Fans of the cult-hit series Firefly will be pleased to learn that the show has been picked up by the Sci Fi Channel--just two months before the release of Serenity, a Universal Pictures film based on the series.

SciFi picked up the rights to show the 1st season of Firefly, including the 3 unaired episodes. They also will be showing them in order.

This move scares me. With the movie coming out in 2 months, you'd think Fox would adopt a "wait and see" attitude about the show. Why are they selling rights to a show that could get very popular? If they had any plans to restart the show after the movie, you'd think they'd want to keep the 1st season.

[ Well, the article says nothing about whether they've acquired rights to the whole franchise. As in, this says nothing about potential future episodes. I'm glad that (hopefully) more people can be exposed to such a good show. Still, I have a feeling Fox is probably assuming they'll get more out of buyers now, when the hype is high, than if the movie's not well recieved... it's a hedge.

Anyway, I'd *love* to see SciFi run with the series. As long as the writers and actors are willing to keep it up, the production values can be lower... it was never driven by flashy SFX (even though it had them) but by rich characters and stories. Someday those gou cao de jackasses at Fox will keep a quality show around.

(and, yes, I *have* been waiting a while to use one of the chinese quotes from the show in this context... ;)

-k]

Firefly picked up by SciFi Channel

] One provocative hypothesis that might account for the
] rise of spectrum disorders in technically adept
] communities like Silicon Valley, some geneticists
] speculate, is an increase in assortative mating.
] Superficially, assortative mating is the blond gentleman
] who prefers blondes; the hyperverbal intellectual who
] meets her soul mate in the therapist's waiting room.
] There are additional pressures and incentives for
] autistic people to find companionship - if they wish to
] do so - with someone who is also on the spectrum. Grandin
] writes, "Marriages work out best when two people with
] autism marry or when a person marries a handicapped or
] eccentric spouse.... They are attracted because their
] intellects work on a similar wavelength."
]
]
] That's not to say that geeks, even autistic ones, are
] attracted only to other geeks. Compensatory unions of
] opposites also thrive along the continuum, and in the
] last 10 years, geekitude has become sexy and associated
] with financial success. The lone-wolf programmer may be
] the research director of a major company, managing the
] back end of an IT empire at a comfortable remove from the
] actual clients. Says Bryna Siegel, author of The World of
] the Autistic Child and director of the PDD clinic at
] UCSF, "In another historical time, these men would have
] become monks, developing new ink for early printing
] presses. Suddenly they're making $150,000 a year with
] stock options. They're reproducing at a much higher
] rate."
]
]
] Genetic hypotheses like these don't rule out
] environmental factors playing a role in the rising
] numbers. Autism is almost certainly not caused by the
] action of a single gene, but by some orchestration of
] multiple genes that may make the developing child more
] susceptible to a trigger in the environment. One
] consequence of increased reproduction among people
] carrying some of these genes might be to boost "genetic
] loading" in successive generations - leaving them more
] vulnerable to threats posed by toxins in vaccines,
] candida, or any number of agents lurking in the
] industrialized world.

Really interesting. Really interesting. Really interesting. Really interesting. Really...

[ Truly. Very fascinating article. -k]

Wired 9.12: The Geek Syndrome

flynn23 wrote:
] ] Both chambers in Congress now will delay their Easter
] ] recess to try to pass a law Monday that would allow
] ] federal courts to intervene in Schiavo's case.
]
] Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?
] Why?

Because the bit of bipartisan hackery w/ baseball and steroids wasn't enough grandstanding for the republicans.

