Open Letter to CNBC about Taking Down Post-Debate Poll Won by Ron Paul

To: Allen Wastler
Managing Editor, CNBC.com

From: Paul Levinson, PhD
Professor & Chair, Department of Communication and Media Studies
Fordham University, NYC

re: your An Open Letter to the Ron Paul Faithful of October 11, in which you explain why you took down your poll, conducted after the Michigan Republican Presidential debate, and featured on your web site

1. You invite comments and response to your Open Letter, and provide an e-mail address. Since your action is, in my view, a matter of great public concern, I am not only e-mailing this response to you, but publishing it in my InfiniteRegress.tv blog.

2. I am not one of the "Ron Paul Faithful". Although I greatly admire many of his positions, especially his support of our Constitution, I have not yet endorsed any candidate, and am indeed on record as urging Americans to support the best candidate in each of our two main parties, so as to give us the best choice in the general election. You are welcome to see my How About We Look for the Best Candidate in =Both= Parties for details.

2a. I am writing to you, therefore, as a professor, scholar, and observer of media and politics, with a keen interest in seeing the press serve our democracy as Thomas Jefferson and our Founding Fathers intended - that is, by providing us with the truth wherever possible.

3. Let me now address the issues you raise in your Open Letter:

You write that "these Internet polls are admittedly unscientific and subject to hacking".

True, but the "scientific" polls - the ones that rely on random sampling - are subject to error, as well. See, for example, the famous poll that predicted that FDR would lose the 1936 Presidential election.

Also, while the Internet may indeed be subject to hacking, do you have any proof that hacking took place in this case? You further say that your "poll was either hacked or the target of a campaign". Again, your proof?

You further say that "[t]he next day, our email basked was flooded with Ron Paul support messages. And the computer logs showed the poll had been hit with traffic from Ron Paul chat sites. I learned other Internet polls that night had been hit in similar fashion."

None of the above actions are "hacking". You owe Ron Paul's supporters and the American people an apology.

Indeed, the fact that the polls reflected votes "from Ron Paul chat sites" does not even support your conclusion that your poll was "the target of a campaign" - conceivably some of the votes that came from the sites could have come from people who had come to the sites, impressed by what they saw of Ron Paul in the debate, and then went on to cast their votes in your poll. Does that sound to you like "a campaign"?

You further say that Ron Paul's supporters, presumably including anyone who voted for Ron Paul in your poll, "also ruined the purpose of the poll. It was no longer an honest 'show of hands' -- it suddenly was a platform for beating the Ron Paul drum."

What do you suppose influences public opinion in any election campaign? What is your definition of an "honest show of hands"? Is a potential voter who expresses support for a candidate, because that potential voter already liked that candidate prior to a given debate, somehow not "honest"? If what you wanted to measure in your poll was how previously undecided people felt about the performance of candidates in the debate, why did you not say so in your poll, and devise some way of measuring this? (For example, trying to identify a sample of undecided voters beforehand, and then asking them for their preferences after the debate?)

Instead, you conclude your Open Letter with the following: "When a well-organized and committed 'few' can throw the results of a system meant to reflect the sentiments of 'the many,' I get a little worried. I'd take it down again."

Again, you offer no evidence whatsoever that anything in the poll was "thrown," and you similarly offer no evidence about how "few" of the "many" were composed of Ron Paul supporters.

Indeed, you offer no evidence of anything, really - just supposition and innuendo - and that gets me more than a little worried, about your competence and capacity to be Managing Editor of CNBC.com's website.

If something needs to be "taken down," it may well be your position as Managing Editor. I call upon you to either apologize to the American people, or step down.

CNN's Jack Cafferty on Ron Paul: Excellent Piece

My friend Matt Caverhill brought this to my attention ...



I've been watching Jack Cafferty since he shared the WNBC-TV nightly news spot with Chuck Scarborough here in New York City - decades ago. Chuck continues to hold down the fort in New York. Jack has gone on to become a trenchant, curmudgeonly, valuable national commentator.

He's at his incisive best in this piece. Asking plain but profound questions. What if we brought the troops home from Korea? They've been there 50 years ... The questions that Ron Paul is asking.

As I indicated in my assessment of the five mainstream television networks a few weeks ago, MSNBC and CNN have by and large done the least wrong to Ron Paul and the democratic process, and have been the most reasoned in their coverage. Indeed, Chris Matthews, Tucker Carlson, and Pat Buchanan have each indicated some kind of support for Ron Paul and his positions.

It's heartening to see Jack Cafferty doing the same, in his inimitable way, on CNN.

Maybe the mainstream media are beginning to come around. Maybe it's not just the Internet any more...

Heroes Season 2 Episode 3: Hanging Questions

This Monday's episode (3) of Heroes on NBC was in many ways excellent. Good to see Claire getting a super-powered boyfriend, Sylar back in his evil business (if not recuperated in his evil powers), Nikki back in any kind of business (and I don't believe D. L.'s dead), and Hiro and Peter moving along well in their (separate) new stories.

I especially enjoyed Hiro's messages to Ando from the past, and the danger that Mr. Bennet now seems to be...

But I'd like to see a few more answers, already, about how Peter and Nathan survived that explosion in the sky. For that matter, even Sylar's survival - "scraped off the street" by illusion-casting Candice - is in want of more explanation.

Presumably this information will be revealed as the series proceeds. But I'd enjoy the excellent new stories more if I knew a little more about how characters who are supposed to be dead ended up alive and (more or less) well.


3 minute podcast of this review

Review of other Season 2 Heroes: Episode 1 ... 2 ... 4 ... 7 ... 9. How Immutable Are Fate and Isaac's Paintings? ... 10. Penultimate in Fall ... 11. My Predictions Last Week Were Right!

---

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

Evolution of Science Fiction ... my 6-minute tour...

My infamous 6-minute tour on the history and evolution of science ... from The History Channel's 2002 Time Machine series...

From Mary Shelley through H. G. Wells, George Melies, Hugo Gernsback, Ray Bradbury, William Gibson ... I comment on all of them and more ... scientific romances, bug-eyed monsters, cyberpunk, and bio-tech science fiction ... with some really cool pictures as accompaniment...

