Amazon Prime Video has the 1st season of 24 streaming for free. I’ve had it on in the background as I did other stuff.  It is amazing how dated it seems. It seemed so “cool” back then.

And I forgot how much I hoped Jack Baur’s wife would get killed.  Boy is she irritating. By design? No idea. I don’t recall her in later seasons so I suspect the show’s producers concluded similarly.

Set your DVR… it is supposed to be good.

I’ve read the George R.R. Martin series and really liked it. 

But this really ices the cake!

At a minimum I think my wife should dump our HBO and other premium channels. Not gonna need them…

Short:  Well written, enjoyable and interesting show.

Long:

Imagine the character precision of the Cohen brother’s remake of True Grit, only on your TV weekly.  That is Justified, a TV show that I’ve purchased Season 1 of via Amazon Video on my Roku box.

Justified airs on FX, but I’ve no idea what day or time. I watched it, commercial free, in HD clarity via my Roku box.  Quite nice.

It is called Justified because the main character, Deputy Marshal Raylan Givens, usually has a justified shooting each episode. Or two. Or three.

Police procedurals are common. But this one uses Kentucky, and its characters to good effect. The charismatic preacher is VERY charismatic.  The dumb Aryan Brotherhood goons are REALLY dumb and REALLY goonish.

I recommend it.

BTW: if you are a gun enthusiast it is refreshing to see the gun fighting and the gun talk be correct.

Here is how the contestant did it…

As to my wife… she could easily do this. She is really good at Wheel of Fortune, Pictionary, and other linquistic guessing games. I refuse to play Boggle with her.

I’m tellin ya Andy, you’ll regret selling out to them revenuers

Andy Williams, Sheriff Andy Taylor of Mayberry, RFD, has seen his favorability ratings tank after shilling for the new Obamacare program for Medicare:

Our latest North Carolina poll found Griffith at 44/22 in the state for a net favorability of +22. That represents a 25 point decline from June of 2008 when Griffith was at a net +47 (56/9.)

There’s not much doubt that it’s Griffith’s forays into politics, most recently in support of the health care bill, that are driving down his poll numbers.

I love the Andy Griffith Show. And I enjoy Andy’s comedy on the Sirius/XM Family Comedy Channel.  But like any other celebrity that delves into politics, he risks losing the ability to be an abstract malleable figure the more he becomes a very real person talking up things I dislike.

You don’t need the money, I assume, Andy. So keep your reputation.

See it on YouTube here.

Via Wikipedia:

Connections explores an "Alternative View of Change" (the subtitle of the series) that rejects the conventional linear and teleological  view of historical progress. Burke contends that one cannot consider the development of any particular piece of the modern world in isolation. Rather, the entire gestalt  of the modern world is the result of a web of interconnected events, each one consisting of a person or group acting for reasons of their own (e.g. profit, curiosity, religious) motivations with no concept of the final, modern result of what either their or their contemporaries’ actions finally led to. The interplay of the results of these isolated events is what drives history and innovation, and is also the main focus of the series and its sequels.

To demonstrate this view, Burke begins each episode with a particular event or innovation in the past (usually Ancient or Medieval times) and traces the path from that event through a series of seemingly unrelated connections to a fundamental and essential aspect of the modern world. For example, the episode "The Long Chain" traces the invention of plastics from the development of the fluyt, a type of Dutch cargo ship.

A: This Watson doesn’t back up Holmes, he plays Jeopardy.

The NY Times has an interesting article about IBM’s efforts to build a Jeopardy playing super computer.

It was just the beginning. Over the rest of the day, Watson went on a tear, winning four of six games. It displayed remarkable facility with cultural trivia (“This action flick starring Roy Scheider in a high-tech police helicopter was also briefly a TV series” — “What is ‘Blue Thunder’?”), science (“The greyhound originated more than 5,000 years ago in this African country, where it was used to hunt gazelles” — “What is Egypt?”) and sophisticated wordplay (“Classic candy bar that’s a female Supreme Court justice” — “What is Baby Ruth Ginsburg?”).

As a computer scientist, this would be interesting work.

No 13?

The season finale of House, a popular TV show for Fox, was filmed entirely with the new Canon 5D Mark II.

I’ve got a closet full of Canon’s, included a Mark 1D Mark II and the newer 50D. The 50D does excellent video and stills.

What I’ve not seen how they handled is audio. I’d be surprised if the DSLR handled that very well. I’ve no doubt it could handle the images well:

@Drdiagnostic: How was the quality as compared 2 the traditional camera used in shooting?

GY: i loved it and feel it’s the future. cameras that can give you these looks

House is a major show, – it is the biggest TV show in the world right now. I quite like it, although with the DVR I rarely watch it as it happens. I may check this one out on the 17th live though.

Note that it isn’t just a 5D on a tripod… you have a lot of other things hooked in:

VSA HDDSLR Still & Video Shoot – Images by Vincent Laforet

I’ve never really watched the show, but this is funny by cultural osmosis.

News reports will say that Glen Beck “made” 32 million dollars last year.

ACTUALLY… his company had REVENUES of 32 million dollars. A tidy sum, but hardly what he ‘”made”.

And no matter how much he took home, the government took home more.

And it’s coming at a time when the 3amET show is seeing big ratings in the A25-54 demographic – even topping CNN prime time last week

We don’t stay up and watch it, but it is on our DVR.   I like the parts, called “Robots”, where they have political characters of the day in a sauna with computer generated voices.  My wife thinks their every Friday guest, Mike Baker, is dreamy.  I now know she married me only because I once had a job offer from a lettered intelligence agency. (-:

Caution: The show is PG-13+, including the video at the link.

I wonder how many saw the Audi Green Police advertisement ask “how long til it gets that bad”…

BTW: I looked at the A3 TDI just this week. Too small a back seat. WAY to small.

In case you didn’t know, “24” started up again. I’ve suffered through  two two-hour kickoff episodes and one regular hour episode.

Yawn.  Jack still wants perimeters. CTU still can’t make a good one.  Chloe still hacks computers but gets caught at it. The President still is almost as moronic as our actual President. And the CTU director hunches over all the time – get some posture dude!  And why doesn’t CTU block cell phone calls at work? Nothing good comes from them! Finally, the continue their knack for putting characters in harms way that I hope get harmed.

I’ll DVR it and save it for a rainy day when I’ve got no ambition to do anything better with my limited time on earth.

Why the title?  Well, they’ve managed to take 24 hours and make it seem like 27.