Washington Monthly is running an interesting article by Ted Turner on Media Consolidation. Before you jump to conclusions and criticize Ted regarding his own involvement with the topic (Turner’s merging with Time Warner), read the article and hear what he has to say.

& I watched Outfoxed last night… It was pretty amateurish, and was obviously partisan, but I think if you paid less attention to the pundits and more attention to the footage, you will get more out of the film. In all, though, I think the film is preaching to the choir of those who already think that Fox News is biased. The problem with Outfoxed is that by showing tons of snippets of the talking heads on Fox slagging Kerry while championing Bush, or treating Iraq with kid gloves, you are removing the contextual cues. It is impossible to tell the context of these clips, and therefore it is impossible to tell whether Fox is injecting bias in a clip or it is because the clip is taken out of context, unless you are familiar with all of the FNC shows and know which ones are op-ed (O’Reilly) and which ones are supposed to be pure news (Brit Hume during the week, but not on sunday). There isn’t a doubt in my mind that FNC is far right, but this movie just came off as leftie propaganda (whether it is or not).

In addition to just watching the rabble of clips they used from FNC in Outfoxed, and reinforcing my opinion of the network, what really interested me was how they made the film in the Behind the Scenes short. They had gobs of redundant dvd burners recording FNC 24 hours a day for months, organizing the DVDs in those big Case Logic CD/DVD wallets. Then they had a panel of volunteers from around the country that were assigned different blocks of programming and watched it, noting when FNC seemed to stray into the grey or red of integrity. The volunteers reported their observations and then the director and his PAs when back to their DVD archive and mined the footage out of it. Very interesting…

Like I said, the amateurish (hackish, even) nature of this film probably won’t win anybody over, but who knows… Regardless, hopefully it will be a tool used to energize those who already think that FNC is being intentionally deceitful with it’s “Fair & Balanced” mantra and begin to push back…

It’s been awhile since I’ve gone on a real book buying binge, but took careful steps to rectify this situation last week when he sent mail to a whole bunch of people recommending two books on breadmaking. I have always wanted to master bread, but out of the 4 times I have tried 3 could clearly be marked as failures. I regard Pat as a pretty smart fella, so his recommendation goes pretty far. And while I was buying books I figured I might as well toss in a few more books for good measure.

• The Secrets of Jesuit Breadmaking by Rick Curry
• The Bread Baker’s Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread by Peter Reinhart and Ron Manville
• Just a Geek by Wil Wheaton
• The C++ Programming Language (Special 3rd Edition) by Bjarne Stroustrup

I’ve been looking forward to the Wil Wheaton book ever since I bought and read his first book, Dancing Barefoot. And I have been “meaning to buy” the Stroustrup book for eons, since before RIT even, but have never gotten around to it. My recent flood of C++ at work gave me the kick in the ass necessary to get it, especially now that things like STL, namespaces, and RTTL (which Mozilla always advised against using due to lame compiler support) are fairly solid in most compiliers (which means it’s time to learn what I need to know about them).

Yesterday was ‘s (a.k.a. Mateo Girard’s) first day at Goodrich, which was long anticipated… After work I went home, and “made dinner” (quickly cooked the salmon and used the sauce that prepared this weekend. Corinna was doing some Himps work on the bathroom. I had told Matt I would stop by his apartment to get my Gamecube out of there, it has been there for months now and now that he is officially living there he has his own GC. We (Matt, Michelle, , and I) ended up at I, Robot. It was OK, but not great… I did like the little nod-of-the-hat at the beginning of the movie, with the Fedex robot being unit #42.

I guess it’s time to begin thinking about how to get my PC up here in Boston so I don’t miss out (not that my PC is anywhere near fast enough to run it properly)

We’re a little over halfway through 2004 so I figured I would give a
State of the Viewing address to my readership and let them know what films I
have seen so far this year. I think I am behind last
year in volume, but hell, I was unemployed the whole year, so I had
nothing better to do. :) (Update: Actually, looking at the count, I am slightly ahead of last year).

