Paul Levinson's Blog: Levinson at Large, page 376

Person of Interest 1.11 and 1.12: Realignment and Revelation

Catching up with Person of Interest 1.11 and 1.12, and good thing I didn't wait any longer - episode 1.11 had a quick little conversation which, if I heard it right, changes the very premise, pulls the rug out from the under the foundation, of the very series.  Which is the kinda thing I really like in a television series.

The set-up in 1.11 was pretty good, even without the revelation.  Reese needs at last one episode to convalesce from being shot pretty badly back in December in 1.10.  Finch puts him up in a nice apartment, but, as he tells Reese, the machine waits for no man, and there's a life to be saved, of someone who lives in the building. Lots of good twists and turns in this story, good to see Dexter's David Zayas on hand.  But the biggest twist, which is nice, seems to be that Reese in a wheelchair takes over Finch's work, and Finch, who can still move, even with the limp, is out in the field, i.e, mostly in the building.

A nice temporary twist and reversal, but not the biggest twist or reveal at all.  That comes when Reese realizes that Finch is still figuring out all kinds of deep background things, even though Finch has had no access to the machine.  Reese confronts Finch and says you're the machine, aren't you.  Finch neither confirms or denies.

A fascinating revelation, if true.  But, if true, what are those little boxes we see around everyone at the beginning and throughout each episode.  If you think about it, we never see them on a screen Finch is looking at.   So they are, what, on the government's machine?  But ... is there really a government machine?  Or does it all come from Finch, who sends info to the government through some secret back door to make them think there's a machine?

Reese certainly wants to find to find out more, and at the end of 1.12 - the next episode - we see that he has Fuchs trailing Finch. He's entering some potentially dangerous, more relevatory territory, with his slain partner's son now on hand and wanting to know what his father and Finch really did.

But Reese and Finch at least now have Carter in the fold, and that's a good realignment of what Reese and Finch do.  As we've seen in these last two episodes - and many before, including, especially, 1.10 - Reese is not indestructible.  He gets hurt, and even when not briefly out of commission, bad guys can on occasion get the better of him.   With the CIA still out to kill him, having Carter on his side may be necessary for his survival. 

Good story ahead ...

See also Person of Interest of Interest  ... Person of Interest 1.2:  Reese and Finch ... Person of Interest 1.5: Potentials ... Person of Interest 1.7: Meets Flashpoint and The Usual Suspects ... Person of Interest 1.8:  Widmore and Ben, At It Again ... Person of Interest 1.9: Evolution of a Series ... Person 1.10: Carter Returns the Favor


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The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Fringe 4.10: Deceit and Future Vision

One of the things I'm really enjoying about this 4th season of Fringe is how every episode in some significant way moves along the central story.  Tonight in 4.10 we get a tender, sad story about a girl who can see bad things slightly or  a little more into the future.  She thinks her visions are unalterable. But Olivia and Peter et al stop a courthouse from blowing up as per her vision, just in time.  They're unable to stop, however, her own death via a stroke, but -

An Eternal Bald Observer told Olivia, at the end of the episode before last, that he saw her death, which will be unavoidable in all time lines.   What does the future-seeing girl see about Olivia?  Not clear, but -

At very least, she has been looked into by Massive Dynamics aka Nina Sharp, whom we last saw at the end of last week's episode, knocking Olivia out, and planning to do something to her unconscious body, which will leave her with a headache.  My guess is install some kind of tracking device.

This week, Olivia is indeed suffering from headaches, and goes to Nina for advice about the girl who can see the future.  She provides none, but shows up to Olivia's place to make her some soup (Nina is the closest person to a mother for Olivia in this reality), and order some medicine for Olivia's headaches.  Likely the last thing that Olivia needs.

Broyles is doing the best he can to look out for Olivia, and so is Peter. but unfortunately Olivia doesn't (yet) feel comfortable enough to be completely truthful with him.  He sees her looking at photos of the EBOs - earlier, she was looking at them with Broyles - and he tries to explain to her what the EBOs do.  Of special interest to Olivia, or course, is can they see the future, like the young doomed heroine in this episode.  Peter explains that they experience all times simultaneously, rather than time travel or see the future and past. (Great nonverbal acting by Joshua Jackson in this scene, by the way, where his body language and facial expressions convey as much as his words.)  But when Peter asks Olivia if one of the Observers has "reached out" to her, she says no.

