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2013-04-07

TV: Revolution



TV: Revolution

This is a difficult show to commit to. I like it; it has an intriguing premise and a fast moving, absorbing plot. But it also poses serious questions with no likelihood of answering them. It's the fallout from Lost, i guess, plus Galactica, The 4400, and other shows. If you make a big mystery the motivation for a show, you should reveal it by the end. In this case i don't think the writers can.

Revolution begins sometime in the near future when in the space of maybe 2 minutes, all the power goes out. It's not that lines have been cut and it's not that power station have been shut off. What it is, is: electricity has ceased to flow.

Fast forward 15 years. We meet the main characters in Chicago, but never mind that, they soon leave. Mainly we are left to imagine the chaos, mass starvation and so forth that must have happened. We just see a microcosm of the end result, a group of just a few intact houses arranged in a horseshoe. Obviously the remains of a culdesac. No ruins; the other houses are completely gone, replaced by cornfields. Middle class suburb to peasant village in one easy step.

Well there are some questions right there. Why go to the trouble of completely removing the other structures, especially when you have to do it entirely by hand? And also, why remove the road? There's not a speck of asphalt to be seen. But guess what, those are not the questions i was referring to earlier and i'm going to let them slide.

What does concern me is first of all why is anyone alive? If there's no electricity, there shouldn't be any metabolism. And nerves aren't even the beginning. How about the ADP<>ATP transition? But let's say that somehow, only actual currents are affected; then the next question is why is there no replacement technology? Whole lot of engineers with lots of time on their hands, why haven't they come up with some machines based on sequential chemical processes like the ones in living organisms? And what about steam? No sign of that. In fact several episodes into the season, the reactivation of a single steam locomotive from a museum is treated as an iffy proposition. Don't the writers on this show know how many steam train hobbyists there are?

The other reason for starting in Chicago is to show us the long reach of the Monroe Republic. We soon discover that Monroe is a warlord who controls most of New England and parts of the midwest. Oh, and most of his troops have muskets or bows. Which brings up the next question: how does America run low on bullets in just 15 years? And if you've reached the point where you can no longer equip your entire army with assault rifles, why go all the way back to the Brown Bess? Yeah, muzzle loaders, when there must be plenty of single shot rifles available. Maybe you can't make new shells, but you can you can reuse the old ones. I'll pass over the fact that the Monroe Militia seems to have plenty of horses, since i honestly don't know how long it would take to breed them.

And then there are the magic amulets. They restore the laws of physics in their vicinity. How? Tiny tuning forks that change the vibrations of cosmic strings? Gears made from dark matter? Whatever it is, they don't just make it possible for devices to work, they power them up too, somehow inducing a current with the proper voltage and amperage-- the ultimate pull up power supply.

Monroe has established his capital at Philadelphia. His headquarters is Indepedence Hall. He's making plans to take on Georgia, which seems to now include all of the old south, and the "plains nation", which includes most of the midwest. Eventually he wants to conquer all of North America. But first he needs to rid his own territory of a stubborn rebellion, which naturally calls itself "The Resistance". There's a gang war element to this. Monroe brands his people with his logo; the rebels sport american flag tattoos.

We learn through flashbacks that the power shutdown method was discovered by accident by a company trying to invent something else. Apparently the amulets were made for the development team. Which included Rachel, one of the main characters. Monroe didn't know the details but he did know that she was involved somehow, so he captured her sometime in the past. A few episodes in, he captures her children. Finally he has leverage to compell her to talk about the project. She builds him an amplifier, a roughly water heater sized device with a range in the hundreds of yards. She and the children eventually escape and rejoin the others. Monroe uses the amplifier to resurrect two attack helicopters and start snuffing out rebel bases.

Really? Two military grade helicopters that haven't had full maintenance in 15 years. But they work fine. You know, the propellors aren't made of metal anymore, they're made from a flexible material that depends on centrifugal force to maintain rigidity. After 15 years of stillness, hanging by their own weight, they should at least be bent. But no: propellors, engines, radios, gatling guns, rockets, all as good as new. Fortunately Rachel manages to find another wizard, er former colleague, in hiding and use his amulet to power a bazooka. Which her son uses to destroy the chopper with the amplifier in it. That makes the other one crash as well, of course. He gets killed in the process, but that turns out to be an important plot development, because it means that Rachel can reclaim a special advanced pacemaker that was put in him when he was a child. It's apparently made with the same technology as the amulets.

