Big Love 5.5: Barb's Deal

Big Love 5.5 on HBO last night with packed with all sorts of important developments, but the most important concerned Barb, and her future with the family.

We last saw Barb - at the end of episode 5.4 - taking over as Bill's intern, after she dismisses the backstabbing (to Bill) and disrespectful (to Barb) original intern.   Who'd have thought Barb would end of continuing on the job, but that just what she does, as Bill assumes his elected post after being sworn in.  Barb has mixed feelings about the job, and that's about the best thing that happens to her in this episode.

Nikki soon comes to Bill with an excruciating situation:  In order to protect Cara Lynn, Nikki needs to adopt her.  But this requires a legal father, presumably Bill, except he's legally married to Barb.  The upshot:  Bill would have to divorce Barb and legally marry Nikki!

Now, the family would of course continue living just as they now do, but, even so, divorce would an unwelcome trauma to Bill, not to mention Barb.   But Bill's seriously considering it.  Barb doesn't reject it out outright, but she says she needs time to think about the whole situation.  Nikki of course is deeply pleased to have an occasion to move Barb and Bill apart, and get closer to Bill herself.

Barb has the additional complication - about as profound as it gets - of struggling with her welling belief that she can be a priest holder.  Bill has already ordained Ben, and may be even more upset about Barb's priest holder claims than he is about the possible divorce.

Bill thus is in the mold of many revolutionaries - they are conservative about anything not already in their revolutionary agenda.   But he realizes that going ahead with the divorce makes no sense.  And as for the priest holding-

But before that part of the drama is played out, Barb at last takes matters into her own hands, and tells Bill: we need to get divorced!

Is this purely a response to the Cara Lynn adoption, or is Barb saying more here - that she can't stay married to Bill, ultimately in any form, if he stands in the way of her fulfilling her priest-holder aspirations.

We shall see ...

See also Big Love's Back and North to Alaska ... Big Love 5.3: Grim Christmas

See also Big Love Season 4 Start with Casino, Psycho, and Birds ... Big Love 4.2: Politician or Prophet?  ... Big Love 4.3: Super-Compressed, Super-Fine ...  Big Love 4.4:  Bill and Don
... The Potential for Brilliance in Big Love 4.5 ... Big Love 4.6: Barb Ascendant ... Nearly Gunfight at the OK Corral for Big Love 4.7 ... Big Love Breakout Season 4 Finale

See also: Big Love, Season 3 ... 1. a 4th ... 2. Two Issues Resolved, Two Not So Much ... 6. Exquisite, Perfectly Played ... Big Love Season 3 Finale: Bigger Love ...

And from Season 2: 2: Oh, Happy Day, and Not ... 3: Sons and Mothers ... 4. Help Me, Rhonda ... 5. The Waitress and More... 6. Just Lust ... 7. Margene's Mama ... 8. Polygamy and Misgivings ... 9. Swing Vote Margene ... 10. Polygamy as the Ultimate Cool/Bad ... 11. Family in Crisis ... Big Love Season 2 Concludes

---

                 Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, eHarmony, eMusic, Mozy, Zazzle

---

---

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

CBS Mars Grammys with Bleeps, Part II

Well, CBS exceeded last year's regrettable performance of censoring artists on its Grammy Awards broadcast, earlier this evening bleeping (dead silencing) phrases from Arcade Fire, Dr. Dre, Eminem,  Cee Lo, and Lady Gaga - five artists in comparison to three (Lil Wayne, Eminem, Drake) bleeped last year.


It's getting to the point - as I mentioned in one of my Tweets during the Grammys broadcast - that CBS should start calling its show "Holes in the Music".   Afraid to stand up to the FCC and its unconstitutional fines on behalf of the rights of artists and writers to say what they please ("Congress shall make no law ... abridging freedom of speech"), CBS also deprives people in America and around the world the right to enjoy performances of their favorite artists.    CBS' cowardice is especially unfortunate in a world which is daily standing up for its freedom from government repression in memorable ways.


The Grammys need to move to another station, which is willing to let the music and words flow freely.


In the meantime, here are my Tweets pointing out the acts of censorship on CBS earlier this evening, in reverse order.   I look forward to the time that I can just Tweet about how much I'm enjoying the artists and their performances.

PaulLev Paul Levinson

And just for a good measure, Arcade Fire was censored. CBS should call its show "Holes in the Music"

3 hours ago 

PaulLev Paul Levinson

Dr. Dre just got the censorious treatment!