Californication Continues: 9: The Manuscript

I gave this review of Californication, Episode 9, a title, because that was its central theme: the manuscript. Or, more precisely, the manuscript for a new short novel - or, as Hank called it, a "novella" (I love that term - and that length manuscript - one of my most successful publications was a novella - "Loose Ends," a time travel story, that was published in Analog Magazine in the late 1990s.)*

But back to Hank: he's written a novella while in New York. He had gone there for his father's funeral, after a great night of intimacy in all ways with Karen, and stayed on in New York to do some writing. Karen had inspired him.

Back in L.A., Hank wants Karen to read it. He's always counted on her reading of his work. He also wants her to marry him.

Charlie's thrilled about the new manuscript - money, money, money. Speaking of which, Hank gets a big unexpected royalty check for the movie made from his novel....

Mia's thrilled about the manuscript, too, and wants to read it. (Hank lets us know at some point that it's about a guy who sleeps with an under-age woman, but doesn't know about that at time ... hmmm ... Hank writes from what he knows.)

So everyone's pretty happy at this point - a rarity in Californication.

But not Karen, who, it seems, wants to stay with that stiff of a fiance, after all (I don't really believe her).

Things even turn worse, suddenly, for Hank .... but there's a great surprise ending, and, I won't give it away, except to say, it's all about that manuscript....

Great show tonight.
=============================================================

*More about Loose Ends

See reviews of other Californication episodes: Californication Going On Mondays ... 2 ... 3 ... 4 ... 5 ... 6 ... 7 ... 8 ... 10 ... 11: Pivitol Mia ... 12: Californication Comes ... To a Season's End


5 minute podcast review of Californication

---

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

Republicans on Economics and More on CNBC: Thompson, Romney, Giuliani and Ron Paul

Here are some of the highlights and lowlights that struck me in the Republican Presidential debate which concluded a few minutes ago in Michigan. It was on CNBC, and will be repeated tonight at 9pm on MSNBC:

Fred Thompson: started out almost comatose, and then settled in. But he's fuzzy on most of the issues, and looks like Dwight David Eisenhower on a bad day. His best moment was responding to a pretty good crack by Romney, about the Republican debates being like Law and Order - a big cast, goes on forever, and Fred Thompson comes in at the end. Thompson smiled and said, not bad, and I thought I was going to be the best actor up here.

Mitt Romney: his response to whether the President needs to consult Congress before going to war - Romney said he'd leave that to the attorneys - was one of the lowest points, not only in this debate, but in American history, period. (See Ron Paul's response to this, below.)

Rudy Giuliani: his response about whether the Internet required FCC-like cultural policing was troubling, to say the least. He's not in favor of creating new government agencies, but he might look into it, if the problem doesn't subside. But, what's the problem? No one disputes the need of police to go after predators, on and off line. The question was about the "cultural" problems of the Internet (porn?) and what should be done about that. A better answer would have been: "The FCC is unconstitutional even as a regulator of broadcasters. The last thing I would do is extend its violation of the First Amendment to the Internet." Too bad Ron Paul didn't get a chance to answer that question. Fortunately, Ron Paul did get a chance to respond about the President going to war...

Ron Paul: his finest moment was his outrage over Romney's gibberish about consulting attorneys. Read the Constitution, Ron Paul said - it clearly says that Congress, not the President, has the power to declare war.

You don't need to be a lawyer to understand that. You need to be just minimally literate.

Also admirable was Ron Paul's unwillingness to blindly support whoever gets the Republican nomination - that nominee would need to stop following Bush's disastrous and unconstitutional foreign policy.

It's rare indeed to hear a political candidate in either party speak such plain truth to the American people, and to the world.

Continuing Journeyman: 3

I think what I liked best about Episode 3 of Journeyman on NBC last night was the conversation between Dan and Hugh Skillen (played by Brian Howe, whom we saw as the medical examiner in Deja Vu) at the end. Dan, unable to save Skillen's sister from the 1989 earthquake in San Francisco, did pick up from her that Hugh was called "the Hulk". Dan mentions the name to Hugh, who wonders how Dan, in 2007, could have known that Hugh was once called that...

In other words, Hugh Skillen, like Dan's wife (but not yet his brother), is slowly being drawn into Dan's time-traveling reality. A seed has been planted, which may eventually allow Dan to call upon Hugh for help. Perhaps Hugh is even at the first stage of being recruited into this time-traveling, or whatever the process that calls upon Dan to perform his services.

Livia is course much further along in this than Dan, but we still don't know what it is that is driving both Livia and Dan, in their separate yet intertwining ways.

That's ok. Journeyman needs time to breathe, to develop and make clear the depth of its complex stories. Another nice touch in last night's story was Al Pratt (John Billingsley) having an impact in the present after Dan saves him in the past.

All of this is good time-travel story-telling - a rarity in movies, novels, and television.

The show isn't doing too well in the ratings - not surprising. Other than the time travel, Journeyman appeals to a very audience than does Heroes, which Journeyman follows.

I hope NBC gives Journeyman time to find its own audience.

Reviews of other Journeyman episodes: 1 ... 2 ... 4 ... 5 ... 6 ... 7 ... 8 ... 9. Dan Unravels His Present ... 10. Jack's In! ... 11. Livia's Beau//Save the Newspaper, Save the World ... 12. The Perfect Time Travel Story ... Lucky 13


8-minute podcast analysis of Journeyman

---

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

Marshall McLuhan as Micro Blogger

Marshall McLuhan died on the last day of 1980 - not only years before there was Twitter, micro-blogging and blogging, but a few years before e-mail and commenting on Web pages.

In 1986, I wrote a piece for the IEEE Transactions of Professional Communications entitled "Marshall McLuhan and Computer Conferencing," in which I said that the pithy bursts which characterized his writing - his great works from the 1960s consisted of chapters often not more than a page or two in length - were actually a form of web writing ("computer conferencing") decades before the Web and online communication emerged. I've attached that article below.

Just today, I realized something more about McLuhan's writing. The memorable titles he gave to his short chapters - for example, "The Medium is the Message" in Understanding Media (1964) or "Nobody ever made a grammatical error in a non-literate society" in the Gutenberg Galaxy (1962) (which has 107 of these gems) - were actually micro-blogs.

Blogging in his page-or-two chapters, micro-blogging in the titles or "glosses" (his term) he gave them. All of this back in 1962 and 1964.

McLuhan was in touch with a mode of expression, a vehicle of the human intellect, which was clear and comfortable in his mind, even though the technology of its delivery was still decades away from invention.

