bones 7.6: The Reassembler

2012-01-12T22:59:00.002-05:00

Yay! Finally a villain in Bones 7.6 worthy of the brilliance of our team! Meaning, although I think and have often said that the new Bones-Booth relationship is a wonderful transformation of the series, the actual cases this year have lacked the intensity of the Zack Addy and other tension-tingling shows and stories of Bones past.

And tonight we finally got both. Booth and Bones decide on a house, and the baby is just six weeks away, and it's balm for the soul to see them still so happy together.

But they're faced with a sociopathic killer who rearranges the vertebrae of the victim to deliver a code, inscribes another code for a worm (the computer kind) on the end of a bone which, when scanned, shuts down the lab's massive computer, and, like that. Booth says the killer MacGyvered it, Jack and Angela can do little more than break the code and admire it, and Angela's the first to say the guy's a genius.

He has a great alibi. He has a security bracelet around his ankle which tells his monitors where he is, at 30 second intervals, but he's managed to beat that system and commit his murders. Further, he's not only brutally dismembered his victims, but has Booth and Bones in his sights. Bones can't believe she's encountered someone who's smarter than her ...

And there this story ends. With Bones, you never know if the reassembler will be back when the series first comes back in the second half of this season, or it he'll jump back into play later this season or even next. I'll be glad to see him again, either way - though I just hope he hasn't in some way bugged or rigged the new home that Booth and Bones are so happy in ...

See also Bones 7.1: Almost Home Sweet Home ... Bones 7.2: The New Kid and the Fluke ... Bones 7.3: Lance Bond and Prince Charmington ... Bones 7.4: The Tush on the Xerox ... Bones 7.5: Sexy Vehicle

And see also Bones 6.1: The Linchpin ... Bones 6.2: Hannah and her Prospects ... Bones 6.3 at the Jersey Shore, Yo, and Plymouth Rock ... Bones 6.4 Sans Hannah ... Bones 6.5: Shot and Pretty ... Bones 6.6: Accidental Relations ... Bones 6.7: Newman and "Death by Chocolate" ... Bones 6.8: Melted Bones ... Bones 6.9: Adelbert Ames, Jr. ... Bones 6.10: Reflections ... Bones 6.11: The End and the Beginning of a Mystery ... Bones 6.12 Meets Big Love ... Bones 6.13: The Marrying Kind ... Bones 6.14: Bones' Acting Ability ... Bones 6.15: "Lunch for the Palin Family" ... Bones 6.16: Stuck in an Elevator, Stuck in Times ... Bones 6.17: The 8th Pair of Feet ... Bones 6.18: The Wile E. Chupacabra ... Bones 6.19 Test Runs The Finder ... Bones 6.20: This Very Statement is a Lie ... Bones 6.21: Sensitive Bones ... Bones 6.22: Phoenix Love ... Bones Season 6 Finale: Beautiful

And see also Bones: Hilarity and Crime and Bones is Back For Season 5: What Is Love? and 5.2: Anonymous Donors and Pipes and 5.3: Bones in Amish Country and 5.4: Bones Meets Peyton Place and Desperate Housewives and Ancient Bones 5.5 and Bones 5.6: A Chicken in Every Viewer's Pot and Psychological Bones 5.7 and Bones 5.8: Booth's "Pops" and Bones 5.9 Meets Avatar and Videogamers ... Bad Santa, Heart-Warming Bones 5.10 ... Bones 5.11: Of UFOs, Bloggers, and Triangles ... Bones 5.12: A Famous Skeleton and Angela's Baby ... Love with Teeth on Bones 5.13 ... Faith vs. Science vs. Psychology in Bones 5.14 ... Page 187 in Bones 5.15 ... Bones 100: Two Deep Kisses and One Wild Relationship ... Bones 5.17: The Deadly Stars ... Bones Under Water in 5.18 ... Bones 5.19: Ergo Together ... Bones 5.20: Ergo Together ... Bones 5.21: The Rarity of Happy Endings ... Bones Season 5 Finale: Eye and Evolution

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Rick Tyler's Good Defense of Anti-Romney Ads and Movie

2012-01-12T14:10:00.001-05:00

I just saw Rick Tyler (on Andrea Mitchell's MSNBC show) give a spirited, excellent defense of the Gingrich PAC-group attacks ads and movie directed against Mitt Romney. You've no doubt seen them - "When Romney Came to Town" - a scathing portrayal of what Romney did at Bain Capital, destroying rather than creating jobs in the companies Bain acquired.

Republicans ranging from Limbaugh to Giuliani have condemned the ad and the anti-Romney campaign, saying it plays right into Obama's hands. That would be enough to make me kindly disposed towards the ad - I can't recall the last time I agreed with anything Limbaugh and Giuliani have said - but Tyler made some good, objective points that make a lot of sense.

We're in a primary, not a general election, he said of the contest now going on among Republican contenders. This is a time when candidates are supposed to be vetted by the press, and then voters.

Some economists have joined the critique of the ads, saying that what Romney did at Bain embodies Schumpeter's notion of "creative destruction," as one of the necessary, healthy engines of capitalism. I'm Darwinian in my theory of media evolution - see my The Soft Edge - so I'm well aware of Joseph Schumpeter's work. But Tyler had a valid response to this, too: it doesn't matter whether you dress up what Romney did at Bain in sophisticated economic theory. Romney did preside over the dismantling of weak companies Bain had acquired, and profited from this.

And Romney apparently enjoyed it. Vultures may be part of the natural world, and play a role in evolution and survival of the fittest. But that doesn't mean we have to like them, or want one to be President.

Beyond that, as I said last week about Gingrich's handwringing about Romney Pac-group attack ads on Gingrich: people are not that influenced by them, anyway, people can separate truth from falsity, stop whining.

The Day After New Hampshire

2012-01-11T14:11:00.000-05:00

I take Ron Paul's strong second-place in the Republican New Hampshire primary last night as a very good thing for people like me who want more government respect for the First Amendment and an end to unconstitutional wars.

Yes, there are positions that Ron Paul holds which I strongly oppose - notably his call for a Constitutional Amendment to ban abortion, which is inconsistent with libertarian philosophy and its view that the government should stay out of our lives. And I'm not at all happy about the racist observations that appeared under his name in his newsletter two decades ago.

But there's a lot to commend in Ron Paul. He not only opposes undeclared wars but the NDAA signed into law by Obama and SOPA now under consideration in Congress. He wants an end to the massive Federal anti-drug enforcement, which he correctly sees as an invasion of privacy, and which has especially targeted minority groups.

And his Republican rivals, who share none of his virtues, share all of his serious political defects. No Republican supports a woman's right to have complete control over her own body, and Gingrich and Santorum have both recently made racist statements.

Would I vote for Ron Paul over Barack Obama in a general election? Not very likely. But unlike in 2008, when I first supported Ron Paul for the GOP nomination and then withdrew that when I became aware of his 1990s newsletters, I think our country would be much better served by an Obama vs. Ron Paul election than it would by Obama facing any other GOP candidate.

Hell on Wheels 1.9: History Inevitable and Unknown

2012-01-09T11:33:00.000-05:00

The thing about Hell on Wheels is that we know that Durant succeeded with the Union Pacific railroad. That's our unchangeable history, and the unchangeable foundation of the series, because it's historical drama not time travel. So it's a measure of how good a job the series has been doing of keeping us on the edge of our seats that it comes as a refreshing surprise when Durant pounds in the spike that completes his forty miles - winning him the right to continue building his east-west half of the first transcontinental railroad.

But, of course, there's no guarantee at all of happy endings for the other characters.   Elam's finally doing fine, getting money (for the Indian scalps that he took), a better position from Durant, and the exclusive relationship he wants with Eva.   Lily's doing fine, free from Durant and proving her surveyor acumen.

Well, not totally free, because as we see near the end of the episode, Durant still wants to keep her clear of Bohannan. Durant see Lily and Bohannan talking cosily in the bar, we see the flash of passion in their eyes which we knew was there all along, and this spurs Durant to speak to Bohannan privately and give him a "bonus" for his great work in getting the crew to complete the 40 miles.   The bonus isn't money, which Bohannan doesn't want. It's the information that Federal marshals are coming to get Bohannan for the serial murders of his wife's killers he's been committing.

Bohannan realizes that Durant is doing this not really to help Bohannan, but to get get him out town (whether he realizes that this is to get him away from Lily is not yet completely clear).   Durant says the Swede alerted the marshals. Whether the Swede did this on his own or with Durant's knowledge - or even on Durant's orders - is also not completely clear.   Durant, as far as we've seen, values his railroad above all else. But the love of a woman - smart, strong, and beautiful - can be a pretty strong motivator to man like Durant, who would go far to have someone like Lily beside him.

We'll find out next week in the finale of this too-short season what becomes of this.   I'll be back here with a review of that after the train finishes whistling.

See also Hell on Wheels: Blood, Sweat, and Tears on the Track, and the Telegraph ... Hell on Wheels 1.6: Horse vs. Rail ... Hell on Wheels 1.8: Multiple Tracks

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The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

The Good Wife 3.12: Two Suits

2012-01-09T10:59:00.001-05:00

The Good Wife's first 2012 episode - 3.12 - brought us two suits. Not clothes, law suits. And against the Lockhart Gardner.

The first was essentially another David Lee boondoggle, an "alienation of affection" case arising out a divorce case that Lee handled for the firm a few years ago. The most important part of this suit - other than the humor - was the role that Cary unexpected plays. His testimony helps the firm - deliberately. And when Alicia, seeing him out, thanks and asks him what's going on, he says he's a different man now, happy with his job as Peter's deputy. It's good seeing a character grow like that.

The alienation of affection suit also may hold some unexpected affection for Diane, with a new character, played by Bryan Brown, a charming process server. Not only is there a little chemistry between the two, but Bryan Brown is a cool choice to bring in as an actor: he starred in the 1987 movie, The Good Wife, a completely different story, also starring Rachel Ward.

Back to our Good Wife, the second suit of night has been progressing for a while - it's the one against Will. Wendy Scott-Carr is tightening the vice. Her motive is still not completely clear - she presumably wants to get back at Peter, for getting the State Attorney job she wanted, but going after Will seems a little of a roundabout way to do this. Fortunately for Will, he's hired the quirkily brilliant Elsbeth Tascioni as his lawyer on Alicia's recommendation, and it will be fun seeing Elsbeth ultimately take down Wendy (I hope).

The Good Wife continues as one of the best lawyer shows in that oft-practiced genre on television.

See also The Good Wife 3.1: Recusal and Rosh Hashanah ... The Good Wife: 3.2: Periwigs and Skype ... The Good Wife 3.7: Peter v. Will ... Dexter's Sister on The Good Wife 3.10

And see also The Good Wife Starts Second Season on CBS ... The Good Wife 2.2: Lou Dobbs, Joe Trippi, and Obama Girl ... The Good Wife 2.4: Surprise Candidate, Intimate Interpsonal Distance ... The Good Wife 2.9 Takes on Capital Punishment ... The Good Wife 2.16: Information Wars

Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic

The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

LP's Into the Wild

2012-01-08T14:22:00.001-05:00

Hey, you've all seen that Citibank commercial, with the woman climbing to the top of an awesome rock formation, and another woman belting out "Somebody left the gate open, Save us a runaway train". Jeanne Moos had a good piece about it on CNN this weekend.

I'm no fan of Citibank, and I've climbed no more than a few feet up in my life, but I was knocked out enough by the lyric, melody, and performance to seek out the full version of the song, and -

Wow, it's "Into the Wild" by LP, the most energizing, emotionally brilliant song and performance I've heard in years.

Here are two video versions - the recording with a picture, and LP's live performance. Laura Pergolizzi not only sings but whistles evocatively, that stand-up bass player in her group reminds me of The Seekers, retro-rocked-up and launched out of this world into more than the 21st century.

NCIS 9.12: DiNozzo and ...

2012-01-05T18:11:00.000-05:00

NCIS was back on Tuesday with its first episode of the new year - 9.12 - which got me thinking about the new form of story telling NCIS has quietly adopted: End the previous season with a series of cliff-hangers or at least questions. But then, rather than resolving all of them in the first episode, or even the first few episodes, of the new season, resolve only some of them, and leave the rest for later in the season. This has the good result of making the later episodes seem both fresh and weighty, an attractive combination.