4 hours ago 

PaulLev Paul Levinson

Now Eminem censored twice ... the Grammys should be taken off CBS and moved to a station that respects artists and writers

4 hours ago 

PaulLev Paul Levinson

And now Cee Lo was apparently bleeped by the CBS censors ... what are they, five years old?

4 hours ago 

PaulLev Paul Levinson

CBS up to its old censoring, cowardly tricks: just "bleeped" Lady Gaga's acceptance speech!

Fringe 3.13: Alternate Fringe

Fringe 3.13 was so good, fired so well on so many cylinders, that I had a profusion of possible titles for this review.   I chose "Alternate Fringe" because it gives nothing away (no spoiler in the title) and encompasses the range of this story.

It's all in the alternate reality.  We learn a few more delicious differences between their world and ours.  In addition to mass dirigible flight, all of Boston was ambered 2004 (not just Harvard Yard in 1989), and avian flu killed millions.

This last difference gets to the nub of the alternate story:  Dr. Armand Silva was close to developing an insect cure - from a certain kind of beetle - when the natural host of the beetle, sheep, died out (another difference between their world and ours).  The only other host for the beetle are humans.  This sets Silva on a course of infecting humans,  which leads to their deaths, but helps him perfect the beetle as an antidote to the avian flu.  He wants above all else to be famous - remembered in history - like Salk, Crick and Watson, Pasteur, who were as famous over there as over here.   When Silva dies, at the end, he asks that his named be spelled correctly.  (Another exponent of that wonderful line, "I don't care what the newspapers say about me, as long as they spell my name right" - ironically, or appropriately, attributed to almost a dozen famous people.)

An alternate title for this review could have been "spell my name correctly".  But fame was not all this episode was about.  It was also the first time we see our alternate Fringe team at work on the cases that our Fringe team works on over here.  Previously, alt-Fringe was devoted to fighting our Fringe.

But Fringe 3.13 also had some great parallel-realities-at-war elements, too.  We see that Walternate has some redeeming human qualities.  He won't experiment on children.  This is likely because he still feels his loss of Peter so keenly.  It's now a double loss - when Peter as a boy was kidnapped by Walter, and when Peter an adult left of his own free will.

And there's Fauxlivia, who's never been more appealing.   Frank, her long time lover, returns from a stint in Texas which has kept them apart for far too long.  He wants to marry Fauxlivia, and proposes.  She's clearly been thinking of Peter, but suppresses that, and says yes.

But it turns out that she's pregnant - we find this out in a neat twist which had us thinking she was infected with Silva's (I spelled his name right) beetle.   And you know whose baby it is.

When Walternate finds out, he's thrilled, and promises he'll take good care of Olivia (that is, Fauxlivia in our parlance) and his grandson.  She'll of course continue on the team, but now Walternate has an inducement to get Peter back over to his reality: Peter's baby.

We learned last week from Sam that Peter will have to choose which Olivia to stay with, which will determine which of the realities will survive.  The chances of the alternate reality just got very much better - as the series seems to do with just about every new episode.   (Hey, I wonder what's been on television over there ... Felicity, Alias, Lost, and ?)

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
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, eHarmony, eMusic, Mozy, Zazzle

---

---

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 First Internet Revolution

It came close in Iran in the summer of 2009, but brutality and murder by the government there put it down.  It succeeded today in Egypt, because the government and military were enlightened enough to listen to the people. 

The peaceful revolution in Egypt was propelled and made possible by many things, but none so prominent as the Internet.   The three pillars of new new media, of consumers becoming producers of information - Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube - kept the world in constant touch with what was happening in Egypt, and allowed Egyptian protesters to keep in touch with one another.   The Egyptian government tried early on to shut down the Internet in its country, but it wisely decided to reinstate that access.  In so doing, the Egyptian government allowed its people to pave the way to its future.

And this future is more than Egypt's.   As Dylan Ratigan just pointed out at the end of his hour on MSNBC, no longer can governments and corporations control information as easily as boarding up a newspaper office or taking over a broadcast station.   In our new world, people can be fed with the sustenance of democracy more easily and efficiently than ever before.   And that sustenance is information.

