The Singing Detective

Last night, I started and finished The Singing Detective, starring Michael Gambon. Hey, I love Harry Potter and the BBC and this was one I never would have taken on my own, but it was recommended by my friend Paul.
But, the short and sweet of it is I only watched the first two of the six episodes. I almost started the third one, but I realized two things - I didn't care so much about two of the three story-lines and that I would likely do bodily injury to myself from the vast and overpowering depression this show was creating in me.
The rub of it is (a little pun for those that have watched this show), Gambon is brilliant as the aged, ailing writer. In the younger version of himself that is also the main character of his novel which the series named after, less believable and in fact I spent most of the time he was on screen dressed as he was marveling how much he looked like Stephen Frye circa his Jeeves and Wooster days.
I can understand why IMDB (see link above) gave this series an 8.8, but there should be a disclaimer that this show will take any happiness residing in your soul and crush into dust to be dumped into the Thames like so much dirt swept off the boardwalk into the river.

In case you're wondering, the Singing Detective is just that - a lounge singer who is also a private detective. I don't know if it was Gambon singing, but suspect it was - he doesn't have a bad voice, or didn't in '86 when this came out. There are a couple of musical numbers with lounge singers (Gambon's character and another), but there is also one per episode that is a full-on broadway style number that is in hallucination that Gambon's writer persona is having.

I can't with a good conscience recommend this show. It is really one of the more depressing things I have ever seen. But, if you can handle that, the acting by Gambon is brilliant and the main storyline is good, though I won't go that far for the other two which didn't hold my mind as well.

Time Travel

Why Time Travel has appeared to fail...

I was thinking about Time Travel (TT) yesterday and this morning. And it struck me that something that is never compensated for is the movement through 3-dimensional space that is also required with TT. I mean, the Earth is rotating at close to 40,000 miles per hour, plus revolving around the sun which is moving around the Milky Way galaxy which is still moving away from some cosmic origin point, plus a lot of other factors that I haven't listed and a whole hell of a bunch which I'm not even aware exist.
So, you want to travel back in time to see dinosaurs 120 million years ago. You need to also calculate the millions of trillions of miles. Let's say your super-duper computer can do this, what about any anomolies that would only be known at that time? Let's say that 100 millioin years ago the Earth suddenly decreased rotation speed by 1 mile per hour. Multiplying that rather insignificant change of one mile per hour out of 40,000 miles per hour, by all the hours in a year, mulitplying that by 20 million years and you could be off by billions or trillions of miles in your calculations.

I'm going to leave TT in literature alone for now...there's so much of it I don't know where to start to be honest. I'm going to talk about movies and/or television and their portrayal of TT. I like calling it TT. It makes me feel like I'm eather a genius or a loon. My money's on loon.

When I think about TT, the first thing that comes to mind is Back to the Future, the second is Quantum Leap and the third is Harry Potter and the Prisoner's of Azkaban, so let's talk about those, shall we?

Aside from using a DeLorean (which is a good idea), the Doc had it all wrong. Sending Marty back 40 years (or whatever it was - I can't believe I can't remember) would require sending him billions upon billions of miles as well. Now, I am as willing as the next guy to admit that there is a lot of power in a lightning bolt, multiplied through a clock tower and channeled down a wire to a car, but enough to send someone through space-time all those decades and all those billions of miles? No. Unless Thor himself is involved, but for those types of things, see below.

Quantum Leap is a different story. I can't promise that I saw all the episodes, but my mom was a huge fan of the show, so I watched a lot with her, and continued to watch when I had moved out on my own. I don't recall having ever seen the method of TT explained very clearly, but the rule was that Sam could only move back as far in time as the beginning of his life. That, and he is not physically moving his body through the space-time continuum, just his consciousness, which is swapping places with someone else's. His buddy appears to him through some type of unexplained technology that is keyed into his ??? Thought patterns? I don't know, it's kind of metaphysical, so I'll allow it.
I have no problem with moving through space if it's just his "mind". The mind can do many things, which may include interdimensional travel when unencumbered by a burdensome body. How does it get to the right spot? Well, that's part of the mystery of the mind. It seeks out other minds, and E.T. and Yoda not living any place near our home, even when we are talking billions or trillions of miles, it wouldn't be hard to find the mind's home. Or, like you know, whatever.
Seriously, this kind of TT doesn't violate my rule, so I'm good with it.

Harry Potter may TT on more than one occassion, but the main time is in Harry Potter and the Prisoner's of Azkaban. As an aside, this was my least favorite of the books, but not my least favorite of the movies - and being my "least favorite" of the Harry Potter books is still pretty darn favorite.
Harry (and Ron and Hermione) TT by use of magic. As we all know, Magic doesn't have to follow any of the rules of science unless it wants to. Magic is as Magic does. So, whatever they do in the movie works because I'm not a wizard and I can't tell you if they've broken any of the rules of Magic (which seem to be mostly about not getting seen by your other self, because you'll somehow break either yourself or the universe).
Considering the way the wizard's travel, I find it likely that TT and subsequent movement through space could just as easily happen as the travel through time.
Remember when I mentioned Thor earlier? Well, I will allow the powers of gods to allow TT and space travel to conincide with the godly efforts. If it's otherwise, I'll need some proff from Asgard to convince me that I'm wrong.

So, why didn't I mention Doctor Who? I mean, I am as likely as not to bring that show up  in any given conversation anyways. The reason I didn't, was that he doesn't break the rules. He uses alien science, which may be like Magic and they just call it technology, or it's so far advanced that it seems like Magic. But he's got the tardis which is a fully funcitonal space craft as well as time craft. Not to mention that noone knows exactly how large it is on the inside - the tardis might be everywhere and everywhen and it only shows it's callbox facade at the points where the Doctor wants to be.

So, what have we learned today? Magic and gods are good! Science is bad! Well, bad science is bad. If the science compensates for space travel during their TT, then I'll seriously consider it. Anybody have any good suggestions for movies or t.v. shows on this?

Kudos Facebook

Hey, would you look at that! I filed a bug report with Facebook and two days later the bug is fixed. :)

I'm sure it wasn't my request by itself that got it fixed, as it was listed in their F.A.Q. under known bugs, but still, there timing was pretty good. The bug was that the chat/online status button would not do anything. So, since at some point I had turned off chat, I couldn't turn intn back on, or see which of my friends were on Facebook.

Now, if they can just get the Farkle bug fixed. But, they won't. They've already told me that it's a bug with the application, not with Facebook. It's a weird bug - while playing Farkle, sometimes buttons do random things. For example, you may push the "Roll" button and another application opens up, or you may push the "Continue" button to have your site mail open to send a message to a friend. I've just taken it as the universe is telling me to quit wasting my damn time playing Farkle. ;)