Like most people, I'm occasionally compared to one fictional character or another in terms of appearance or personality traits. About a year ago Linde compared me to a character on "The Big Bang Theory," a show I had not seen until this week. This would probably be endearing if the character in question wasn't the annoying and belittling comic relief character (thanks, Linde). Even worse, when I mentioned it at work, one of my coworkers laughed and said "I can see that." I'm going to assume they're referring to his polymath status and social difficulties and not his plaid pants and arrogance.

So in the last year, various friends and family have compared me to the following characters:

Dexter (emotionally void serial killer)
Zach Addy (socially challenged genius with Asperger's Syndrome . . . who is also a serial killer)
Sheldon from "The Big Bang Theory" (genius with inflated ego and OCD)

The one thing these characters have in common is an inability to understand normal social interaction and a tendency to rely on deductive reasoning to predict social behavior instead of experiencing it intuitively, which is right in line with my INTJ personality and my own experience. So I suppose in that respect my friends and family are right.

Let's just hope they're wrong about the serial killer part . . .

Labels: introspection, linde, science, television

This is just the dumbest thing I've heard all day. I can't even pronounce that phonetically without wincing.

It's probably no coincidence that the amount of time I've spent watching the SciFi Channel over the last 5 years has been inversely proportional to the amount of non-scifi nonsense they've incorporated in their effort to "broaden the target audience" (as this rebranding is supposed to do). I stopped watching the channel almost completely when they started showing, of all things, *professional wrestling,* and I've been completely done with it since the season finale of "Atlantis" (which the brain trust at SciFi decided not to renew, two years after also not renewing "SG-1," despite being the highest-rated shows on their channel).

Labels: annoyance, television

[Spoilers, Cris.]

I understand that Top Chef is a reality show. Despite this nefarious moniker, I've felt that the show stood apart from the banal, neuron-killing sludge that percolates through MTV, Fox and the rest of Bravo by making it a food show that happens to be reality rather than a reality show that happens to have food. While there is craziness on the show (some of the contestants are just plain nuts; go Andrew), traditionally the producers have allowed the personalities and the pressure of the show itself to be the sources of the drama.

This season's talent is not on par with the previous seasons, and to make up for that the producers have used more of the "traditional" reality show fare. The camera crews now peek in the windows to secretly spy on the contestants in their apartment, put contestants on the spot about cheating on their significant others and open shows by staring down a contestant's shirt for 10 seconds while listening to her voice-over about how much she loves cooking. I'm sure there are a lot of viewers who like this direction. I find it distracting from the thrust of the show (promising young chefs looking for recognition for their creativity and skills).

They've now eliminated all of the contestants I liked, so I'm kind of ambivalent about who wins. I know Cris still has a favorite, so I hope he gets his wish. :)

Labels: annoyance, cooking, television

I'm finally caught up with this season of Top Chef (guess what I did instead of watching the Super Bowl . . .). As is usually the case, watching Top Chef makes me want to cook, so last night I made pan-seared bananas, which were edible but not fantastic enough that I'll make them again any time soon. I suppose they might be better with ice cream, but my limited fondness for ice cream discourages me from keeping it on hand.

I'm disappointed in this season of Top Chef. The talent levels just aren't there (especially compared to the previous two seasons). The food they're making isn't innovative or creative and rarely takes risks. There is only one clear front-runner (the guy who has won about 70% of the challenges), and he's a jerk; the remaining members could be eliminated at any time and I wouldn't be surprised. I think the producers recognize that the talent isn't there, and to compensate they've made the show more like other reality fare (something distinctly unpalatable to me, as the emphasis on food rather than drama has always been a selling point for me); rather than interviewing contestants on their food philosophies and the finer aspects of their dishes, the cameras are (voyeuristically!) peeking in the windows of the contestants' shared apartment to spy on two of the (already in relationships) chefs making out on the couch and focusing on *that* for the rest of the episode. That's a bad sign for the quality of the show.

On a note of personal preference, there is no equivalent to Richard on the show this year, which not only means I have no one to root for, but also that molecular gastronomy is completely unrepresented (no foams, no liquid nitrogen, no hi-tech gadgets, no discussion of how different flavors interact in terms of chemistry). That's not a staple of cooking, so there's no requirement to include it, but I miss it.

Labels: cooking, television

I'm considering dropping my cable. I made a preliminary audit of my television-watching habits the other day and realized that the only show I specifically plan to watch on television is Atlantis, and it only has two more episodes. Everything else I stream from Hulu or Netflix (or else is just random channel flipping that I wouldn't miss). This was brought into stark relief last week when I was talking about "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" to one of my coworkers and encouraged her to watch an episode; she agreed and asked for the channel and time, and I sat there confused for a moment before saying "Erm, Hulu, whenever it's convenient?". The savings from dropping cable wouldn't be *huge*, but they'd be noticeable.

