Can it match what Patrick McGoohan created (all of the old episodes are available) back in 1967? Only time will tell, but I rather like the updated version of The Village, with what look like the twin towers in the background. It has that ticky-tacky ersatz village feel one can see in the real town of Seaside, where "The Truman Show" was filmed.
It might also help that they pulled it into just 6 episodes. The original was a bit much for the casual viewer!
Inspired by a comment from The Thomas, here is an article about the a working 1936 TV in the UK. Let that be a challenge to you! I was amused by the fact that it only had one channel because there was only a single (state owned) station in the entire UK, so it needs two converters to get over-the-air transmissions, and by the comments from the grandson of John Logie Baird (UK television inventor). I knew him from an old book (something about "electrons go to work") in my collection.
The article also has an extensive comments section, where various people posted the ancient things they have that still work. Reminds me of the refrigerator my parents have in the old house, which I think is older than I am.
Other news of note includes a new "spot" on Jupiter (possibly from an impact, but a "dark mark" could come from a Death Eater attack), and some older followup stories about Apollo:
Restoring the Saturn V in Houston, which is made up of parts of two rockets built for canceled moon missions (first stage of #514, whose other two stages are at Kennedy Space Center, the second stage of #515, and the third stage of #513, which Wiki says was surplus when #513 became the Skylab booster).
Link to the NASA page with the LRO pictures, which includes links to the full-size images like the one Astroprof posted. I can't get over how close Apollo 16 was to the edge of a crater!
The NASA article gives important details on the resolution per pixel (about four feet) and how the long shadow (due to a low sun angle) makes it easier to spot the lander. Imagine what we will see when the resolution improves by more than a factor of 2 after they circularize the LRO orbit later this year!
The History Channel just ran an ad announcing their schedule for Monday, 20 July.
They will run a half-hour program at 8:30 EDT (re-run about three hours later at 8:00 PDT) that is essentially a re-broadcast of the CBS News coverage I watched as a kid.
the actual CBS News/Walter Cronkite coverage of man's first lunar landing. Using minimal editing and leaving the original footage untouched viewers will feel as if they are watching the CBS coverage in July of 1969. While today we know the outcome of Apollo 11's mission it was not a given then. This will become evident watching Walter Cronkite and his colleagues as they watch the historic lunar mission unfold before them.
Afterwards, from 9 to 11, they will run the movie "Moonshot" with the film parts converted to high definition. I can't wait to see that.
Having seen other "as it happened" re-broadcasts (one was of the NBC coverage of the Kennedy assassination that I never saw in real life), this promises to be excellent.
You will also get to see how TV looked back then, and I'll get to see it in color.
(We could not afford a color TV back then. Or, to be more precise, my parents could not afford to save for our college education and have a color TV back then. They made some excellent economic choices.)
If you missed it last night and didn't see one of the re-run today, go to Colbert Nation and watch the June 8 "Colbert Report". Getting his hair cut has made the news shows, but the real highlights were that he declared victory during 'the Word' and had the soldiers howling at jokes about the heat and multiple tours of duty.
Watching the streaming video is a good way to check out details like the Colbert shield (C R with a hair dryer and two balls) or his military ID, not to mention the sandbag American flag that supports his desk.
Check out this "featurette" preview of a new fall show on NBC called Community. As in "Community College". The full screen version on hulu is higher quality than this embed, but here you are (sorry about the leading ad):
Trust me: It is definitely worth four and a half minutes of your time if you teach at a CC. Heck, it wouldn't have been that far off the mark back when I was a grad TA at a major state R1! Like the guy who ate peanut butter straight from the jar during a 10 AM class. Was it a late breakfast or an early lunch? Who knows, but it had to stop.
Anyway, as I said in a side comment on DD's blog, I used to think that "Big Bang Theory" hit too close to home to the extent that it resembled my days as a physics grad student, but this show has the potential to disturb me very deeply. You see, only some of our students are HS losers. Some choose to come here to save money, with our lower tuition, which is a big deal these days.
And I don't know if the one character is a Dean (talking about why he is at this college) or a Psych 101 instructor (based on the Rorschach blot on the wall), but neither one has a bottle of wine on his desk - at least not with the door open. But the set decoration? Exquisite, right down to the boxes with an old computer display on top.
So is it, as they claim, "A smart comedy about higher education and lower expectations"? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe only if I lower my expectations for the program itself. But my friends and colleagues will all be waiting to see if (and how) they treat math or science classes. College Algebra, anyone?
Update: Dean Dad blogged about the program here. I like his emphasis on the positive. I hope it does show, by example, the approach that leads to success at a CC.