We last saw EJ at the end of season 8 - not killed - but she hasn't been on hand since then, either. In fact, she's been missing all season. This left not only where she was and what she was doing up in the air, but her relationship with DiNozzo, which played a pretty significant role last year, inviting a lecture from Gibbs to DiNozzo to steer clear of such involvements. She was back in 9.12, in a story which wrapped at least one loose end from last season and also the Stratton thread (featuring Scott Wolf of V) from the premier episode of the current season.

But what about EJ and DiNozzo? They exchange a weak kiss and longing looks, and that's about it. EJ's off on another job.

Which would be unfortunate - especially given the flack that Gibbs gave DiNozzo over EJ last year - had we not been thrown another old/new curve. Is there something brewing, again, between DiNozzo and Ziva?

They throw each other, if not meaningful, some kind of different-than-usual looks at the end of the episode. Ziva of course still is in some sort of relationship with CIRay, which is clearly frayed due to Ray's absence. But he'll be back next week, and here's hoping Ziva cuts him loose and goes for another round with DiNozzo. What would Gibbs say about that?

See also NCIS 9.1: Unpacking Partial Amnesia ... NCIS 9.2: Lying to Yourself ... NCIS 9.3: McGee's Grandmother ... NCIS 9.4: Turkey Vulture as Explained by DiNozzo ... NCIS 9.5: Behrooz's Mother ... NCIS 9.6: Too Good to be True ... NCIS 9.7: "You Were My Shannon, Leroy" ... NCIS 9.8: Intersections with Reality ... NCIS 9.9: Twists and History ... NCIS 9.10: Almost One Agent Short

And see also NCIS Back in Season 8 Action ... NCIS 8.2: Interns! ... NCIS 8.3: Tiff! ... NCIS 8.4: Gary Cooper not John Wayne ... NCIS 8.5: Dead DJ, DiNozzo Hoarse, and Baseball ... NCIS 8.6: The Written Woman ... NCIS 8.7: "James Bond Movie Directed by Fellini" ... NCIS 8.8: Ziva's Father ... NCIS 8.9: Leon's Story ... NCIS 8.10: DiNozzo In and Out ... NCIS 8.11: "The Sister Went Viral" ... Bob Newhart on NCIS 8.12 ... NCIS 8.13: The Wife or the Girlfriend ... NCIS 8.14: Kate ... NCIS 8.15: McGee and DiNozzo's Badges ... NCIS 8.16: Computer Games ... NCIS 8.17: Budget Cuts ... NCIS 8.18: Gibbs vs. the Kid ... NCIS 8.19: The Deadly Book ... NCIS 8.20: CIRay ... NCIS 8.21: Mask and Eye ... NCIS 8.22: "I'd Rather Have a Lead" ... NCIS 8.23: Answers and Questions ... NCIS Season 8 Finale

And see also NCIS ... NCIS 7.16: Gibbs' Mother-in-Law Dilemma ... NCIS 7.17: Ducky's Ties ... NCIS 7.18: Bogus Treasure and Real Locker ... NCIS 7.21: NCIS Meets Laura ... NCIS Season 7 Finale: Retribution

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

What the Iowa Caucus Results Show about Campaign Financing

2012-01-04T17:22:00.000-05:00

There has been much outrage expressed - by unlikely allies Newt Gingrich and Chris Matthews - about the baneful influence of political commercials financed by big money groups not specifically affiliated with any candidate. Gingrich, who came in 4th in Iowa, and Matthews of MSNBC, specifically singled out the four million dollars worth of campaign ads put on the Iowa air by a pro-Romney group against Gingrich.

And Gingrich did lose. And Romney did win-

But by a total of eight votes. And Rick Santorum, who came in such a close second, had virtually no money spent on his behalf on ads. He came in so close to first the good old-fashioned way - by pressing the flesh, in-person, across Iowa.

I agree with literally none of Santorum's views that I know of. But I appreciate the unavoidable conclusion of his almost-victory: spending on TV commercials counts for nothing. One candidate spent a fortune, the other spent next to nothing, and they both came in tied in the lead.

I've been arguing, for years, that the Jeffersonian view that people are inherently rational, can separate truth from falsity, means we shouldn't get so upset about campaign financing, and in fact the government, as per the First Amendment, should stay totally out of this. Last night the Republican caucuses in Iowa made this point with clean, mathematical eloquence.

Why Obama Was So Wrong to Sign the NDAA into Law

2012-01-03T12:29:00.002-05:00

On the last day of 2011, Obama signed into law what may well be the worse piece of legislation to come across his desk.   The NDAA - the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 - has actually been on the books since 2008, and has language that authorizes indefinite detention of suspected terrorists without trial.   An attempt to amend the bill to prohibit the indefinite detention of American citizens on U.S. soil was defeated in the Senate. Obama supported the amendment, and issued a Presidential letter along with his signing of the NDAA, stipulating that his "Administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens".

But he signed the bill into law anyway.

Why is that so wrong and dangerous?

Let's first look at the logic of the section of the law (Section 1021) that authorizes indefinite detention without trial, for it does have its logic. Let's say the FBI is able to break-up a terrorist plot on American soil, something it was not able to do prior to September 11, 2001. If the suspects were arrested and put on trial - as required for all other people arrested - they would be entitled to mount a defense, call witnesses, etc. The prosecution could be compelled to reveal sources and information which could impede stopping of other terrorists, and damage American security.

And that logic is not insane, not unsound. It has merit. But does it justify what could be done to American citizens having nothing to do with terrorism?

I believe Obama when he says he won't use the law to lock up Americans indefinitely without trial. But what about his successors?

I'm old enough to remember what America was like when JFK was President - a country full of hope and purpose. If JFK had signed such a bill into law in 1962 - after Richard Nixon, beaten in the Presidential election of 1960, and again in the California gubernatorial race of 1962, had announced that the press would not have "Dick Nixon to kick around any more" - would I or anyone have imagined back then that Nixon would be sitting in the White House just seven years later?   I certainly did not, and yet Nixon was elected President, and created an "enemies list" which was secretly targeted for harassment by his administration.   That enemies list consisted not of terrorists or even run-of-the-mill criminals, but of Nixon's political critics, period.   Is there anyone alive back then, or who has studied that history, who has confidence that Nixon would not have used an NDAA to not only harass but lock up without trial the Americans he deemed the worst of his enemies?

Obama, in part because of that law - which has been rightly denounced by the American Civil Liberties Union and has angered progressives who are his political base - could conceivably be a one-term President. Look at the Republican candidates for President. All but Ron Paul are far more hawkish than Obama.   Are you confident that Rick Santorum or Mitt Romney wouldn't use the NDAA to put Amercans in detention without trial, for reasons they thought justified?

Bill Clinton made a similar error, less grievous, perhaps, when he signed into law the Communications Decency Act, which punished salty language on the Web (including political) with fines and imprisonment. Fortunately, the Supreme Court struck down that violation of the First Amendment.

Obama missed his chance to defuse this currently ticking time bomb to American democracy and due process. It's now up to the Supreme Court to strike the NDAA down for the unconstitutional game of Russian roulette that it is with our freedom and way of life.

Hell on Wheels 1.8: Multiple Tracks

2012-01-01T23:35:00.000-05:00

A good Hell on Wheels 1.8 on New Year's Day tonight - on our New Year's Day that is - and as for its being good, that's been true of every episode in this fine new, too-short series, due to end its first season just two weeks from tonight.

The main, specific, somewhat surprising character development tonight has Lily not wanting to be Durant's wife, after all. Not even his kept woman. Whether this rejection is what she had planned all along - as Durant thinks - or whether it was brought out by Lily seeing Cullen, and realizing she loves and/or wants him on some level, is not clear and a little hard to say. Maybe it's a little bit of both. What's more clear, now in retrospect, is she hadn't yet slept with Durant. She was probably too much the lady and even he too much the gentleman, for that day and age.

What struck me about Hell on Wheels as a whole, again, and what makes it so appealing, is how the story ties together so many different themes. When Cullen, Elam, and Joseph go out with an arrogant Union cavalry or whatever guy accustomed to being in charge - out to hunt down Joseph's brother, who waylaid one of the Union Pacific trains - the following tensions are all on the boil at the same time: Union vs Dixie, white vs black, American vs. Native American. Fortunately for what's good and right, Elam and Cullen seem to have an alliance.

Techolnogy-wise, there was nothing special in this episode, but there was a good lesson about how unpleasant life was out there and then, as Lily struggles to put planks down on the mud that serves as the floor of her new tent dwelling. The food she's given to eat is pretty unappealing, too - she gives it to Eva, what's Lily going to do, though, starve? - but this servers as a reminder of the sacrifice she made not going with Durant.

Hey, I also like the theme song at the beginning and played between segments. Glad AMC's renewing it for a second season.

With Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, The Killing, and now Hell on Wheels, AMC has by far the best percentage of excellent series now on television. Putting on powerful series is like shooting fish in a barrel for AMC.

See also Hell on Wheels: Blood, Sweat, and Tears on the Track, and the Telegraph ... Hell on Wheels 1.6: Horse vs. Rail

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The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Timcast on UStream Doing Great Covering NYPD Violation of First Amendment Tonight

2012-01-01T03:17:00.000-05:00

In between the usual New Year's Eve celebrations, I've been watching Timcast and his live UStream coverage of Occupy Wall Street, and the New York City Police (NYPD) once again violating the protesters' First Amendment rights.

I'm going to continue to talk even more about this trampling of the First Amendment - one of my New Year's resolutions - but I wanted to take a moment to thank Tim, and say how inspiring it is to have his continuous coverage of Occupy Wall Street.

There was nothing about this on CNN, MSNBC, or Fox. Nothing on the major broadcast networks. CNN is especially irksome - they gave us Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin, who were funny enough, broadcasting from Times Square in New York City. But there's nothing funny about the NYPD continuing its systematic flouting of the First Amendment, and the damage that does to our democracy, just a few blocks away..

But, as the mass media failed in their jobs tonight, Timcast soldiered on. For no pay. Motivated by the noble goal of getting world out to the world about what's been happening in New York City on this New Year's Eve and now Day.

I just saw on Timcast's live feed the NYPD block the sidewalk, then order protesters to stop blocking the sidewalk, then start arresting the group. And Tim Pool - the Tim of Timcast - covering this, was grabbed and pushed by police, and threatened with arrest. Another outrageous abrogation of the First Amendment.

Tim just reported that a National Lawyers Guild observer was arrested by the NYPD, after he disobeyed their order to put his phone down!

All of this on 13th Street and Second Avenue in New York City.

You know what? As long we have people like Tim, democracy will never be defeated. He just said he's "beat, hungry, and carrying this 40-pound bag". That would be the bag with his video equipment. It's also the bag of our freedom and future.

Most of my 2011 commentary on Occupy Wall Street is here.

-Paul Levinson, PhD
Professor of Communication and Media Studies
Fordham University

Four Important Documentaries in 2011

2011-12-30T21:42:00.000-05:00

Looking back at 2011, I would say that it was a great year for documentaries. Here are four that I had the pleasure to see, learned a lot from, and reviewed. They are listed in date order, because ranking them would be apples and oranges. The dates and links are those of my reviews, which could be earlier than official release dates, in cases in which I was able to see a preview.

January 6, 2011: There But for Fortune, Kenneth Bowser's vivid, incisive movie about Phil Ochs, second only to Bob Dylan in the opinion of many, certainly above Dylan in some ways ... more relevant than ever in view of Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring ... look for it on PBS in 2012 ... details on the movie's Facebook page

January 18, 2011: Default: The Student Loan Documentary, Aurora Meneghello's movie about usurious bank practices regarding student loans ... one of the main causes of Occupy Wall Street ... look for it on PBS in 2012 ... details on the movie's Facebook page

August 14, 2011: Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness, known as the Yiddish Mark Twain, Aleichem showed - and this movie by Joseph Dorman shows - a first-rate understanding of media on the level of Marshall McLuhan, in the centenary of McLuhan's birth ... details on the movie's Facebook page

September 2, 2011: Connected, Tiffany Shlain's triple threat movie, one part bio-doc about her father Leonard, one part history of media ala Marshall McLuhan, one-part about the growing interconnectedness of our world now expressed in Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring ... details on the movie's Facebook page

Who's the Leak on The Closer, Part 2

2011-12-26T23:03:00.000-05:00

With The Closer now ending its Winter 2011 season, and only six episodes left to go this coming Summer of 2012, it seems a good time to ask, what more have we learned about who's the leak on The Closer - who on Brenda Leigh Johnson's team, largely defined to include all significant police and FBI on the show, have been feeding Goldman information?

