Shark Jumping TV

Over at Procrastinators Club, Greg makes some interesting observations about Star Trek: Enterprise, mainly that it jumps the shark in every episode as a method to maintain viewership. By ensuring that no one episode can be any worse (or better) than any other, viewers are never insulted or suprised with the content.
I’d like to propose that many long living series end up in a similar boat, symbolicly jumping the shark every episode so as to have a sufficiently enticing ‘hook’ in their 30 second preview for next week. ER is an almost perfect example of this. As the original stars depart (and return and depart again) for greener pastures, the writing of the show must get more and more outlandish to convince viewers to keep watching. At a certain point, the shark jumping begins and we get to watch a road rage inflicted driver shoot at and run the car carrying 2 romantically involved, medium length stars and a heart wrenching guest star off a bridge.
The other genre that has developed along these lines is the mostly non-connecting series, where you can miss a week (or more) and not worry that you are missing substance. Law & Order is probably the longest running example of this right now. Sure, you might not get some of the finer details about Lenny’s alcoholism or daughter’s suicide, but you don’t really need them to watch one show.

Yet another new virus/worm

Similar to an earlier post, we are seeing another worm. This one uses the process name wmediaplayer.exe and seems to be spreading using weak or nonexistant administrator account passwords. Infected machines also appear to be scanning other hosts on ports 135, 139 and 445. Suspiscious keys in HKLMSoftwareWindowsCurrentVersionRun refer to executable name.

As usual, none of the antivirus vendors have signatures for this yet.

It’s just another day on the Internet. I’m not sure if it was someone on this campus that reported it, but the DDoS mentioned at ISC was also seen here.

Global Test

This whole “global test” thing has gotten out of hand. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said the following to Wolf Blitzer:

I don’t understand ‘proving to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons,’

Now, it might just be me, but I think that little quote almost spells out the exact problem this administration has. It looks to me like talking points are becoming more important than common sense. Any dolt can understand that if the President of the United States of America is going to send American soldiers into harms way for preemptive action, it damn well better be for a reason that makes sense to someone outside of this country. Approach them with facts and data that backs up the grounds for the action and they should say “Yes, preemptive attack would be an option if all other avenues fail”. With or without the caveat, that sounds like a global test to me.

Condi was showing signs of going nuts back when she refered to the “bin Laden determined to strike in US” as based on “historical data“.

To be fair, Kerry doesn’t fully answer the question asked in the original article about what the “global test” really means. But, remember that the debates were supposed to be free response, thinking on your feet events. And we all know who looked better at doing that.

Word Power

I was reading one of my favorite sections in The Onion today and started off on an interesting journey. Seeing Dan’s success with “santorum“, he got a challenge to try and revive some words that have fallen out of common use, kakistocracy was one of them. I then had to go searching Google to make sure this was a real word. It is, and I stumbled upon something that’s almost funny in light of the current political atmosphere: The Clinton Kakistocracy.
I wish Dubya had only gotten a blowjob from an intern. Lets go down the checklist:

  • Using questionable military actions to distract from other shortcomings in the administration? CHECK
  • Claiming your advisors all back your actions when there is nothing close to a concensus? CHECK
  • Having a bunch of two faced partisans claim that partisan action, by the other side of course, is behind all of this? CHECK
  • “lemming-like recitation of ‘I believe the president'”? CHECK (Just watch two Sunday morning talking-head, gasbag shows and feel the talking points wearing at your soul).

And to top it all off:

“With evidence now gathered since the bombing, it is certain the attack was, at best, a poorly planned military exercise and at worst a multi-million dollar deadly diversion.”

Poor planning? Billions spent distracting us from the real target?
Heres to hoping I’m only drinking because of the game after the debate tommorrow.

Day Trip to the Illinois River

Alisha and I spent the day driving over to Havana. Driving into town on Rt 136, we saw 2 seperate signs for the “Historic Watertower”, so I had to stop and take a picture of it. Brick base with a metal tank on top.Historic Havana, IL watertower
After that, we crossed over the Illinois River and visited the Dickson Mounds Museum. Excellent place to visit, but not exactly what we set out for. We headed back over the river to the Chautauqua National Wildlife Refuge., where we took some more pictures.