nameandnature | Entries tagged with television

Talking to a Philosopher About ‘The Good Place’ – The Ringer: Contains spoilers for The Good Place: watch it first (it’s very good).
(tags: television philosophy the-good-place ethics trolley-problem)

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Ghostwatch: the Halloween hoax that changed the language of television: Via fanf, an article on the BBC’s Halloween mockmentary which many people took to be real.
(tags: tv television ghosts halloween paranormal)

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I’ve got questions about the Rainbow Cinematic Universe | Den of Geek: A critique of the problems with the world building in Rainbow. “Rod, Jane and Freddy seem to live everywhere and nowhere all at once, a bit like God or The Littlest Hobo.”
(tags: funny rainbow television)
Children of Magenta – YouTube: 1997 presentation about the levels of flight deck automation and how to keep out of trouble. Interesting stuff about trusting the automation too far, and how trying to keep it updated when the situation changes is worse than going more manual.
(tags: automation aircraft safety flying)

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Strange Horizons – Freshly Remember’d: Kirk Drift By Erin Horáková: A lengthy essay arguing that the popular image of Shatner’s Kirk isn’t what the original episodes of Star Trek portray (but that the reboot has picked up the stereotype and run with it).
(tags: star-trek kirk james-t-kirk science-fiction television)
BENDOCKERY.COM: The Anatomy of Swing: A series of articles with examples. The bit about “laying back” was new to me.
(tags: swing music jazz)

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The Science Behind “The Expanse” – 1/25/17 – YouTube: A panel with Caltech scientists and people from the show.
(tags: tv the-expanse science science-fiction sci-fi physics astronomy)
Abigail Nussbaum — Person of Interest – The Good Bits Version: If you want just the SF bits of Person of Interest (which are great, see Peter Watts’s review) without the police procedural/victim of the week stuff, Abigail Nussbaum has a useful list of episodes to watch.
(tags: person-of-interest artificial-intelligence science-fiction television)

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A Parable On Obsolete Ideologies – Less Wrong: Yvain/Scott Alexander on why it might be a bad idea to continue to espouse a belief in God, the Devil and whatnot while having a sort of private understanding of what that means, even if that understanding is more palatable than the original theology.
(tags: psychology religion rationality hitler)
The Definitive History Of The West Wing: (tags: west-wing aaron-sorkin television politics)
The Fox Trot in the Jazz Age – YouTube: What they called Foxtrot in the 1920s was rather different to the modern ballroom version.
(tags: dancing foxtrot jazz)
Jazz Age Ballroom Dancing (“The Modern Dances”) | Mass Historia: A set of web pages on the Jazz Age ballroom dances.
(tags: 1930s 1920s dance jazz foxtrot ballroom)
Take The A Train: The AABA structure of “Take the A Train” illustrated in a neat little presentation which tracks the music.
(tags: jazz music)

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PETER DINKLAGE: Dinklage, Peter Dinklage…
(tags: dinklage funny peter dinklage game-of-thrones television tv)

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Are you paid to look busy?: Do people with useless jobs secretly resent those with useful ones?
(tags: jobs money management work employment)
Interview with the Game of Thrones linguist: There are a few Easter eggs in the Valyrian stuff. Fun.
(tags: television game-of-thrones language)
What’s the evidence on using rational argument to change people’s minds? : May 2014 : Contributoria – community funded, collaborative journalism: Are we rational or rationalising? Depends on the context.
(tags: psychology bias rationality argument persuasion logic)