In September, I analyzed the situation and concluded - surprise, surprise - that there was no obvious suspect. But that's a compliment to the show. I thought Pope was the most likely, though, with an outside, long insane shot that Fritz might want her out of the business so she's no longer in danger so often of getting killed.

Pope in this winter season has seemed a little better a human being, i.e., less likely to be the leak than I thought in September, when the recollection that he had refused to let Raydor stop investigating Brenda was still prominent in my mind. Since then ... well, he's still a bit of knife-you-in-the-back superior, but a little more supportive, at least, until tonight, when he tried to shove the "Johnson rule" down Brenda's throat.

But does that make him the leak? Not necessarily.

As for Fritz, he's been as loving and supportive as always, which means he's exactly where he was in September, an extreme long shot to be the leak.

And I feel exactly as I did about the rest of the team in September. David and Taylor are not implausible suspects, for different reasons, but I just can't quite see them doing this to Brenda. And the rest of the team seem totally out of the question.

So that leaves us, with, once again, Pope as the best suspect, more by the Sherlockian logic of when you clear away all the impossibilities, what's left, however implausible, is the answer.

But then there's this: could it be that the twist the Summer of 2012 will have in store for us is that there has been no leak, never was a leak, in the first place? But how then did Goldman get the information? I don't have an answer for that. But when you clear away the impossible, maybe all that's left is indeed the answer.

See also: The Closer 7.2: Pope ... Who's The Leak on the Closer?

And The Closer 6.1: The New Building ... The Closer 6.2: Fun Bumps ... The Closer 6.11: Andy Flynn

And from Season 5: The Roots of Testimony on The Closer and Finding Killers vs. Hearts on The Closer and Brenda Leigh's Niece and Libby from Lost on The Closer and Tom Skerritt on The Closer and Det. Richard Tracy on The Closer and Pres. Laura Roslin vs. Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson and The Closer Closes on a Fine Note for the Season

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The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol

2011-12-26T20:42:00.000-05:00

Mission Impossible is back with its 4th movie, and one of the best - well, better than the 3rd, which was pretty good, but I'm not sure about the 1st and 2nd movies in the franchise, which were each in their own ways superb.

Alias, Lost, and Fringe fans (I'm a big one, though not of the ending of Lost), will be glad to know that J. J. Abrams is back, this time getting top producer credit (he directed MI3), and Josh Holloway puts in an appearance at the beginning. The antes are raised nicely in MI4, with the Kremlin blown up, the US Defense Secretary killed (played by major actor Tom Wilkinson, making the death even more surprising, and all-out nuclear war at stake between the US and Russia. This had an appealing retro flavor, and was refreshing in view of so many Islamic terrorists in movies and on television.

The MI slight-of-hand devices and impersonations were also in fine display - with a projector that makes the guard think he's looking at a far wall with no one in the room, even though Ethan and Benji are actually walking right by the guard into the guarded room - and a cool double feint in which the team splits up and fools two of the villain groups at the same time, keeping in touch via the comm at their disposal.

As in all the MI stories, there are a couple of escapes that fall a little short of believability - Brandt's survival in the wind tunnel or whatever that was is the one that most comes to mind. But these were balanced by the MI plans and strategies which don't work out - including failure to stop the launch of the Russian nuclear warhead toward the US - which gives the movie a good smack-in-the-face plausibility.

And the acting, including and especially Tom Cruise as Ethan, was excellent. Jane (Paula Patton) and Sabine (Léa Seydoux) were both dangerous in different ways and good to look at. The team - which was ghosted or put into non-existence when wrongly held responsible for the Kremlin bombing - accomplishes its mission in the end, and will clearly be back, as Ethan's new team, for another romp, I hope not too far in the future.

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The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Unforgettable

2011-12-26T14:34:00.000-05:00

Bopping in here with a review of Unforgettable - not the Nat King Cole song, the new CBS series - which I've been watching this Fall, so far, 11 episodes, but haven't had a chance to review.

It's a good set-up - Carrie an NYPD detective has a better than photographic memory - she can recall not only everything she sees, but can pull into focus even tiny details on the periphery of her vision, that she almost didn't see, or wasn't aware of seeing, the first time. Meanwhile, the one thing she doesn't remember enough of is who killed her sister, long ago, when she was a little girl. Poppy Montgomery gives an appealingly sassy, sensitive performance.

Dylan Walsh - first seen years ago in Brooklyn South, another cop show - plays Det. Al Burns, Carrie's boss and de facto partner. The two were also romantic partners years ago. Carrie still thinks of him in that way, and Al feels the same way, deep down. The rest of the squad is also a bit more memorable and wise-cracking and well written than the usual the NYPD precinct fare.

Unforgettable also a colorful, real NYC ambiance, with real universities figuring in the story - NYU, CUNY, and hey, one episode even featured Fordham! (Not my Communication and Media Studies Department, but the Sociology Department, pretty close.) The series tries a little too hard, though, for social media currency, with one character talking about receipt of a "pdf," when clearly all that was needed was "text".

But the individual stories are diverting enough - almost as good as Law & Order: SVU's - and the central story, Carrie's hunt for the killer of her sister, receives enough attention in every episode to keep me watching. I'll have more on Unforgettable in the New Year.

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

CNN Distorts Ron Paul Interview

2011-12-24T14:59:00.000-05:00

I should have known better. When I saw Ron Paul stalk off after a few questions from Gloria Borger about the racist statements published under his name in his newsletter in the late 1980s / early 1990s, I should have suspected that there might well have been more to the interview.

I of all people should have known this, given that I gave a 45-minute lecture to my class at Fordham University in September 2007 about the mass media's misreporting of Ron Paul in the last Presidential campaign (see video below) - about how ABC and Fox, especially, cropped pictures, left Ron Paul out of poll reports, and committed other lies of omission in their coverage.

But, instead of suspecting CNN, as I should have, I simply assumed that what I saw on the screen was true. I even commented on Facebook that Ron Paul should have talked more about the offensive newsletters, rather than abruptly terminating the interview.

And it turns out that's exactly what he did. The bright spot in our media world, as I point in New New Media, is that we need no longer rely on the mass media as our sole source of information. As Mediaite - itself a new new media site where you can see the uncut interview, and compare it to what CNN aired - aptly notes, the Daily Paul and Reddit brought the truth of this interview to everyone's attention (and thanks to my friend Michael Papagermanos for bringing this to my attention on Facebook about an hour ago). Indeed, the complete interview not only shows Ron Paul giving Borger a full and repeated explanation of his views about the racist passages in his newsletters, but also has a clear and cogent an analysis as ever I've heard from Ron Paul (or anyone) about the dangers of going to war without the Declaration of War required by our Constitution - something I've been pointing out since the Vietnam War in the 1960s, and has been the case for every "war," beginning with the Korean War, that we've waged since World War II (the last legally waged war). But Ron Paul's words about this, too, wound up on CNN's proverbial cutting room floor.

No one expects any television channel to air every second of an interview it tapes. Cutting is an intrinsic and necessary part of television and radio news, just as editing is in the press. But deceitful cutting - editing which distorts what the interviewee says, and therefore misleads the viewer - is most certainly not.

Such deceitful reporting is not only an attack on Ron Paul, but on all Americans and our democratic system of government. The media are given special protections and status under the First Amendment - which, as my readers know, I've spent a lifetime vigorously supporting. But the media also have a responsibility to report the truth, and not undermine our electoral process by cutting interviews to give wrong impressions. Media that distort are worse than useless. They are dangerous affronts to our freedom.

Prime Suspect Locked Away

2011-12-23T19:18:00.002-05:00

NBC broadcast one of the final episodes of its short-lived new series, Prime Suspect, last night.

Too bad. The show has a stellar cast - Maria Bello (ER), Brían F. O'Byrne (Brotherhood, Flashforward), Kirk Acevedo (Fringe!), Kenny Johnson (The Shield!!), to name just a few. You can't get much better than that. And the dialog has been sharp, humorous, tough, crackling.

But, sad to say, the plots were nothing special. With the exception of one superb episode - 1.8 - which brings Jane (Bello) and Reg (O'Byrne) upstate and into a series of escalation action sequences as gripping as you might find in a good movie - the individual episode stories were trite and lackluster, in contrast to the edge-of-your-seat mysteries in the original British series, which started Helen Mirren.

And the continuing story, which had potential, never really went anywhere. Jane's difficulties as a female detective in the still male-chauvinist NYPD detective world barely went beyond the conflicts and abrasions of the first episode. And her personal affairs, in particular, the possibilities of life with Matt (Johnson), never really were developed, either.

But, don't get me wrong, I would have been very happy to pick up the show for the rest of a complete season in the New Year, and will miss it, with all of its flaws. NBC has added another good show to its roster of what might have beens, if only given a little more time on the air. The Black Donnellys, Kidnapped, and Friday Night Lights (which managed a bunch of seasons only because NBC brought in DirecTV), and now Prime Suspect ... NBC has great taste in getting shows on the air, but doesn't seem to know what to do to keep them there.

Just two episodes left - next Thursday night, and the week after. I'll be watching both.

See also review of Prime Suspec t premiere ...

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Terra Nova Season One Finale

2011-12-19T22:28:00.001-05:00

Well, Terra Nova saved it up for its season one finale just concluded on Fox tonight - and, with this season cut short, and a second not yet announced, this may well have been the series finale. More would be the pity. Tonight's two hours were the best since the two-hour season premiere, and in some ways even better.

One major character bravely dies. Two even more major characters are almost killed, but somehow survive. All characters are operating at their very best - or worst - which makes for a good story.

The most significant development - which goes beyond any individual character - has Jim traveling back to the future to blow up Hope Plaza. This means no more people and shipments from the future. One week after Taylor's brilliant, twisted son opened up the port for two-way business - so his partners in the future could make a fortune plundering the bountiful past - all transactions to and from future are finished.

Or are they? In the last few scenes, we find that the badlands in Terra Nova have evidence of some other transport from the future. The nature of these transactions could be the foundation of a second season.

As I've mentioned before, there are aspects of Terra Nova which are trite (the pseudo-military in the colony) and even goofy (Jim's family at times). But there's a lot of vitality, intrigue, fascination with nature and science that wears quite well on this show.

I'm a sucker for science fiction, that's true. But Terra Nova has something special, and I'd enjoy seeing the lost in the past family and related characters back with the dinosaurs and prehistoric microbes for at least one more season.

See also Terra Nova Debuts ... Terra Nova as Good Biological Science Fiction

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The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Homeland Concludes First Season: Exceptional

2011-12-19T02:26:00.000-05:00

Homeland wrapped up its excellent first season on Showtime tonight, in a fine, intense, thornily surprising package - that turned out not to be wrapped up at all, i.e., the best kind of package for a season finale.

Dana - Brody's daughter - pretty much plays the most pivotal role. She realized something was not right with her father last week, and suspects something bad, but doesn't know what. When she confronts Brody praying, he tells her he converted to Islam - Brody, like all ingenious liars, knows the best way of hiding something is to admit some significant part of it when caught in the lie. But Dana's smart and intuitive, and is only mostly not completed convinced by Brody's religious confession.

When Carrie - who has figured out what Brody is up to - comes to Brody's home and tries to convince Dana to call her father and "talk him down," Dana calls the police instead. Carrie's taken away in handcuffs, but she has tapped into Dana's residual misgivings. She calls her father (especially powerful acting by Morgan Saylor as Dana and Damian Lewis as Brody in this episode), and indeed talks him down - i.e., from setting off his suicide vest after it didn't work the first time, which would have killed not only Brody but the VP set to announce his campaign for President, and a whole bunch of high-ranking American officials.

Dana may even had had something to do with why the vest didn't work the first time - she interrupted her father when he was putting on and connecting the parts of the vest. He had to take it off so Dana wouldn't see it, and he likely stuck a wire in a wrong place when he hurriedly had to put the vest back on.

But how did Brody get in the room with the VP et al? That was one the best turns of the story. I was wondering how Brody would get through the weapon detectors- when Walker takes a shot that misses the VP, hits the political operative, and takes two more shots that hit no one. This drives everyone including Brody into the building, with no one paying any attention to the weapon detector sounding off as the Secret Service hustles to get everyone to a safe room. Smooth piece of plotting.

Brody later goes on to kill Walker, as part of his apparently successful effort to convince Nazir that the only thing that happened in the bunker is the vest didn't work, and Brody can actually do more damage to the US now, by being in a a position to take out the VP after the election and the VP has become President.

