Everyone has a story, discover yours at Ancestry.com.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Category: TV
Hitler’s lost sub – Shadow Divers
A FANTASTIC story, as dramatic and compelling as any high altitude mountaineering epic.
I had no idea deep wreck diving was so thrilling.
Hitler’s Lost Sub was a NOVA TV special first aired in 2000:
In 1991, professional diver John Chatterton discovered a sunken German U-boat from World War II, lying undetected only 60 miles off the New Jersey shore, its unexploded torpedoes and the bodies of its crew still aboard. This two-hour special follows Chatterton and his dive partners in their dangerous quest to identify the missing U-boat, a pursuit that takes six years and costs three lives. The U-boat’s history involves unusual coincidences and a startling twist of fate. …
Of course Hitler lost hundreds and hundreds of submarines, but this one has a particularly compelling story.
Highly recommended too is this book on the adventure:
Actually, there is a follow-up book contesting the book I read: Shadow Divers Exposed: the Real Saga of the U-869 by Gary Gentile. I will not read that one. Sounds to me it is dull, badly written and perhaps a work motivated by jealousy.
amazing 3D technology is here already
Check this post on 3D electronics:
… stunning examples of cutting edge technology which is already reality today or will become reality in 2008.
TV commercials we love
Fact is, I’m not against TV commercials. Only the 99.9% of those I HATE.
Like most people, I love this Lock Ness monster ad for the Toyota Tacoma Truck:
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Battlestar Galactica Season Four looms
I can hardly wait.
The cast of Battlestar Galactica poses for a “Last Supper” tableau in the latest Entertainment Weekly.
Battlestar Galactica: Secrets Of Battlestar Season Four Betrayed In New Photo
Holly Hunter rocks
Just saw Holly Hunter in the new TV show Saving Grace.
She’s awesome, as always. One of my favourite actors.
This time a hard-drinking, bad ass detective. And flirty. Like CRASH flirty.
Hunter’s first starring role in films came in 1987’s Raising Arizona. That year, she also starred in Broadcast News, for which she earned an Oscar nomination for the Best Actress. In 1993, she won the Best Female Performance Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and the Best Actress Oscar for The Piano and showcased her skill with the piano by playing all the elaborate pieces on the score herself. That year, Hunter was also nominated for Best Supporting Actress for The Firm.
In 2004, she earned another Best Supporting Actress nomination for Thirteen and voiced a star role (Helen Parr/Elastigirl) in the animated film The Incredibles. Hunter has also appeared in several television films and has earned two Emmys. She is currently starring in and producing Saving Grace, a crime series on TNT portraying an Oklahoma City Police Department detective.
Rosie O’Donnell posted this photo on flickr
more evidence TV is dying
At least TV, as we know it
… Silicon Alley Insider attended a power breakfast on the topic “Economics of the New Television Marketplace” and had some choice notes. Featured attendees were Google’s president of advertising Tim Armstrong, Digitas EVP and global media director Carl Fremont, NBC U chief digital officer George Kliavkoff, and Turner Entertainment president of ad sales and sports, David Levy.
Myers: “[W]ithin four years 40% of all video consumption [will] occur outside of the television set. That’s according to a poll of nearly 300 media execs by Myers and video tracking firm Teletrax.” (Silicon Alley Insider)
Kliavkoff: “‘As an industry we have to fix the mobile video distribution platform.’” The carriers, he said, are keeping 70% of the revenue for themselves and sharing only 9% with content creators. “‘We have to work with the carriers to fix that or we will have to go around them.’” (Silicon Alley Insider)
And here was a nugget from a story by Nigel Hollis on MediaPost’s Online Video Insider about stats YouTube rarely gives out:
Jeben Berg, product marketing manager at YouTube: YouTube sees “an average of 8 hours of content being uploaded every minute. Every minute! And what is more, that content comes from only 2% of the site’s user base.” (Video Insider)
…
MultiMedia Intelligence: “Worldwide shipments of multimedia-enabled mobile phones will exceed 300 million units next year, surpassing shipments of television sets, according to a research report being released this week by MultiMedia Intelligence. …
Numbers You Should Know: Beyond TV; YouTube Uploads; 5,000 ?s for GOP « NewTeeVee
Battlestar Galactica: Razor – strong women
The only two TV shows I follow religiously are The Colbert Show and Battlestar Galactica.
