Hacker Cinema
The Big Bang Theory
2007 · TV series · 22 min episodes · 12 seasons
Created by Chuck Lorre, Bill Prady
Physicists Leonard and Sheldon find their nerd-centric social circle with pals Howard and Raj expanding when aspiring actress Penny moves in next door.
26 positive57 negative6 mixed110 neutralfrom 199 commenters
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218 comments on Hacker News
> I find American humour so hard to relate to but I guess it's just a culture thing
These kind of comments always puzzle me. Hollywood makes stuff for the entire world, not just for a domestic audience.
Shows like Friends, Seinfeld, The Simpsons, pretty much any big sitcom you can name is in syndication in most countries around the world, because of how relatable it is.
It's often not sophisticated, and can be quite shallow (See Two and a half men or Big Bang theory), but it being hard to relate to is unlikely to be an issue.
You know when something doesn't annoy you until someone points it out?
It's so obvious in hindsight. Shows like the Big Bang theory, House and Scrubs I very rarely caught two episodes consecutively (and when I did they were on some release schedule so you'd forgotten half of the plot by next week). But they are all practically self contained with only the thread of a longer term narrative being woven between them.
It's doubtful that any of these netflix series you could catch one random episode and feel comfortable that you understand what's going on. Perhaps worse is the recent trend for mini-series which are almost exactly how you describe - just a film without half of it being left on the cutting room floor.
But American comedy movies are shit nowadays, it's just a bunch of comedians and Will Ferrell doing one-liners. Might as well add pause for laughter like the Big Bang Theory. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKS3MGriZcs
As for drama, I'd like to watch Sentimental Value, but I imagine my eyes will be wet in many scenes, I'd rather do that at home than in a theater.
Not a bad thing necessarily, but some part of the plot, and usually with things going awry or emphasizing the scammy nature of blockchain.
Examples: Shameless season 11, The Simpsons S31E13, Superstore season 5, the good wife S3E13, greys anatomy S14E8, big bang theory S11E9, Billions season 5, some later seasons of Mr Robot, etc
So the old saying "I can feel myself getting dumber for watching" has some merit. I used to say that for things like Housewives/Kardashian style tripe, as well as bad sitcoms with laugh tracks like Big Bang Theory that was supposed to be so smart
> It's most glaringly obvious in TV shows. Scenes from The Big Bang Theory look like someone clumsily tries to paint over the scenes with oil paint. It's as if the actors are wearing an inch thick layer of poorly applied makeup.
This might be the uploaders doing to avoid copyright strikes.
I've noticed this for a while, when I accidentally click on YouTube Shorts. (I want to avoid it, because it's brain rot, but YouTube keeps enabling it and pushes it hard in notifications).
It's most glaringly obvious in TV shows. Scenes from The Big Bang Theory look like someone clumsily tries to paint over the scenes with oil paint. It's as if the actors are wearing an inch thick layer of poorly applied makeup.
It's far less glaring in Rick Beato's videos, but it's there if you pay attention. Jill Bearup wanted to see how bad it could get and reuploaded the "enhanced" videos a hundred times over until it became a horrifying mess of artifacts.
The question remains why YouTube would do this, and the only answers I can come up with are "because they can" and "they want to brainwash us into accepting uncanny valley AI slop as real".
I don't really know why that "understandable". We see this with so many TV shows and movie francises. There's a reason why there's only two seasons of The Office in the UK version, but it's just beaten to death in the US version. Same with The Simpsons, Futurama, Big Bang Theory, pretty much the entire Marvel francise, Star Wars, Jurassic Park and so many more shows and movies.
You just find yourself in the corner yield "Please stop, it dead! It's been dead for years!" For example Star Wars, that francise is completely ruined, but the fans are insufferable and just keeps pouring money into something that quite frankly sucks by now.
Why must everything be milked dry to the point where we start hating it?
They just haven’t watched the Big Bang Theory episode with Howard and the robotic hand:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYryogNE8Ys
The big bang theory series episode was the one that introduced me to Brian Wilson through Darlin.
RIP
You're entirely missing the point. The average western person has never heard of or seen any Ghibli movies. GPT use is heavily skewed by nerdy types. The average football watching big-bang-theory-is-a-smart-show type person doesn't know what any of this is.
If Ghibli feels like they are getting screwed, they could've taken this opportunity to promote themselves, is the parent's point. If I were in their marketing dept I would have been screaming "guys, non-weeaboo people are seeing our name in the news, let's fucking capitalize!" When has Ghibli ever trended? Set up some screenings or stream Spirited Away on their site for a couple weeks or somethin. If they want to win hearts and minds, that's what you have to do. As of now, it's already out of the MSM news cycle and forgotten.
I can't argue that I really enjoy music as my working background noise. Something else unique is I enjoy listening to TV shows, or more, "noise". I usually put on a simple TV show I've seen before that doesn't need a lot of attention (Friends, the Office, New Girl, Big Bang Theory), that creates that background noise. It's like white noise to me :)
I love this movie. I have a masters in Physics and somewhat blame this movie for it. It's also the most accurate depiction of physicists that I've seen in media. We're not the nerds from Big Bang Theory-- we're just normal, if typically very idiosyncratic people
I'm guessing that at a plurality of those non-experts thought that "Big Bang Theory" was a good TV show. There's no shortage of crap for those mouth-breathers already.
If all art and entertainment is made to curry their favor and satisfy their appetites with as little effort as possible, then I guess there's even more dreck out there to be ignored.
This reminds me of Sheldon Cooper's suggestion to Penny on The Big Bang Theory when she was having financial problems: "You know, it occurs to me that you could solve all your problems by obtaining more money".
Weight depends on a complex interaction between many systems of the body. Losing significant weight and keeping it off in healthy way without side effects can be difficult.
There was a good look at much of this in the Nova episode "The Truth About Fat" in 2020. Old Nova episodes are usually behind a paywall if you aren't a member of your local PBS station but occasionally old episodes become free for a while. It might be worth checking occasionally to try to catch it during one of those free periods.
I'm quite a fan of the theory that we can culturally blame the Big Bang Theory TV show for a lot of this: https://www.tiktok.com/@hasandpiker/video/7472501303743155502
Fun fact: in that Big Bang Theory episode, they were hipped about BTC @ 5K [1], while the episode aired Nov 30 2017 and the closing price was already 10K [2]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cc-Hbklizzk
[2] https://www.statmuse.com/money/ask/bitcoin-price-november-2017
They recorded that episode probably between March and April 2017 or end of February (?)
maybe it should be mandatory to watch all episodes of "Big Bang Theory" on a trip to mars for educational purposes ;-)
> "jokes about him being a 'nerd' in the ways mainstream people think of nerds"
"Big Bang Theory" was initially written that way, but the original pilot episode was a famous flop. Test audiences hated the characters. (The unaired pilot can be found with a Google search.)
Even though the pilot failed, the studio liked the concept enough that the showrunners were given the rare opportunity to reshoot the pilot with a new script. They introduced the character of Penny and balanced the scenes carefully around emotional connection, to make it clear to audiences when the characters are connecting or failing to connect. And that's probably closer to why millions of people love the show — it's not the tech jokes or laughing at nerds but the empathy.
> What the US actually does is subsidize purchases of electric cars regardless of manufacturer
From a cursory Google: Of the top 3 auto manufacturers in China, BYD is the only one that isn't a SOE. I keep trying to put emphasis on this, but I'll do it again for a third time: just how much, if it at all, subsidies are factoring into BYD's success is speculation. It's even further speculation to say that BYD is being subsidized exclusively, and certainly something I never imagined, or advocated.
> It can be both.
Goes without saying.
> There are many products that are now only made in China, or where China represents >90% of global volume in that industry.
China built up it's manufacturing capability over decades on the back of low labor costs. Now they have both mid-range labor costs, but exceptional advance manufacturing capabilities and human resources. This is not due to 'subsidies', but investment in, and a culture of, education. In the west people sit and laugh at smart people on sitcoms (looking at you Big Bang Theory), while in China intelligence isn't some social shortcoming. I'll defer to Tim Cook (as per the transcript):
"There's a confusion about China that ..uh.. and let me at least give you my opinion the the popular conception is that companies come to China because of low labor costs. I'm not sure uh what part of China they go to but the truth is China stopped being the low labor cost country many years ago, and that is not the reason to come to China from a supply point of view. The reason is because of the skill and the the quantity of skill in one location and the type of skill it is. Like ..um.. the products we do require really Advanced tooling and the the precision that you have to have in tooling and working with the materials that we do are state of the art, and the tooling skill is very deep here. You know, in in the US you could have a meeting of tooling engineers and I'm not sure we could fill the room in China you could fill multiple football fields it's that vocational expertise is very very deep here and I give the ..uh.. the education system a lot of credit for continuing to push on that even when others were de-emphasizing vocational. Now I think many countries in the world have woke up and said you know this is a key thing and we've got to correct that, but China called that right from the beginning"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6bR8BptIpw
India and Asia Pacific at large are lagging a decade behind China, but you'd see more and more goods coming from there too, and not without perfectly fair, appropriate, sensible, and necessary government investment/subsidies into their own human resources and into emerging industries.
I'm done here. Feel free to have the last word.
And they're going from binge-watching ad-free episode of an entire series, to releasing one episode a week... with adverts.
Yeah, no thanks. I'll just VPN+torrent the ad-free version and watch that, thanks. On any device of my choosing as well.
And why should I pay £8.99 or whatever to one streaming service, for one programme, that was previously "free to air" for the other series? Paramount taking back Star Trek from Netflix for example.
I'm not sure how many multi-million dollar, unseen cancelled-after-one-season dramas with 50,000 viewers these studios need to create before they realise 'we need viewers to 'build a franchise' and make a profit'.
Just imagine if these series or dramas were only seen by a few thousand people at most: Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Band of Brothers, Shogun, Dallas, Cheers and so on. Even How I Met Your Mother and Big Bang Theory were pretty much pre-streaming when they started, but syndicated to world-wide terrestrial channels.
> That’s probably due to the character over plot idea, as there usually isn’t a storyline I’m dying to finish.
Yes, but how you handle your characters can still be very important. There are shows where the ending is simply a good episode, sending some loved characters off - like The Big Bang Theory. The ending itself is not that great of an episode on the tin, but the viewer has come to love these characters and having a great ending for them is important.
And then there are endings like How I Met Your Mother, which manage to cast the the whole series in a worse light. It would be the counter-example for ruining a comedy with the finale.
Overall, comedy endings are probably simpler than most, but you can still make a lot wrong.
Fun analysis! Some thoughts and subjective opinions.
- Westworld's very poor showing helped me realize what I think the major flaw is in this analysis, which is that it doesn't properly capture shows that have been on the decline for a while. In Westworld's case, the season scores are as follows: S1 8.86, S2 8.38, S3 80.25, S4 79.38. As you can see, there is a consistent decline from beginning to end, not just a disappointing ending. The series average is propped up by a very strong first season and goes downhill from there. Not sure how to best adjust the calculation to try to take this into account.
- I found The Expanse ending disappointing because it ended mid-plot (which is less excusable than GoT since the authors actually finished the book series), but I also understand that they had to end it somehow and did pretty well with what they had. As a note to anyone that is enjoying The Expanse show but maybe hasn't finished it, I would definitely recommend stopping now and reading the books first, then watching the show. The books actually have a complete arc, but also the first six books pretty closely match the series, so if you watch the show first those books will be a bit of a slog to get through. Doing it the other way I think will work much better, because although you'll know the plot of most of the show in advance, the space battles and other visuals are so cool that it is still a fun watch. Then you can just kinda imagine what the rest of the books would look like if the'd actually made them into the show.
- Ozark being in the Disaster Finale surprised me – I thought the ending was good (if not great). I guess viewers were hoping for a Breaking Bad-tier ending (given the subject matter and strong rest of the show) and so were let down.
- Agree with the author that Lost is a surprise "satisfying finale". It is definitely in my top 5 most disappointing series endings (alongside the unsurprising disaster finales of GoT and Dexter).
- Big Bang Theory had a finale that seemed right in line with the rest of the show, surprised by the delta that puts it into Transcendent territory. I have a sneaking suspicious that non-fans may've been watching other random episodes and rating them (negatively), thus dragging down the season average by a good bit. But non-fans would probably not be tuning in for the finale, thus leaving that score to be entirely dictated by fans.
I noticed that the watchtime of `You` was split half-and-half between the new season 4 and the prior seasons 1-3. I was curious about the total results by show, including all seasons. Here's the top 25:
TITLE TOTAL HRS WATCHED ----- ----------------- Ginny & Georgia 967,200,000 The Night Agent 812,100,000 You 766,300,000 Outer Banks 740,400,000 The Walking Dead 738,600,000 The Glory 622,800,000 La Reina del Sur 616,800,000 CoComelon 601,200,000 Suits (2011) 599,100,000 The Blacklist 596,900,000 Manifest 581,900,000 Grey's Anatomy 560,300,000 Wednesday 507,700,000 Gilmore Girls 505,800,000 Breaking Bad 505,000,000 Queen Charlotte 503,000,000 Friends (1994) 448,500,000 Love Is Blind 439,300,000 Lucifer 434,300,000 The Big Bang Theory 420,400,000 Shameless (U.S.) 392,600,000 PAW Patrol 392,300,000 New Amsterdam (2018) 375,500,000 Brooklyn Nine-Nine 358,900,000 Firefly Lane 342,700,000
Big Bang Theory is one of those scapegoat shows that smart people have a stock "it sucks" opinion about. It's a very good light sitcom as far as light sitcoms go and easily holds its own with shows like How I Met Your Mother.
>The chances of that happening are indistinguishable from zero
Yeah, no. John Krasinski was waiting tables and struggling to make ends meet before getting his part as Jim in The Office that made him a household name today.
The casts of Friends and The Big Bang Theory were mostly nobodys before getting their parts which made them multi-millionaries that everyone recognizes today.
It's survivorship bias, but some of those "nobodys" actually do end up becoming very big "somebodys" later on, and the movie studios want to own their digital likeness for cheap early on, just in case, so that if they do become somebodys, they can pump out and monetize valuable ML generated content based on their likeness without having to pay them.
I was most impressed by Sheldon's use of a telepresence robot in one of the Big Bang Theory episodes. That was very funny as well as a good introduction to the uses of such robots.
Some shows are a lot worse with the ads. Big Bang Theory was running 18 minute episodes 7 years ago and I'm sure it's only gotten more extreme.
In the TV show The Big Bang Theory, they invented a quantum vortex based inertial guidance system in 2016.
Initially in https://bigbangtheory.fandom.com/wiki/The_Positive_Negative_Reaction
Then later https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=az44pMHvUYk
The streaming rights for Friends, South Park or Big Bang Theory seem to still be a big deal, and their first episodes are 29, 26 and 16 years old respectively. Breaking Bad is 15 years old, one year older than Avatar (the James Cameroon one, Last Airbender is 18 years old). And then of course there are classics like Star Trek (TOS is 58 years old, TNG is 36 years old) or Star Wars (Episode IV is 46 years old).
99% of media is forgotten about after 20 years, but the rest makes up for that in profit. Of course for some of them you could argue that having the old stuff freely available would boost the popularity of the newer adaptations, spinoffs, reboots, etc. But I think that's rocking the boat too much to be viable, and some content does genuinely take years or decades to start to be appreciated.
I would have guessed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Hofstadter fictional character of the TV show Big Bang Theory that usually attract physics enthusiasts, but your guess is better.
TV shows I've already seen are my go to as well. Parks and Rec is a staple. Office, Scrubs, That 70s Show, Big Bang Theory are all great as well.