Meanwhile, Carrie at first takes Brody's survival to mean she was wrong to suspect him a second time. She checks herself into a hospital to get shock treatment for her bi-polar condition, and just as she's about to go under the anesthesia, she recalls that Brody shouted the name of Nazir's son when Brody had a nightmare the night she and Brody spent together (outstanding acting by Claire Danes the whole season, but especially in tonight's and last week's episodes). But she's unconscious the next moment, and the shock therapy might result in some kind of short term loss of memory.

But we won't forget a thing, and the ingredients at the end of this first season of Homeland look like the makings of an exceptional second season next year, as well.

See also Homeland on Showtime ... Homeland 1.8: Surprises

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Dexter Season 6 Finale: Through the Eyes of a Different Love

2011-12-18T22:27:00.001-05:00

Well, I've been predicting all season that what we see in the very last scene of the Dexter Season 6 finale would happen - in fact, it's been in the cards, lurking behind almost every scene, for years.   It had to happen, sooner or later.   Dexter had been living on the borrowed time of it not happening, surviving any number of razor close calls, for years. It had to happen. It was inevitable.

But I never thought or predicted for a second that it would happen this way.   That Debra would discover the truth about Dexter, catch him in the very act of ritual murder, only after she had come to realize her deep love for him. Not sisterly love. Full fledged romantic, passionate, soul mate love.

This love may well inncoculate Dexter from Debra turning him in - giving not only the brother, but the man she loves, over to the police system. Also, Dexter may be able to convince Debra that his killing of Travis was a first time thing, provoked by Travis trying to sacrifice Harrison.   There's no necessary connection between Dexter's killing of Travis and all of Dexter's other killing - his trademarked serial killings that we the audience know so well. This always the big advantage of Dexter disposing so completely of the bodies.

But Deb has shown herself to be one sharp crime solver.   She has a keen nose for the truth. Love for Dexter may blind her, but likely Dexter's explanations, however clever they may be, will eventually unravel if Debra puts her mind to it. And likely a part of her will be unable to resist doing this - assuming Dexter doesn't tell her the whole truth in the first episode next season, which seems highly unlikely.

So real the question from now on is how long Deb's love for Dexter will keep her from turning him in - could be forever, could be sooner than that. Could even be she'll in some sense approve of what Dexter has been doing.

One thing is now sure. Dexter has changed in the most major way since its beginning - more so than when Rita was killed at the end of Season 4. I'm thinking, though I've loved all Dexter these past six seasons, that it could even be a change for the better.

See also Dexter Season 6 Sneak Preview Review ... Dexter 6.4: Two Numbers and Two Killers Equals? ... Dexter 6.5 and 6.6: Decisive Sam ... Dexter 6.7: The State of Nebraska ... Dexter 6.8: Is Gellar Really Real? .... Dexter 6.9: And Gellar Is ... ... Dexter's Take on Videogames in 6.10 ... Dexter and Debra: Dexter 6.11

And see also Dexter Season Five Sneak Preview Review ... Dexter 5.4: Dexter's Conscience ... Dexter 5.8 and Lumen ... Dexter 5.9: He's Getting Healthier ... Dexter 5.10: Monsters -Worse and Better ... Dexter 5.11: Sneak Preview with Spoilers ... Dexter Season 5 Finale: Behind the Curtain

And see also Dexter Season 4: Sneak Preview Review ... The Family Man on Dexter 4.5 ... Dexter on the Couch in 4.6 ... Dexter 4.7: 'He Can't Kill Bambi' ... Dexter 4.8: Great Mistakes ... 4.9: Trinity's Surprising Daughter ... 4.10: More than Trinity ... 4.11: The "Soulless, Anti-Family Schmuck" ... 4.12: Revenges and Recapitulations

See also reviews of Season 3: Season's Happy Endings? ... Double Surprise ... Psychotic Law vs. Sociopath Science ... The Bright, Elusive Butterfly of Dexter ... The True Nature of Miguel ... Si Se Puede on Dexter ... and Dexter 3: Sneak Preview Review

Reviews of Season 2: Dexter's Back: A Preview and Dexter Meets Heroes and 6. Dexter and De-Lila-h and 7. Best Line About Dexter - from Lila and 8. How Will Dexter Get Out of This? and The Plot Gets Tighter and Sharper and Dex, Doakes, and Harry and Deb's Belief Saves Dex and All's ... Well

See also about Season 1: First Place to Dexter

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Person of Interest 1.10: Carter Returns the Favor

2011-12-16T18:51:00.001-05:00

Person of Interest percolated along quite well last night in episode 1.10, which featured Carter coming into the fold - or, at least, saving Reese and Finch from CIA operatives intent on killing Reese and Finch, too, if he got in the way.

How did we and Carter get there?

Well, Resse saved Carter's bacon last week, but she's been a tough cookie of an NYPD detective, and didn't show much sign of doing anything other than wanting to arrest Reese, even after last week. Indeed, she set the CIA on to where Reese would be in 1.10.

Reese and Finch already had their hands full with four not one number coming up, and two down and out (as in dead) before their murders could be stopped. In addition, Reese's old CIA colleagues, who until recently thought Reese was dead, are now after him, too.

Carter's conversion was a memorable moment. It was the other shoe falling after last week's episode, and will profoundly change the series (for the good, as I've been saying). She's a human being, who feels guilty about setting Reese up, after he saved her life. With Reese shot by the CIA-hole, and making a desperate attempt to escape, it seems at first that only Finch will come to his rescue. Which he bravely does - against Reese's insistence that Finch should stay away - but it's not quite fast enough, and Carter gets the drop on both of them, before they can drive away. But-

Carter gives them a pass. Which means the duo now not only have Fusco (drolly called "fiasco" by one of the characters last night) but Carter ... and we have a much better show! Good midseason finale and course correction. Carter makes a more interesting friend than enemy.

See also Person of Interest of Interest ... Person of Interest 1.2: Reese and Finch ... Person of Interest 1.5: Potentials ... Person of Interest 1.7: Meets Flashpoint and The Usual Suspects ... Person of Interest 1.8: Widmore and Ben, At It Again ... Person of Interest 1.9: Evolution of a Series

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Hell on Wheels 1.6: Horse vs. Rail

2011-12-13T02:03:00.003-05:00

Well, the iron horse beat the flesh-and-blood kind in Hell on Wheels 1.6 last evening, as it always did in the long run - of any track and any history.   And in this episode, the victory of the stoked engine symbolized the victory of the Industrial Revolution, which was just beginning, over the Native Americans across the Plains.

The tribes, of course, had lost in the East well before the Industrial Revolution and the rails across America.   As Senator Crane helpfully tells Cheyenne Chief Many Horses, his people are living in "The Stone Age". True enough, but the Chief is more than wise enough not to go for Crane's generous offer of a reservation for his people.

Crane is not doing much better driving Durant in this episode. When the Swede - in many ways the most commanding character, following his own and no one else's lights (fine acting by Christopher Heyerdahl) - tells the Senator that Durant has embezzled over $100,000 of government supplied funds for the railroad, the Senator tries to get Durant to admit that, and therein get Durant under his thumb. Durant refuses, leaving Crane no option other than to leave with the threat of commencing charges against Durant when Crane gets back to Chicago.   As despicable as Durant often is, Crane is clearly worse, and the more dangerous villains in Hell on Wheels are in government not railroad building.   Whatever that says about the political predilections today of the show's creators, the Durant-Crane confrontation back in 1865 certainly leaves me rooting for Durant.

Durant does get one good piece of fortune - from Lily, who gives him her husband's surveys, that she was previously holding out in hopes of a big payout (which her slain husband eminently deserved). But her act was based on her realization of the importance of the railroad - to the country, to progress and civilization - which her husband certainly believed in, too.   And this, increasingly, will be what everyone believes in most - not just Durant for the money and the dream - but sooner or later Cullen and Elam, as well. The transcontinental railroad, after all, not exceeded the horse, but pulled into play a lot of visions of destiny along the way.

Hey, though I love driving and flying, the rails are still my favorite way to travel, and I'd jump on a bullet train across America tomorrow if Amtrak had one.

See also Hell on Wheels: Blood, Sweat, and Tears on the Track, and the Telegraph

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Boardwalk Empire Season 2 Finale: Stunner!

2011-12-12T00:34:00.001-05:00

I love being wrong in my predictions about how plots and seasons end on television - it's a large part of what makes television great.

And, yeah, did I get the end of this superb season of Boardwalk Empire - its second season - wrong.

I predicted that Nucky and Jimmy would have a rapprochement. Jimmy had no love for the weaklings in his would-be empire who were out to sink Nucky.   Jimmy would welcome Nucky's help in paying Manny back for the murder of Angela. All of that was was true. And yet-

As that seemed to be coming to fruition, Nucky inviting Jimmy to a place out in the rain with Manny waiting, bound, for the slaughter, Nucky kills Jimmy instead, in one of the all-time most stunning endings to a television season.

Before then, the ending was very Godfather-like - Nucky through his agents wrapping up all of his business after the charges against him are dismissed (the judge declares a "mistrial, without prejudice," which means the charges can be brought against Nucky again). But Jimmy certainly appeared to be one of the Nucky's agents - someone who, unlike Eli earlier in the season, had been the recipient of Nucky's forgiveness.

But it turns out, as Nucky says to Jimmy before he fires the second shot into Jimmy, that Nucky does not seek forgiveness.   Nor does he forgive.   Nucky didn't forgive Eli and he didn't forgive Jimmy. But Nucky knew he could control Eli more than Jimmy, that weak Eli was less of threat to him than was Jimmy.   If I were Eli, though, I wouldn't feel too confident about my future, either.

Nucky was probably telling the truth when he told Rothstein on the phone - I love seeing those old phones, hearing them ring - that he had a decision to make. I doubt he actually flipped a coin in the air, as Rothstein suggested - not Nucky's way.   But Nucky realized his future was safer with Manny and no Jimmy than vice versa.

The ending was still like the Godfather in other ways - Nucky smoothly lying to Margaret about his deeds. But Margaret is no Kay after she first married Michael.   So Margaret, though married now to Nucky, deeds the AC land to the Church, the land Nucky gave her for legal safekeeping before the trial. I can only imagine Nucky's response to this - but we'll have to wait until next year to find out.

Did Jimmy know what Nucky intended for him? I guess his coming unarmed to the meeting suggests that. Unable to protect his wife, disgusted with his mother, Jimmy had no reason to live - or, as he says to Nucky, he already died in the trenches overseas. But it's also a little hard to believe that Jimmy wouldn't have welcomed someone else's weapon to shoot Manny out in the rain, and wouldn't have wanted more time with his boy, and wouldn't have wanted to leave her in Gillian's control, especially given her predilections.

A great season indeed - and a shout-out to Dominic Chianese, Uncle Junior on The Sopranos, who played Leander in Boardwalk Empire.   I'm glad he survived the taking care of business of Nucky's enemies this time around.

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Dexter and Debra: Dexter 6.11

2011-12-11T21:57:00.001-05:00

Sometimes the next-to-last show of a season is even better than the finale. I was thinking that about Dexter 6.11, until the coming attractions to next week's finale.

But here's the astonishing thing about 6.11. I've been saying for a while that Dexter and Debra's relationship was going to change this season. But I thought that was because Debra was finally going to get a glimpse of Dex's dark passenger - i.e., see that he was a serial killer, however otherwise kind and wonderful. I didn't guess for a minute the way that their relationship has moved to being on the verge of changing tonight - changing to a physical couple, in all meanings of the phrase.

Deb dreamed about it, after a session with her shrink in which she (the shrink) suggested it.   Deb stalked out of the shrink's office at the very suggestion. But the shrink did make the point that Deb and Dex are not biological sister and brother (though I still think there could be a chance that Harry is really Dexter's father, too).   And Deb wouldn't afterward have dreamed that Dexter kissed her, if some deep part of her didn't really want that.

This is the second week in a row that some kind of strange, unexpected, incest sex has been going on or suggested on television. Dex are Deb were after all raised as sister and brother, even if they are not siblings biologically. And last week we saw Jimmy sleeping with his mother on Boardwalk Empire (I'll review the finale of that fine season later tonight).   What's the world of cable television coming to?   Well, I guess it's certainly more realistic, off-the-wall, and stunning than it's ever been.

If Dex and Deb become a couple, that could have profound consequences on the future of the series, in addition to the obvious reasons.   Deb could find out about Dex's killing ways, and not be obligated to testify against him, if she was his wife.

But that's getting ahead of the story, and is a probably at least a year or two off.   For next week, Dex still has to deal with Travis, who, according to the glimpses of next week's finale, has his eyes set on Harrison.   But, you've got it to hand it the writers for the Dexter-Debra thing: in many ways, it's a logical development.   Where else can either now go for true comfort, giving what both have gone through for the past six years?

