So maybe it turns out that Joe Shuster, Canadian and co-creator of Superman, was less of a creator of iconic mythology and more of a prophesier of future events.
He was just off by about 10,000 years.
A meteorite of unknown origin was recovered in a spot in western Kansas that coincides
Now I'm not saying that there is proof that anything else crashed along with the group of meteors that this one was a part of. Anything like a man with Superpowers and a benevolent drive to protect mankind from itself. I'm not saying that at all.
I'm just saying that I had a bit of a geekasm when I read the headline 'Rare meteorite found in Kansas field'.
Although it goes without saying that we might want to keep an eye on the researchers for any 'meteor rock' induced superpowers.
Labels: smallville, superman
The one good thing about living in a time when the forces of religious zealotry leave almost no room for intellectual thought to survive, let alone prosper, is the application of Newton's Third Law to human sociology: "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."
One major component of the reaction to the unending barrage of religious dogma that is splintering and destroying us is Richard Dawkins, whom I mentioned in a recent post about The Flying Spaghetti Monster. I just finished an article by Dawkins that any rationalist, atheist, humanist, or any other non-dogmatically-challenged-ist needs to read.
Look for the link after the jump.
Here's a sample, where Dawkins quotes Sam Harris:
And here's Dawkins' conclusion, for the very lazy. It ruins nothing for those who want to enjoy the full article:
One major component of the reaction to the unending barrage of religious dogma that is splintering and destroying us is Richard Dawkins, whom I mentioned in a recent post about The Flying Spaghetti Monster. I just finished an article by Dawkins that any rationalist, atheist, humanist, or any other non-dogmatically-challenged-ist needs to read.
Look for the link after the jump.
Here's a sample, where Dawkins quotes Sam Harris:
by a ball of fire, some significant percentage of the American population would see a silver-lining in the subsequent mushroom cloud, as it would suggest to them that the best thing that is ever going to happen was about to happen: the return of Christ . . . Imagine the consequences if any significant component of the U.S. government actually believed that the world was about to end and that its ending would be glorious. The fact that nearly half of the American population apparently believes this, purely on the basis of religious dogma, should be considered a moral and intellectual emergency. Does Bush check the Rapture Index daily, as Reagan did his stars? We don't know, but would anyone be surprised?'American Taliban' indeed.
And here's Dawkins' conclusion, for the very lazy. It ruins nothing for those who want to enjoy the full article:
We explain our existence by a combination of the anthropic principle and Darwin's principle of natural selection. That combination provides a complete and deeply satisfying explanation for everything that we see and know. Not only is the god hypothesis unnecessary. It is spectacularly unparsimonious. Not only do we need no God to explain the universe and life. God stands out in the universe as the most glaring of all superfluous sore thumbs. We cannot, of course, disprove God, just as we can't disprove Thor, fairies, leprechauns and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. But, like those other fantasies that we can't disprove, we can say that God is very very improbable.Check out the full article here.
Labels: atheism
A friend of mine just emailed me a link to a very interesting project that Yahoo is currently undertaking. They are collecting submissions from internet users across the globe, that along with being 'stored' in a time capsule, will also be projected out into space along a laser generated from the Pueblo of Jemez, an ancient archeological site in New Mexico.
Now this is the stuff that I think that we should be spending more of our time doing, particularly in light of my current (and quite frankly) lifelong thoughts about whether humanity will make it past our own self-destructive tendencies.
If nothing else, at least this is a way for us to project some of the essence of what we are right now to any inter-galactic neighbours who might have the capacity and the inclination to intercept our message and examine it someday.
Just in case there's no one around when those same neighbours drop by for a visit. (See my post on Fermi's Paradox for more on that)
Links:
Time Capsule Main Page
Time Capsule Blog
Here's my first contribution to the Time Capsule, under the category 'Hope'
Now this is the stuff that I think that we should be spending more of our time doing, particularly in light of my current (and quite frankly) lifelong thoughts about whether humanity will make it past our own self-destructive tendencies.
If nothing else, at least this is a way for us to project some of the essence of what we are right now to any inter-galactic neighbours who might have the capacity and the inclination to intercept our message and examine it someday.
