While watching this I didn’t know whether to be impressed, shocked or annoyed.  In the end I found myself laughing.

Thanks to Sundar for the link.

I’m taking a risk that this will actually be interesting for anyone who doesn’t have a pinch of science nerd in them.  I personally watched it like four times in a row with my eyes wide open.

Read more about the video on Wired Science.

The title of this post seems like a very ordinary thing. Except that I have not stepped foot in a movie rental store in years. Netflix is second only to Gmail and Flickr in my short short list of Internet sites I cannot live without. But Netflix failed me last night (I know you will argue this claim as your read further).

Dawn came home yesterday and despite her condition, there’s only so much sleeping you can do. She cannot use her left arm and is weighed down my various post op attachments and bandages. Sitting is uncomfortable due to the elevation I assume.

So the likely solution we came up with was to watch movies. I rolled our old 27″ tube TV into the bedroom and looked through our current batch of Netflix movies. Uh-oh.

Alaska IMAX: I really don’t know why I ever put this movie in the queue. It’s been in our house for three weeks now and I haven’t watched it, so no way is Dawn, no matter how bored.

No Country For Old Men: I watched it the other night and while good, far too depressing and violent for Dawn even when she’s not a day out of surgery.

Easter Promises: I had watched about 30 minutes of this movie and could only recall one bloody scene. I know Dawn likes Viggo Mortensen (aka Strider) and so I told her to cover her eyes when he goes to dispose of the dead guy and then I’d come in and watch the rest with her.

About 30 minutes later Dawn called me in, with an expression that was partly tears and partly “what the hell were you thinking?” Apparently, and Dawn has reminded me of this several times in the past 12 hours, I forgot to mention that what also happens in the first 30 minutes is:

1. Someones throat is cut open.
2. A young pregnant girl passes out in a pool of blood.
3. A birth scene where the young girl dies.
4. Then, dead guy gets fingers cut off.

I feel terrible. I don’t know where my head is - I honestly didn’t recall all that stuff happening. After Dawn fell asleep, I watched the rest of Eastern Promises and well I’m glad she stopped it when she did, although Viggo Mortenson does end up fighting completely in the nude (good for Dawn). Of course he also ends up stabbing a knife into a heart, a head and an eye all in that same scene (bad for Dawn).

So with the Netflix queue failing our immediate movie needs, I visited Family Video for the first time. It was a strange experience for me honestly. Not only did it feel like I had been transported back in time, but while browsing I saw hundreds of movies that I’ve never heard of. Tons of crappy movies that never reach my radar since my portal to movies is the Netflix recommendation engine and friends. So thanks to Family Video, I now am aware of movies like Lake Placid 2 and Delta Farce.

Oh and I am now re-acquainted with the concept of “late fees”.

Hopefully the stack I brought back will be void of themes like cutting body parts, pools of blood and pregnancies that end in death. Now taking movie recommendations for Dawn.

There’s no question that FOX’s war on journalism is spreading to other “news” networks. And CNN has been slowly stamping out good journalism on their network for the past decade.

Here’s a recent example.

I have two reactions to this video.

First, it’s bad journalism. I wrote better papers in the 9th grade.

Notice how Wolf starts by talking about Obama supporters and then saying things like, “some are saying”, “some are suggesting”, “we hear”, “they say”, “critics say”. Without citing anyone. And during the segment the banner at the bottom of the screen reads:

Obama-Mania Backlash

Passion “cult-like” to some

Then the female anchor comes on and says, “you’ve heard the criticism of Obama . . . and now some critics are saying the Obama campaign is coming dangerously close to being a cult of personality”. Towards the end of the segment they throw out some citations, but none of them link directly back to all the claims they made at the beginning of the program. It’s like Hillary is behind the curtain operating Wolf and his co-worker like puppets.

Secondly, the reason Obama is winning the vote is tied directly to the fact that our media and government is controlled by people who want you to think that being passionate about your elected representatives is “creepy”, an attitude that disgusts me.

Recall Howard Dean.

A passionate democratic who lost the nomination to someone who stands by while a student activist is tasered.

In the absence of great (and canceled) historical dramas like HBO’s Rome and Deadwood, I find myself grasping for a replacement. Something to fill the void until HBO delivers a new period show. Showtime’s The Tudors is my current attempt at filling that vast emptiness, and I’ve so far invested nearly 9 hours watching Jonathan Rhys Meyers play King Henry VIII.

Here’s my review:

Yawwwwwwn.

Henry had like 6 wives and transformed religious power in Europe. Yet after NINE episodes his first wife is . . . still his first wife. It’s like watching history in real time. The other night while watching The Tudors I found myself reading page after page on Wikipedia related to Henry’s reign, and enjoying it far more than the show. I mean behead someone already!

If HBO was producing this I can assure the heads would be rolling every episode.  There should be at least one rack, dagger, poisoned goblet or torch in every other episode. I wish HBO would produce something like The Inquisition, or Elizabeth. Of course Showtime might very well have ruined all the fun to be had in medieval times with their protracted story telling. In that case I beg of HBO to go into the future and produce Asimov’s Foundation series.

But I digress.

My advice - avoid The Tudors like the plague.