Priceless! A new introduction for Firefly as a 80′s show:
And here, Simon has his own 80′s show:
It’s all in the music and the graphics!
Oh, and here’s an awesome video of Summer Glau training for the fight sequences in Serenty:
Firefly from the 80′s
Cool, Film, Funny, Sports, Television
Jun 202011
Questions on Art Preferences
Aug 202010
Some FormSpring Questions and Answers on personal preferences in art:
What is your favourite classic novel, outside of Rand?
It’s hard to name one, so here’s a few, in some rough order:
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
- Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
- Persuasion by Jane Austen
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
- The Sea Wolf by Jack London
- Shirley by Charlotte Bronte
- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
I love classic fiction, and I read a great deal of it, but I’m not nearly as widely read as I’d like to be.
Which TV shows do you watch?
Some of these shows are no longer running, but we’re still watching them on DVD.
- The Unit
- Burn Notice
- Psych
- South Park
- The Office
- Inside the NFL
Of all of them, I like The Unit the best… perhaps even more than Firefly.
Do you like Rush? Why or why not?
No. It’s too hard rock for me. My tastes run more to pop. (Go Mika!) I can’t stand to listen to more than a few seconds of it.
Spider
Apr 272010
One of my favorite television miniseries is the HBO production, “From The Earth To the Moon“. This series details the saga of the Apollo space program, with the goal (in President Kennedy’s words) of “landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth”.
Although I’m not a supporter of government-funded science for the same reasons Ayn Rand laid out in her essay “Apollo 11“, like Rand I still marvel at this tremendous achievement which was a triumph of man’s reason and courage.
Of the various episodes in the series my favorite is probably episode 5, “Spider“.
“Spider” depicted the development of the Lunar Module (LEM) by Grumman Aircraft, led by engineer Tom Kelly. Kelly and his team solved engineering challenge after challenge through a combination of reason, ingenuity, creativity, intellectual integrity, and above all an utmost respect for the facts of reality. The episode is upbeat and nicely captures the joy of engineering.
The whole episode is superb and worth watching. But I was especially glad to find this short excerpt of the final 5 minutes on YouTube:
Kelly’s musings about how each LEM has a “soul”, consisting of the souls of all the men who built her, designed her, and dreamed about her was very reminiscent of Dagny Taggart’s musings in Atlas Shrugged during the first run of the John Galt Line when she thought that the motors running her engines were alive — operated by remote control by the souls and minds of the thinking men who designed them.
This excerpt also contains one of my favorite short pieces of television music, the “Eagle” theme by composer Mason Daring.
Daring’s piece captures a uplifting combination of hope, yearning, solemnity, and pride in wanting to meet great challenges and overcome them.
The musical theme to the series (at the beginning and end of each episode) by Michael Kamen is also very nice:
(The video track just above is from a different television show, but the audio track is from the HBO series.)
I’ve always thought of these as wonderful musical concretizations of the optimistic American sense of life that was so widespread and normal just a few years ago.
So if you find yourself getting depressed over current events, just remember that many Americans still retain that marvelous implicit sense that life is good, happiness is desirable and attainable, and great achievements are possible to men. And as long as we still have that, this country still has a chance.
Dominique on The Simpsons
May 082009
I haven’t watched The Simpsons in years, but this Sunday’s episode promises to be of interest, according to the description in TV Guide:
Sunday, May 10: The Simpsons (8pm): Oscar winner Jodie Foster lends her voice as Maggie, who portrays the girl-power protagonist from Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead.
(Via Randex.)
Joss Wedon’s Dollhouse
Feb 232009
Joss Whedon really got my attention with his wonderful but sadly shortlived TV series Firefly and its related movie Serenity. So when I found the premiere episode of his Dollhouse series on Hulu last night, I was eager to check it out.
Quick review: I’m intrigued. Excellent production, solid acting, short skirts. And most important, a sci-fi premise that will make you think about the nature of personal identity. What if you could copy aspects of people from a library of personas to create an amalgam in a host, tailored for some particular application? Need someone who flies helicopters and has a doctorate in neurobiology? Coming right up — but you’d better hope that the amalgam is stable and that none of the donors’ psychological quirks mess things up before the mission is completed and the host is wiped clean again.
Which brings us to the hosts, the agents used in these missions. What would be their motivation for undertaking such a lifestyle? Who would volunteer to become a vessel forever filled and emptied by someone else? Sure, whatever horrible memories they’ve accumulated in life would be erased, which sounds appealing. And they would get to be and do an amazing variety of things — presumably bringing about happiness and justice and so on. That’s pretty cool, too.
But who are you, if not the sum of your choices and actions and experiences? And what is any of it worth to you if you have no knowledge of what “you” did?
House!
Dec 122008
HAHAHA: Write your own House episode.
Chicken Law and Order
Oct 312008
If you’ve ever watched Law and Order, you absolutely must watch this two minute spoof. It’s so damn perfect — even in its plot!