Peter no doubt sees through that.  It's heart warming to see these two working together.   Olivia's best chance at survival will be Peter.    Her and Peter's ability to stop the girl's visions from coming true is no comfort to her about being able to do anything to stop what the EBO saw from coming true - since he didn't really see it, he experienced it ...

Hey, check out my essay The Return of 1950s Science Fiction in Fringe in this new anthology




See also Fringe Returns for Season 4: Almost with Peter ... Fringe 4.2: Better and Worse Selves ... Fringe 4.3: Sanity and Son ... Fringe 4.4: Peter's Back, Ectoplasm, and McLuhan ... Fringe 4.5: Double Return ... Fringe 4.6: Time Slips ... Fringe 4.7: The Invisible Man ... Fringe 4.8: The Ramifications of Transformed Alternate Realities ... Fringe 4.9: Elizabeth

See also Fringe 3.1: The Other Olivia ... Fringe 3.2: Bad Olivia and Peter ... Fringe 3.3: Our/Their Olivia on the Other Side ... Fringe 3.5: Back from Hiatus, Back from the Amber ... Fringe 3.7: Two Universes Still Nearing Collision ... Fringe 3.8: Long Voyages Home ... Fringe 3.10: The Return of the Eternal Bald Observers ... Flowers for Fringenon in Fringe 3.11 ... Fringe 3.12: The Wrong Coffee  ... Fringe 3.13: Alternate Fringe ... Fringe 3.14: Amber Here ... Fringe 3.15: Young Peter and Olivia ... Fringe 3.16: Walter and Yoko ... Fringe 3.17: Bell, Olivia, Lee, and the Cow ... Fringe 3.18: Clever Walternate ... Fringe 3.19 meets Inception, The Walking Dead, Tron ... Fringe 3.20: Countdown to Season 3 Finale 1 of 3 ... Fringe 3.21:  Ben Frankin, Rimbaldi, and the Future ... Fringe Season 3 Finale: Here's What Happened ... Death Not Death in Fringe 
 
See also reviews of Season 2: Top Notch Return of Fringe Second Season ... Fringe 2.2 and The Mole People ... Fringe 2.3 and the Human Body as Bomb ... Fringe 2.4 Unfolds and Takes Wing ... Fringe 2.5: Peter in Alternate Reality and Wi-Fi for the Mind ... A Different Stripe of Fringe in 2.6 ... The Kid Who Changed Minds in Fringe 2.7 ... Fringe 2.8: The Eternal Bald Observers ... Fringe 2.9: Walter's Journey ... Fringe 2.10: Walter's Brain, Harry Potter, and Flowers for Algernon ...  New Fringe on Monday Night: In Alternate Universe? ... Fringe 2.12: Classic Science Fiction Chiante ... Fringe 2.13: "I Can't Let Peter Die Again" ... Fringe 2.14: Walter's Health, Books, and Father ... Fringe 2.15: I'll Take 'Manhatan' ... Fringe 2.16: Peter's Story ... Fringe 2.17: Will Olivia Tell Peter? ... Fringe 2.18: Strangeness on a Train ... Fringe 2.19: Two Plus Infinity ... Fringe the Noir Musical ... Fringe 2.21: Bring on the Alternates ... Fringe 2.22:  Tin Soldiers and Nixon Coming ... Fringe Season 2 Finale: The Switch

See also reviews of Season One Fringe Begins ... Fringe 2 and 3: The Anthology Tightrope ... 4: The Eternal Bald Observer ... 7: A Bullet Can Scramble a Dead Brain's Transmission ... 8. Heroic Walter and Apple Through Steel ... 9. Razor-Tipped Butterflies of the Mind ... 10. Shattered Pieces Come Together Through Space and Times ... 11. A Traitor, a Crimimal, and a Lunatic ... 12, 13, 14: Fringe and Teleportation ... 15: Fringe is Back with Feral Child, Pheromones, and Bald Men ... 17. Fringe in New York, with Oliva as Her Suspect ... 18. Heroes and Villains across Fringe ... Stephen King, Arthur C. Clarke, and Star Trek in Penultimate Fringe ... Fringe Alternate Reality Finale: Science Fiction At Its Best

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The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book



Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ... 