See also Dexter Season 6 Sneak Preview Review ... Dexter 6.4: Two Numbers and Two Killers Equals? ... Dexter 6.5 and 6.6: Decisive Sam ... Dexter 6.7: The State of Nebraska ... Dexter 6.8: Is Gellar Really Real? .... Dexter 6.9: And Gellar Is ... ... Dexter's Take on Videogames in 6.10

And see also Dexter Season Five Sneak Preview Review ... Dexter 5.4: Dexter's Conscience ... Dexter 5.8 and Lumen ... Dexter 5.9: He's Getting Healthier ... Dexter 5.10: Monsters -Worse and Better ... Dexter 5.11: Sneak Preview with Spoilers ... Dexter Season 5 Finale: Behind the Curtain

And see also Dexter Season 4: Sneak Preview Review ... The Family Man on Dexter 4.5 ... Dexter on the Couch in 4.6 ... Dexter 4.7: 'He Can't Kill Bambi' ... Dexter 4.8: Great Mistakes ... 4.9: Trinity's Surprising Daughter ... 4.10: More than Trinity ... 4.11: The "Soulless, Anti-Family Schmuck" ... 4.12: Revenges and Recapitulations

See also reviews of Season 3: Season's Happy Endings? ... Double Surprise ... Psychotic Law vs. Sociopath Science ... The Bright, Elusive Butterfly of Dexter ... The True Nature of Miguel ... Si Se Puede on Dexter ... and Dexter 3: Sneak Preview Review

Reviews of Season 2: Dexter's Back: A Preview and Dexter Meets Heroes and 6. Dexter and De-Lila-h and 7. Best Line About Dexter - from Lila and 8. How Will Dexter Get Out of This? and The Plot Gets Tighter and Sharper and Dex, Doakes, and Harry and Deb's Belief Saves Dex and All's ... Well

See also about Season 1: First Place to Dexter

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The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Person of Interest 1.9: Evolution of the Series

2011-12-11T17:13:00.001-05:00

Well, Detective Carter finally gets more than an incidental, annoying role in Person of Interest 1.9 - she's the target, the number that comes up, and the episode gives us a pretty good story of Carter's background, who would want to kill her, and Reese and Finch's increasingly desperate moves to protect her.

Carter - like so many characters in law enforcement on television these days - has an Iraq back story. But in a nice feint, this turns out not to be source of her impending intersection with death.

Eias - Enrico Colantoni from Flashpoint - also may have a role, but I won't say anything more about that, other than it's good to see Colantoni again, and that Elias is definitely in for some kind of Keyser Soze continuing role in Person of Interest, as I mentioned in my review of his first appearance in Person of Interest.

Mark Margolis - who had a great role in the past season of Breaking Bad, and also put in an appearance of Law & Order: SVU a few weeks ago - was also on hand in this episode as Moretti, a memorable character.

But by far the most important aspect of Person of Interest 1.9 is how Reese's protection of Carter - of course she doesn't get killed - will change their relationship and thus the dynamics of the series. Carter gets that Reese was doing his utmost to make sure she wasn't taken out, but will this get her to give Reese and Finch a pass when their paths cross as Reese and Finch attempt to pull another person away from the jaws of death? Well, she's a cop. so she can't make life easy for a vigilante, or look the other way, completely, but at least the series is now on a much more interesting footing regarding Carter.

PS - A friend over on Facebook - documentary film maker David Sobelman - asked me to say, in my next review (which this is) what I thought of the introductory sequences in Person of Interest - you know, the people walking around with squares over the heads, to signify the Machine's view. I like Finch's voice-over, and the mosaic effect is ok, if a little obvious. Better than Dexter's (great show, but the intro is a little boring already), not as good as Boardwalk Empire's (great show, great intro), if that helps.

See also Person of Interest of Interest ... Person of Interest 1.2: Reese and Finch ... Person of Interest 1.5: Potentials ... Person of Interest 1.7: Meets Flashpoint and The Usual Suspects ... Person of Interest 1.8: Widmore and Ben, At It Again

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

More Lies from Mayor "I Have an Army" Bloomberg about OWS and the Press

2011-12-09T19:23:00.001-05:00

According to Mayor Michael "I Have an Army" Bloomberg, talking on radio this morning about the criticism he's received about preventing the press from covering his eviction of Occupy Wall Street protesters from Zuccotti Park, “We didn’t keep anybody from reporting, they just had to stand to the side while the police did their job."

And how, exactly, is a reporter supposed to do her or his job when the police prevent this reporter from seeing what other police are doing?

And why, if Bloomberg and the police "didn't keep anybody from reporting," did Bloomberg after the Zuccotti Park eviction order the NYPD - his "army" - to keep their hands off reporters covering these events?

The answer, as the New York Times reported, is that a "coalition" of media representatives pressured Bloomberg into saying the right thing.

He also complimented his army aka police for doing "a great job" in their evictions at Zuccotti. Is that why the coalition of media people complained? Is preventing reporters from doing their jobs, roughing them up in some cases, not to mention the unconstitutional eviction of the Park itself, a "great job"? Is Bloomberg already reneging on his order to police to leave reporters alone? Didn't take long.

Fortunately, cellphones in the hands of uncredentialed, every day people have shown America and the world the truth - people put in the hospital (one, a former Marine, in critical condition), tear-gassed, shoved up against a wall (an elderly woman) - all by police, who are supposed to protect not assualt law-abiding people.

I'll give Bloomberg this - so far, none of the worst offenses by police have happened in New York City. But pointing to a worse evil does not justify one not quite as bad, and Bloomberg by his talk and actions is well on the way to making New York, a city I was born in, lived all my life, and love, into a totalitarian town.

-Paul Levinson, PhD, Professor of Communication & Media Studies, Fordham University

my interview of NY Night News about Bloomberg, OWS, the press

Occupy Wall Street Chronicles, Part 1

Bones 7.5: "Sexy Vehicle"

2011-12-08T21:53:00.001-05:00

An extreme-weather Bones 7.5 - Bones' "first tornado," as she notes - with some great wind-blown shots, humor abounding, all topped off with Grandpa Z Z Top in town to take care of Angela and Hodgins' baby (all smiles, and delightful).

The "sexy vehicle" is Sweets' line, about a tornado-hunting truck, and what goes on inside it. They're looking for the killer of a guy who was not a victim of a storm, at least, not the weather kind. Booth is understandably protective - he doesn't want Bones accompanying him into tornado territory - and she of course doesn't want him regulating her life. I'm with Booth on this one - near a tornado is no place Bones should be - but she's irrepressible, shows up anyway, and helps work the case.

Angela and Hodgins would prefer Grandpa Top nowhere near their baby - they don't want him blowin' like a hurrciane and over-stimulating Michael with his music - but his beard has to be enjoyable for a baby to tug, and I've always found "Sharp Dressed Man" both energizing and soothing at the same time.* Angela and Hodgins see the light pretty soon, and go off to help with the tornadic case.

Bones and Booth never do come to a complete understanding, which is realistic, and good news for a long-term stable relationship (the only way that two strong people can constantly agree on everything is for one or the other to repress feelings, which is a prescription for problems). Bones is more annoyed that Booth lied to her than that he was so protective. Booth sincerely apologizes about the white lie in the tornado case (not letting her know he and Sweets were off on the trail for the tornado killer), but insists that he is going to continue to be protective. Bones accepts Booth's apology, but not necessarily his protectiveness. This is an adult, serious relationship, and continues to be a refreshing one-of-a-kind in television land.

See you in January with my review of the next Bones, and maybe before then with a review of another show on the dwindling winter screen (well, there's Dexter, Boardwalk Empire, and Hell on Wheels).

*And here are a few bars of Sharp Dressed Man with a pic of sexy vehicle ...

See also Bones 7.1: Almost Home Sweet Home ... Bones 7.2: The New Kid and the Fluke ... Bones 7.3: Lance Bond and Prince Charmington ... Bones 7.4: The Tush on the Xerox

And see also Bones 6.1: The Linchpin ... Bones 6.2: Hannah and her Prospects ... Bones 6.3 at the Jersey Shore, Yo, and Plymouth Rock ... Bones 6.4 Sans Hannah ... Bones 6.5: Shot and Pretty ... Bones 6.6: Accidental Relations ... Bones 6.7: Newman and "Death by Chocolate" ... Bones 6.8: Melted Bones ... Bones 6.9: Adelbert Ames, Jr. ... Bones 6.10: Reflections ... Bones 6.11: The End and the Beginning of a Mystery ... Bones 6.12 Meets Big Love ... Bones 6.13: The Marrying Kind ... Bones 6.14: Bones' Acting Ability ... Bones 6.15: "Lunch for the Palin Family" ... Bones 6.16: Stuck in an Elevator, Stuck in Times ... Bones 6.17: The 8th Pair of Feet ... Bones 6.18: The Wile E. Chupacabra ... Bones 6.19 Test Runs The Finder ... Bones 6.20: This Very Statement is a Lie ... Bones 6.21: Sensitive Bones ... Bones 6.22: Phoenix Love ... Bones Season 6 Finale: Beautiful

And see also Bones: Hilarity and Crime and Bones is Back For Season 5: What Is Love? and 5.2: Anonymous Donors and Pipes and 5.3: Bones in Amish Country and 5.4: Bones Meets Peyton Place and Desperate Housewives and Ancient Bones 5.5 and Bones 5.6: A Chicken in Every Viewer's Pot and Psychological Bones 5.7 and Bones 5.8: Booth's "Pops" and Bones 5.9 Meets Avatar and Videogamers ... Bad Santa, Heart-Warming Bones 5.10 ... Bones 5.11: Of UFOs, Bloggers, and Triangles ... Bones 5.12: A Famous Skeleton and Angela's Baby ... Love with Teeth on Bones 5.13 ... Faith vs. Science vs. Psychology in Bones 5.14 ... Page 187 in Bones 5.15 ... Bones 100: Two Deep Kisses and One Wild Relationship ... Bones 5.17: The Deadly Stars ... Bones Under Water in 5.18 ... Bones 5.19: Ergo Together ... Bones 5.20: Ergo Together ... Bones 5.21: The Rarity of Happy Endings ... Bones Season 5 Finale: Eye and Evolution

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Hell on Wheels: Blood, Sweat, and Tears on The Tracks, and the Telegraph

2011-12-07T23:01:00.001-05:00

Thought it was time that I rolled in with a review of Hell on the Wheels, which rolled out its 5th episode on AMC this past Sunday.

I gotta first say that AMC has been coming up with nothing but aces with its series. From Mad Men to Breaking Bad to The Walking Dead to The Killing and now Hell on Wheels, I'd say AMC has more top-notch series on the air than HBO and Showtime put together these days.

And Hell on Wheels is one of the best - which is to stay, every bit as good as those other four so far. Now readers of this blog will know how partial I am t to historical dramas - Rome (HBO), The Tudors (Showtime), Mad Men (AMC), The Borgias (Showtime), Boardwalk Empire (HBO) - and Hell on Wheels has carved out a niche all its own, in 1865, with the Civil War just over and Lincoln in his grave, as the opening episode tells us.

What I especially like about historical dramas is when they not only get the events but the technology and media of the time just right. Hell on Wheels is about the building of the transcontinental railroad in the U.S., so it's just bursting with technology, accurately portrayed, blood, sweat and tears at every turn.

The only long distance medium at hand in those days was the telegraph, whose poles went up alongside the tracks, and kept information and money, the lifebloods of the massive construction project, flowing. Colm Meaney puts in his best performance since Miles on Star Trek: The Next Generation (hey, another travel show) as the boss of the whole railroad operation - Thomas 'Doc' Durant - and one of my favorite parts of every episode is watching him bark messages ("STOP") to his hardworking telegraph operator. (For more on the history and early impact of the telegraph, see my 1997 book, The Soft Edge: A Natural History and Future of the Information Revolution.) The telegraph has been called The Victorian Internet, and I call it an early form of tweeting in New New Media (2009).

Dominique McElligott is beautiful and bright as Lily Bell, whose beloved husband, surveyor for the railroad, dies at Indian hands in the first episode. Durant certainly wants Lily - though he probably loves his railroad more - but it's likely just a matter of time before she gets together with Cullen Bohannan (Anson Mount), the other fine lead of the series, a former Confederate determined to kill all of the Yankees who killed his wife in their home.

