Boing Boing » tv

AaronSw on Jeopardy!

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 17 May 2013 04:23:46 +0000

Noah Swartz writes, "Aaron Swartz was the 'answer' to the final 'question' in the 'Techie Dropouts' category on last night's episode of Jeopardy, preceded by other famous techie drop outs like Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg."

IT Crowd coming back for a final episode!

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 08 May 2013 17:19:14 +0000

Wahoo! It's official: the IT Crowd will reunite for a final episode. My favorite new sitcom of the century will be back -- something that seemed less and less likely as the careers of its stars reached heights that were beyond the scope of UK TV.

During a Q&A session at the German re:publica digital conference, IT Crowd creator and writer Graham Linehan announced that he is bringing the award-winning geeky British sitcom and cast members (Chris O’Dowd, Richard Ayoade, Katherine Parkinson and Matt Berry) back to Channel 4 for one last special forty-minute episode. According to Bleeding Cool, this final episode is to be filmed in three weeks time. The script for the special was written over a year ago, but due to a pregnancy and the actors being busy in other TV and film projects, it was postposed.

IT Crowd Creator Graham Linehan Bringing the Geeky British Sitcom Back For One Last Episode (via IO9)

Game of Brogues

Rob Beschizza — Mon, 06 May 2013 17:14:16 +0000

From Max Read's fantastic article nitpicking the inconsistencies in Game of Thrones' deployment of regional British accents:

"The show has dragons, who cares if the accents don't match?": Well, first of all, I care. Second of all, the cornerstone of science fiction and fantasy fandom is nitpicking. Third of all, the fact that Game of Thrones doesn't take place within our collectively agreed-upon reality doesn't release it from its responsibility to verisimilitude or the maintenance of internal consistency within its own systems.

Harrison Ford doesn't answer Star Wars questions on Kimmel

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 02:40:50 +0000

When Harrison Ford's appearance on Jimmy Kimmel switched to Q&A with the audience, Ford said that no Star Wars questions would be allowed. Whereupon Kimmel began (apparently) to troll Harrison rather hard. While it's clear that Harrison was in on the joke, it's got a pretty great finale.

Harrison Ford Meets an Old Friend and it Doesn’t Go Well on Kimmel

Game of Thrones S3E2: Ladies, leave your men at home

Leigh Alexander — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 13:00:31 +0000

The Game of Thrones universe is all about how disadvantages are balanced against advantages: Every major character or faction has a unique set of challenges, and then a trump card. Tyrion Lannister's unfavorable height, scarred face and status as the family black sheep is balanced by his superior wit and endless disposable income; as Queen Regent, Cersei almost has the power she wants -- but then of course, she's tasked with mothering and managing awful Joffrey. Daenerys' dragons were her trump card even when she had nothing else. And young Bran Stark has lost everything, including the use of his legs, but he has "green dreams."

Magical phenomena in Game of Thrones are applied with a light hand, generally. You could almost forget you're watching a show about a fantasy universe instead of a show about medieval wartime politics until it asks you to believe in undead wights, or in skin-changing wargs, people that have the ability to project themselves into the bodies of animals. Bran's dreams of a three-eyed crow and a peculiar, small young man are more than ordinary dreams. When he sleeps he roams the world in the body of his direwolf, Summer.

After fleeing occupied Winterfell, Bran, along with the wildling woman Osha, his dear steward Hodor and his little brother Rickon, plans on going to the wall, from whence Bran doesn't know his half-brother Jon Snow has defected on a spy mission against the wildlings. But in this episode Team Bran meets the crannogfolk Jojen and Meera, who've presumably found Bran through the boy's nighttime searching in Summer's skin, and we get the impression this three-eyed raven of his dreams might become a more important quest.

The lost Stark children seem endlessly to orbit their family -- mother might be at Riverrun, Jon at the Wall, Robb on the warfront -- and as the courses of their travels attract new potential allies (will Littlefinger really help Sansa reunite with Catelyn, or use her for his own ends?), they seem always a step behind. The Stark family's wish to reunite drives what might be the primary narrative arc of Game of Thrones. We just want to know if their mother is going to get her children back.

Things aren't good for Lady Catelyn right now. Her eldest son blames her for the fall of Winterfell, the rest of her children are missing or captive, and she's just gotten word from Riverrun that her father, Hoster Tully, has died.

To make matters worse, Robb has broken an alliance with the Freys that saw him promise to marry one of their horrible daughters in exchange for passage at the Frey-owned Twins holding last season. He's married a Volantene girl, and you see how deeply Catelyn mistrusts this choice. If there weren't already enough people blaming her for the botched-up war effort, she confides she thinks the gods are exacting vengeance on her because she once wished for Jon Snow, her husband's bastard, to die, and then failed to be a mother to him.

Robb decides to divert his troops toward Riverrun so that the family can attend his grandfather's funeral. Family is core to the Starks' identity, and yet Robb's consistent choice of love and loyalty and the noble pursuit of vengeance over strategy is clearly threatening his bid for the throne. Northmen loyal to the Starks are getting restless, and grizzled Arnolf Karstark tells Robb of his bride, "I think you lost the war the day you married her." Ooh, was that the prickle of foreshadowing? I sure hope not.

Legendary swordsman and charming incestor Jaime Lannister is, at the behest of Lady Stark, remains in the custody of Brienne "The Beauty" of Tarth. She's clinging doggedly to her mission to bring this incredibly high-value prisoner to King's Landing, believing he can be traded for the Stark girls. The Lannisters, of course, have made sure nobody knows they only have one Stark girl -- Arya is, of course, posing as a sword-wielding boy in the countryside with her friends -- but let's worry about that later.

The characters discuss the late Renly Baratheon and his "degenerate" "proclivities" often during this episode. Renly, of course, was gay, and in love with Loras Tyrell, the handsome Knight of Flowers, but the books always made that fact implicit. The show's decision to deal with it explicitly, and even to portray the physical relationship between Renly and Tyrell in earlier episodes, is an interesting one.

I always felt dealing with issues of discrimination and oppression through period dramas is sort of the easy, or lazy thing to do -- of course everyone is racist and ableist and sexist and homophobic, that's just the world they live in, and so forth. But the show has taken pains to create empathy for the ways characters try to move within the limitations their universe has prescribed, so we feel for Loras and Renly's unexpressed love, and the fact that most characters seem to feel Renly's orientation would have made him unfit to be king.

Jaime insults Renly to Brienne and makes fun of her both for what he perceives to be her own "masculine" qualities, and for the fact she fancied Renly, but it seems he really just wants to upset her. Jaime is someone who behaves in an openly-arrogant fashion, but may conceal a more thoughtful moral code, if a personal one, than many of the other characters.