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Good for Gingrich Talking about the Moon

Newt Gingrich has received considerable ridicule and flack for his statement that we would have a permanent base on the Moon by the end of his second term as President, and when the Moon attained 13,000 permanent settlers, it could become another U.S. state.

I say, good for Gingrich for thinking so big.  We need more of that.  One of the reasons our efforts in space have stagnated is because no one after JFK had the requisite vision to see us get off this planet in a sustained way.

The fact is that we are citizens of the cosmos, not just this Earth.  We'll never truly understand who we are, what we're doing here, from a vantage point stuck down here on this planet.   Carl Sagan got this.  Isaac Asimov understood this.  Unfortunately, not enough politicians and Presidents.

Although I expect to vote for Barack Obama in this election, as I did in 2008, I was never happy with his weak position on space.  Obama has been no better on space than his predecessors after JFK, and in some ways worse.

Conversely, I'm not likely to vote for Gingrich (though, if I were a Republican, I would over Romney).  I get that he's presumtuous about the second term. I get that he's grandiose.   But sometimes, as in the grandeur of space, that could be a good thing.
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Any Bad Results from Obama's Health Plan?

I just saw a pro Newt Gingrich anti Romney ad airing in Florida that, unsurprisingly, attacked Romney-care in Massachusetts as being the basis for the "disastrous" Obama-care.

I put "disastrous" in quotes because every time I hear something like this, I wonder, what, exactly is the disaster that has occurred because of Obama's health plan?

I'm not talking about some courts that have said the mandate part of the law may be unconstitutional.  I disagree with everyone being obliged to get health are, whether or not they want it, too.  But that's hardly a "disaster" - it's just a part of the law that I and many disagree with.

To say the law has been a disaster would indicate, I would think, that one of more patients or people needing medical care died or got or remained very ill due to some application of the health law.  Or maybe that a doctor went bankrupt or had to give up her or his practice as a result of the law.   Or a hospital had to close.  Or a business of any sort had to shut down because it could not meet some provision of the law.  Or, even, an insurance company went bankrupt (I can't see being too upset about that, but I'll list it as a criterion of disaster just to show how reasonable I am).

So ... any takers?  Can anyone cite a single instance of a bad result obtaining from Obama-care?   Not a disagreement in policy, not a concern that something bad will result from the law, but an actual, real-life, non-hypothetical, bad result?

If not, then, the incessant Republican repetition that Obama's health care plan is "disastrous" is just a piece of classic propaganda - tell a lie often enough, and maybe you'll get some people to believe it.


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The Renaissance of Television in Poliics?

Television has never been unimportant in politics - beginning with Nixon's "Checkers" speech in the 1952 campaign and progressing into JFK's victory over Nixon in the first televised Presidential debates in 1960.

But, more recently, lots of people including me have talking about how Barack Obama in 2008 and Republicans in 2010 won by mastering social media - or, what I call "new new media".  Paul Saffo even coined a new term - "cybergenic" - to describe Obama in 2008, an evolution of JFK and Reagan being telegenic.

Has television come back?  Newt Gingrich clearly smashed Romney in South Carolina because of two brilliant performances in television debates in the past week.   With two more debates coming up in Florida this week, the question of the impact of television debates could be crucially important.

David Gergen just said on CNN that he thought Gingrich's victory indeed shows that television is playing the decisive role in this year's primary - so far.

I'm not surprised.   Even though I've written extensively about the role of Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube in today's politics, I'd never discount the role of television.   Older media don't just disappear when new media arise.  The written word is still important today, as is radio.

