Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Random Notes from a Crank

Today marks 100 days until the start of college football season.

For the past couple of days, I've been binging on watching the first season of Game of Thrones. I recently started watching episodes of the second season on Sunday nights. After being frustrated and having a fit of cursing at HBO's website because of their overly complicated process of being able to watch past episodes online, I finally started watching the first season via my laptop last night. I'm really enjoying the show, which is a surprise because I'm not really much of fantasy/otherly-world fiction kind of guy. In fact, the last time I think I read a fantasy novel was when I was back in junior high school -- that was Tolkien's Return of the King, the final book in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. To give you an idea of the episode-watching binge I've been on, today is Tuesday. Like I said, I started watching the first season last night. This afternoon I finished episode 7. And now I've gone and ordered the first book because, as far as I can tell so far from the HBO series and what I quickly learned about the books on the Web, the story doesn't sound like it has any of goofy pathos and bathos of fantasy fiction.

I do have a complaint about the Game of Thrones series and other films of the fantasy variety though. Why do the characters in these films almost always have British accents? Why? What up with that?

As much as I agree with argument made in May's "Science Agenda" editorial in Scientific American, I'm not optimistic about smart, substantive changes to the farm bill. I hope I'm wrong.

Although it's not a humorous article, reading "The Science of Health" piece in the same issue reminded me of the sound advice my Uncle Raymond told me before I went to college: "Avoid the clap."

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