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I am a big fan of (almost) anything Sci-Fi, but I could never bring myself to enjoy Star Trek. The whole show seemed to me more like a soap opera in space. Now, there have been some soap operas that in my vulnerable young years I actually enjoyed (won't name them lest I risk ridicule), but at least they were proper soap operas, not wannabe sci-fi shows. Now, most of the Physics geeks are invariably enamored with the show, so I have to politely excuse myself whenever the topic pops up. Nonetheless, I never bothered "deconstructing" my dislike for Star Trek - it did not seem worth my time. Then in this May's issue of First Things an anarticle titled Lost and Saved on Television appeared with the following priceless sentance:

As late as the early 1990s, the only sci-fi show of any merit on television was Star Trek: The Next Generation, a U.N. bureaucrat’s fantasy of the twenty-fourth century, in which a crew of asexual socialists in leotards kept the galaxy safe for cultural relativism and conflict resolution.

That pretty much hits the bull's eye.

Posted by Bojan Tunguz at 08:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I don't watch all that much TV these days. Sure, I leave it on a news channel in the background while I do something else, but in general I am not as much enticed by the tube as I used to be. The only exception are some good sporting events (NBA finals) and the comedy shows, in particular South Park, The Daily Show, and The Colbert Report. This last one is probably the smartest comedy show on TV these days, especially when it comes to current events and politics. My friends who know how conservative I am are sometimes puzzled by my liking for Mr. Colbert, since the whole premise of his show is to satirize the right-wing politics. The solution to this puzzle is rather simple: I actually agree with most things that Colbert says while in character. It is actually rather similar to the kinds of (half) jokes that I crack.

Posted by Bojan Tunguz at 01:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last week was my birthday. For those who want to know, I turned 33. It also happened that it was the last day when I could get a new drivers license. It seems that procrastination doesn't get any better with age. The whole license getting process was very smooth and efficient, uncharacteristically so for a government bureaucracy. I am used to long lines, testy clerks, exorbitant fees, and missteps along the way. It will never stop to amaze me how cheap even a new drivers' license is in the US - around $20. In Croatia it is around $1200, and from what I understand it is not much cheaper in most other countries in the "free world". How and why are people around the world willing to tolerate such high government overhead on their essential needs, beats me.

I had an opportunity to use my drivers license the same day I got it. I got "carded" at Kroeger that day, and the funny thing was I was not even the person buying the drinks! (Sharmin was, I was just tagging along as I usually do.) It made me feel good about getting older.

Posted by Bojan Tunguz at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This would be a really good add-gone-bad, were it not so potentially offensive. A while back I was shopping at Meijer, when I came across the above sale ad for Jägermeister. The poor chap writing the ad was obviously not familiar with the Gothic script, so letters 'J' and 'long s' got transmuted into 'F' and 'l'. The umlauts, not surprisingly, got lost altogether.

Jägermeister has somewhat of white-trashy reputation in the US, so there is a chance that the Meijer employees tried to make it seem more fashionable by changing its name into something, like, totally gay. Like totally.

Posted by Bojan Tunguz at 05:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)