Just in case there's no one around when those same neighbours drop by for a visit. (See my post on Fermi's Paradox for more on that)
Links:
Time Capsule Main Page
Time Capsule Blog
Here's my first contribution to the Time Capsule, under the category 'Hope'
Labels: everything else
When I was around ten or eleven years old, I made a very conscious decision to have nothing more whatsoever to do with religious faith in general and organized religion in particular. I couldn't say for sure what finally prompted my decision, other than the realization that took years to finally sink in: that only one out of the myriad faiths out there could ever be the right one, and why did the one my Mother have to cram down my throat over and over have to be it?
I have been an atheist every day since.
I was baptized Anglican, but I've endured litanies in Lutheran, Missionary, Roman Catholic, and other flavours besides.
In fact, it was in all likelihood in spite of my Mother switching denominations like a hooker changes sex partners that exclamated my newly found enlightenment, a fact that causes her no small amount of discomfort, I am sure.
And ever since The Day I Woke Up and Stopped Blindly Believing Every Unsubstantiated Thing Other People Told Me, I have tried to learn as much as I can about other religions around the world in an attempt to understand why they exist, and what goals they serve. What it is about their particular brand of beliefs that brings people comfort and makes them think they are more correct (and therefore better) than everyone else? I have spent years in this pursuit and I have yet to come up with a satisfactory answer.
From my view in the existential cheap seats, all I see religion (and yes, that's ALL religions, though I pick largely on xians) doing is fragmenting the peoples of the world and giving them cause to go to war with one another.
I find it fascinating, as well as pants-shittingly terrifying that a person's belief about What Happens After Death informs everything else they do in their lives, as well as causes them to hate and fear and attack and murder others who don't happen to hold the same untestable beliefs about an afterlife that they do.
And this is where we get to The Flying Spaghetti Monster. The product of protest against so-called 'Intelligent Design' being taught in US classrooms, it is the deity of a completely fabricated religion, designed to spoof organized religions the world over.
In the script of life, The Flying Spaghetti Monster is a MacGuffin, an arbitrary placeholder for a creator being that simply says a person's belief in (insert religious Creator-type here, be it God, Brahman, Zeus, Quetzalcoatl, Odin, etc) is no more plausible than an admittedly fictional monster made mostly of durum and meatballs. It shows to demonstrate just how ridiculous and arbitrary the religious beliefs that hold the vast portion of the world's population hostage really are. Wikipedia's great article outlines this parody religion better than I could.
So why did I bring this up? Other than to bring my deeply personal and strongly held convictions up in a public forum?
I just came across an article by a very public atheist, Richard Dawkins, in which he makes a very public case for the end of organized religion before it literally destroys humanity. Its a bit of a tease piece for a book of his that I will get to reading shortly.
I recently read another book along the very same lines by Sam Harris called The End of Faith, which pretty much calls for exactly the same end that Dawkins speaks of.
And I think that Dawkins and Harris may be right: It could be that the time for sitting on the fence and saying that its okay for other people to believe whatever they want has passed. That used to be my opinion, so long as no one was harmed by those opinions. But of course there has been and currently is great harm being done in the name of those beliefs. There has been more blood spilled in the name of religious 'truth' than for any other reason in the history of mankind. (See pretty much any conflict anywhere for proof of that last statement)
Here's the inflammatory interview with Dawkins that got me riled enough to post again about the worst thing to happen to humanity ever, and the pseudo-serious way we can elect to make fun of it: via The Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Here's the official Flying Spaghetti Monster site.
And here's the new t-shirt I am waiting patiently for as of five minutes ago.
Labels: atheism
I just came across an article about a real scientific equation that in all likelihood was the impetus for The Best Television Show Since Star Trek, Babylon 5, Smallville, Firefly, Battlestar Galactica: Lost.
I was looking for information on The Valenzetti Equation, the supposedly fictional equation that predicts the end of the world and is the main backstory for Lost. As I was browsing through some material I came across information about The Doomsday Argument, a real life equation that was designed to auger the same thing: When mankind will become extinct.
I guess I'm not sure what shocks me more: The fact that a mathematical equation was built that actually predicts our end, or the fact that said formula's creation surprises me.