You can almost forgive him for having children with his sister Cersei, because through the horrible circumstances of a ruthless, motherless Lannister childhood, he's genuinely in love. When he's had his fill of tormenting poor Brienne, he relents, with probably this episode's finest quote: "I don't blame you, and I don't blame him either. We don't get to choose who we love."

You don't get to choose what your kids turn out like, either. It's hard to say what's a bigger challenge for Cersei: Her monstrous son, or the inconveniently young, beautiful and merciful Margaery, who stands a chance of upsetting the Queen Regent's sloppily-constructed power balance.

Desperate to control Joff, Cersei's expelled all of Tyrion's efforts to undo the damage the boy's done, and has replaced her most intelligent counsel with the kind of thugs and sycophants that will tell her what she wants to hear. Sad to see Cersei digging herself into a trench of destructive paranoia when there's someone out there who really loves her, but this isn't a series that likes happy couples.

The appealing Tyrell family represents a meaningful threat to Cersei, but Joffrey's so excited at the military power the Tyrells add to his kingdom that he derides his mother's insecurity. Luckily it's his very disgust for women that makes him utterly blind to any threat Margaery and her family could pose to his rule. He just sees a lady to impress and control.

The Tyrells also represent the possibility of salvation for Sansa, who, disappointingly, is still too much in love with fantasy courtly ideals for her own good. It's clear she's attached to the idea of picture-perfect Loras Tyrell helping her out, here -- she doesn't know she's not his type.

Book fans have been eagerly waiting this episode's introduction of Olenna "Queen of Thorns" Redwyne, the Tyrell family's intriguing matriarch (her son, Mace Tyrell, is Margaery and Loras' father, mostly renowned for eating too much). Her power seems to be in plain speech -- "the cheese will be served when I want it served, and I want it served now," she tells a manservant, and that's that.

She's summoned Sansa presumably to hear the truth about Joffrey. Terrified into silence at court, it's the Stark girl's first chance to speak anything other than the pleasant lines she's been parroting for her own survival, and she even has trouble at first, before at last she can confide to Joffrey's monstrousness. It's a risky move, of course, as the Tyrells are ostensibly Lannister allies, but with this woman in charge, you get the sense that if they have their own agenda, they have a good chance of executing it.

Speaking of executing, this episode brings us the most awkward conversation about anal sex that's ever taken place over a crossbow. Awful little Joffrey is clearly much more comfortable with weapons than with women, and we see Margaery tread into dangerous territory as she pretends to show an interest. There's a lot of subtext going on in this conversation -- unless she confesses her first husband (and her brother's love) Renly was gay, Joffrey might think she consorted with a "traitor", and failed her "job" of bearing a child to boot. A displeased Joffrey is a physical threat, but Margaery defuses it by claiming to share his appetite for violence.

Yet I wonder how much pretending Margaery's actually doing. We heard her grandmother tell Sansa that it's Margaery's father who insists the girl needs to become a queen, even if that means marrying whichever contender is the closest. When Joffrey tells her that she no longer belongs to her father, the reaction this elicits seems genuine, and when she lets Joffrey embrace her over the weapon, it looks like there's a real thrill there, a secret desire to claim some of that shameless, violent male power for herself -- even if it's at their own reflection in the mirror she ultimately ends up pointing the thing.

Ah, and Theon is back. Alfie Allen's portrayal of the character, desperate and insecure and ultimately hunted to a cliff, was among my favorite things about the last season. But his pointless seizure of Winterfell means Robb Stark's supposed ally, Roose Bolton, is sending his people to clean up the mess, and now Theon is a prisoner who'll continue to pay for his juvenile error of judgment and his betrayal of the Starks.

House Bolton has some issues. I mean, their house sigil is a flayed man bound to an X-shaped torture device. Now we see why. And when we see Jaime and Brienne set upon by a posse bearing that flag, we know suddenly the Beauty and the Kingslayer have much bigger things to worry about than one another [*].

Arya is in trouble, too. She and her companions (including Gendry, who doesn't know he's one of Robert Baratheon's black-haired bastards), encounter the Brotherhood Without Banners, a ragtag group of unaffiliated freedom fighters led by Thoros of Myr, a red priest. We were supposed to presume the posse pro-Lannister, as they were singing "The Rains of Castamere," but not so. Arya and friends were going to be allowed to go on their way, but unfortunately an inconvenient prisoner arrives just in time. Sandor "The Hound" Clegane's nightmarish brother, Gregor "The Mountain," has been wreaking havok all over Westeros, but it's the Hound that gets dragged in by the brotherhood.

Recall how, terrified of fire, he fled the battle of King's Landing and has, we assume, been drinking himself into a stupor ever since. Despite everything else Arya has tried to be, Clegane immediately outs her as a "Stark bitch," and we're left wondering what this will mean for her future.

A strong theme in this episode is what women can do with the poor hands they're dealt in this world; one can become ruthless like Cersei, charming like Margaery, or, like Catelyn Stark, root oneselves in motherhood and prayer. We see how the wrong marriage to an apparently-excellent, loving woman can do Robb just as much harm as a decisive battle, and we see how the blunt, fearless candor of Lady Olenna is what makes people fear her. Even Shae, who seems to be interested in securing some genuine safety for Sansa, wields a certain power over Tyrion, easily able to twist him into begging for her forgiveness when it comes to the roving eye of his past.

I'd hardly call Game of Thrones a feminist story, but it does emphasize the way that while the power and movement of women in this world is limited, they use whatever resources they can find to tilt a little favor in their direction. Throughout this episode, we see the male heroes disadvantaged -- Robb making every wrong decision, Theon in brutal torture, Jon Snow lost in a foreign society -- in favor of examining what the women are able to accomplish behind the scenes. "Men use brawn, women use wiles" is the sort of trite concept typical of reductive fantasy universes. And the exceptions to this rule -- Brienne's nobility and incredibly-confident sword hand, Arya's warrior ambition -- are somewhat blunted by the fact that in order to have access to that type of power, they need to essentially pass as men. And at the end of the day, what matters most about Arya on a practical level is simply that she's a "Stark bitch."

But there's still enough nuance to make it a pleasant journey for the heart, if one is willing to suspend some disbelief. Terrible things happen to everyone in this story, and we can find a point of empathy for everyone we're watching thrash in the grip of inevitability. We had a lovely discussion in the comments last week, so I'll ask you a question in the hopes of fostering another: Who's your favorite woman in the series, and why?