**Note added 25 February 2009: Section on McLuhan as Microblogger in "Twitter" chapter of my new book New New Media, to be published September 2009

==========================================================
MARSHALL McLUHAN and COMPUTER CONFERENCING

by Paul Levinson

First published in IEEE Transactions of Professional Communications,
March 1986, pp. 9-11.



As far as I know, Marshall McLuhan never owned a
personal computer. He never was part of a computer network,
and never engaged in computer conferencing. Certainly his
landmark Understanding Media (1964) and The Gutenberg Galaxy
(1962) were published years before the development of personal
computers and the types of communication they make possible.

But even had McLuhan's contributions been made 20 years
later, they no doubt would have been made without the services of
computers. For McLuhan was a firm believer that those in the
belly of a technology were blind to its effects, and he
credited much of his perspective on media to his habitat in
Canada several miles above and beyond the media milieu of
the United States.

Yet for all their aloofness from the electronic world they
detail, McLuhan's writings epitomize a kind of Joycian, stream
of consciousness flow that can best be described as
electronic. Critics never tired of citing McLuhan's writing
style as the best evidence he offered in support of his
contention that writing had become outmoded, and much of the
popular misconception that McLuhan was "against" writing and
print stemmed from his admitted attempt to break free of
traditional typographic styles of narrative and composition.

And so the question of how to understand McLuhan, what
to make of the relationship between the structure and the
content of his work, continues to interest all who
write about him. I raise this issue once again because I
think I have found a most astonishing key, an unexpected
Rosetta Stone, that goes a long way towards answering
this question. Architects of computer conferencing most likely
paid little or no attention to the style of McLuhan's writing
in design of their programs. And McLuhan simply couldn't
have had any knowledge of computer conferencing when he
wrote his main works. And yet recent experience in the
medium of computer conferencing struck me with how
literally the prose collages of McLuhan's books resemble the
transcripts of computer conferences.

What Is Computer Conferencing?

In the spring of 1984, I was hired by the
Western Behavioral Sciences Institute to teach a course by
computer teleconferencing for their School of Management and
Strategic Studies. Faculty (known as conference moderators or
facilitators) meet in person with students (known as conference
participants) at the Institute's premises in paradisiacal
La Jolla for week-long seminars twice a year. Thereafter
faculty and students scatter to the far corners of the
Earth (students in my class come from Australia,
Sweden, and Colombia, though most of the participants
are business, government, and non-profit executives located
in the U.S.), to give and receive instruction and
enlightenment entirely through the Kaypros, DEC-Rainbows, and
assorted other personal computers in their homes and places of
business.

Before detailing some of the features of computer
conferencing, let me give a little background on the more
general medium of electronic mail of which computer
conferencing is a part. In a sense, electronic exchange
of written information began with the telegraph and continued
with the telex, long before personal computers and
electronic networks for consumers became feasible. But the
privacy and convenience of the telephone quickly usurped
the lion's share of electronic communication from the
telegraph, and until the past decade the telephone and the paper
mail system constituted the main long distance communication
options for most people. Communication via computers provides
an important and in many respects superior third
alternative, offering the privacy, immediacy, and
convenience of the telephone, with the permanence and
opportunity for formality afforded by the written word.

Although direct, unmediated communication between
personal computer and personal computer is
technologically possible, it is at present expensive and
inefficient, with the result that most communication between
computers is conducted via larger third party computers
that serve as clearing houses. Such an approach of
course tends to reduce the likelihood of immediate
exchanges (though two computers "on-line" with the central
computer at the same time can easily communicate with each
other in real, immediate time), but has the advantage of
offering ancillary services such as storage of long
documents, sending of simultaneous messages to large groups,
etc. which are difficult or impossible for many
personal computers. In the standard procedure, I send you
a message by composing it on my home computer and
electronically transmitting it (through telephone lines)
to the clearing house computer; you receive my message by
using your home computer to electronically contact
the clearing house; I receive a confirmation from the
clearing house that you've received my message (and a response
from you if you've provided it) the very next time I
contact the central computer after you've received my
message, and the central system will usually keep a copy of my
message to you on hand (for our eyes only) for a specified
period of time.

The Western Behavioral Sciences Institute
conducts its computer conferences through the Electronic
Information Exchange System (EIES, pronounced
"eyes"), situated in a mini- computer at the New Jersey
Institute of Technology in Newark. In a typical conference, the
faculty moderator sets the agenda with a few
introductory comments of about 25-50 lines in length, and
assigns a few background readings (often summarized
in other comments available on-line). The
conference system allows all participants (usually anywhere from
5 to 75 students, and 5 to 10 participant faculty in
addition to the moderator) to enter comments into the
conference and to read all comments entered by others
(procedures exist for allowing some people to read only
or write only in a conference, and the moderator has a
seldom used authority to delete a participant's comment
deemed unseemly). In the month's time allotted for most
conferences, 5 to 15 participants along with the
moderator regularly contribute 5 to 10 comments per
week, while the other participants for a variety of
reasons choose to read only or comment very infrequently. The
end of the conference usually yields a total of 100 to 150
comments of about 5 to 100 or more lines in length,
loosely integrated around a central theme.

Andrew Feenberg (Professor of Philosophy at San
Diego State University) ran a conference for WBSI on
"Utopia and Dystopia" in June 1984. Feenberg, associated
with the Institute since its entry into computer conferencing
in 1982 and an old hand at moderating these events, describes
his experience in June as "a bit like a publisher working
together with peers and colleagues to produce a sort of
magazine in which all readers can become writers."
Although the multi-authorship makes the magazine metaphor
apt, the length of each comment (too small) and number
of total comments (too large) are not consistent with most
magazines.

I propose, then, a different way of looking at the
products of computer conferences. I suggest that,
notwithstanding the fact that these conferences are multi-
authored, their results are virtually identical in texture
and rhythm to the so-called electronic, reader
directed, pre-computer writings of Marshall McLuhan.