The press led to the rise of democracy in the West in the Age of Reason.  Broadcasting has been a mixed blessing for freedom, because its centralized facilities are easily controlled by a central government.  But the Internet is far more potent in dissemination of information than newspapers.   And it stimulates great reporting from broadcasters - such as the reporting of Richard Engel from Tahrir Square today, translating a multitude of jubilant Egytpians on the spot, on MSNBC.   Edward R. Murrow would have been proud of him (Engel already won the Murrow Award for "outstanding achievements in electronic journalism").  It was really something to see.

The bells of freedom around the world - including in Iran - have just begun to ring.

Why Did the Media Get Egypt So Wrong Today?

So I was driving back from lunch in Manhattan to my class at Fordham up in the Bronx this afternoon, and I'm listening to Mubarak's speech, and it becomes clear after a while that he's not going to "stand down" (that phrase used non-stop today) after all.   Why did the media get this so wrong?

• Maybe Mubarak changed his mind.
• Maybe the Egyptian military, whose spokesman stood up in  Tahrir Square and told the protesters they would get everything they wanted, were pulling some kind of elaborate feat of disinformation to gauge the consequences.
• Maybe we should not give the media quite so much attention when they predict rather than report the news.

This last point, of course, isn't an explanation of why the media got Mubarak's resignation wrong, but it's very likely the truest statement above.   The media were right to report what the Egyptian military spokesman said.   But they did not need to spin that into a virtually certain conclusion that Mubarak would, in fact, be resigning.

Indeed, by that very action, the media provided a vivid reason for following what the Egyptian administration said to the Egyptian people today: stop paying so much attention to what you hear and see in the media.

That's generally very bad advice.   We and everyone in the world should be paying attention to what the media are saying - democracy is impossible without information.   But this means the media need to be more careful than they were today in their reporting.   When the fate of a nation hangs in the balance, the best course of action for news media is to show a little more restraint - less speculation, more facts.

Bones 6.13: The Marrying Kind

Well, I said in my review of last week's Bones that Booth would never put the ring on Hannah's finger, and I was right ... but, will that be enough to satisfy the Bones-Booth true believers?

How it started:  Sweets, drunk, decides he wants to get a ring for Daisy - he loves and wants to marry her.   Booth, almost as drunk, sitting next Sweets, decides to do the same for Hannah.   Sweets is actually doubly to blame for this.  He not only sets the example, but chides Booth when Sweets says he doesn't want to end up like this, that is, Booth's age and unmarried.

What happened in between: A good story about an Evel Knievel-type guy found dead on a rooftop.  Angela helps the most with some projections of what motorcycles can do, and the killer turns out the least likely among the dare devil bikers (which, if you watch even a moderate amount of television, makes him the most likely).

Back to the ring:  Sweets and Booth in a jewelry store.  Sweets first has second thoughts because the price of the rings is too high.  But what's really going on with Sweets is that the emotional price of marriage is not what he wants to commit to just now.   (Realizations when drunk are always suspect.)  Booth, however, has no such misgivings, and buys an eye-poppingly expensive ring for Hannah.  Just for good measure, it's non-returnable.  (What kind of store is this, anyway?)   Non-returnability is always a tip-off that the buyer will come to wish he or she could return it.

The denouement: Booth proposes to Hannah.  She's says no, she's "not the marrying kind".  (Girls just wanna have fun.)   After Hannah leaves, Booth throws the ring into the river or pool.  These leads to a superb cut from the diamond gleaming in the water to the lamplight outside of the tavern which Booth's walking into.   Bones soon joins him.

Coda: Booth feels terrible - he wanted in his life to marry three women, none wanted to marry him.  Bones - 2nd in this series - tries to comfort him.  Booth says he's happy to work with Bones as a partner, but nothing more.  If Bones can live with that, fine; if not, she can walk out the door.  Bones asks if those are the only two choices.   Booth says yes, just those two.  Bones logically says in that case she'll stay as Booth's partner, and she orders a drink.

My take:  Bones should have at least hugged Booth, to further comfort him, and that might have sped things up.   We certainly don't want to see Bones and Booth to go back to square one on this.   But there's really no way they can.  Bones now knows how she feels about Booth.  It's just a matter of time until they get together ... But, wait a minute, isn't that square one?   No, because Bones is more open now to being with Booth ...

As long as she's not involved with someone else ....


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

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

---

                 Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, eHarmony, eMusic, Mozy, Zazzle

---

---

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

V 2.5: Chess Game with Two-Edged Pieces Continues

Excellent V 2.5 last night, in which the deadly chess game continues between Visitors and humans, with a least one piece in the game wheeling around and playing for the other side.