[ Yeah, i can't help but be cynical about this. It's the kind of issue republicans just love because it's difficult to oppose without seeming like an asshole, and the stupid sheep across the nation can rally behind "valuing life" all the while we continue killing Iraqis. We can spend all these resources discussing, essentially, the value of one woman who hasn't been concious for 15 years, but issues that affect thousands and millions of people don't get a word. I honestly don't understand how people can think this is a proper way for politicians to spend their time. -k]

RE: Congress jumps into Schiavo tug of war

] The "suicide bomber" clips a shrapnel-filled belt around
] his waist and buttons up his jacket to conceal it.
]
] As he turns back and forth in front of a semicircular
] white panel about the size of a shower cubicle, a
] computer monitor shows the metal-packed cylinders
] standing out clearly in white against his body.
]
] This is no real security alarm: It's a demonstration at
] the British technology group Qinetiq of a scanning device
] that sees under people's clothes to spot not just metal
] but other potential threats, like ceramic knives or
] hidden drugs.

Sounds like what was called Millimeter Wave in the novel Snowcrash, right? Well, guess what the technology is called.. Millimeter Wave. Yep, life continues to imitate fiction.

I just left a message on George Orwell's VMB telling him to screw himself.

Airport scanners keep it anonymous | CNET News.com

] He also pays a lot less in gasoline taxes which fund
] highway projects and road repairs. As more and more
] hybrids hit the road, cash-strapped states are warning of
] rough roads ahead.
]
] Officials in car-clogged California are so worried they
] may be considering a replacement for the gas tax
] altogether, replacing it with something called "tax by
] the mile."
]
] Kim and his team at Oregon State University equipped a
] test car with a global positioning device to keep track
] of its mileage. Eventually, every car would need one.

Question: We're discouraging fuel efficiency. Why not just raise the damn gas tax?

Answer: Because this way we get to install tracking devices in every car!

You might win a debate with the cops about this but you'll never win a debate over tax revenue.

[ Yeah, kinda wack. I had thought we'd see the push come from insurers, who could use that sort of tracking data to really customize their coverage and rates (not to mention refuse to pay claims in which you were going 1 mph over the limit and so on).

I guess my question is, why do you need a GPS to track mileage? Doesn't my car already do that? I mean, I guess if you want to calculate distribution of the funds to localities and so on you'd need it, but computerizing the odometer does not strictly require a GPS unit, and would be a fuck of a lot cheaper. Hell, my focus already has a computerized odometer... slap on a short range radio and that's it.

I have nothing against the idea of taxing per mile though, in theory. By no means do i think the gas tax should go away, and in fact, I kinda feel like it should be progressive, but that's probly impractical at best. -k]

CBS News | States Mull Taxing Drivers By Mile

] The pair were testing a very thin carbon-mesh sail by
] firing microwaves at it. To their surprise, the sail
] experienced a force several times stronger than they
] expected. They eventually worked out that the heat from
] the microwave beam was causing carbon monoxide gas to
] escape from the sail's surface, and that the recoil from
] the emerging gas molecules was giving the sail an extra
] push.

[ Very cool. 60 MW is a lot of microwaves, but it's a neat concept.

Incidentally, one of the brothers is Gregory Benford, who's written a number of well known SciFi novels. -k]

New Scientist: Solar super-sail could reach Mars in a month

Someone snapped a picture of this truck in an Applebee's parking lot in Kentucky. I hope this turns out to be a fake. This is sad.

[ It almost seems like too much, but who can say anymore. It's sad enough to know that even if this is a fake, there are people who think that way. -k]

Enlightened Motorist

] When Robert Moran drove back to his law offices in Rome,
] N.Y., after a plane trip to Arizona in July 2003, he had
] no idea that a silent stowaway was aboard his vehicle: a
] secret GPS bug implanted without a court order by state
] police.
]
] A federal judge in New York ruled last week that police
] did not need court authorization when tracking Moran from
] afar. "Law enforcement personnel could have conducted a
] visual surveillance of the vehicle as it traveled on the
] public highways," U.S. District Judge David Hurd wrote.
] "Moran had no expectation of privacy in the whereabouts
] of his vehicle on a public roadway."

Yowzer... The police "could have" visually observed the vehicle, but they didn't. They attached a tracking device to it. A tracking device it a wholly different animal and has wholly different privacy implications.

