Chaotek Thoughts

Late night TV has not been this entertaining for me in a long time.  It’s comedy gold at NBC’s expense.  I’ve never much of a fan of late night talk shows, especially since getting a DVR, but I’ve enjoyed the last week quite a bit.  I’ve never been a fan of Conan, but he’s doing a great job considering his situation.  The jokes are hilarious, mocking NBC over and over, reminding me of when Howard Stern worked for WNBC.

I think that NBC caused this problem from the start.  After David Letterman’s defection back when Leno took the helm of the Tonight Show, NBC became very paranoid that it would happen again.  They decided to retire Jay Leno while he was on top, and didn’t want to retire.  All because they were afraid of Conan leaving and becoming the competition.  While I liked Leno a lot more than Conan at the time, I believe that Conan should get to keep the Tonight Show as is, in its current timeslot.

It is ridiculous to blame Conan for NBC’s woes, considering the ratings failure of NBC as a whole.  Late night TV is dependent on people watching the news, which is dependent on the prime time schedule.  As has been publicized for the past months, the poor primetime performance of NBC (including the Jay Leno Show) has been hurting local evening news.  NBC is acting like changing the late night lineup will somehow save the network, but they should be looking to primetime first.  NBC has cancelled good show after good show, and even the good shows that they keep seem to barely get renewed.

They say that any publicity is good publicity, proven as I’m watching late night TV when I haven’t in years, but this publicity is going to be a problem down the road.  It’s polarizing NBC’s audience, suggesting that they choose between Conan and Leno (perhaps permanently).  I’m not going to solve the problem, NBC hasn’t called yet, but however it turns out it has been great TV (especially because it’s at NBC’s expense)!

Announced today, Remo Williams will return to the screen. I’ve always been a fan of the cult classic, and its great to see that it may get another chance!

It seems like doctors get stumped, baffled, or are stating that something is unexplainable quite a lot. Who are these doctors and specialists? Take this case of a woman who cried blood. Or this article about a man cured of back pain. The problem with these cases is either the wrong doctors (or right ones, depending on your point of view) are being consulted, or the doctors are being provided with insufficient information to give proof.

China bans any mention of Tiananmen Square, shutting down access to journalists and a huge swath of the Internet on the anniversary of the massacre.

I think that corporations and governments are too concerned with offending China to stand up and do the right thing. Either they need Chinese products, consumers, investments, etc. there just seems to be too much catering to what amounts to an Evil Empire. Tyranny should always be opposed, and while those within China may not have the ability to do so, the rest of the world does and should.

In Popular Mechanics there is an article debunking claims that UFOs are seen in released NASA Shuttle videos. The comments on the article are great, because there are so many comments that NASA and the US Government are trying to cover up obvious alien spaceships caught on tape. That makes a lot of sense, since you’re seeing the UFOs (actually ice and other space debris) on NASA’s video–if they were trying to hide something, why give out the proof?

Here’s the thing that the UFO true-believers don’t understand: real UFO’s would be awesome. These UFO believers who claim that the skeptics and scientists don’t want to believe are just wrong, I think that skeptics and scientists would be super excited to find alien life (even if it’s just bacteria). Sure, the government might be afraid of alien life becoming public. But if the government’s grand conspiracy were so powerful and omnipotent, why would they be stupid enough to release the “key evidence” over, and over, and over in NASA videos.

The people who really don’t want proof of alien life are the religious true-believers, as it would fly in the face of every doctrine that says that man is a special and unique creation. Virtually any real scientist or skeptic would be excited to find proof of extraterrestrial life. But also it would prove a basic rule of science–we’re not special. Life is a natural process, and finding life, not-of-Earth, would prove that.

Now I know why I like energy drinks so much:

Traces of cocaine ‘found in Red Bull’ in Hong Kong

The Church of Scientology has been banned from editing on Wikipedia, or at least their known IPs are. The beauty and failure of Wikipedia, which I love, is that it is open for (almost) anyone to edit. However how do you stop people from posting graffiti on it, posting outsourced information, or removing unflattering information without some amount of peer review? I don’t know that you can. But I suspect that this will have longer reaching issues, as the Church of Scientology has a long history of suing those who write unflattering or inside information, which Wikipedia has a lot of. We’ll see what happens from here.

I was reading an article about a male advocacy student group that formed at the University of Chicago. What struck me was how hypocritical some of the opponents of the group were. For example, a woman who heads a group called “Women in Business” explained how she didn’t understand why there needed to be a male based business student group because there were 5-6 gender-neutral business student groups. Read that again, slowly (I’ll wait)… There are plenty of other commentators who oppose the formation of the group, but this comment was perhaps the most ironic seeing as how the speaker is the president of a gender-specific business student group. The article also notes that there are 9 female advocacy support groups, and this would be the first.

Sure, the president of “Men in Power” explained why a male-targeted group should be allowed, but why should he have to. It’s kind of like how its okay to form women-only gyms, banks, social clubs, etc; but it’s evil to do the same thing for men? Maybe I suffer from the male perspective, but I thought I understood that the goal these types of groups was equal rights…

Kindergarteners get a tough lesson in tardiness from the President:

http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Kindergarteners-Snubbed-for-Steelers.html