Everybody Needs to Listen to This Episode

Things are pretty bad right now in the Bay Area and nowhere is it worse than in Fremont, where the NUMMI plant will fully shut down its production line tomorrow. Last week's episode of This American Life focused on the plant's history and what went wrong, and I must say it damn near brought tears to my eyes.

America should be angry at this. Very. Goddamn. Angry.

Take an hour and have a listen: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/403/nummi

--Matt

Together At Last!

I wake up every morning wondering when one of the greatest music videos and one of the greatest sci-fi programs will finally unite.

The waiting is over, I give you BSG vs. Sabotage. Might want to reload the page once or twice to get them synced up well.

For a video bonus the following trailer came across my screen yesterday and sums up my feelings on what it takes to win an Oscar: filmmakers, abandon challenging material and just follow the damn formula.

Ultima Ratio Regum

This was too good to be true. C'mon sci-fi geeks out there, you can't tell me that the heart wasn't pumping a bit above baseline when, say, the gatling needlegun Reason spins up to unleash gouts of red hot death, or when the Culture unleashes extra-dimensional energy--Gridfire --onto an entire ringworld. These are some of the genre's most defining moments and here this artist has gorgeously laid them all out chronologically for us. Bravo, ma'am. Bravo.

--Matt

"Squid Wrestling: All Tentacles and No Substance."

Yikes, I am super busy at work and come home every night really wanting to just collapse in a heap...and I love it! Finally I'm feeling like a semi-contributing member of society again despite the ridiculously low salary. (They tell me it'll pay off, I hope they're right.) The downside to this, of course, is that there's little to no energy left to do my own, non-company, writing here. But tonight I stumbled on a blog that really made my day--Sleep Talkin' Man. This is what happens when a prolific and astoundingly funny sleep talker marries a blogger with recording equipment and no shame whatsoever in broadcasting her husband's most intimate unconscious moments to the world.

His lucid speech and fantastic imagination remind me very much of famous sleep talker Dion McGregor.

--Matt