There's just one of those Yankees left, at this point, and it will be interesting to see whether he remains elusive for the entire season or series, or meets his demise sooner. One of many interesting stories, subtle and powerful, that keep this railroad of a series and its viewers stoked.

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Boardwalk Empire 2.11: Gillian and Jimmy

2011-12-05T12:52:00.001-05:00

No show nails it to the wall, follows through to the max with its implications, as much as Boardwalk Empire this season.   There's been sexual tension between Jimmy and his mother - who looks young and hot enough for a man of any age to want to bed - from the very beginning.   It finally happened last night in Boardwalk Empire 2.11.

It happened in a flashback, which was the lion's share of the episode. Although it delayed our seeing Jimmy's response to the murder of Angela and her female lover - he spent most of the episode in shock in Princeton - the flashback filled in some of the crucial missing pieces of Jimmy's story.

Jimmy's an up-and-coming successful student at Princeton, where he meets Angela and gets her pregnant.   He might have had a happy life, but Gillian comes up from AC and flirts with his professor - who doesn't even imagine Gillian could be Jimmy's mother - and sleeps with him.   When Jimmy sees her walking out of the room, she feigns irritation at being taken advantage of. When Jimmy sees the professor, he confronts him and soon beats the prof to a pulp - more than enough to get him expelled. Later that evening, he mostly undresses and puts his drunken mother to bed. She's hammered but not passed out, and when he leans over to kiss her goodnight - actually, already on top of her - she pulls him into all-out sex.   Jimmy now has lots of reasons to want to get out this place and join the Army.

This puts Jimmy's later life - the life we've seen in these first two seasons of BE - into much clearer perspective.   Nucky not Gillian is the source of the good and decency in Jimmy's personality. Gillian brings out the worst in Jimmy, and is always urging him to do the worst things. Back in present time, Jimmy almost kills Gillian when he comes back to Atlantic City, and sees his son in Gillian's hands. But the Commodore saves Gillian - who then urges Jimmy to kill the Commodore, which he does, after he narrowly escapes being killed by the Commodore himself.

As for Nucky, he's finally beginning to see the truth about Margaret - she's holding him responsible for her daughter's polio (God has punished her for her sins).   At this point, Nucky would be better off without her and her guilt.

As I've said before, I see a re-alliance with Jimmy and Nucky in the future, maybe near future. Both men are low on true friends.   Nucky would certainly have no problem with Jimmy killing Doyle and Manny in retribution for Angela.   And Jimmy should have no problem with Nucky getting Lucky and Al out of his hair (but not killed, because history won't allow that).

But, first, Nucky has to deal with the charges against him. Van Alden's unmasking as a pyscho killer should help, and it will be good to see how this plays out in the season finale next week.

Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic

The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Dexter's Take on Video Games in 6.10

2011-12-05T02:36:00.001-05:00

Well, Dexter weighs in with his take on violent video games in episode 6.10 tonight - namely, Masuka's assistant's creation of a new video game where the player can be a real serial killer. Much to Dexter's discomfort, the list of serial killers includes the Bay Harbor Butcher - aka him, Dexter - real as can be in Dexter-land, and, for that reason alone, Dexter rips the assistant a new one for his video game. Even without the Bay Harbor Butcher, Dexter would no doubt have been nonplussed about the video game - serial killing, for him, is never a game.

Dexter also vents his rage at the part of him that is Harry, sick and tired of the advice that has gotten him almost nowhere this season. He's determined to get Travis all on his own, an understandable reaction to having been fooled by him - "he's mine" - though Travis' plan to kill not one but a whole bunch of people at the Miami Metro precinct may give Dexter no choice but to work with his team.

Debra's arc this season remains the most interesting to me. Jennifer Carpenter was on both Dexter and The Good Wife tonight from 9-10pm Eastern - giving new meaning to Edmund Carpenter's observation (no relation, he was a media anthropologist, a co-worker with Marshall McLuhan) in Oh! What a Blow that Phantom Gave Me! that only arch angels and people on television can be in more than one place at the same time. Carpenter (Edmund) was talking about the image on a television show being on millions of screens at the same time. But Carpenter (Jennifer) was on two different shows, and thus twice as many millions of screens at the same time.

Anyway, though it fun was to see Carpenter on The Good Wife, her character there was no comparison to the irrepressible Debra, who has the best foul mouth now on television. I also still think - and I have no advance knowledge of this - that Debra's en route to finally beginning to find out who Dexter really is.

We'll see in the next two episodes, which will conclude this season. In the meantime, the following are my views about violent video games, given in a debate with anti-video-game crusader Jack Thompson, on CNBC a few years ago.

See also Dexter Season 6 Sneak Preview Review ... Dexter 6.4: Two Numbers and Two Killers Equals? ... Dexter 6.5 and 6.6: Decisive Sam ... Dexter 6.7: The State of Nebraska ... Dexter 6.8: Is Gellar Really Real? .... Dexter 6.9: And Gellar Is ...

And see also Dexter Season Five Sneak Preview Review ... Dexter 5.4: Dexter's Conscience ... Dexter 5.8 and Lumen ... Dexter 5.9: He's Getting Healthier ... Dexter 5.10: Monsters -Worse and Better ... Dexter 5.11: Sneak Preview with Spoilers ... Dexter Season 5 Finale: Behind the Curtain

And see also Dexter Season 4: Sneak Preview Review ... The Family Man on Dexter 4.5 ... Dexter on the Couch in 4.6 ... Dexter 4.7: 'He Can't Kill Bambi' ... Dexter 4.8: Great Mistakes ... 4.9: Trinity's Surprising Daughter ... 4.10: More than Trinity ... 4.11: The "Soulless, Anti-Family Schmuck" ... 4.12: Revenges and Recapitulations

See also reviews of Season 3: Season's Happy Endings? ... Double Surprise ... Psychotic Law vs. Sociopath Science ... The Bright, Elusive Butterfly of Dexter ... The True Nature of Miguel ... Si Se Puede on Dexter ... and Dexter 3: Sneak Preview Review

Reviews of Season 2: Dexter's Back: A Preview and Dexter Meets Heroes and 6. Dexter and De-Lila-h and 7. Best Line About Dexter - from Lila and 8. How Will Dexter Get Out of This? and The Plot Gets Tighter and Sharper and Dex, Doakes, and Harry and Deb's Belief Saves Dex and All's ... Well

See also about Season 1: First Place to Dexter

Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic

The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Dexter's Sister on The Good Wife 3.10

2011-12-04T22:25:00.001-05:00

Television has come a long way from the days when a star could not be on more than one series in the same season.   Tonight, Dexter's sister - or, more precisely, Jennifer Carpenter, who plays Debra so well on Dexter - was not only on Dexter, but on The Good Wife, at exactly the same time. I'll review Dexter in my next post.

On The Good Wife 3.10, Carpenter plays a "Professor of English" who is fired by the Provost, who's accused by Alicia's firm of sexual harassment, pc-bigotry (the professor is a conservative), and religious bias (she's a fundamentalist Christian outspoken in her views against abortion).   The story line was factually inaccurate about what provosts of universities can do - they cannot summarily fire professors without faculty and dean concurrence, unless the prof violates the university code of conduct, and even then, the prof is entitled to some sort of hearing. And the mix of offenses was jumbled.   Only Michael Fox as Canning made this weak segment at least a little interesting, and then-

All hell broke lose with an unexpected twist that shook up the fundamental set-up of this season's Good Wife, and will likely change it forever more.   The creators of this episode deserve big kudos for not starting the episode with the apparent shocker, and instead lulling us into a sense of tedium and even irritation with the story line about the professor that made the shocker that much more of a punch in the solar plexus.

Alicia, on a break in the professor/provost arbitration proceedings, discovers that her daughter Grace has tried to call her 12 times. Alicia returns the call, gets no answer, and within seconds we're pitched into a frantic search for Grace.

Canning is truly helpful, Peter mobilizes the police, but it's Kalinda who finds Grace - being baptized. Grace's phone was in her back pocket - she ass-dialed her mother, happens to everyone. Alicia, Peter, and Grace hug - which Will, who has come over to Alicia's house to help, sees.   He thus doesn't protest when Alicia later tells him, in the office, that it's "just too much" for the two of them to continue with their affair.   The thought of what could have happened to Grace, when she was missing, has put her heart in keen touch with her family - including Peter.

Diane is of course happy, though Will doesn't correct her when she says he did the right thing to end it with Alicia. Kalinda asked Grace not to tell her mother that Kalinda found Grace, but you just know that sooner or later Alicia will find out, which means her relationship with Kalinda should be repaired.

And speaking of repair, how long with it now take for Peter and Alicia to get back together - in bed, and even as a fully married couple?

One person who's incorrigible in all this, though, is Canning. Once he learns that Grace is ok, he uses Alicia's absence to look through her papers, and gets evidence which wins him and his client the arbitration. (Poor Deb always has problems with legalities.) That was about the only good thing in the arbitration case, in an episode which was otherwise superb, and was especially superb because of the sudden contrast with the arbitration.

See also The Good Wife 3.1: Recusal and Rosh Hashanah ... The Good Wife: 3.2: Periwigs and Skype ... The Good Wife 3.7: Peter vs. Will

And see also The Good Wife Starts Second Season on CBS ... The Good Wife 2.2: Lou Dobbs, Joe Trippi, and Obama Girl ... The Good Wife 2.4: Surprise Candidate, Intimate Interpsonal Distance ... The Good Wife 2.9 Takes on Capital Punishment ... The Good Wife 2.16: Information Wars

Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic

The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

A Progressive Libertarian in the Occupy Wall Street Age

2011-12-03T12:39:00.001-05:00

It's been 3 and 1/2 years since I posted I Am a Progressive Libertarian, which received some 60+ comments, most in 2009 and 2010, most by people who argued that I wasn't really a libertarian, which I maintained I really was. The gist of my position is we need (a) less or no government in regulation of communication, technology, etc., and strict enforcement of Constitutional provisions of government's capacity to wage war, collect data on citizens, etc., (b) more government involvement in providing health care (I see protection from microbial parasites or disease as akin to protection from human invaders), and (c) payment for necessary government by taxing the super-rich (as a goal, no taxes from any person or business earning less than $1,000,000 per year, greatly increased taxes for all people and corporations earning more than that per year).

How does that position play in our Occupy Wall Street age?

1. The resurgence of direct democracy that is the mainspring of Occupy Wall Street is a straight-up staple of any libertarian philosophy.   Direct democracy intrinsically reduces government by replacing representatives of the people (in Congress, in state houses, and in city halls) with the people themselves as decision-makers.   See Occupy Wall Street, Direct Democracy, Social Media for more. The failure of Congress to reach an agreement on budgetary issues this year is further evidence of the decline of representative democracy. Referenda to recall or remove elected government officials, calls for a Constitutional Convention, and General Assemblies at Occupy sites are expressions of this new direct democracy. Note that The Tea Party, which often presents itself as a conservative libertarian movement, is explicitly focused on electing representatives, meaning that, unlike Occupy Wall Street, The Tea Party is not pursuing direct democracy (though both movements arise from a common refusal to accept business-as-usual from current officials and representatives in government).

2. Police brutality against protesters in Occupy Wall Street sites across America is precisely the kind of government trampling of communication - and abrogation of First Amendment rights to peaceably assembly - that the progressive libertarian seeks to prevent, restrain, punish, and stop.   Similarly, the obstruction of the press from covering the Occupy Wall Street eviction in New York by Mayor Michael "I Have an Army" Bloomberg is an outright violation of the freedom of press provision of the First Amendment.   The failure of President Obama to condemn all of these violations in the U.S., and of Governor Jerry Brown to do the same in California, is yet another example of the exhaustion of representative democracy in our digital/street age.

3. The 99% vs. 1% focus of Occupy Wall Street is exactly what I have in mind with the goal of no taxes for any person or business earning under a million dollars per year, and sharp increases in taxes for all earnings above one million dollars per year.   Bank of America's decision to rescind its plan to charge $5 a month for use of debit cards is a small but first explicit victory of the 99% over the 1%.

In sum, the progressive libertarian approach is not a call for yet another political party. It is, rather, a philosophy, a perspective, which I see as consonant with Occupy Wall Street and hope will ring a bell with those seeking less government in our political lives and more government responsiveness to our human needs, financed by the super-wealthy.   As a citizen, I intend to continue to shine an uncompromising light on the government's escalating violation of our First Amendment rights.

