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Web 2.0 Expo 2008: Clay Shirky (blip.tv) - ‘A screen that ships without a mouse ships broken.’

Clay Shirky, Gin, Television, and Social Surplus:

“I was having dinner with a group of friends about a month ago, and one of them was talking about sitting with his four-year-old daughter watching a DVD. And in the middle of the movie, apropos nothing, she jumps up off the couch and runs around behind the screen. That seems like a cute moment. Maybe she’s going back there to see if Dora is really back there or whatever. But that wasn’t what she was doing. She started rooting around in the cables. And her dad said, “What you doing?” And she stuck her head out from behind the screen and said, “Looking for the mouse.”

Here’s something four-year-olds know: A screen that ships without a mouse ships broken. Here’s something four-year-olds know: Media that’s targeted at you but doesn’t include you may not be worth sitting still for. Those are things that make me believe that this is a one-way change. Because four year olds, the people who are soaking most deeply in the current environment, who won’t have to go through the trauma that I have to go through of trying to unlearn a childhood spent watching Gilligan’s Island, they just assume that media includes consuming, producing and sharing.”

The Wire - Omars Day. (YouTube)

Obit Magazine, Off-Beat Obit: “A Man’s Gotta Have a Code”:

“BALTIMORE - Omar Little, the veteran stick-up artist who inspired fear and fascination in drug-plagued neighborhoods across the city, was shot and killed in a west-side convenience store yesterday. Police said the assailant remained at large.

Famed for his brazen robberies of area drug dealers, Mr. Little had retired from what he called “the game” a year ago, moving to the Caribbean with a new romantic partner. But he apparently returned to Baltimore this winter to seek revenge following the brutal murder of a beloved business associate.

Mr. Little’s efforts to hunt down Marlo Stanfield, the man he blamed for the killing, were unsuccessful–an unusual stumble in a celebrated career. He injured his leg jumping out a window during what sources said was a firefight with alleged Stanfield associates. As a result, witnesses said, the once intimidating figure was reduced to limping along city streets on an improvised crutch. (…)”

(via)

Nota Bene: “MANY ARE TRAPPED FOR HOURS IN DARKNESS AND CONFUSION.”

“This ain’t Aruba, bitch.” - Bunk (The Wire: Unconfirmed Reports.)

Entertainment Weekly, ”The Wire”: Bright Lies, Big City:

“Last night’s epigraph - ”This ain’t Aruba, bitch” - was delivered by a slurring Bunk at the bar. All those black bodies found in the rowhouses aren’t enough to warrant a continued investigation, and Bunk, McNulty, and Lester tried to drink away their disgust. Perhaps if those bodies had been white; better yet, if just one of those bodies had belonged to a white teenage cheerleader who had gone missing on an island spring break. Now that would warrant front-page news despite being a cold case for months now.”

(Zie ook: Missing white woman syndrome.)

VPRO’s Tegenlicht: de integrale versie van het interview met Michael Pollan.

Tegenlicht uitzending: De toekomst van ons voedsel: landbouw of laboratorium? (maandag 28 januari 2008, 21:00 Ned 2)

Fresh Air, Michael K. Williams: He’s Only Playing Tough:

“On HBO’s The Wire, actor Michael K. Williams plays Omar Little, a stick-up guy who robs only drug dealers.

Omar has a scar running down his face. That’s not a prosthetic scar; it’s real. Williams tells Terry Gross the story behind his scar — and lots of other stories about himself and Omar.

Williams’ other TV credits include Law & Order, CSI, Boston Legal and the TV movie of Lackawanna Blues; he’s appeared on the big screen in Gone Baby Gone.

Williams tells Terry Gross that he initially had a hard time figuring out how to be as hard and frightening as the script calls for Omar to be.

“Anybody that really knows me … knows that’s very far from my character, so I just had a hard time finding a believable state of mind to execute the character,” he says. “I just kept going to laughter.”"

Eurozine, Watching David Attenborough:

“We are looking at something that probably not one of us has ever seen before. We are staring in perfect colour close-up at the slow, rhythmic uncoiling of a slimy proboscis. But what are we to make of the strange and oddly beautiful sight before our eyes? The camera pulls back a fraction. The answer is revealed. We are looking at a snail. A familiar garden snail. And as our recognition dawns, the background music, a gently impelling blend of harps and violins, fades slightly, and we hear the characteristic hushed intensity of one of the most famous voices in the world. “We don’t often see a snail that way”, says David Attenborough. “And that’s because we’ve only recently had the tiny lenses and electronic cameras we need to explain this miniature world.”

We are entering, burrowing into, the first part of Attenborough’s most recent BBC series, Life in the Undergrowth: by the time the five episodes are over another four hours of screen time will have been added to the ninety or so hours of extraordinary television footage that he and his various teams have compiled for television viewers over the last 30 years.”

