Mokka mit Schlag » Pop Culture

If we can trust Number 6 (and I’m not at all sure we can) there are exactly twelve “skin job” Cylon models. So far by my count we’ve seen 6. (Warning: spoilers follow.)
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After watching Friday’s Battlestar Galactica, I think I have to change my opinion of just what’s up with Gaius Baltar and Number 6. (Warning: spoilers follow.)
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Some companies still haven’t figured out they don’t live in a monopoly anymore. I’m on hold with Cablevision right now as I try to order cable service. If DirecTV’s phone tree weren’t just as bad, I might well have decided not to switch back to cable. Plus the DirecTV dish has an annoying habit of losing reception in severe weather. I’ll have to give up BBC America, but they’re not showing Dr. Who anyway. None of the other channels I lose or gain make any large difference to me. Neither Cablevision nor DirecTV offers TV5 Etats-Unis, which is the only channel I’ve been missing.

I had switched to DirecTV a few years ago because at the time Cablevision didn’t have digital cable in my neighborhood and wasn’t carrying the UFC. Now they do both. I mainly decided to switch back to cable to get HDTV (plus DirecTV is now part of the evil empire). DirecTV wanted $390 to install an HDTV box in my apartment, and $490 if I wanted a DVR. Cablevision claims they’ll do it for free. I should also be able to shave $20 off my monthly bill. We’ll see. I’m still on hold with them.

Update: Cablevision’s been late for two appointments in a row. When the installer showed up for the first appointment, he didn’t have the right equipment. The second one was more than an hour late, and I couldn’t hang around long enough for him to finish the job. The next appointment they can schedule is more than a week away. This really seems like a company that doesn’t want the business.

Truthiness is tearing apart our country, and I don’t mean the argument over who came up with the word. I don’t know whether it’s a new thing, but it’s certainly a current thing, in that it doesn’t seem to matter what facts are. It used to be, everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. But that’s not the case anymore. Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything. It’s certainty. People love the president because he’s certain of his choices as a leader, even if the facts that back him up don’t seem to exist. It’s the fact that he’s certain that is very appealing to a certain section of the country. I really feel a dichotomy in the American populace. What is important? What you want to be true, or what is true?

–Stephen Colbert

Read the rest in Stephen Colbert | The A.V. Club

I am not a musician or a composer. I can’t personally hear or judge the complexity of different songs and records. However I recently noticed that maybe I don’t have to. I’ve been reencoding most of my CD library using Lame. Lame uses variable bit rate encoding. I’m sure audiophiles will correct this simplistic explanation, but in brief Lame samples different pieces of a song with more or less frequency as necessary to match the music. A pure tone could probably be reproduced using very limited sampling, whereas a dissonant cacophony of white noise with no predictability would require a very high sampling rate. Lame also takes into count the nature of the human ear. Frequencies humans can’t hear can be thrown away, and frequencies we hear preferentially need to be sampled more frequently.
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The Guardian explains how copy protecttion is now even befuddling and bedeviling wealthy movie producers. When are people going to realize this stuff is more trouble than it’s worth? It’s not like I can’t go out onto the streets of New York City right now and find a pirated copy of Munich. Copy protection only hurts the honest, who in this case include people who might have otherwise voted for a Munich for a BAFTA award.