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The Millions : One Fixed Point: “Sherlock,” Sherlock Holmes, and the British Imagination: Why we love Sherlock.
(tags: sherlock sherlock-holmes britain television books)
13 reasons why I am taking the Daily Mail to the Press Complaints Commission | British InfluenceBritish Influence: The Heil lied about Romanian immigration to the UK. This isn’t that surprising, but it’s nice to see someone do the research to prove it.
(tags: dailymail fail journalism lies uk romania immigration politics)
The Descent to C: Simon Tatham introduces C to people who’ve only worked in high level languages, the innocent little darlings. You ‘ad array bounds checking? You were lucky!
(tags: C programming language)
The Liberal Democrats face a true test of liberty | Nick Cohen | Comment is free | The Observer: “The real scandal in the Liberal Democrats is not leading the news. Extremists are menacing the career and life of a Liberal Democrat politician and respectable society hardly considers these authentically scandalous threats to be a scandal at all. The scandal, in short, is that there is no scandal.”
(tags: islam libdems liberal-democrats nick-clegg islamism freedom twitter mohammed)
The Millions : Read Me! Please!: Book Titles Rewritten to Get More Clicks: Classic literature titles re-written as those click-bait headlines you see spreading around Facebook: “They Told Him White Whales Were Impossible to Hunt. That’s When He Went Literally Crazy.” Via marn.
(tags: creative funny literature parody)

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THE EXPLODING TOILET and Other Memories: "And in one of those dreaded realizations pilots are advised to avoid, that insulation between cockpit calm and atmospheric anarchy looks thin indeed. An extrapolated horror: the riveted aluminum planks bending apart, the wind rushing in, explosive depressurization, death, the first airliner — no, the first vehicle — in history to crash because of an overflowing toilet." This guy tells a good story. Via marnanel
(tags: flying toilet pilot aircraft funny)
Secrets of FBI Smartphone Surveillance Tool Revealed in Court Fight | Threat Level | Wired.com: by a court case. Those guys have some nice kit.
(tags: eavesdropping FBI spying bugging surveillance interception)
The Boston Marathon Bombing: Keep Calm and Carry On – Bruce Schneier – The Atlantic: "But our brains are fooling us. Even though this will be in the news for weeks, we should recognize this for what it is: a rare event. That’s the very definition of news: something that is unusual — in this case, something that almost never happens. "
(tags: terrorism bruce-schneier security)
PSA: Ignore the news – Charlie’s Diary: The reading the news is bad for you: a timely reminder.
(tags: television news tv media charles-stross)

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Richard Dawkins attacks Muslim schools for stuffing children's minds with 'alien rubbish' - Telegraph: "He said that while he opposed faith schools as a whole, it was the Muslim ones that worried him the most." That seems reasonable: the C of E schools are mostly harmless, as far as I can tell: they accept evolution and don't examine the consequences for Christian doctrine too carefully.
(tags: evolution religon islam richard-dawkins dawkins education schools)
Religious People Are Nerds - YouTube: Following on from my post about how religion is a fandom, here are some more interesting parallels.
(tags: religion nerds fandom hobby funny)
Strictly Come Dancing! | Woruld under wolcnum: "Some exciting factoids from my trip to be in the Strictly
studio audience (in no particular order!)"
(tags: television tv dancing)

Paul Haggis Vs. the Church of Scientology : The New Yorker: Just in case you were in any doubt that Scientology is a massive con.
(tags: religion scientology cult)
Clergy told to take on the 'new atheists' - Telegraph: The Archdruid is going to fight the Dawkinsator. This will be epic.
(tags: atheism uk anglicanism anglican cofe rowan-williams new-atheism richard-dawkins)
What "socalized healthcare" is really like: Not perfect, but pretty good at treating urgent stuff.
(tags: uk nhs health medicine)
Terry Jones Adapting Good Omens Into A TV Series Bleeding Cool Comic Book, Movies and TV News and Rumors: Should be good, if it happens.
(tags: terry-pratchett pratchett neil-gaiman books television fantasy)
On ableist language: Why you shouldn't call the Conservative cuts "crazy". I found this very helpful.
(tags: satire identity-politics disability politics)