McLuhan as Computer Conferencer

McLuhan was quite deliberate in pursuit of a
writing style that many viewed as incomprehensible, overly
playful, or an outright slap in the face of conventional
scholarly form. In his Introduction to Harold Innis' The
Bias of Communication , McLuhan extols the "mosaic"
approach that both writers employed: It offers snap shots
from various angles of the big picture, rather than a series
of descriptions that attempt to construct a larger whole in
an orderly, step-by-step fashion. Because each snap shot or
piece of the mosaic is equidistant from the central theme
and the other snap shots, each can serve as an entry
point, review, or food for further thought on the main topic.
A book of such pieces is thus accessible from any
point, and can be read backwards, forward, from the
middle backwards and forward, and indeed in any way the
reader chooses. In this sense the reader becomes
the writer of McLuhan's books. (Although Innis' work was as
imaginative and compressed as McLuhan's, it was a good deal
more traditional in its narrative approach, and never fully
achieved the mosaic style that McLuhan attempted.)

McLuhan offered the mosaic as essential to capturing the
complexity and speed of the electronic age, but the roots
of this approach of course go as far back as Nietzsche and
indeed the Greek mystics who served as Nietzsche's (and
no doubt McLuhan's) inspiration. Nonetheless, McLuhan's
style has quite rightly become identified with the attempt of
the written word to come to grips with
electronic culture, and is quite consistent with what has
more recently been termed the "holographic" method of
understanding reality (after Karl Pribram's observation
that the cells of the human brain function redundantly,
each containing traces of the information contained in
all others, in much the same way as pieces of a holographic
plate each contain the whole, three dimensional picture
recorded on the original, intact plate.)

Dig out your yellowing paperback of Understanding Media,
or better, The Gutenberg Galaxy, if you have it. (GG,
predictably out of print in the United States, was
McLuhan's quintessential work, acknowledged as such by the
author. The more widely known UM is actually a
bit more traditional in style, while subsequent works such
as The Medium is the Massage and War and Peace in the
Global Village are much more drastic in their
eschewal of any narrative thread.) After a brief, agenda-
setting introduction, The Gutenberg Galaxy proceeds
with 107 pieces, about 50-150 lines in length, on topics
ranging from Greek art to Descartes and Heidegger. Pieces are
occasionally grouped around specific themes such as the
effect of the alphabet on Greek culture, but they
nonetheless manage to be free-floating,
overlapping, self-contained, reinforcing little essays
spinning like satellites around the globe of what impact
written forms of expression have had on human life throughout
the ages. Like the holographic cells noticed by Pribram,
each contains a blueprint and entree to all others.

Now let us look at Feenberg's June 1984 computer
conference on "Utopia and Dystopia" (or, if you like,
at virtually any other computer conference conducted on EIES,
The Source, Compuserve, or any network of your choosing).
After the moderator's opening remarks, a group of about
six including the moderator generated 122 comments ranging in
length from several to more than a hundred lines each.
Again, comments were often grouped around subthemes such as
rationality and its perversion in dystopias (and moderator
and participants often made a deliberate effort to
respond specifically to earlier comments), but the general
result was a constellation of free-floating tiny essays,
each providing more or less equal access to the central theme.

The two striking differences in composition of a
computer conference and a McLuhan book are that computer
conferences are group efforts produced in a month and
McLuhan's books were the work of one person (later two)
certainly at toil much more than a month. Yet the
similarities in outcome of these two sharply different
modes of production suggest that the many creating for
a brief period in some way balance the one creating for a much
longer time.

None of this, of course, is meant to suggest that
the results of computer conferences (at least those of
which I am aware) have in any way yet equalled the scope and
originality of McLuhan's writings. It is the congruence
in style and organization to which I am calling attention,
and which I believe holds an important message for those
who have learned from McLuhan's work, and those many more who
have been frustrated by it.

McLuhan was no clairvoyant. The unwitting fulfillment
of his writing style in computers a few years after his
death and decades after his major work is evidence of
something quite else: striving mightily to transcend
the limits of print stuck to paper, struggling against
the professional norms of his time and a backdrop of
electronic media that conveyed only sounds and pictures,
McLuhan somehow managed to produce a corpus perfectly suited
to an electronic medium not yet invented. The apostle
of medium over content created content that defied the
media of its day and hung around waiting for the world to catch
up and on. Not so much ironic is it as another example --
perhaps the best yet -- of how profoundly in tune
McLuhan was with the tempo of our century.
====================

Shoutout for Joe Torre

So, the Yanks lost tonight - the third straight year they didn't go on to the World Series after making it into the playoffs, and everyone's disappointed, and George said the other day that if the Yankees didn't progress then Joe Torre might be finished as Yankee skipper...

But let me say the obvious: Third straight year that the Yankees didn't make it to the series after getting into the playoffs? For any other manager, that would be cause for the owner offering a hefty long term contract. How many other teams make it in the playoffs year after year - in the case of the Yankees and Joe Torre, 12 years, to be exact, with World Series wins and all.

But that's not the most important reason that Joe Torre deserves credit and continuation, in my book.

In the end, baseball is just a game. What lasting value it has comes from the humanity and lessons its players give to the world.

And when it comes to that, no one holds a candle to Joe Torre. He has brought to baseball a whole new level of decency, rationality, and humanity. I'm old enough to remember Casey and of course Billy, and they had their moments, but they were a different species of manager compared to Joe.

He has taught the world not only how to win - but how to lose, if it happens, with dignity. Since no one, no team, can possibly win all the time, that's a crucially important lesson.

I hope George Steinbrenner thinks a moment about this, before he announces the future for the Yankees.

Mad Men 11: Heat!

With the early October temps in 80s here in New York City, there couldn't be a better day to review last night's Episode 11 on AMC's Mad Men which, in one way or another, was all about heat...

Peggy's asked to test out and analyze for her second ad campaign a device that is supposed to help women lose weight. The guys are trying to figure out why some women seem to really like it - it's an electric belt that is supposed to massage away fat - even though there is no evidence that it really melts away any weight.

Peggy discovers its secret: its vibrations give women orgasms. The problem is how to explain this to Don and the guys - which she does a pretty good job of doing.

Meanwhile, Betty has her own hot experience. With the temperature high and uncomfortable in this Indian summer, Betty gets a call from a traveling air conditioner salesman. (The traveling salesman is another great artifact, long gone from our culture.) Betty lets him in, she's attracted to him, but buys nothing and tells him to leave. She later tells Don, who is furious - about as angry as we've seen him - that Betty has let in a stranger. Little does Don know that later, in one of the most interesting scenes of the series, Betty fantasizes about the salesman as she enjoys the vibrations of the washing machine against her .... enjoys the vibrations a lot ... Like I said, it was a hot show.

