I don’t know about you, but this week flew by for me. I can’t believe it’s already Friday but am happy about it nonetheless. Got any big plans for the weekend? We’ll probably just hang around recovering from our various stages of the not-flu illness that is sweeping the country.
Got any good Netflix / Prime recommendations? I plan to binge-watch season 2 of “Happy Valley,” an excellent Netflix original crime drama featuring an acerbic, middle-aged Yorkshire policewoman whose life makes the biblical Job’s existence look like a jaunt at Club Med. Will try to catch up on “Better Call Saul” as well. And finish one of the three books I’ve got going.
Feel free to discuss your favorite shows, preen about your moral superiority because you don’t watch TV or talk about whatever. Open thread!
redshirt
Daredevil Season 2 was just released on Netflix today.
I’ll be gorging, though moderately.
raven
I knew it, a brilliant set of comments by me will be lost. . . again!
schrodinger's cat
Can’t wait for the second episode of The Americans
swiftfox
Maybe it was all those episodes of F-Troop, Cowboy in Africa, and Mr. Terrific, but I can’t watch anything except sports, news, and movies. The 1st, 2nd and part of the 3rd seasons of Orphan Black were interesting but I can’t touch that anymore, either.
raven
Best two days in sports. If frickin WVA was playing there would be a thread. Till then I’ll repost this
” This is the was Taureen Prince of Baylor handled a stupid question.
“You go up and grab the ball off the rim when it comes off…and then you grab it with two hands, and then you come down with it. That’s considered a rebound. So, they got more of those than we did.”
Punchy
I’m in love with the show called “Mysteries at the Museum”. They visit random museums, find some artifact which has a sizable and interesting back-story, and then tell that story in ~15 min bits. All completely real-life, actual historically accurate shit.
It’s like taking a US History class and only learning the cool and/or fun shit. I’d watch it for hours if it wasn’t for the ball and chain and spawn hinting at possible deadbeat status for attention neglect….
gogol's wife
I adore James Norton, better known as Prince Andrei, and Sarah Lancashire, Shirley Henderson, and Kevin Doyle (better known as Molesley) are also in it, but I can’t stand the violence.
ETA: In Happy Valley, I mean.
Mustang Bobby
Heading for Naples (Florida) at the crap of dawn tomorrow for the Antique Automobile Club of America’s Southeast National Winter Meet. Taking the 1988 Pontiac 6000 Safari for its third Driver Participation Class badge and infiltrate that bastion of white heterosexual alcoholic Republicans with my Canadian-built wagon. Then I have the week off for spring break, so I’ll probably veg out and start work on a research paper due at the Inge Festival scholars conference in April.
cleek
Vikings!
SiubhanDuinne
I have a short-term contract job with my former employer, so will be putting in several hours on that project today and over the weekend. Tomorrow, though, I’m taking a few hours to go to my favorite cinema and hear/watch the Berlin Philharmonic in an all-Beethoven concert (a late addition to the Fathom Events schedule).
raven
@gogol’s wife: It snuck up in that first season. Almost seemed like a comedy until the female officer scene.
Thoroughly Pizzled
Fucking Yale and fucking Duke. My disgust is Brobdingnagian.
redshirt
I’ve been obsessing of late on a new theory, and wanted to run it by the smart folks of BJ to see if anyone has heard of an actual academic theory that closely matches it.
I call it “Predictable Unpredictability”, meaning that what appears to be random or distracted behaviors are actually quite predictable. Example:
You drive the same route to work every day, but also the same route at different times. During these drives you observe with a great degree of predictability that a large majority of drivers (80% or more) will go under the speed limit on one stretch of road, and then just a mile or so down the road, these same drivers will go well above the speed limit. The drivers are randomized for the most part, as is the time of day and conditions. Furthermore, these patterns do not precisely hold for drivers going in the other direction, but there are different sets of patterns for that direction.
These patterns of predictable unpredictability repeat at the same spots day in, day out.
I suspect this type of behavior occurs in many other types of situations (shopping, walking, lining up), but it takes a lot of observation with some controls in order to discern the pattern.
Thoughts?
schrodinger's cat
@gogol’s wife: Do you watch The Americans?
raven
@redshirt: Look for some kind of trigger.
Thoroughly Pizzled
@redshirt: Sounds like a normal distribution.
khead
Hoops on TV, work. Work, hoops on TV. Maybe catching more cats. Maybe some snow on Sunday. I loved the Baylor kid’s response.
Gin & Tonic
I guess one benefit of having an early March Madness round here in PVD is that there’s an early-season Waterfire tonight. I hope the traffic and parking isn’t insane. Tomorrow is an RI Philharmonic concert and Sunday unfortunately is work all day, hopefully home before the snow starts.
p.a.
Just have over-the-airwaves tv, waiting on a geek friend to talk me through roku/netflix/appletv/amazon’s whatever/et al. ‘course that means (I think) an upgrade to a wi fi app enabled tv; 4k I guess, no interest in 3dtv.
Elementary is moving to Sunday, it’s my only real ‘crap I missed this week’ show. Like NCIS NOLA too, it’s ok for an ‘our lab oddballs never make a mistake’ show. Bakula is good, and Daryl Mitchell.
DS9 7 season collection is down to $240.. Might pull the trigger.
PurpleGirl
Jackson Galaxy’s My Cat from Hell starts new shows on April 2nd.
Outlander starts a new set of shows on April 9th.
With the end of Downton Abbey, I’m really looking forward to Outlander for historical, costume drama.
redshirt
@raven: I have, and it eludes me. As for driving, I’d reckon setback distance on the sides of the roads plays a factors, whether there are turns or not. And while I can come up with a few explanations, it doesn’t cover the whole.
What I’m getting at is if you saw this behavior once, you’d assume its random; but seeing it hundreds of times and it’s clear there’s patterns – patterns that go against expected behavior.
raven
@Gin & Tonic: And the Friars beat USC!!!
redshirt
@Thoroughly Pizzled: Explain please.
raven
@redshirt:
redshirt
@p.a.: Deep Space 9 is available on Netflix. Save yourself a ton of money and watch it there.
raven
@PurpleGirl: Mr Selfridge is starting up soon. Wonder if there will be another Call the Midwife?
schrodinger's cat
@redshirt: If you know the underlying probability distribution you can predict a lot about the system even if an individual event is random, e.g. throwing a dice or flipping a coin.
Knight of Nothing
Not sure if this issue has been reported, but the pagination buttons at the bottom of the site haven’t been working for a while. It’s annoying! Please fix :-)
PurpleGirl
@Punchy: Yes, Mysteries at the Museum is a neat show. There’s a companion show Mysteries at the Monument which follows the same pattern of show. The presenter of those shows also has done a show where he goes “underground” in various cities to look at their histories. I’m spacing his name right now but he’s very good.
p.a.
@Gin & Tonic:
Grab some of the wood, it may come in useful the next few nights.
MattF
They’re predicting snow (snow!) for Sunday around here, so I may begin watching my GoT DVDs. Season 5 arrived yesterday, so if I watch one episode a week for the next 3,731 (est.) years, I will get to it.
Ben Cisco
@raven: Popovich will be all over that kid in the draft if he lasts long enough.
redshirt
@raven: I’m familiar with this concept but I don’t think it applies to what I’m getting at here. These are the actions of thousands of people which forms a pattern – a pattern that goes against the grain of expected behavior, yet is highly predictable.
Synchronicity seems to apply only to personal experiences, or so I thought. Could be wrong.
gogol's wife
@schrodinger’s cat:
No.
raven
Damn, Spike, Barkley and Samuel singing “Pina Colada” is pretty damn funny.
Domaninion
Among favorite responses ever heard:
crisp and efficient and very intense young mother: “We never watch TV”
kind of slobby looking, easy-going, whatever kind of mother: “That’s really precious”
gogol's wife
@raven:
I think I saw in TV Guide yesterday that there will be another Call the Midwife season starting in April.
Mary
@redshirt: Yaaas!
schrodinger's cat
@redshirt: If you can predict it how is it unpredictable. You are confusing a lot of concepts here. Driving the same route at a fixed time is not a random event at all. You need to tighten the description of your problem, if you want to model it mathematically.
dr. bloor
@Thoroughly Pizzled: I’d be praying for a meteor except I live about a mile and a half from the Dunkin Donuts arena.
Gin & Tonic
@raven: Indeed they did. Can’t see them beating UNC, though.
p.a.
@raven: 9 over 8, no biggie. win the next one however… then strut
@redshirt: tks! i really should do my due dilligence on this stuff.
redshirt
@schrodinger’s cat: Indeed, but these are people I’m talking about, not dice or flipping coins. And in a proscribed environment – public roads with posted speed limits. My assumption would be people would act rationally towards the speed limits – always above, always below, always at, whatever, but predictably. However, what I’ve observed is that while the behavior is overall predictable, it’s hard to explain – why would the same driver go 10 under and then just a half mile down the road, 10 over? And not just that one driver, but thousands of drivers behaving exactly the same.
raven
@gogol’s wife: Cool, I never thought I’d like a Midwife show so much!
Litlebritdifrnt
@Punchy: That is one of the on demand shows that I watch at the weekends. I also like the sister shows “Mysteries at the Monument” and I believe “Mysteries at the Palaces”. It is amazing what chunks of history you can learn watching them.
low-tech cyclist
@Knight of Nothing:
They’re aware of it. Not being an IT geek, I have no idea why this particular problem is so hard to fix, but apparently it is.
I share your annoyance. Every now and then I don’t check in here for a couple of days, and it would be nice to be able to read the older posts I’ve missed. But I’m sure that if they could have fixed this by now, they would have.
smith
I plan to get to Happy Valley as soon as I finish Trapped. It is excellent Scandi Noir from Iceland, of all places.
raven
@Gin & Tonic: They barely beat the Illini on their own court so they cant be THAT good!