It's been pretty obvious from early on that the current state of things is being maintained by some sort of engine, let's call it the Nullifier. Extrapolating from the size of the amulets and the amplifier, it must be huge. And immobile. And if i were one of the warlords, or better still, part of some group that still believed in democracy, i'd be looking for it. I suspect that it disturbs Earth's magnetic field, so i'd find a geomagnetic survey map and a compass, and take readings until i found significant variances. Then i'd follow those. No one appears to be doing that. However, in the flashbacks we meet Russell. He was a Defense Department contact person who was the first to be officially told about the discovery. He in turn, sold the Pentagon on the idea of the Nullifier. It would be used to target specific areas. Yeah, what's better than drone to ground combat? Drone to ground combat on an enemy with no working machines or communication. There is reference to a place called The Tower, apparently the location of the Nullifier.

Then the Bad News Officers showed up at Russell's door. His son was not coming back from Afghanistan. Russell became obsessed with the idea of putting an end to modern warfare.

It has not yet been made clear to what extent the developers were in with Russell, but they were at least aware of what was coming since they made the amulets. We see in the flashbacks that Rachel's husband, also a developer, updated his amulet (they are part flash drive) just before the blackout. But it seems that neither he nor any of the others warned anyone that famine and disease were about to take three fourths of the world population. Why didn't they? What is clear is that they never anything afterward either. and instead just tried to live anonymously, occasionally checking in with their hidden computers. But Russell seems to have a new plan that involves collecting the researchers (which he can because he has working devices that track the amulets) and coercing them to work for him. And he just showed up at Monroe's headquarters. In a car.

2013-03-30

Easter

You've got the brawn
I've got the brain
Let's eat chocolate bunnies!
 

2013-03-24

Recipe: 4 Cups of Custard



Recipe: 4 Cups of Custard

Start with a solid glass 4 cup measuring cup.
Add ½ cup of sugar, and 4 eggs. Beat until smooth, but don't get air in.
Gradually mix in milk until the mixture reaches the 4 cup mark.
Carefully add flavoring. I like 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract, ½ teaspoon of almond extract, and ½ teaspoon of nutmeg.
Put the cup in the microwave. give it 8 minutes on low. if you don't have a turn table do 2 minutes at a time with a quarter turn in between.
This is the tricky part because microwaves vary so much. Give the mixture another 3 minutes and check the temperature. If you have a thermometer you're looking for just over 200 degrees. Otherwise observe how it steams and judge when it looks about to boil. Until you reach that point, keep zapping it. But stop as soon as you reach it.
Wait half an hour. It should be set but not very hard. Scoop it out and eat it warm.
This is very soothing to the stomach and easy to digest. It's i had when i was really down with the nasty bug that's been going around.

2013-03-16

TV: Robot Combat League

TV: Robot Combat League

Robot Combat League has a cool name. Unfortunately, that’s about all it has going for it. I think almost anyone contemplating the name would automatically imagine something much more interesting than the reality.

First of all, this is not like the robot competitions that have been going on at universities in the past decade. This is not lawnmower sized machines built by engineering students hacking and cutting at each other. This is not a competition among teams working independent under a few simple constraints. Nope, this is just a supersized version of Rockem Sockem Robots.

All of the robots were built by the same group and have pretty much the same design. Two arms, two legs, hydraulic movement, and rear support beam attached to a dolly. So while they do walk, it’s a hunched over walk, with the beam and dolly providing balance. An umbilical provides power. These are animatrons really, not robots. Each is operated by a team of two. One uses a joystick to operate the legs, making the robot move forward and backward, left and right, but there’s no actual turning. The other operator uses a waldo to move the arms and torso. Since this is a punchout, a lot of camera time is spent demonstrating how the robot’s arms follow the movement of the operator’s arms. The operators are referred to as the “robo pilot” and “robo tech” I forget which is which.

There is an anonymous staff of referees and mechanics, plus a moderator, one Chris Jericho. Jericho is a professional wrestler with lots of experience in over hyped commentating. Also he was in a movie once playing an industrial service robot who enters a pit fighting match and gets beaten to death by ticked off factory worker.

The competitors do a lot of bragging. “I actually built robots for NASA.” “I’m a combat helicopter pilot, I can handle powerful machines.” “I’m a professional auto racer, I’ve got lightning reflexes and nerves of steel.” “I play a lot of video games.” “My dad is George Lucas.” But come on-- engineering knowledge means very little if you didn’t build the machine. Not to mention, the machines on Mars are real robots, with intelligence and autonomy. And the only physical skill you need is the ability to play Tag. Strategy does help, but only a little.

`As I said, the robots are built very similarly. The differences are meant to interest the audience. This one has extra heavy fists. This one has a longer reach. This one has thicker armor. This one has minimal armor but it’s fast.

So rockem sockem. The upper body operators yell to their partners: Charge! Back off! Right! Left!. Sometimes their partners respond in perfect synchronization. Swing those arms— it’s a hit! Sparks fly when a fist connects, but that’s just for show. The cover pieces, which are referred to as armor, get knocked off, which makes no difference except that the hydraulics get exposed. Damaged hydraulics limit a robot’s movement. “That left arm is dangling uselessly!” Jericho unnecessarily informs us. Oh and the hydraulic fluid is slippery, so a robot standing in its own blood loses traction. So far none has actually fallen, but that’s surely coming.