In furtherance of my cable-pondering, I visited the site of my somewhat-less-than-illustrious cable provider to check on current pricing. The visit did not do much to dispel my disappointment in them . . .


I also like how their premium package is advertised for "large file downloaders" (wink, wink).

Labels: amusement, television

Behold! The wonders of cheaper airtime! Step right up with money in hand to purchase these products that are so special, so unique, that only people with non-standard sleeping schedules are blessed enough to even be aware of them!

I have to imagine the language is perfectly crafted to avoid the legal pitfalls of product liability or misrepresentation, but I still have to marvel at the audacity of selling a product that "hydrates" water. The overeager salesman began with run-of-the-mill junk science about the unnamed fluid in the $40 plastic tube sending out "waves" that align the water or some such, allowing it to be more easily absorbed by the body. Standard non-specific claims of "hundreds of studies." A single quote from a peer-reviewed paper on a completely different topic. Blah blah blah. But then to my amazement the man actually claimed that this piece of plastic will help you lose weight because, and I quote, "in my opinion obesity has nothing to do with body fat; it has to do with your body retaining water because it's not getting the right *kind* of water it needs to flush out toxins." Really, diet, exercise and genes have nothing to do with it. It's all bloating. I feel a curious blend of sadness for and disappointment in the people actually taken in by such transparent nonsense as this. I mean, if they're going to propose some "magic" material that changes the physical properties of water, they could at least go all out and use Ice Nine.

But as though sensing my ire at humanity's failings, the television eagerly cheered me up by showing another infomercial, this time for a product that I can only describe as an easy way for your family to all buy the same color cult robes . . .

Labels: humanity, social commentary, television

Not at the same time, of course. Some things should not be cooled to -320 degrees F, and nipples are probably one of them.

The Top Chef finale was last night. Unfortunately, I can't talk about it yet because Cris's cable was out due to the second round of tornadoes and flash flooding we've had in a week and I don't know if he's seen it yet. I *will*, however, say that my favorite contestant, Richard, once again tickled my molecular gastronomy bone by incorporating liquid nitrogen into his cooking (yay for cool gadgets and high-tech ingredients), in this case to make a flash-frozen ice cream. The idea is pretty simple; assemble your non-frozen ice cream ingredients (in his case bacon-flavored ice cream, which did not particularly impress me; his original idea for tabasco pepper ice cream sounded better), put them in a high-grade mixer (like my KitchenAid), turn the mixer on low and slowly add liquid nitrogen until the concoction is ice cream (observing all due safety precautions, of course). Nitrogen is inert and boils out, leaving only the original, now-frozen ingredients. Lane has encouraged me to try it (with her present, of course), and liquid nitrogen can be had without permits or the like (it's not a regulated gas). The limiting factor is finding a place that will sell it to you in small quantities (most gas supply stores sell in bulk and I don't really need 30 liters of the stuff, since it doesn't store). I haven't found one in Omaha yet. Maybe someday.

On the nudity end of the spectrum (Do spectrums really have nudity ends? Is there a chocolate end?), the Transportation Security Administration rolled out its first full-use backscatter airport security machines this week. I first heard about these years ago in a Discover Magazine article (because they use a unique form of X-ray that measures object density by how much the object "scatters" the radiation rather than how it absorbs and re-releases it), where the focus was on the science rather than the politics. Now that they're in use, expect to hear about them in the news, because they produce near-photo-quality black-and-white images of the subject's nude body, regardless of clothing (clothing scatters almost none of the radiation so it doesn't show up). In an attempt to address privacy concerns, early versions of the machines had software that blurred out private areas, but apparently the TSA has decided that blurring those areas will encourage terrorists to hide items there, because the machines delivered to 10 airports this week "allow the security screeners . . . to clearly see the passenger's sexual organs." The TSA's press release assures people that there is no way for the screener to make a copy of the image, and the software still blurs the subject's face, but they're still getting a "show."

The defense offered to make the machines easier to swallow is phrased in the form of options. You can still request a physical pat-down in place of the machine, and the idea is that the machine is less physically invasive. I can see from my own personal standpoint that I would prefer the machine to having a stranger's hands on me, but then I'm not particularly uptight about images of the nude body (even my own), given my photography portfolio. It remains to be seen how most people, especially women and parents of pre-teen children, react, and how the actual security setup is handled (the procedure would likely be more palatable if the person viewing the images is in a different room and cannot see the subject, making it more impersonal, and the screener and subject are matched up by gender the way physical pat-downs are). I imagine it's only a matter of time before there's a scandal of some sort involving an overzealous screener; stay tuned.

Labels: cooking, politics, science, social commentary, television