Brent
@raven: Saw the video. Honestly, the question could have been phrased a little more succinctly but it didn’t strike me as a particularly bad question. Essentially, the writer wanted to gain some perspective on how a lower seeded team that generally doesn’t tend to attract the same caliber of athletic talent as a team like Baylor manages to out-rebound them. Prince may have had a good answer to that or not but either way, there is nothing wrong, as far as I can see, with asking the question. Pretending like it isn’t a legitimate issue is pretty unconvincing. I would be willing to bet their coach is asking himself that very same question in post mortem.
LAO
Netflix recommendations: The Fall (starring Gillian Anderson and Jamie Dornan)
and Hinterland — also a police procedural set in Wales — the scenery is amazing
schrodinger's cat
@gogol’s wife: Great show! I was curious because you actually know a lot about Russia? Was it you who was talking about their visit to Russia during the Soviet era.
Shell
This weekend is the official start of Spring, so of course were expecting a new snowstorm.
redshirt
@schrodinger’s cat: I should have been clearer. Driving the same route routinely at the same times, but also at vastly different times. The predictable behaviors hold. I’d also suggest these type of behaviors can be found in acts other than driving, but I don’t have enough observations to state anything.
raven
@Brent: I didn’t say it was bad I said it was stupid. What’s really stupid is making those kids do the presser in the first place.
p.a.
@MattF: yes here too and next sunday is Family Holiday Wingnut Torture Dinner Theater, so I’ll have to prepare some global warming =/= no winter material.
Peale
Going to be watching Midnight Special this weekend. I’ve been looking forward to it for awhile. But for the most part I need to focus on “selling myself” so I can write a business case for a promotion. Difficult for me to do as I tend to feel in general that people who talk about themselves too much are full of crap, and while my self-esteem and self-regard levels are both well within normal ranges, I never like to come across as boasting. Stupid Midwest upbringing. Sometimes you have to be willing to be the shiny nail.
redshirt
Anyone watch “The Man in the High Castle” on Amazon? I thought it was a neat concept, OK show. Good period piece.
JCJ
@raven:
Did you watch Purdue yesterday? My Boilermakers have such a history of going out early in the tournament I am not surprised. I remember years ago (’87) Purdue and IU tied for the Big Ten title. In the tourney Purdue lost in the second round while IU won the whole thing. I was in Bloomington so that made it extra painful. A sign in a car once summed it up when IU was playing in the Sweet 16 in Indianapolis and Purdue had already crashed out – “You can tell it is spring when IU is still playing and Purdue isn’t.” I couldn’t be mad because it was true.
Fair Economist
@redshirt:
Road design. People drive to the road, not to the speed limits. If you’ve got a six lane straight stroad with wide lanes and no street parking people are going to drive highway speed regardless of the speed limit. Likewise, if you’ve got a curvy narrow street with cars parked on both sides people will drive slowly even if there’s no limit at all.
raven
@JCJ: Yes I did, I’m an Illini so I hate IU more than I hate Purdue but not by much!
Redshift
@redshirt: Yeah, I really enjoyed it. Can’t wait for season 2!
schrodinger's cat
@redshirt: I am sure you could design a Monte Carlo simulation to model it. Traffic patterns have been studied using them. Check out Google scholar.
p.a.
@schrodinger’s cat:
Goddamnit you used it twice in 1 comment. Once more and BiP would be summoned.
Mnemosyne
I discovered last night that the book I’m on the waiting list for at the library was on $1.99 on Amazon, so I snatched it up. I managed to be 10 minutes late for work this morning because I just wanted to finish this one chapter …
I also need to read Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance so I can get caught up on the Vorkosigan saga, and of course keep working on my own book. I’m hoping the batch of 99 cent research books I bought from Alibris arrive today.
Lifetime definitely seems to be expanding their programming — I Tivoed the BBC miniseries of “And Then There Were None” and want to finish watching that this weekend. They made it with the book’s ending, not the play’s ending, so it’s kind of like a really high-class slasher film with terrific acting (Sam Neill, Miranda Richardson, Noah Taylor, and more). I hope they keep it up with these BBC imports that don’t make it to BBC America or PBS.
Knight of Nothing
@low-tech cyclist: thanks! Good to know it’s on the radar. I have the same issue as you – miss a couple days, and the only way to catch up is to search by particular author or use a mobile device.
I am in fact an IT nerd, and while I don’t know much about WP, I do know that some seemingly simple problems are maddeningly complicated to fix.
schrodinger's cat
@p.a.: Oops my bad!
Ninedragonspot
Binge-watching Chinese-opera-singing contest shows (“Pear Garden Spring 梨園春” from Henan, “Climb the Stage 走進大戲台” from Shanxi.). Husband is out of town, so I can crank up the volume.
Gravie
Prime recommendation: Alpha House Produced and at least partially written by Garry Trudeau, it’s a political comedy that’s a fantastic antidote to the real-life hijinks of our elected officials. Also, John Goodman and Wanda Sykes are prominently featured.
schrodinger's cat
@Mnemosyne: That’s a great Christie.
gogol's wife
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yes, I probably should watch it, but we tend to focus on TCM and PBS.
hedgehog the occasional commenter
Tonight: stay home, have homemade mac & cheese, watch hoops. Denver and environs are getting a spring snow (great for water, sux for commute). Tomorrow: mr. hedgehog is off to the Jefferson County Democratic convention (alternate delegate for Hillz). I have an SCA demo in the morning, workout in the afternoon, then hoops. Our dog in the fight is Iowa State (Cyclone Power). We got to go to yesterday’s game and had a blast.
Mnemosyne
@PurpleGirl:
I also like “Secrets of the Dead,” though that’s more about archeology. They were able to pretty definitively prove that the lost colony of Roanoake, VA, did resort to cannibalism towards the end. When you find human bones in a trash pit, it’s pretty definitive.
Thoroughly Pizzled
@redshirt: Could you clarify this? What exactly can you predict about people, and why is it unexpected?
schrodinger's cat
@gogol’s wife: It has two British actors who do an amazing job. One plays a deep undercover KGB agent who is posing as an average Joe suburbanite and the other is a secretary to the FBI counter intelligence boss.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
J is on vacation with her sister, attending SXSW to hear the music. She needed the break. I’m holding down the fort, trying to get motivated to do yard work tomorrow – it’s supposed to rain/snow/rain here in NoVA on Sunday.
Cheers,
Scott.
gogol's wife
@raven:
Premieres Sunday, April 3 — and I saw Mr. Mason pop up in this trailer, he’s a busy man, on Last Tango as well.
humboldtblue
@raven: Did you actually watch Selfridge and enjoy it? I think I made it through about an hour of the first episode and then turned it off. Pivin was fucking grating and I felt the show had all the depth of a Palin political statement.
Also, I found this meme to be funny
Germy
Do cats get spring fever?
I’m sleep deprived because our cat has been getting frisky at 3:30 a.m. and yelling the house down.
All last winter she’d sleep through the night at the foot of our bed. Now she’s hyper.
I wonder if it’s because the warmer nights mean more critters taking shortcuts through our yard, and her seeing them is causing her outburts.
schrodinger's cat
@gogol’s wife: He was also on the Horatio Hornblower series.
ruemara
I dunno, may go out and watch a movie. Releasing my short to the team for their reels and writing the next ep, production planning to gang up some shooting, working out. Same old.
Don’t feel like getting out of bed though. Have no appetite. First obstacle to overcome.
redshirt
@Fair Economist: Yeah, I’ve long considered this, and while I see how that can be a factor at times, it strike me as not believable at others. Unless that is I don’t understand human psychology, which it totally possible. I drive to the speed limit at all times.
That said, there are three remarkable areas where the speed limit is 50, the road is straight and flat and yet average speed is 40-45, and then a mile down the road the speed limit drops to 40, the road curves, and people predictably go 50. This happens in 3 different and far removed spots. I cannot figure for the life of me how the road design would cause such behaviors.
raven
@humboldtblue: He is annoying but, overall, we enjoyed it. Have you seen “The Paradise”. It’s very similar and I guess they bailed on it because of that. Sara Lancashire is in it too.
Mnemosyne
@Fair Economist:
This. There’s been a lot of work lately about road diets and driver behavior based on road design. A wider, more open road makes people drive like they’re on a highway. A more narrow road with trees makes people drive more slowly.
One of the major proposals to slow roads down is to reduce it to one lane on each side with bike lanes and a turn lane running down the middle. I drive a chunk of my commute on exactly such a road and it works beautifully to accommodate trucks, cars, bicycles, and horses (yes, horses — it’s an area near the LA Equestrian Center that is zoned for horses).
smith
@Mnemosyne:
Watched that, and really enjoyed it. After you see it, you might find this discussion interesting about the order of events chosen by Christie as they reflect a moral judgement about degrees of guilt.
Face
Got a hunch I thought I’d test drive on BJ:
Republicans run a 3rd candidate, a non-Trump. Somebody very well respected in conservative circles. They do this, knowing they’re forfeiting the Presidency to HRC, but expect to maintain the Senate and the avoid losses in the House.
Here’s why: because if it’s Just Trump, then “real” conservatives may stay home. That not only fucks their presidency chances, but also all tickets downstream. However, a “real” conservative choice, while splitting the GOP vote for presidency, allows all the angry “true” conservatives a reason to still go to the polls, and thus provides crucial votes for GOP Senators and House members on that same ballot.
IOW, it gives the disenfranchised base an actual reason (presidential spite vote!) to fill out a ballot, preserving at least the Legislative branch for the GOP….
