I wish I had a “staycation”; instead, I’m going to have what will pass for a vacation – a whirlwind of what and a family wedding up in Boston. But, really, I need more sleep. And to cut clutter. The war against clutter has me all but crying “uncle.” The Self-Proclaimed Duchess of Procrastination reigns.
Some stuff:
NY Times does a review of PBS’ “Nova ScienceNow,” which I’ve already raved about. (yeah, that’s right, I was ahead of the NY Times’ curve here!). Anyway, the Times’ Neil Genzlinger writes:
Take a little of the grotesque, a lot of the tantalizing and a heavy dose of friendly analogies, and you have “Nova ScienceNow,” a science program in a newsmagazine format that will leave laymen of almost any age feeling smarter and better informed.
The PBS series, now in its third season, has as its genial host Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist and director of the Hayden Planetarium in Manhattan, whose comfort level on camera shatters any stereotypes you might have harbored about geeky scientists. [….]
And pretty much everything gets an analogy, apt or ridiculous. Searching for audio evidence of life in space is like dipping a glass in the ocean and seeing if you catch a fish. Stem-cell treatments would be like putting fettuccine in a blender and making a cheesecake out of it. Yes, Dr. Tyson puts some fettuccine in a blender.
All of this is served up brightly, and at a level that a child can grasp but that doesn’t bore an adult. And the scientists and other experts all seem to have taken lessons from Dr. Tyson: they’re engaging and comfortable on camera. Maybe that stereotype of the geeky scientist never had any basis in reality at all.
Yeah, that’s right too: combat stereotype!
Speaking of challenging misconceptions, the review by Daily News’ Elizabeth Weitzman seems to be the one review I’ve found that isn’t that unhappy with the new “X-Files” movie. She does say that Mulder/Scully fans may be willing to see them back, even if there are episodes that are better than this movie. As a fan, I Want To Believe that it’s a better than average movie…
In “Aliens Are Overrated,” Slate’s Julie Lapidos posits how the better episodes of “X-Files” were the ones not necessarily about the Alien Conspiracy Mythology. She might be right: the Flukeman episode was up there for being strange and compelling and sick all at once; I remembered the episode where Mulder and Scully investigate this community of circus performers/circus freaks as tragic and creepy and funny (particularly the scene where one of the freaks points to Mulder as the example of Good Looking Guy, as Mulder strikes an unintentional (intentional for the actor and writers, though) pose as Good Looking Guy – while also not realizing that Mulder’s a freak like anyone deep inside his own twisted mind).
Checked the mail and saw that Time and Sports Illustrated are doing their Olympic previews. Must…not…get…sucked…in…by…hype…
Hasbro v. Scrabulous begins… Wonder if this means that Hasbro’s going to sue everybody else who’s on the “let’s make a word game that looks like Scrabble” on-line.
Anyway, I’ll see if I’ll be able to blog from Boston/Cape Cod-ish this weekend. Tonight, it’s a game at Shea, to at least take an opportunity to enjoy before the new Citifield opens (I’m not even sure when’s the next Met home game I’ll make, so it goes).