Wild, Wild West was a terrific series, and one of the first science-fiction westerns. (I’ve long suspected that the show’s “James T. West” played a role in transforming Star Trek’s James R. Kirk into James T. Kirk.) Then it spawned two awful tv-movies, and finally a still more awful theatrical movie. At this point, is there anyone who could possibly revive it and restore its tarnished glory?
Yes.
The Molinari Society will be holding its seventh annual Symposium – this time with two sessions – in conjunction with the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association in Boston, December 27-30, 2010. Here’s the latest schedule info:
GIV-3. Tuesday, 28 December 2010, 2:00-5:00 p.m.
Molinari Society Symposium, SESSION 1:
Author Meets Critics: Gary Chartier’s Economic Justice and Natural Law
Marriott/Westin-Copley, precise location TBAchair: Roderick T. Long (Auburn University)
critics:
Jennifer Baker (College of Charleston)
Kevin A. Carson (Center for a Stateless Society) [Commentary online: to be read in absentia]
David Gordon (Ludwig von Mises Institute)
Douglas Den Uyl (Liberty Fund)
Douglas B. Rasmussen (St. John’s University)author:
Gary Chartier (La Sierra University)GVII-4. Wednesday, 29 December 2010, 9:00-11:00 a.m.
Molinari Society Symposium, SESSION 2:
Topic: Spontaneous Order
Marriott/Westin-Copley, location TBAchair: Gary Chartier (La Sierra University)
presenters:
Charles Johnson (Molinari Institute)
“Women and the Invisible Fist: How Violence Against Women Enforces the Unwritten Law of Patriarchy”
Roderick T. Long (Auburn University)
“Invisible Hands and Incantations: The Mystification of State Power”commentators:
Nina Brewer-Davis (Auburn University)
Reshef Agam-Segal (Auburn University)
As part of the APA’s continuing policy to prevent free riders, they’re not telling us the name of the room until we get to the registration desk. As part of our policy of combating evil we will of course broadcast the name of the room far and wide as soon as we learn it.
This year we have managed to avoid any schedule conflict with the Ayn Rand Society (Dec. 28th, 9:00-11:00) or Jan Narveson’s author-meets-critics session (Dec. 30th, 9:00-12:00) but not, alas, with the American Association for the Philosophic Study of Society (Dec. 29th, 9:00-11:00).
The forthcoming dvd for the most recent series of Doctor Who includes two extra scenes, which as it happens are also available – at least for the moment – on YouTube, so watch ’em while you can.
In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy there’s a beverage dispenser on the spaceship that Douglas Adams describes this way:
When the ‘Drink’ button is pressed it makes an instant but highly detailed examination of the subject’s taste buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subject’s metabolism, and then sends tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centres of the subject’s brain to see what is likely to be well received. However, no one knows quite why it does this, because it then invariably delivers a cupful of liquid that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.
Steven Moffat pretty clearly had this passage in mind when he wrote the first scene below. It takes place between “The Eleventh Hour” and “The Beast Below”:
If you’re worried about Amy’s fate at the end there, recall the opening of “The Beast Below”:
The second extra scene takes place between “Flesh and Stone” and “Vampires of Venice,” immediately after Amy’s failed attempt to seduce the Doctor:
Amusingly, Democrats in several states have apparently been running fake attack ads against Libertarian candidates that describe them in terms designed to appeal to Tea-Party-style Republicans so as to split the Republican vote. Here are a couple of samples (click on them to enlarge):
I call this such ads “fake” attack ads because although the Democrats do disagree with the positions they ascribe to the Libertarian candidate, the goal of the ad is to increase rather than to decrease support for that candidate. (Notice that the ad never identifies its target as Libertarian, thus preventing anyone from wondering “why are the Democrats wasting money attacking a third-party candidate with low poll numbers?” They’re also counting on people not wondering “why would the Democrats use ‘outsider’ as a pejorative term when most voters identify positively with it?” or “why are they surrounding the person they’re attacking with flags and American Revolution imagery?”)
In other news, I see that I am, at the moment, the first name mentioned in the Wikipedia article on libertarianism!
I caught “Last of the Time Lords” on BBC America last week – and they’d cut out the following scene!
Now admittedly that scene doesn’t really advance the plot; but still, I would bet it’s the one scene that fans best love and remember from that episode. (Plot isn’t everything.) And of course BBC America offers its viewers no announcement that they’re watching truncated versions of episodes.
There’s a new Galactica series in the works, to take place between Caprica and BSG, featuring Ensign Bill Adama in the early years of the Cylon War.
The next Star Trek movie will feature one of the following five original-series characters: Harry Mudd, Trelane, Gary Mitchell, the Talosians, or the Horta. I guess I’m hoping for and/or expecting Gary Mitchell, because: Mudd is too silly, Trelane is too much like Q, the Talosians are too entangled with a specific Christopher Pike plot thread that the last film seems to have averted, and the Horta strikes me as not having, um, legs beyond its original story. (But if Abrams does use Mitchell, it’ll be one more case of his channeling Of Gods and Men – the $150,000 libertarian fan film that featured the destruction of Vulcan and the creation of an alternate timeline stemming from the moment of Kirk’s birth, three years before Abrams’ film did all those same things.)
There might be some Star Wars sequels (CHT AICN) on the (fairly distant) horizon, but will probably “not have anything to do with the Skywalker Clan” and may take place “as far as 100 years or 1,000 years in the Star Wars universe future,” presumably to avoid conflicts with the Expanded Universe stories.
The good news is that The Hobbit will film in New Zealand after all. The bad news is that this result was achieved by government micromanaging industrial relations to keep a big corporation happy. (And no, if it’d been micromanaging industrial relations to keep a big union happy I wouldn’t have liked it either.)