Finally, another reason it's fun to follow along with Game of Thrones is the social media culture. Here and there I'll try to direct you to neat things I find online, like Marissa Nadler's awesome, haunting a-capella cover of the opening theme. Or Arrested Westeros, my current favorite site, which combines Game of Thrones with quotes from Arrested Development. You wouldn't believe how well it works.

[*CORRECTION: I originally (incorrectly) presumed it was Ramsay Bolton who'd led the party capturing Brienne and Jaime, but friends remind me it's supposed to be the Brave Companions that take them captive here. The book's creepy Vargo Hoat seems to have been replaced with a Bolton-affiliated man-at-arms called Locke who's in charge of recapturing Jaime Lannister, whereas the novel's Brave Companions were mercenaries ostensibly favoring the Lannisters, if I recall. Was Vargo Hoat too awful for TV? Did the writers worry that introducing the Brotherhood Without Banners and the Brave Companions simultaneously would confuse people about unaffiliated teams? Either way, they're probably going to Harrenhal, and awful is awful, right?]

Creators remember Knightmare, the pioneering VR adventure show

Rob Beschizza — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 12:48:07 +0000

Knightmare was a fantastic childrens' adventure show that ran on British TV in the 1980s. A youngster, wearing a vision-blinding helmet, would be guided around a giant virtual reality castle by a team of his or her peers, which issued instructions from dungeon master Treguard's chambers. Though defined by its technical limitations, Knightmare built a cult following thanks to its pioneering blue-screen setup—hence the blindfolding—and merciless treatment of contestants. The Guardian's Ben Child interviewed creator Tim Child and star Hugo Myatt and found that the production was itself something of a bad dream. Embedded above is the show's intro and a short documentary about it. Then you may enjoy a a selection of deaths.

Adafruit debuts "Circuit Playground" -- a kids' puppet show about electronics

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 12:38:58 +0000

I've written before about Adafruit's "Circuit Playground," a kids' puppet show about electronics (with accompanying coloring book and plushies!). The first episode, "A is for Ampere," just went live and it's a smashing history and explanation of the ampere and the electron.

Circuit Playground “A is for Ampere” – Episode 1

Three's Company pilot with different actors

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 15:44:33 +0000

The rather dreadful 1970s sitcom Three's Company adapted the UK sitcom Man About the House for American TV; it ran for eight seasons and was heavily syndicated through my whole childhood, and as with many people of my age, it lurks in my subconscious.

It turns out there was an unaired pilot that used some of the same cast, but a different writing team and a somewhat smarter brand of comedy, and it's surfaced on YouTube. Here's Wikipedia's description of that pilot:

The show was first penned by famed Broadway writer Peter Stone who set the series in New York. Stone envisioned the Jack Tripper character as a successful, yet underpaid, chef in a fancy French restaurant while the characters who were to become Janet and Chrissy were to be a secretary for a CEO, and a high style fashion model respectively. Silverman felt that the treatment would not play to middle America and thus passed on the script. Silverman then enlisted the services of famed television writer Larry Gelbart, best known for his Emmy-award winning work on CBS's M*A*S*H. Gelbart initially wanted nothing to do with the show, feeling that its relatively simple premise made it substandard in comparison to M*A*S*H. Nonetheless as a favor to Silverman, Gelbart went ahead and developed a pilot episode with his son in law who named the series Three's Company. Gelbart's adaptation closely followed the British series. He envisioned Ritter as "David Bell", an aspiring film maker looking for a place to live who just happened to be a great cook. Ritter's better halves were portrayed by Valerie Curtin who played "Jenny" an employee of the DMV, and Suzanne Zenor as an aspiring actress named "Samantha". Gelbart reset the Ropers' apartment building, which he called the Hacienda Palms, from New York to North Hollywood, California. This plot of this pilot looked much like that of the first episode of the actual show. Liked by Silverman, a pilot was ordered by ABC which taped in early 1976. This format of the show just barely made it on to the fall 1976 ABC lineup but was ousted by what ABC felt were more promising series. Of all the new sitcoms that premiered on ABC for the 1976–1977 television season, only Three's Company and the summer premiere of What's Happening!! went on to a second season. While ABC was in negotiations to re-shoot the pilot, CBS became interested in the show, and made a firm commitment to TTC productions (producers Don Taffner and Ted Bergman's New York based company) to air the show as a mid season replacement in February 1977 with the Gelbart cast. However, at the last minute ABC decided that they wanted the show and made a firm commitment to air the show at midseason with a new cast.

Three's Company - Rare First UNAIRED Pilot (Part 1)

Three's Company - Rare Second UNAIRED Pilot (Part 2)

(via Super Punch)

KISS/Hello Kitty TV show in development

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 03:05:56 +0000

2010's KISS x Hello Kitty clothing line has spawned a TV show about a Hello Kitty rock band that dresses in KISS makeup:

Yes, I'm serious: Kiss Hello Kitty (working title) is now in development, and it's based on this line of Kiss x Hello Kitty products, which made its debut in 2010. The show will feature "four Kiss x Hello Kitty characters living their rock 'n' roll dreams and bringing pink anarchy to every situation they are in."
Kiss' Gene Simmons is slated to be one of the executive producers, and the band sounds pretty pumped about the project. Says Paul Stanley: "Knowing and viewing The Hub as I do daily with my three children, it is the perfect home for us to bring the Kiss Hello Kitty juggernaut to yet another generation."
You heard it here first, folks. I'll keep you posted on when the series will make its debut.

So, on the one hand, this is a delightfully weird popculture trainwreck. On the other hand, Gene Simmons is a misogynist asshole, and I can't get all that enthusiastic about his executive producer role in an entertainment project aimed at little girls.

Exclusive: Hello Kitty and Kiss team up for a TV series [USA Today/Whitney Matheson]

(Thanks, Prezombie!)

Games to play during commercial breaks

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 17:28:32 +0000

The nice people at Hide and Seek have a collection of Tiny Games you can play while the commercials are on TV, like each player putting a finger on the screen and scoring a point for every face that they poke during the break -- winner is the most prolific face-poker.

I TOLD YOU SO
A game for two or more overconfident players.
As soon as a show segment ends, player one must say what the first advert will be advertising. Player two immediately mutes the television, and as the advert plays, whatever it is for, player one must explain how they were right, and the advert is definitely for the product they suggested, regardless of what it is actually advertising. Scoring is entirely subjective.
YOGHURT. BECAUSE MUMMIES ARE TIRED. BECAUSE MEN.
A game for two or more verbose players.
At the very start of an advert break, shout out a word. The other players have to shout out something else. Earn one point every time your word is said during the advert break. If someone chooses a word that’s not within the spirit of the game – “the” or “and” or “be” or anything like that – then the other players can reject it by unanimous agreement.