By the way, according to the equation, we only have 9120 years left, so I wouldn't wait to do that xmas shopping.
Read about The Doomsday Argument here.
And if you're into stories about Lost, here's two more that I found, and found very interesting:
I was looking for information on The Valenzetti Equation, the supposedly fictional equation that predicts the end of the world and is the main backstory for Lost. As I was browsing through some material I came across information about The Doomsday Argument, a real life equation that was designed to auger the same thing: When mankind will become extinct.
I guess I'm not sure what shocks me more: The fact that a mathematical equation was built that actually predicts our end, or the fact that said formula's creation surprises me.
By the way, according to the equation, we only have 9120 years left, so I wouldn't wait to do that xmas shopping.
Read about The Doomsday Argument here.
And if you're into stories about Lost, here's two more that I found, and found very interesting:
Labels: lost
I just finished watching the season 3 premiere of Battlestar Galactica. I missed it when Space ran it last Saturday night because I was far too busy stuffing my face with Thanksgiving turkey. Gotta love Thanksgiving in October, btw. For any Americans reading this, what the hell is the point of having Thanksgiving seemingly minutes from xmas? Spread your holidays around a little willya?
Ahem.
As refreshing as it was to me to be so spectacularly surprised recently when the season premiere of Lost turned out to be so great, I was nothing short of astonished when BSG also decided to break the pattern of not merely living up to its own hype and was in fact better than everyone thought it would be.
Baltar is finally the total bastard we all knew he's always been, Starbuck has another season of trauma to survive (no real surprise there), Sharon is back with the fleet, and insurgency abounds. Another example of that sci fi that I like to immerse myself in to escape the horror that is modern civilization (see prev post).
The mediocre-but-improving Smallville season 6 offerrings notwithstanding, it seems that the golden age of televised sci if is going to continue for at least one more season.
And I'm not sure when the hell my personal blog become a scifi-only post zone, but since it is such a big interest for me, I suppose it makes sense. I'll try to mix it up with more posts about my other inane interests more often.
Either way, with the cold weather coming, I can't wait to cuddle up on the couch under a blanket andlet, coerce, emotionally blackmail Superwife into watching a lot of scifi with me to pass the winter away.
Ahem.
As refreshing as it was to me to be so spectacularly surprised recently when the season premiere of Lost turned out to be so great, I was nothing short of astonished when BSG also decided to break the pattern of not merely living up to its own hype and was in fact better than everyone thought it would be.
Baltar is finally the total bastard we all knew he's always been, Starbuck has another season of trauma to survive (no real surprise there), Sharon is back with the fleet, and insurgency abounds. Another example of that sci fi that I like to immerse myself in to escape the horror that is modern civilization (see prev post).
The mediocre-but-improving Smallville season 6 offerrings notwithstanding, it seems that the golden age of televised sci if is going to continue for at least one more season.
And I'm not sure when the hell my personal blog become a scifi-only post zone, but since it is such a big interest for me, I suppose it makes sense. I'll try to mix it up with more posts about my other inane interests more often.
Either way, with the cold weather coming, I can't wait to cuddle up on the couch under a blanket and
Labels: battestar galactica, lost
As a confirmed scifi and space nut, I spend a lot of my time looking to the future and wondering if desperately hoping that humanity will make it to a time when we have sorted out our petty differences and can work towards some common goal. I know, not fucking likely eh? But I guess that's why scifi appeals to me so much; because in my heart I know that we're not likely to get past the threat of exterminating ourselves, so our only real hope for a rosy future lies in the art we create about it.
Along those lines, I have been thinking more than I should lately about nuclear war and whether it will be our final undoing, as generations of people have thought before me (during the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, etc.) As a kid I used to have terrible nightmares about blowing ourselves up in nuclear fire. I mean, real doozies. I'd wake up bathed in sweat and screaming my head off. Not all that uncommon as it turns out, and I know why: It's a valid thing to be scared about. Nowadays I understand that in order to go through our daily lives, we must be able to shelve fears of what people we have no control over could someday do that might lead to our end. And I generally am able to make that conscious shelving, and get busy in the details of my life, my commitments, my loved ones. But there are times.