There's no hot physical sex tonight between Joan and Roger, back in the office to put up a show for a client, even though he is still far from recuperated. But there is perhaps the tenderest kiss in the series. Joan asks if it's ok to kiss him.... He tells her a few seconds after that she was the best piece of ass he ever had.

I found this scene really winning and memorable. Joan is among my top 3 or 4 favorite characters on the show - not just because of what she looks like, but what she says. Christina Hendricks and John Slattery put in their best performances.

But Roger suffers a second heart attack, which leads to Don's getting made a partner in the firm ... as we move into next week's show, about Nixon and Kennedy, just one before the finale...

A superb series, which I'm sorry to see conclude, but I'll be looking forward to round two of next year.

See also reviews of other episodes: Mad Men Debuts on AMC: Cigarette Companies and Nixon ... Mad Men 2: Smoke and Television ... Mad Men 3: Hot 1960 Kiss ... Mad Men 4 and 5: Double Mad Men ... Mad Men 6: The Medium is the Message! ... Mad Men 7: Revenge of the Mollusk ... Mad Men 8: Weed, Twist, Hobo ... Mad Man 9: Betty Grace Kelly ... Mad men 10: Life, Death, and Politics ... Mad Men 12: Admirable Don ... Mad Men 13: Double-Endings, Lascaux, and Holes

20-minute interview with Rich Sommer (Harry Crane) at Light On Light Through



6-minute podcast review of Mad Men

---

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

My Sept 28 2007 Lecture at Fordham University about the Media Misreporting of Ron Paul

This is the lecture I delivered to my "Introduction to Communication and Media Studies" class at Fordham University on September 28, 2007 about the media misreporting of Ron Paul.

The lecture, with student questions at the end, was about 50 minutes. It's divided in five parts on the YouTube video, as follows: 1. history of polling ... ABC May 2007 misreporting of Ron Paul ... 2. ABC continues misreporting Ron Paul (early August 2007).... 3. Mark Levin urges disinformation against Ron Paul on ABC radio ... Kucinich gets cropped ... the First Amendment ... 4. Hannity & Colmes misreport Ron Paul on Fox News ... reasons behind all of this ... 5. I answer student questions ...

Note that the above is, of course, current only as of September 28, 2007, and contains no mention of ABC affiliate WMUR TV in New Hampshire failing to cover the Ron Paul "Family Day" rally on September 30...

Heroes Season 2 Proceeds

The new season of Heroes proceeds ... like a shattered puzzle slowing coming back together, and enlivened by some new pieces.

It seems to me that, so far in the new season, Heroes is giving more equal attention to more stories per episode, and that's good. We've yet to see any of Niki (next week, according to the coming attractions), but Claire, Matt, Mohinder, Hiro, and now Peter are all involved in chewy stories - tales which will slowly pull themselves into one.

My favorite, as usual, is Hiro's. Last night we saw him perform the task of the 16th century hero he admires - in other words, create the very legend which he thought he'd have the pleasure of observing when he came to in the past. This is an old time-travel trick - the time traveler, for better or worse, causes the very event that the traveler went to the past to either safeguard or prevent. (I did a little of this with time traveler Sierra Waters in The Plot to Save Socrates.) It got a nice little rendition last night, replete with Hiro's mannerisms coming through Kensei's armor.

As for the new pieces, we have a good couplet in the twins who are trying to get to American from the south. The woman can psychically poison, her brother has the power of antidote.

And speaking of poison, it looks as if Sylar will be back in business next week...


3 minute podcast of this review

Review of other Season 2 Heroes .... Episode 1 ... 3 ... 4 ... 7 ... 9. How Immutable Are Fate and Isaac's Paintings? ... 10. Penultimate in Fall ... 11. My Predictions Last Week Were Right!

---

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

Californication Continues: 8

A psychologically rich and very satisfying Episode 8 of Californication on Showtime last night, occasioned by the death of Hank's father Al (well played by vet actor Mark Margolis).

We get an excellent back story, in which we see not only Hank's relationship with his father, but the crumbling of his relationship with Karen (when they were still together), all occurring as the accursed "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" is being filmed. (Again, I gotta say that, as a science fiction author, I wish I had such aggravations.)

The explanatory power of this back story - shot in a slightly different lighting - reminded me, of all things, of Lost, and its back stories. As in Lost, the back story in Californication last night moved the story forward in a critically important way. Hank and Karen are falling apart in the back story, and pulling closer together in the present.

The last five minutes were especially satisfying. Karen finally sleeps with Hank. Perhaps it's partly a mercy act, but Karen clearly enjoys it, and, as we already knew, she has feelings for Hank.

They're flying off to New York for Al's funeral in two planes, but I'm looking to seeing if and how they draw closer together in the next episodes.

See reviews of other Californication episodes: Californication Going On Mondays ... 2 ... 3 ... 4 ... 5 ... 6 ... 7 ... 9 ... 10 ... 11: Pivitol Mia ... 12: Californication Comes ... To a Season's End


5 minute podcast review of Californication

---

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

Continuing Journeyman: 2

The second episode of Journeyman crystallized what I was thinking (and wrote) about the premier of Journeyman last week: the new NBC time travel series is really about the intricate, time-entwined personal lives of the central characters, unlike Quantum Leap, in which Sam's personal life only rose into story prominence on very special occasions.

Journeyman is clearly - and, so far, tantalizingly - the cat's-cradle story of four people. Dan (Kevin McKidd) and Livia (Moon Bloodgood) are time travelers, erstwhile lovers, and maybe more. Livia's further along in this time travel business than is Dan, but Dan is the focus of the story.

Meanwhile, Dan's slowly managing to convince his wife Katie (Gretchen Egolf) that he's time traveling. This week, Dan time-vaults to the past from a plane, in which he is seated next to Katie - a nice touch, for this leaves no way she can think he just tripped out on the street somewhere, and that's why he's not home.

And Katie and Dan's brother, Jack, were once a couple. While Jack - a cop (great to see Reed Diamond from Homicide back in the mix) - intersects with Dan in his time traveling, as well as in the present.

This nearly menage-a-quatre is much more than just emotional backdrop for the story. It is emerging as the story, though we haven't seen all that much of it yet.