The action centers around Anna's dedication of a new Concordia center in New York City, one of a world-wide network of centers dedicated to helping we humans find jobs in this troubled economy. (You notice how last year the Visitors were bringing us health care, whereas this year they say they're bringing us jobs? At least jobs are something both Democrats and Republications want to get for Americans in our reality, so painting this tack on the Visitors cannot be seen as an attack on just Obama, which the health care last year certainly could have been seen as doing, and I was less than thrilled about.)

Anyway, Anna of course cares no more about jobs than she did about our health - she's using Concordia as one of the vehicles along with the Red Sky to somehow impregnate human women with Visitor offspring. Knowing this on some level, and hating Anna for what she's doing to his daughter, Ryan brings Eli to a meeting with Erica, Jack, and Kyle, with a plan to at least temporarily combine the two groups, in order to assassinate Anna at the NY Concordia dedication.

Kyle of course immediately agrees, Jack of course does not - he cannot countenance the loss of innocent life - and Erica, with the swing vote, says no for the same reasons as Jack. But Anna tightens her grip on Tyler, Erica sees things differently, and oks the hit. Jack, now risking Vatican sanctions, is willing to play a part by stirring up people at the Concordia event to distract the FBI.

The plan would have worked - except that Ryan, the 5th columnist Visitor who set the assassination plan in motion, has a change of mind and warns Anna. He's concerned that Anna's death would deprive his daughter of Anna's healing "bliss".

Marcus goes up instead of Anna, and he's seriously wounded as Kyle manages to get off a pretty good shot, with Eli and Erica's help in an exciting moment. Marcus is now in critical condition, and I hope he lives, because I think in some ways he's a more interesting character than Anna.

And the tangled web on V continues to be pulled ever more tightly ...

See also:  V is Back and Badler ... V 2.2: Do Beings from Planets Have Souls? ... V 2.3 Meets 24 ... V 2.4 at Vatican and Mossad

And reviews of Season 1:  V Returns to TV ... V 1.2: The Effects and The Characters ... V 1.3: Multiple Twists and Lizard Visions ... V 1.4: Good Medicine for Television ... V's Back in 1.5 ... V 1.6: Floating Witches ... V 1.7: Ryan's Story ... V 1.8: Is Lisa Becoming 5th Column? ... V 1.9: Moral Complexity and NonStop Action ... V 1.11:  Lisa's Loyalties ... V 1.12: Complex Chess and Red Cloud

---

                 Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, eHarmony, eMusic, Mozy, Zazzle

---

---

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

NCIS 8.14: Kate

A superb NCIS 8.14 - close to my favorite of this season - that fired so well on so many cylinders that the murder story, which was excellent, was not even the best part.

But let's start with that.  A Naval Commander is found shot to death on his boat.  The first suspect, a Korean journalist, turns out not to really be a journalist, and not the Korean we thought he was.  He's actually North Korean.  A spy.  Not only that.  He's not the murderer, either.  And that's because ... no one is the murderer.  The Commander took his own life.  As I said, an excellent murder story - the kind in which there is no murder.

Now let's get to the Kate part.  She was killed at the end of Season Two, one of the astonishing, series-transforming deaths in television, right up there with the killing of Jack's wife at the end of the first season of 24 and the killing of Tommy's brother in Rescue Me.  But that was a long time ago in NCIS-land.  So what does Caitlin Todd have to do with tonight's episode?

The back story, which becomes the front story, features Dr. Rachel Cranston insisting with Vance that she be allowed to proceed with a psych evaluation of the team - which, of course, the team is none to happy about.   As Rachel interviews each member of the team, in between their investigation of the not-murder, two things began to strike me.

One, many of the answers Rachel received involved Kate.   Ziva talks about replacing Kate, Ducky thinks about Kate on his table as he talks to Rachel, DiNozzo speaks about his competition with and affection for Kate ... You get the picture.

Now, Kate's death did affect the team profoundly, so it makes sense that they talk about Kate ... but then something else hit me:  Rachel looks a lot like Kate.   Maybe this coincidence was what got the team to talk and think about Kate so much in their interviews.