Sometimes I get into phases that need a little extra. The Marvel movies phase 1-3 are solid, as is Breaking Bad.
I swap to prog rock music (again stuff I've heard multiple times before) if I have something particularly creative and demanding to work on.
Oh yeah, mainstream media really crapped on him.
That's why he showed up alongside Tony Stark in Iron Man 2 and was treated like a god on an episode of Big Bang Theory.
The media, for the most part, treated him gently until the Thai cave incident when people started to catch onto the idea that this "quirky genius" might be an asshole.
This thread reminds me of that Big Bang Theory episode with the Super Man argument.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9R5w4Qz6pVk
I don't want to imply anything, just a moment of having fun.
edit: wording
The Wikipedia page for the EAS notes that CBS had to pay a fine for using it in an episode of The Big Bang Theory.
Same for me. As once Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory said: the world's most powerful graphics chip - imagination. I guess playing this game (even with new images generated every time you play it) would resemble reading a book after watching a movie, all the characters and scenes during reading would appear as they are in the movie - no place to stretch for imagination.
No idea, but I'm trying to look at it in a positive light. My knee-jerk reaction is to gasp and grab my pearls, which is wrong. I think this is a subtle issue that needs careful examination. I'm not a big fan of "The Big Bang Theory" sitcom and think that it perpetuates negative "nerd" stereotypes, but I don't want to ban Target from selling TBBT t-shirts and mugs.
Reminds me of this old Big Bang Theory episode - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZd8sDquNYw
I don’t consider stereotypes funny. America has a really bad history when it comes to shows propagating racial stereotypes. People finding a stereotype funny is not a good reason to air it on national television.
Jim Crow was a stereotype which plenty of people found funny 80 years ago, we don’t find it funny anymore(it was never funny), as we see it for the truth. It was an untrue racist portrayal that harmed Black Americans. Granted the portrayal of Raj isn’t nearly as harmful and it is not comparable to horrors of Jim Crow. Jim Crow was a billion times more harmful to a lot of Black Americans.
Portrayal of Raj probably has little to no impact on Indian Americans. However as a society we have to learn from the past, and it is time to abandon stereotypical portrayals of people.
Big Bang Theory is an old sitcom people found funny during its time, just like people abandoned the stereotypes of the past, people will dumb Big Bang Theory.
> Reasoning in that way, almost all movies in the world wold be a "soft projection" and Nation State attack
I mean, I don't think it requires any sort of active attack, or paranoia about a malicious attack, to recognize that soft power is real and it can influence people's behavior even when nobody intended it. The Big Bang Theory, as a reflection of American culture, can work to perpetuate that culture and serve America's interests even without anybody in America or anybody working on the Big Bang Theory intending for that to happen.
Now, in the case of the Big Bang Theory, whether that is good or bad is somewhat up to whether you think American-culture-as-espoused-by-the-Big-Bang-Theory is good or not, but honestly as an American who generally thinks American culture is good about some stuff but not everything, the Big Bang Theory is pretty far down on the list of cultural exports I would consider good or important. There's a lot of stuff in the Big Bang Theory that I feel ashamed to be associated with, including some of the stuff mentioned in this article as cut, like the racist jokes about Chinese people.
> China has its own culture and mores
Correction: Xi and the CCP have their own culture and mores
The people, though, want to see The Big Bang Theory uncensored.
The people are different from Xi. They don't want the same things as he (except for the ones Xi has successfully brainwashed, or those who have a highly tribal brain).
> why should it allow that kind of soft projection
That sounds paranoid, I hope you don't mind. Reasoning in that way, almost all movies in the world wold be a "soft projection" and Nation State attack. But sometimes it's just jokes or reality and a good movie ... or would have been.
In TV 'Mr. Big' is usually the 'Showrunner'. Basically the original creators. It's like a form of creative production and management.
For film, the Director is often kind of the version of 'Showrunner'.
If the director was the one doing the pitching, raising the money - they they are that.
If it's a big IP asset, like Star Treck, then it's different, sometimes a team effort.
Like Kathleen Kennedy is the 'Big Honcho' for Star Wars and will have absolutely the 'last word' on everything, directors may not. Directors may have to negotiate their degree of freedom and may really want to avoid those situations where they are 'not in control', and will be forced to 'take notes'.
So 'director', depending on the type of show, does not have to be the most critical thing, it really depends.
Something that's heavily dependent on the quality of the acting, probably the director will matter a lot.
A perfunctory serial, a bit less.
For something so fundamentally institutionalized, like 'The Big Bang Theory' I'll bet you could remove almost any single person, and the gap would be filled in by the others who are all professionals. Like literally a child could direct an episode, because everyone would know 'what to do'.
But yeah, it helps to have a 'core creative team' that has track record of resonance, this way, you have an idea of what you will get.
Cohen Brothers, Villeneuve, Tom Cruise Inc., they use a lot of the same people. So you have less risk.
That's literally a plot line for an episode in Big Bang Theory, turn out Sheldon has good social skill after all.
Life is arts huh.
Deceiving the actor with no film in camera sounds extreme, but I suppose every production is different. Sometimes actors come up with new or better lines. Off top of my head, Brad Pitt apparently came up with the line "what's that smell" when he died at the end of Fight Club. The Big Bang Theory cast described the set as a "sandbox" where they tried different things, but I suppose a TV series has different production methods.
You probably won't see this since it's been so long but...
> a redefinition of their masculine identity as toxic
There's a bunch to unpack here.
First, I never used any such terms. All I did was say that it's weird to me that some men react so strongly to what other men are doing, as if it offends them personally. That's actually a segue into the next part...
You said that there's a redefinition or relabeling of masculine identify as toxic. I don't think it's masculine identity, but a set of behaviors and patterns.
As an example, why would it bother Joe if Bob goes to a meeting where he's talking about his own feelings? Why does Joe feel personally attacked for that? And if Joe's response is "That's GIRLY!" and thus something to distanced from, again, why? Why is Joe's idea of masculinity so narrow as not to include Bob's expression.
That's what toxic masculinity is, it's the idea that masculinity has to be a very narrow thing and that we (men) must perform it within very tight parameters.
> insisting they express their emotions in a more traditionally feminine way.
Do you actually see this and have experienced it? This isn't a hyperbolic question, because it hasn't been my experience.
> Emotionally expressive and occasionally vulnerable men is what women have always asked for
That is also not my experience. Women can engage in the same toxic attitudes as men and perpetuate the same rigid gender roles. We see it throughout society, in all socio-economic statuses, and generally.
"Boys don't cry" still exists, and "Boys will be boys" exists (though less than it did when I was a a child).
We still see men valued by their economic statuses, and their ability to suppress emotion.
And we still see unconventional expressions of masculinity as the butt of jokes in mainstream culture, such as Drax in the Marvel movies, Boyle in Brooklyn 99, and the entire male cast of the Big Bang Theory.
Not masculine identity, but behaviors and thought patterns.
I had difficulty understanding this and found the term "toxic masculinit
That was used in The Big Bang theory episode The Raiders Minimization, as discussed (among many other places) at https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/14508/is-amy-right-about-indiana-jones-being-irrelevant-to-the-outcome
Video games are just a younger medium than books and movies. Even TV needed more time to be seen at a similar level to movies in terms of art.
We're getting there though. The past 15 years have given us many masterpieces of gaming that can absolutely be considered art, and they're becoming more and more common. As this happens more and more, the medium is taken more and more seriously.
Many games still suffer from feature-creep by way of trying to please users demanding "content". This incidentally make them feel like the primary goal is to waste time rather than to experience a high quality story. In other words, there are still too many "Big Bang Theory" and not enough "Breaking Bad" so that is why it still feels less valuable.
Because I told you I just binged The Queen's Gambit, you wouldn't look at me like I wasted my time, you'd ask me about the story. If I told you I just binged TBBT, you'd just think I'm nuts. (No offense if you like TBBT, it was a decent sitcom for a couple seasons, but … hey, you do you).
For example, I just finished Control. A wonderful, high quality game. Great storytelling, great mechanics, and … a crapton of completely useless busywork that is just there because it's expected to be there. A talent tree, repeat random side-missions, a crafting system, etc. None of this is useful to the core game. It's a shame because I believe if it had done less in terms of busywork mechanics and maybe focused a tiny bit more on puzzles, that game could have been a masterpiece of the same caliber as Portal and Portal 2. (Can you imagine if Portal 2 had a talent tree and a crafting system?)
Instead, it's a Season 7 of Game of Thrones. Great production value, but so hit and miss in terms of final quality because of avoidable mistakes. Could have been so good, you know?
Interestingly, I feel like in "Big Bang Theory", the opposite happened -- the first few episodes, the characters were almost entirely a bag of stereotypical "geek" quirks; they slowly became more human as the show went on.
I think I remember in an interview one of them saying that filming before a live studio audience actually helped with that -- you got immediate feedback about what the audience thought of the characters and the show; and people are just more interested in characters they can identify with.
And I swear I saw an episode of this on Big Bang Theory where Howard was suppose to get this right.
Netflix's problem isn't cancelling shows too soon, it's an inability to make anything that endures. They've had loads of shows that won raves upon initially airing but haven't really stuck around much at all.
They haven't managed to make sticky shows like Friends, the Big Bang Theory or even something more recent like Brooklyn Nine Nine that people can mindlessly rewatch over and over and they haven't managed to make top tier prestige stuff (talking Sopranos/Wire level here, they've made plenty a couple of notches below). The whole platform depends on a certain kind of novelty of the algorithm being able to churn up totally new stuff that's okay.
As far as cancelling stuff goes, I get the impression Netflix moreso just doesn't renew? HBO seem to have a formula where a cancelled show will get a special to wrap things up (e.g. Looking, Hello Ladies), always thought that was pretty savvy as it probably costs quite a bit less, makes that one episode into a bit of an event for fans and leaves the overall series a lot more enticing to people in the future.
So true. I don't get why American TV shows always need to be ran to the ground.
Like Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory are shows that should've gone past their 8th season. The Office should've never had those abysmal last two-three seasons. That '70s show should've never had those abysmal last three seasons.
I always like it when creators and producers recognize when a show has run its course. This is why we have good memories of Seinfeld. Jerry Seinfeld stood to make something crazy like 5 million per episode if they had done a 10th season but he knew the show had run its course and ended it on a high note (something, btw, that was a plot point on an earlier episode).
Same with Breaking Bad, they knew that they had a story to tell and that it didn't need to drag on and they delivered some of the finest 5 seasons of television drama that one could ever ask for.
This reminds me of one of episodes of The Big Bang Theory where Sheldon uses a dice to take every little decision. It was hilarious.
> The notion is that if you aren't working on 12 dimensional quantum theories of gravity or the holographic principle and black hole physics, then you aren't a real physicist. Somehow they think that if your work has a real world impact, then it's tainted in some way. I'm not sure how it's gotten this way, but I've actually been told as much by another grad student that my field should be moved to the engineering department because we aren't doing real physics
Wow, so The Big Bang Theory is actually pretty good documentary about how modern physic departments operate?
The best (worst?) example I know of this going horribly wrong is the title sequence for the Big Bang Theory, which speeds up as it goes along and then cuts to the cast.
Math, science, history, unraveling the mystery <as the pixels start to unravel>, it all started with a Big Bang. BANG (Bang, your Screen is a riot of random pixels. Oh wait, here’s the cast instead!)
Then I caught an episode on another service, maybe Netflix? The transition wasn’t awesome, but it wasn’t awful either. It only glitched for a frame or two instead of a few seconds. Clearly better heuristics were in play.
Jerry Seinfeld is almost a billionaire due to his eponymous sitcom. The starring cast of Big Bang Theory fame were earning nearly a million dollars an episode by the end of the series. Similar story with Two and a Half Men, Gilmore Girls.
Jamie and Adam were stars of a wildly popular television show that ran for 14 seasons, spawn numerous spin offs and runs in syndication even today. I'd expect them to have hit at least $500k per episode.
Games have already had enormous educational impact and that satisfying to use tools can help pull us towards a better understand of a thing is well known.
The list of games with widespread educational impact of some sort is already much larger than most people think. As is usually the observation when edutainment of any sort is written about, the point is really that there are many important fields of education excluded from this revolution. Part of that is probably that the cross section of people that are interested in making a game and those who understand the topic well enough to start with is often not large. Persisting cultural relevance for your creation is very rare, which can be crushing. That a game like Snake Pass exists exposing more people to the uniqueness of snake movement is a near miracle.
Games aren't currently categorized by what a player can learn from them, just as movies rarely are. Sometimes even putting into words what you came away with after an experience is difficult, but you know your perspective on yourself or the world changed in some way. Check any of the movie or game storefronts and see if they have any comprehensive sections to let you filter by what people thought they learned from them. Valve is the most well positioned to implement something like this through Steam, because they rapidly iterate with experiments and have a strong variety of games available with an engaged audience willing to do the tasks necessary.
At the moment, you have to guess what you might learn based on the genre or first impressions. Even still, the ratings for a product aren't there to rate educational value and the time played doesn't tell you how long you have to spend in the game to get that learning experience. You can have a 1-2 star game teach you something priceless, while a 5 star game is a nearly vapid lifeless husk of manipulation. Stores like Steam almost need a completely separate perspective view with its own ratings, own tags and own reviews to make these aspects of games more discoverable. There are people that would be more than thrilled to populate that information in good faith.
I think there are hidden riches waiting to be described when people are encouraged to explain to others what it was that they learned rather than what bugs they encountered or whether the production quality was bad and changes like that could over time apply meaningful pressure to add more important educational moments into their games for measurable marketing value.
Being father's day, it wasn't that long ago that my dad was reminiscing about old TV shows where every episode tried to deliver some moral education. How hard is it to find those old episodes categorized by what it tried to teach? Seinfeld was also saturated with educational value through a bevy of unique situations. South Park is probably more educational than Big Bang Theory, because oddly enough I see BBT as more of a facade.
In short, it's not only the standard academic teachings that are underserved or have poor discoverability in all media and I do think continuing to neglect the explicit identification of this value as newer generations pass up old media of all types will have a cascading cost that will impact generations of families.
The side effect is that there will be some educational value that will be polarizing, like inauthentic diversity education that could become an avoid flag for many (for both good and bad reasons). That could be a good thing if it pressures political activism in media to be less overt in order to have more widespread subtle impact without preaching to people louder than the art itself is able to genuinely speak.
There are exciting times ahead and I'm optimistic of the many educational avenues that will be opening up as people wake up to how they learn over the course of their lifetime, be it calculus or empathy.
> Is there a scientific way to find out?
That's an interesting question.
I'm reminded of the "3 compatibility questions" some university worked out for asking someone you were considering dating:
- Do you like scary movies?
- Have you ever traveled to another country alone?
- Would you like to ditch it all and go live on a sail boat?
I wonder if there are questions that would scientifically predict compatibility with an autistic person.
Personally I have both (extended) family members, some friends and some coworkers who have (or I suspect have) autism or aspergers.
I enjoy the quirkiness, but I also really enjoyed the big bang theory.
>> "hence domestically popular tv shows like Big Bang Theory which have 0 audience in countries that value intellect"
> It's shown in 180 countries worldwide and very popular internationally (Including Russia):
You are confusing popularity with agreement with the anti-intellectual undertones.
"hence domestically popular tv shows like Big Bang Theory which have 0 audience in countries that value intellect"
It's shown in 180 countries worldwide and very popular internationally (Including Russia):
https://bigbangtheory.fandom.com/wiki/International_broadcasts
While I don't necessarily love the show, I've known many PHD students from China, Taiwan, and Korea that absolutely love the show. Hardly from countries that "don't value intellect".
