Sunspots 509

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

The Arts: National Public Radio reports that seismic shifts were used as a basis for music from the bell tower on the University of California's Berkeley campus. The tower is 100 years old, and Berkeley is in an area that experiences lots of motion in the earth.
Computing: (Sort of) Wired warns us not to buy a Smart TV yet, because TV manufacturers have ruined them. Translation -- too many ads, and they aren't talking about the ads in the programs.
Education: NPR on why little kids should play with blocks.
Health: National Public Radio reports that a higher percentage of Tanzanians are vaccinated against measles than the percentage in the US.
NPR also reports that cancer patients don't often understand what their doctors are saying about their survival time.
Politics: The Equal Justice Initiative has released a report on lynchings of African-Americans in the South, which report says that the number of lynchings had been under-reported, and that lynching was a form of terrorism.
NPR reports that less than 1% of the US Federal budget is for foreign aid, and that the most of that is for health.
The Washington Post has posted maps of the most gerrymandered congressional districts in the US. Some really strange shapes. (Gerrymandered districts are designed to put a lot of people who vote for your opponents together, making it more likely that you will win in non-gerrymandered districts. It has been practiced by both parties.)
Image source (public domain)

Sorry, NCIS: Los Angeles

We taped the first episode of the new CBS series, NCIS: Los Angeles, last Tuesday. (This program is a spin-off from the long-running NCIS, and an episode of that program introduced most of the characters during the previous TV season.)

In case anybody cares, there is a real NCIS.

We don't plan to visit the new program again.

The old NCIS has six main characters, two female. (A few years ago, there were three main female characters.) The new program, according to the TV Guide Fall Preview issue, and to our viewing of the first episode, seems to have just two main characters, both male. There are a lot less potential relationships between the characters. NCIS has all sorts of interactions among the six, as well as with minor recurring characters, such as Ducky's mother, Jimmy Palmer, the assistant medical examiner, or Tobias, from the FBI. Almost none of these relationships are romantic. They are relationships of friendship, of rivalry, between subordiates and a boss, or mentoring relationships. The old NCIS features a lot of, well, investigation. Granted, it was only partly believable. McGee can break into any computer system on the planet, Abby is an expert in forensic chemistry, and apparently all other types of forensic science. Gibbs, DiNozzo, Ziva and McGee do a lot of investigation of crime scenes. Ducky examines corpses, finding all sorts of clues. But it is investigation, and we often learned something from watching, and we listen to people think. The new program seems to major on car chases and exchanges of gunfire.

The old NCIS is set in the District of Columbia, or near it. (There are Naval bases in that area.) The new is set in Los Angeles. Why Los Angeles? There is no major Navy or Marine presence there. If it has to be in the West, why not Puget Sound, or or the San Diego area, which are the major locations of the Navy and Marines in the West? We don't understand, except that Los Angeles has more glamor, if not much of the Navy or Marines.

We have gotten used to various quirks of the old NCIS, such as Abby's warm emotions, and her tattoos, Gibbs' handcrafting of a boat, and ineptness at high technology, DiNozzo's many courtships and stealing of other people's food, Ziva's struggles with English idioms, and her abilities as a hand-to-hand fighter, Ducky's one-way conversations with dead bodies, and monologues on all sorts of experiences that he has had, and the occasional head slap from one character to another, usually from Gibbs. Perhaps there will be as many quirks in the new series, but it will have to go some to equal the old. There are also frequent moral dilemmas in the old series. Perhaps there will be some in the new one, but we don't plan to give it a chance. We don't think watching gunfire and car chases, and lots of gee-whiz technology, equal watching human interactions, emotions, and thought processes. Sorry, NCIS: Los Angeles. I'll stick with plain vanilla NCIS.

Well, that's my first review of a TV program -- actually two programs in one. One good entertainment. One not so good.

Thanks for reading.