Television never really went away.  The Internet is still crucially important.  But for the right candidate, television can be even more important, precisely because of its old mass media magic - it's unique capacity to speak to millions of people at the same time.

Gingrich clearly is such a candidate.   His particular talent is looking great on television attacking television.

But Obama is powerful on television, too.  That's part of his being cybergenic.

Stay tuned for an exciting election.



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Lesson in Gingrich's Win for Obama

If I were Barack Obama, I'd be very unhappy about Newt Gingrich's win tonight in South Carolina.  As it is, I'm a mostly supporter of Obama, and I'd much rather the see the President face the robotic Romney than Gingrich.

Gingrich not only is a highly effective debater, he has a capacity to surprisingly endorse positions that pull the rug out from under his opponents.  In the debate the other night, what I most noticed was Gingrich's powerful condemnation of SOPA and PIPA - the now shelved Internet anti-piracy legislation that would have crippled the Internet.

In contrast, Obama was mostly silent about this and eventually came out with a mild backing off statement expressing reservations with the bills.

Obama cannot afford to be outflanked like this in the general election.  My best advice would be that he be true to his progressive views, take a more libertarian position on respecting the First Amendment and the Constitution, support Occupy Wall Street, and energize his base which he has not especially done in the past few years.

Romney the robot - whom I called  a Cylon back in 2008 (attention Battlestar Galactica fans) - would have been a push-over for Obama, or indeed any candidate with a real passion for his or her ideas and ideals.

Obama has that, and he'll need to call upon all of it to beat Gingrich.  The Republican convention is still a long way off, and anything can happen in the rest of the primaries, but tonight could change everything.


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Fringe 4.9: Elizabeth

A tender - yes, tender, even beautiful - Fringe 4.9 tonight, mainly because -

Alt-Elizabeth - our Peter's mother - visits Walter, to convince him to try to help Peter get back to the world and people he loves.   She forgives Walter for kidnapping Peter - in which her transformed alternate reality, Peter died as he and Walter were crossing the lake.  And she convinces Walter.

A little later, when Walter comes to see Peter, it's clear that Peter is starting to feel a real connection to Walter.  It may be that the main help that Walter can give Peter to get back "home" is getting Peter in touch with the fact, or, at least, almost fact, that Peter is home already.

Otherwise, I'm really enjoying the smooth way the alternate sets of characters relate to each in this new transformed double set of realities.  Sitting across a table from one another, out in the field shooting bad guys, mixing Peter in as a a wild card who knows things that neither set of characters does,  Fringe is giving us a wild and wildly believable and satisfying tableaux.  Not easy to do even in a novel, let alone television show.  Fringe is setting standards in complex story telling that we may not see again for years.

And the villain set is pretty impressive too.  Alt-Broyles is a damned good, dangerous double agent.  He's even got me wondering if he's somehow brought our straight-laced Broyles into his web.  Alt-Broyles and his boss Jones make a powerful combination.   And the revelation at the end that Jones is taking his orders from our (transformed original universe) Nina promises a tough fight even against the assembled intelligences of both Walters, Olivias, Lees, and Peter.

Hey, check out my essay The Return of 1950s Science Fiction in Fringe in this new anthology




See also Fringe Returns for Season 4: Almost with Peter ... Fringe 4.2: Better and Worse Selves ... Fringe 4.3: Sanity and Son ... Fringe 4.4: Peter's Back, Ectoplasm, and McLuhan ... Fringe 4.5: Double Return ... Fringe 4.6: Time Slips ... Fringe 4.7: The Invisible Man ... Fringe 4.12: The Ramifications of Transformed Alternate Realities