As for Dan's "missions" - which he is yanked into without warning - we have now seen two. They bear an interesting similarity: the real purpose of the mission isn't revealed until the end, and it's not what we think it to be. Also, at this point, the missions have all been about non-famous individuals - no attempt to save JFK from assassination (which I and I bet half the science fiction writers in the world did in at least one story we wrote)*.

In its individual rather public-event focus, Journeyman is also like Quantum Leap, which only only once or twice a season had Sam figure in attempting to avert a public tragedy of the past.

But next week, Journeyman will take a shot at this, too. The coming attractions show Dan at the 1989 San Francisco earthquake, where he will have to choose which of three people to save.

I'm betting that there will also be an important element of his personal life at stake in this, too. I'm looking forward.

*That would be the "Loose Ends" saga for me - which I actually started writing in 1974, but I didn't get around to publishing until 1997.


8-minute podcast analysis of Journeyman


Reviews of other Journeyman episodes: 1 ... 3 ... 4 ... 5 ... 6 ... 7 ... 8 ... 9. Dan Unravels His Present ... 10. Jack's In! ... 11. Livia's Beau//Save the Newspaper, Save the World ... 12. The Perfect Time Travel Story ... Lucky 13

---

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

Now ABC Affiliate WMUR TV Neglects to Cover Ron Paul in New Hampshire

The Free Market News Network reports that WMUR neglected to cover Ron Paul at his "Family Day" rally in Manchester, New Hampshire this past weekend. WMUR is a state-wide television operation, with headquarters in Manchester.

What struck me most about this was not the lack of coverage itself - infuriating and undemocratic - but the fact that WMUR is ... an ABC affiliate!

Just this past Friday, at the lecture I delivered to my "Intro to Communication and Media Studies" class at Fordham University (we'll have the video up on YouTube soon), I detailed a series of outrageous ABC misreportings of Ron Paul since May - ranging from leaving him out of poll results to using photography to make his supporters seem far fewer at a rally in Iowa than they in fact were. But I concluded, in an effort to be fair, that ABC seems to have been improving in the accuracy of its reporting lately, with Fox making the worst transgressions.

But here we are, once again, with a national ABC television affiliate apparently up to the same old business. If the Free Market News story is correct - and it's been up online all day with no opposing comments offered - then ABC is continuing to dig itself into a hole it may never get out of.

Because, whatever happens in this election, the shameful performance of ABC News at so many junctures - regarding mostly Ron Paul, but also, at least once, Dennis Kucinich - will not be forgotten. Indeed, I expect it will be a section in many a textbook about media and politics. I know I certainly will be putting something about this in my next edition of The Soft Edge: A Natural History and Future of the Information Revolution.


See reviews of the most recent edition of The Soft Edge.

Sputnik's 50th Anniversary: Sad That We Have Not Gone Further in Space

Sputnik celebrates its 50th anniversary on October 4 - the first artificial satellite to circle the planet. It was soon followed by Sputnik 2 (dogs in space, 1958), first human in space (Yuri Gagarin, 1961), Telstar (first telecom satellite, 1962), and then we walked on the Moon (Armstrong and Aldrin, 1969).

Notice that I didn't say Soviet or US above, because it doesn't really matter. Humans in space is what counts. But everyone of course knows that Sputnik - Russian for "fellow traveler" - set off the space race which we in the US eventually "won" in 1969. Prior to then, Telstar was our only first accomplishment.

And what did that victory get us? A space shuttle, with brave astronauts, some of whom lost their lives. But no one has gotten too far beyond this planet. We've sent robots to Mars, and that's exciting, but robots neither laugh nor cry - they're not human.

And so, as the 50th anniversary of Sputnik approaches, I can only hope that we start doing a little better. Civilization is filled with examples of major inventions that stayed dormant for centuries - even millennia. The Chinese invention of the printing press in 700 or 800 AD, and its failure to be used for a mass print and popular culture, is one of the most vivid examples. (I wrote about this way back in 1977, in my essay, "Toy, Mirror, and Art: The Metamorphosis of Technological Culture" - it was reprinted in my 1995 Learning Cyberspace - and I'll try to post the essay here in the next few weeks.)

Let's not wait 700 more years to really get out into space. The Universe awaits us...

========================
See also Realspace: The Fate of Physical Presence in the Digital Age, On and Off Planet


20-minute podcast: Celebrating Sputnik

Brotherhood's Back! Sneak Preview

Brotherhood returns for its second season on Showtime Sunday night - right after Dexter. From Miami to Providence - a great sweep of the eastern seaboard, and a great sweep for Showtime.

I've seen an advance copy of the first four episodes. No spoilers below, except for what you have to know already: Brotherhood could never let Michael Caffee die.

So Michael's back. But he's not 100%, and the shake-up that his brain received makes for an important element in this year's story. Jason Isaacs gives a great performance - just as he did last year - of a slightly muted Michael. (Isaacs plays Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies, in case he looks familiar. Talk about an actor with range.)

Jason Clarke gives a fine performance as brother Tommy Kaffee, too. Brotherhood has good echoes of The Sopranos. But the great strength of the series for me has always been the Providence politics. It's not only Rich Man/Poor Man, brother who made good and brother who didn't. It's a show about getting things done - the hard mobster way as does Michael, and the hard political way, as does Tommy. The first ends in blood more than the second, but otherwise they're no less painful, no less easy as paths to success.

The women are also strong and appealing on Brotherhood. Tommy's wife Eileen played by Annabeth Gish is complex, intense, and, whatever her flaws, you'd want her brown eyes on your side. (Her relationship with Tommy is especially difficult now, because of what she told him at the wedding last year). Fionnula Flanagan as mother Rose Kaffee is a classic (if she looks familiar, you saw her in Desmond's UK flashback on Lost). Michael's girlfriend Kath (played by Tina Benko) has a much larger role, and that's welcome. And The West Wing's Janel Moloney is now on the show, as - well, I promised only one spoiler, above.

But I can say that I think the show is more thoughtful, even deeper than it was last year. Ethan Embry's giving a sterling performance as officer Giggs, and the complexity of his personal and professional life could support a series in itself. Brian F. O’Byrne joins Brotherhood as Caffee cousin Colin - from the other side of the Atlantic - and this adds an additional dimension to the family.

Brotherhood's on its way to making memorable television - among the best of the decade.