A match is three rounds. In between there are 20 minutes for repairs. The staff does most of that but the operators usually do some. Mostly it’s tightening bolts, replacing broken hydraulics, refilling the hydraulics, and popping back on the fender like armor pieces— if they aren’t too badly bent. The important thing is that if there is a lot of damage, there will not be time to fix everything. Unequal scoring in the first round often leads to the worse of robot being rendered totally disabled in the second. That’s referred to as a knockout.

But, and here’s my biggest complaint, there is no duct tape! What kind of supposedly engineering/geeky competition has no duct tape? With duct tape you could have those twisted armor pieces back on in 5 seconds. You could cover that crack, splint that rod, reinforce that pressure seal. Jury rigging is the true test of machine related skills, not part swapping.

I had a really old car once that developed engine trouble. The mechanic said that the head gasket wasn’t properly sealed because the cover was warped. Replacing the cover would have been really expensive, not to mention the downtime while waiting for delivery. So instead the mechanic took a head gasket of a thicker size and shaved it down to match the bend in the cover. Worked nicely. That’s the kind of activity I want to see in a robot match.

Otherwise, it’s about as “technical” as crashing model trains.

2013-03-13

TV: Smash

TV: Smash

Smash is a drama about an attempt to make a Broadway musical about Marilyn Monroe. It gets a lot disparagement. and low ratings. I don't know why, personally, i like it.

There are three main groups of characters, each seperated by about a half generation in age, and each with its own set of motivations.

The oldest group consists of finance and production. Old hands, on first name terms with everyone who counts. Unfortunately, the power couple that first took on the project got divorced, and now the show is caught up in their feud.

Next is creative: script, music, choreography, and direction. In their stratum, everyone is a genius and their employability depends less on how many hits they've had than how recently they've had one.

Then there are the performers. Apparently, until the show opens, they live on a $200 a month stipend, out of which they have to come up with food and lodging and additional acting/singing/dancing lessons to improve their chances at auditions. In New York-- i don't see how they can do it. Plus, until the show settles in with a guaranteed season they have to be ready to jump on a moment's notice. The backup performers are always looking to jump anyway-- to something that will give them more exposure.

Also, who will be Marilyn? The more experienced Ivy, who's a buxom blonde even without the costuming? Or Karen, who's kind of scrawny, but has freshness, eagerness, and the burning desire to never need to look for a job back home in Iowa. Yeah, kinda like Norma Jean.

Karen the newcomer is played by Katherine MacPhee, also a newcomer. Not that it matters, i didn't recognize anyone in the show except Debra Messing, the creator and main writer. So MacPhee was just someone else i'd never heard of and i was surprised at the hate out there for her. Apparently she came up through American Idol and that leaves a stigma. I don't know why, i don't watch any of those shows, but i thought the idea was to reward talent that might otherwise go overlooked. Apparently the Internet thinks she was unfairly rewarded because there are some awful things being said about her speech, movement, facial expressions, emoting, and even the way she stands still. I don't get it, she seems fine to me.

So, drama, intrigue, bed hopping. And music.

The music has gotten bad responses too, but i think it's wonderful. Each song perfectly fits the mood of the scene it's in. Some of the songs are meant to be part of the musical and some are sort of dream sequences triggered by stress between the characters, which makes the outer story sort of a musical too.

Finally there's a lot of genuine discussion on the meaning of Marilyn in our culture. Is she a true role model? Was she just a commodity? Or did she manage to outgrow the men who treated her like one?

Smash is nearing the end of its second season. There may not be a third. That would be sad.

2013-03-12

My Dishwasher

I am so unorganized. It's really hard to feel i've made progress on anything. And i spend more time trying figure out how to get something done, than i do doing it.

That's why i like my dishwasher. I put the dishes in, run it, and behold, they're clean! No uncertainty there.

2013-03-10

Codfish Cakes



Codfish Cakes


I was thinking about codfish cakes a few weeks ago. My father used to make them when i was a child. You start with dried salted codfish. Rinse it in clear water to remove most of the salt, then mix it with mashed potatoes, eggs and sour cream. Cook in a skillet and serve with applesauce. It was hearty, filling, a nice traditional working class dish.

Well, last week, for the first time in years, i found the same brand of codfish, dried and salted in a wooden box, at a local grocery store. It was ten dollars a pound! Working class no more. That's what we've come to, fish is a luxury. I recently read a claim that by mass, the amount of fish in the oceans is just one tenth of what it was a hundred years ago. I saw a very compelling set of photographs, trophy fishing pics from tourists at a single Florida resort over the decades. The fish get smaller as time goes on. I wonder if anything can be done.