Thoughts?
ruemara
@Germy: two things to do. Check for thyroid issues. Which means vet visit.
Increase playtime. Try a food release toy versus free feeding or feed times.
Germy
My wife is addicted to Grimm.
I usually read while it’s on, so I hear the CRUNCHING of bones and SPLASHING of blood on the soundtrack.
humboldtblue
@raven: Nope, I have not seen it. May I recommend an excellent movie on Netflix? The Wipers Times is an excellent movie about two British officers who started a newspaper in the hell of the trenches around the city of Ypres. It’s a wonderful film, funny, smart, dark and wonderfully acted. Michael Palin plays a British General fer chrissakes, I loved it.
Germy
@ruemara: Thank you. Good advice.
redshirt
@Thoroughly Pizzled: In sum, you can predict when someone will behave seemingly unpredictably, I.E. going ten miles under the speed limit and then 10 miles over just down the road. If you saw such behavior once it would strike you as random, or distracted. But when the same patterns hold for thousands of drivers – locals, out of staters, etc – at different times of the day, then it can be predicted.
For instance, I bet there’s similar patterns in grocery stores, where the store lays out the traffic flow trying to induce certain behaviors, but people predictably go against it in certain spots.
Mnemosyne
@schrodinger’s cat:
I’m loving the design of the miniseries, because they kept it period and very lush even with the gory murders. It’s like things went very, very wrong at Downton Abbey.
dedc79
Peggy f’ing Noonan:
Josie
After binge-watching House of Cards all the way to the last episode, I am now despondent that it is done. It was a bit darker than I usually like but really well done.
NotMax
Extremely short notice, but “The Night Is Young” on TCM at 2 p.m. Eastern.
Frivolous escapism of the old school, flossy and evanescent as cotton candy.
Three things recommend a peek:
The pairing of a still impish Ramon Navarro (here at the sunset of his leading man days) and rarely seen on film British stage actress Evelyn Laye.
The duo of deadpan character actor Charles Butterworth and his horse, MItzi.
The Romberg/Hammerstein music, especially the song “There’s A Riot in Havana.”
Germy
So Zack Snyder wants to direct a movie version of The Fountainhead.
AkaDad
As a Trump supporter I suggest watching Birth of a Nation to remind us all of the good ol’ days.
redshirt
@Germy: How could he fit enough explosions into that story?
RSR
My wife loves Happy Valley. We also enjoy Sarah Lancashire from Happy Valley as part of a great ensemble cast in Last Tango in Halifax, three seasons of which are on Netflix. (Only six episodes per, so pretty easy to binge watch.)
Betty Cracker
@low-tech cyclist & @Knight of Nothing: You can also input dates into the URL address to get to specific days, e.g.:
https://balloon-juice.com/2016/03/16
I know it’s a pain in the ass, but it’s a workaround…
schrodinger's cat
@Mnemosyne: I have only read the book but not watched the miniseries.
Mnemosyne
@ruemara:
If you develop a sore throat, it may be the horror cold Betty alluded to above. It SUCKS ASS because the fatigue lasts for over a week, and THEN the runny nose starts just when you’re almost over it. It may be worth it to try and do as much as you can from a prone position for a day so it doesn’t knock you out. Satby tried to power through it and ended up with walking pneumonia.
Steeplejack
@p.a.:
Your options are probably more varied than you imagine, I think. Probably your friend will set you straight. No requirement for a 4K TV, and some of the streaming gizmos work with older, less “smart” TVs.
I have liked Elementary since its (slightly bumpy) start, but it has improved even more this season. Something about the writing; maybe the plot twists seem less mechanical. And the addition of Holmes’s father has been a good one.
My recent TV discovery is Vera, running on one of the lesser PBS stations here that specializes in BBC reruns. Brenda Blethyn plays Inspector Vera Stanhope of the Northumberland and City Police. The scripts are good enough to go along with, the acting is very good—sometimes I have to turn on closed captions to translate the accents—and the cinematography is superb. The station is running one of the more recent seasons; I need to see if I can find the earlier ones.
Gin & Tonic
@Face: Aren’t there states where filing deadlines have already passed?
Shell
Thought you were talking about the soundtrack of The Walking Dead.
Brachiator
I’ve recently started watching “Person of Interest,” a show I was vaguely aware of, but had not followed or even read about.
In between errands and other weekend stuff, I will try to catch up on some of the past Oscar season movies. First up is “Bridge of Spies.” I also plan to watch an early Hitchcock, “Secret Agent,” that is free on Amazon Prime.
Germy
@Betty Cracker:
But the “Archives” feature on the right works just fine. Select the month and year and you can see all posts.
lol chikinburd
Today apparently is “Find Out How Everything Has Gone Wrong” day. The assessor has effectively knocked $5K off our house price. A form the hospital was supposed to fax a week ago (when I had hernia repair surgery) was not received by the appropriate party, and so I’ve now had to fax my copy of it to two different numbers (the first corrected number I was given today apparently being erroneous). Two other people I need to get back to me regarding my housing situation after this house closes…aren’t getting back to me. Both my realtor and my only other trusted family advisor are out of contact. At least I managed to get a garbage disposal working again, at a time when I probably shouldn’t have been exerting myself. Ask me if I care about frickin’ basketball right now.
Germy
@Shell: I’ve read that sound-effects people break stalks of celery to get the bone crunching sound.
Technocrat
@redshirt:
There’s an online Rock-Paper-Scissors game where the computer learns to beat you by exploiting your unconscious patterns. That seems similar to what you’re talking about, although I don’t know what the concept is called.
link: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/science/rock-paper-scissors.html?_r=0
Josie
@Josie: I screwed up the italics on my comment and could not figure out how to fix it. Just pretend that I did.
RedDirtGirl
@LAO: Loved Hinterland. Also just watched Red Rock, an Irish cop show on Amazon prime. First season is 44 20-minute episodes!
Poopyman
@khead:
????
Germy
@AkaDad: There’s a new film out called Birth Of A Nation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3FeM21XVWk
Mnemosyne
@Germy:
Have you ever seen the King Vidor version with Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal? It’s hilarious high camp. It comes very close to coming across as parody. Since Rand wrote the script, I suspect that Vidor got sick of her crap and went over the top on purpose.
elmo
The contractors poured my driveway! I am no longer cut off from the outside world! Or at least I won’t be after it’s cured, so I’m still stuck until Monday or Tuesday. Still, yay driveway!
My house sits about 150m back from the road, at the top of a fairly steep hill. Across the base of the hill, and about 30m in from the road, there is a creek. About four weeks ago, the oil delivery truck discovered that the bridge across the creek had been poorly built and badly undermined over the years, and crushed it.
So I’ve been parking at the bottom of the hill and hiking up every day. Often carrying groceries. Once carrying lumber for projects. Nearly always carrying mail, and sometimes heavy packages. Oh, and of course my briefcase.
But how fortunate I have been! The weather has been decent the whole time; there has been no ice, and only rain once; I haven’t needed another oil delivery; and here’s the real lucky part: If the bridge had collapsed on its own due to water and poor design, I’d have had to pay for the repairs myself to the tune of almost ten grand. But since it was an “event,” instead of wear and tear, my homeowner’s insurance is paying to have a proper bridge and culvert built, up to code (the other one wasn’t), with a new pipe sleeve and solid foundation. I am out the grand total of $500 for my deductible.
All hail Nationwide Insurance, savior of the driveway!
Steeplejack
@Knight of Nothing:
It has been reported. A workaround is to enter the date in the address field, e.g.,
https://balloon-juice.com/2016/03/18/
which will get you a front-page-ish list of posts for that date—with working page navigation numbers at the bottom.
You can use this for any date.
ETA: What Betty Cracker said.
El Caganer
@Face: Weren’t the Red State crew tossing that idea around a few days ago?
NotMax
Had to split watching the first episode of the new season of Happy Valley into two sessions. Cannot conceive of binge watching the entire season.
But whatever floats yer boat.
MattF
@Face: One problem is that the leading ‘real’ conservative is Cruz, who would out-flank any ‘establishment’ R candidate.
ruemara
@Mnemosyne: nah, not even sick. Just undesiring of moving or doing. Just have to shake it off.
Thoroughly Pizzled
@redshirt: I’d say that road design, as others have mentioned, as well as people “following the leader,” so to speak, are the likely reasons. There’s a short stretch at the Detroit airport marked 25 mph that I’m pretty sure everyone exceeds by 20.
Germy
@Mnemosyne: I’ve never seen that version. I love old movies, but I draw the line with ol’ Ayn.
A few weeks ago a theater near us was playing “The Girl Can’t Help It” and I’m kicking myself for missing it on the big screen.
Mnemosyne
@Germy:
I’m actually kind of enjoying AkaDad’s posts. They’re just over the top enough to clearly be snark, but still subtle enough to require 2 reads.
Brent
@raven: Not bad but stupid? I guess I don’t see much of a distinction there. My point is that it seems like a plain basketball question and one that I am pretty sure the team is asking themselves.
I don’t have much of an opinion on whether college athletes should be required to attend these pressers. I certainly wouldn’t care if they weren’t. But given that they are, “How did the other team manage to beat you on x aspect of the game?” seems like as straightforward a question as anyone is likely to get after any game at any level. All the snarky response demonstrates, in my opinion, is that Prince either didn’t know the answer or didn’t want to answer the question, which is certainly his prerogative, but it doesn’t make the question itself stupid.
raven
@Mnemosyne: There is an ongoing fight here in Athens about the roads. The main drag that we walk every morning is also a state highway. The state wants to move the traffic coming in from the outlying counties while those of us who live here want it calmed. Here’s our Complete Streets site.
redshirt
@Technocrat: Thanks! Yeah, that’s the idea I’m getting at.
