What TV SHOWS are you watching?

Michael Barnes wrote: Watched about 20 minutes of Homecoming- nope.

Wife and I started watching this last night and I'm pretty engrossed. I understand why it would turn someone off, but I can't get enough of Sam Esmail's work.

Not sure if anyone else is still watching Walking Dead, but the current season is actually pretty solid.

Watched the first episode of Robin of Sherwood a BBC television version of the Robin Hood tale put out in 1984.

It was pretty good in an 80's BBC kind of way. There is some magic in it which is different and Robin has immaculate 1980's Joe Perry from Journey hair which is beyond strange in an age before blow dryers and styling products.

It also reminds me a lot of 90's syndicated American shows like Xena. Which is to say it may be a bit silly but fun to watch.

repoman wrote:

It was pretty good in an 80's BBC kind of way. There is some magic in it which is different and Robin has immaculate 1980's Joe Perry from Journey hair which is beyond strange in an age before blow dryers and styling products.

Steve Perry from Journey != Joe Perry from Aerosmith. But we get the point.

Finally saw America To Me, a documentary about a high school in Oak Park. It's behind a paywall of Starz, so I binged watched it during the free trial.

I liked America To Me quite a lot, but it was frustrating. It has two theses. One is the thesis that must underline everything these days, not just in television documentaries, but in ordinary discourse; the undeniable thesis that all human beings are deserving of empathy and dignity. This is about 90 per cent of the 10-hour documentary.The other 10 percent barely registers. It's this: that our educational system is in the business not of educating students, but of cutting pedigree paperwork specifically produced for white students and their parents, so that the students might be considered competitive for college consideration. Something like 75 per cent of white kids in the Oak Park school explored in the documentary were on the honor roll. An unbelievable statistic. They were not there due to their service to others, or through their raw intelligence or intuitive conceptual grasp, but largely through relentless campaigning, through aesthetic and emotional signaling, that they are competitive in the abstract, and may perform self-harm if they are not considered abstractly competitive. Meanwhile, non-white families who do not immerse themselves in this subtle and bizarre theater (often because they are focused on more rational educational outcomes) are left behind. I loved learning about the teachers and kids in the show, but I wish this second thesis had been explored in more detail.

Michael Barnes wrote: We watched all of She-Ra. I am glad that sexist man-babies and diversity hating “fans” are so angry. It’s great and the inclusiveness is wonderful. Only complaint is that Hordak Isnt as ridiculous and doesn’t have Skeletor to totally clown out. Hordak is my favorite He-Man/She-Ra character.

My daughter (6) is enjoying She-Ra. There is a part of the internet that I never traverse, and apparently it is the part where people are upset about She-Ra (I can't see anything offensive in it -- what are people expecting, it was always about a "Princess of Power").

GorillaGrody wrote:

The other 10 percent barely registers. It's this: that our educational system is in the business not of educating students, but of cutting pedigree paperwork specifically produced for white students and their parents, so that the students might be considered competitive for college consideration. Something like 75 per cent of white kids in the Oak Park school explored in the documentary were on the honor roll. An unbelievable statistic. They were not there due to their service to others, or through their raw intelligence or intuitive conceptual grasp, but largely through relentless campaigning, through aesthetic and emotional signaling, that they are competitive in the abstract, and may perform self-harm if they are not considered abstractly competitive. Meanwhile, non-white families who do not immerse themselves in this subtle and bizarre theater (often because they are focused on more rational educational outcomes) are left behind. I loved learning about the teachers and kids in the show, but I wish this second thesis had been explored in more detail.

My daughter just started college this semester, so I got to see this from the inside. My take on it was this: I graduated from high school in '79, so I'm an old geezer. Going on the number of students in college prep courses, my school was looking at about 25-30% of us students to move on to college. Today that number is 75% or so. Classes that were high level and optional for me, such as a foreign language and Algebra/Trig, are now required. It's a lot harder now, and college now feels like a requirement for a decent career, unless your kid knows that they would love working in a trade or joining the military.

So with college looking like a must-have, you then got to deal with the truth of that corny old saying, "Tell me how you'll measure me, and I'll tell you how I'll perform." And to us it looked like acceptance was measured mostly on GPA and ACT/SAT scores, with 'other' being well in third. This is what we were getting from guidance councilors and other parents. Universities themselves don't spread their criteria around. So there's more pressure for grades, and more pressure for test scores, because there's more pressure for college. So honor rolls are full, and in some schools everyone with a 3.8 or better gets to be a Valedictorian.

