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capri0mniSeason Final of Chuck (So far): Three down, ten to go.
I'm really liking this. The first four seasons told the story arc of how love-lorn, thought-he-was-a-loser Chuck got an implant in his brain that "taught" him to be a super-spy and to be confident, and thus he meets a beautiful woman with a checkered and mysterious past who falls in love with him and becomes his wife. Oh, yeah, And there's his best-buddy since fifth grade (nine or ten years of age, for those unfamiliar with American Grade School system) who's at his side the whole time, to laugh with and cry with and run-from-the-bad-guys with. The End.
This Season-- New "once upon a time": Chuck no longer has the implant, but he's still the leader who can save the day, his marriage is strong, his relationship with his family is good and stable. Unlike with many, many, other shows, the writers on this team are resisting the temptation (so far-- knock wood) to create new plot twists by turning good people evil and smart people dumb. For this season, the conflict centers not on Chuck's angst over The Big Love Interest (because that story-arc is complete), but on his relationship with his best friend. ....And it highlights that Friendship: life-long, quiet, funny, sad, has been at the center of the show from the beginning-- alongside the Romance and Sexy-sexy kisses, and teh hawt innuendo, neither one supplanting the other.
Ye Muses and Storytellers! There needs to be more of this! Please!
Another snippet from Rolling around in my head:
(quote) He said that he never saw signs painted with hatred 'no Jews, no Blacks,' because in his world the barriers were more than just prejudicial and attitudinal, they were built right into the fabric of society. "If our most important invention was the wheel," he said, "why did we follow up with the stair?" (unquote)
Thoughts that come to mind from wanting to talk back to Brian Greene in his new "Fabric of the Cosmos" series:
I am really sick of the Theory of Entropy being treated like it's a hot, new, exciting idea. I went to a very small private high school-- a total of thirty-six students in grades ten through twelve combined, with three teacher/advisers for the group. In 1981, one of those teachers read Entropy by Jeremy Rifkin. And the whole damned high school fell into a malaise of depression that year, as the book made the rounds between teachers and students (the fact that books, in general, made the rounds between teachers and students is one of the things that made that school so nifty, though).
Yes, it's real, sure. And yeah, in fourteen-something-billion years (based on what we have observed so far, and can figure out), the universe probably will have expanded so far from its starting point that the sky will appear devoid of stars. The idea that what we're really sensing as "the one-way 'Arrow (or River) of Time'" is actually the unfolding of Entropy from order to disorder is intriguing.
But don't you think, maybe, that the reason we don't perceive Time as being actually as Wibbly-Wobbly as it truly is, is because our Brains are not set up that way? After all, if we want to survive and reproduce as a species, it actually does help if we look both ways before we cross the street, instead of after. Studies of the electrical activity in tiny ant brains shows no difference in perception whether they're walking three feet horizontally or three feet vertically, suggesting that ants have no knowledge of the third dimension... ('cause, really, what possible good would it do for a teeny-tiny ant to actually know it's at the tippy-tippy-top of a giant redwood tree?). That doesn't mean the world stops being three-dimensional when an ant is in the room.
And: Lo! And Behold! While the Universe has supposedly been "degrading" from the highly ordered state at the moment of the Big Bang to a highly disordered state at the hypothesized End of Time, Biospheres have been evolving in exactly the opposite direction: from atoms with a single electron and proton to the elements of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, from those four elements to amino acids, from amino acids to protozoa, and so on -- all the way up to entire, self-regulating ecosystems which produces planetary-wide homeostasis -- a state of homeostasis which slows down the process of entropy. And the more we study life on this planet, the more we realize how flexible and likely it is throughout the entire universe.
And, thanks to Life, a chaotic and falling-apart Universe is a lot more fun and interesting that the super-ordered moment at the very start of the Big Bang. I'll take it. Thanks.
I'm really liking this. The first four seasons told the story arc of how love-lorn, thought-he-was-a-loser Chuck got an implant in his brain that "taught" him to be a super-spy and to be confident, and thus he meets a beautiful woman with a checkered and mysterious past who falls in love with him and becomes his wife. Oh, yeah, And there's his best-buddy since fifth grade (nine or ten years of age, for those unfamiliar with American Grade School system) who's at his side the whole time, to laugh with and cry with and run-from-the-bad-guys with. The End.
This Season-- New "once upon a time": Chuck no longer has the implant, but he's still the leader who can save the day, his marriage is strong, his relationship with his family is good and stable. Unlike with many, many, other shows, the writers on this team are resisting the temptation (so far-- knock wood) to create new plot twists by turning good people evil and smart people dumb. For this season, the conflict centers not on Chuck's angst over The Big Love Interest (because that story-arc is complete), but on his relationship with his best friend. ....And it highlights that Friendship: life-long, quiet, funny, sad, has been at the center of the show from the beginning-- alongside the Romance and Sexy-sexy kisses, and teh hawt innuendo, neither one supplanting the other.
Ye Muses and Storytellers! There needs to be more of this! Please!
Another snippet from Rolling around in my head:
(quote) He said that he never saw signs painted with hatred 'no Jews, no Blacks,' because in his world the barriers were more than just prejudicial and attitudinal, they were built right into the fabric of society. "If our most important invention was the wheel," he said, "why did we follow up with the stair?" (unquote)
Thoughts that come to mind from wanting to talk back to Brian Greene in his new "Fabric of the Cosmos" series:
I am really sick of the Theory of Entropy being treated like it's a hot, new, exciting idea. I went to a very small private high school-- a total of thirty-six students in grades ten through twelve combined, with three teacher/advisers for the group. In 1981, one of those teachers read Entropy by Jeremy Rifkin. And the whole damned high school fell into a malaise of depression that year, as the book made the rounds between teachers and students (the fact that books, in general, made the rounds between teachers and students is one of the things that made that school so nifty, though).
Yes, it's real, sure. And yeah, in fourteen-something-billion years (based on what we have observed so far, and can figure out), the universe probably will have expanded so far from its starting point that the sky will appear devoid of stars. The idea that what we're really sensing as "the one-way 'Arrow (or River) of Time'" is actually the unfolding of Entropy from order to disorder is intriguing.
But don't you think, maybe, that the reason we don't perceive Time as being actually as Wibbly-Wobbly as it truly is, is because our Brains are not set up that way? After all, if we want to survive and reproduce as a species, it actually does help if we look both ways before we cross the street, instead of after. Studies of the electrical activity in tiny ant brains shows no difference in perception whether they're walking three feet horizontally or three feet vertically, suggesting that ants have no knowledge of the third dimension... ('cause, really, what possible good would it do for a teeny-tiny ant to actually know it's at the tippy-tippy-top of a giant redwood tree?). That doesn't mean the world stops being three-dimensional when an ant is in the room.
And: Lo! And Behold! While the Universe has supposedly been "degrading" from the highly ordered state at the moment of the Big Bang to a highly disordered state at the hypothesized End of Time, Biospheres have been evolving in exactly the opposite direction: from atoms with a single electron and proton to the elements of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, from those four elements to amino acids, from amino acids to protozoa, and so on -- all the way up to entire, self-regulating ecosystems which produces planetary-wide homeostasis -- a state of homeostasis which slows down the process of entropy. And the more we study life on this planet, the more we realize how flexible and likely it is throughout the entire universe.
And, thanks to Life, a chaotic and falling-apart Universe is a lot more fun and interesting that the super-ordered moment at the very start of the Big Bang. I'll take it. Thanks.