Hide and Seek also brought us the Board Game Remix Kit, and now they're running a Kickstarter to fund a bazillion tiny games as a mobile app.

Tiny Games For Ad Breaks (via Super Punch)

Supercut of all the alternate endings to the Animaniacs theme

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 22:33:29 +0000

Here's TammieRD's compilation of all the alternate endings to the Animaniacs theme song, each better than the last. As I mentioned before the complete seasons 1-3 DVDs are a huge hit around our house. Really some of the best kids' (and grownups') TV of the last century.

Animaniacs alternate theme song lyrical endings (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Cord-cutting wisdom from Nielsen to TV execs

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 23:36:04 +0000

"Oh, don't worry about those people who have found something better and who are dropping your service in six figure chunks each quarter. We'll just observe them and be ready to act later." -Mike Masnick

Muppet Musicians of Bremen

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 17:46:48 +0000

The entirety of the wonderful 1972 Tales from Muppetland special Muppet Musicians of Bremen is on YouTube is six parts. I loved this one growing up, and can't wait to share it with my daughter. It's not out on DVD, though you can find old laserdiscs of it if you hunt around.

Muppet Musicians of Bremen

Weekly Wipe: Charlie Brooker shreds TV

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 14:12:44 +0000

I somehow missed the fact that Charlie "Black Mirror" Brooker's brilliant, sweary, hilarious show Weekly Wipe had returned for a third season. It's the latest iteration of several different Brooker projects in which he sits on his sofa and shouts at his TV in the most amazingly entertaining way. Huge whacks of it are on YouTube, and every episode is pure glod (and oh, God, the bits where he reads awful online comments about bad TV moments aloud!).

Weekly Wipe

Black Mirror episode 2: White Bear and the culture of desensitization

Leigh Alexander — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 14:56:01 +0000

The last episode of Black Mirror’s second season airs tonight on UK Channel 4.

Do you remember the first profoundly shocking image you saw on the internet? Perhaps it would have been something you came across by accident; perhaps you followed, half horrified and half compelled, a trail of digital whispers to see if you could handle it.

Maybe you don’t remember the first one, but you remember some of them. Maybe you shut the window, sick at yourself, at the glimpse of a woman’s eyes glassed with something unsettling, not staged. Maybe you lingered on eruptions, lacerations, in spite of yourself. To see if the image could possibly be real.

You could have even been one of those who chased the rush, gaze fixed on the spectrum of human mortality suddenly available for analysis and consumption in ways far beyond what you will hopefully ever witness in your actual life. If so, you’ve probably seen someone’s victim, someone’s child, flicker by in your shock-zoetrope. That person is probably okay. It probably wasn’t real. It wasn’t really your problem. There was nothing you could’ve done anyway. You went to bed.

Now, you know that the world is full of upsetting and graphic things. You have seen communities form in dark little digital caves, faceless audiences forever upping the ante, worrying at a numb nerve ending that adapts, that wants ever more elaborate stimulation. . It is hard to feel shocked anymore; it is hard to feel moved. If you wanted to join them you wouldn’t have to dig through secretive channels; it’s just there, right over your shoulder. You probably already know where to look.

In the exposition of Black Mirror's season 2, episode 2 ("White Bear"), a woman awakes bound to a chair, alone in a house where the television radiates a stark, inexplicable sigil, an ominous whine. Disheveled, amnesiac, and clutching a photo of a child she can barely remember but who must be her daughter, she stumbles out into a suburban neighborhood, shouting for help. What greets her instead is an eager scattering of spectators wielding camera phones. Unmoved by her pleas, they film her from house windows, follow her down the street.

The voyeurs are possessed of a visible, quiet eagerness that you’ve seen on anyone looking at the world through a smartphone’s video recorder. Like what they’re seeing is just a moment to be captured, unreal. Immediately our heroine learns she’s being hunted; a masked man with a shotgun coolly advances, fires at her with no particular urgency.

No one helps. They just follow along and watch, like they’re hoping to be the first one with the video of someone dying. Who’d do that? Oh, yeah. You, maybe. It’s not that implausible a projection.

This episode is only tangentially about voyeur culture and our desensitization to the individual fostered by mass communications, though. It deviates from the usual structure of the series -- usually an episode opens with a scenario, a premise, an imminent reality enabled by our relationship to omnipresent social media and technology, and then explores the implications of that premise.

This one favors a long, action-intensive exposition that, beneath all the fleeing and gasping, the slow dread of violence, throbs toward a twist conclusion. It starts by placing us right into the circumstance of Victoria, shaken and bereft of her memory, fleeing the voyeurs and the videogame-like, masked “hunters” who seem to want to kill her for the benefit of the viewers. She’s assisted by Jem, a tough gal who explains that everyone’s under the influence of a signal being broadcast from a transmitter called White Bear (hence the episode’s title). The pair’s objective is ostensibly to evade the sadistic hunters and disable the transmitter.

All the while, Victoria has flickers of memory: Of viewing the child she scarcely remembers through a video screen, of being accompanied by a man with a sigil tattoo. And all along, the viewers, disturbingly gleeful, like they’re touring a theme park.

The reveal at the end doesn’t feel totally unexpected, but it’s still uncomfortable. Ultimately you can view the episode as a critique of all kinds of themes: Mob mentality, reality television, even the complicated treatment of women in the justice system, or the assumptions we bring to the things we see – we can capture nearly any issue from all angles and pin it to virtual glass forever, but still only own a piece of the story, the unknowable remainder filled in by our own preconceptions.

Primarily, though, this episode is a critique of our deep, often-unexamined mass desensitization, or at least a dread portent of its potential to grow. It aims to ask: To what extent can you stand by and watch horror before you are complicit, punishable?

Black Mirror decodes our modern dread of technology

Leigh Alexander — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 15:04:48 +0000

The English have a coy euphemism for addiction: “moreish.” It summons the delightful anxiety in surrendering your control to something else, the ambivalent cocktail of desire and guilt. We feel it flickering in the periphery, and we feel our smartphones in the middle of a restaurant dinner.

We live with the inability to fall asleep without a glassy black object nearby – you don’t need your phone when you’re going to bed, exactly, but you take no ease unless you know where it is. We lock our phones without a concrete reason besides the fact that letting someone else pick it up and look feels violating, too-intimate. It summons a nonspecific anxiety.