"This permeates western culture across the board,"
I can't speak for Australia, but I went to high school in the US during the 90s. The 'cool' kids weren't necessarily anti-intellectual, they were just more social and were well versed in the ability to make friends. Most were in the top 10 in terms of grades at our school and I didn't go to a specialized or private school.
The 'nerds' and unpopular kids weren't necessarily smart either. Many had Aspergers or were on the autism spectrum, which means they most likely won't do well in social situations and most likely won't ever be popular.
Others were just anti-social or were just never taught how to make friends or be a friend.
Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory is supposed to depict someone like this.
It's easy to say we aren't popular because we are smarter than everyone else, but the actual reasons are much more nuanced.
"The other factor is that westerners really love to coddle and infantalise their children. A 12 year old in Russia is basically treated as a small adult with the associated respect and responsibilities. A 12 year old here is treated (and behaves) like a large baby."
I suppose this is just the result of living in a stable and safe country. 12 year olds aren't adults and shouldn't take on adult responsibilities. It's sad to me that there are children out there that can't actually be kids for awhile, which is something you can never get back as an adult.
> I think on average the difference between a high school student from Russia and US is negligible
I went to high school in Russia and then moved to Australia. The difference was immense. It felt like i just dropped 2 year levels. Even the accelerated programs were hopelessly behind the regular curriculum for my age group in Russia. AU/US high school students can't possibly compete against RU or CN high school students. The gap only begins closing around year 11/12, sometimes not until tertiary education.
One of the major factors is this weird anti-intellectualism culture that just doesn't exist in Russia. Doing well at your subjects in Russia put you in the cool group. Doing well at your subjects in AU got you labelled as a nerd. This permeates western culture across the board, hence domestically popular tv shows like Big Bang Theory which have 0 audience in countries that value intellect. I hear the culture of marginalising smart kids is somewhat changing lately though.
The other factor is that westerners really love to coddle and infantalise their children. A 12 year old in Russia is basically treated as a small adult with the associated respect and responsibilities. A 12 year old here is treated (and behaves) like a large baby.
Never were fine in Australia. Half of the Dr. Who were absent because of "legal reasons". I can't recall now (I don't have subscription for almost 3 years) but there were bunch of TV shows I wanted to binge and they were unavailable or partially available. Big Bang Theory never were on Netflix IIRC, I had to pay for one of the seasons. I don't think anything from HBO is there and so on.
I'm not playing those games, I can torrent whatever I want to seen in better quality - with subtitles in variety of languages, HD or SD, some number of audio tracks with different translations if I wish (even though I don't need it after leaving in English speaking country for some time) and so on.
It's just shitty user experience.
I'll go out on a limb here and defend TV: I think this is a somewhat-outdated view of television.
Modern television isn't just The Big Bang Theory anymore. The line between cinema and television is quickly blurring, with television shows like Chernobyl that are essentially very long films. Even "regular television" can be incredibly enlightening, with shows like Planet Earth exposing us to parts of our own world we might never see otherwise and our imagination might not even do justice!
And much like cinema, sure the experience itself is somewhat isolating in that you're trying to pay attention to it and not converse with those around you. But what's beneficial about some television shows are the emotions they inspire, the conversation they generate after, the fantastical thoughts that come later while you process what you saw.
Sure, garbage exists on television in the same way that pulp fiction (i.e. low-quality literature) never really died out. But I don't think it's fair to dismiss the medium any more than it's fair to dismiss film or literature.
Native German speaker here. Other recommendations (I learned English this way):
- Watch movies / TV series with (German) subtitles. Recommendations: Dubbed stuff that is easy to digest like e.g. Crime Stuff / Big Bang Theory.
- Or more advanced, German productions: Dark on Netflix; Babylon Berlin; Bad Banks; Stromberg (The Office clone); Tatortreiniger; Tatort.
- Read books like that you might know in your native language: the Little Prince, Harry Potter.
The Marvel TV shows, obviously... ;)
More seriously I liked the big bang theory, the expanse, firefly, and dark matter. I haven't watched game of thrones yet.
The did on The Big Bang Theory show so it's got to be possible :-)
https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/24686/is-this-laser-experiment-shown-on-big-bang-theory-possible
YouTube link (for those that like the show): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_v52LFgUq-8
From the proof:
"The episode of The Big Bang Theory that contained the discussion about 73, was actually the 73rd of the series!"
Hi there,
I sometimes try to help normals relate to me by asking, "You know Sheldon Cooper from Big Bang Theory? I'm like a stupid, slighty-less-social-idiot Sheldon Cooper."
I identify with Dr. Cooper. (BTW it sucks being like that. Don't ever think we do it because we like it. There are a few perks but it mostly sucks. Also, it's like living in "Idiocracy". I can't watch that movie because it's too painful. That's my life. From my point of view y'all are running around pouring Gatorade on the plants talkin bout "It's got lectrolites!" It's getting seriously scary now IRL too: where the fuck are all the fucking insects!? We should all be fucking terrified right now.)
Anyhow, from my POV the "average" programmers should GTFO and stop peeing in the pool. I would fire 90% of working programmers. They're not needed and actively counter-productive.
Also, FP is coming on stronger today than ever before. You are in actual fact just wrong.
He was "into engineering and science", yes. But it didn’t mean anything beyond that; he didn’t do any engineering besides occasionally something would magically appear. And he liked “science” but not any particular part of science. They didn’t talk about anything that he liked more than “science”.
It would be like if someone said they liked “movies”, but never mentioned a single movie that they enjoyed, or actor, or director, or anything. Just they’re really into “movies”.
Big Bang Theory has many flaws, but it is so far better than Steve Urkel or Screech. If I had been a kid when Big Bang Theory came out, having some positive nerd representation would have been wonderful. And in Big Bang Theory the characters are represented positively—the show clearly likes the characters, to use Roger Ebert’s terminology.
Well, we now have positive queer role models in other shows mixed in with those caricatures, which is leaps and bounds above what we used to have. Go back and watch In Living Color's Men On Film, which is one of the more "positive" portrayals. I find it incredibly cringeworthy today.
Shows like Next Top Model and Queer Eye play up their queerness for ratings, but that's actually progress: queer folks (actually played by other queer folks, not straight people parodying us) are being queer on camera, and people want to watch them for that. Millions of people. It's actually the point of those shows. That's huge!
Commonly people's first reaction to things they don't understand or things that are unusual is fear. I used to resent Will and Grace for being over the top, contrived, and playing on stereotypes. But I think, like Big Bang Theory, however cringeworthy the humor is, they've both put gay folks and nerdiness in prime television slots. People watch them, and they become less "foreign" to millions of televison watchers. They're made relateable (simply because not as many folks would watch it if it wasn't), and in turn nerdiness and queerness are made relateable and understandable. I don't need to watch either, but... I don't have to. It's not for me.
I haven't watched The Big Bang Theory regularly in a long time but I always enjoy it when I catch it in re-runs. A lot of people claim to hate it because it makes fun of "nerd stereotypes". I never found it insulting, though. Exaggerated, sure, but it's a sitcom, it's supposed to be exaggerated. A lot of the fun of the show is the characters "taking the piss out of each other" [1]. Not everyone will like that kind of humor but it's pretty common in sitcoms and a lot of people seem to enjoy it.
It seems to be common for people who dislike BBT to complain that it ridicules nerds as a class. I don't think that's right at all. Does anyone think that "Scrubs"[2] ridiculed doctors and other healthcare professionals as a general class?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taking_the_piss
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrubs_(TV_series)
I wonder if past generations felt this too -- this feeling that the as you get older, popular culture seems to twist itself to pander to your tastes and attitudes. I had assumed that I had this feeling because I was in the most sought after advertising demographic. Now that I'm into my 50s though, it seems like it's still happening, and perhaps even faster than before.
As we enter 2019, celebrities are rushing to play Dungeons and Dragons, The Big Bang Theory has better ratings than NFL football, Game of Thrones is the top HBO show, and the most popular movie in America is from a comic book. It's a weird world.
Nowadays I'm a bit saddened that my attitudes have shifted to become more close-minded, like my fathers. Adults playing Dungeons and Dragons are somewhat pathetic, comic books are boring kids stuff, and "fantasy" is for people who have dull lives. I don't subscribe to all of that, but remembering how angry I was at my father for belittling the fantasy escapism that I was so wrapped up in, it's odd to find myself agreeing with some of his sentiments.
I haven't watched many recent sitcoms, I think the last one I wanted regularly was How I Met Your Mother which had zero gay lead characters (even though the biggest womanizer on the show was played by and actor who is gay in real life).
There are some gay focused shows (Grace & Frankie, Will and Grace), but looking at the top 5 current sitcoms [1]
1. Big Bang Theory - none of the main characters are gay
2. Modern Family - out of 11 main characters, 2 are gay
3. Brooklyn Nine Nine - out of 10 main characters, 1 is gay
4. The Simpsons - I don't know how to count main characters, but I don't think any are gay
5. Always Sunny in Philadelphia - Out of 5 main characters, one is (or might be?) gay.
(I used Wikipedia for most of these, so I may not have gotten the counts completely accurate)
This doesn't seem to be a gross over representation of homosexuality - I wonder if you're suffering from observation bias, or if maybe you're just watching sitcoms that have more gay characters for whatever reason.
[1] - https://www.ranker.com/list/best-current-tv-sitcoms/ranker-tv
Wasn't there a Big Bang Theory episode where this happened?
I would argue that Big Bang Theory continues the negative trend of "nerds" being a laughing stock for the "normal people". Sure it is a success, but that tells us nothing except that it is successful in appealing to audience. I watched only a few episodes and although it introduces people to some aspects of the "nerd culture", overall I still found its mocking tone personally unappealing. I've even experienced and witnessed people using the tropes from the show to mock "nerds". Yes, it might be funny due to the over exaggeration of the stereotypes and honestly I don't mind, but when it comes to the issues that were describe in the article it isn't helping.
I don't know much about friends (never could watch it as I find pretty much all of the characters insufferable), but in regards to the article it is pointing out just one thing of a much larger story. I think other things played much larger role in the anti-intellectual/anti-reason movement that the article is lamenting.
BBT has quite a few episodes portraying work at the university, but it's definitely a minor amount, and it's not really intended to be scientifically accurate bleeding edge science. Big Bang Theory is far more worried about getting right details of various super heroes than presenting an education on theoretical physics.
I agree here. I am not a fan of comic books nor superhero films. My wife loves them though so we have seen most Marvel movies and it id probably where I know Stan Lee from.
Though IIRC he appeared in "the big bang theory" as well.
Of course - his legacy are the characters and stories and not just the cameos :)
I wonder how much of the higher piracy outside the USA is being caused by a lot of USA content being desirable, but not being released (or much later) on broadcast TV outside the USA.
Sitcoms like Big Bang theory... I'm not sure if they're worth paying for for a lot of people, but it'll take a long time before you can watch it for free (well, except for the advertisements) outside the USA.
> Meanwhile I wonder how people have time to finish entire seasons of TV shows on netflix, given the modern trend of story-driven shows that assume you've actually seen all the previous episodes instead of pre-internet-era sitcoms that you could jump in and watch any 30-minute episode with little context. Twitch is more of a return to old-school TV in that regard.
Is this really true?
I know I watched random episodes (Malcolm/Seinfeld/Friends/etc..) and enjoyed it. But re-watching them in the proper order is magnitudes better and clearly the way it was supposed to be watched.
I wonder if the same is true for modern TV shows, e.g. the big bang theory - it can be watched and enjoyed by picking a random TV show. Even longer form, say Firefly/Dark Angel/Twin Peaks require you to watch it in order - yet they could be enjoyed on their own as well (you had basically no choice anyway..).
I wonder who the target audience here is. It is a short article composed of quotes from Randy Pausch, some generalizations about engineers, and sports metaphors.
> I’ve had the privilege of spending my entire career in technology surrounded by wicked smart engineers. I’ve always been drawn to their raw intelligence, Spock-like rationality, sincere honesty, dry humor and quirkiness. With the immense popularity of the sitcom, “The Big Bang Theory”, I suppose I’m not alone in my appreciation of them.
Almost none of the characters on Big Bang Theory were engineers, they were physicists. This article seems to conflate 'nerd' with 'engineer' on an incredibly surface level exploration.
... and before anything is actually stated, it moves over to use sports metaphors to accent how important teamwork is.
The awful truth is that arrogance, inability to delegate, poor communication, poor ability to react to feedback are traits that are rampant in pretty much every industry, including VC. Picking out engineers are some type of specific 'archetype' especially bad at these skills is buying into awful stereotypes about engineers as if we have no social skills.
China has just as large, if not larger, challenges in getting women into and keeping them in tech jobs. The overtime cheerleaders don’t help matters.
Also, Big Bang theory is really popular in China, my wife had already seen every episode when we were living in Beijing (I don’t have any intrest in the show). The reason for the ban (which doesn’t affect piracy sites) is probably more financial than cultural.
Adding my experience to the "Italian thread". I want to share just to say that it's easier than you think, and you don't necessarily need special experiences if you can't (or you didn't) have them.
During school I always studied French, and very little/basic English. I did a 3 months full immersion in Dublin, but it didn't help that much. When I started my PhD I literally had issues with the "s" at the 3rd person.
Because I was required to write primarily in English, I started doing that: write a lot, and do exercises to be better at writing. In parallel I started to read more in English, mostly research papers. I still had issues with reading, let alone speaking. Specifically, I never read an entire book in English, and I still used to read news in Italian even though a lot of them, especially technology news, are much better in English.
The major change for me has been starting to watch series in English (the first one was The Big Bang Theory), initially with subtitles in Italian and soon after subtitled in English -- I highly recommend the latter. With that, I transformed. I watched TBBT also dubbed in Italian, I realized how worse it was (jokes not got by translators, weird voices once you heard the real ones, etc.). I remember soon after I was excited and watched the black swan in English, I certainly had improved but couldn't get most of it still.
Fast forward a few years, improvements were clear. I published peer reviewed papers, and spoke to conferences. I moved to San Francisco and survived well. Five years in, I live here, my wife is American, and I work & live primarily in English. I can't work in sales :), but my English is certainly fluent for my work, to talk to people, and to speak in public.
In summary, from 0 to fluent writing a lot, watching TV series, and later talking to others.
> The movie lauded nearly universally, winning and nominated for all sorts of awards (including best picture!)
Yes it is the same movie. If the judgement of the entertainment industry and public were any measure of quality then "Big Bang Theory" should be an excelent show, when in truth it is just a childish nerd version of those blackface movies from early 20th century. Millions loved it? Millions are wrong.
> I don't recognize a single one of your bullet points as being about my experience of the movie.
I just described scenes. Watch the movie you'll see those scenes.
I don't see the "brilliance" you describe, just a lot of clichés in fast montage to blur out the shallowness.
I liked the movie, "The Theory of Everything", which allowed for more people to learn about this phenomenal human being. [1] I also liked his appearances in shows (like The Big Bang Theory). We would've looked forward to a lot more from him! He will be missed!
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_of_Everything_(2014_film)
Im curious if the developers are fans of The Big Bang Theory TV series? They were using a smart phone app...and of course was less useful due to it being fiction...
https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=big-bang-theory&episode=s04e12
They aren't just players. They are way more than that. They are specifically made to organize and display large collections of movies and TV shows. VLC or wmp doesn't have an integration with IMDb to download all the titles, descriptions and cover art for movies based on their Usenet/torrent standard naming conventions.
I'm not saying there aren't plenty of legal uses for Kodi and Plex, I'm just saying that people aren't paying for a Plex pass or spending countless hours on Kodi to catalog their personal home videos.