I smoked that robot too knowing it was trying to predict what I’d do.
I guess the overall point I’m trying to make in regards “Predictable unpredictability” is people’s seemingly random behaviors in all areas of life are most likely highly predictable if you could observe enough of the same scenarios. Perhaps we are almost always constrained by unconscious cues.
Mnemosyne
@ruemara:
Okay, but sometimes the body knows what it needs. Rest is important, too.
Germy
@NotMax: Charles Butterworth! He was king of the deadpan.
LAO
@RedDirtGirl: I will definitely give it a go. FYI, the second season of Hinterland is coming April 1st. I am psyched.
raven
@Brent: Well, you have your opinion and I have mine.
NotMax
@Mnemosyne
It’s still almost impossible to sit through. But Neal staring at and drooling over the size of Cooper’s, um, jackhammer is worth the price of admission.
redshirt
@elmo: Cool! Good news. I am planning to pave my driveway and I’ve spent years now considering water control and erosion issues as I live on the side of a mountain.
Water and gravity are forces not to take lightly.
Steve in the ATL
@redshirt:
Give me a few minutes–need to smoke a bowl first
humboldtblue
@Brent: That’s because the only good answer to that question was the one they gave. They grabbed more balls than us. What makes the question inane is the fact that Yale is a top-20 rebounding team and there is an underlying hint of “why did those white guys out-rebound a team filled with athletic black guys?” Also, defensive rebounding is far easier than offensive rebounding and a good team like Yale will take advantage of that.
Mnemosyne
@NotMax:
I love how all of the models of Cooper’s “new!” and “exciting!” architecture are subpar Frank Lloyd Wright ripoffs 30 years after Wright’s heyday. Those are the kinds of touches that make me suspect Vidor was subtly undermining Rand.
And, yes, the jackhammer scenes are pretty jaw-dropping.
AkaDad
@Germy:
Thanks for letting me know. I hope that I’m not dissapointed with this reboot of a classic.
Larv
I’ve been impressed with Bosch on Amazon, based on the Michael Connelly books. They just released season two last week.
Technocrat
@redshirt:
I mean, that makes sense though, right? Consider the alternative – a Completely Unpredictable Human probably couldn’t hold a job, or cross the street, or eat. He’d speak gibberish, wet his pants, walk into walls, etc.
Keith P.
Better Call Saul is pretty damn slow, IMO. I’d much rather be watching “Don’t Fuck With Mike” but it will suffice.
raven
@Technocrat: Oh, Trump people!
Brachiator
@Face:
Nope. There is no evidence that anybody on a downstream ticket is in danger. The GOP will retain control of the Congress no matter what happens in the presidential election. Voters will not stay home because most of them are happy with their own representatives. They just hate everybody else’s representatives.
Running a 3rd candidate confuses whatever the Republican “brand” is supposed to be.
If the GOP had any brains and wanted to get rid of him, they would have dumped Trump after Super Tuesday. If he fails to implode, they may have to reconcile themselves to his candidacy.
They may still find a way to do something incredibly stupid in reaction to his run toward the nomination. Fortunately, it’s not my problem and I get to enjoy the show.
Redshift
Seeing Indigo Girls tonight (rescheduled from February because of snow.) Then our local planetarium is having their annual science fiction weekend, and I’m helping to score the trivia contest on Saturday night. Then an adoption event for my rabbit rescue group on Sunday. Whew!
Brent
@humboldtblue:
Well no. “Yale is a top 20 rebounding team” is a good answer to that question. “Defensive rebounding is far easier than offensive rebounding and a good team like Yale will take advantage of that” is another good answer. “Your question contains an implied racism” is also an interesting answer although I can certainly understand why Prince might be hesitant to take that particular route. But “this is the definition of a rebound” is not an answer at all. Its an attempt to belittle the question and the questioner.
Perhaps there is an argument that that belittiling is deserved.
Germy
@Technocrat:
Sounds like more than a few bosses I’ve had.
raven
@Brent: Wow, you really didn’t like it did you? I think it was fucking great,
Face
@MattF: Out flank? Not sure. My theory is that it does not matter who the candidate is, as long as the rancid base approves. It’s all about giving the really frustrated bible bangers, who ordinarily would say “eff this election!” and stay home, a reason to vote and thus save the GOP Senators and Housers who are on that ballot. Otherwise, only having Trump will depress the vote to the extent that the GOP Senate becomes at risk.
Doing such a thing would be the white flag to the Dems w/r/t the Presidency, but knowing that a GOP Senate and House can neuter President Clinton #2, they’d choose that option as the best of shitty choices.
RedDirtGirl
@LAO: More in this genre, Jack Taylor (alcoholic Irish private detective) and Single-handed (young Garda in the countryside).
ETA: both on Netflix I think.
Steeplejack
@redshirt:
My half-assed hypothesis, from driving around D.C. and along the Baltimore-Philadelphia-New York corridor:
There are certain roads, and even individual sections of roads, where the posted speed limit is merely advisory, at best, e.g., Route 66 in NoVA, George Washington Parkway, large parts of I-95 between Washington and Baltimore, almost the whole New Jersey Turnpike. The speed limit might be 55 mph, but the traffic—all the traffic—is moving at 65-70 mph. Speed limit 65 mph, traffic moving at 75 mph.
So, to your point: I think in a lot of situations there are enough regular, experienced drivers on the route who know what to expect and what they can get away with that they create a sort of “herd” effect that envelops the infrequent drivers, who have a (perhaps unconscious) sense that they need to move with the herd and not stick out (too slow or too fast).
And I think the speeding thing comes from the impulse to cover as much ground as possible while the traffic is moving to the next inevitable slowdown or tie-up.
And I do see cops and the state police pull people over. But it seems to be either a random, “cull the herd/make an example” thing or “Christ, this asshole was doing 90 and lane-hopping all over the place!”
ETA: Similar cause for slower speeds: the regular drivers know where the cops hang out and/or where the road conditions are a bit tricky. There’s one place on I-495 North where the road takes a goodish curve and the traffic always slows down a bit for no reason other than the curve. (And it’s not a curve that actually requires lower speed.)
NotMax
@Redshift
Bonus score for anyone who points out parallels between Trump and The Mule from the Foundation series.
Technocrat
@raven:
LOL, damn. How did I miss that??
Mnemosyne
@raven:
BTW, since you’re on a WWI kick right now, you might enjoy the 4th Blackadder series, which takes place in the trenches. It’s very dark comedy (and does not end happily), but it’s interesting to see what Rowan Atkinson and his writers make of it 70 years later. It’s easy to get on DVD and I believe the title actually is “Blackadder Goes Forth.”
raven
@Mnemosyne: Nice description:
Mnemosyne
@Brent:
With the caveat that I know next to nothing about sportsball, shouldn’t that question be better addressed to the coach than to the players? It’s kind of dickish to ask the players to explain in detail why they sucked so bad right after they lose the game.
MattF
@Steeplejack: I drive on I-95 between DC and Baltimore every day– so I know all about that. Note that the posted speed limit on I-95 is 65, not 55– and the actual speed limit is around 80.
J R in WV
We got Mrs J home from the hospital yesterday afternoon. She had total knee arthoplasty – total replacement, with custom repairs added a not extra charge. Her kneecap was way off center, minor birth defect she adjusted to in her youth. When we were young we had kayaks, and canoed, and caved, and camped and hiked. Never again, but at least we’ll be able to stroll as tourists in interesting places again. Other knee to follow in 3 months or so.
I am whipped tired, but keeping on keeping on. She is really doing well, so I’m doing well too.
I hear there is politics going on! Really? Still??? ;-)
LAO
@RedDirtGirl: I”ve already watched both. But if you haven’t seen The Fall, I can not recommended it enough. Gillian Anderson as a DCI and Jamie Dornan as a serial killer. it was great. (I’m not giving anything away it’s a will they catch him, not a whodonit.)
raven
@Mnemosyne: Some people don’t like the way Richard Sherman answers questions either.
raven
@LAO: Season 3 is in the can too.
RedDirtGirl
@RSR: The woman who created both Happy Valley and Last Tango in Hallifax, also made, and acts in Scott and Bailey, about two women cops in Manchester. I think I had to watch it on YouTube, but it was worth it. Moseley is in that too, and you’ll never see him the same way again after watching him in the first season of this show.
Ok. Lunch time over. Back to work.
Steeplejack
@Fair Economist:
This is true too.
JustRuss
@Brachiator: My wife and I just finished POI on Netflix, apparently there’s a new season underway. They do a nice job of evolving the show and introducing new characters to keep it from getting stale.
My wife’s gone this weekend, so I’ll be bingeing on Witcher 2. Don’t often get to enjoy consecutive uninterrupted hours of monster-killing immersion. Got a book to read too. Should probably work on finding a job too.
RedDirtGirl
@LAO: Seen both seasons!
Ruckus
Betty Cracker
I have moral superiority?
Who would ever have suspected?
satby
@elmo: Hooray! How nice that’s going to be!
LAO
@raven: The Fall?
Mnemosyne
@raven:
I really prefer Atkinson in Blackadder mode than as Mr. Bean. Interesting fact: Atkinson is a stutterer, but it’s true that if the sentences are structured properly, someone with a stutter can do a monologue just as easily as someone who doesn’t, so Atkinson has these wonderful rolling lines of invective. They apparently did a good job of showing how to do that in The King’s Speech.
Gin & Tonic
@NotMax:
Wow.
raven
@LAO: Yes
raven
@Mnemosyne: LIke Mumblim Mel Tillis!
satby
@ruemara: Some days it can help to just veg out too. You need R&R every once in a while, when I get that no motivation feeling, I know it’s usually because the previous weeks stress has built up. Take care of you.