Except ... it turns out to be no coincidence.  About halfway through the show, I said to my wife, hmm, I wonder if that could be Kate's sister?  And that's just who Rachel is.   In a great final scene with Gibbs, he realizes who she is (DiNozzo did, as well, a bit earlier), and that she sought to have this series of interviews with the team so she could get some closure on her sister's death, by finding out just how she fit in with the team, how they regarded her and her work for them.  Rachel's questions were designed to elicit information about Kate - that's why she figured so prominently in the answers Rachel received from the team.

This fine episode also had some great footage with Kate from the two first years, and maybe a new piece of footage of her talking to her sister (though it could have been Kate talking back then in the story, with Rachel put in now - or maybe we saw that whole scene back then, I can't recall).  What I do know for sure is that it was great to see Sasha Alexander back on NCIS, even just in clips from the past.  Caitlin Todd was a much better character than Maura Isles.

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

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

---

                 Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, eHarmony, eMusic, Mozy, Zazzle

---

---

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

Full Speed Ahead on High-Speed US Rail

Well, it's not quite yet up to speed, and if implemented will take at least 15-20 years to get going, but I was delighted to hear VP Joe Biden commit to development of high-speed rail across the US, in a speech in Philadelphia's 30th-Street Station, which is one of my favorite rail stations.

Among the advantages of high-speed rail across the US, to complement and as alternative to cars on the Interstate Highway System and planes in the sky, are

• rails bring you right to the center of most big cities, which cuts down of the wear and tear of getting to and from airports
• railways travel through all kinds of interesting countryside, some beautiful, and you can see it all out the window
• rail is just more comfortable than air travel - more room, you can easily stretch your legs, and there's just none of the anxiety of being in a plane in the sky
• the $53 billion plan announced by Biden will put lots of Americans to work, in reliable, long-lasting jobs

 Don't get me wrong.  I love jumping in my car and driving anywhere I please, any time I want.  I think flying from New York to London is a miracle.   But when it comes to distances too far to drive in a few hours, but not far enough to need to fly, there's just nothing like a train.   A high-speed rail system in the United States will improve the well-being of anyone other than a hermit.

Olbermann to Have Nightly Show on Current TV

Glad to see this report in the Huffington Post that Keith Olbermann will soon be on Current TV with a new, nightly news and commentary show.   As I noted to a reporter at Crain's New York yesterday, in an interview about AOL's takeover of the Huffington Post, big corporations are not the best foundations for free press and broadcast media.

Although there is no direct evidence that anyone at GE or Comcast was responsible for Olbermann leaving MSNBC, or that Viacom led to Dan Rather's leaving CBS over Docugate, it certainly is reasonable to suppose that Rather would have been more respected had William Paley still been in charge at CBS, and Olbermann would have done better with a more independent MSNBC.    To be clear, I'm not necessarily against corporate acquisitions, and certainly do not want the FCC or FTC to unconstitutionally interfere with such media business, but nor should we be blind to possible adverse consequences of such mergers.

In Olbermann's case, his no-holds-barred progressive commentary will no doubt find a better home on Current TV, with Al Gore and his uncompromising support of free speech at the helm.  As Gore said to the Huffington Post, "We believe at Current that every citizen has freedom of speech, and that freedom of speech includes the ability to donate to candidates of your choice."

In other words, Olbermann is not likely to be abruptly yanked off the air, as he was a few months back on MSNBC, or leave on almost no notice, as also happened on MSNBC, both of which actions redound to MSNBC's discredit.

In other words, Olbermann on Current TV is good for our democracy.

House 7.11: The Patient's Most Important Right

House came off a fine Superbowl commercial - probably the best of the crop - with one of the best episodes (7.11) of the season last night.  The set-up:  Cuddy's Yiddish mother Arlene (converted to Judaism, adopting its culture with a delightful vengeance, played by Candice Bergen) is admitted to Princeton Plainsboro with what could be a serious ailment.

We met Arlene in 7.9, when House drugged her to sleep over dinner to save him and Lisa from Arlene's conversation (which, from the viewer's point of view, was hilarious).   Now in the hospital, super-Jewish-mother Arlene, annoyed with House's manner, removes him from her case.  A good not brilliant doctor takes over.

As House later explains to Cuddy, he didn't want to risk Arlene dying, and Lisa thinking that House killed her mother every time she looked at him next to her in bed.   So House comes up with a plan: he'll continue treating Arlene, by substituting his own prescriptions for the doctor's, who thinks he's now treating Arlene.   This means that Foreman, Chase, Taub, and newcomer Martha Masters must do the actual substitutions - since Arlene would be suspicious of anything House tried to administer.  And as they all realize, this would be patently illegal - it could not only lose them their licenses but land them in jail.