Neither program is even well suited to that. There isnt even an easy to use interface on either for including custom content.
But drop in a file names the.big.bang.theory.s05e11.720p.brrip.mkv and they both know exactly what to do.
Netflix has assets too. They own a whole bunch of original shows and movies. For comparison, The Big Bang Theory has been worth a couple billion to CBS just in syndication.
They also have a worldwide CDN capable of delivering high definition video around the world.
And lastly, they have 20 years of movie viewing history. Their prediction models alone are probably worth many billions to the movie studios.
What I loved about Ready Player One was that it was an unapologetic celebration of obsession and nostalgia. It was a plot contrived to create a setting where those qualities were what was needed to save the world. It's not particularly deep outside of that, and I don't really mind.
Geekdom is becoming more popular in popular culture, but RP1 does it in a special way that I can appreciate. The Big Bang Theory does standard sitcom stuff and plays a laugh-track when recognizable "geeky" thing happens like a character having a Nintendo 64 on-screen for a moment. RP1 has an infodump about an easter egg and a glitch in a specific arcade game (... not entirely different than some of the type of nonfiction I like) and then works it into a contrived but fun plot point. It paints a world where many characters are driven by obsession, and that this isn't a spectacularly weird thing they do. (Yes, the book does take it to some amusing extremes.) Maybe it's the likely asperger's syndrome in me talking, but I feel like obsession is a big thing in my life, and it's fun to find a story that actually embraces that.
Yes, I know that the way the character often interacts by trivia-dropping is grating outside of scenarios where trivia saves the world, and possibly still a bit grating within those scenarios. I never thought those parts were being portrayed otherwise. Yes, there's common problems with fandoms about gatekeeping and lack of inclusion, and no, I don't think it's unforgivable that RP1 doesn't address these. RP1's popularity is not a dismissal by society of these issues.
No, I never thought it would be a good idea for human culture to stop creating new media and cling to 80's stuff, or felt like the book pushed for that at all. Maybe others read it differently, but I figured that the setting was like that just so the book could focus on 80s nostalgia specifically with no other media to get in the way while also having futuristic VR.
> One thing that is certain is that there are more commercials now. If you watch an episode of The Big Bang Theory sans commercials, you will notice that it is only 17 minutes long! And that includes the 60 second intro. So 13 minutes of commercials for 16 minutes of actual content. No chance I'll be going back to regular TV.
I get my episodes of BBT from iTunes. You’re correct that BBT episodes are shorter than most other mainstream shows (at least in my own library). They are often only about 18-19m, other episodes reach 21-22m as well. I don’t see any below 18m in the past four seasons and stopped searching beyond that. Alternatively, most of the half-hour shows I watch are consistently about 20-21m, so BBT is definitely providing less content overall.
As for the assertion of 1m intros with BBT, that's 3x longer than reality. I scripted simple controls for controlling iTunes via my phone so that I wouldn’t need to reach for my kbd or trackpad. I set the FWD time to 30 seconds and the BACK time to 10 seconds. Jumping ahead by 30s is appropriate for most shows that I watch, whereas BBT requires me to also jump back by 10s (it has a 20s intro).
Few sitcoms still have 1m or longer intros. New Girl is about 5s, down from around 30s when it started. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia dropped from 1m to 30s. The Sarah Silverman Program dropped from 22s to 17s in 2010. I see the overall trend for typical broadcasts as gradually reducing intros (excluding shows on HBO, etc; those still have very long intros but also no commercials).
Taking a look specifically at the Big Bang Theory, up until Season 10, most episodes were around 21 minutes. Season 10 had episodes around 20-21 minutes, and the current season (11) hovers around the 19-20 minute mark.
When I was in High School, our English teacher actually wrote and produced a TV show and was telling us about her experience and some of the things she had to do to cut episodes in the right amount of time for commercials. At the time (mid 2000s), the average was 23 minutes of show per 30 minute episode.
Looking across my library at recent shows, it seems to average about 21 minutes nowadays.
One thing that is certain is that there are more commercials now. If you watch an episode of The Big Bang Theory sans commercials, you will notice that it is only 17 minutes long! And that includes the 60 second intro. So 13 minutes of commercials for 16 minutes of actual content. No chance I'll be going back to regular TV.
"the medium is the message. The medium a piece of art chooses is significant. TV and movies will rot your brain regardless of whether it's The Big Bang Theory or Citizen Kane. Reading will improve your brain, regardless of whether you're reading Danielle Steel or Chaucer."
I have not heard that before.
The medium a piece of art chooses is significant, yes, (and in a lot of cases the creator chooses the wrong medium, eg. there are plenty of computer games out there that really want to be films, they dont make use of the strengths of the medium and even fight against it.)
The rest, I dont agree with.
Imo big bang, citizen kane, danielle Steel and chaucer are all somewhat equatable, because they are all fiction/entertainment. Personally I'd rate something educational or non-fiction over fiction in any medium
Arts aren't just entertainment. They're a reflection of the soul of a culture and exist long after that culture is dead. If you look at every culture ever recorded in human history, you'll note there is a direct correlation between a culture's progression in art and a culture's progression in science and technology.
That said, I agree with you that most written literature has very little to offer most people. Most pieces of literature bear that designation because they are "teachable" in one form or another. Some are chosen because they perfect one very specific aspect of the craft of writing. Others, like Finnegan's Wake, are like P vs NP in that they provide an infinitely complex problem for intelligent minds to spend lifetimes chewing on without ever reaching a conclusion.
Something else to keep in mind: the medium is the message. The medium a piece of art chooses is significant. TV and movies will rot your brain regardless of whether it's The Big Bang Theory or Citizen Kane. Reading will improve your brain, regardless of whether you're reading Danielle Steel or Chaucer.
Something as mass-market as Big Bang Theory did a D&D episode years before Stranger Things existed. It's been a much longer process than that.
Something more niche but still network TV (Community) did one a few years before that, even. That's around the same time I started noticing it popping up in more stores in suburban TX.
as we know it is too late, trisolaris fleet is already under way, and the problem with the human science progress is so apparent that it even became a subject of the recent Big Bang Theory episode.
There's an episode of the Big Bang Theory where all the fancy scientists mock the internal combustion engine for being primitive technology... But when their car breaks down, Penny has to come and help them out :-)
> If we didn't do that, we'd be completely inundated with American shows flogged off on the cheap
Absolutely. I deleted it from my post, but I was going to mention that on non-primary Australian TV stations that don't have the same content restrictions, we get 2 hours of non-stop Big Bang Theory reruns, or endless repeats of Frasier, Sex And The City, Charmed & Becker.
> What kind of tv show do you consider 'culturally significant'?
Glitch is my favorite recent Australian TV show, started on ABC but apparently Season 2 has been sold as a Netflix exclusive. Back in the 90s it would have been shows like Seachange, Frontline, Kath & Kim. Maybe Offspring & Packed To The Rafters are recent equivalents.
(Outside Australia, I'd think of shows like The Bridge, Springfloden, The Killing & Occupied, that have exported Scandinavian culture onto Australian TV.)
Reminds me of Sheldon and Amy discussing the same issue in "the Big Bang Theory" TV show!
Actually, no, a huge number of people do not enjoy regular TV. The highest viewership series last year "The Big Bang Theory" had over 90% of the population uninterested in watching a free show.
http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/more-tv-news/the-20-highest-rated-shows-of-2016-the-walking-dead-and-the-big-bang-theory-win-the-year/
Its at the point where if you meet someone and you're a fan of a non-top tier TV show, unless you met in an echo chamber, the odds of someone being your astrological symbol or in some cases having the same birthday are higher than them being a fan of your pet show.
TV is no longer culturally relevant, not like it was decades ago. Nobody watches that stuff.
I've had some success relating one of my favorite jokes from the TV show "Big Bang Theory".
Dr. Stephanie: "So what did you do today?"
Leonard: "Well, I'm a physicist, so... I thought about stuff."
Dr. S: "Is that all?"
L: "I wrote some of it down."
They aren't different, just different dimensions. If you increase the frame rate you would need less temporal anti-aliasing. You can actually see noise artifacts in the motion blur of the first ice age movie (and many other places to be fair, like the slices in the transitions on Big Bang Theory).
Surely, the sitcom you meant is the big bang theory. The modern minstrel show with geek chic instead of blackface.
I agree, and it is by no means exclusive to the US. It's lucky for the US that it's still in a position to easily lure people from almost every country.
And this won't chance too soon, most TV shows and films, e.g. Big Bang Theory, Mr. Robot, do nothing to normalise the perception of these kinds of jobs. Workers are always portrayed as weird/quirky/dysfunctional. The closest portrayal to normality has been the workers in Westworld. But those jobs weren't exactly aspirational either...
Wow, that's crazy.
I haven't really used the drive other than what I mentioned. I just grabbed the nearest DVD (disc 2 of 3 of season 7 of "The Big Bang Theory"), popped it in, and it just worked.
That was just a quick "test" to see how difficult it was nowadays to rip/encode DVDs (I haven't done that for probably eight years or so and it was a major PITA back then). I was planning on doing the same to most of our "media collection" so I'm hoping it continues to go well.
Thanks for the heads up. I'll be looking more into this.
Cures for diseases I expect AI to do much better than us very soon.
Entertainment will take longer, but I see no reason why it wouldn't be possible to algorithmically create. The lesser ones like Big Bang Theory is basically just a nerd reskin of every other sitcom Chuck Lorre has done. That could probably be churned out by a computer by the end of 2020. The more complicated entertainment will take longer to crack though.
Friendship is tough to define. So I'll give you that.
I'm native Romanian, fluent English and medium German. I've learned both on my own. School was terrible for learning anything.
Read, read a lot. But not hard-copy books. Read short articles. Read something you're interested in and already have some knowledge of. Technical stuff is easier than literature. No metaphors, no hidden meaning. You might not understand much in the beginning, but that's ok. If you at least get the gist of the article, you're good to go. It keeps you interested. Install the "Wiktionary and Google Translate" addon (if on Firefox, or similar for other browsers). Double-click a word to pop up it's definition. Or select whole sentences to instant-translate them. Every word definition is a click away. The more you see, the better you become.
Watch your favourite tv show with subtitles. If the tv show is in English and you already know English, that's all you need. Put on the subtitles in the language you want to learn and see the magic happen. You'll pick up words and expressions in no time. Dramas/thrillers work better than comedy. Comedy is usually fast-paced and has complicated expressions. Recommended: Dexter, Breaking Bad, SOA, etc. Not recommended: Friends, Big Bang Theory, etc. You get the idea.
It takes time, but it's better than learning all the grammar before you even have the chance to use the language. It's like learning the geometry of the hammer without ever using it. A little grammar right at the beginning might help, of course. But don't stay too long in that corner.
Character from the tv show Big Bang Theory. The character is highly intelligent but quirky.
http://www.fanpop.com/clubs/the-big-bang-theory/images/26450991/title/sheldon-cooper-fanart
The Theranos story reminds me of an episode of "The Big Bang Theory". Sheldon gets sent to jail. Why? Why do you think, for doing the same crap he always does but this time to a judge.
Theranos followed a standard SV script, sell the vision, create a barely working product. get people to use it, iterate.
You just can't do that in a regulated space especially when you can put people's lives at risk.
Modern Family, 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation, The Middle, Raising Hope, How I Met Your Mother, and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt were all fairly recent examples of decent modern sitcoms (and wow that list is bigger than I thought it'd be), and for the most part, generally centered around middle class families/people. Some are a bit more outlandish and over-the-top at times, but that can also be their appeal.
By modern, I also mean they follow a continuing story arc episode-to-episode, so while you could watch any episode in isolation, you get a lot more if you know backstory and the characters. They're also all "single camera" shows (no laugh track) which IMHO is a much better style, and allows them to be more creative, have a continuing story, and frankly, be funnier than the (pause for laughter) lines in a show like Big Bang Theory.
I grew up upper-lower-middle class in a dying manufacturing town near Chicago so the The Simpsons, Married with Children, Roseanne always felt like home.
I can't agree with the article tho. I still see that same grasping in current shows like Better Call Saul, Shameless (which, aside from Season 2, is fantastic), and, in a different way, The Big Bang Theory and Silicon Valley.
Most comedies are just joke delivery mediums with paper thin walls. But nothing has changed, shows have always been a reflection of their creators/runners and the networks fund people who've had hits.. Family Guy was a hit on DVD/[adult swim]? Ok! Order two more joke delivery vehicles from Seth MacFarlane!
James L. Brooks had a string of hits with a strong emotional core. So after he helped get The Simpsons on the air it made sense that he essentially forced the 20-something writers to build the show around an emotional/sentimental core instead of letting it to devolve into a gag factory out of the gate.
While the value of watching a "rubbish" comedy (or TV for that matter) certainly is debatable, the content of the show, or at least the accuracy of the physics jokes, are spot on. They are pretty rigorous in their joke fact checking :
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-big-bang-theory-has-hidden-jokes-down-to-a-science-1443808102
>A lot of the humor is over the heads of the general audience.
>But there are jokes inside of jokes, and for those who
>recognize the science, they’re hilarious. The show takes this
>stuff so seriously that it employs a UCLA physics professor
>to make sure it gets it right.
>Case in point: In a 2009 episode, “The Jiminy Conjecture,”
>Sheldon and Howard heard a chirp and then argued over which
>variety of cricket made the sound.
>On the whiteboard in the background is Dolbear’s law, which
>states the relationship between the air temperature and the
>rate at which crickets chirp.
>“I went to a Dolbear presentation at Tufts, and they talked
>about this, in like 1989,” says one high-profile fan of the
>show, Seamus Blackley, one of the creators of Microsoft’s
>original Xbox game console. “I remembered it!”
>“Once I realized what was going on, it was awesome,” added
>Mr. Blackley, who is also trained in physics. “It’s the No. 1
>show, and it has actual physics in it.”
I'm just not sure there's ever been a show that's attempted to deliver comedy around Schrodinger's Cat or Quantum Uncertainty. They do a phenomenal job with comedy surrounding such technical subjects, but just by acknowledging my fondness for the show, puts me in a minority here.
LMAO.. Big Bang Theory... The TV Show.
I probably should have been more explicit but the very fact that this was misunderstood, probably proves my point about HN News and pop culture..
Or maybe you're just trolling... :)
I get that the Hacker News crowd maybe a bit more anti-social, but how do we continuously ignore what's going on in the general population (HN == anti-Facebook, anti-Big Bang Theory, basically, anything that's popular)?
Have you been to a concert? A family reunion? A movie? People waiting in line? People are looking at their phones constantly, even to the point, where they're ignoring everything else around them.
Yes, people live in their phones. It's so obvious.
Now I can't wait for that episode where a greyed Ross Gellar has a guest appearance on The Big Bang Theory. Sure, there is a lot of making fun of nerds in that show, but it's so nuanced compared to the old Ross-mocking that one might actually enjoy living in the 21st century. Not mentioning TBBT in a 2016 text about nerd bullying in Friends? Might be tolerable in a tweet, but not in a text that long.
(entirely unrelated tangent: R.E.M. ITEOTWAWKI(aiff) as a preliminary Friends theme song? Now that puts the whole show in an entirely new perspective)
The show is everything Big Bang Theory isn't.
BBT makes fun of stereotypes, in the way only outsiders can make fun of stereotypes: The jokes don't make sense, the writing seems to have no real compassion for the group that they are lampooning at all, and I've never actually seen people behave like the characters do.
Instead, SV makes sense for people in startups: It doesn't really spend most of its time making fun of how maladjusted startup workers are, like BBT does, but instead makes fun of the theater we all are surrounded by. By just turning the tech into star trek style technobabble, the show can focus on things that are relatable and real.