See also Episode 10: Finale

---

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

Mad Men 10: Life, Death, and Politics

Well, the next Mad Men was well worth waiting two weeks for - Episode 10 was the most powerful story so far, and had a superb piece on Eisenhower and Nixon.

I'll get right to it. Roger has a heart attack after going for a second round in the office with one of a pair of twins being hired for an ad campaign. Don's on hand, with the other twin - not doing anything, because Don wants to get back to Betty and his family, who are in a beach house for the Labor Day Weekend with Betty's father and new girlfriend and the kids (or maybe Don's not interested in the twin because Don's thinking about Rachel). But Don gets Roger to the hospital. The heart attack is serious, and Don is all shook up.

This sets the stage for three of the most important developments in Mad Men thus far:

1. Don comes face to face with his own mortality. We, the viewers, already know this. Every time we hear someone cough in this literally smoking world, we think lung cancer. The other health hazard of smoking is of course heart attack. Given the number of cigarettes that are smoked on the show, we could expect at least half of the characters to be struck by a smoke-induced illness. Has Don made the connection between Roger's heart attack and his smoking? Maybe not quite yet, but he's close.

2. Don calls Betty from the hospital, and their distance has never been more painfully apparent. Don maybe wants to talk, at least a little, about his feelings and proximity to mortality. Betty wants to talk about how much her father's girlfriend irritates her. The most helpful thing she can say to Don is make sure you don't forget to eat.

3. Don goes to Rachel's apartment. They not only sleep together, but it is more clear than ever that the two are soul mates. His relationship with Midge is spent already, and as for Betty...

So Don is now in some pretty new, risky personal territory. Rachel might yet say no to their relationship, but that certainly won't come from Don.

And the politics: It was great to see Eisenhower on the screen again, with that famous answer he gave about what Richard Nixon accomplished as Ike's Vice President. Give me a week, and maybe I can think of something, Ike replies...

Superb show ... even though it had one little anachronism, as always. Comes from Joan, who says, "I'm so over you...." In 1960, on the East Coast? I'm so not believing that....

But I don't really mind... You know, it dawns on me that most of the anachronisms are coming from Joan (she earlier said "the medium is the message"...) Maybe she's a time traveler...

See also reviews of other episodes: Mad Men Debuts on AMC: Cigarettes and Nixon Coming ... Mad Men 2: Smoke and Television ... Mad Men 3: Hot 1960 Kiss ... Mad Men 4 and 5: Double Mad Men ... Mad Men 6: The Medium Is the Message! ... Mad Men 7: Revenge of the Mollusk ... Mad Men 8: Weed, Twist, Hobo, Excellent ... Mad Men 9: Betty Grace Kelly ... Mad Men 11: Heat! ... Mad Men 12: Admirable Don ... Mad Men 13: Double-Endings, Lascaux, and Holes

20-minute interview with Rich Sommer (Harry Crane) at Light On Light Through



6-minute podcast review of Mad Men

---

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

1:30pm Lecture by me today at Fordham Univ: The Media Misreporting of Ron Paul

I'll be delivering my special lecture this afternoon - 1:30-2:20pm - to my "Intro to Communication and Media Studies" class at Fordham University on "The Media Misreporting of Ron Paul"....

I'll be discussing Hannity and Colmes' denigration of Ron Paul's first place finish in their own poll after the last Republican Presidential debate on Fox, ABC's indication of a lone Ron Paul supporter before the Iowa straw poll when his supporters say there were numerous, ABC Radio Mark Levin's call to his listeners to harass Ron Paul headquarters, ABC's cropping Dennis Kucinich out of a photo of the Democratic candidates (Ron Paul is not the only victim of mass media malfeasance in reporting the Presidential campaign), and much more.

My blog post about this upcoming lecture two months ago received 1290 Diggs, 190 comments, and was on the Digg front page for days.

YouTube video will follow next week.

Ron Paul at PBS Debate: Against Federal Death Penalty

I was delighted to hear Ron Paul say at the Republican Presidential debate on PBS that he is opposed to the Federal death penalty. He indicated that this was one of the few positions he changed his views about over the years - at one time, he supported the Federal death penalty - and his reason was that DNA evidence has shown too many innocent people found guilty.

My position, all of my life, has been against death penalties on all levels. Even before DNA evidence, it seemed to me that juries are fallible, they are capable of error, and putting a person to death on the basis of a wrong jury decision was one of the very worst things a civilized society could ever do. Life in prison without parole was a strong enough punishment, and one which allowed reversal in the event that new evidence came to light or old evidence proved faulty.

As on so many other issues, Ron Paul's libertarian distrust of government, and his sheer logic, have led him to an enlightened, humanitarian position. My only disagreement with Ron Paul on this issue is that I would like to see capital punishment outlawed on a state level, too. (I wonder if he would support an amendment to the Constitution that outlawed the death penalty.)

Meanwhile, it's also worth noting about this PBS Republican debate that Giuliani, McCain, Romney, and Fred Thompson didn't bother to show. Apparently Tavis Smiley's African-American moderation of the debate was not to their GOP liking.

No real matter. Nothing any of the four might have had to say would have stacked up to what Ron Paul said tonight.

Dexter's Back! A Preview...

Dexter returns to Showtime for a second season this Sunday. I just saw the first four episodes, and I gotta say ... Dexter is considerably better than it was last year, which is saying a lot, because Dexter was easily the best show on television in its first season.

But this year has even more brilliant plotting, and the kind of unexpected twists you find only in a fine movie. Twists that are jolting and satisfying, make great sense in retrospect, and (of course) move Dexter one step forward to a better life, success, or safety, on the one hand, and one step back - being discovered - on the other hand.

I will reveal just one spoiler, which serves as the writhing backdrop of the first four episodes, and I'd bet of the entire second season. The burial ground of Dexter's victims, the place he has dumped their body parts in bags out in the sea, is discovered....

Other than that, I can tell you Sgt. Doakes (Erik King), Debra (Jennifer Carpenter), Rita (Julie Benz), Angel (David Zayas), Maria (Lauren Vélez), and Vincent Masuka (C. S. Lee) are sharp and more vivid than ever. Plus, Keith Carradine's in as a master Federal agent investigating the bodies that turn up in the bay, and dark-haired beauty Jaime Murray plays Lila who ... well, let's just say, she understands Dexter better than does Rita (not too difficult) and may understand him better than anyone.