Game designer and critic Ian Bogost’s iOS-centric installation, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville, aims to explore what the designer sees as a relationship between technology and religion; he likens the iPhone to a rosary, something we thumb automatically, observant. As a journalist on games I once craved the mainstreaming of designed interaction – now I startle to enter a silent subway car full of passengers with heads in laps, faces illuminated by screens, tapping.

The role of horror media in our culture is to show us our fears, to illuminate unspoken anxieties. Charlie Brooker’s Channel 4 series Black Mirror, something of a spiritual successor to The Twilight Zone, takes up the mantle for the digital age. Launched last year and now in its second season, it was inspired by the popular satirist and presenter’s own ambivalence to the increasing proliferation of these dark little screens; he found himself sincerely conversing with Siri (“a servile asslick with zero self-respect”), routinely performing the thoughtless tug-and-pop of Twitter refreshes.

Black Mirror's format is one I wish more American series emulated; rather than spooling shows into endless seasons of quick hits, it’s more common in the UK for quality TV to air robust, brief seasons. Black Mirror’s first season consists of three hour-long episodes, united by tone and theme instead of recurring characters or settings.

The third episode is called The Entire History of You, and it’s the one everyone talks about the most, with a sort of hushed dread (Robert Downey, Jr. reportedly optioned it for a film. Get the Arcade Fire to lend their song to the credits?). You ought not to watch it if you’re in a couple, they say, with a stricken look. This show has that kind of power: to rub your face in the viscera of everything about the modern world that you don’t want to think about. It is many things, but it is not pleasant viewing.

The boyfriend I’m in London to visit did not want us to watch The Entire History of You, which apparently involves a near-future where devices embedded in your body record everything you see, say and do – including your past relationships – for later viewing. In the browsing history of his iPad are several articles offering advice on overcoming jealousy of a partner’s past. He doesn’t know I’ve seen them, and he hasn’t told me about them; I know his mind from that black tablet.

The recently-aired first episode of season two explores just how much of a person can exist in the digital ether. It’s called Be Right Back, a play on the "BRB" notification people leave when exiting chat windows to go do real life.

A better title might have been Be Right There.

“Are we going to watch the new Black Mirror?” I asked my boyfriend.

“Be right there,” he said, immersed in a pretend city he was building on the iPad. I picked up my iPhone to kill time on Twitter until he was done.

“Are we watching it?” He asked ten minutes later. “Be right there,” I said. The irony of negotiating with our devices in order to watch a program about our relationship to our devices was pretty embarrassing.

Be Right Back is about a social media widow. Martha and Ash have moved in to a pastoral country house; Ash’s constant palming his stark black phone highlights the contrast between his social media use and the couple’s tactile life, framed in neutral tones with touching notes of green and turquoise. As characterization goes, Ash’s compulsion is wisely sketched with a light hand; he uses social media a lot, but not apparently dangerously so. No more than any of us.

The story begins in earnest when Ash is killed in an accident. A friend or relative–it’s not clear, as Black Mirror tends to place viewers directly into the flow of an episode without lavishing on background or irrelevant details –intrudes upon Martha at Ash’s funeral with an unsettling suggestion: There’s a new service that lets you talk to the dead.

Using the manifold digital fingerprints, photographs, voice recordings and text interactions he’s left in the social media space, this tech can serve Martha an interactive AI of Ash’s personality. It knows how he talks, his tastes and his memories – so long as he has shared them.

You can’t help but be gripped with the unease of wondering how much the black mirrors know about you. If it’s enough to resurrect you, how much of your essence have you divested onto the infrastructure? Twitter and Facebook obsess us with ideas about “sharing” and socialization, but is that really your life “on there,” or a thin, troubling simulacrum?

As we watch Martha, who learns she’s pregnant, succumb to her own grief-stricken urges to contact Ash’s memory through technology, the AI learns. It gains enough data to talk on the phone to her, and she reminds him of certain memories he’s meant to have, which he retains. When she nearly breaks her phone – and the increasingly-crucial lifeline, we feel her raw nerves.

We understand the ill junction of compulsion and disgust behind the mad, grotesque decision she makes next – a flickering car dash advertisement for synthetic body parts that we see at the episode's outset foreshadows a key clue. The episode’s best moment is a lovely exercise in restraint: Martha waiting restlessly in her living room for what she’s wrought to leave the upstairs bathroom. The calm, gentle voice of the man she loves pleads urgently with her not to turn the light on.

I won't spoil the ending, but I’ll tell you it’s not the shambling Night of the Living Dead you’d expect of typical horror. It is more subtle, more gently terrible, sawing slowly at the heart like a dull knife. Martha’s “resurrection” of Ash ultimately suggests that the parody of authentic-self that we serve to social media is unholy, a violation.

Black Mirror’s gift is that it presents a world where anything is possible thanks to technology -- and prickles our skin regarding the inevitable complications of that possibility. We are ever on a quest for advancement, and it’s quite likely that we’ll figure out how to do things we’ll end up wishing we never learned how to do and cannot unlearn.

This is a show about our fear that some line may loom in the story of humankind that we ought not cross, for our own good. Such a line feels tangible, near; maybe we’ve even crossed it already. It is considered unenlightened and luddite to fear technology, but Black Mirror makes it startlingly easy to admit that there is much to be unsettled about these days, quietly, ambivalently.

The newest episode airs on Channel 4 on February 18. Brooker’s said it’s “not for the fainthearted.” I know, because I follow him on Twitter. Can't wait. Show is moreish.

Previously: Black Mirror is black, and it's brilliant - best sf on TV

Soviet TV advertisements from the 1970s and 1980s

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 17:11:21 +0000

Here's 53 minutes' worth of Soviet commercials from the 1970s and 1980s, produced by what's billed as the USSR's sole advertising agency:

In 1967, Estonia was founded the creative association "Reklamfilm Estonian / Eesti reklaamfilm" - the only one at that time in the Soviet Union studio, specialized in production kinoteleradioreklamy and "representational" commercials on the orders of the enterprises of trade, industry, services and amenities, colleges, vocational schools , traffic police and other organizations in the Soviet Union, this company for the production of television commercials was the work of a new and at that time quite bold. But among Estonian documentary was a very energetic person - Eedu Ojamaa. It was he who was able to implement such a complex idea in the USSR State Committee for Cinematography. "Estonian Reklamfilm" soon became the largest advertising company of the Soviet Union. He released a year nearly 350 commercials, and also created a lot of documentaries. The company has been amended in Leningrad and Moscow and Riga branch of executed orders for the Union. Among the customers were and Finnish companies. Until 1992, the "Estonian Reklamfilm" took more than 6,000 commercials and movies.
It is clear that under socialism, the absence of private ownership and competition television advertising had a slightly different look and pursued a very different purpose. The director, advertisers still did not have the strict limits and constraints, which are now exhibited customers promotional TV program. So they used all their creativity to create a bright memorable quality product.
For objective reasons, most subjectively and commercials, produced by the company, did not survive. This anthology - a collection of the private collection of Harry Egipta - a former director and screenwriter "Estonian Reklamfilma", called his colleagues "Norshtein advertising" for unusual associative moments in his work similar to the work of the author of "Hedgehog in the Fog". Credo Egipta in television commercials - catchy individual style fast in those days "video clip" assembly, original music and songs, and of course, beautiful women!