The Daily Telegraph, The South Bank Show: you can’t please everyone:

“Did he wonder whether he was exploiting the painter Francis Bacon by showing him drunk? ‘But we were both drunk! Plastered. By the end of the day the room was spinning. We had started drinking at 9am when he came out with Bollinger, then we carried on drinking and filming over lunch and into the evening. But curiously I was asking things that were OK. I looked like, well, what I looked like, but I thought keep it in, keep it in.’”

Timewatch’ Omaha Beach in CGI. (YouTube - via)

Timewatch:

“One of the most fun parts of filming is for the computer graphics (CGI) sequences. Timewatch has its own team dedicated to CGI (Neil Wilson, Steve Flynn and Colin Thornton) who have come out to Normandy with a car laden with Rangers’ uniforms and fake plastic guns.”

Omar Little. Played By Michael Kenneth Williams.

Het vierde seizoen van de Amerikaanse tv-serie The Wire (wikipedia) wordt niet zelden ‘de beste serie ooit op tv uitgezonden’ genoemd. Onnodig overdreven, maar niet eens heel ver bezijden de waarheid. Hoe dan ook, vandaag 6 januari begint het vijfde en laatste seizoen:

“The fifth and final season of ‘The Wire’ centers on the media’s role in addressing - or failing to address - the fundamental political, economic and social realities depicted over the course of the series, while also resolving storylines of the numerous characters woven throughout the narrative arc of the show.

Explains series creator David Simon, “It made sense to finish ‘The Wire’ with this reflection on the state of the media, as all the other attendant problems of the American city depicted in the previous four seasons will not be solved until the depth and range of those problems is first acknowledged. And that won’t happen without an intelligent, aggressive and well-funded press.”"

In Nederland is The Wire overigens niet anders dan via bittorent te volgen. (Leesvoer en kijkvoer na de klik.)
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Inside HBO’s The Wire:

“Continuing to describe The Wire’s visual differences from conventional TV, Chappelle moved to the subject of lighting. “We’re not afraid to let people go into shadow, we seldom have edge lights or give the ladies a beauty light. You know all the things you’re supposed to do, well we usually don’t.” The look of the show is ‘real,’ he said. “You walk into a room and it’s a harsh, fluorescent light. If it goes a little green, it goes a little green. The downlights on some of The Wire’s sets are pretty much ‘practicals’ - of course they’re re-tubed but on sets like the Police station or (Police) headquarters that’s the (florescent lighting) look we’re going for.”"

(via)

Fox News Porn:

“Warning. All clips used in this video were taken from Fox News broadcasts.”

Update: Zie ook Larry Lessig, The weird world of “indecency”.

Op bezoek bij David Letterman is David Byrne nerveus én grappig.

Talking Heads on Letterman ‘83 Pt. 1
Talking Heads on Letterman ‘83 Pt. 2 I-Zimbra

Jonathan Miller geinterviewd door Bill Moyers

Bill Moyers interviewt Jonathan Miller naar aanleiding van diens BBC-serie A Rough History of Disbelief uit 2005, binnenkort in de VS door PBS uit te zenden. De 3-delige serie is in fragmenten of integraal ook hier (wederom) te bekijken. Bijzonder de moeite waard.

In Europa: 1900 Dawn of the Century

In Europa:

“Welkom bij de start van een bijzonder project. Op zondag 11 november is de eerste aflevering van In Europa op TV, en dat betekent ook de start van de In Europa Atlas, een virtuele kaart van de geschiedenis van Europa die vanaf deze week steeds verder zal worden ingevuld en waaraan u zelf ook kunt bijdragen.”

Aflevering 1: 1900 Dawn of the Century. (Zondag 11 nov. om 21.05 uur op Ned2.)

Rondetijden meeschrijven anno 2007

Schaatsen op schaatsen.nos.nl, met ondermeer live de actuele rondetijden, tussentijden en standen in beeld. (via)

Whatever it takes, hoort Jack zich zeggen.

Seizoen 6 was ronduit slecht. Desalniettemin begint in de eerste weken van het nieuwe jaar het 7e seizoen van de actieserie 24. De eerste aflevering van de serie wordt door Fox op zondag 13 januari 2007 uitgezonden en is kort na uitzending in de VS ongetwijfeld weer via bittorrent te downloaden. De extended ‘Day 7′ trailer is nu al te bekijken.

Wederom een slechte trailer, maar zoveel lijkt wel duidelijk, seizoen 7 gaat over torture. Lees in dat verband dan ook Whatever it takes. The politics of the man behind “24.” en Interrogators Fought ‘Battle of Wits’.

The New Yorker: Stealing Life. The crusader behind “The Wire. Lang artikel over David Simon and The Wire.

Washington Post:

“”We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture,” said Henry Kolm, 90, an MIT physicist who had been assigned to play chess in Germany with Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess.”

Zie en luister ook Fresh Air: TV Torture Changes Real Interrogation Techniques.