Probably because I thought that I'd gotten past my childhood fears, I thought I'd be into Jericho, a tv series about surviving a nuclear attack. I have watched the first few episodes and aside from the initial horrific imagery, I've even enjoyed the show. And because I was okay with Jericho, I thought I would be in the right place to watch an old movie about nuclear war, so I put The Day After on my rent list, and I watched it today. It's a gritty look at what the after-effects of a nuclear attack would be like in middle America. It was made in the early eighties, but after you've forgiven that, its a thoughtful, gut-wrenching look at what the days after would really be like. And it made me sick to my stomach. Seriously. It was an all too authentic version of what I think surviving a nuclear attack might be like, and after watching it, I now clearly remember that it was one of the reasons I had those nightmares all those years ago.
I think that I have seen my last episode of Jericho.
I want to go back to not thinking about how stupid we are, and hope for that day when no one has to worry that all life could end based on some ridiculous posturing over natural resources, or economics, or religion.
Here are some articles that I dug up afterwards, mostly on wikipedia, in an attempt to make myself feel better. I had a good, cathartic cry after I had a look at them:
Videos of effects of nuclear explosions
The Nuclear Bomb explained
Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombings
How Fallout works
North Korean Nuclear Test
And here's Oppenheimer's account of witnessing the first tests of nuclear bombs, which were only made possible because of his research on The Manhattan Project:
Along those lines, I have been thinking more than I should lately about nuclear war and whether it will be our final undoing, as generations of people have thought before me (during the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, etc.) As a kid I used to have terrible nightmares about blowing ourselves up in nuclear fire. I mean, real doozies. I'd wake up bathed in sweat and screaming my head off. Not all that uncommon as it turns out, and I know why: It's a valid thing to be scared about. Nowadays I understand that in order to go through our daily lives, we must be able to shelve fears of what people we have no control over could someday do that might lead to our end. And I generally am able to make that conscious shelving, and get busy in the details of my life, my commitments, my loved ones. But there are times.
Probably because I thought that I'd gotten past my childhood fears, I thought I'd be into Jericho, a tv series about surviving a nuclear attack. I have watched the first few episodes and aside from the initial horrific imagery, I've even enjoyed the show. And because I was okay with Jericho, I thought I would be in the right place to watch an old movie about nuclear war, so I put The Day After on my rent list, and I watched it today. It's a gritty look at what the after-effects of a nuclear attack would be like in middle America. It was made in the early eighties, but after you've forgiven that, its a thoughtful, gut-wrenching look at what the days after would really be like. And it made me sick to my stomach. Seriously. It was an all too authentic version of what I think surviving a nuclear attack might be like, and after watching it, I now clearly remember that it was one of the reasons I had those nightmares all those years ago.
I think that I have seen my last episode of Jericho.
I want to go back to not thinking about how stupid we are, and hope for that day when no one has to worry that all life could end based on some ridiculous posturing over natural resources, or economics, or religion.
Here are some articles that I dug up afterwards, mostly on wikipedia, in an attempt to make myself feel better. I had a good, cathartic cry after I had a look at them:
Videos of effects of nuclear explosions
The Nuclear Bomb explained
Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombings
How Fallout works
North Korean Nuclear Test
And here's Oppenheimer's account of witnessing the first tests of nuclear bombs, which were only made possible because of his research on The Manhattan Project:
We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, "Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." I suppose we all thought that one way or another.Get why I'm a scifi fan now?
-J. Robert Oppenheimer
Labels: everything else, scifi
I just finished watching the Comedy Central roast of cultural icon William Shatner, and while Superwife and I were laughing our asses off, I found myself wondering why any person would be willing to endure an entire night of downright nasty remarks from a bunch of mostly washed up Has Beens.
I also found myself noticing that notwithstanding Betty White's hilarious routine (Kee-rist is she ever a dirty old lady!), William Shatner was far and away the funniest person in that room.
After getting told that he couldn't act, that he was a fat old man, and more than once to go fuck himself, Shatner got the last (and loudest) laughs by being given the opportunity to dish it right back to the roasters, far better than they got him. One of his best lines concerned the shockingly poor quality of jokes there had been, considering how many years of crappy material he has given for material.