Mnemosyne
@raven:
I love Richard Sherman. I really, really hope he’s able to avoid the curse of CTE, because he’s a really smart and articulate guy (and, yes, I know the “a” word is a little fraught). He’s originally from LA (Compton or Carson, I can’t remember which), so he’s a major local hero out here.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@redshirt: Driving bunching/debunching can depend on a lot of things, but there’s usually a reason for it. On my commute home I almost always go the same way. Part of it I stay very close to the 35 limit, part of it I’m usually ~ 10 over the 45 limit. The slower section has lots of intersections where cars get T-boned and where lots idiots insist on driving at 45-50. I want to be sure I have space available in the slower section. The faster section has many fewer intersections, much less weaving in and out, etc.
I would look for “hidden variables” in your observations – 1) notorious speed trap in a particular place? 2) more accidents there? Stuff like that.
People generally want to drive over the limit if they can. If they’re not doing so in one place and are in another, there’s usually a good reason for it.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
rikyrah
‘The South Side’ tackles Chicago segregation, highlights black neighborhoods
By Jeremy Mikula
Chicago has a segregation problem. That isn’t exactly news to anyone who’s set foot in the city, but ask journalist and author Natalie Moore, and she’ll tell you segregation is a fact of life for Chicagoans, particularly South Siders.
“People know that segregation exists, but they don’t always think about it,” said Moore, WBEZ’s South Side Bureau reporter and the author of “The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation.” “It’s like air and water: You just kind of live it, but you don’t think about it.”
In “The South Side,” which will be published by St. Martin’s Press March 22, Moore investigates how segregation informs South Side living, exploring the structural impact it has on schooling, housing, food access, politics and violence. Moore interweaves touches of family history and her experiences growing up in Chatham, her parents’ move to Beverly, and living in Bronzeville and Hyde Park, where she currently resides.
justawriter
Elementary is one of my must watch shows as well. I also quite like Lucifer … a sympathetic look at the Devil. (He hates that he gets blamed for all the evil we humans do on our own). Usually it takes me a while to get into a show, but I thought the characters and writing were really crisp starting in the first episode.
Steve in the ATL
@redshirt: I’m not a racist, but…merely a keen observer: have you factored in Asian drivers? There are lots where I live, and I can find no pattern as to when they drive 10 mph under the speed limit in the left lane versus when they drive 15 mph under the speed limit in the left lane.
MikefromArlington
So that Paris terrorist attack guy was caught .today
raven
@Mnemosyne: Straight outta Compton
LAO
@RedDirtGirl: Luther? It’s also awesome. If subtitles don’t bother you — would also recommend Spiral (french police procedural) and Witnesses (also a french police procedural). You may be sensing a theme here …lol
redshirt
@Steeplejack: I can buy that on highways. There’s definitely herding factors at play. And I take it as a logical, predictable response that if many other drivers are speeding, then the average driver will speed too, even if unconsciously.
I’m only referring to non-highway roads with my example – one lane roads. It restricts behaviors greatly.
But my theory is not just about driving, though that’s the easiest example. It’s about apparently unconscious behaviors that seem unpredictable yet given enough observation time you’d find they are entirely predictable. Which speaks to a larger issue of free will, and how influenced are we by unconscious cues.
raven
@LAO: And then there was Prime Suspect!
cat
@redshirt:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory
The initial conditions are the road conditions and the free variables are the drivers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_walk
Multi-dimension random walk where each dimension is the probability the drivers inputs into the cars controls.
Everything points to this being best modeled using statistics around driver behavior unless the plan is to use many observed stretches of roads to predict how to build roads with target MPH.
raven
@Mnemosyne:
LAO
@raven: Thanks for the heads up. Although, not quite sure where the story can go after last season.
redshirt
@justawriter: I watched the first 4 or so episodes of Lucifer because technically it’s a comic book show and I loved that story. It’s fun. It’s dumb, silly, cliche, but fun. Haven’t seen the last few episodes. It’s not much like the comicbook though except for the overall premise (Lucifer leaves Hell, opens up a nightclub in LA). Originally from Sandman.
LAO
@raven: I hate American police procedurals but I love British and European. There was a really good Australian crime/politics thriller but for the love of all things, I can’t remember its name.
NotMax
Guilty pleasure on Netflix is Sirens. Puerile, but the ensemble cast meshes excellently.
I use it as a tonic to the determined clench-jawed grimness of some of the detective/police shows.
Betty, have mentioned both multiple times over the course of other threads but if you haven’t caught up with them, River and the Aussie series Rake might fit in your wheelhouse. And I’d wager real folding money you’d fall for the Danish series Rita.
The movie The Physician was an interesting find. In the 11th century, a barber surgeon’s apprentice in Britain undertakes to travel to Persia to study medicine.
raven
@LAO:
RedDirtGirl
@LAO: I think we might be the same person. I’ve seen both of those as well.
Technocrat
@redshirt:
AKA Supernatural Agency
=)
Tinare
@schrodinger’s cat: I plan on binge watching Season 3 of The Americans this weekend (or at least starting to) to get caught up. I taped the first episode of Season 4. It’s still good?
This thread has been great for recommendations on other things to watch.
humboldtblue
@RedDirtGirl: If you want a good Irish Garda cop movie, may I recommend The Guard? Brendan Gleason and Don Cheadle are fantastic and it’s a quirky, fun and dark comedy.
LAO
@RedDirtGirl: LOL.
ETA: I thought Witnesses was great. It seems there is a 2d season coming.
@NotMax: I love Sirens (seriously, stupidly funny), River and Rake — would second your recommendations.
redshirt
@cat: Thanks! Random Walk seems more like what I’m thinking of, and I’d never heard of the theory before. Cool!
redshirt
@Technocrat: Well, if our behaviors are constantly shaped by unconscious cues that we have no awareness of, it’s hard to argue for free will. No supernatural agency required.
Elmo
What? All this stuff about police procedurals, spy shows, dark shows, and no love for The Blacklist? James Spader is absolute genius and a joy to watch. Alan Alda, fer Chrissake!
AkaDad
@Mnemosyne:
I’m glad you’re enjoying my comments and I hope you will support us patriots by making America hate again.
schrodinger's cat
@Tinare: It is as great as it was. I am eagerly awaiting episode 2, on the edge of my seat since I saw the promo.
Brachiator
@redshirt:
Watched and enjoyed the first two episodes. I thought the alternate history timeline was well done.
I’ve been meaning to finish watching the available episodes. They might give a sense of what living under a Trump regime might be like.
Ruckus
@redshirt:
You just aren’t seeing the triggers. They are always there and on a freeway with traffic they don’t take a lot of people to see them because you really can’t drive over the car in front of you. It may be a slight up hill, it may be a roughness in the pavement, a slight corner, whatever. Freeway driving is herd response, we all are in a flow and we have to respond to the flow even if the flow changes for no apparent reason. Part of it is that most people don’t look far enough ahead when they drive. Things come up and surprise them. I used to race for a hobby and some times was tasked with teaching new racers, novices. The biggest issue was how far ahead they looked because the speeds were so much higher than driving on public roads. But the same concept holds when people are looking a distance ahead that is OK at 50mph but going 75. Or looking at their cell phone, or texting……….
Nate Dawg
My recommendations for new TV:
Samantha Bee’s Full Frontal
HBO’s Togetherness
New Season of House of Cards
American Crime Season 2
American Crime Story: The people vs OJ Sumpson: This is the biggest surprise. Such good acting and amazing writing. The show pulls most material from Jeffrey Toobins account of the trial and the memoirs of those involved. Nearly every scene is adapted directly from primary source material, and the courtroom transcripts are almost word for word. Simply amazing. Takes a little while to get to the good stuff (Cochran in court!) but once it does it is mind blowing.
hitchhiker
Bookmarking this thread for all the good recommends. Thanks.
I just did bingewatch Season 2 of Happy Valley. Damn.
humboldtblue
@Brent: Not really, rebounding is far too unpredictable, the ball bounces in funny ways and it’s an inexact science at best and Yale deserves credit for the strong offensive rebounding in the first half. Baylor was a very good rebounding team and they were a better team overall than Yale, but in a one-and-done tournament one off game (those rebounds that normally fall to your grasp all of a sudden fly two feet to the left) ends your season as Baylor, who was a 4 seed last year and lost in the first round, know all to well.
redshirt
@Ruckus: Highway driving is a different beast than one lane road driving, but lets accept that it’s all triggers based on road conditions; it implies most drivers aren’t conscious about what they’re doing, but rather are unconsciously responding to triggers. This could be summarized as stated above as drivers “Driving the road, not the speed limit”, IE people are unconsciously responding to the perceived narrowness of the road because it’s tree lined, even though the width of the road is exactly the same as always and the speed limit is still 50MPH.
Brachiator
@LAO:
What’s the difference?
There was a Scandinavian procedural that popped up on one of the PBS affiliated stations that was pretty good. It featured a journalist crime solver, Annika Bengtzon.
A moody Italian cop show, Inspector Montalbano, is also pretty good. I love the exteriors of the city in which the series is set. I get the impression that the version shown here is less explicit than the original transmission, and cuts down on the sexuality.
redshirt
@Brachiator: I forget what episode its in, but there’s some wonderful scenes of VA (Victory in America) Day which look like the 4th of July, except of course, everything’s NAZI.
Randy P
@redshirt: Well… sure. That’s kind of the nature of all of physics. Air molecules bounce around “randomly”, but if the wind is blowing to the west, that randomness is on average to the west, and if the wind is blowing east then that randomness is on average to the east.