Take, for instance, a conversation they have, in an early episode of this year, about the problems of high valuations and down rounds. There were articles written about it that hit the very top of HN, because the conversation was so very real. The craziness you see in the GPs video? It seems deranged, but it's said by a character more than loosely based on Mark Cuban, and it's reflecting the values of the time when Cuban made his money! And his story covers a huge issue in entrepreneurship: Does the fact that you managed to get an amazing exit in one company really mean you will be any good later as a venture capitalist? Were you lucky or good?
If you take away all the laughs, the series tackles realistic problems all the time. So the series is not about easy laughs at the expense of people: It's a story about a culture, that happens to have laughs to make sure people that aren't interested in the culture are still entertained by it. Just like The Wire, it's not a documentary, but it sure seems to rhyme with reality.
I swear a big bang theory rerun about this was on last night. Sheldon detected waves at the north pole, but they were actually a blender turned on by the rest of the gang. He's embarrassed and goes home. Leonard beds Penny. Decent episode.
Referring to an appearance of Bayes' theorem on Sheldon's whiteboard:
> Bayes’ theorem has become so popular that it even made a guest appearance on the hit CBS show Big Bang Theory
That's not a sign that it has become popular, any more than the appearance of the standard human pedigree notation used by genetic counselors on the same whiteboard indicates that standard human pedigree notation has become popular among the general public. It's simply a sign that BBT takes care to make the whiteboards generally scientifically sensible.
They have a UCLA physicist [1] consultant who works with the producers, writers, prop people, set decorators and others to try to make things scientifically accurate.
In this particular episode, both Bayes' theorem and the genetic information are there because Sheldon was trying to figure out his chances of surviving until technology reaches the point that he can transfer his mind to an AI and what he would have to do to improve those chances. So both those things were on the whiteboard because they are things that would be perfectly reasonable to find on the whiteboard of someone doing that.
They consulting physicist had a blog [2] where he covered most episodes and talked about the whiteboards and other scientific content. Here is the entry for the aforementioned episode [3].
[1] http://bigbangtheory.wikia.com/wiki/David_Saltzberg
[2] https://thebigblogtheory.wordpress.com
[3] https://thebigblogtheory.wordpress.com/2010/09/30/s04e02-the-cruciferous-vegetable-amplification/
Er... you realize that The Big Bang Theory is a sitcom, ie a comedy show?
>> for a normal sitcom or drama, costumes can be bought off the rack and shots can be done on location or on a sound stage with easily-sourced furniture / decoration / etc.
Worth noting: for sitcoms, staff costs are often as high/higher than the SF shows that make it to the screen. For example, actors on _The Big Bang Theory_ are rumored to earn $1m per episode each. Ditto other shows like _Modern Family_.
Likely there are relatively few Sci Fi shows because the Sci Fi writ large has yet to figure out how to connect with audience sizes beyond a niche. If they achieve mainstream reach, the cost of the sets will not matter as much.
At least for movies and TV, it's all about the unwritten rule that you can't punch down, but it's okay to punch up. Big Bang Theory is a good example: it makes fun of the stereotypical nerdy white, brown, and jewish guys. That is socially acceptable, because these are the same demographics ruling the country from Silicon Valley and Wall Street.
Of course not every asian guy is a 1%-er working at Google. But lots of old white guys (always an acceptable target for comedy) also struggle to make ends-meet. Regardless, that's where the media has chosen to draw the line. I'm not defending the practice, but I'm pretty sure that's what explains your observations.
Rotten tomatoes represents the views of critics, which is one sort of view: was it good. Some viewers, like myself, may review more on a basis of: did I enjoy watching it. So, I wouldn't expect nor want a very strong correlation with a subset to the whole.
To put it another way, I like good movies, but have an unreasonable fondness for zombie movies, and a fabulous hatred for Goodwill Hunting, PI, and the Big Bang Theory my perception of their failure to accurately represent my area (although Chuck is fine). If I were writing reviews, I'd have to cut back on my weird personal biases to make them marketable and useful.
Unfortunately for the author, the numbers simply don't support the narrative she wishes to paint:
> The percentage of women studying computer science actually has fallen since the 1980s. Dr. Cheryan theorizes that this decline might be partly attributable to the rise of pop-culture portrayals of scientists as white or Asian male geeks in movies and TV shows like “Revenge of the Nerds” and “The Big Bang Theory.”
CS degrees took a huge jump from 5,000 per year in 1975 with 18% being women to 39,000 per year in 1985 with 37% being women. Perhaps she should ask what caused that.
I'll tell you what--Punchcards, COBOL and the PDP/Vax. Suddenly everybody put their accounting systems on computers, and you needed people who could program them or feed them data. And that required keyboard skills--which were taught to women because every high school had secretarial classes (typing/shorthand/dictation). And, right around when the decline started happening (1984/1985), those secretarial programs all got wiped out.
Perhaps if we start training women to be secretaries again, we'll fix the CS enrollment problem (CAUTION: I'm being sarcastic here about drawing stupid conclusions that fit your desired narrative).
In addition, if you look at Master's degrees awarded, you find that the percentage of women earning Master's in CS is about 28% and has bounced around that number since 1985 and been around 30% since 2001. The percentage of PhD's going to women in CS has been gradually increasing every year since 1977 or so and stands at 21% in 2010.
These aren't the statistics for a field women are having difficulty entering (take a look at electrical engineering for that ...). The fact that female CS undergraduate percentages crashed in 2005 is a bit concerning (similar downblip in EE--wonder what the issue is), but that should be a local cause that should be discoverable rather than systemic.
References: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf13327/content.cfm?pub_id=4266&id=2 http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf13327/pdf/tab33.pdf
Yea, seems to be going in the opposite direction. Pop culture like tv shows Big Bang Theory and Silicon Valley are showing that it's actually cool to be geeky or into tech and startups.
You are absolutly right. Threatening to kill people would not be funny at all. Of course, humorous hyperbole on the other hand...
I'm guessing you don't see a lot of sitcoms like Silicon Valley, Big Bang Theory, or comedians like Luis C.K., Sara Silverman et. al. Which is tragic, because they are awesome.
Not, of course, to suggest I'm as funny as that (clearly), just someone who's providing observations on Sift from using it in real world production applications (unlike almost all of the posts above this one).
NRX Silicon Valley techno-libertarian sub-culture
Neoreactionaries are anti-libertarian by definition.
selfie culture
Not a subculture any more than the hula hoop was a subculture.
how STEM seems to have become the new 'cool' or celebrity status, especially with the show The Big Bang Theory being so popular
Not really STEM in particular, but rather various media (novels, comic books, films, TV shows, etc.) related to science fiction, fantasy and stereotypically "geeky" things.
> Name a sitcom where the man is smart and the woman an idiot
Big Bang Theory, kind of (its a sitcom, all the male main characters are intellectually "smart", and the not-smart main character is female, though there are also two "smart" female characters, as well.)
Not only do I disagree with the description of Big Bang Theory as "nerd blackface" (and, in fact, find that description offensively trivializing of the actual nature and impact of blackface, but that's getting tangential), but clearly the description is more applicable to Scorpion, in which, unlike Big Bang Theory:
1. All the hyper-intelligent characters that are part of the main recurring cast are male (BBT has a 4:2 gender ratio in the characters portrayed as unusually intelligent),
2. The one female character that is part of the team with those characters is a female who is explicitly part of the team to, as described upthread, "lubricate their social interactions." (BBT has a range of social ineptitude among the intelligent characters, including one of the intelligent female characters as particularly socially inept.)
3. Is, rather than a deliberately and overtly ridiculous sitcom, a drama billed as reality-based.
>There's an incredible amount of bad programming on today
Well, Sturgeon's Law. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law
The crap today is crap in different ways from older television but I'd argue what's good is very, very good. And frankly, if you can give me a handful of hours of quality television a week, I'm happy. Give me much more than that and I'm not going to watch it anyway. If there's a greater percentage of poor TV today, it's probably because there are more time slots that need to be filled cheaply but whether it's 99% crap or 99.9% crap doesn't really affect me.
I never got into Big Bang Theory and have pretty much lost my taste for sitcoms generally in any case. I'm not sure I'd even get into Seinfeld today although it was pretty much a cultural touchstone at the time.
I can't tell if this is a joke, but I'm going to humor you.
I think your money would be better spent on, say, therapy to help you deal with your issues of belonging. One movie starring an Asian-looking man is not going to fix your identity issues, nor is any external event.
Asians are less than 5% of the country, so there aren't as many accusations of racism when movies are missing them as when movies are missing African Americans. Also, the "Asian American" statistic includes people from the Indian subcontinent. So if you feel like you're in a country that has very few people who look like you, you're right! If you were white in China, you'd feel the same way.
Regarding Asian actors: John Cho has had a fairly successful career, and it's only on the upswing. The Netflix show Marco Polo is absolutely full of Asians. Lucy Liu is the star of a TV show and many movies.
I find it ironic that you're crying about discrimination, but you mention several times that you want to see a male playing a lead role. Everyone wants the world to be in their image, but it never will be. Do what you can to change it, and if you can't, don't make yourself miserable.
Edit: Main characters in Silicon Valley, The Big Bang Theory, Heroes, The Last Air Bender, and probably lots of other films are Indian. Ben Kingsley is super-famous and half Indian.
I think there are two separate viewpoints, both useful, neither true, that can be used to understand the structuring of stories. The viewpoint espoused in this article is that there exist certain timeless structures, imposed by the form that inextricably results in a type of output. And that the job of a writer is to discover these forms and work within them.
There's another line of argument, made by Steven Johnson in Everything Bad is Good for You, where viewers are trained by the media to read texts in a more sophisticated fashion. As viewers become more media savvy, the desire for surprise causes a constant creative arms race as structures that were once avant garde becomes commonplace, then tired, then old fashioned.
The A/B plot mentioned in the article is only about 40 years old (starting with Hill St Blues in 1981). Prior to that, television comedy followed a strict single line for fear of confusing the audience. Nowadays, it's not uncommon to see a sitcom go up to E plots. What's allowed them to do that is that television has developed increasingly dense visual shorthand that allows them to speed through a plot even faster, allowing for more story to fit into those 22 minutes.
Previous constraints on syndication meant that characters were required to remain in a stasis throughout the entire run but season long and series long arcs are now becoming the norm with even relatively retrograde sitcoms like The Big Bang Theory engaging in long term plotting.
If you look towards the cutting edge, you start to see people playing around with the traditional three act structure in interesting ways to keep the form fresh. How I Met Your Mother plays around with time and memory, sometimes establishing the conclusion at the front of the episode and then uses flashbacks to flesh out the central conflict in reverse. Louie routinely fits 2 or 3 stories into a single episode or stretches a single story across multiple episodes. Arrested Development S4 was an overly ambitious attempt to build a single, series long story, told and retold from multiple perspectives. And one of Girls' most polarizing episodes, One Man's Treasure (the bottle episode where Hannah has a tryst with the rich doctor) was hated by some precisely because it rejected the standard formula and resolutely avoided going for a climax and resolution.
Such techniques follow the standard adoption cycle, first appearing in cutting edge, low rated comedies aimed at early adopters before eventually gaining widespread appeal and mainstream success before becoming hacky and relegated to shows for children and old people.
But some are.
I certainly share certain character traits and life experiences with some of the characters of that show. That's a part of why I like it.
It's like when any show features a group, there will be people from that group who do not like the way they're being depicted.
It's like when a show features black people, there are always black people who get upset because they're not like that or when a show features asian people, there will always be asian people who get upset because they're not like that.
In these cases, just like with nerds and geeks, some are like that and the ones who are, are the ones about whom an entertaining show can be made.
Virtually nobody is going to watch a show featuring a middle-class, college educated black dude who manages a small restaurant unless there is some other hook. Virtually nobody is going to watch a show about a middle-class, westernized son of Japanese immigrants who works as an accountant, unless there is some other hook. Virtually nobody would watch the Big Bang Theory if all of the characters were average looking, well adjusted people who have passable social skills and just so happen to be very smart and work boring jobs.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and sometimes a TV show is just a TV show. If you can accept that the message isn't "This what they're ALL like" and that it is "This is what THIS group of people is like", I think you can reduce the amount of discomfort you feel.
The problem is the same as it is with print; the subscription fee usually only covers the cost of distribution. The cost of content is typically paid for by advertising, which brings in more than subscriptions do. This CBS streaming service is going to be $6/month. So for each million subscribers they get $6m/mo.
But CBS's most show, The Big Bang Theory, which is the most popular show in the USA in that time slot, pulls in about $6.5 million of ad revenue every episode. So CBS would need 4 million subscribers just to match the revenue stream from that one show. Put another way, they need 50k subscribers to replace the ad revenue from one single 30-second commercial spot on that same show. http://www.ibtimes.com/economics-prime-time-how-much-does-it-cost-place-30-second-ad-prime-time-weeknight-tv-show-1424544
This is why the economics of TV are so brutal and many shows are canceled after only a few episodes or a single season. It's not necessarily the fault of the show itself - if a new show goes up against a much stronger offering from another channel, it may not attract a critical mass of viewers and it's more economical to cancel further production and fill the time slot with repeats of more popular material that draws a reliable audience.
Now it could be possible for individual shows to break even. I don't watch a lot of TV, so I only ever watch one program on CBS, a show called Elementary. I would be willing to consider paying something like $1/episode or $25 for the whole season up front - but that has run for a few years already. For launching a new show with the production value and baseline quality of acting that a commercial audience expects, you probably can't get people to pay for it without spending the same amount of money on marketing as on the production itself. So without the cross-subsidies from advertising it would be quite difficult to raise the capital to finance new TV shows. Obviously you have alternatives depending on what sort of show you want to make, eg you can produce a wacky animated comedy relatively cheaply and launch it on YouTube or somesuch to get your initial audience critical mass. But if you want to do an hour-long serious drama or current affairs or science programming, your up front costs are far higher and you need people to open their checkbooks - your MVP probably costs at least $1 million.
I'm not really convinced.
The article's arguments for "geek culture" (might I add there is no such thing as a homogenous geek culture, but hey) proliferating are:
a) The recent popularity of sci-fi and superhero films.
b) The mass spread of consumer electronics and social media.
c) Computer technology becoming more accessible.
d) The information age enabling us to find trivia at a much faster rate than ever before.
e) Recent tech company acquisitions. (Twitch, Mojang, Oculus)
-------------------------
a) is not indicative of any long-term acceptance and popularity of "geekdom". Sci-fi, superhero and fantasy films have fluctuated in popularity on and off over the past 40 years. We're simply at another point where they've picked up again. In fact, the article does mention this quite neatly: "In the past, there have been plenty of pop culture phenomena nerds could get behind — the frenzies surrounding the “Star Wars” and “Lord of the Rings” movie franchises are two potent examples."
This is out, then.
b) is a technological inevitability. It has nothing to do with a spike in "geekdom". It's just progress, and in fact, one might make an argument that it is, to some extent, a regression. This is due to the locked down and obscurantist nature of consumer electronics, which discourage hacking and where everything is buried under a smoke screen. Social media? The Web is becoming ever more ubiquitous, so of course social media will as well. Social media has become more practical due to advances in web technology.
c) is closely related to b). As I stated, it may actually well serve as an argument against proliferation of "geekdom".
d) This means little, again. People have always been passionate about fiction they're invested in, so it's only normal that they'll memorize factoids and trivia. Honestly, if people think the best thing that came out of the Information Age is being able to look up factoids about television shows, what a miserable failure it is then.
e) is just tech giants being tech giants. Hurray?