See also Fringe 3.1: The Other Olivia ... Fringe 3.2: Bad Olivia and Peter ... Fringe 3.3: Our/Their Olivia on the Other Side ... Fringe 3.5: Back from Hiatus, Back from the Amber ... Fringe 3.7: Two Universes Still Nearing Collision ... Fringe 3.8: Long Voyages Home ... Fringe 3.10: The Return of the Eternal Bald Observers ... Flowers for Fringenon in Fringe 3.11 ... Fringe 3.12: The Wrong Coffee  ... Fringe 3.13: Alternate Fringe ... Fringe 3.14: Amber Here ... Fringe 3.15: Young Peter and Olivia ... Fringe 3.16: Walter and Yoko ... Fringe 3.17: Bell, Olivia, Lee, and the Cow ... Fringe 3.18: Clever Walternate ... Fringe 3.19 meets Inception, The Walking Dead, Tron ... Fringe 3.20: Countdown to Season 3 Finale 1 of 3 ... Fringe 3.21:  Ben Frankin, Rimbaldi, and the Future ... Fringe Season 3 Finale: Here's What Happened ... Death Not Death in Fringe 
 
See also reviews of Season 2: Top Notch Return of Fringe Second Season ... Fringe 2.2 and The Mole People ... Fringe 2.3 and the Human Body as Bomb ... Fringe 2.4 Unfolds and Takes Wing ... Fringe 2.5: Peter in Alternate Reality and Wi-Fi for the Mind ... A Different Stripe of Fringe in 2.6 ... The Kid Who Changed Minds in Fringe 2.7 ... Fringe 2.8: The Eternal Bald Observers ... Fringe 2.9: Walter's Journey ... Fringe 2.10: Walter's Brain, Harry Potter, and Flowers for Algernon ...  New Fringe on Monday Night: In Alternate Universe? ... Fringe 2.12: Classic Science Fiction Chiante ... Fringe 2.13: "I Can't Let Peter Die Again" ... Fringe 2.14: Walter's Health, Books, and Father ... Fringe 2.15: I'll Take 'Manhatan' ... Fringe 2.16: Peter's Story ... Fringe 2.17: Will Olivia Tell Peter? ... Fringe 2.18: Strangeness on a Train ... Fringe 2.19: Two Plus Infinity ... Fringe the Noir Musical ... Fringe 2.21: Bring on the Alternates ... Fringe 2.22:  Tin Soldiers and Nixon Coming ... Fringe Season 2 Finale: The Switch

See also reviews of Season One Fringe Begins ... Fringe 2 and 3: The Anthology Tightrope ... 4: The Eternal Bald Observer ... 7: A Bullet Can Scramble a Dead Brain's Transmission ... 8. Heroic Walter and Apple Through Steel ... 9. Razor-Tipped Butterflies of the Mind ... 10. Shattered Pieces Come Together Through Space and Times ... 11. A Traitor, a Crimimal, and a Lunatic ... 12, 13, 14: Fringe and Teleportation ... 15: Fringe is Back with Feral Child, Pheromones, and Bald Men ... 17. Fringe in New York, with Oliva as Her Suspect ... 18. Heroes and Villains across Fringe ... Stephen King, Arthur C. Clarke, and Star Trek in Penultimate Fringe ... Fringe Alternate Reality Finale: Science Fiction At Its Best

                 Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic


The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book



Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ... Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Setting Dodd Straight on SOPA

Former Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), now the head of the MPAA and the main spokesperson for SOPA and PIPA (now shelved or withdrawn), just told Andrea Mitchell a bunch of nonsense on MSNBC.  Here are some of his major points, with translations into truth to set the record straright:

Dodd:  Most people misunderstood what the bills were about - which was, to stop the loss of American jobs due to Internet piracy.
Truth:  Everyone understood that purpose of the bills.  What we also understood were the provisions of the bill that would have held entire sites responsible for even one pirated item on their otherwise massive, non-pirated sites and could have crippled the Internet as we know it.  Dodd said nothing whatsoever about that.
Dodd:  the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 has been effective against Internet pirates and has led to the shutdown of many sites.  SOPA and PIPA were just trying to extend its provisions to international pirates operating here.
Truth:  Right, the DMCA has been very effective.  So why not just extend its provisions to cover international pirates?  The DMCA has none of the provisions of SOPA and PIPA which could have crippled the Internet.
Dodd:  The First Amendment does not protect criminals, people who libel and slander others, etc.
Truth:  Right, but the First Amendment does protect from government regulation all modes of speech and press which are not engaged in criminal, slanderous, or libelous actions.   If The New York Times, for example, inadvertently published something deemed libelous, it could be sued for libel under the current laws.  Those same laws can be used against anything online - without the need for SOPA and PIPA - and the same applies to piracy (with extension of DMCA to cover international pirates).  The problem with SOPA and PIPA is they went way too far, and would gave have seriously violated the First Amendment.

