stargeek
Heinlein's houseHeinlein's houseHeinlein's house 06/24/2005 06:31 PM Cory Doctorow:
This is a GrokNews Entry: (what is grok?)Heinlein's houseGrok Headline matches for Heinlein's houseIsraeli Troops Search House-To-House in
|
 The
Idea: Go watch House
MD now. Way too good to last.The last time I recommended a television series (Karen Sisco, and the recommendation was due to early-episode writing by creator Elmore Leonard), it was the kiss of death. I seem to have had this effect on the handful of good television series over the past decade: The Big Easy, Dave's World, Reasonable Doubts, Max Bickford and the best of them all, Aaron Sorkin's Sports Night. What distinguished all of these series was excellent writing: You didn't even have to watch -- you could enjoy just listening to the smart, quirky dialogue, and the rich, carefully woven story-lines. So I'm almost afraid to go to bat for the latest well-written drama (on the Faux network yet -- sheesh), House MD. The show features British theatrical actor (accent undetectable) Hugh Laurie as the eponymous Dr. Gregory House MD, brilliant but bitter medical specialist, whose team must solve the medical mysteries lesser minds have given up on. Some of the medical cases are intriguing, usually with wry twists, but the real magic in the program is the dialogue, which sparkles and hasn't an ounce of fat on it. The writing is mostly done (I think -- writing credits are hard to catch in Hollywood productions) by Sara Cooper and Lawrence Kaplow, who were last seen as the writers of Hack, the short-lived and claustrophobic (but also cleverly-scripted) drama that featured David Caruso as a disgraced cop working as a cabbie. I've seen quite a few well-written shows destroyed by studio and network hacks insisting on more 'human interest' (i.e. improbable 'cute' romances that are dragged out like soap opera story lines), more 'action' (i.e. simpler shorter dialogue and more implausible disasters with ample shouting and shooting), or more 'conflict' (i.e. black-hat stereotypes that conspire and do inconceivably mean things to impossibly good guys, also a soap opera staple). The Pretender actually took a soap opera actor and, thanks to good writing, made him engaging and heroic -- but the hacks dumbed down the show and refocused it on the conspiracy of 'the center' and the absurd Snidely Whiplash-level nastiness of the antagonists. The (anti-)hero was reduced to a comic book caricature and the program became unwatchable. Same thing happened to Max Bickford, which started brilliantly but was soon forced by the studio to introduce more romance and bigger roles for the young actors on the show (i.e. shed the older-demographic skew because advertisers know older viewers buy less, and less impulsively). Richard Dreyfuss could have been excused if he had murdered the producers, who reduced a show of great promise to pathetic drivel and may have wrecked Dreyfuss' career in the process. Maybe it's a good thing that some of the best shows never lasted long enough to be polluted and dragged down by the pathetic media-oligopoly moneygrubbers who run the studios and networks and care only for ratings points among their most unsophisticated viewers. The consequence is the flood of cheap 'reality' dreck that has filled the schedules and made shows like House stand out so remarkably. The attempt by the hacks to damage House is clearly evident (the hospital administrators are predictably corrupt and ludicrously manipulative and out to 'get' our hero -- they force him in the latest episode to choose between firing one of his brilliant interns or shilling for a new overpriced drug; and the way-too-pretty young people on the staff are being given more close-ups and featured in vapid, simple subplots) but what is remarkable is that the show seems to have found a way to accommodate this interference without losing its edge. A particularly fine episode, Fidelity, has a convoluted, stunning plot and a merciless, horrifyingly human ending. It would make a wonderful stage play. And House's spare and savage come-backs and asides are still original, lovingly crafted and totally believable. House is tailor-made to be the stereotypical rude and short-tempered medical specialist, yet Laurie and the writers refuse to allow him to be caricaturized -- with each episode he grows deeper and more engaging and complex. Catch it while you can. House is way too smart for its own good, especially on that network. As a real-life doctor said in his review of the show on imdb: "Somewhere there is a team of writers who actually know their craft, and an acting ensemble that knows how to pull it off. Now I can watch my TV one hour a week." I'm with you, doctor. |
For the Yo-Yo Ma types who find the insatiable and immediate
urge to play a stringed instrument at the drop of a wig, all you must
do at The Wege House is don rosin-powdered gloves and have at it on
any of the house's integrated instruments. The House architecture
becomes the resonating chamber of the instruments, with strings
precisely lined, allowing you to be completely surrounded by the
music.
