• Battlestar Galactica: Not the original TV series from the late 1970s but the new TV series on the Sci-Fi Channel. The channel originally broadcast a two-part (4 hour) mini-series sometime last year, and then evidently encouraged by the success of that decided to go ahead with a regular one-hour every Friday night at 10 pm.
The show is one of the better sci-fi shows
I've seen in a while: it avoids cliches, sees through false optimism,
has untidy endings, people of ambiguous moral sensibilities, and it
doesn't hurt that there is a very hot model-looking actress who is
supposed to be an alien presence in someone's brain. The special
effects are much more realistic that one might expect, and salivating
space geeks everywhere no doubt are blogging frantically about the yaw,
pitch, and
roll effects of the spacecraft in interstellar space. The basic premise
of
the show is that humanity's home has been destroyed and taken over by a
race
of robotic entities which were created a long time ago by humans
themselves. Humans meanwhile are drifting aimlessly through space
trying to outrun these robots who want to track down every last one of
them. There's a woman President, a pock-marked military commander, a
hot-headed woman fighter pilot with
the unfortunate callname Starbuck (a leftover from the '70s), a
self-obsessed English scientist who talks to himself, and various other
richly formed characters who grapple with high falutin' issues. A
couple of downsides: the characters say "frack" instead of "fuck,"
which is really annoying; and there's some sort of underlying story
about God and religion that may become tedious.
But otherwise, this is better than most sci-fi shows you have ever seen
(OK,
except the Shatner Star Trek and Deep Space 9). The two-part
mini-series
is out on DVD (review).
Go rent it, ye geeks.ICE Today: One of several new cultural and news magazines in Bangladesh edited by my cousin Luva. This one is dedicated to fashion and stuff like that. I thought I'd give a shout out.
• Jamini: This may be the best arts magazine issued in South Asia these days. Also issued from Dhaka and edited by my cousin Luva, the writing is superb, the design is amazing, and the quality is superlative.
Recent articles include pieces by by Monica Ali, Amiri
Baraka, and Vikram Seth. Although most of the essays are South
Asia-centered, the journal
is international in its scope and makes the leap over the east-west
divide pretty seamlessly. For a decent review of an early issue of the
journal, go here.• Pitchforkmedia.com: Probably the best place to find and hear about new and independent music. They also have cool mp3 files for downloads.
• Pop Matters: Their major column writers can be over-verbose, like college student juniors over-compensating in their final term papers, but some of the writers are quite good. You just have to know which ones. A good site for all things pop cultural. If you can get over the self-referential nature of the reviews (music, movies, books, DVDs, comics, computer games), they are useful for the quick summaries of just about everything ever released under the Sun. No matter what kind of pop culture you find interesting, you will probably find a review of it here. They also have great mp3s for download here.
• James Wolcott: Now that Christopher Hitchens has abandoned reason and good cause (and his wit, it seems), progressives can stop looking for a worthy replacement. James Wolcott is that person. He is (also) a writer for Vanity Fair but don't let that ward you off. He's eloquent, armed with many metaphors, iconoclastic, and best of all, very funny. And, oh yeah, hates Bush II and the crooks that work for him. Check out his (almost) daily blog.
• Harpers and The New York Review of Books: The best writing on American politics and culture.
• Economic and Political Weekly: The best writing on international political economy. (Kolkata/Calcutta-based but with a global perspective).
• Scott Sandage's new book, entitled Born Losers: A History of Failure in America, has just been published by the Harvard University Press. It won the Thomas J. Wilson Prize in 2003.
I am excerpting the blurb from the Harvard
press website:What makes somebody a Loser, a person doomed to unfulfilled dreams and humiliation? Nobody is born to lose, and yet failure embodies our worst fears. The Loser is our national bogeyman, and his history over the past two hundred years reveals the dark side of success, how economic striving reshaped the self and soul of America.
From colonial days to the Columbine tragedy, Scott Sandage explores how failure evolved from a business loss into a personality deficit, from a career setback to a gauge of our self-worth. From hundreds of private diaries, family letters, business records, and even early credit reports, Sandage reconstructs the dramas of real-life Willy Lomans. He unearths their confessions and denials, foolish hopes and lost faith, sticking places and changing times. Dreamers, suckers, and nobodies come to life in the major scenes of American history, like the Civil War and the approach of big business, showing how the national quest for success remade the individual ordeal of failure.
Born Losers is a pioneering work of American cultural history, which connects everyday attitudes and anxieties about failure to lofty ideals of individualism and salesmanship of self. Sandage's storytelling will resonate with all of us as it brings to life forgotten men and women who wrestled with The Loser--the label and the experience--in the days when American capitalism was building a nation of winners.
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