See also I Am a Progressive Libertarian and The Occupy Wall Street Chronicles, Part 1

-Paul Levinson, PhD
Professor of Communication and Media Studies
Fordham University

Terra Nova as Good Biological Science Fiction

2011-12-02T20:11:00.001-05:00

As Terra Nova chugs along to its season conclusion - perhaps series conclusion as well - it seems like a good time to assess what went wrong and right with the show.

Time travel is the central foundation of the series - people traveling from the future back to the prehistoric past. But as a continuing time travel story, replete with the paradoxes of time travel - if I travel to the past to make my current world better, and I make the change in the past which does make my current world better, then why in my better current world, where I was growing up, would I have wanted to travel back to the past in the first place - Terra Nova offered little. That general scenario was never Terra Nova's - the travel to the past is just to find a better life - but Terra Nova so far has not picked up on any other paradoxes, which are like fruit for the picking in time travel stories.

Dinosaurs ala Jurrasic Park are also an obvious mainstay of the series, and Terra Nova did pretty well on that score, though no great shakes. The smaller screens of even today's big screen television sets are just no match for dinosaurs on the big movie screen, and dinosaurs do even worse on iPads.

But one area in which Terra Nova has excelled is in its thoughtful treatment of the natural world in the past - not just special effected dinosaurs - or what is otherwise known as biological science fiction. A recent episode featured big insects outfitted with spy devices, an earlier episode had memories lost because of micro-organisms, and with Elisabeth's high tech medical knowledge playing a role in just about every show, the organic has really flourished in this series.

I admit to having a soft spot for biological science fiction - three of my novels pictured below delved into these themes (The Consciousness Plague about the loss of memory, and The Pixel Eye about squirrels outfitted with spying chips). And I indicated in a piece on the History Channel about the evolution of science fiction a few years ago that I expected biological science fiction to be the next wave (replacing physics as the leading science-fiction science).

If Terra Nova does get a chance to continue - which I hope it does - it would do well to more prominetly mine this rich vein of stories.

See also Terra Nova Debuts

Bones 7.4: The Tush on the Xerox

2011-12-01T22:12:00.001-05:00

It was great to see Ralph Waite back on Bones 7.4 as "Pops," Booth's grandfather Hank, in a sad, beautiful episode about the passing of Booth's father, and how Bones helps Booth comes to terms with it, in a way that brought tears to Booth's and certainly my eyes. But I'll get to that in a minute.

First, a shout-out to a nice toochas oyfen tish - or more precisely, tush on the xerox - which, while not solving the case, helps swing it in a enjoyable direction, a take-off of sorts on Murder on the Orient Express, in which an ensemble of suspects seem guilty (one of whom with the tush in question), but the killer turns out to be someone else.   It's been a fine Fall season for the toochas - what with Manny's primo pronunciation of the word over on Boardwalk Empire - and it was good to see Bones lend a hand.

But back to Booth's father. Bones is at first at a loss in how to how to help Booth deal with the loss of a father whom he hated in many ways and with good reason. Hank, in a powerful scene, tries to get Booth to see that Hank is grieving over the loss of his son - Booth's father - and the guilt Hank feels for the way that Booth's father turned out. This affects Booth, but just barely. He accepts a small box that his father left for him, but doesn't open it. It's left for Angela to give Bones the best advice, as she usually does - just draw on who you are, Angela says, you're the one Booth loves.

And Bones does just that.   Applying her knowledge of quantum physics, and its paradoxical view that all times - present, past, and future - exist simultaneously when the universe is looked at in a certain way, Bones gets Booth to see that the good times he had with his father (for they weren't all bad) are with him right now. That includes one of the best days of his life - when his father took him to a Phillies game - and Bones' quantum mechanical acumen is confirmed when Booth opens the box, and finds (among other meaningful things) that his father had saved those very two tickets to the baseball game. It had been an extraordinary day, a time worth never forgetting, for Booth's father, too.

As this was an extraordinary episode for Bones. Everything is better through the lens of Bones and Booth being together.   More vibrant, more keen, more quivering.   And making the loss of Booth's father the focus of that lens upped the payoff. Where and when else on television can you see quantum mechanics, controversial and ambiguous as a hard science, used to such clear and uplifting effect in a human relationship?   Only by Bones on Bones, and in a show in which the dimensions of an ass-bone, as Booth puts it, also play a significant role.

For another story about quantum mechanics and human relationships, see The Chronology Protection Case.

See also Bones 7.1: Almost Home Sweet Home ... Bones 7.2: The New Kid and the Fluke ... Bones 7.3: Lance Bond and Prince Charmington

And see also Bones 6.1: The Linchpin ... Bones 6.2: Hannah and her Prospects ... Bones 6.3 at the Jersey Shore, Yo, and Plymouth Rock ... Bones 6.4 Sans Hannah ... Bones 6.5: Shot and Pretty ... Bones 6.6: Accidental Relations ... Bones 6.7: Newman and "Death by Chocolate" ... Bones 6.8: Melted Bones ... Bones 6.9: Adelbert Ames, Jr. ... Bones 6.10: Reflections ... Bones 6.11: The End and the Beginning of a Mystery ... Bones 6.12 Meets Big Love ... Bones 6.13: The Marrying Kind ... Bones 6.14: Bones' Acting Ability ... Bones 6.15: "Lunch for the Palin Family" ... Bones 6.16: Stuck in an Elevator, Stuck in Times ... Bones 6.17: The 8th Pair of Feet ... Bones 6.18: The Wile E. Chupacabra ... Bones 6.19 Test Runs The Finder ... Bones 6.20: This Very Statement is a Lie ... Bones 6.21: Sensitive Bones ... Bones 6.22: Phoenix Love ... Bones Season 6 Finale: Beautiful

And see also Bones: Hilarity and Crime and Bones is Back For Season 5: What Is Love? and 5.2: Anonymous Donors and Pipes and 5.3: Bones in Amish Country and 5.4: Bones Meets Peyton Place and Desperate Housewives and Ancient Bones 5.5 and Bones 5.6: A Chicken in Every Viewer's Pot and Psychological Bones 5.7 and Bones 5.8: Booth's "Pops" and Bones 5.9 Meets Avatar and Videogamers ... Bad Santa, Heart-Warming Bones 5.10 ... Bones 5.11: Of UFOs, Bloggers, and Triangles ... Bones 5.12: A Famous Skeleton and Angela's Baby ... Love with Teeth on Bones 5.13 ... Faith vs. Science vs. Psychology in Bones 5.14 ... Page 187 in Bones 5.15 ... Bones 100: Two Deep Kisses and One Wild Relationship ... Bones 5.17: The Deadly Stars ... Bones Under Water in 5.18 ... Bones 5.19: Ergo Together ... Bones 5.20: Ergo Together ... Bones 5.21: The Rarity of Happy Endings ... Bones Season 5 Finale: Eye and Evolution

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Occupy Wall Street Chronicles, Part 1

2011-11-30T13:49:00.001-05:00

I offer ongoing commentary about Occupy Wall Street, September 27 through November 23, 2011. The commentary first appeared in 15 blog posts - dates, titles, and links to the text of the blog posts are listed below. Main themes include Occupy Wall Street as a resurgence of direct democracy, police violation of the First Amendment in their violence against protesters and the press, failure of the Obama administration to protect the rights of Occupy citizens attacked by munipalities, and much more. The audio podcast is about 55 minutes in length. It is intended as both analysis and eyewitness to one of the most important revolutions in human history. Further chronicles will appear here in subsequent months.

audio podcast: Occupy Wall Street Chronicles, Part 1

Sept 27, 2011 NYC Police Disgrace Themselves in Brutal Treatment of Wall Street Protesters
Oct 6, 2011 Advice to President Obama: Join Occupy Wall Street
Oct 16, 2011 Occupy Wall Street, Direct Democracy, Social Media: A Thumbnail History of Media and Politics Since Ancient Athens
Oct 21, 2011 Obama Should Call in National Guard to Restrain NYPD in Occupy Wall Street
Oct 26, 2011 No Expiration Date on First Amendment
Oct 29, 2011 Into the Mind of a Conservative Bully
Nov 2, 2011 Bank of America Bends to Will of the People
Nov 10, 2011 Open Letter to Governor Jerry Brown
Nov 13, 2011 Lame CBS Broadcasts Only First Hour of Republican Foreign Policy Debate
Nov 15, 2011 Mayor Bloomberg's Poor Understanding of the First Amendment
Nov 16, 2011 Violation of First Amendment to Cover Up Violation of First Amendment
Nov 20, 2011 What OWS Has Shown Us about Bloomberg, Jerry Brown, Obama
Nov 20, 2011 Jay Carney (and Obama) Have It All Wrong about Police and OWS
Nov 20, 2011 Failure of Budget Super-Committee Shows Further Decay of Representative Democracy
Nov 23, 2011 First Amendment Trampling Bloomberg Caves: NYPD Ordered to Let Press Do Its Job

My television interviews about OWS ... with Chuck Scarborough on NY Nightly News ... on FOX 5 NY ...

Relevant movie ... Tiffany Shlain's Connected moive

Blog posts since the audio podcast (to appear in Occupy Wall Street Chronicles, Part 2) -

16. Nov 25, 2011: Cairo and New York: A Tale of Two Related Cities
17. Nov 26, 2011: LA Woman Could Be Charged with 'Battery" for Pepper Spray - How About
UC-Davis Cops?
18. Nov 27, 2011: The Pike Pepper Spray Meme: Pros and Cons
19. Dec 3, 2011: A Progressive Libertarian in the Occupy Wall Street Age
20. Dec 9, 2011: More Lies from Mayor "I Have an Army" Bloomberg about OWS and the Press

The Walking Dead 2.7: Rick's Way vs. Shane's Way

2011-11-28T18:49:00.001-05:00

I've been letting the searing, superb Walking Dead mid-season finale - 2.7 - settle in. It was as powerful a presentation of two opposing ways to deal with a potentially deadly situation as ever I've seen on television.

On the one hand, Rick wants to cooperate in any way he can with Herschel, including not only protecting the walkers in the barn - whom Herschel considers not dead but sick (and therefore potentially curable) people - but bringing new walkers into the barn when they turn up. Rick is not happy about this at all. But he thinks he has no other choice. Lori and Carl want to stay on the farm. Lori is pregnant. Taking his family back out into the insane world out there is not acceptable to Rick.

On the other hand, Shane might want to stay, but certainly not with walkers in the barn. The very possibility of that is not only unacceptable, but insane to Shane's way of thinking. Shane's conversation with Lori only intensifies Shane's convictions that the walkers must be destroyed. Shane thinks he's the father of Lori's baby - which she does not really deny as a physical possibility - and he already has something of a fatherly relationship with Carl. Shane risked his own life and sacrificed Otis to save Karl.

So who's right? Although I had sympathy for Rick's approach, I have to side with Shane. The very process of taking the two new walkers back from the water to the barn shows how dangerous they are - all that has happen is Rick or Herschel get too close to one of them, get bitten, and game over.

And although I felt bad for the walkers, and Herschel, when Shane opened the barn and started shooting the zombies in the head as they staggered out the door, he made the right decision. Even Maggie nodded that it was ok for Glenn to join in the shooting.

And the heart-breaking denouement shows Rick pretty much agrees. Everyone is stunned when Sophia dead-walks out of the barn (I hadn't figured she was in the barn, but thought she'd be found a walker in the drugstore), but Rick has the sense and the self-control to shoot her in the head, before she bites any of his family and people he feels responsible for. He chose not to try to put Sophia in a harness and back in the barn.

It was a horrifying but instructive scene. If Shane had been convinced by Rick, and tried peaceful coexistence with the walkers in the barn, what would have happened when Carol discovered her daughter? Would she have been able to live with her daughter in the barn? How about the others?

I suppose Rick's original point of view - Herschel's - could be vindicated if it turns out there is some way out there, now or in the future, to bring the walkers back to full human life. But unless and until that happens, I think you have to give credit to Shane for doing the right thing. And even if a cure is discovered, Shane made the best decision with the information he had at the time.

... The Walking Dead 2.3: Shane and Otis ... The Walking Dead 2.4: What Happened at the Pharmacy ... The Walking Dead 2.7: Secrets Told

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The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Boardwalk Empire 2.10: Double Shot

2011-11-28T14:32:00.001-05:00

Boardwalk Empire 2.10 last night was all about the ending - shocking, slightly signaled, somewhat justified, and altogether what makes Boardwalk Empire such fine, pull-no-punches television.

The slight signaling occurred when Angela was unusually affectionate to Jimmy when he was about to leave for out of town business - this was a tip-off, in television narration, that something unusual would soon happen with Angela. I thought Angela would be leaving Jimmy, which she did, but not in the everyday sense of the term.

