{"id":6608,"date":"2012-11-02T11:22:05","date_gmt":"2012-11-02T18:22:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=6608"},"modified":"2012-11-02T20:12:04","modified_gmt":"2012-11-03T03:12:04","slug":"friday-news-chum-periodic-table-of-tech-uss-enterprise-kickstarter-disneylucas-sitcom-spinoffs-and-robocalls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=6608","title":{"rendered":"Friday News Chum: Periodic Table of Tech, USS Enterprise, Kickstarter, Disney+Lucas, Sitcom Spinoffs, and Robocalls"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-6617\" title=\"userpic=headlines\" src=\"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/userpicheadlines.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"125\" height=\"122\" align=\"right\" hspace=\"10\" vspace=\"10\" \/>Well, it&#8217;s Friday at lunch (well, really, it is Thursday evening, but you know how things go), and it is time to clear out the accumulated links of the week. There&#8217;s a bunch of real interesting stuff here folks, so let&#8217;s dive in&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Periodic Table of Tech<\/strong>. I think I found this through Slashdot, but I my memory could be off. This article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.techhive.com\/article\/2013092\/the-periodic-table-of-tech.html\" target=\"_blank\">goes through every element in the periodic table and discusses how it is used in technology<\/a>. You&#8217;re probably aware of many of the common ones &#8211; O, C, Si, Al &#8211; but seeing how some of the more obscure elements are used is really interesting.<\/li>\n<li><strong>To Boldly Go<\/strong>. The mega-storm Sandy <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/8301-205_162-57543129\/space-shuttle-enterprise-damaged-by-sandy\/\">damaged the demonstration shuttle Enterprise<\/a>, which was named after the USS (Starship) Enterprise, which was named after the US Navy Enterprise. Here&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/security.blogs.cnn.com\/2012\/10\/31\/uss-enterprise-on-the-front-lines-of-history-for-half-a-century\/?hpt=hp_bn13\" target=\"_blank\">a nice article on the various real ships that have born the name Enterprise, and how soon we might be without a USS Enterprise<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Helping Out<\/strong>.\u00a0I&#8217;ve recently begun to explore Kickstarter; I participated in the funding of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/nowherethis\/now-here-this-original-cast-recording?ref=live\" target=\"_blank\">Now. Hear. This. Cast Album<\/a> and the new <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/353144938\/smashing-songs-of-stage-and-screen\" target=\"_blank\">Big Daddy &#8217;59 album with Songs of Stage and Screen<\/a>. I&#8217;m thinking about funding <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kickstarter.com\/projects\/997082407\/the-dry-bones-passover-haggadah-by-yaakov-kirschen\" target=\"_blank\">the Dry Bones Passover Haggadah<\/a>,\u00a0 and I keep suggesting that <a title=\"Mid-Sized Theatres in Trouble\" href=\"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=6578\" target=\"_blank\">the Colony Theatre look to Kickstarter for its emergency fundraising<\/a> (which they haven&#8217;t done to date). So I was amused with the Mentalfloss <a href=\"http:\/\/security.blogs.cnn.com\/2012\/10\/31\/uss-enterprise-on-the-front-lines-of-history-for-half-a-century\/?hpt=hp_bn13\" target=\"_blank\">summary of 13 interesting Kickstarter projects<\/a>. These include neat documentaries, books, games, and toys. Speaking of helping out&#8230; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/features\/food\/dailydish\/la-dd-new-york-post-sandy-in-luck-if-you-have-a-woodfired-oven-20121101,0,4501876.story\" target=\"_blank\">here&#8217;s a really neat story about some restauranteurs in New York, who are feeding the city with what they have on hand and their wood-fired ovens<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>The Force is With Them.<\/strong> By now, you&#8217;ve heard Disney has bought LucasFilms. But what did they get for $4.05B? <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/entertainment\/envelope\/cotown\/la-fi-ct-disney-lucasfilm-20121101,0,3099599,full.story\" target=\"_blank\">This article describes it in detail<\/a>. A significant chunk is ILM and the theatre sound portions, which aren&#8217;t the glamorous parts. They got Star Wars (at least the characters and the future films; the released films are tied up with Fox for a few years, and the first (or is that fourth) is entirely Fox). They got Indie Jones (but that is also tied up with Paramount for a few years). They got a few other movies. They <a href=\"http:\/\/insidetv.ew.com\/2012\/11\/02\/star-wars-clone-wars-cartoon-network\/\">may get Clone Wars, depending on Cartoon Network<\/a>. Related to this, an article in Wired Magazine (h\/t andrewducker) explores <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/business\/2012\/11\/pixar-worth-more-than-lucasfilm\/\">how the House of Mouse valued Lucasfilm<\/a>. My one problem with the analysis is that it doesn&#8217;t mention the value of the Lucasfilm ILM and sound technology arms; when you factor that into the analysis, it means that Disney valued the existing franchises even lower! (In other purchase news, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/business\/money\/la-fi-mo-warren-buffett-oriental-trading-20121102,0,2985876.story\">Warren Buffet has purchased Oriental Trading<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li><strong>Mork, Joey, Gloria, Rhoda, Frasier&#8230;<\/strong> What do these have in common? They are <a href=\"http:\/\/voices.yahoo.com\/the-master-guide-television-sitcom-spinoffs-177240.html\">all spinoffs of sitcoms<\/a>. When I was growing up, the sitcom spinoff was very common, and there were often branches of sitcom trees. Nowadays, we have &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/List_of_television_spin-offs\">franchises<\/a>&#8220;: NCIS, CSI, L&amp;O, etc. &#8230; and none of them are sitcoms. Why? <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vulture.com\/2012\/10\/why-the-sitcom-spinoff-isnt-coming-back.html\" target=\"_blank\">This article from Vulture explores why the sitcom spinoff might be dead<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Reading Too Much Into It.<\/strong> Andrewducker also alerted me to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tor.com\/blogs\/2012\/10\/the-astonishingly-sensical-plot-of-the-rocky-horror-picture-show\">an interesting analysis of the Rocky Horror Show<\/a> as a deep metaphor for the battle of the Glam movement of the 1970s against the &#8220;pure&#8221; rock and roll era of the 1950s. This analysis finds all sorts of parallels and allegories and makes some interesting points, but I also if the author was just thinking too much about it &#8212; in other words, whether they were finding more than the original author intended.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Dreading the Call<\/strong>. We&#8217;ve all gotten the call, usually while we are cooking dinner, from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbb.org\/blog\/2012\/07\/7259\/\">Rachel at CardServices<\/a> with an important announcement about our credit card. Try and track those down, and you get into the 5th ring of hell. Good news. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.networkworld.com\/community\/blog\/ftc-escalates-anti-robocall-campaign-%E2%80%93-takes-out-5-mass-callers\" target=\"_blank\">The FTC is shutting down those robocall services<\/a>. See, your government is on your side and trying to do good things for you. Now if they can just go after those political pollsters that call during dinner&#8230;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, it&#8217;s Friday at lunch (well, really, it is Thursday evening, but you know how things go), and it is time to clear out the accumulated links of the week. There&#8217;s a bunch of real interesting stuff here folks, so let&#8217;s dive in&#8230; Periodic Table of Tech. I think I found this through Slashdot, but <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/?p=6608\">Read More &#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[117,56,69],"tags":[259,225,166],"class_list":["post-6608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-news-chum","category-television","tag-disney","tag-science","tag-telephony"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6608"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6613,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6608\/revisions\/6613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cahighways.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}