We have chosen to explore in our time on Earth an idea: Could we increase the size of the instrument and walk inside? To walk inside the instrument and play the instrument is to feel the sound in your body, within your bones and within your mind.You certainly couldn't increase the New Age Zen-meets-Honey I Shrunk The Kids philosophy. Pictures and videos give you some idea, but I can't imagine it adequately capturing the experience.
Symphonic House [Ektopa via NearNe arFuture]
allahpundit.com/archives/000158.html
track this
site | 5 links
It's just a design concept for now, but perhaps if
architect Marcin Panpuch's transparent, spherical houseboats get a
warm response at the Royal Institute of British Architects' Future
House London exhibit, punting on the Thames will become a lifestyle
choice. The idea is to reclaim much of the empty space along the
Thames' shores and docks by placing these solar-powered, motile
three-story units into the water, slurping up sunshine and heat by day
and releasing it throughout by night. It's an attractive design, if
dubiously seaworthy, but I wouldn't start pinching your pounds to save
quite yet; I'm sure one of the thousands of cheap, modular geodesic
homes of the future should be going on sale right about now,
right?
Read - In the Pod House [ThisIsLondon via Mobile-Weblog]
ugoff.com
track this
site | 4 links
Colonial House Will Debut in May
"PBS and Thirteen/WNET's next US-produced time capsule reality series will debut in May. Colonial House will air over four nights, May 10 to 14, from 8 to 10 p.m. The colonists are separated into four houses, two of which contain 'indentured servants,' and one of which is designated for three 'Freemen.' They lived as if it was 1628, facing 'the rigid class and gender roles, mandatory religious observance, and the puritanical civil laws of the era, particularly those pertaining to profanity....' " [reality blurred: the reality TV weblog]
I wish I could set my ReplayTV for it now!
Koreans are a rowdy lot. They built their presidential palace ABOVE the Imperial palace - looking down on it.
It's amazing to contemplate a company that is worth so much but is
so badly run. It is very easy to
provide prospective customers with a phone number
that routes them directly to a knowledgeable sales
rep. Too bad these highly paid execs are so out of touch
to understand that simple truth.
allahpundit.com
track this
site | 6 links
So I finally got a Shoutcast Server working with the WinAmp DSP plug-in on my home PC, and I'm able to stream it to Pocket Tunes on my Treo. How cool is that?!
Of course, now I have to find the time to create playlists for the various scenarious in which I envision myself using this. For example, the first one I want to create is a baseball-themed one for between innings at Brent's games. I plan to wow the other parents with this one! After that, maybe a library-themed one that I can play as people slowly congregate in the room where I am giving a presentation.
Oh, the possibilities!...
Everything in this world comes at a price but with technology enabling us to work smarter and more efficiently why should our houses not be smarter.
Do you get tired of telling the kids to turn off the lights or loose your mind when you find the freezer door has been slightly ajar for the past 12 hours. Why don't freezers have a door ajar buzzer like cars do.
How much energy do we waste because of pure laziness. When I was a single guy, and traveled a lot, I had a solution for energy savings when I was not home. Every circuit breaker minus the refrigerator was snapped off. I had amazingly small electricity bills which allowed me to run the A/C a little longer than I normally would when I was home.
So how come our homes cannot be smarter? Seems like this would be a
very hot market considering oil and electricity prices these days.
Turns out that the next generation of smart homes may be very close to
being ready for prime time. [SmartMobs]
allaboutgeorge.com/a2g/archives/000644.html
track
this site | 5 links
The following phrases have been identified by the grok system as matching this entry:
The Heinlein Society has a collection of photos of the groovy,
circular California home of Robert A Heinlein, legendary science
fiction author. Pictured here: Heinlein's groovy rec-room.