The somewhat justified part of the ending concerns Manny Horvitz. An assassin whom Manny knows was sent by Jimmy almost killed Manny last week. He thus has every reason to want to return the favor, but not with the "almost," to Jimmy. His showing up at Jimmy's house was no surprise. Neither was his finding Angela sleeping peacefully in bed.

But Louise walking out of the shower, and receiving Manny's gunshot before he realizes that his target is not Jimmy - that was jolting indeed, to us as well as Manny. So was his shooting Angela - stunning to us - and firing more bullets into both of them, to make sure they were dead.

He did this, presumably, to make sure Angela didn't go to the police about Manny shooting her lover. There was no need to kill Angela to keep this from Jimmy, whose man Mickey who went to Philadelphia will no doubt reveal what he told Manny. Or, if he doesn't, Jimmy will realize that anyway - even if weasel Mickey denies it. Or, if Manny killed Mickey, that would tell Jimmy the same.

But Munya aka Manny is one butcher not to mess with. And Jimmy brought this on himself - if you're going to aim at the prince, or even someone who has specials on assholes (Mickey's way with words), you better make sure you kill him.

So in less than a minute, Boardwalk Empire has been changed forever. Who will take care of Jimmy's son? (Speaking of whom - where was he during the shooting? I guess Angela had him staying with friends, to give her and Louise the house to themselves - but this could have been made a little more clear.) Jimmy's mother could have a bigger role - always welcome - but the Commodore may be recovering, and her attentions required there. And that's just the family side. What this will do to Jimmy professionally - what he'll do about Manny, and for that matter Lucky and Al, unhappy about the stall in the liquor flow, should make for riveting viewing. Could an re-alliance of necessity with Nucky be in the works?

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The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Dexter 6.9: And Gellar Is ...

2011-11-27T22:01:00.001-05:00

Gellar's status is finally established in Dexter 6.9.

Travis is on the floor of Gellar's Church.

Dexter leans over him, ascertians that Travis is still alive. Dexter hears a noise - like a generator kicking on.

Dexter goes down into the cellar below, opens a freezer, and finds ... Gellar. Or, to be more precise, Gellar's body. Gellar, dead, in the cellar. The generator or whatever made the noise presumably kicked on automatically.

What this means for Dexter is that he's been about as wrong as he's ever been. As I mentioned last week, it was more difficult than it might have been for Dexter to see the truth about Travis, since Dexter had first suspected Travis, and then came to believe that he had wrongly suspected Travis. It's hard to double back to where you started.

Has Dexter ever been this wrong? Not about someone who didn't really matter to him.

Is Dexter losing it? Well, it's certainly clear that all of business about God - what brother Sam has brought him to see, or Dexter thinks he sees - hasn't done his incisive hunting and killing instinct much good. He drove all the way to Nebraska, and though he was right to not kill Jonah, Dexter handled the whole matter not with his usual aplomb, and attracted Debra's suspicions for no good reason. And Dexter did this in response to Sam's death.

I don't think Travis will be much of a threat to Dexter, even though Travis now literally has the upper hand. I'm much more concerned about Deb finding out something really irreversible about her brother.

See also Dexter Season 6 Sneak Preview Review ... Dexter 6.4: Two Numbers and Two Killers Equals? ... Dexter 6.5 and 6.6: Decisive Sam ... Dexter 6.7: The State of Nebraska ... Dexter 6.8: Is Gellar Really Real?

And see also Dexter Season Five Sneak Preview Review ... Dexter 5.4: Dexter's Conscience ... Dexter 5.8 and Lumen ... Dexter 5.9: He's Getting Healthier ... Dexter 5.10: Monsters -Worse and Better ... Dexter 5.11: Sneak Preview with Spoilers ... Dexter Season 5 Finale: Behind the Curtain

And see also Dexter Season 4: Sneak Preview Review ... The Family Man on Dexter 4.5 ... Dexter on the Couch in 4.6 ... Dexter 4.7: 'He Can't Kill Bambi' ... Dexter 4.8: Great Mistakes ... 4.9: Trinity's Surprising Daughter ... 4.10: More than Trinity ... 4.11: The "Soulless, Anti-Family Schmuck" ... 4.12: Revenges and Recapitulations

See also reviews of Season 3: Season's Happy Endings? ... Double Surprise ... Psychotic Law vs. Sociopath Science ... The Bright, Elusive Butterfly of Dexter ... The True Nature of Miguel ... Si Se Puede on Dexter ... and Dexter 3: Sneak Preview Review

Reviews of Season 2: Dexter's Back: A Preview and Dexter Meets Heroes and 6. Dexter and De-Lila-h and 7. Best Line About Dexter - from Lila and 8. How Will Dexter Get Out of This? and The Plot Gets Tighter and Sharper and Dex, Doakes, and Harry and Deb's Belief Saves Dex and All's ... Well

See also about Season 1: First Place to Dexter

Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic

The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

The Pike Pepper Spray Meme: Pros and Cons

2011-11-27T11:02:00.001-05:00

As the Huffington Post noted last week, John Pike's pepper spraying of UC Davis students has become a massive meme of Internet ridicule. Jeanne Moos's CNN piece yesterday had some truly funny examples, my favorite probably being Pike as the cause of John Boehner's tears.

But I admit to having mixed emotions about this meme. On the one hand, Pike's act of casual depravity - pepper spraying non-violent students like "he was watering a garden," as Sharon Osbourne aptly put it - is deserving of all the cleansing ridicule the creative among us can bestow upon it. Humor is a good way of diffusing cultural pain, of sublimating the fury we feel at Pike's nonchalant cruelty, as per Freud.

On the other hand, maybe we don't want our anger sublimated all that much. Pike assaulted those students, plain and simple. He committed a crime that warrants not only conviction and punishment - as in jail - but maximum publicity in its raw form, to serve as a warning and reminder to other police officers to control themselves when they are attempting to control groups of people. All of that is no laughing matter.

Still, there is a healing quality in humor, in laughing at Pike's vent from hell aimed at everything from Mount Rushmore to the Beatles to Bambi. My other favorite is Pike showing up in prehistoric cave art - Pike as the demon of authoritarian violence which has beset our species from the beginning - and here's a shout-out to James McGrath's contribution (James' comment on my blog post here yesterday got me thinking about this).

Occupy Wall Street Chronicles, Part 1

LA Woman Could Be Charged with 'Battery" for Pepper Spray - How About UC-Davis Cops?

2011-11-26T17:43:00.001-05:00

I just heard that the woman who pepper sprayed shoppers in Los Angeles to get an edge on bargains could be charged with "battery". Seems right.

And what about the UC-Davis police who pepper sprayed non-violent students week before last?

No such justice.

At least, not so far.   The two cops who pepper sprayed the students, and the head of their UC-Davis police unit, have suspended with pay, pending investigation.

Are students in California worth less as human beings than shoppers, or are cops out there somewhere above the law?

If anything, the cops should be charged with a crime worse than what was brought against the pepper sprayer of shoppers. Police are (a) paid by taxpayers to (b) protect not attack law-abiding citizens.

If anyone should be suspended - without, not with, pay - it should be the officers who stood around, watched the two pepper-spraying cops, and did nothing.

I'd like to think that most police in America wouldn't stand by when their colleagues were breaking the law, and certainly wouldn't break the law by assaulting peaceful protesters themselves.   We do every good police officer a disservice by going easy on the rotten apples in uniform.

Governor Jerry Brown of California, is there any reason you're not saying this?   How about you, President Obama?

Occupy Wall Street Chronicles, Part 1

Cairo and New York City: A Tale of Two Related Cities

2011-11-25T14:37:00.001-05:00

With tensions on the rise in Cairo about the upcoming elections, with people out in Tahrir Square menaced by police and authorities, it is all to easy to smugly say thank goodness we don't have it that bad here in New York City, in the United States.

I admit to thinking something like that when the Arab Spring emerged some ten months ago. But I don't believe that now - not with cops in NYC arresting and roughing up protesters and members of the press, and cops out in California pepper-spraying and beating innocent students on campuses.

Hundreds of Egyptians died for freedom in the Arab Spring earlier this year, and more than 40 have been killed in the past week. So far, that has not happened in the United States. But although local authorities have made some moves to restrain the police here - as in Bloomberg's belated order that the NYPD must let the press do its job - there is still no Federal or across-the-board recognition from any part of the government in the United States that police here having been going much too too far in brutal attempts to control Occupiers.

The White House has publicly denounced what riot police are now doing in Egypt. Will a mainstream, old-media reporter ask President Obama why he doesn't do the same about out-of-control police in New York and California?

In the global village that Marshall McLuhan foresaw in the 1960s and which has come into reality this past year, Cairo and New York City and every place in which people have come out in the streets for freedom and economic justice are more alike than apart. It would be good if in the coming days and months this shared global community was not beset by violence from the authorities who represent the interests of an older world order which is cracking.

Occupy Wall Street Chronicles, Part 1

First Amendment Trampling Bloomberg Caves: NYPD Ordered to Let Press Do Its Job

2011-11-23T23:14:00.001-05:00

Progress: The New York Times reports that NYPD has been ordered to keep its hands of the press, and not prevent reporters from covering news as it did when the cops evacuated Zuccotti Park. In that shameful event, not only were the protesters unconstitutionally evicted (in violaton of the freedom to peaceably assemble clause of the First Amendment), and the media kept from covering the story (in violation of the freedom of press provision), but reporters were manhandled and arrested.

Bloomberg not only knew all about this, but the press was kept from Zuccotti that morning at his order. His first statement after the clearing said everything that happened in the Zuccotti eviction was his responsibility and no one else's. "Make no mistake," that statement said, "the final decision to act was mine." And when people and the media began complaining about the press being prevented from covering the eviction, Bloomberg hid behind the excuse of all totalitarian governments, saying it was for reporters' own safety - "to protect members of the press".

Fortunately, Bloomberg listened to reason when, according to the NY Times, "A coalition of news organizations ... sent a letter complaining about the treatment ." That's all to the good.

But Bloomberg should be impeached. There's no guarantee he won't do something like that again. New York City deserves a Mayor who has a less steep learning curve where the First Amendment is involved. The city that never sleeps needs a Mayor who gets First Amendment right the first time around.

my interview of NY Night News about Bloomberg, OWS, the press

Occupy Wall Street Chronicles, Part 1

Homeland 1.8: Surprises

2011-11-23T16:07:00.001-05:00

I last reviewed Homeland, Showtime's new domestic terrorist/spy series, after I'd previewed the first three episodes. I figured it was time to check in with a review again, especially in view of the excellent twists and surprises we've seen in the last few episodes of this thoughtful series.

The surprises begin when Carrie, seeing her investigation of Brody cut off, decides to pursue him personally.   This turns out to be literally, when she sleeps with him in the car in episode 1.6. This progresses in 1.7 to the best episode in the series.

Carrie takes Brody to her cabin. The two make love - and Carrie really enjoys it. In the afterglow of the next early morning, she slips up and apologizes to Brody for not having his favorite tea in the boondocks, Yukon Gold. This triggers Brody's realization that Carrie has been spying on him, and a no-holds-barred conversation (for Carrie) in which she confronts Brody about his being a terrorist.

Brody's explanation and behavior seemed believable - to Carrie and well as me - and the confirmation that Walker was checking out the premises near the airfield certainly confirm that Walker is up to no good. Brody, it seems, was also set up by Nazir - to believe Brody had killed Walker. And the secret Brody was keeping was not that he is on a mission of terror here in the homeland, but that he killed a fellow POW.

One part of Brody's explanation which struck me as a little week at the time - in episode 1.7 - is that he adopted Islam as the only mode of spiritual comfort available to him.   And at some point it also occurred to me that Brody as well as Walker could be here on a terrorist mission.

And that's pretty much the big reveal at the end of 1.8 - which was a good smack in the face, even though I somewhat saw it coming. Brody, apparently, was still lied to by Nazir, who managed to not only turn Walker but Brody, too. And that's why Brody's been praying with the Koran.

Carrie's job has now gotten much more difficult. Having doubted Brody - falsely, she thinks - and feeling bad about that, she will be that much more resistant to seeing that Brody is a terrorist, after all.   Perhaps Saul, unencumbered by such guilt and now fully focused on this case, can be of help. I suppose there's also still a chance that Brody may be some kind of triple agent - playing Nazir, not following him - but his comfort with the Koran, which he takes in private, argues strongly against that.

See also Homeland on Showtime

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