You don't get a lot of do-overs with your child-rearing decisions. I'd hate to have thought, "This HS crap is bullshit, we're not going to play that game," and find out that, bullshit or not, your decision just made your kid's life a bit more difficult. She's going to find out that even a good life ain't all sunshine and rainbows, without a bad parenting call on our part making things worse.

RobertB wrote:
You don't get a lot of do-overs with your child-rearing decisions. I'd hate to have thought, "This HS crap is bullshit, we're not going to play that game," and find out that, bullshit or not, your decision just made your kid's life a bit more difficult. She's going to find out that even a good life ain't all sunshine and rainbows, without a bad parenting call on our part making things worse.

This is so true in many areas of life. Right now we are trying to set up a system for evaluating graduate student to make sure they are moving "towards" getting the dissertation done on time and also obtaining a job. One of the biggest screeners that potential employers use for a research job is number of publications in graduate students. My colleagues are very opposed to using this -- and I don't disagree that it is a poor metric; however, when everyone else is playing by one game, you can't be the lone holdout to change the system by refusing to adhere to the rules of the game.

That sounds like I am advocating for conformity and lack of principles. I'm not. Rather, our students (or eventually my children - 1st grade is low level so far, but I see it building) can't be the pawns that will be sacrificed to affect change. I continue to believe that there are other ways that we can achieve change without, as you say, making things worse out of principle.

The doc goes into this. Unfortunately, it makes a case that this isn’t something that just happens passively. It requires fierce advocacy on the part of parents. And one of the criteria at this one racially integrated school was “well, how are the black kids doing, because I want my kid to do whatever is better than that.” The rage of these parents at school board meetings was something to behold.

Anyway, I strongly recommend the documentary.

Sagrilarus wrote: Alright, season 7 Matt Smith Doctor Who is much better.

'He's in a tie with Colin Baker for me for worst Doc.'

??

ThirstyMan wrote:

Sagrilarus wrote: Alright, season 7 Matt Smith Doctor Who is much better.

'He's in a tie with Colin Baker for me for worst Doc.'

??

His first two seasons just didn't seem to have much of interest going on as far as storylines. I was finding myself halfway through an episode not caring how it ended. Might have been Matt, might have been the writers.

The last season picked up and I just finished it. I'm watching the Christmas episodes now and the Christmas Carol one was very good. More brooding, more story-oriented, and I like that much more than the manic chase scenes that a lot of new episodes want to focus on. In another week or two I'll only be one Doctor behind.

Michael Barnes wrote:
Watched about 20 minutes of Homecoming- nope.

lol, more reviews like this please. I love it.

Space Ghost wrote: This is so true in many areas of life. Right now we are trying to set up a system for evaluating graduate student to make sure they are moving "towards" getting the dissertation done on time and also obtaining a job. One of the biggest screeners that potential employers use for a research job is number of publications in graduate students. My colleagues are very opposed to using this -- and I don't disagree that it is a poor metric; however, when everyone else is playing by one game, you can't be the lone holdout to change the system by refusing to adhere to the rules of the game.

I can see the reasoning behind that metric. People who start and finish projects are more likely to reach other big goals on time. But it seems odd that this is just a theory. Why can't somebody mine the data and see if there is a strong correlation between number of published articles and timely completion of dissertation?

The Mighty Boosh is streaming on Amazon Prime.

Here is how I describe watching the Mighty Boosh:

First Viewing: What in the hell was that?
Second Viewing: I've no idea what's going on or why I'm smiling
Third Viewing: Laughing so hard I've got tears in my eyes.

The Mighty Boosh is genius!

HBO’s Watchmen is shooting in Atlanta...we went to an industry Christmas party last night and a friend of my wife, who is working art department on it, showed me some stuff from it.

Hardcore fans of the comic are going to be PISSED.

However, it looks like a much more interesting way to do Watchmen than slavishly recreating the book (and completely misinterpreting it) like Zack Snyder did.

One thing he showed me that he worked was incredible...it is something nowhere in the Moore text, but tonally and visually it was exactly right. It was also pretty upsetting. Another upsetting scene he talked about sounded almost like something more out of Tales from the Black Freighter. A very WEIRD thing going on involving...a crab trap.

He shared a humourous anecdote about Jeremy Irons, who is playing Ozymandias/Veidt...apparently he is a total bad ass at 70 years old.

The feeling on set is that this is going to be another Game of Thrones. They are aiming extremely high with it in terms of quality.