It's great, as always, to see the different reactions of the team members, especially Martha's, who, as we've already seen, is more by-the-book, and respecting of a patient's rights, than even Foreman.  But House's position, that the patient's most important right is to live, is hard to deny, and the resolution of this story brings home, once again on House, the importance of going with what is medically best, regardless of standards and practices.


See also House and Cuddy on the Other Side in Season 7 Premiere ... House 7.2: House and Cuddy, Chapter 2 ... House 7.3: The Author and the White Lie ... House 7.9: The Vilda Chaya

And see also House Reborn in Season Six? ... 6.2: The Gang is Back and Fractured ... 6.3: The Saving Hitler Quandary ... 6.4: Diagnosis vs. Karma ... 6.5 Getting Better ... 6.6 House Around the Bases ... Four's a Crowd on House 6.7 ... House 6.8 and the Reverse of Flowers for Algernon ... House 6.9: Wilson ... House 6.10: Back in Business ... House 6.11: Making Amends, Mending Fences, and a Psychopath  ... House 6.12: The Progression to Mensch ... House 6.13: Cuddy's Perspective ... House Meets Blogger in 6.14 ... House 6.15: About Taub ... House 6.16: Revealing Couples ... House 6.17: Socrates on Steroids ... House 6.18: Open Marriage

---

                 Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, eHarmony, eMusic, Mozy, Zazzle

---

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

Fine Interview of Obama by O'Reilly

I said - actually Tweeted - this yesterday, about Bill O'Reilly's brief interview of Barack Obama before the Superbowl:  Obama did very well.  He came off as informed and articulate.  He gave clear answers to O'Reilly's tough questions.

I would say exactly the same about the longer segment of the interview just aired on The Factor.  Obama provided reasoned and astute answers to O'Reilly's series of questions ranging from Afghanistan and Iraq to why Obama hasn't been doing more about the economy. Obama's answer on the economy was instructive - the President cited some of the many things he's in fact been doing.

Of special significance to anyone who enjoys media analysis - which would include me - was Obama's response to O'Reilly's question about what the President thinks of Fox News.   Obama allowed that although he (correctly) saw Fox as a news operation that disagreed with his policies, Fox was nonetheless a legitimate news station.

Unsurprisingly, the interview has received fire from both sides.  O'Reilly read an email from a conservative who wondered by O'Reilly would interview such a "loser".  O'Reilly's response, with a smile - because Obama's the most powerful person in the world - was graceful and of course well-taken.  Meanwhile, Lawrence O'Donnell was busy denouncing O'Reilly and the interview over on MSNBC, aggrieved at the number of times O'Reilly interrupted the President.  I had no trouble at all following the conversation.

Indeed, I think all of the interview's critics, from right and left, were busy watching the scripts in their own heads than the interview on the screen.   Kudos to both President Obama and Bill O'Reilly for bringing us an engaging presentation of the President's policies.

Fringe 3.12: The Wrong Coffee

Fringe 3.12 was ostensibly about a bone-dissolving compound - as in dissolving the bones seconds after anyone breathes it in, leaving the victim just about instantly filleted.  On a deeper level, the episode was about the few satisfactions and many perils of mental telepathy - that is, how difficult a normal life is if you can read everyone's minds - with Fringe taking a page from True Blood.   But the deepest and most long-range significant level of Fringe 3.12 was about who Peter really loves - Olivia or Fauxlivia - and why that is so important not only to Olivia but our universe.

Fauxlivia is still on and in Peter's mind, whatever he may say to Olivia to the contrary.  We see this early on in the story, when Peter brings Olivia a coffee with milk - she likes her coffee black, with sugar, and the realization that Fauxlivia liked her coffee with milk certainly is not sweet to Olivia.  The telepath - someone whom Walter kicked out of the experimental children's group (of which Olivia was a part) because he didn't want anyone to read his mind and know he had kidnapped Peter - reads Peter's mind, writes down what he finds, and gives the paper to Olivia.  She reads that Peter still has feelings for her alternate self.

This a tough situation for Olivia, to say the least.  She feels she has been damaged by the experimentation done upon her as a child.   She has trouble expressing her feelings, and is more withdrawn than Fauxlivia, who smiles and acts more easily.   So who will Peter choose?  Good, slightly damaged Olivia, or bad, totally together and more vibrant Fauxlivia?   And will it help Olivia's cause if she confronts Peter about his mind-read feelings?