-----------------------
Finally, I'd like to state that The Big Bang Theory has a rather... mixed reception, to put it euphemistically. In addition, installing a printer isn't always so simple. CUPS is nowhere near as bad as it used to be, but I still find myself having to reset the printer driver for the UI quite frequently, as it just arbitrarily blocks. I don't know.
And of course, the irony of taking a jab at that "homogenous, sexist geek culture" while writing about how a very watered down variant of it might be becoming popular.
"What was it about the 1970s and early 1980s that made Computer Science more welcoming to women? And what changed? I want the answer to this question too!"
A hypothesis (remember this is only a hypothesis):
What changed was that science and math became way less cooler in the (American) public perception between the 80s and the 2000s.
With the cold war and space race, scientists and engineers were supposed to be the people who took the US to the moon. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were, after all, engineers. The last flight to the moon was in 1972. The Voyagers were launced in 1977. Scientists, astronauts, and their like were cool, for a change. No one cared about who was winning college football when people were going to the moon and exploring the Solar System. My theory is that CS / Engineering got caught along in this wave and experienced strong female enrollment
Later, in the late 90s, and early 2000s, films like American Pie and whatnot came along, and solidified the appeal of the sports-playing jock, and making fun of the "nerds". Suddenly, nerds were the weak, spotty kids who were buried in their math books, and girls did not want to be associated with them. Enter present day, with probably 10% of CS classes in good schools being composed of women (unless it's MIT etc., which preferentially admits women to even the ratios, if I remember correctly)
To see the attitude change, just think of television programs. The scientist/astronaut Major Nelson in I Dream of Jeannie (1965-70) was portrayed as a strong, positive, and socially successful character. The scientists in Big Bang Theory are portrayed as a bunch of socially inept shut-ins who are very socially/romantically unsuccessful and are supposed to be pitied by the audience.
It's unfortunate to see this, but there are so many constantly reinforced stereotypes regarding geeks and 'geek culture' that very few want to embrace it.
Take a look at the (terrible, imo) TV show Big Bang Theory. The main characters are purposely socially awkward and distant.
Real-world geeks are typically far from that: far more exist on the socialable side of the spectrum than those who are constantly portrayed in the media. :(
Why on earth would you think Big Bang Theory is a positive portrayal of scientists and engineers? The scientists and engineers on that show are portrayed as unfit, socially awkward, overgrown children.
I'll think scientists and engineers are highly revered when films about them start winning Oscars regularly (forget 'Gravity', that fell into the 'cool astronaut' category). In that sense, we've actually come backward since 'A Beautiful Mind', a film about an eccentric mathematician won four Oscars.
It shouldn't be compared to Big Bang Theory. That show is a typical paint-by-numbers sitcom, the kind that CBS has been cashing big checks on for the past decade. They aren't particularly funny. I think Chuck Klosterman wrote something that these shows are "in the form of funny", which means that they follow a common comedic timing and use the laugh track as a cue. Once you start looking for it, you always see it.
The three camera and laugh track are usually indicators that the show probably isn't "smart funny", but it's not always true. I can watch Seinfeld reruns and pick out the camera cuts, laugh tracks and joke timings, but the show is still pretty clever.
But most people capable of making shows of Seinfeld-quality aren't going to go do a CBS sitcom. Seinfeld's set up was mostly a relic of its era. Today, you can get a single-camera comedy greenlit thanks to the cable channels. Even networks took some chances. I don't watch too many network shows anymore, but I know Scrubs and Arrested Development were single camera shows without laugh tracks and they were on NBC/ABC and Fox, respectively.
As for Silicon Valley, I was expecting more from it. It's a Mike Judge show and the reviews were very positive. I've only seen the first two episodes, but they were at least good enough to make me want to watch more. It sometimes takes these shows a while to build the characters and build enough background for more jokes to connect, but at this point, I'm more worried about the story lines being thin than the comedy. That's what ultimately lost my interest in Entourage. That show started out as being a fun 30 minutes, but it was very superficial and once you realized that the plots were ridiculous and the characters didn't make that much sense, it became tedious to watch. Since both Entourage and Silicon Valley are both based on specific, unique cultures, I think they're fairly comparable.
> Big Bang has a lot of nickle jokes related to science fields, with situational comedy surrounding the characters thrown in.
I think you have it backwards. Big Bang Theory these days is primarily a sitcom with some geek humor* thrown in.
* I use the term geek humor loosely. I don't consider superhero outfits or comparing someone to $nobelLaureate to be proper jokes (especially if I mentally edit out the laugh track).
Does Silicon Valley have a laugh track? I don't remember one from the first episode, but I watched that a couple of weeks ago.
Often (not always, though) shows with laugh tracks are an entirely different level of "not funny". It's bad when the show creators have to rely on cheap psychological gags to trick you into enjoying yourself. Silicon Valley operated at a higher level than that, although I still found a lot of its humor just referential and not too humorous or too easy. Honestly, just reading hacker news every day provides you with way more satire than the show does... I didn't watch anything past the first episode, so I can't speak to the story which you seem to like - I was just looking for a comedy show.
But tastes do differ. Especially when it comes to comedy. I'm glad you liked the show. I wouldn't compare it to Big Bang Theory, but I wasn't a fan.
I love this show. Not only does it accurately portray the SV startup scene, but it has a well-written story line. You can't really compare this to Big Bang Theory. I've seen nearly every episode of Big Bang and that is way, way more sitcom-style than Silicon Valley. Big Bang has a lot of nickle jokes related to science fields, with situational comedy surrounding the characters thrown in. Silicon Valley is not a sitcom, and the episodes follow a well-researched story line.
I second your feeling about Big Bang Theory, but I don't think SV is that bad. Personally, I liked the competing show "Betas" a lot better because it had subjectively more soul and better dramaturgical timing, but other than that Silicon Valley is mildly entertaining. Compared to BBT there is not a lot of pretentiously presented flavor text with at best a tenuous connection to real science, so I think Silicon Valley might at least have better expert consultants than most professional-themed drama and comedy shows. That still doesn't mean one can or should expect total factual accuracy from a TV show, it's still just entertainment - it just has to be enough to make you believe for a few minutes.
> Big Bang Theory isn't made for geeks; it's made for people who want to laugh at geeks.
It's important to note that BBT's jokes are largely predicated on academia and NOT tech culture since their inside consultant is a physics prof. It's amusing when the "geeks" complain how the show portrays them, when they don't just get the humor having never shared the experiences of the academics on the show.
That said, the volume of nuanced yet poignant physics jokes has dropped since season 1. Still not bad though, and enjoyed by those without the misplaced egos.
Plenty of shows taped in front of a live studio audience still sweeten it with a laugh track. But I have no idea if BBT does.
edit: wikipedia says yes. "Sweetening has been used in a number of television series, from older shows like Happy Days, Taxi, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, to newer sitcoms Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweetening
Big Bang Theory isn't made for geeks; it's made for people who want to laugh at geeks. Mostly, it's made to sitcom conventions and happens to use geekery as the punchline to conventional setups, situations, and timing. It's a show on rails, with ostensible 'nerds' as set dressing. Provided you watch it as a formulaic, mildly entertaining sitcom, it serves that purpose. Occasionally you can nod knowingly at catching Sheldon's obscure-to-the-general-public science references. But if you're the kind of person who catches Sheldon's references, the show's not for you. (In the aggregate, at least. Personally speaking, I enjoy Sheldon, even though I recognize him as a caricature.)
There have been some great commentaries over the last few years about shows for nerds vs. shows about nerds. Compare, for example, Big Bang Theory and Community. The former has more putatively 'nerdy' characters, but it's by no means a nerdy show. The latter revels in its obscurity, geekery, and absurdity, even though only one of the characters is supposed to be a 'nerd' in the vein of BBT's Sheldon. General Population watches BBT for entertainment, but also for a sort of paradoxical validation: to feel 'in' on the nerdery, but mostly to place a safe distance between itself and nerdery. Nerds, meanwhile, watch shows like Community, which make no bones about their nerdery.
Traditionally, the gulf between content 'for nerds' and 'about nerds' has been pretty wide. That's because the non-nerdy public finds the genuine article to be unfamiliar and vaguely threatening. If Judge's take on Silicon Valley succeeds, it will be the first time in years that someone's bridged this gap.
Big Bang Theory is a mainstream sitcom, and it has all the "qualities" of a mainstream sitcom set in any situation.
The vitriolic hatred of a certain subsection of geeks merely because of the setting, or god forbid, attempts at serious criticism of not "not conveying a genuine culture" only serves to confirm all geek stereotypes being exploited by that show.
I think it's odd that tech people are comparing this to the Big Bang theory. Big Bang theory dumbs down all of the jokes at the expense of not conveying a genuine culture. This is why it is massively successful in the general population and regected by geeks.
Silicon Valley seems to be the opposite at least based on the first episode. There are at least 4x as many subtle tech memes as there are jokes.
Apart from the sitcom the Big Bang Theory.
This is starting to sound like a Big Bang Theory episode :)
I'm not sure which side I'm on really. There are both good jokes there and some really mean episodes that are laughing about really nasty behaviour.
But to see how depressing some of the scenes actually are, search for "big bang theory without laugh track" on youtube. Once you listen to it like to a real situation... it's just terrible.
I quite like this writeup. I've seen a few episodes of The Big Bang Theory, and could never quite put my finger on why I didn't enjoy it, when I knew people who claimed it was the cleverest thing on TV and absolutely hilarious.
Clearly, though, I need to check out Community.
As a former ESL teacher, I think TV can be helpful but it's better to be very selective about which shows you watch. Pick shows that have a lot of dialogue in English.
Older TV shows tend to be more dialogue-centric. If you have the TV Land channel, I'd suggest: MASH, All in the Family, I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners, The Dick Van Dyke Show, &c.
Contemporary shows that would be good for this purpose might be: Modern Family, NCIS, Mad Men, Big Bang Theory, Parks and Recreation, Arrested Development, Parenthood (advanced: lots of simultaneous talking).
Why does this remind me of an episode of the 'Big Bang Theory'?
I haven't watched Community, but that is a long form version of my description to others (when asked) of why I don't watch The Big Bang Theory. I gave it a few episodes, I caught more when others watched it. It never clicked for me why I would be considered a part of the target audience when you often don't laugh with the characters, but at them. Thanks for the link.
"66. Germans seem to really enjoy watching (dubbed) How I Met Your Mother, Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory."
haha, that's true. These TV series run in an infinite loop. And of course everything in TV is dubbed ;)
> I was hoping for more storage so I could put every episode of Big Bang Theory on my iPad.
Can't he use the Time Capsule for this?
I think it is very possibly a result of culture in America and to a lesser extent, Europe, showing people working in technology as unglamorous, lonely nerds with questionable personal hygiene.
Witness the many TV shows making fun of STEM-concentration people, The Big Bang Theory, The IT Crowd, etc. In any film, the hacker will typically be shown as the over-eager, quirky, physically weak character (think Charlie Day as the kaiju scientist in Pacific Rim). Unless the film is something edgy like the Matrix, people always expect to see computer professionals as low-status individuals.
In my opinion, this results in women being afraid to enter these fields, because they are painted as having low social worth even if they have high economic worth. (BTW, if you live in Silicon Valley and are used to coffee-shop discussions about your favourite JS libraries, remember that it is a distorted reality field; if you are male and work in tech elsewhere in the States, the most people will come up with is "Do you work in IT? Oh, I see...")
On the contrary, in the former Soviet Union, scientists and technologist had a high social worth. Boom, 58% of engineers were women, as the article says.
>Now, I'm not talking about canned laughter. I think I can agree that adding laughter in post is bad. And Big Bang Theory is particularly guilty of 'sweetening' live audience reaction, meaning jokes that shouldn't be that funny often have huge waves of laughter. I don't appreciate that.
You are looking at it wrong. Do you know why the laughter is edited in post? You agreed that they film in front of a live audience (something most BBT bashers still can't accept from personal observations).
Now, one scene, multiple takes. The take that makes it into the show might have been the fifth one of the day. Of course the laughter that take produced is nowhere near as the initial response to the joke. So, you edit the laughter in post to make it fit. That has got nothing to do with "sweetening" anything. Unless you would rather they just use the laughter form the actual take, even though it was the 12th attempt and after seeing the joke 12 times the audience couldn't muster up so much as a snicker.
Isn't this what they did on the Big Bang Theory? I remember an episode when they shot a laser at the moon to ping it.
Wasn't this covered in an episode of Big Bang Theory? AKA the fount of relevant scientific knowledge..
It's quite obvious that he was referring to the societal stereotype that 'nerds' (of either sex) are socially inept and incapable of having anything other than an awkward conversation with the opposite sex (despite their desire for 'normal,' sexual relationships).
If you don't believe that stereotype exists, go watch _any_ episode of The Big Bang Theory.
Have you ever watched the "Big Bang Theory" TV show? There's a reason a character like Sheldon is portrayed in the show: Elements of that character are found in a number of disciplines, including programming. What I am saying is, there are people who are utterly rude and inconsiderate and don't actually know it. They somehow failed to develop human qualities about them. They exist and are very real. I worked with a guy who would wear a badge reading "Asshole <his name>" for years. People left him alone. He was very nice, but playing that role got him peace and quiet.
I would venture to guess that most online assholes are socially dysfunctional people.
I checked out the Pirate Bay's top 100 section the other day, and was astounded to see that The Big Bang Theory was the top TV show.
A lot of sitcoms aren't funny, but Big Bang Theory is like being held down by your older brother while his spit drips on your face.
Maybe it's supposed to be ironic? Like it's so bad it's good?
In high school my friends and I had bad-movie nights, where we'd do our own Mystery Science Theater. Is it like that? Do friends get together and smoke pot and have a Big Bang Theory marathon where they make fun of how terrible the jokes are?
Just trying to understand.
This reminded me of the Big Bang Theory episode "The Cruciferous Vegetable Amplification". Except in that episode, Sheldon was only using a telepresence robot because he was afraid that some mishap would kill him before the singularity.
If you'll pardon me for quoting a recent Big Bang Theory episode...
"All your ideas address [women] at a university level. By then it is too late. You need to design an outreach program that targets them at the middle school level and sets them on an academic track towards the hard sciences."
I think I disagree.. The rise of the "brogrammer" is proof that nerd culture is not only on the rise, but actually revered as the new "cool".
Look at television for example.. Asthon Kutcher is the highest paid actor on TV, and he basically stars as himself on Two and a Half men. Ashton is a product evangelist + angel investor. He makes nerds look awesome
Another example from (popular culture/TV) is Big Bang Theory. "Toward the end of its run, Friends was topping out around 20 million viewers, meaning Big Bang is now standing shoulder-to-shoulder with one of network TV's biggest and longest comedy successes."[1]
Movies like The Social Network + jOBS will further push the perceived nerdiness for Google into a good thing, not a negative thing. Our culture is shifting.
[1]- http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2013/01/big-bang-theory-ratings/60625/
Given that the average sitcom writer's conception of a nerdy character is more like "Screech" or Steve Urkel, the complex, neurotic, and really quite well-researched characters on Big Bang Theory are like a bolt of awesome from the blue.
"When The Big Bang Theory first aired there weren’t many nerds on mainstream TV, at least besides the character with the glasses and braces in the background on a teen drama. Before TBBT, nerds were the characters the protagonists avoided, the ones with the crushes on the blonde cheerleader lead, or the person the popular ensemble helped out to show that they were nice."
Am I the only one who remembers Numb3rs? That show treated Charlie (one of the two leads, a math professor) with respect, at least in the episodes I saw. His supporting cast in the math and physics departments was excellent as well.