A 2hr flashback special called Razor aired recently. It goes on sale (somewhere) on DVD on the 6th.
I have some criticisms of Battlestar. (It’s “Hollywood” enough to have explosions make noise in the vacuum of space.)
But there’s no other TV show in history that has such strong, complex female characters. Women completely overpower the male actors.
Razor is the best yet. They should study it at film school.
Michelle Forbes plays unforgettable military psychotic Admiral Helena Cain:
Cain later made a name for herself as a smart and ambitious officer in the Colonial Fleet. She was something of a rising star: Commander William Adama later remarks that she was promoted “to Rear Admiral over half the Commanders on the list”.
Prior to the destruction of the Twelve Colonies, Cain’s flagship, the Battlestar Pegasus, was docked at the Scorpion Fleet Shipyards for a major refit. The refit team included a civilian network analyst, Gina Inviere, with whom Cain initiated a lesbian relationship. At the time of the attack, Admiral Cain, like many of her crew, was preparing to leave the ship on shore leave. The initial Cylon strike destroyed five Colonial vessels in Pegasus’ immediate vicinity and severely damaged the Pegasus herself, killing 700 crew members. In a desperate gamble, Admiral Cain ordered a “blind jump” that took the Pegasus out of the combat zone. The stress of losing so many crew members appears to have contributed to Admiral Cain’s later extreme behaviour and possible alcoholism.
Even more fascinating is Stephanie Chaves-Jacobsen, a Portuguese Chinese Norwegian English Aussie, born in Hong Kong. She has degrees in philosophy and English literature.
She plays Kendra Shaw, a smart, tough warrior ethically torn by the commands given by Cain. But who obeys. And who rises rapidly in the military hierarchy.
She numbs her pain with drugs.
OK, I want to buy this special as a download. …
Oops — NBC yanked it off iTunes in a pricing dispute. Oops — it’s not available on NBC.com …
Ah, NBC will make it available from Hulu.com … Oops — Hulu is in Beta, AND not available for Mac.
Oh, well. I don’t want to, but I can buy the DVD from NBC. Mail it as a Christmas gift to my empowered women friends.
Oops —
Never mind, if NBC doesn’t want my business, I know how to get their product. Without all the roadblocks to commerce.
Do you see why I am so critical of old media?
ripped off on high-speed internet?
CBC TV Marketplace did a brilliant investigation into how little of the promised “unlimited way fast” internet speed you actually get.
They compared the 4 major providers in Toronto. Certainly, I thought, hated TELUS would be worst. …
Actually, Bell was by far worst.
Are you getting the high-speed internet you’re paying for?
When the telephone and cable companies are trying to sell you internet access, speed is everything. Some promise speeds of “up to 8Mbps.” Some go as high as “up to 25Mbps.” But how well do they explain what those numbers mean?
Pay attention to two small but important words: “up to.” Sometimes they can be a shorthand way of saying “up to a theoretical maximum speed you may not actually experience, because your wires are old, or you have a lot of neighbours sharing the connection, or because we’re still upgrading our equipment in your area.”
You can see the TV show on-line: CBC.ca – Marketplace
U.S. Comptroller General projects Fall of the American Empire
David M. Walker speaks truth to power.
How can he do that in the USA?
He has a 15-year appointment as Comptroller General of the USA and cannot be brought down by the President nor anyone else.
Walker has compared the present-day United States with the Roman Empire in its decline, saying the U.S. government is “on a ‘burning platform’ of unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal deficits, chronic healthcare underfunding, immigration and overseas military commitments threatening a crisis if action is not taken soon.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is a legislative branch agency founded in 1921, whose mission is to help improve the performance and assure the accountability of the federal government for the benefit of the American people. Over the years, GAO has earned a reputation for professional objective, fact-based, and nonpartisan reviews of government issues and operations. …
David M. Walker (U.S. Comptroller General) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The USA is a great nation. But with no political accountability beyond the next election. Walker’s budget projections are “the dirty little secret that everyone in Washington knows, but no one will talk about”.
Watch an excerpt from the TV show 60 Minutes on YouTube, or click PLAY.
I don’t expect things to change.
Not until full out disaster forces the issue.
Thanks Barbara Anne for circulating this video.
Rick McCharles 