So it’s randomness around an underlying trend. And since quantum mechanics taught us that the universe at the particle level is fundamentally random, that’s pretty much the way all of nature behaves if you look closely enough. Even the parts you think are nailed down and not random.
Betty Cracker
@NotMax: I did like “River,” and “Rake” is on my list for the next time I fall into a “show hole.” :) Is the Danish series subtitled? I realize it marks me as déclassé, but I generally avoid subtitles unless something is just so damn good I can’t resist. (Nearsightedness…)
MomSense
DAREDEVIL.
redshirt
@Randy P: Can people’s behaviors be described by quantum mechanics?
Randy P
@Mnemosyne: Random thing this made me think of: There was a charming Oscar-nominated short film this year called Stutterer, which we saw when we caught the annual showing of the “Oscar Nominated Short Films” at our local art theater. Actually, I think it won. I highly recommend it.
maurinsky
RE: TV, I feel like I may be on a different planet than most people, because I love shows that have not been mentioned: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Jane the Virgin…I vastly prefer comedy to drama, so I also watch The Grinder (which is kind of awesomely bizarre in an unexpected way), Broad City and I’m digging the cinematic scope and feel of You, Me and the Apocalypse.
As far as predictable human driving behavior, I have noticed that there is one road that I am always behind slow drivers who go 10 or so miles BELOW the speed limit. I think it’s because there is a shopping mecca on one end of the road and because it’s one of the roads that goes from the north end of town to the south end of town with not too many lights or stop signs, so it attracts more people. It is also, unfortunately, a road I have to take to get home from work, so I always stuck behind pokey people.
There is also a highway I drive on that I have observed people driving way over the speed limit in the morning (I am driving in to work at 6:30 a.m.), but on the way home at 3:30, people tend to be driving under the speed limit on the same highway.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@redshirt: Everything can be described by quantum mechanics, but it doesn’t make sense to do so. The wave functions are pretty tightly confined. ;-)
What’s the wavelength of a baseball?
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
Randy P
@redshirt: No, but they can be described by equations and by statistics and there is clearly some underlying cause here which is affecting average speed. So the speed of people in each area is some distribution around a different average.
Random people in Texas are more likely to have votes clustering around the Republican/insane side of issues and random people in Vermont are going to have votes clustering around the Democratic/sane side (gee did I let some editorial judgment creep in there?). Those are average behaviors. Individually there’s wide variation around those averages. But you can still identify the averages as real things and probably find causal explanations for those averages.
I used quantum mechanics as a random thing that particles do. I didn’t mean to imply that everything random is QM, only that randomness is everywhere but randomness has trends. With electrons as well as people.
Edit: I was really responding to your original question, which was “is there such a thing as predictable unpredictability?” To which I am saying in a very verbose way: yes. There’s predictability underneath virtually every random thing.
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
Yes, subtitled.
If that’s a deal breaker, so be it.
But give maybe 2 episodes a go. It might just hook you. Synopsis: She’s a school teacher (darn good one, too) who doesn’t take sh*t from anyone.
One thing noticeable is how gosh darn clean Denmark is.
Steeplejack
@redshirt:
My point wasn’t about speeding per se, it was about the herd behavior, which goes to your “apparently unconscious behaviors” and “unconscious cues.” The speeding is just one example.
redshirt
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Not gravity, apparently. Hashtag #Einsteinwasright
Bob In Portland
Elizabeth Holmes.
Mnemosyne
@smith:
You didn’t warn me there was a “Hamilton” joke at the end and made me laugh out loud at work. Thanks a lot
;-)
Ruckus
@redshirt:
Highway driving isn’t different other than the number of lanes. The act is the same, driving. The triggers are the same. Something causes people to react to the perceived speed they are traveling. Not everyone reacts the same way of course but enough do. It looks less than random because it is less than random, given a large enough sample. That doesn’t mean everyone will react the same way or to the same extent but a large portion of people will. Traffic engineers have studied this for decades, trying to get traffic to flow better while keeping the speeds down enough to better limit destruction and death.
ETA and of course sometimes the road goes where the road has to go, so there are things that would be better if done differently but there are overriding factors.
redshirt
@Steeplejack: Maybe this delves to far into opinion, but herd behaviors are logical to me. Predictable. Whereas the lone driver on a one lane road has no herd, and yet his/her unpredictability (10 under here, 10 over there) is highly predictable. It’s a different phenomena I think.
I think the cell phone is a great contributor to herd behaviors on the highway. When talking on the phone and driving, I posit a person will unconsciously attempt to match the speed of drivers they can see.
NotMax
@LAO
Have you by any chance sampled Man Seeking Woman on FX? Also stupid funny.
Tentatively guess it might be up your alley.
daveNYC
Happy Valley is baller, but I can’t imagine binge watching it. It’s pretty depressing.
redshirt
@Ruckus: I agree with your explanation, but disagree with your opening statement. Highway driving is designed to be much freer of distractions, and there’s extra lanes which allows for safe and even recommended passing. A one lane road offers none of that. And I’m not talking about a collection of drivers on a one lane road, but rather the single driver. Its obvious on a one lane road you are greatly restricted in what speed you can do by the driver in front of you, whereas on a highway you can just pass them if you choose.
LAO
@Brachiator: I don’t no why, maybe because I’m a criminal defense attorney and I find it difficult to root for American law enforcement (and I have a limited ability to suspend my irritation at the procedural mistakes?) The one exception (and my brother is a LEO and we both agree) was the Wire. Damn that show was so well done and close to correct.
Calouste
@Face: Trump could threaten to run his own down ticket candidates and/or endorse the Libertarian/Constitution/Freedom party candidates lower on the ticket. Enough Trumpzombies would listen to what the Leader tells them to make it a disaster for the GOP. They can’t afford to lose 10% of the vote, maybe not even 5%.
Miss Bianca
@LAO:
I’ve been trying to get season 2 of “The Fall” on DVD but for some reason, even tho’ they released season 1 over here, they did not release season 2…now I’m stuck on perpetual cliff-hang.
ETA: Or at least they hadn’t last time I checked, which was several months ago.
LAO
@NotMax: No, but will definitely give it a try. I’m almost embarrassed to admit how much I liked The League. Which was also stupid funny.
LAO
@Miss Bianca: Totally bummer. It was/is seriously my favorite show. When season 2 came out on Netflix, I locked myself in my apartment with enough food and drink to last 3 days and did not move from my couch.
LAO
Re: The Wire — every time I get discovery from the government on a criminal case — I utter, under my breath, “Is you taking notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy.” EVERY TIME!
Miss Bianca
@LAO:
Does this mean I have to cough up for Netflix? : (
Spent a bit of time in Belfast last year and it was kind of a blast to realize “oh, hey! I know where that park is!” and stuff like that. Story a bit grimdark for my tastes but what a cast…I may have to watch X-Files some day after all, just for Gillian Anderson…
Randy P
Here’s kind of a Netflix suggestion, which I just watched: The Americanization of Emily. I’ve been meaning to watch this for literally decades and finally got around to it. Saw a piece of if as a kid, and was mightily impressed that one of my favorite TV stars (James Garner of The Rockford Files) was in not just a movie, but a movie with Julie Andrews, whom I also worshiped.
But that’s about all I remembered about it.
So I finally saw it and I’m amazed. It was a great movie and a lot of fun, but I can’t get over the fact that it was made in 1964. It takes place just before D-Day (which provides the climax of the film) and is amazingly cynical in many ways about the military. My memory of the 1960s is that American entertainment was pretty worshipful about the military, ESPECIALLY the WW2 military. The anti-war movement against Vietnam hadn’t really gotten going yet, and to my memory didn’t really show up in movies until the 70s.
So how the heck did this film get made in 1964? Not only is it anti-war, but it’s frankly sexual. Garner’s job includes procuring pretty women (with day jobs as, for instance, nurses) to act as escorts and sleep with high-ranking officers. How the heck did THAT survive the studio machine of 1964?
And the beloved Julie Andrews is one of them! And has some dialog talking about her experience sleeping with soldiers and how many of them she’s fallen in love with just before they get killed. How the heck did Julie Andrews HAVING SEX get made in 1964?
Anyway both of these stars are gorgeous and they make a great couple and a great very cynical film.
LAO
@Miss Bianca:
Yes. Especially as Raven has informed me that there is a season 3. Also lots of good TV and documentaries on Netflix.
Matt McIrvin
@redshirt: You are Hari Seldon. Watch out for the Mule.
schrodinger's cat
@Miss Bianca: I watched the first episode, Mulder got on my last nerve. I still have to get to the other episodes.
jurassicpork
On the home front: The kitten is just to get your attention.
Steve in the ATL
@humboldtblue:
IIRC, this what made Dennis Rodman so great at it. He would study each player’s missed shots so he could predict which way they were likely to bounce. This put him in right place to get the rebound more often than other players who hadn’t done their homework.
Clearly, however, he is less skilled at determining which foreign leaders are worth befriending.
Miss Bianca
@LAO:
Wait, wait, not yet! I was inspired to check again and it’s *finally* out! A quick hold placed and voila…free media will prevail for me for at least another day!
ETA: Wait, did I say “Free”? Tax-payer funded media! Rules!
John Revolta
@Mnemosyne: As Eddie Selzer once put it, storming into a story meeting at Warner’s: “What does all this goddamned laughter have to do with the making of animated cartoons?”
Isobel
@MattF: I tried that approach when I got seasons 1-5 in December. They were so good, I’d watched them all before the end of February. So, so good.
On another note, I’m re watching Person of Interest seasons 1-4 in anticipation of the last season.