But Fringe raises the ante another notch, with the revelation - from the guy in the bowling alley to Nina - that Peter's choice of Olivia vs. Fauxlivia will do much more than determine Olivia's happiness.  It will determine which of the two universes will survive.

A nice profound development, in an episode which did have at least one cool touch and one hilarious bit of secret history.  The cool touch with was the book on the shelf by Dr. Spock, as Nina looked at pictures of her and William Bell.   And the secret history?   Walter says that Pat Nixon came on to him.   Can't get much better in cracked secret history than that.

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

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, eHarmony, eMusic, Mozy, Zazzle

---

---

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

Bones 6.12 Meets Big Love

So far on Big Love, Bill Henrickson has stirred up some mighty tensions, even fury, with his three wives, but he's still alive.   The man with three wives on Bones 6.12 is not so lucky.  But, then again, Bones is about bones, and usually with little or no flesh upon then, so the state of the polygamous husband should be no surprise.

The situation is indeed more extreme on Bones, because the sister wives were sisters - siblings - before they were married to the same man, and this makes the killer a logically deducible choice.  What one man would be the most aggrieved by another man marrying three sisters while all are alive?

The conflicts in polygamous marriages - at least, according to Bones and Big Love - often come from the husband favoring, or being perceived as favoring, one of his wives above the others.  This leads to Booth discoursing to Bones that a man with multiple loves always loves one the best.   How would he know that, Bones asks?  He just knows, Booth says, looking across the room at Cam and the guy she is realizing she loves, and then Booth quickly looks at Bones, but she doesn't quite see it.  Good news, especially following the meaningful gaze Booth gave Bones across the street last week, but then what's Booth doing picking out a ring for Hannah in those coming attractions for next week?

My prediction:  he'll never put that ring on Hannah's finger.   Maybe, if Bones and Hannah and Booth were polygamous, he might.   But Bones after all is not Big Love.   Which means there might be plenty of copulation - which Bones had plenty of good scholarly riffs on tonight - but ultimately only one woman for one man.

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

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

---

                 Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, eHarmony, eMusic, Mozy, Zazzle

---

---

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

MSNBC Deprived Us of Olbermann's Voice about Egypt

MSNBC has been doing a fine job covering and responding to the revolution in Egypt - Lawrence O'Donnel and Rachel Maddow in particular, and especially eloquent, as always.  But something has been misisng from MSNBC's nightly commentary - a voice of outrage, verging on inchoate but searingly lucid.  A voice that could take our government to task for not supporting the people of Egypt over the non-democratic President of Egypt more strongly.  That voice would be Keith Olbermann's.

By in effect firing Olbermann last week - I don't care what it's officially called - MSNBC silenced a voice and the insight and passion behind it, at one of the most world-wide revolutionary times in recent history.   The world is watching what Obama does, but there's no insistent voice, sometimes rude, but unafraid to take the unambiguous moral high ground, no progressive voice like to shout the truth to our President.

MSBNC could not have known this would happen in Egypt at the time they let Olbermann go, but this is what happens when petty corporate bureaucrats tell us what we can hear and what we cannot.  Today, in Egypt, pro-Mubarak thugs attacked journalists.   MSNBC used no physical force or threat, but is what they did to Olbermann ultimately any different?

NCIS 8.13: The Wife or the Girlfriend?

NCIS 8.13 presented a good classic whodunit last night, regarding the killer of a Marine, pretty badly stabbed as well as murdered, and discovered by a dog.  The victim was a brutal guy who beat his wife, also a Marine (Gunnery Sergeant Georgia Wooten), and he had a pregnant girlfriend (Jancey).   Each had reason to be jealous and hate the victim, Sgt. Travis Wooten.  The question is who did the killing?


Georgia Wooten is played by Christina Cox, who played an heroic Secret Service agent on 24 last year.   She's tough and vulnerable at the same time, an appealing combination for this kind of character.  Jancey, played by new comer Olivia Taylor Dudley, is mostly vulnerable but appealing, too.  She and Travis were fighting at the bar, and she claims she didn't know he was married.   Two women with strong motives for murder.

Gibbs the master interviewer questions them both.  Evidence comes in in an alternating pattern that implicates one, then the other.   And the killer is?   Neither, as one would expect in a good detective story.