Unlike last year, I have been keeping track of films as I watch them, as
opposed to recalling them from memory. Even so, there may be a film or two
that I have missed (although, most likely not one on the big screen). If
you catch one I missed, let me know.

Big Screen:

1. Big Fish
2. Touching the Void
3. The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra
4. The Fog of War
5. Wet Hot American Summer
6. Starsky & Hutch
7. The Battle of Algiers
8. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
9. Dawn of the Dead (2004)
10. Goodbye, Lenin
11. Hiding and Seeking
12. Dogville
13. Kill Bill: Volume 2
14. Noi Albinoi
15. The Mayor of the Sunset Strip
16. The Saddest Music in the World
17. Super Size Me
18. Van Helsing
19. Hellboy
20. Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound
21. Shrek 2
22. Monty Python’s Life of Brian
23. Saved!
24. Napoleon Dynamite
25. The Terminal
26. The Chronicles of Riddick
27. Dodgeball
28. Fahrenheit 9/11 (twice)
29. Spiderman 2

Small Screen:

1. Sunshine
2. Hell House
3. Bruce Almighty
4. Killer Clowns from Outer Space
5. S.W.A.T. (2003)
6. Tank Girl
7. This is Spinal Tap
8. American History X
9. The Hunted
10. The Talented Mr. Ripley
11. Underworld
12. Super Troopers
13. High Fidelity
14. Auto Focus
15. Not Another Teen Movie
16. House of 1000 Corpses
17. Wonderland
18. Wadd: The Life and Times of John C. Holmes
19. Talking Heads: Stop Making Sense
20. Bad Taste
21. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
22. Cosmos
23. Near Dark
24. UHF
25. Finding Nemo
26. Secretary
27. The Missing
28. Haggard
29. Roger & Me
30. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)
31. The Eyes of Tammy Faye
32. Old School
33. Prom Fight: The Mark Hall Story
34. Kill Bill: Volume 1
35. Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy
36. Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger 4
37. Capturing the Friedmans
38. Caligula (Unrated)
39. Hedwig and the Angry Inch
40. The Thin Blue Line
41. The Mission
42. The Grey Zone
43. If I Should Fall From Grace: The Shane MacGowan Story
44. Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election
45. Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed
46. The American Nightmare (2000, Documentary)
47. The Clash: Westway to the World
48. Master & Commander: The Far Side of the Sea
49. Bubba Ho-tep
50. Pitch Black
51. Resident Evil
52. Strangers on a Train
53. Deep Rising
54. Dawn of the Dead (1978)
55. Lost Skeleton of Cadavra
56. Star Wars (Episode IV: A New Hope)
57. Elephant
58. The Empire Strikes Back (Star Wars: Episode V)
59. Terminator III: Rise of the Machines
60. RKO 281
61. The Bourne Identity
62. Spiderman
63. Return of the Jedi (Star Wars: Episode VI)

I came into work yesterday but left after 6 hours because I was supremely congested… I slept for a few hours when I got home, and sat like a blob on the couch while cooked me a delicious meal. I slept like a baby last night, and am feeling better today, although I am still a little sniffley and congested, but I should be able to think today.

An administrative note: I decided that since all my pobox.com address is used for lately seems to be spam to relegate it to the lower levels of my attention. So any mail sent to that address will be dumped in my Gmail account, which seems to handle spam better than Spamassassin (or, at least, SA on the CSH systems, which due to endianness issues (I gather) doesn’t do Bayesian filtering). The short version of this is that I check Gmail less frequently, so if you really want me to see something immediately, my CSH address or my sean-graham.com address is the way to go. I may begin phasing out my pobox.com address but that would happen over the course of a few years (because I am paranoid of losing contact with someone).

I love google

I feel like i’ve been sick all week, but it started Tuesday. I had a sore throat until today, when that exchanged for coughing and the runs. I’m finally starting to feel better…. I’ll probably be congested for another two weeks, but whatever.

I had tickets for last night’s Dresden Dolls show and totally forgot about it… I’m a douchebag.