Joss Whedon's new show Dollhouse premiered on Friday night. It's only the second show in the last three years that I'm going to be watching on a regular basis. 30 Rock is one of the others, of course, and this year's Fringe has done a great job of holding my attention.
Whedon's history is good with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and of course Firefly and the movie it spawned--"Serenity":imdb.
Something struck me about Whedon's writing while I was watching Dollhouse: he's got a reputation for writing strong female characters and, while this is true, he also seems to write replaceable female characters.
What exactly does this mean?
According to the New York Times, the owners of the San Francisco Chronicle are considering folding the paper. This won't be the last, and it's not surprising that San Francisco would be the epicentre of this quake as it has been for much of the revolution.
My favourite part about this is the fact they they knew something was wrong but decided not to do anything about it. Lucky no one was on the chair when it fell.
Whistler chairlift crashes to the ground
BY KELLY SINOSKI, VANCOUVER SUNFEBRUARY 22, 2009 8:01 PMWhistler Mountain technicians knew there was a fault in the high-speed Harmony Express chairlift late Wednesday night, but because the mountain was closed at the time, they didn't follow protocols and inspect it.
In the morning, one of the chairs was found to have crashed eight metres to the ground. Nobody was on the lift at the time of the incident.
The New York Times has created one of the most compelling memorials to American soldiers who have died in Iraq I can imagine. This is reminiscent of Life Magazine's One Day Dead feature published in 1969, but the update uses current technology in an effective way.
Levi Leipheimer's leading the race, and Velonews has an impressive sequence of photos showing his crash earlier today.
In other news Lance Armstrong's bike was stolen which just seems stupid. Here's hoping he had a lot of Kryptonite locks on that thing: it's one of a kind probably worth a fortune.
I understand the sentiment behind why this was cancelled, but I can't help but perceive this political correctness winning over history. I had actually considered going to see this.
At this point, I'd like to see a modern day recreation with Rene Levesque leading the French & Pierre Trudeau leading the English side. These modern day warriors are deserving of a tribute, and I can't help but think that rather than complaining about it happening Levesque would have had the event go forward, thumbing his nose at it the whole time and using it as a tool to remind the Québécois of their oppression by the English majority.
Plains of Abraham re-enactment cancelled
Safety, security concerns spur National Battlefields Commission to pull plug on controversial replay of 1759 France-Britain battle
RHÉAL SÉGUIN, Globe and Mail Update, February 17, 2009 at 2:18 PM ESTQUEBEC -- A slugfest of insults between federalists and separatists that threatened to turn to violence led to cancellation of the re-enactment of the Battle of the Plains of Abraham marking the 250th anniversary of the British conquest of New France.
For weeks a war of words erupted in newspapers, on the web and on open line radio shows where extremists on both sides threatened to use violence to either stop next summer's re-enactment from taking place or protect it against disruptions.
It appeared as though a modern version of the Plains of Abrahams battle was in the making, which led the head of the federal agency known as the National Battlefields Commission André Juneau to back down from his idea to re-enact the 1759 French defeat at the hands of the British.
"Given the excessive language in the past few days and the threats mad through the media, we could not as responsible agency compromise the security of families and children who could attend the event," Mr. Juneau said in cancelling the event. "It was odious and unreasonable to have suggested that the Commission planned to celebrate a military defeat.
One would think this would have been self evident by now. I'm just glad they didn't create a Royal Commission to study this. The emphasis is mine.
Tasers potentially lethal, RCMP head tells MPs
Commissioner says stun guns 'far, far less lethal' than conventional firearms
Last Updated: Thursday, February 12, 2009
CBC NewsA revised RCMP policy that restricts how officers can use Tasers recognizes the stun guns can cause death, especially when fired on "acutely agitated" individuals, the head of the Mounties said Thursday.
"The RCMP's revised CEW policy underscores that there are risks associated with the deployment of the device and emphasizes that those risks include the risk of death, particularly for acutely agitated individuals," Elliott told the committee.
The Boomtown Rats popped into my head today, which doesn't happen that often. A performance from the Secret Policeman's Ball that I saw a few years ago was just beautiful. Wait for the pause after the reverb at 2:46.
