Media

Just wanted to remind everyone that Act 1 of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is up today. Acts 2 & 3 will be up Thursday and Saturday. I just watched it; it's great.

Has anyone seen the documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car?"? We watched it last night, and I'm still all fired up.

It deals mainly with the GM EV-1, and all-electric car that came about because of the zero-emissions mandate enacted by California in the early 90's. It shows how they were fast (really fast!) and quiet, but doesn't shy away from their downsides, mainly their limited range (60 miles per charge at first, but 120 in the later models--newer lithium-ion batteries in an EV-1 could easily do 300).

They were much loved by the people leasing them, but then when the leases were up, GM wouldn't re-up the leases, collected all the cars and destroyed them. No official explanation was given, but several auto industry representatives said that no one wanted a car that could only go 120 miles per charge and required charging overnight (but could get an 85% charge in an hour). This was in spite of a huge waiting list due to the fact that they insisted on hand assembling the cars, which artificially drove up the price and increased production time.

Personally, I would LOVE a car that I could plug in overnight that would take me to work & back each day with some charge left over for some errands. To think that such a thing existed, was actually on the roads and was killed really turns my stomach, especially in light of the mess we're in right now with gas prices. Since they were taken off the roads, we could've had 6 more years of development and improvement on these cars, but instead we're wasting money and time on pie-in-the-sky ideas like hydrogen cars and half measures like hybrids, with a bright light being plug-in hybrids that should be here 'soon.'

I can only imagine how well these would sell these days. If only GM had stuck with it, they'd be raking in the money instead of losing billions on big gas-guzzling SUVs.

I highly recommend this movie. I can't recommend it enough.

This guy, however, disagrees. While there is some truth to some of the points he makes (specifically the list in #1), mostly he's having fun calling conjecture 'fact.' You can have your own fun by comparing his argument tactics to Wikipedia's list of logical fallacies. While you're at it, you may as well figure out which one I'm using in this paragraph

On a side note, the movie also touches on how, in the mid 20th century, GM bought out a bunch of streetcar companies, dismantled the electric streetcars and replaced them with GM buses. More info here.

Have I ever mentioned that?

Here's the preview from his upcoming 'Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog':


Teaser from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on Vimeo.

In other Joss news, he will be returning to TV (his true home) with 'Dollhouse,' which also looks excellent.

And lastly, Cyndi & I are slowly rewatching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. We're nearing the end of season 2. It's truly the perfect TV show. Way better than that crap JK mentioned years ago when I told him he should watch it, but he wouldn't because he doesn't like 'that kind of show.'


Update 7/1/08: There's a comic to introduce the characters here.

This silly lost quiz thinks I'm Charlie:



...but, I think I'm more of a John Locke:



But, maybe--with my dashing good looks and penchant for attracting former (and sadly, not so former) heroin addicts--I'm a Claire:

So, in an effort to reduce our debt, we're cancelling cable TV so we can direct the money we would've spent on cable to credit cards. To avoid an all-out child revolt and personal withdrawal, we've joined netflix. We're thinking of it as TV methadone. Of course, if we didn't join netflix, we could apply even more money to debt, but then again, we could also bathe in a stream to save money on showers or something equally drastic like drying our clothes on a clothesline in the basement to avoid using the dryer, one of the biggest money-suckers in the house (oh, wait, we are going to do this last part...).

Anyway*, back to the point of this pointless entry. We've joined netflix. Won't you be me my netflix friend?

In other netflix news, they've come out with a new set-top box that lets you watch your netflix instant queue on the TV. The reviews are somewhat mixed. The price is good ($100 for the box, no extra fees from netflix), it works well, etc. But, only a fraction of netflix's total collection, 10,000 or so titles, is available for instant viewing. My opinion is that they're probably continually adding to the instantly-viewable collection and that the box would be worth it.


* Almost all of my sentences begin with 'so' or 'anyway.' ( <-- I still hate putting the period inside the quote.)