Sure he created an acting style that has inspired generations of mockers, and yes he's been in some terrible shows/movies, and yeah he gets the Reeves-Stevens' to write all his books for him.
But in the words if not the intent of Wil Wheaton, he's William Fucking Shatner. And like him or not his legacy will likely live on for a lot longer than most celebrities have any right to expect.
If I live so long I can only hope to be such a class act.
I also found myself noticing that notwithstanding Betty White's hilarious routine (Kee-rist is she ever a dirty old lady!), William Shatner was far and away the funniest person in that room.
After getting told that he couldn't act, that he was a fat old man, and more than once to go fuck himself, Shatner got the last (and loudest) laughs by being given the opportunity to dish it right back to the roasters, far better than they got him. One of his best lines concerned the shockingly poor quality of jokes there had been, considering how many years of crappy material he has given for material.
Sure he created an acting style that has inspired generations of mockers, and yes he's been in some terrible shows/movies, and yeah he gets the Reeves-Stevens' to write all his books for him.
But in the words if not the intent of Wil Wheaton, he's William Fucking Shatner. And like him or not his legacy will likely live on for a lot longer than most celebrities have any right to expect.
If I live so long I can only hope to be such a class act.
Labels: star trek
Dear Trinity,
This week you turned 15 months old, and what a fun month it has been.
YOU ARE WALKING!
Yup, that bears capitalization. And repeating: You are walking now. Not just giggling as you lurch around from couch to chair to parent, etc. As fun as that was, and exciting in what it meant was coming, this is so much better.
You walk everywhere, and rarely crawl at all anymore, unless we're playing. You walk all over the house, outside, pretty much everywhere we go nowadays. And if we try to confine you to your stroller, or a shopping cart, or even carry you? You go crazy trying to get those feet flat on the ground so you can get there under your own power.
You also got to spend some more time with your new cousin, and you seem to be coming around to the idea that this little person is somebody to get interested in. I hope that by the time you can read this, you two are the good buddies that all parents involved would like you to be.
What else? Well we got to take you out for your first 'real' dinner out. We've taken you with us to restaurants before, but we always brought you a little baby food for your dinner. This time you got to hit the kids menu (kids pasta in alfredo sauce) and between playing with your own bowl of pasta, swinging your balloon around, and lapping up the attention being lavished on you from these strangers called waiters, you had a very good time. It is something we will definitely have to do again soon.
I guess these letters are a little bit like me breaking the boundaries of space time, in that I am writing to you from your past to a future when you will be able to read them. I hope that in that future you can get an idea of just how loved you are and how much joy you bring to your Mom and I.
Love Daddy
This week you turned 15 months old, and what a fun month it has been.
YOU ARE WALKING!
Yup, that bears capitalization. And repeating: You are walking now. Not just giggling as you lurch around from couch to chair to parent, etc. As fun as that was, and exciting in what it meant was coming, this is so much better.
You walk everywhere, and rarely crawl at all anymore, unless we're playing. You walk all over the house, outside, pretty much everywhere we go nowadays. And if we try to confine you to your stroller, or a shopping cart, or even carry you? You go crazy trying to get those feet flat on the ground so you can get there under your own power.
You also got to spend some more time with your new cousin, and you seem to be coming around to the idea that this little person is somebody to get interested in. I hope that by the time you can read this, you two are the good buddies that all parents involved would like you to be.
What else? Well we got to take you out for your first 'real' dinner out. We've taken you with us to restaurants before, but we always brought you a little baby food for your dinner. This time you got to hit the kids menu (kids pasta in alfredo sauce) and between playing with your own bowl of pasta, swinging your balloon around, and lapping up the attention being lavished on you from these strangers called waiters, you had a very good time. It is something we will definitely have to do again soon.
I guess these letters are a little bit like me breaking the boundaries of space time, in that I am writing to you from your past to a future when you will be able to read them. I hope that in that future you can get an idea of just how loved you are and how much joy you bring to your Mom and I.
Love Daddy
Labels: trinity
After the ridiculously long diatribe I posted yesterday about the second season finale of Lost, I left little doubt as to how I feel about the show.