SOVIET ESTONIAN COMMERCIAL (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Black Mirror is back, and it's brilliant - best sf on TV

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 17:59:39 +0000

As mentioned Charlie Brooker's science fiction TV show Black Mirror is back for another season. This is the second coming of the Twilight Zone: scary, trenchant, clever and sparing in its use of special effects and fully immersive in its storytelling. I've just watched the first episode, "Be Right Back," for a second time, and found myself no less moved by it, but even more impressed by it -- full of tiny, unobtrusive grace-notes and sweet, low-key futuristic moves.

It's available through Channel 4's catch-up service in the UK, and if you use a UK proxy, you can stream it. Otherwise, you'll have to use your imagination to get your copy, or exercise patience. I'm sure that there'll be a second-series DVD (here's the first season).

Black Mirror

Building a "bionic man"

David Pescovitz — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 18:57:19 +0000

This is Rex, a $1 million "bionic man" built in the UK by roboticists Richard Walker and Matthew Godden. Rex was the star of a new Channel 4 documentary titled "How to Build A Bionic Man." Rex is outfitted with a variety of synthetic systems and appendages, from prosthetic limbs to a cochlear implant, artificial pancreas to retinal implant. He's now on display at the London Science Museum but will visit America in October to promote the Smithsonian Channel's US premier of the documentary, retitled "Cyborg/Frankenstein."

PES's title sequence for Dutch TV show

David Pescovitz — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 17:42:27 +0000

Het Klokhuis (Dutch for "apple core") is an educational TV show for young people that's aired in the Netherlands for 25 years. They asked the amazing PES, whose "Fresh Guacamole" was nominated for a 2013 Oscar, to create a new title sequence.

David Byrne and St Vincent on Letterman

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 01:50:18 +0000

David Byrne and St Vincent appeared on the David Letterman show this week to perform "I Should Watch TV" (a deliciously ironic choice, given the song's content) from their amazing album Love This Giant, which is my favorite new music in years. The stage performance is amazing, too.

David Byrne & St. Vincent - I Should Watch TV - David Letterman 1-28-13

TV made out of a grid of discarded remote controls

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 03:09:09 +0000

Artist Chris Shen made a TV out of 625 discarded remote controls, hacking their LEDs to light up in a grid, creating a low-rez moving image. The Evil Mad Scientists posted his loving documentation of the the technical aspects of the project:

The main change to the Peggy was to solder molex headers instead of LEDs: this is to allow the wires to be easily plugged in and out of the board which is necessary when dismantling and reassembling the piece. Yes, all 625 remotes are numbered so they can be removed from the frame for transportation! The current and voltage was also adjusted fo IR LEDs as opposed to visible LEDs.
While researching, the main thing I was looking for was the ability to play video (live) on a low-res matrix. I looked into various ways of doing this but once I found the Peggy 2 kit it gave me confidence to go ahead with building Infra because of the open-source nature, existing work done by Windell, and Jay Clegg’s video Peggy mod.
I connect all the remote controls via 500 meters of speaker wire to the Peggy, held into the frame by a simple looped elastic band. The circuit is mounted to a sheet of acrylic as the circuit bowed with all the wire attached. Each remote had to be opened to solder the wire directly to the LEDs legs. The wire is then routed out through the back of the remote and closed back up.

The TV is on show in London, at 18 Hewett Street, London, EC2A 3NN, until 3rd February 2013.

Infra, a TV built from remote controls Artist Chris Shen made a TV out of 625 discarded remote controls, hacking their LEDs to light up in a grid, creating a low-rez moving image.

Trailer for season 2 of Black Mirror, scariest/best sf on TV

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 01:35:53 +0000

Here's the trailer for the new season of Charlie Booker's Channel 4 science fiction series Black Mirror. The first season was the best science fiction TV I've ever seen, better even than The Twilight Zone. The trailer itself is so gloriously creepy and wonderful in every way that it makes me want to hide under the bed until the episodes start airing.

Black Mirror (via IO9)

Some context, in case you spent the better part of last night googling eclampsia

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 15:29:08 +0000

For no particular reason, here is a graph of maternal mortality rates in England and Wales between 1850 and 1970. The Daily Beast also has an informative article on eclampsia, specifically, though you should be aware that it contains many television spoilers. Particularly interesting to me: We still don't actually know what causes eclampsia — and the treatments still revolve around preventing the seizures. (Thanks to Ms. Rosenberg for the graph!)

Fox's talking heads bear uncanny resemblance to Kids in the Hall

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 03:41:32 +0000

From Backdrops R Us, a grid of Fox News talking heads alongside classic shots of scenes from Canadian comedy show Kids in the Hall (particularly members of the troupe in drag). The resemblances are uncanny.

FOX News Figures Strangely Resemble Kids In The Hall Characters (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Hollywood gets science wrong — and that's okay

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 17:08:44 +0000

Sidney Perkowitz is a physics professor at Emory University, and the author of several books that blend science and pop culture, including Hollywood Science: Movies, Science, and the End of the World. Seth Shostak is a senior astronomer at the SETI Institute and a science advisor to multiple films, including Contact and the 2008 re-make of The Day the Earth Stood Still.

Together, they fight crime.

Okay, that last part isn't technically true. But it does make for a good story, and, in that, it actually does a really good job of showing you what these two men actually do. Both Perkowitz and Shostak work to bridge the gap between the people who do science and the people who make science fiction. They're involved in the Science and Entertainment Exchange — a National Academies of Sciences effort to bring scientists together with directors, producers, and writers. The goals: Help scientists do better public communication and make sci-fi more awesome. But there's a catch here, because "awesome" and "totally 100% accurate" are seldom the same thing.

This week, I spoke to Perkowitz and Shostak about what happens when science and entertainment cross streams, how you illustrate things nobody has ever seen, and why — even when the science in the movies is bad — science still wins.