GodBlock - Protect your children: "GodBlock is a web filter that blocks religious content. It is targeted at parents and schools who wish to protect their kids from the often violent, sexual, and psychologically harmful material in many holy texts, and from being indoctrinated into any religion before they are of the age to make such decisions." Via Metafilter
(tags: religion atheism software censorship children web internet god funny parody filter)
Johann Hari: Did the media help to pull the trigger? - Johann Hari, Commentators - The Independent: "Every time there is a massacre by a mentally ill person, like Derrick Bird's last month, journalists are warned by psychologists that, if we are not very careful in our reporting, we will spur copycat attacks by more mentally ill people. We ignored their warnings. We reported the case in precisely the way they said was most risky. Are we now seeing the result?"
(tags: murder psychology crime ethics guns journalism media violence uk suicide)
The Turn - 93.12: "At the very heart of winged flight lies the banked turn, a procedure that by now seems so routine and familiar that airline passengers appreciate neither its elegance and mystery nor its dangerously delusive character. The author, a pilot, takes us up into the subject"
(tags: flight history aviation flying banking physics)
YouTube - N559DW full flight with radar overlay - Doug White King Air landing HD: Via realinterrobang: passenger with a PPL for single engined light aircraft lands something a bit bigger when his pilot dies. Video of the radar with audio from the radio.
(tags: aviation flying pilot air-traffic-control emergency radar)
FIREFLY: The Credits Sequence It Deserved!: io9.com gives Joss Whedon's "Firefly' an 80s style intro sequence. Still not as good as Airwolf's, but a good effort.
(tags: video funny youtube television firefly intro)
YouTube - Carl Sagan: A Universe Not Made For Us: "Excerpts from Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. More specifically, from the chapter titled A Universe Not Made For Us. I edited together the audio from the audio-book, and added the video from Stephen Hawking's Into the Universe and Brian Cox's Wonders of the Solar System. The music is Jack's Theme from the Lost soundtrack."
(tags: cosmology astronomy sagan science evolution universe video youtube religion creationism)
Moral Realism in the Bible?: "Most theologians seem to think the Hebrew Bible presupposes a subjective theory of ethics that grounds right and wrong in the nature or attitudes of a person, Yahweh. This is called divine command theory. Bible scholar Jaco Gericke has proposed an alternate view: that some passages of the Bible presuppose objective moral realism, such that right and wrong are grounded in something beyond the attitudes of a person or persons. Under such a view, Yahweh might sometimes be wrong."
(tags: bible morality philosophy religion christianity)

Heresy Corner: Equality before the law: "If Harriet Harman's odious Equality Bill reaches the statute book in anything like its current form (in other words, if the House of Lords doesn't manage to delay it before a general election intervenes) then there may well be social and legal chaos in this country. There will also be a lot more work for lawyers. A lot." - Heresiarch reckons the Equality Bill is a bad thing.
(tags: law politics equality)
Killing In The Climb - rathergood.com: Why have them vying for the Christmas number one when you can combine them?
(tags: music video rathergood funny mashup)
DAVID SIMON - Vice Magazine: "David Simon is responsible for one of the greatest feats of storytelling of the past century, and that’s the entire five-season run of the television series The Wire." - Vice Magazine interview him.
(tags: vicemagazine the-wire tv-programmes tv television wire crime drugs politics journalism)
Sumerians Look On In Confusion As God Creates World | The Onion - America's Finest News Source: Members of the earth's earliest known civilization, the Sumerians, looked on in shock and confusion some 6,000 years ago as God, the Lord Almighty, created Heaven and Earth.
(tags: religion funny onion history creationism)
IEEE Spectrum: Math Quiz: Why Do Men Predominate?: "among top math performers, the gender gap doesn’t exist in some ethnic groups and in some countries. The researchers conclude that culture is the main reason more men excel at the highest math levels in most countries."
(tags: maths mathematics gender feminism equality)
The C Programming Language: 4.10 by Brian W Kernighan & Dennis M Ritchie & HP Lovecraft: "C functions may be used recursively; that is, a function may call itself either directly or indirectly. Uninquiring souls may take this as just another peculiarity of those C folk, of whose ways their neighbours speak little to outsiders but much among themselves.

Keener news-followers, however, wondered at the events of the winter of 1927-28, the abnormally large number of calls placed upon the stack, the swiftness with which that list was sorted, the disturbing lack of heap allocation throughout the proceedings, and the secrecy surrounding the affair."
(tags: funny humour parody C programming lovecraft horror)