And in a stunning move that blatantly defied typical behaviour for highly anticipated events, tonight's third season premiere was not as good as I had hoped it would be.
It was much, much better.
I have said it before but I have to reiterate how lucky I feel that fans of science fiction (or indeed, just good dramatic television) are to be on the receiving end of programming no longer made for the lowest common denominator. Established shows like Lost and Battlestar Galactica, and the new Heroes all demonstrate that producers have caught on that fans of episodic, complicated serial television can be sated while still making money for their parent companies. I would go so far as to say that they finally figured out that this is where the real money is.
I know I'm hooked.
Check out this post for a recap of the show.
Now its off to the message boards for the next few hours. What's that address again? Fetish:Footage:Forum? Oops, wrong online phenom. Gotta love that William Gibson.
Labels: lost
Waaaaaay the hell back in what, May? June? I mentioned that I'd be writing my thoughts about the LOST second season finale (see, I did say that), and as we get within only a few hours of the season 3 premiere (tomorrow, Wednesday, October 4 @ 9 EST in North America) now seems like the appropriate time.
One of the benefits of writing a review four months late is that you really don't have to worry about ruining it for fans that haven't seen the subject of the review yet: Either you're a LOST fan and you have seen the season 2 finale already, or you don't watch it, meaning I have more taste in my penis (see True Romance if you don't get that quote) and I'm spoiling a show you don't watch.
I've read some online commentary about how the second season wasn't as good as the first, that the show gets more ambiguous as it progresses, etc. I couldn't disagree more. Or louder, or whatever. I found this past season to be way better than the first season; more focus on what is actually going on with this island, more confrontation with the ubiquitous Others, and less with the religious crap, (although its still there - don't want to lose 75% of that demographic, eh ABC?).
The finale is a veritable bonanza of revelations for the fans. It opens with a boat showing up off the coast of the island, right in the middle of the funeral for the recently slain (by Michael) Anna Lucia and Libby, and the ensuing chaos effectively ends whatever semblance of grief was being shown for the drunk driving duo (please excuse the real-world reference).
Jack, Sayid and Sawyer swim out to the boat only to find that its sole occupant is Desmond, the guy that was manning the hatch at the beginning of season 2. He is drunk and tells a story about how he couldn't get away from the island, even after heading due west for two weeks. Snowglobe indeed.
After making some plans of his own with Sayid, Jack and the rest of a posse consisting of Sawyer, Kate, Hurley, and Michael head out to 'rescue' Walt. Along the way the group is followed by some of the others, and after killing one of them, the posse demands answers from Michael.
They stumble on an enormous pile of canisters and an end point for a pneumatic tube system. Inside the canisters are hundreds of the notebooks written by people working inside the hatch Locke and Echo found at The Question Mark (The Pearl). Turns out the Pearl was the experiment after all.
The posse gets captured by the Others, and taken to a dock, there to await their fate at the end of the episode.
And what of Sayid? He, Jin and Sun take Desmond's boat around to the other side of the island, in an attempt to ambush the Others and thwart Michael's plans. Along the way they spot the remains of a gigantic statue, which just for the hell of it, has only four toes. Hmmm.
They get to the Other's supposed encampment, only to discover that it was all window dressing, likely exclusively for Michael's benefit.
Meanwhile Locke has locked Echo out of the hatch and with Desmond inside is intent on letting the numbers run down once and for all.
Echo enlists Charlie in attempting to use dynamite to blow open the blast door that Locke has erected, and in so doing only badly injures himself and Charlie in the process.
Flashback time: Turns out that Desmond has been on the island for over three years, most of which was spent with Inman (remember him?) until Desmond killed him once he realized Inman was lying to him about everything. Before his death Inman told Desmond about a 'failsafe' device that could be used to disable the device inside the hatch, but no one knows what might happen were the failsafe to be used. Desmond returned to the hatch after killing Inman only to find the device in 'system failure' and all hell breaking loose in the hatch.
Back in the present (2004, close enough) Desmond realizes that it was in fact him that crashed Oceanic Flight 815 by not inputting the numbers into the computer in time. This is confirmed by verifying the date and time of the plane crash against the printout from the Pearl that clearly shows the time the system failure occurred. Oops.
