With just a year and about ten days to go to D-day (Digital Day) lots of folks are still confused about what it means to them. It is simple, really. If you have a digital TV, fine — no problems. If you watch Cable (e.g. Cablevision, Comcast, Time-Warner Cable, etc.) or satellite (e.g. DirecTV or DISH) transmissions — no problems. If you get your TV from the airwaves, you have rabbit-ears on your TV or an old-fashioned TV antenna on your roof — then you will need a converter to be able to watch digital broadcasts on your current TV. Don’t worry, the government is so concerned about losing their main brain-washing medium that they are giving away $40 certificates, which will cover the full cost of the cheapest converters.
Of course, you will probably want to upgrade to a real digital TV if you can afford it, because the quality of the image will be much better. People are already visiting the great outdoors less, in order to spend more time in front of the tube — we will be able to close the National Parks once TV goes digital — the picture will be so sharp and detailed it will be much better than really being there. Those silly Park Rangers never tell you which deodorant to wear, really — TV is much better.
Julie Dubela made it to American Idol, but flopped miserably. Some folks think she was presumptuous, thinking that her appearance on the unspectacular ‘American Juniors’ four years ago somehow qualified her as American Idol material.
Fact is, it wasn’t her history that was the problem — it was her presence. She can’t sing. That’s the ugly truth of it. She may be a wonderful person (I hope she is) but she isn’t going to be anyone’s idol. Give it up. Do something your good at.
The latest teeny-bop fodder from Disney debuts tonight. High school nerds invent a time machine (I’ve always wanted one of those), and accidentally go further back than they planned. That, of course, disrupts the time-continuum and causes a black-hole to form on the high school grounds (how could it not?)
If you have 10 to 14 year old kids, they will probably like this, it does have its funny moments. Certainly no Back to the Future, it is just good enough to entertain those who haven’t tired of the nerd vs jock cliches.
Of course the show has no science, but in the real world, don’t write off the possibility of time travel yet. Physicists are beginning to suspect that indeed, there may be more than one time dimension, which opens up all sorts of theoretical possibilities. Even without further dimensions, some physicists like Li-Xin Li and J. Richard Gott III of Princeton University suggest that relativity does not entirely rule out the possibility of traveling back in time.
I’m ready to go, just as soon as I get back from my trip to Mars…