Maggie Koerth-Baker: First, let's get some background. How does the relationship between Hollywood and science work?

Sidney Perkowitz: All I can really comment on is what the Science and Entertainment Exchange does. There are two main modes of interaction. First, the Exchange is open to having a movie maker or a TV maker call them up and ask for a suggestion of a scientist who could advise them on a specific issue. And the Exchange will give them a name. There's hundreds of interactions like that. The second thing is to have these soirees to bring science and entertainment people together. Those allow people to communicate and it builds trust between the two sides.

Seth Shostak: [When you work as an advisor to a specific project] it's usually more in-depth, rather than a quick question. The minimum I've done is an hour-long talk. They want to hear about the general subject area and marinate in the subject a bit. It's background research for them and the studio is enlightened enough to think that's worth the plane tickets. [Shostak had just finished spending the morning with a movie team that flew up from L.A. to meet him before he and I spoke.] More often, though, the National Science Foundation buys me a ticket down there.

Normally they don't want to know how to illustrate an idea — they know how to illustrate things — but they have quesitons about details. How do we make the dialog sound like it's real scientists, for instance. If aliens invaded Earth, why would they come here? And what sort of weapons would they have? As if we know. They're looking for something to hang a plot point on. So I advise them and then they take maybe 30% of my suggestions.

MKB: Seth, I'm curious how you'd answer that question. What sort of weapons would the aliens have?

SS: Probably very poorly. If I knew, I'd be working for DARPA. But I'll make some general observations. Like, say, our weapons work basically by hitting pieces of metal and throwing throwing them at someone else. It's all based around projectiles. But that's kind of silly. They can't move very fast and they're very inaccurate. It's crazy, when you think about it, that we build a whole aircraft carrier, for billions of dollars, and we put it out in the ocean and its only function is to move us a little closer to the enemy so we can throw bits of metal at them. It's so primitive.

So I'd just assume that the aliens have gotten away from bullets. Maybe they're using lasers. Maybe they have launchers on the Moon or their planet and you don't have to build these big ships to get right up close. But, you know, [the entertainment people] aren't thinking outside the box like that. You ask a caveman, what weapons will the aliens use and he'll tell you, "Well, they'll have bigger clubs." They're thinking bigger artillery. So it's my job to step back and say, "Well what is it you really want to accomplish and what are some other ways we could do that."

MKB: What happens when they want to know what something looks like, and nobody know what it looks like — like, you're talking about something that's still theoretical, or something that can't be observed directly.

SP: With particle physics, a lot of science fiction shows the outcome, rather than the particle itself. You have this miraculous particle that makes a weapon. They don't often try to show the particle itself, they show the weapon. The example that comes to mind, though, is from the other end of the scale — not particles, but at the cosmic level. Go back to Star Wars. Every time they go into overdrive, traveling faster than light, what you saw through the windscreen was stars stretching out. That was a great impressionistic way to show what was going on without trying to explain what was actually going on. They were expressing the idea of faster-than-light travel in visuals, in a way that's good enough to keep audience happy.

SS: Getting it correct is less important than conveying what is going on. During the making of Contact, I was one of the people called up by folks at Warner Brothers asking questions. They asked me what it looked like when you fly through a wormhole. Well, nobody knows, of course. And it's not clear you could even do it. But it is true that when you go faster than the speed of light the universe collapses into a bright point of light ahead of you and a bright point behind you. I told them that and then I told them that, usually when someone illustrates it though, they use something that looks like a pig's intestine. But this would be more accurate. So they said, "Thank you," and we hung up, and they made it look like the pig's intestine.

But that's okay. They're going for the pop culture, the iconic depiction of the thing. It's really a shorthand, so that when you, the audience, see something like that, you get it. They don't need to spend a lot of screen time explaining what it is. There's a different intent and a different audience. In the question, "What does it look like", the important point is "like".

MKB: So it's okay to get the science wrong?

SP: You have to bend accuracy. Entertainment starts with an assumption that a lot of scientists don't start with: The story and the science have to somehow blend. You can't just insist the science be 100% accurate. It's better to have some science in there that's more or less accurate, than to have it badly done or not there at all. So [as advisors] we'll bend some in return for having some input.

Almost all of the superhero movies have some of this in them. You take being bitten by a radioactive spider in Spiderman. There's no scientific sense to it. But it starts the story going, and maybe along the way you can fit in real science. In Spiderman 2, we're way beyond his origin story now, and he's dealing with a scientist who wants to create fusion power and the way he does it is meaningful — using lasers to induce fusion is a real, ongoing scientific operation. There's real science in there. I think a really hard-nosed scientist might say you have to throw the whole thing out the window. But the Science and Entertainment Exchange says let's accept the bad part and see what we can fit in that works reasonably well.

SS: Scientists like to whinge about accuracy. And it's true, particularly years ago, a lot of sci-fi was just bonkers. I mean, it's still bonkers. But even more back then. But [the entertainment industry] aren't in the business of science education. They're in the business of entertainment.

I was the science advisor for The Day The Earth Stood Still, and one of the things they had me do was redline the scripts and help them make the dialogue sound more realistic. And they have these lines, like one scientist saying to another, "Professor Sputnik, there's an asteroid on a hyperbolic trajectory" and they rattle off all these numbers. Well, that's not how scientists talk to one another. What they'd say is, "Bob, there's a goddam rock headed our way!" But they don't take all my advice on that because they're trying to make those characters sound "like" scientists, not sound like actual scientists.

MKB: If they don't have to get it right, though, what's the point of involving scientists at all?

When I was a kid, you'd see something in a movie and realize it wasn't right, but it's coming off the supply reel at 90 feet a minute there's no backing it up to see what you'd missed. Now you can just hit a button, stop, back up and play it 20 times and see exactly what's wrong. And then you go on your blog and say it's wrong and stupid, and that has actual consequences for the filmmakers, which it didn't in the past. Before the one percent who noticed a mistake didn't have a platform to tell ayone else about it. Now there's much more interest. People do have a platform. And so the National Academy of Sciences set up the Science and Entertainment Exchange down in L.A. to bring filmmakers and scientists together when they're in early stages of a film and can still change things. It's better to get it right than wrong. But to say it's going to make a big difference in science literacy is probably not true. Nobody going to say, "I don't want to be a scientist because I saw this movie and they got all the science wrong." What's important is that it grabs you at emotional level, not intellectual one. That's what got me interested in science, in fact. Seeing silly science fiction films as a kid.

MKB: Okay, but what does science really get out of this relationship? Why is it worth your time to keep them from being picked on by the Internet?