[ Agreed. Is the applicability to my person as well? Is it any more defensible to stick a tracking device on my car than on me? I think the difference is minimal, in truth, and the thought of traipsing around with homing beacons with no court oversight makes me real nervous. -k]

No court order required for GPS bugs! (More dumb judges.)

“Serious reading had always been a minority matter."

Are you one of the five percent? Are you doing Serious Reading?

[ Gallup's metric is ridiculous. I read every single day. I have maybe 30 books on my bedside table, either recently finished, in progress or on deck. I'm certain that I read 70 books a year, but that's because I have no wife or girlfriend, much less children, so I have nothing but personal time, and I still often sacrifice sleep to spend more time with a book. 70 books a year is slightly faster than one every 6 days. Normal humans simply can't do that. Certainly not with any hope of retention. Do I think they should be able to? Hell yeah... we work too much and all too often our leisure feels like work because it has to be scheduled and carefully planned. The absolute luxury of really reading... the sheer inefficiency of it... is, to me at least, the very definition of leisure. Not that I don't have to sneak it in around the corners sometimes too. The benefits -- wisdom, entertainment, perspective, escape, insight -- are gifts, which perhaps too few appreciate. I don't mean to suggest that literature is inherently supierior to other forms of leisure activity, but it's my favorite and I think it offers things that can't be found elsewhere.

Perhaps part of explanation of decline is that people think of reading as either academic, and therefore too much like work, or as pure entertainment, in which case they can choose another venue, of which there are many new forms. I think that's a simplistic view, but I don't think it's uncommon.

I read for all the things I listed above, but also because I find it to be an rejection of the notion that time is wasted if it's not serving some productive end. It's the salve for the raw spots left by life's tethers : blackberry and cellphone and action item lists and email and calendars. It's escapist, in the best possible way.

Anyway, I think young adults are still reading, in a sense, because of the time they spend online, but it'd be presumptuous to venture a guess as to the quality. There's also, I'm sure, an impact from video games, and, perhaps, increased social activity, fostered by improved tech for coordinating and so on. Those tethers aren't all bad, of course. If kids are spending more time with each other, one can hardly argue against that.

As a final note, there's a mention of the problem being, in part, the way in which literature is presented to students. I won't support that, precisely, because I'm not really in a position to say, but I will say that one exceptional teacher is often the difference between a kid that becomes engaged and one who doesn't. I'm sure there's a discussion to be had about testing methods, and the problems there, but now we're drifting even further off topic. -k]

The Lost Art of Reading

] Academics such as the next secretary of state still
] decorate Washington, but academia is less listened to
] than it was. It has marginalized itself, partly by
] political shrillness and silliness that have something to
] do with the parochialism produced by what George Orwell
] called "smelly little orthodoxies."

[ There's some truth in this article, to be sure. Liberals do suffer from a certain amount of that "consensus effect", which explains, I think, why we say things like "I just don't understand the way people think in rural america."

That being said, I have trouble listening George Will talk about all the institutional barriers to conservative thought in academia, and crying about how marginalized academics have become without once mentioning the crusade of anti-intellecualism propagated by the far right for the past 30 years. You want an orthodoxy to parade around, consider looking to your right, where you'll find the most tightly knit and well organized message machine in modern history.* Message discipline is definitionally orthodox, a subscription to talking about issues only in one way. I'm not saying liberals don't fall into echo chamber mode somewhat, but for fucks sake, "intellectual" didn't become a dirty word by itself.

It must have been hell for Mr. Will, all those years at Trinity College, Oxford and Princeon, surrounded by liberals.

-k

* Will even telegraphs a bit of that message consistency in this article : I see the word "shrill" more often in conservatives' references to liberals than vice versa. It's a keyword perfectly suited to simultaneously discredit the oppositions viewpoint as unreasoning and childish and paint them an irritation, making it difficult to work.]

Academia, Stuck To the Left