Michael C. Hall is deft, just the thing as Dexter, as he was last year. His voice-over narration is sardonic and just the thing, as it was last year. The new season starts this Sunday.

But, if you'd like to see the complete first episode now, just click here for the VIP webite - and your password is Killer Shows.

I'll be seeing the first four episodes of Brotherhood tomorrow, which will debut its second season right after Dexter on Sunday.

But on just the irresistible strength of Dexter, I'd say Showtime can now lay claim to being the undisputed best network on television.


5-minute podcast of this review




See also my reviews of other Season Two episodes ... 5. Dexter Meets Heroes and 6. Dexter and De-Lila-h7. Best Line About Dexter - from Lila and 8. How Will Dexter Get Out Of This? and 10. Dex, Doakes, Harry and Deb's Belief Saves Dex and Season 2 Finale: All's ... Well

And see also my review of Dexter, Season One: First Place to Dexter

---

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

Dems Debate in Dartmouth: Gravel Proud to Stick Credit Card Cos, Kucinich Lower Voting Age to 16, Edwards Shines

You gotta love Mike Gravel. Asked by Tim Russert how he could run for President and be trusted with the nation's fiscal responsibility, when he ran up a big unpaid debt, Gravel proudly shot back - hey, look who got stuck with that debt, I stuck the credit card companies with a $90,000 debt, and they deserved it!

Second best point from an underdog - or maybe it was the best - came from Kucinich, who said he not only favored lowered the drinking age to 18, but the voting age to 16. I seriously support such a lowering of the voting age - I've been saying for years that it should be lowered to 14 - an age at which, according cognitive psychologist Jean Piaget, people have completely adult reasoning processes, and have had them for at least two years.

Among the top tier Democrats, I thought John Edwards did splendidly tonight. He comes across as the most human - the least political - and made some points against Hillary and Obama on stopping the business as usual in Washington. I especially liked Edwards' solution to the social security crisis: rather than raising the cap (it's currently $97,000+), create a window, in which income earners won't pay social security tax above the current cap, until they reach a much higher level of income.(I actually most favor Ron Paul's solution of letting people below a certain age opt of social security - but Edwards' is at least an innovative solution, which doesn't punish people in the upper middle class).

Hillary was good tonight, Barack was not. He was often indistinguishable from Hillary, and he lacked Edwards' passion. Edwards could be set to become the main Democratic alternative to Hillary Clinton.

Coming to Bill O'Reilly's Defense about Restaurant Comment: Ridiculous not Capital Media Offense

I think Bill O'Reilly's comments about eating in a Harlem restaurant - "There wasn't one person in Sylvia's who was screaming, 'M-Fer, I want more iced tea.'" - are regrettable and tasteless, but not a capital media offense.

Unlike Imus' remarks, which were directed at college students and were personally insulting to them, O'Reilly's remarks are at worst general, racist banter. They bespeak an antiquated, general bigotry - which many white people in my father's generation suffered from, which presumably far fewer do now, and which O'Reilly claims he was actually critiquing in his comments. Whatever his intentions, his remarks were inappropriate (if only because they could easily be taken out of context), but so general as to be laughable rather than really damaging to anyone.

Of far more concern are O'Reilly's statements and attitudes about many other things - including his ridiculing remarks about Andrew Meyer's taserng in Florida last week, in which O'Reilly said Meyer was hamming it up for the cameras when he was screaming in pain.

To use a metaphor from The Factor: O'Reilly's comments about the patrons of the restaurant would be The Most Ridiculous Item of the Day, not the lead Talking Point memo, or even close to it, which is the way some in the media are playing it.

Californication Continues: 7

I guess no one - not even Hank Moody - can have sex every minute of the day, or during most of every episode, and so last night's episode of Californication - #7 - was pretty quiet in comparison to other episodes.

Indeed, Weeds, on Showtime just prior to Californication, had a far hotter, funnier scene with Andy at a porno shoot.

As I mentioned in my review last week, the supporting team of Charlie and his two women - secretary and wife - seem to be getting more sex time than Hank. The three actually tried a menage-a-trois last night, with unsurprisingly unexceptional results. Marci (the wife) did remark that Dani (the secretary) had a "great ass," and there's no denying that.

Meanwhile, Hank and Karen do seem to be drawing a little closer, sexually and romantically - meaning, Karen is not resisting Hank quite as much as she was at the beginning of the season - and it will be interesting to see where this goes.

Here's my lame prediction: the two will sleep together at the end of this season, and ... Hank will realize that he really wants to be with the redhead, Meredith...

Not a spoiler, just a prediction, chances are I'm wrong ... but we'll see...

See reviews of other Californication episodes: Californication Going On Mondays ... 2 ... 3 ... 4 ... 5 ... 6 ... 8
... 9 ... 10 ... 11: Pivitol Mia ... 12: Californication Comes ... To a Season's End


5 minute podcast review of Californication

---

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

Weeds 3 Ep 7: Conrad Rules!

I've been missing Conrad (well played by Romany Malco) on Weeds this season. He's had almost no role, but ...

Last night, he reveals that he - not the Mexicans - was the one who shot Marvin in the ass, as a way of fomenting a war between the Mexican dealers and U-Turn, which Conrad thought would help Nancy and him get out under from under U-Turn's thumb - which is just what it accomplished.

Conrad is clearly the smartest guy (including women) on the show. He's a Luther Burbank genius when it comes to growing weed. And he's a master at strategic planning.

All that remains now is for Conrad and Nancy to finally get together. But it hasn't happened yet, and Nancy, to celebrate her freedom, goes for a little afternoon delight with Sullivan (Matthew Modine), who has been hitting on her, grabbing her ass, as well as hitting on Celia...

Meanwhile, Weeds is starting to give Californication and Tell Me You Love Me a run for their money in the full-frontal nudity department - male and female. Weeds had both last night, with Uncle Andy on hand at a porno shoot.

Next week ... looks as if Peter, or at least his corpse, is back...

Reviews of other Season 3 episodes ... 1 ... 2 ... 3: Appealing, Important Questions ... 4-5. Prius and Gluteus ... 6. Ray of Hope ... 12: Nancy and Conrad! ... 13. Shane Pays the Price ... 14. Just Nancy Thought Things Couldn't Get Any Worse ... 15. Finale: The Fire and the Clean Slate

---

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