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Jul. 18th, 2011 02:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwydion* It was at some point in the third episode of The Wire, that the characters really got traction for me. I like how well drawn and ambiguous the characters are on both sides. The world view really takes me back to high school, the way the cops were just another gang, brutal and internally loyal. I like that the drug trade is treated like exactly that; a trade, a business. I've been arguing for years that you deny bright people options to use those brains in legal, positive ways they will turn those brains to surviving
Now that I've seen this, I get what Chicago Code is trying to do. They are cleaned up for network TV, but they are clearly trying to be the network safe version of this and not quite making it. They got the gritty feel, the politics, and the ensemble casting, but prime time rules tie their hands and they are aiming at corruption instead of the drug economy. You can see the Wire's influence in things like the heat wave episode where they show the Alderman sending minions around to check on the old people, some of them the same thugs he's employed in crimes. They miss the full nuance of the alderman and the Irish mobsters, but they keep trying to draw them as whole people.
Things like this interest me, the way one piece of break through art will influence how other people design their art.
Now to wait for the next disk.
* "Early history of Transfusion:" http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=blood-lust--the-early-history-of-tr-2011-07-12
This is entirely from a European perspective and completely misses the great civilizations of the new world where blood transfusion was fairly common in the treatment of serious injury. It was safer than you'd think, as the populations involved were nearly all type O. Obviously people would die now and then from a conflict of types, but the occational death they couldn't explain wasn't a deterrent when it worked out better than extreme blood loss for a vast majority of patients.
It consistently irks me that there is this pretense that all the pioneering medical advances were European. I mean, when is the last time you heard about the Chinese doing eye surgery hundreds of years in advance of everyone else? Why aren't the civilizations of central and south America being hundreds of years ahead of the rest of the world on blood transfusions?
* A bunch of entitlement princess mothers are two lazy to fold their strollers and commandeer all the handicapped seats on a bus then refuse to move or get off the bus, presumably on the grounds that choosing to be lazy is the biggest handicap of all, way worse than real involuntary disabilities like arthritis or paraplegia: http://www.news957.com/news/local/article/253261--stroller-dispute-snarls-traffic-as-transit-driver-mothers-butt-heads
It seems pretty ironic that they were coming from parenting class, as this looks like some pretty bad parenting. when I was little, my Mom worked two jobs that required a complicated schedule of buses, trollies, and subways to make all the appointments. She possessed a small folding stroller, which she folded up on public transport. We learned bus etiquette like waiting for people to disembark before getting off, saying excuse me where appropriate, and yielding seats to the elderly and disabled at peak times. It seems to me that these lessons are way more valuable than the lesson that if you have or are a child, you needn't obey bus etiquette or rules about handicapped seating, and that being incredibly lazy and spoiled is better than being right. I pity those children.
* Edison's talking doll recording: http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-07-edison-1st-doll.
* Mozart and I may have had something in common: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-07-mozart-longer-spent-sun.html
* "Bath's Roman Baths algae could fuel cars:" http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-14102932
* Native American Marker Trees: http://www.gainesvilletimes.com/section/199/article/52953/
* Caligula statue: http://news.discovery.com/history/caligula-statue-unveiled.html
* Results of some mummy CT scans; http://www.suntimes.com/6461128-417/ct-scans-unravel-mysteries-of-field-museums-mummies.html
* O.o http://curbed.com/archives/2011/07/15/breaking-free.php
* Potter Cake: http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/2011/07/sunday-sweets-and-all-was-well.html
* Save feast of fun; http://www.feastoffun.com/donate/
Now that I've seen this, I get what Chicago Code is trying to do. They are cleaned up for network TV, but they are clearly trying to be the network safe version of this and not quite making it. They got the gritty feel, the politics, and the ensemble casting, but prime time rules tie their hands and they are aiming at corruption instead of the drug economy. You can see the Wire's influence in things like the heat wave episode where they show the Alderman sending minions around to check on the old people, some of them the same thugs he's employed in crimes. They miss the full nuance of the alderman and the Irish mobsters, but they keep trying to draw them as whole people.
Things like this interest me, the way one piece of break through art will influence how other people design their art.
Now to wait for the next disk.
* "Early history of Transfusion:" http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=blood-lust--the-early-history-of-tr-2011-07-12
This is entirely from a European perspective and completely misses the great civilizations of the new world where blood transfusion was fairly common in the treatment of serious injury. It was safer than you'd think, as the populations involved were nearly all type O. Obviously people would die now and then from a conflict of types, but the occational death they couldn't explain wasn't a deterrent when it worked out better than extreme blood loss for a vast majority of patients.
It consistently irks me that there is this pretense that all the pioneering medical advances were European. I mean, when is the last time you heard about the Chinese doing eye surgery hundreds of years in advance of everyone else? Why aren't the civilizations of central and south America being hundreds of years ahead of the rest of the world on blood transfusions?
* A bunch of entitlement princess mothers are two lazy to fold their strollers and commandeer all the handicapped seats on a bus then refuse to move or get off the bus, presumably on the grounds that choosing to be lazy is the biggest handicap of all, way worse than real involuntary disabilities like arthritis or paraplegia: http://www.news957.com/news/local/article/253261--stroller-dispute-snarls-traffic-as-transit-driver-mothers-butt-heads
It seems pretty ironic that they were coming from parenting class, as this looks like some pretty bad parenting. when I was little, my Mom worked two jobs that required a complicated schedule of buses, trollies, and subways to make all the appointments. She possessed a small folding stroller, which she folded up on public transport. We learned bus etiquette like waiting for people to disembark before getting off, saying excuse me where appropriate, and yielding seats to the elderly and disabled at peak times. It seems to me that these lessons are way more valuable than the lesson that if you have or are a child, you needn't obey bus etiquette or rules about handicapped seating, and that being incredibly lazy and spoiled is better than being right. I pity those children.
* Edison's talking doll recording: http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-07-edison-1st-doll.
* Mozart and I may have had something in common: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-07-mozart-longer-spent-sun.html
* "Bath's Roman Baths algae could fuel cars:" http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-14102932
* Native American Marker Trees: http://www.gainesvilletimes.com/section/199/article/52953/
* Caligula statue: http://news.discovery.com/history/caligula-statue-unveiled.html
* Results of some mummy CT scans; http://www.suntimes.com/6461128-417/ct-scans-unravel-mysteries-of-field-museums-mummies.html
* O.o http://curbed.com/archives/2011/07/15/breaking-free.php
* Potter Cake: http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/2011/07/sunday-sweets-and-all-was-well.html
* Save feast of fun; http://www.feastoffun.com/donate/