Hell, there's an episode where he actually teaches a class, on-screen, on the Monty Hall problem:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbCM8w18h-Q
I hate the big bang theory, and for the longest time I've tried to put my finger on what it is I don't like about it. I think it comes from a mixture of two things.
The writing making the characters repeatedly try and display how smart they are (which I'm aware is integral to the show) but to me makes them totally and desperately unlikable. That, coupled with the general tension building component of most sit-coms where all too frequently characters do what is clearly a bad idea, followed by some form of "make it better" set of actions.
I know that if they [the characters] made a mistake and just repaired it in a very mundane way this would not be good television, but I find it incredibly jarring that these unlikable characters have one thing going for them, their intelligence, yet seemingly couldn't find their way out of a paper bag.
(EDIT: This reflects the relatively few episodes I've seen, but every time I see one I feel exactly the same)
(EDIT2: Perfect example from a comment below,
"When he [Sheldon] drops some furniture he is carrying to debate the point that pulling it up the stairs would reduce the required vertical force by exactly fifty percent and not about fifty percent, he is doing something weird and nerdy..."
Debating yes, absolutely, but scientific debate by itself isn't funny to the general population (Deestan would enjoy it, I might enjoy it, but Joe Bloggs on the street probably wouldn't care) so he drops it. That's not smart. If the show was consistent he'd then point out that the loss of energy from dropping it far outweighs the benefit of moving it around, or he'd break his toe.
It's this orthogonal slapstick which seems totally incongruous with Sheldon's typical behavior which annoys me.
It's quickly mentioned in the article, but the laugh track in the show is what makes me HATE "The Big Bang Theory". It drives me crazy, it ruins ever joke for me, and it also makes it very hard for me to follow the plot of the episode when there is a "laugh pause" after every 1-5 words in the dialog.
I find much more humor in a show that has hilarious jokes/PUN's and doesn't need to stress them so much. For example, Arrested Development, is one of the best comedies ever done (in my opinion) because the complexity in their jokes and there is no need to stress the idea of when to laugh.
If "The Big Bang Theory" goes by the idea that the laughing from the live audience helps them determine what to cut parts of the episode, they should just film it without the live audience then air it to a screening crowd separately to decide what to cut and keep. Why dilute the show for other viewers not watching it live with that extreme annoyance of constant laughter? I just don't get it.
Here is the most complete and eloquent explanation of Big Bang Theory hate that I have read:
http://butmyopinionisright.tumblr.com/post/31079561065/the-problem-with-the-big-bang-theory
I recommend reading the whole thing. The snippet that pulled me in was the perfect comparison to Community:
"There’s a saying which made its rounds in geekdom recently – “Real nerds watch Community”. Now I take issue with the idea of “real nerds” but the sentiment still stands. Whereas The Big Bang Theory sees nerd culture as an object of ridicule, Community celebrates it. Community’s laughing with you whereas Big Bang is giving you a wedgie and laughing at you. When TBBT makes a pop culture reference it uses it as a punchline, it names a show like Firefly and asks you to laugh at it. When Community makes a pop culture reference it commits. Community makes a whole episode based on a trope or a genre, it doesn’t just use paintball as a plot device it takes paintball seriously and bases two season finales around epic battles of paint. Community doesn’t laugh at the idea of playing D&D it bases an episode on it. Parallels can be drawn between the characters of Sheldon in Big Bang and Abed in Community. Abed too has trouble reading sarcasm and emotion, he has obsessions with routine and structure as well and disruptions in routine cause him considerable distress. Abed sees everything in terms of television and film tropes. This is how he understands the world around him and how he figures out how best to react. Unlike Sheldon, it is often confirmed that Abed does have mental difficulties, most likely Asperger’s Syndrome. But, crucially, the main difference between Sheldon and Abed is that Abed is treated as a hero. In the pilot episode Jeff Winger, arguably the most conventionally “cool” member of the group says this: “Abed is a shaman. You ask for bread and Abed gives you soup because soup is better. Abed is better”. In one episode Abed is literally treated as a god. Yes, his neuroses do at times inconvenience the rest of the group but his belief that they see him as a nuisance is dismissed as his own insecurity rather than the truth. Community positions us, its audience, as Abed. It knows that we are knowledgeable about the things we love, it knows that we understand tropes and genre conventions, it gives us the benefit of the doubt and treats us as intelligent human beings who will not only understand the meta pop culture references, but will find them funny and love the show for it. Community tells us it’s cool to be a nerd. If Abed is better then we are better. Community is a warm hug of acceptance whereas The Big Bang Theory is a pantsing and a punch in the face."
> So it comes as a shock to me that there is a lot of hate for BBT in geek culture.
I didn't realize this was a thing.
Just because you can google for "Big Bang Theory Sucks" doesn't demonstrate that there is lots of hate for BBT "in geek culture".
I can also google for "Puppies Suck". Okay, you only get two results of relevance. But still.
There are haters for every TV show in the universe. Haters are always louder than those who love the show. And easily googled. This doesn't mean they're numerous.
One step is to change the negative associations with the word, "hacker." I once co-organized a hackathon for teachers and we debated long and hard about using the word "hack" in the title or tagline. In the end, we decided not to use the word because too many teachers thought "hacking" was about breaking into computer systems, like the movie.
(I made sure to use the term in the description though, because I believe we really need to change the connotations of that term for the general public.)
Later, some high school students who attended our hackathon decided to organize a similar event at their high school. They used the term "hack" in the title because that was how they could best attract other students. This was against the desires of their teachers, most of whom argued against using that term. Their event was a success and hopefully they've changed the way their high school views the word "hack."
Or, maybe there just needs to be a character on "The Big Bang Theory" who is a hacker. Hollywood has a funny way of changing perceptions sometimes.
> That is because they want credit for the idea. Give them credit and share it freely, and most people will not complain, even if they never intended for their ideas to be shared by millions of people (many will be happy with the fame, even if they don't see millions of dollars for it -- again, as long as they are getting credit, or at least as long as nobody else gets the credit).
It goes far beyond credit. Find a popular restaurant with an original shtick, set up a copy, and see if proper attribution changes the degree to which you've pissed off the owner of the original.
Do a thought experiment. Do you remember the episode of "Big Bang Theory" where Penny comes up with the idea to sell Penny Blossoms (little hair accessories)? See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF-0qn_-TAo
Imagine this hypothetical: someone else sees Penny Blossoms, copies the idea and the name, and makes a ton of money selling their copy mass-produced by Chinese labor. What is Penny's reaction in this hypothetical? Is she excited to see her ideas be disseminated, or pissed off that someone else is making money off her idea? Does attribution change that reaction?
> Only people who want to exploit ideas for profit use terms like "intellectual property"
"Intellectual property" exists because people believe, very strongly, in the right to profit from their own ideas to the exclusion of others. People perceive it as "unfair" when someone else makes money off their idea. The Apple versus Samsung case is a really great example. The case didn't happen because certain patents existed. The case happened because Samsung released products that looked a lot like iPhones, and Apple (Jobs) felt ripped off. If patents didn't form the basis of the suit, Apple would have found something else--the feeling of being ripped off came first, the law came after.
> That is because the rest of us have not been brainwashed to the point of thinking that copying things is a destructive activity.
You're wildly confused about whether the chicken or the egg came first. Perceptions about the protection of ideas predate "all that money donated by Hollywood and the recording industry, all their lobbying, all the revolving door politics..." Obviously copyright and patent date back to before the Constitution, but even in contexts where neither copyright nor patent apply, there has been a strong theme of people wanting to protect intangible property. Usually these come up in the context of "misappropriation" or "unfair competition." In many respects, the protection of ideas under the current law is much narrower than what people thought should be the case historically. It was popular (though never the law), for a long time, to appeal to a "labor theory of copyright" where people thought facts or news should be protectable if they took effort to collect or gather. There is a strong conceptual appeal to the idea that if one spends effort creating something, whether tangible or intangible, one owns and should be able to control it. It's a manifestation of our monkey selves.
Another good example is analyst stock recommendations/price targets. These are clearly facts/opinions and not protected by any intellectual property regime (an attempt to extend protection to them under a misappropriation theory was struck down by the Second Circuit recently). But even though the law doesn't protect these recommendations, people genuinely feel ripped off when aggregator sites repost analyst recommendations. They feel it is unfair that someone should be able to profit by simply reposting something that required them to undertake extensive research and analysis. It's very much a "there should be a law!" sort of feeling.
conditions reminded me of Sheldon from Big bang theory tv series
Nice idea. However, I tried checking the release date for The big bang theory and it said "No Next Episode :(" which disagrees with Wikipedia that says "November 8".
A nice attempt. But I am not satisfied with the UI! Why to drag the picture when you can just click it and get the next release date. Basically, you are taking two steps to do a thing which can be done in one step, may be just to make the UI pretty. Plus some details are incorrect (like no new episode for the Big Bang Theory) but these are your content source issue. Apart from that it is good!
The title sounds like the name of a Big Bang Theory episode
His blog shows an image of shot from The Big Bang Theory. TBBT has done excellent job for on-demand content. The minute their weekly show ends, they post that video on their website (http://www.cbs.com/shows/big_bang_theory/) for week. I haven't watched a single episode on TV since they started doing this. It's currently free and supported by pre-roll video advertising. I don't mind ads as I'm getting content on-demand and free.
I don't buy that TV is going to be dead. I'd love to watch TV along with my family in our living room. However, I also want flexibility that on-demand offers. I'm sure TBBT is getting lot of money with this experiment.
The question about Netflix is complicated one and I hope author goes into unit economics in his future column. I also agree, at the current rates (for netflix subscription), it will be hard for Netflix to show latest on-demand content. I imagine we will have premium fees for such feature.
> what causes first, the asocial stigma? And what causes our society to keep girls from asocial activities?
In most western societies there is very little that keeps girls from these activities. But then there is the boob tube, watch some disney channel and study the stereotypes present in the shows. It kind of answers both questions. But it is not only Disney Channel I would consider it pervasive in western culture as a whole. e.g. Like TV shows like The Big Bang Theory.
It was once being ridiculed in Big Bang Theory (I think Season two, Episode 8-12 somewhere I'd wager)
This is all correct. Suitable is a spin-off from Willow Garage, with many of the same people involved. Suitable's first product is based off the Texai project from Willow. The Texai was featured on the Big Bang Theory in one episode.
Actually this reminded me of that episode of Big Bang Theory where Sheldon gets paranoid about germs or something and builds a similar device to interact with others. It was also the episode where they bring in Steve Wozniak.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-K1uj9VmCzo
This is going to be a marmite OS for sure.
Microsoft has weathered that storm with Windows 95, though, so they should really tart up the marketing with licensed songs and sitcom actresses. Just really hammer home that this is what the future of the PC is going to be, and hey, Penny from The Big Bang Theory is a PC and loves her some Windows 8. Then once we've all gotten into the groove with Surfaces and touch screen media centers from HP, the criticisms will quiet down some.
To quote The Big Bang Theory:
Ex-Roommate: Run away dude! Leonard : What? Ex-Roommate: Run fast, Run far!
-- Series 3 Episode 22: "The Staircase Implementation"
Between them they are asking for effectively all of the cash to be spent in a year (or less - "incidentals" add up quickly) at the end of which they can just walk away?
How much runway do you need? Much, much more than you think, and if you're getting 250K+ then you certainly will need more than 12 months.
Firstly, you can't have something that's "very unique" - either it's unique, or it isn't.[1]
Secondly, it's not made "unique from any other subway station" - it's made different from any other subway station.
Thirdly, I wonder if he really has checked them all.
Finally, it's not the case that "EVERYONE trips on it." I counted at least 14 who didn't, and that's in a film specifically intended to show that "everyone" does.
========
[1] Yes, I know that some claim you can't be "more wrong" because "wrong" can't be compared, and that others claim you can compare "wrong" - "Of course it is; it's a little wrong to say a tomato is a vegetable, it's very wrong to say it's a suspension bridge."[2] Still, I claim that something can't be "very unique".
[2] Big Bang theory, Series 2, episode 20.[3]
[3] Also from BBT (Pilot, 2007 (and relevant)):
Sheldon: You want to hear an interesting thing about stairs? Leonard: Not really. Sheldon: If the height of a single step is off by as little as two millimetres, most people will trip. Leonard: I don’t care. Two millimetres? That doesn’t seem right. Sheldon: No, it’s true, I did a series of experiments when I was twelve, my father broke his clavicle. Leonard: Is that why they sent you to boarding school? Sheldon: No, that was the result of my work with lasers.
- users always want faster, more direct answers (rather than controlling the filtering/categorization of their searches)
That's a very power-user centric attitude, don't you think? As a power user I preferred to type long, complicated Sabre queries to find exactly which airplane flight I wanted. It was much faster, and I had memorized all of the complicated mnemonics. But that's not what a casual user would want to use.
Asking users to specify categories for what they want means requiring a certain orientation in their thinking which is shared by computer scientists and trained librarians. But to an average user, that's extra work. And think about how this might work if you're talking to an actual human librarian: if you start asking about TV shows, and then mention "The Big Bang Theory", do you think the librarian will ask you, "Did you mean the scientific theory, or the TV show?" That's only something a stupid computer would do. A smart librarian would take the context of the previous queries that you've made of him or her, and provide the right answer quickly and efficiently. Wouldn't you want the same thing from a search engine?
The better abstracts is the reason I use DuckDuckGo at home.
If I just want to know when the next episode of Big Bang Theory is out or what the weather is today I rarely need to even click on a result. For more obscure technical searches at work, Google still finds more answers.
But remember - the barrier to change for a search engine's customers is very very low
Not if you are pricing your own labour at a lower cost than it's possible to outsource it. An episode of Big Bang Theory, where Penny makes penny blossoms, illustrates this pretty well: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1256028/
"Piracy has put the impetus on media companies to more quickly strike deals to make television and movies available on the Web legitimately. In 2007, Erik Flannigan, now the executive vice president of digital media at Viacom Entertainment Group, pulled up the Google search page on a giant screen at Viacom’s Times Square headquarters. He typed in “South Park” and took senior executives on a tour of Web sites offering pirated episodes.
Today, Comedy Central makes every episode of “South Park,” “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” available free online. The efforts, Mr. Flannigan said, put a big dent in piracy. As for the television industry as a whole, Mr. Flannigan said: “You might not like the windows, or that shows go up and come down, but it’s a far cry from where we were.”
Still, Comedy Central shows do not make billions in syndication or in DVD sales like some TV series. The industry has been reluctant to make available shows like CBS’s “The Big Bang Theory,” which sold for $2 million an episode to Time Warner’s TBS and Fox. That makes piracy a tempting option.
“If they don’t make content available where consumers are, they’re just shooting themselves in the foot,” said Ron Conway, a Silicon Valley investor and the head of the SV Angel investment fund."
CBS' concerns stem from the fact that if the web delegitimizes a television channel's status as the go-to source for viewers, then the whole process of the concentrated industry's livelihood, one which they have established as essential to stay afloat, let alone profit, is irreparably diminished.
If advertisers do not think the money they paid in the past is what they need to pay TBS now, given other advert opportunities, they will to want pay less for commercials, which support TBS' model, and would bungle up their plans. (TV Industry would go off of Nielsen ratings, which were strong estimated guesses of # of ppl/demos tuning into particular programming; this information provided Advertisers an idea of where they should their energies and money, for maximum appeal.)
TBS will want to pay less because they won't rake in as much from commercials, pissing CBS off since they rely upon $2 mil/episode syndication deals of their most popular properties to subsist and survive.
