And the Amazing Run-To-The-Line-And-Back continues. Cue Wilhite's rant.
3 comments:
Anonymous
said...
Was it just me and Kim, or was it mind-bogglingly foolish for Meredith and Gretchen to pick the "brawn" task over the "brain" task? Wasn't their whole strategy to use their greater knowledge and experience to make up for their more limited physical abilities?
All in all, not a tremendously interesting episode. I wonder if Ron and Kelly will actually break up and quit before the race ends? (I won't find out until late next week: I'm going to be at a Cubs game Tuesday night and busy on Wednesday as well.)
[Side note: I'm still in stunned disbelief about Sean Carroll being denied tenure. What the bleep were they thinking?]
By the light of day, I have to admit this probably wasn't as great an episode as I thought it was at first. But I was very excited to see them go to London. My ears won't miss Gretchen, either. It would have been an injustice to see them make the final three. They should be proud to have made it that far, but luck played a huge role in their surviving South America, let alone 10 legs (11 episodes).
Now, the rant: One of the charms of the show was the fact that they really were racing around the world. Do they think that we can't tell the difference between "around the world" and "to India and back"? In a sense, I feel like the show has lost something by not sticking to its premise. I actually like the final few legs being through Turkey and London (with what I think is a stopover in the Caribbean), but I miss the around-the-world aspect. I don't think it's necessarily any easier on the racers to take this route--the travel is still hard, and they're still traveling roughly the same distance--but I'm disappointed that they've abondoned the central concept, making it a Race through the world, rather than around.
To me, it feels like the show is more and more hastily produced every season. Each season, it seems like the teams bear a little less responsibility for their own travel (free tickets from Botwana to Mumbai, anyone?), and that the legs are a little more simplistic. I realize it's harder than Hell to plan this thing (the middle of TAR8 will be the 100th episode), but every season it just seems a little less like a race around the world and a little more like a series of production-guided field trips. And this backtracking business doesn't make me feel any better.
OK, I realize I am getting curmudgeonly about a reality show, so I should stop this bitching now. It's still a really entertaining show, and I'd much rather watch it than anything else.
[Side note: I have no idea how to even react to Sean not getting tenure. I am not well versed in his science, but this seems like a ridiculous and short-sighted decision. What is the mood around the department? I imagine this is being treated like a scandal (in terms of opinion, not that I think there is any sort of investigation).]
This is the point where I'm supposed to go on a mathematical counter-rant about how "around" has no meaning on a sphere, anyway. :) The fundamental group of the sphere is trivial: you can't lasso a basketball! (But having said that, I do recognize that the Earth's rotational axis and the resulting climate patterns do break the SO(3) symmetry to SO(2), which has fundamental group Z. So yes, "around" probably is meaningful and I'm a bit disappointed, too.)
On the other hand, Kim points out that in the two hour finale, they could easily fly from London through (e.g.) Japan on the way to California. It's not that much farther that way, since it's all the way on the west coast.
[And as for Sean, I probably can't comment on the quality of his science, either, but his publication record since getting here seems impressive: a dozen papers with an average citation count of 78 (already). Almost every grad student I've talked to has been equally confused; I haven't gotten up the nerve to ask the faculty about it yet.]
The man of many hats (literaly not figuratively), condensed matter physicist, passionate baseball and hockey fan, devotee of the late, lamented Satellite of Love, mutli-pronged geek.
3 comments:
Was it just me and Kim, or was it mind-bogglingly foolish for Meredith and Gretchen to pick the "brawn" task over the "brain" task? Wasn't their whole strategy to use their greater knowledge and experience to make up for their more limited physical abilities?
All in all, not a tremendously interesting episode. I wonder if Ron and Kelly will actually break up and quit before the race ends? (I won't find out until late next week: I'm going to be at a Cubs game Tuesday night and busy on Wednesday as well.)
[Side note: I'm still in stunned disbelief about Sean Carroll being denied tenure. What the bleep were they thinking?]
By the light of day, I have to admit this probably wasn't as great an episode as I thought it was at first. But I was very excited to see them go to London. My ears won't miss Gretchen, either. It would have been an injustice to see them make the final three. They should be proud to have made it that far, but luck played a huge role in their surviving South America, let alone 10 legs (11 episodes).
Now, the rant: One of the charms of the show was the fact that they really were racing around the world. Do they think that we can't tell the difference between "around the world" and "to India and back"? In a sense, I feel like the show has lost something by not sticking to its premise. I actually like the final few legs being through Turkey and London (with what I think is a stopover in the Caribbean), but I miss the around-the-world aspect. I don't think it's necessarily any easier on the racers to take this route--the travel is still hard, and they're still traveling roughly the same distance--but I'm disappointed that they've abondoned the central concept, making it a Race through the world, rather than around.
To me, it feels like the show is more and more hastily produced every season. Each season, it seems like the teams bear a little less responsibility for their own travel (free tickets from Botwana to Mumbai, anyone?), and that the legs are a little more simplistic. I realize it's harder than Hell to plan this thing (the middle of TAR8 will be the 100th episode), but every season it just seems a little less like a race around the world and a little more like a series of production-guided field trips. And this backtracking business doesn't make me feel any better.
OK, I realize I am getting curmudgeonly about a reality show, so I should stop this bitching now. It's still a really entertaining show, and I'd much rather watch it than anything else.
[Side note: I have no idea how to even react to Sean not getting tenure. I am not well versed in his science, but this seems like a ridiculous and short-sighted decision. What is the mood around the department? I imagine this is being treated like a scandal (in terms of opinion, not that I think there is any sort of investigation).]
This is the point where I'm supposed to go on a mathematical counter-rant about how "around" has no meaning on a sphere, anyway. :) The fundamental group of the sphere is trivial: you can't lasso a basketball! (But having said that, I do recognize that the Earth's rotational axis and the resulting climate patterns do break the SO(3) symmetry to SO(2), which has fundamental group Z. So yes, "around" probably is meaningful and I'm a bit disappointed, too.)
On the other hand, Kim points out that in the two hour finale, they could easily fly from London through (e.g.) Japan on the way to California. It's not that much farther that way, since it's all the way on the west coast.
[And as for Sean, I probably can't comment on the quality of his science, either, but his publication record since getting here seems impressive: a dozen papers with an average citation count of 78 (already). Almost every grad student I've talked to has been equally confused; I haven't gotten up the nerve to ask the faculty about it yet.]
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