Mnemosyne
@Randy P:
The Production Code started breaking down in the mid-1950s due to a lot of factors including pressure from television, the studios being forced to sell off their theater chains after an anti-trust suit, and the “Miracle” decision (Joseph Burstyn Inc v Wilson) by the Supreme Court, which ruled that state censorship boards could not base their decision on whether a film was sacriligious. So, yes, 1964 is right in that time period where studio censorship was almost dead but the ratings system had not yet replaced it.
ruemara
@raven: It’s actually very funny. And incredibly dark.
I moved. Finally. Just the mood swings from dark to onyx. Time to make the sauces for the co-worker monday birthday lunch. Black bean pasta with vodka turkey sauce for the meat eater, mushroom avocado for the vegan. I get… no carb pasta. yay.
LAO
@Miss Bianca: You taker!! Enjoy the “free stuff” and if you though season 1 dark and creepy … prepare yourself.
Knight of Nothing
@Betty Cracker & @Steeplejack: right on, thank you both!
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@redshirt: Mr. Higgs might have an argument to pick with Mr. Einstein about that. ;-) But, you’re right, quantum gravity hasn’t been fully worked out yet.
Cheers,
Scott.
SiubhanDuinne
@Randy P:
The Americanization of Emily is on my all-time Top Ten list. I’ve pushed it here from time to time. Just a wonderful film in every way.
Another James Garner/D-Day movie I’m very fond of is 36 Hours, co-starring Rod Taylor and Eva Marie Saint. It was also a 1964 release.
Miss Bianca
@LAO:
I plan to be drinking heavily and wincing all the way thru’. Just like I spent St. Paddy’s ; )
(not really. I actually drank fairly moderately, considering. But “give the fiddler a dram” ain’t just a line in a song, apparently, so what could I do? At least it was craft gin and not Jaegermeister).
SiubhanDuinne
@J R in WV:
I wish her a speedy and pain free recovery.
Bill Murray
I would suggest, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries. An Australian show set in the late 1920s with a flapper-esque heroine. It is on Netflix, and based on a book series, and really quite good
satby
@Randy P: if you haven’t seen it, Victor/Victoria has both Andrews and Garner and a fun storyline that was very gay friendly for the time it was made.
MomSense
@raven:
Isn’t there supposed to be another season of Peaky Blinders soon? I really hope so.
I’m having a private concert right now. Kid just played some Albert King for me. Then he did some acoustic wonderfulness. Oh and I bought tickets for Dylan and Mavis Staples this summer.
Mnemosyne
Just when you think the cast of “Hamilton” could not possibly be nicer people, out comes a story today about Lin-Manuel’s substitute undergoing cancer treatment last winter and the whole cast pulling together to help him.
MomSense, I’m afraid your crush on Leslie Odom Jr. will only grow thanks to this.
Amir Khalid
Somehow, this doesn’t sound like very good political advice.
MomSense
@Mnemosyne:
Wait Lin had cancer?????
ETA My obsession affects my cognition. Wow.
Brachiator
@LAO:
Ah, that makes a certain sense.
I loved Homicide, which I think was from some of the same people, but still have not yet watched The Wire. But it’s on the list.
Trollhattan
@dr. bloor:
There’s seriously a thing called Dunkin’ Donuts Arena? Sounds about as athletic as the Crisco Bowl.
different-church-lady
@Amir Khalid: You think Salon actually paid money for that?
Ruckus
@redshirt:
You obviously don’t live in a big city area. Such as LA or Chicago or……… Yes you can pass when traffic is light, but in a place such as LA traffic rarely is other than 2-3 in the morning. Yes there are heavier traffic times but even light traffic usually means that traffic is flowing at normal speeds, which is the same with many cars or few. And these slowdowns are caused by people’s perceptions of what they see. It doesn’t have to be the same for everyone and isn’t but if it is the same for enough people the number of lanes only means that more people will travel at the speed of the average.
Once again, the concept may look random to you but it really isn’t. That it isn’t obviously rigid is what I think is getting to you. If it was totally random there would be far more accidents than there are because people would not react to outside clues. That we normally react to outside stimuli while driving keeps driving from being as dangerous as it could be. That not everyone does this the same way makes this look a bit more random because some people don’t slow down or speed up in the same places. Not everyone has the same skill level and not everyone has a sane idea of what their limits are, nor do they take into account what others skill levels are.
Brent
@Mnemosyne: I wouldn’t say so. Players are obviously perfectly qualified to answer basketball questions and it really was just a basketball question. To put it another way, if you didn’t ask them something like that, what in the world would you ask them?
My sense is that the much more common sort of question and what counts as really stupid is asking things like “How does it feel to lose?” Being asked: how did this team beat you in such and such a way is, if you are going to ask a question at all, a pretty direct one.
@raven:
Well sure. It certainly struck me as just a little condescending and rude. I am instinctively put off when anyone makes a point of belittling someone else, especially for public consumption and especially when they are just trying to do their job.
But really, he’s a young kid that had just lost a game and was probably at the end of a long press conference where I am sure he did have to answer a lot of objectively stupid questions. I certainly didn’t think it was any big deal. My point was really more that it struck me as rather a negative overreaction to a fairly standard basketball question.
Trollhattan
@schrodinger’s cat:
Is Holly Tailor (Paige) the best young actress working? My 8-ball says “hell yes.”
How I love The Americans. It and Better Call Saul are making for a very good teevee run at the moment.
Amir Khalid
@different-church-lady:
You’d think a Bernista, of all people, would know that Bernie has been saying this for decades. Yeah, Salon must have paid him for this. Unless, they’ve started encouraging writers to contribute work for “exposure”, which I hear is starting to be a thing.
Germy
How to write successful fiction: Plotting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wtmc9XYjSZ8
How to use a mechanical plotting device. From the 1941 film “Blonde Inspiration” starring Virginia Grey, John Shelton & Charles Butterworth
JMG
@Trollhattan: It used to be the Providence Civic Center, but naming rights intervened. Locally known as the Dunk, which at least makes basketball sense.
humboldtblue
@Steve in the ATL: Charles Barkley over his first 10 seasons (initial 8 with Philly) was the hardest working man in professional sports and it was his rebounding that sparkled. The willingness to move, work, and use that gigantic ass of his added a dimension to his game (people forget how strong and athletic he was as a young man) that few others possessed.
He has never endorsed a midget dictator either as far as I know.
Gin & Tonic
@Trollhattan: Dunkin’ Donuts’ corporate headquarters is nearby (albeit in Massachusetts) and the company is a major presence in the area, with a DD on every corner and in every gas station. So they bought naming rights as part of a refurbishment of the previously-decaying arena a few years ago. As pointed out, everybody calls it either “the Civic Center” or “the Dunk.”
Germy
@Amir Khalid:
When I first started writing for online markets, I made three sales. I sold my house, my car and my furniture.
2liberal
@raven:
fuck the fucking friars. the rhode island legislature loves them. /URI graduate
Mnemosyne
@MomSense:
I remember a whole thing on Twitter this winter where both Lin and Javi were sick and Jon Rua had to step in, but I had no idea it was so serious. They did a good job of keeping it quiet until he was ready to talk about it.
humboldtblue
@Gin & Tonic: Dunkin’ has become a global brand and part of that is the partnership with Fenway Sports Group which purchased Liverpool a five years ago. I grew up with Dunkin’ as a regional brand but they have gone national and then multi-national. I didn’t realize they owned Basking Robbins as well.
redshirt
@Ruckus: Well certainly, traffic on the highway with congestion is a different subject all together. I suspect you could model it on fluid dynamics and not be far off.
But I’m talking about drivers with no impediments, no bumper to bumper traffic. They’re making their own decisions, and yet, apparently, they are not.
Trollhattan
@JMG: @Gin & Tonic:
After ARCO ceased existing our arena naming rights devolved to “Sleep Train” which at least accurately describes the product.
Its half-billion dollar replacement will be a techie showplace, which will at least distract from the carnage on the floor. Fastest big construction project I’ve ever witnessed, and in the middle of downtown to boot. If they can do that you’d think they could acquire a rebounding power forward and an actual goddamn point guard.
raven
@2liberal: I got no dog in that fight except I spent 6 months of my Vietnam tour in the 107th Signal, RI NG!
Trollhattan
@2liberal:
If they were the Fryers they could play in Dunkin’ Donuts Arena. That would be cool.
Steve in the ATL
@humboldtblue: But he is an out of the closet Republican. Now sure which is worse….
raven
@MomSense: Yes, Peaky is coming up.
Steeplejack
@Brachiator:
I was wondering whether to issue another futile recommendation of Montalbano, which is a tremendous series. It’s good enough that I got the whole series on DVD, but I first saw it on MHz, which is the channel I think you’re referring to (Annika Bengtzon, etc.) MHz is not available everywhere, but I think all their shows are available on Amazon Instant Video (and maybe on Roku?).
The only “cuts” MHz makes to Montalbano are some slightly prudish pixelation of nudity (sometimes even on paintings and statues!) and occasional “bleeping” of profanity in the English subtitles.
For people who do get MHz, their International Mystery omnibus at 9:00 p.m. and midnight ET every night is a pretty good miscellany of European cop shows and mysteries. Tonight it’s Bruno Cremer as Inspector Maigret in the excellent series from the ’90s. They’re also currently running Braquo (dirty French cops), The Baantjer Mysteries (mostly clean Dutch cops), Codename Hunter (Norwegian cops and spies), Kennedy’s Brain (from Henning Mankell’s novel), Dirty Money, White Lies (bad Swedish cops), A French Village (during the German occupation in World War II), Nicholas Le Floch (police official working the royal court and the mean streets of Paris in the 1750s) and Spiral, mentioned above by several people. In the past they have run the original Swedish Wallander and some good German series. There was even one about a Finnish P.I. that was pretty good.