And CBS won't want to spend as much on their properties (production budgets, salaries, etc) because they will be uncertain if it will even pay off. We are past the days of Must-See TV Thursday and 30 Million Viewers for 30 mins of Friends. Sorry Burbank, they are not coming back. ---- At least Comedy Central recognizes their new competition in distribution and knew to bite the proverbial bullet and stream for free what is going to be out there for free, no matter what. Because of that, they build up brand loyalty (less and less of an influence on TV, more and more of one online) and can make money advertising -- centralizing properties, distributing, and payoff -- within the company. Establish an optional low-cost subscription fee for complete access to their library, and enough people will pay for it to justify its creation, too!
I am 21 years old, and hardly anyone my age watches TV. They WILL subscribe to Hulu, and they WILL subscribe to Netflix -- but look at the volume of content, and the amount of control the viewer has with those services! The television is a box of content that asks for passivity from the viewer, especially in choice availability. That does NOT work in The Game anymore.
Those that look to "Remember When" and long for systems of the past are individuals who are losing to progress, because they did not -- or COULD not, in much of Hollywood's case -- look past their at-present business models for more innovative means necessary for industry survival.
Now is the opportunity for independents all over to seize the unprecedented access to the consumer they now have and make a living doing it.
People do not care if Paramount Pictures made a movie or Uncle Regis' buddy two towns over did -- they just need it offered to them, they want it when they want it, and above all, they want it to be worth their time. Anybody can do that, and anybody can make money off of that.
--stepping off the soapbox--
The problem is that marketing is still what drives big numbers to watching a show. Lots of money is spent so that people know when the premiere and finale of each show is, every season. When shows are sold internationally, it's the local distributor who puts up the money to do all of the local marketing and slots in a local TV channel or other distribution. If a show was made everywhere internationally, the local distributor would miss out on the ability to monetize that viewer, since they went to the US site and watched it there. Some of the youngest, savviest audiences (ie the most valuable) would be lost.
This would go away if it was possible to synchronize broadcast episode schedules in all target markets, but that's almost impossible due to local differences. Also, it would mean that shows need to air the same time, and TV shows are really risky. Nobody is going to put up shows for international distribution until they've seen how it does in the US first.
This can also go away if a show goes exclusively pay-per-episode. This would only work for certain shows (can't see this for American Idol, but maybe for Breaking Bad), and only if streaming numbers were huge. Right now, they're pretty small. Hulu gets 6-7mm unique viewers per month across all of their content. It's safe to assume even a popular TV show is only going to get a few hundred thousand at the most. Breaking Bad's finale received 1.9mm TV viewers, so it's still TV that's driving scale. For more popular shows like Big Bang Theory, it's a few times that.
Very exciting times, but it will take a while. It was only in 2011 when we got services like Spotify broadly available for music, even though iTunes launched in 2001. Ten years to shift the consumer habits (ownership of bits; legacy of plastic CDs), industry thinking (signing the big 4; establishing royalty structures), and technical availability (3G/4G widely avail). Hulu launched publicly in 2008, so I'm looking forward to 2018.
What's really annoying to me is that they post previews for the upcoming episodes of for example The Big Bang Theory, make you watch the ads and then tell you that the video is not available in your region.
What is particularly annoying, if you like the Facebook account and they tell you about the upcoming episode, for example Big Bang Theory which won't be on for a couple of months.
That's the problem. We can't aim to make $200 M movies from the start.
But I think it is pretty much possible to build a platform where we can finance a TV series like The Big Bang Theory, by charging only $1 per episode to the subscriber. Just cutting the middle man and setting a deal with a dumb pipe channel like Google (YouTube), where they can make money from ads, and paying the creators some more money... That would be only $4 a month for a series you REALLY love. [1]
And of course, the public wins A LOT, by avoiding unexpected cancellations, time slot changes, etc!
I'd definitely pay for series like Battlestar Galactica, TBBT, MacGyver (lol! how would it be today)...
And of course, if you make it GLOBAL, erasing regional restrictions, you can increase your audience at an enormous level!
I see this model as something ABSOLUTELY plausible today. Why are we still paying to the middle men?!?! Let's make this happen.
[1] http://www.tvguide.com/News/Top-TV-Earners-1021717.aspx
Check out http://thebigblogtheory.wordpress.com/ The technical adviser for the TV show The Big Bang Theory does a weekly blog post about the science and tech behind each episode.
It reminds me an episode from Big Bang Theory.
I think the point is market segmentation and ancient distribution channels/agreements are holding them back. This is why things like Hulu end up being US-only. Why they can't get this stuff right even within the same market? Well for one, they are struggling even with what they have. E.g. a number of episodes of The Big Bang Theory would crash the browser at the third (final) commercial segment consistently (even after restarting the browser and attempting to skip to the that commercial segment). They can't even get the tech to do the limited amount that they do now right.
I still can't help but think that at least a few of those unstable BOFHs could be convinced to behave using the right logic and wording. I'm reminded of the episode of The Big Bang Theory in which Sheldon refuses to do something until he's told it's a "non-optional social convention": http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1127907/quotes?qt=qt0419289
As for dashes in a URL, it depends on whether you're constructing an URL for human typing or for search.
For example, I went to Google News, picked the top story, and looked at the story URLs. Some are opaque, but many look like this:
http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/07/02/3196643/exxon-mobil-pipeline-ruptures.html
If you're optimizing for search, the dash-separated words are very common. Google likes you even better if you make the most important thing first in the URL. E.g.:
http://www.sidereel.com/The_Big_Bang_Theory/season-4/episode-24
I fully agree projection figures are guesses, likely to show the situation in a good light, and as much use as a guide to the future as a random line drawn on a bit of paper.
BUT
that is not all that makes up a projection. The interesting and useful information is what assumptions have gone into making the projections, what understanding of the market is present etc. etc. By questioning the creator of the business plans about all of this you can rapidly find out if they understand their business, their market place and their competition.
(I'm not sure how this scales - but for small companies it's critical information. However it certainly works in some situations - IDC are projecting that Microsoft and Nokia will once again be a dominant force in mobile phones, reading the article their assumption seems to be that, Microsoft and Nokia have been dominant in the past and therefore, despite a changing market and any damage they have seemingly done to their own companies, they will be again. Having identified it I can now evaluate that assumption on it's own merits. With a small company this may well be more hidden. Another great example comes to mind: the work song nano cluster episode of Big Bang Theory when Sheldon points out that Penny's business plan will result in her earning considerably less than minimum wage)
Projections are not useless - they tell you what people are thinking and how well they understand key things needed to make it succeed. Just don't treat them as actual predictions of the future.
He's not mentioned in the article, but Dylan Bruno from Numb3rs is an MIT grad (we both played on the football team) and, coincidentally, acted in a movie opposite Ms. Portman :)
Woodie Flowers always used to say that we need an "LA Engineer" (a play on "LA Law for you younger folks) to bring science and engineering into the mainstream. I always cringe at shows like Big Bang Theory that portray smart folks as socially inept - given that association, it's no surprise that many kids would rather be "dumb and cool" than "smart and nerdy" when in fact smart people are just like everyone else.
I don't watch the adverts.
Funny thing, though, is that 90% of the product placement happening in US shows are things I can buy right here at home. Or I can buy some sister product the same umbrella corporation produces.
Furthermore, it is increasingly the case that product placement is happening for online products. I've especially noticed this with The Big Bang Theory (possibly because it's a geek show)
Hell, just take this for example: The only reason I went to the Cheesecake Factory on my US visit last year was because I saw it mentioned on a tv show I pirated.
Let me convey some advice as a guy from Slovenia (EU) who just went through such a trip last October. You are also required to buy me a cup of tea somewhere in the next few weeks when I'm done with exams :P
Here are some random notes in no particular order.
1. Decide what you're going there for, just doing a general soul search and so on can get pretty wasteful. Have events/conferences lined up, if you can also have meetings with interesting people lined up. A fortnight blazes away sooper fast if you don't know what you're doing!
2. Go see the Golden Gate Bridge, I didn't, it still feels weird telling people I was to SF and didn't see it.
3. Alcatraz is over-rated.
4. I can get you contacts with a guy that might be willing to get you a tour of Apple. He's a friend of a friend and works there. You won't be able to see much more than the restaurant and backyard. They're hellishly secretive.
5. Google is a bit less secretive, but you need to find someone who will give you a tour. I was lucky enough to get in with the Startup School tour last year.
6. A lot of everything seems to happen in Palo Alto, so perhaps try staying somewhere close by. You should definitely check out University Street, it's pretty nice.
7. Cheesecake Factory is not just a thing from The Big Bang Theory, it exists and the cheesecake is absolutely delicious. (university street Palo Alto)
8. Five starbucks checkins get you a free coffee.
9. There are only two starbucks open after midnight in the whole general area.
10. Use yelp and foursquare to find good places to eat. Foodspotting might be a good choice.
11. Do visit San Francisco, Mission is pretty cool because that's where the hipster/startup scene is. Go visit the mom&pop coffee shops to get a blast from the past and an awesome experience of how homely something can be (also awesome places to work from)
12. Don't buy the large Cola if you go to the cinema. It's something like a liter of cola.
13. If you're into that sort of thing, there's a lot of cool culture to be seen in Mission, Victoria theatre seemed awesome.
14. Don't forget to go partying at Ruby Skye one night. You can get in for free if you sign up via the internet a day before. It's the club where Zuckerberk meets Timberlake in the movie.
15. Everywhere you will eat the portions will be way too large, everything other than fast food can get pretty expensive. You will likely eat meat at least twice a day, try to avoid this, I nearly died ... but it's hard to find somewhere that doesn't serve primarily meat (or maybe I'm just very silly in finding places to eat)
16. For a cool shopping experience visit the huge mall in SF financial district, it's about the size of the downtown area of Ljubljana.
17. We mostly stayed in motels, they're very cheap and they all mostly have wi-fi. I think we ended up spending something like $20 per person per night.
18. The weather is very warm, but you will acclimatise quickly and start feeling cold at anything below 20C.
19. Remember that this is the US. Everything is very far away. Plan accordingly. If you're savvy enough I'm told it's possible to get super cheap rent-a-car at the airport. Think we ended up paying something silly like $20 per day for the car.
20. Visit Dog Patch Labs at Peer 13, it's an extremely pretty incubator and overall awesome.
21. There is a nearby chocolate startup, we didn't visit, but I'm told they hand out free chocolate.
22. Fly with Lufthansa, it's cheap and sufficiently comfortable.
Ok I can't think of anything more, if you buy me tea I might come up with more little tips I picked up along the way.
PS: don't get lulled into spending too much money. Everything is at a roughly 40% discount in regards to the Euro and it can get you spending really really quickly.
PPS: http://meetup.com, go find meetups.
Neat idea, will use! It took a few minutes to work out how the site is supposed to be used though and can't find any sort of introduction tour, I didn't realise at first I must 1st follow a show, then it'll list the episodes for me to mark as watched. I think they're right about the fantastic interface, the show pages are extremely well built and it's possible to get all the needed info instantly: eg http://followmy.tv/shows/18318/The_Big_Bang_Theory
I'd like to see this statement sourced...
And studios, despite some hemming and hawing, would ultimately rather make a lucrative — reportedly up to $100,000 per mid-season episode — deal with Netflix than rely on middling ad revenue on Hulu.
$100,000 isn't that much. Put it this way. The show Two and a Half Men pays its three stars a combined $3.2 million per episode. Another example is Big Bang Theory which just made a deal for 3 more seasons in which the network will pay $4 million per episode (and is probably making way more)
CABLE pays around $2 million per episode to syndicate the very shows Netflix is offering $100,000 for (http://tinyurl.com/48c5zo9)
So $100,000 an episode is more a joke than a real offer that Hollywood is seriously considering.
It's critically acclaimed because it's original. A critic (and I know this having worked as a reviewer) has likely seen every single show that came out every year. When you've seen generic sitcom A through F, you're going to love something that's original right through from premise to characters (the characters do fill out into the 2nd season, but Fuller has a problem that his main character is often a complete vacuum - like Dead Like Me the main character was simply a way too present observer; by the end I literally loved every character but the lead).
Better Off Ted suffered the same problem (different creator) with the main character being vacuous. His boss was great, his colleagues were great, his daughter was great, I even liked the narration because it was out-of-character from the main character.
I find with the major sitcoms people relate to the main character and solely the main character. I think the main reason Chuck Lorre has done so well with Two And A Half Men and The Big Bang Theory is that it's not just the main character that you can relate to, meaning you get the unbelievably avid fans from those "critically acclaimed" shows making huge noise and driving a near doubling in viewers of their shows (the big bang theory went almost 7-million viewers from the first till third season). You don't see this growth in your average series, it tends to start large and decline continuously (Hawaii Five-0 dropped 4-million viewers in the first 4 episodes).
You can watch the full episode on CBS.com (US only): http://www.cbs.com/primetime/big_bang_theory/
The Big Bang Theory prides itself on accurate science and tech. They have UCLA physics professor David Saltzberg credited as "Science Consultant" to contribute the geeky stuff.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2007-11-04-big-bang_N.htm http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2934564/
I noticed this during the episode as well while the characters discussed their iPhone app idea. If you watched the episode, there were actually some better shots of the whiteboard. The Big Bang Theory has always striven for accuracy. That's one of the things I've always liked about the show.
Life imitates art: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1256039/synopsis
(spoiler alert, in case someone missed Big Bang Theory)
And in the years since this was written in 2004, he has another hit show, Big Bang Theory, either the 2nd or 3rd most popular sitcom.
An excellent piece. For those who don't know Chuck Lorre:
Chuck Lorre (born October 18, 1952) is a writer, director, producer and composer who has created many American sitcoms, including Grace Under Fire, Cybill, Dharma & Greg, Two and a Half Men, and The Big Bang Theory. Lorre also serves as executive producer of the sitcom Mike & Molly which premiered on CBS in September 2010.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Lorre
I think that's acceptable for video games, especially the sort of video games that Nintendo makes. For video content I don't think so. I'll watch upscaled DVDs for certain types of content (e.g. don't really care if episodes of Big Bang Theory are in 1080p), but for movies with great cinematography I want as much resolution as possible.
Me. I saw the first episode and found it utterly unfunny.
I would rather prefer The Big Bang Theory.
This is way better than the Big Bang Theory episode that did that. Dunno why, but theirs sucked compared to this.
in case you are skeptical about clicking the link. This is the unofficial blog of the CBS show, "Big Bang Theory."
It expands on the concepts in the show and explains them to a layman. The first post is about the LHC because the characters were invited to go see it. It also talks about graphene because the tall skinny guy was trying to figure out why electrons have no mass moving across them.
Kind of neat. Might be better to have read these posts before the episode airs to have a better understanding of the concepts and humor during the show. I didn't now what graphene was when i watched that episode, but after reading the blog post, the episode makes a lot more sense.
For some reason I'm strangely reminded of the episode of Big Bang Theory where Sheldon talks on NPR whilst having helium pumped into his room. That would be an authoritative Schneier.
Slightly off topic, but a good hacker TV show is "Big Bang Theory" on Monday nights on ABC. It's about 4 physics PhD students at Cal Tech.
The best part is that they don't water down the physics at all. One guy got dumped by his girlfriend because of their differing opinions on string theory.
I just got the season 1 DVD and it's great.
I'd say so - its definitely become more socially acceptable to be a bit of a geek in recent years, I first started noticing it between the first and second Lord of the Rings films.
We've seen shows like Big Bang Theory and the IT Crowd have popped up in recent years aswell - which shows theres a stronger following towards this culture.
I think the adoption of more geek centric technology is just a natural progression :)
The Big Bang Theory has surprised me in that it actually has truly intellectual jokes. I thought it would just be another stereotype-promoting, nerd-meets-hottie sitcom, but this one actually has some intelligent humor.