HAHAHAHAHAHA!
Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog
Jul 172008
For those of you who’ve missed Joss Whedon television of late, you can satisfy yourself by watching the first two of three acts of his Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. Nathan Fillion enters toward the end, but Neil Patrick Harris is just brilliant. The third act will be posted on Saturday.
According to this fascinating USA Today story, the musical miniseries has exceeded all expectations. As a result, “Whedon is now considering further webisodes, as well as Broadway and film.” Hooray!
(Via Brian Smith)
Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse
Jun 032008
Paul recently pointed me to this trailer for Joss Whedon’s upcoming show, Dollhouse:
Dave Does the Blog adds:
Anyway, embedded in that is the “bad” news that Dollhouse won’t be around until midseason — in fact, it’s slotted to replace (when its season’s run is over) Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles in a Monday evening timeslot.
I can only hope that Fox treats this show better than the fabulous-but-abused Firefly.
The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing
Mar 182002
As Paul has been away at a conference for the past few days, I have spent a few hours in those days in rather dubious pursuits. Perhaps the worst was a few night ago. After watching my beloved Batman Beyond, I stuck around the Cartoon Network to watch some bizarre Japanese cartoon. As it turns out, the cartoon contained an interesting moral lesson, although not the one intended.
In the cartoon, a young boy has died. But there is a possibility of his returning to life if he properly cares for a magic egg. If he behaves badly, the egg will hatch a terrible monster which will bite his head off. If he behaves well, the egg will hatch a powerful creature necessary to return his spirit to his body. But his house catches fire and threatens to destroy his body, without which he will not be able to return to life. A girl he cares for runs into the blazing house to rescue his body, but she gets trapped by the fire. The boy is thus faced with a stark moral choice. He can throw the egg into the fire to save the girl, but thereby ruin his chances of returning to life. Or he can save the egg for himself and allow his friend to die. (Of course, if the boy allows the girl to die, his body will also be destroyed, along with any hope of rebirth. But the cartoon doesn’t consider this fact.) The boy overcomes his “selfish” desire for life and throws down the egg. The gods are so impressed with this noble act that they return him to his body despite the destruction of the egg. In fact, the gods inform the boy that had the egg hatched, the creature would have surely eaten him for his bad behavior. (Sorry for the long summary, but the story line was too bizarre for a short synopsis.)
The moral of the story, of course, is that selfless behavior is rewarded. By acting to save the life of his friend, he ends up saving both of their lives. If he had acted to save his own life, both he and the girl would have died. Only by acting against his own apparent interests can the boy has all of his wishes realized.
This moral message is fairly common, particularly in children’s literature. Adults sell the ideal of altruism to children by giving it an egoistic veneer. They claim that rewards will be heaped upon those who act selflessly. Those rewards may come from God after death, from other people, or even from psychological satisfaction. Those rewards may be delayed, but they will come. In essence, this dressed-up altruism asserts that the best way to obtain happiness is to not pursue it. Or even more strongly: the best way to obtain happiness is to pursue the happiness of others at the expense of one’s own happiness.
Of course, when the issue is put so starkly it seems rather ridiculous. Imagine a person who has $50 in his wallet. He wants to buy a $75 gift for his beloved wife. Would the best way to acquire the extra $25 be to give away the $50 dollars he has? Should he then expect to magically receive $75 back? Or should he just directly pursue the needed $25 by going to the ATM and removing the funds from his account? Obviously, we get the stuff we want by pursuing it, not renouncing it. That’s how life works.
Two objections could be made to this simple observation when applied to happiness. First, we do occasionally receive good stuff unexpectedly, like an inheritance from an aunt we never knew existed. Such gains cannot be relied upon, precisely because they are unexpected and unusual. Most of the time, we must work to achieve what we want. Second, some people pursue their happiness in all the wrong ways, thereby making themselves miserable. But the irrationality of some people’s means of acquiring something says nothing about the actual value of that thing. Just because some people attempt to obtain a job by threatening lawsuits doesn’t mean that pursuing a job is bad.
Altruism, if presented honestly, would advocate the sacrifice of oneself to others as an end-in-itself. To motivate altruism with hope or expectation of reward, as the cartoon did, is to appeal to egoism. But egoism and altruism are not compatible, no matter how often people accept the silly contradiction. Kant understood this problem, which is why his moral theory seems so harsh and extreme. He, at least, was consistent on this issue. (Although not well-grounded, as Will Wilkinson argues in this essay.)
I’m not advocating any form of psychological egoism. People clearly can and do act against their interests, both in full knowledge and in ignorance. My point is rather that to make altruism a palatable moral theory for a wide audience, its advocates must sugar-coat it with a veneer of self-interest. They must promise people rewards for their sacrifices. They falsely promise a positive cost-benefit analysis in the long run. Why? Because naked altruism would be abhorrent to most even moderately self-respecting people.
But by dressing up the wolf in sheep’s clothing during childhood, the indignity of altruism remains hidden from the sight of most people.