In sum - Dodd, after being rebuked by the withdrawal of SOPA, is starting off on the wrong foot for where we go from here.  A little truth would help.

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Challenging Schumer and Gillibrand on SOPA

Largely missed among the online protests against SOPA and PIPA today - protests with whose goal I strongly agree, though I disagree with the tactics of shutting down online systems, as I indicated on Monday - were in-person demonstrations at the Manhattan offices of US Senators from New York Schumer and Gillibrand.

Unlike Wikipedia going dark, which inconvenienced millions of innocent people, the protests against Schumer and Gillibrand were lodged exactly such protests should be, in the faces of people who support SOPA and PIPA and apparently don't care about the damage such law if enacted would do to the Internet, and thereby our lives.  Not only support these bills, but in the case of Schumer and Gillibrand sponsored the Senate version of SOPA - that is,  PIPA.

I've lived in New York all my life, and yet I still find myself surprised when a New York elected official, let alone a Democrat, has such a benighted, retrograde position.  But Schumer has been a disrespecter of the First Amendment for a long time.  He loves the FCC and the fines it levies, and speaks glowingly of the Fairness Doctrine and hopes to see it reinstated.  He probably thinks all the First Amendment prohibits is the government's shutting down newspapers in the middle of the night, but I wouldn't put that past him, either, if the paper printed something he judged in bad taste.

I guess I expected more of Kristen Gillibrand.  Truthfully, I was disappointed when former Governor Paterson passed over Carolyn Kennedy for Hillary Clinton's replacement, and appointed the little-known Gillibrand.   She's done a pretty good job, until SOPA.  I tried to give her a chance.

But the Schumer-Gillibrand position on SOPA-PIPA is insulting to anyone with any intelligence.  Internet piracy is something we all want to stop.  Especially me, as an author.  But Schumer and Gillibrand think it's costing New Yorkers jobs.   Hardly - the movie and television industries are still situated in Hollywood, and the old music business, the RIAA-kind, isn't situated anywhere anymore.   What would cost jobs in New York are Internet companies going broke because of unconstitutional Federal fines and shutdowns in pursuit of pirates.

But speaking of jobs - I hope New Yorkers put someone up against Schumer next time a primary comes around, and as for Gillibrand - let's hope she comes to her senses and withdraws her support from SOPA and PIPA before she loses whatever support she still has from New Yorkers who want to build a better future.


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Wikipedia Wrong to Go Dark for SOPA Protest

The New York Times reported late this afternoon that Wikipedia plans to go dark - shut down - this Wednesday, just for that day, joining Reddit and other online sites in protest of SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act now under consideration by Congress.

I think SOPA is an unconstitutional, dangerous waste of time - that is, a violation of the First Amendment that won't achieve its ends, and could cripple the Internet with its provision that sites could be liable for any pirated material posted on their online premises.  No site can possibly police every post - text or video - for adherence to copyright.

Wikipedia actually does a pretty good job of making sure every image on its site violates no copyright. But I think Wikipedia should not shut down on Wednesday to point out the danger of SOPA.

Wikipedia is a source of information,  a site which by its very existence stands up to ignorance in Congress.  It won't be able to make this point on Wednesday when it's shut down.  And in doing so, Wikipedia will inconvenience millions of people, including students of all ages, who rely on its services.

Wikipedia could make the same point by putting up a page about SOPA which everyone who goes to Wikipedia would see.  A page like that will indeed greet people when they try to go to Wikipedia on Wednesday.  What is gained by then preventing them from getting the information they're seeking?

In times of revolution, even just in opposition to authority, it is especially important that lines of information remain open.  The world will survive Wikipedia's day of darkness, but it is a wrongheaded, unnecessary move, and SOPA will be defeated without it.


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