ETA: For people looking for MHz on their cable system, this is the same channel that carries France 24, which many here got onto after the Paris massacre last year.
humboldtblue
@Steve in the ATL: He is but at least he comes at it as a man who worked his ass off, who came from very humble beginnings and who doesn’t coddle. That makes him far less a Republican then a guy who doesn’t abide those he thinks are whiners.
Mike in NC
Too much good stuff on Netflix to take in. We got caught up on “The Fall” and “Doc Martin” but never finished “Last Tango in Halifax” and a few other series. Great to see more episodes of “(Un)happy Valley” are available. Began to watch “Jessica Jones” but lost interest after a few episodes.
We’re also trying to get through “11.22.63” on Hulu (wife is the biggest Stephen King fan out there) but not enough hours in the day to veg out in front of the TV.
Mnemosyne
@Steve in the ATL:
Not anymore — he switched to the Democrats in 2008. He said that even protecting his riches wasn’t worth sticking with the Republicans.
humboldtblue
@raven: April if I am not mistaken. I hope, hope, hope that Tommy chooses May over that Belfast Orange horror Grace, but I sense the writers see Grace and the baby as his anchor and May and his nephew as the heart of the criminal empire trying to go good, ala Michael Corleone.
Gin & Tonic
@Trollhattan: As a (very) longtime fan of the New York Knickerbockers, I generally find it best to avoid disparaging anyone else’s NBA team.
Trollhattan
@Gin & Tonic:
That was all mine, baby!
/Dick Vitale
humboldtblue
Talk about rebounding, here’s a Dayton Flyers fan who’s going to need to rebound after watching his team fall to Syracuse
Robert Sneddon
@John Revolta: Michael Bentine used to make a comedy show at the BBC which often featured the iconic Television Centre building as a prop, sinking it like the Titanic or sending it off into space.
This bothered the higher-ups in the BBC who considered it disrespectful so eventually a memo was sent around stating “The premises of the Television Centre are not to be used for the purposes of entertainment.”
schrodinger's cat
@Trollhattan: She is a good actress, but I find her character pretty annoying. Pastor Groovyhair is in big trouble next week, from the promos.
gogol's wife
@Mnemosyne:
That’s a nice article — I didn’t know about this. Nice about Mel Brooks.
Mnemosyne
@gogol’s wife:
It sounds like they were keeping it very quiet until he was well again. I’ve heard that Javier Munoz is very good as Hamilton, with a slightly different take on the character, so it’s worth seeing his version.
Kathleen
@redshirt: I don’t know anything about mathematical modeling, but I do know that, without fail, the Kentucky driver in front of me will go at the speed that will cause me to miss the green light at the next intersection (the slowing down and taking up two lanes to make a right turn on red as I seethe impotently in the left turn lane is guaranteed).
RedDirtGirl
@humboldtblue: LOVED IT!
Ruckus
@redshirt:
No they are making their own decisions, they just make mostly the same decisions. Survival mostly and experience in knowing what works and possibly what doesn’t. We aren’t talking about molecules in a fluid, we are talking about humans making decisions. A great many of them have learned that if one person sees something it must be there. Not necessarily a valid response but one that is not random. Another example might be politics. How many people see a felon in Clinton, that she’s going to be indited any day now? It’s been proven time and again that none of this is true but people still believe it and react to it in irrational ways. If it was random it wouldn’t have the same effect.
redshirt
@Ruckus: That’s why we’re talking about different things. You’re talking about predictable even if illogical behavior. I’m talking about predictable unpredictable behavior that does not appear logical.
I would argue that people behave like molecules in a fluid in stop and go traffic on the highways. I recall reading a study many years ago. It makes sense within my theory because you’re forced to pay more attention during stop and go traffic, and there’s very limited ability to do anything than what the majority of drivers are doing. It’s hard to be too variable when 5 lanes are stopping and starting and going 5-15 MPH.
Mnemosyne
@redshirt:
The common metaphor that traffic engineers use is a coiled spring — it contracts in certain areas and then springs out in others. Part of what you’re probably seeing is the effects of one street/area that feels “tight” to drivers (so they drive more slowly) followed by one that feels more “loose” (so they drive faster).
Sawgrass Stan
@redshirt: I was waiting to see if anyone else was watching “Man..” It’s a pretty great show.
redshirt
@Mnemosyne: Agreed. “Tight” and “loose” is a great way to describe the behavior. So what would make a flat straight away feel tight and a curved, wooded section feel loose?
I guess I’m getting at an idea that this unpredictable behavior goes beyond logic, so far as explained yet.
redshirt
@Sawgrass Stan: It made me want to start smoking again. I didn’t, thank you much.
humboldtblue
@RedDirtGirl: Fantastic
Brachiator
@Steeplejack:
Yes! The Mhz programs.
Thanks for the info on the other shows. I think a review of the DVD of Montalbano suggested that this was also the censored/pixelated version, but I am not sure. Still, a good show, and the scenery and photography is often gorgeous.
Another reviewer noted that when the characters eat, it is often fantastic Italian meals. Adds to the … flavor of the show.
Ruckus
@redshirt:
No we are talking about the same thing.
Predictable behavior is not the same thing as rigid behavior. What I’m talking about is that even predictable behavior is not always one thing. That’s why some people don’t slow down where most everyone else does. It’s the reaction to the surroundings, not an unpredictable response. People are not molecules that exhibit random or linear behavior. Inside each of us is an ability to think/solve problems. Some of course are better at that than others but it is not a built in behavior as molecules have. We are also creatures of habit, we tend to repeat our behavior if it works for us, be it rational or irrational to others, a learned response. That we don’t have exactly the same response all the time nor that we sometimes respond in very similar fashion to the same stimulus is that we are not programed robots or molecules, although in politics some sure act like it. We are the sum of our parts, even when many of those parts have fairly predictable reactions, the sum of the parts don’t.
trnc
Netflix rec: Broadchurch, Season 1. You’ve likely seen it since it’s in the same vain as Happy Valley, but hey, you ask, I answer.
gogol's wife
@Mnemosyne:
A close relative of mine saw him in it and thought he was great.
redshirt
@Ruckus: I think we very much are talking about different things. I’m not talking simply about predictable behaviors.
But rather, predictable behaviors that are in fact erratic. Unpredictable. Not logical.
Take a single car with no other traffic on the road. In my thesis I am positing that this single driver’s behavior would be predictable even as it goes against the posted speed limits of the road. In this scenario the posted speed limit is the control for consciousness, and the actual speed represents unconscious behavior.
Example: I could take you on a ride tomorrow at 10 AM and tell you what the drivers ahead of us will do all along a 40 mile stretch of one lane (sometime two lane) road. Within 80-85% accuracy.
How can I do such a thing?
gkoutnik
@redshirt: “Predictable Irrational” by Dan Ariely.
bjacques
Is BBC America carrying The Night Manager, the adaptation of the novel by John Le Carre’? Stars Tom Hiddleston, Hugh Laurie, Tom Hollander and Olivia Coleman. It’s great! Sunday nights.
Also catching up on Line of Duty, second season.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Brachiator:
I don’t think my Montalbano DVDs are pixelated, but it’s been a while since I watched one, and they’re not drenched in nudity anyway.
It is a great series, well written and acted. And the cinematography is gorgeous. It put Sicily on my list of places I’d like to visit.
Ruckus
@redshirt:
How can I do such a thing?
Because you are observant? And yet not.
The speed limit is an arbitrary limit placed on a road for a couple of reasons. Safety, revenue enhancement. Many speed limits have been in place for decades, when vehicles didn’t have as good brakes/tires and handled like donkey carts. How often do you see speed limits changed? The speed limit is not necessarily the only speed that a piece of road can be traveled at. It is at best an average of what is possible and necessary or legally limited. Some don’t care at all about those limits, but most do. Those in the most group’s behavior is rational and predictable because people generally are somewhat rational and predictable, at least about driving. It’s just not random unpredictable behavior. It’s a learned process. Young drivers generally drive faster because they are willing to take greater chances and they haven’t learned the cost of being reckless and law breaking. For most that gets learned rather fast one way or another. For others they think their skills are much better or their risk levels are higher. They are making decisions, such as I’m late or I’m in a hurry, or get the fuck out of my way, not random unpredictability.
Hobbes
@LAO Was it “The Code“?
dimmsdale
Many thanks for the recommendations, everybody. I’ll just second recommendations for Spiral, the French ‘law and order’ series–it’s French, but grimy, gritty, almost no Parisian glamour whatsoever, and altogether fun. No one mentioned Bletchley Circle, 2 (short) seasons set in postwar London, a band of women, formerly code breakers, solving murders (much more fascinating and well acted than I just made it sound). The Aussie detective series someone mentioned upthread was possibly Jack Irish, nicely written, paced and shot, but in need of subtitles for non-Aussies. Also Borgen, a Danish series (3 seasons that I know of) about a woman legislator ascending to Prime Minister, and the costs to her marriage and sense of integrity–loved it. Nobody mentioned The Hour, a drama about producing a TV news show at the BBC in the ’50s, with Romola Garai, Dominic West and Ben Whishaw…if you liked Good Night and Good Luck, this is worth a look. Nobody mentioned Life on Mars so I’ll throw that in, just saw it–a police procedural set in the 1970s that ran 2 seasons, with John Simm and the amazing Philip Glenister, and the final episode was just about the best series ending I’ve ever seen.
Barney
Happy Valley a ‘Netflix original’? Ahem. It’s the pride of the BBC. Well worth watching (I hope Netflix paid a good price for it – no reason it shouldn’t be on BBC America).
I’ll second RedDirtGirl’s recommendation of Irish crime drama Single-Handed (though, like her, I don’t know for sure if it’s on Netflix).