Locke destroys the computer before Desmond can input the numbers again, and Desmond decides that he has to use the failsafe and trust that he is doing he right thing. Guess he thinks he has something to atone for. He uses the device, quenching the magnet behind the walls of the hatch and an enormous amount of electromagnetic energy is released.
Back on the dock, Michael is reunited with Walt, and Hurley is set free to warn the rest of the Losties never to come looking for Jack, Kate and Sawyer.
Cut to a scene of some kind of monitoring station (Iceland mebbe) recording the electromagnetic event and calling their employer: Penelope Widmore. This is significant not only because of who it is, but because finally we get to see that the island does exist in the real world, finally shutting the people in the Purgatory Camp up for good. Hopefully.
The episode ends with the Losties sitting around camp, trying to figure out where everyone went and just what the hell happened. Pretty much what all of the viewers were thinking too. What a great payoff for the fans.
There's a good article summing up the finale as well as some reasonable thoughts about where the show is going at this link.
Along with watching reruns of the show over the summer hiatus, I played the LOST Alternate Reality Game (ARG), an online and real-world game attempting to ascertain what the Hanso foundation is really up to. The ARG consisted of sniffing out clues in the real world and online in the form of billboards, emails, video clips, fake sites, etc. I sucked at the game because I just didn't have the hours and hours some people seemed to have to pour into it. The game is over now, but if you're so inclined, here is a shortish summary of what the game finally revealed. Alternatively, check out LostPedia for an in depth examination of the game in its entirety. Any fan of the show really should know what the ARG was all about. There's some shocking stuff about the nature of the island.
As part of the ARG, I also read the summer novel, Bad Twin by Gary Troupe (a fictional passenger aboard the doomed Oceanic flight 815), a novel published to whet the appetites of LOST fans for season three. It was a really good read, but did very little to illuminate anything significant about the Hanso Foundation or any of the other backstoried elements. But it was still very cool, and I will admit to being marketed into wanting that book.
And for the LOST fans with a sense of humour (you must be out there somewhere - it can't all be religious symbolism and visions, can it?) here's a link to a really funny comparison between LOST and Gilligan's Island, written as if by an 11 year old girl. Here's a sample:
More on the Lost Numbers on Gilligan's Island:Here's the link to the full article.
4 - number of sleeping huts on the island
8 - animals not native to the island
15 - things that wash up on shore
16 - number of times Gilligan foils rescue attempts
23 - number things Gilligan drops on the Skippers head
42 - number of people who visit the island
And here's my current collection of LOST sites, wherein I have spent far too much of my precious free time this past summer, mostly involved in the aforementioned ARG:
The LOST Report
LostPedia - The definitive LOST resource
High definition episode screen caps
Official ABC LOST site
Inside the Experience
The Hanso Foundation
The Valenzetti Equation
Finally, here's a terrific article from TIME that tries to pin down the appeal of an episodic science fiction show that common sense would've predicted cancelled after only a few episodes.
I can't WAIT for tomorrow night.
Labels: lost
Jack-o-Lanterns in the Dark
Originally uploaded by WilWheaton.
After a lengthy hiatus from reading Wil Weaton's blog due to excessive 'poker posting' I have recently begun reading his blog again regularly, and I'm glad for it. Turns out that the nerdy ensign that everyone wanted to see go up in a warp core explosion actually grew up to be a really good writer (those dark months where all he ever talked about was his burgeoning poker career notwithstanding). I highly recommend either of his books, Dancing Barefoot 
And thus ends the barely concealed advertisement.
As I was reading through his latest posts, I found his flickr gallery linked and found this image that reminded me I have to start thinking about how to top last year's jack-o-lanterns. Previous years have seen the Kirk era Trek insignia, a Communion-esque alien face, and other similarly interesting (to me) designs.
This image of Wil's pumpkins got me thinking that I am going to try to carve something indicative of my status as gainfully employed computer geek. An emoticon maybe? An asterisked password? Or maybe this year should see a nod to my daughter's current fascination with everyone's favourite Sesame Street pal, Elmo?
Anyone have any other ideas?
Labels: books, everything else, rants