SP: Here are some of the pluses. Science gets exposure. One of my favorite movies goes back a few years — The Day After Tomorrow. It was partly right and partly wrong on climate science, it had things unfolding over a matter of days that would take years, for instance. Purists were upset. But a more flexible scientist would say it got some of the basic ideas across. And in surveys since, we see that it did raise consciousness about global warming.

The other thing is that you get kids turned on. If some 16-year-old girl sees a film about neuroscience and it's wrong, but she grows up to become a neuroscience who does science right, that's a net plus. There's anecdote after anecdote of scientists getting into science because science fiction got them as a kid.

SS: I think this is good to do, but in the end, storytell is about the emotional content. If they've got the technology accurate, but the movie isn't interesting, it doesn't matter. I think advising for films is one of those things that it's better to do than not. It's like table manners. On the other hand, the real value is when you bring scientists and filmmakers together they might expose the filmmakers to new science that they didn't know about and that might be really interesting. Sci-fi tends to follow these tried and true formulae because they don't know what's going on in science. What was there before the big bang? They don't know that's an active area of research. It's valuable to do it simply because it might give them an idea of a new story. So the real value may be exposing people who have ability to present stories to the public to new ideas in science — especially if those ideas might interest next generation of scientists.

MKB: Have there been times when you've seen Hollywood get the science really spot on in a really clever way?

SP: One of my very favorite examples really shows how creative people, if they want to, can do science right and make a good story. Do you remember A Beautiful Mind. In real life, John Nash won the Nobel for a math theorem and I'm sure you know that's the hardest thing to express in a pop culture way. But they had a scene in which he was trying to make choices out of multiple possibilities. They illustrated that in a scene where a bunch of male math students went to a bar and tried to figure out how to connect with pretty young women in the bar. That director found a really clever way to act out an abstract idea and get it right. So it can be done.

Image: scotia theater, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from 75001512@N00's photostream

More plagiarism from Glee

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 18:00:08 +0000

@afrobluedc sang MY mashup on NBC last Nov. youtube.com/watch?v=yaX4xG… Now I find out @gleeonfox aired/sells SAME combo?! youtube.com/watch?v=urTFed…
— DJ Earworm (@djearworm) February 22, 2012

Last weekend, I blogged about Jonathan Coulton's discovery that the TV show Glee had plagiarized his arrangement for "Baby's Got Back."

Now, the magnificent DJ Earworm writes, "This is my call-out tweet from last February, expressing surprise at the similarities between Glee's arrangement and my own which had aired just a few months previously. I didn't think much about it, but I read that Jonathan Coulton story, and it seemed so similar to my own experience, I thought I'd share."

@AfroBlueDC sang MY mashup on NBC last Nov. … Now I find out @GLEEonFOX aired/sells SAME combo?! (Thanks, DJ Earworm)

Jonathan Coulton: Glee plagiarized my arrangement of "Baby Got Back"

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 02:21:25 +0000

Jonathan Coulton has publicly shamed Fox for plagiarizing his arrangement for "Baby's Got Back" on its TV show "Glee":

Hey look, @gleeonfox ripped off my cover of Baby Got Back: bit.ly/WME9Ho. Never even contacted me. Classy.
— Jonathan Coulton (@jonathancoulton) January 18, 2013

Writing on Techdirt, Mike Masnick has a good, nuanced view of how this kind of thing works:

Yes, his is a cover song, but he introduced some variations that appear to be directly copied in Glee. Is there a potential copyright claim here? Well, that depends -- and the copyright law here is complex. You can cover a song by paying compulsory license fees, and Fox likely did that to whoever holds the copyright on the original. But they copied specific changes (and possibly the music) that Coulton added, which, could potentially be covered by his own copyright (of course, whether or not he registered them could also impact what he could do about it). And, let's not even get into the issue of things like sync licenses for video, and the (still open) question of whether or not Glee actually used part of Coulton's own recording.
In the end, though, almost none of that probably matters. Because Coulton seems unlikely (we hope) to go legal here. Instead, he's just going with the public shame route -- with a simple tweet about the situation, which has set off "the internet" to help him make his case and embarrass Fox and Glee.

Jonathan Coulton Publicly Shames Fox For Copying His Arrangement In Glee

The Chariot from Lost in Space: an appreciation

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 19 Jan 2013 20:10:53 +0000

The TV show Lost in Space featured a marvellous, transparent, caterpillar-tread space-rover called "The Chariot," which was adapted from a snow vehicle, but was groovily and spacily modded into something quite wonderful. The company that manufactured it later went on to produce solid rocket boosters for the Space Shuttle, the Mars Pathfinder airbags, and ejector seats:

"The Chariot" was a real, full-sized, fully operational vehicle, both in real-life and in the 1960s' fictional future. It was used to transport the Robinson family, pilot Don West, the robot, and the conniving Dr. Smith to virtually anywhere on whatever planet they would happen to be crash-landed on that week.
The Chariot was filmed on both the studio soundstage and at remote outdoor locations, which gave the show one of its few points of technical credibility. We never saw how the Robinsons stored the vehicle; I always assumed it folded neatly into the belly of the Jupiter II.
Chariot 6 This futuristic "Family Truckster" began life as a Thiokol Snowcat Spryte, powered by a Ford 170-cubic-inch inline-6 with 101 horsepower. It had a 4-speed automatic transmission, plus reverse. I hope there were some alien gas stations along their way, as the stock vehicle got 4-8 miles per gallon and came with a 15-gallon fuel tank. That's a 120-mile range at best.

"The Chariot" from Lost In Space [That Car Guy/Car Lust]

(via Danny's Land)

BitTorrent set-top box

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 03:34:49 +0000

The BBK BitTorrent box is a €90 set-top Android box that can stream content downloaded over BitTorrent directly to your TV; it can pull programming from the wider Internet, or from computers on your local network:

The first ever certified Android-powered BitTorrent box aims to change this. After the initial December launch was delayed, the BBK BitTorrent box officially goes up for sale today.
While we have seen devices that support BitTorrent downloads before, this is the first one that can can also stream content downloaded through uTorrent and BitTorrent clients on the local network.
This means that users can play content downloaded by uTorrent and BitTorrent directly on their TV. Below is a screenshot of the user interface, displaying the various BitTorrent clients the device can connect to wirelessly.
Since the device supports DLNA, users can also access other media libraries including the one from rival BitTorrent client Vuze and Apple’s iTunes.

Certified BitTorrent Box Brings uTorrent to Your TV [TorrentFreak]

(via O'Reilly Radar)