Meanwhile, McGee becomes the McVictim of an identity theft, and the thief is not DiNozzo, whose cinematic riff of the night comes from Apocalypse Now, in this case, "I love the smell of fresh felt in the morning."

Now, this is the second time I've heard something about a fabric beginning with f on a television drama in the past two-three days.  The first was in the finale of Downton Abbey on PBS on Sunday, where someone said something about "flanneling" another character, signifying (this is 1914 in England) what we mean when talking about snowing someone.   Pretty cool, huh?  Ok, I won't flannel you, I'll likely be reviewing the next episode of NCIS before Downton Abbey, but I'll try to review Downton Abbey here soon, too.

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

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

---

                 Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, eHarmony, eMusic, Mozy, Zazzle

---

---

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 

V 2.4 at the Vatican and Mossad

V 2.4 continues to move into risky, controversial territory, with an episode that brings Anna to the Vatican, and just for good measure, thrusts Erica into an uneasy alliance with a former Mossad (Israeli intelligence) agent.

The Vatican trip continues Anna's quest to learn all she can about the human soul, so she can exterminate it, and with it the presumed source of human emotion, which she is afraid will infect her.  In round one of her visit, the College of Cardinals rejects Anna's request that the Vatican restrain priests like Father Jack, who has been speaking out against the Visitors.   In round two, Anna blackmails the College into supporting her request, by threatening to dazzle the human species with daily or more often "miracles" such as blue energy.   Not a very flattering portrayal of the Church, thus far.

But there is a priest at the Vatican who see things differently - turns out he's a Visitor from a few years back, tasked by Diana to find out about the human soul, and what he's discovered is that the soul could be the most wonderful gift that humans could give to the Visitors.   Rather than attempting to eradicate the soul, the Visitors should nurture it in humans and do what they can to cultivate it in themselves.   Anna has no intention of doing this, and plans to torture the Visitor priest into telling her all he knows about human beings.  But before she has a chance to do this, Diane mercy-him kills him, to keep him out of Anna's hands.   So the contest between Anna and her mother Diana continues, with Diana  becoming an ever more sympathetic character.  I see an alliance between Diana and her grand daughter Lisa in the not-too-distant future.

Meanwhile, Tyler and Visitor-loyal humans trash Father Jack's Church while he's on a mission upstate.  This provided me with an important piece of knowledge: the older priest, Father Travis, is almost certainly not a Visitor.  I was a little concerned, last season, that he was.

Father Jack's mission in upstate New York brings him into contact with Eli Cohn (played by Oded Fehr  of Sleeper Cell), the former Mossad agent.   Erica and the rest of our good guys are there, and the result is an alliance, for the time being, which will enable Erica to account for Malik's disappearance.  But not all's well that ends well here, especially with Erica now partnered with Chris Bolling (played by Jay Karnes of The Shield), on assignment to find out exactly what Erica's up to.

V continues to keep the pot simmering with stories that reach ever further into the diverse paths of human existence.

See also:  V is Back and Badler ... V 2.2: Do Beings from Planets Have Souls? ... V 2.3 Meets 24

And reviews of Season 1:  V Returns to TV ... V 1.2: The Effects and The Characters ... V 1.3: Multiple Twists and Lizard Visions ... V 1.4: Good Medicine for Television ... V's Back in 1.5 ... V 1.6: Floating Witches ... V 1.7: Ryan's Story ... V 1.8: Is Lisa Becoming 5th Column? ... V 1.9: Moral Complexity and NonStop Action ... V 1.11:  Lisa's Loyalties ... V 1.12: Complex Chess and Red Cloud

---

                 Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, eHarmony, eMusic, Mozy, Zazzle

---

---

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

Does This Guy Sound Like Early Beatles or What?

I bumped into this video by Paul Messis on George Cannon's Way off the Grid Radio page. I was drawn to it, because I wrote a song, years ago, also called "Time Will Tell".

But Paul Messis's song is completely different and a lot better. And his sound - especially that base guitar and harmonica - is about as early Beatles sounding as any group I've ever heard, other than the Beatles.

The video, by Glenn Prangnell, is also just perfect. Sweet, cool, sharp, well performed, well cut, and Katie Herbert and Samira Larouci are irresistible complements to Paul in their mod parts.

Yeah!  And this is from August 2010!



PS - George Cannon just told me that Paul Messis told him that he was going for "A Hard Day's Night" feel in the vid, which was all his idea. Great idea, smartly realized!