When I watch tv, it's all about authenticity rather than entertainment, so I appreciate the tip about the British show.
So much for my quest for authenticity!
Also that means I can't tell British dog accents and Australian dog accents apart.
5: Racist. I suppose all dogs look alike, too?
On the internet no everyone knows you're a racist.
As I understand it, British TV copies American TV all the time, but they don't bother actually licensing the name and matching all the characters exactly. I figure that's because they don't have the budget or the potential profit.
Maybe things would be cheaper and simpler for American TV if they just copied the outlines of a show.
I don't follow Marginal Revolution or Roubini, but I was fascinated to follow the links here to see this exchange between Roubini and Cowen.
In March 2007, Roubini more-or-less described how everything was going to go down, and Cowen mocked him for it.
Brad Delong has discussed where he erred in assessing the developing crisis. (He says he had too much faith in risk management at financial firms). Has Cowen/Tabarrok ever explained where they went wrong? How has the crisis changed their views? Have they fallen back on blaming Fannie and Freddie or the Community Reinvestment Act?
Whoops, sorry that was intended for a Crooked Timber thread.
As I understand it, British TV copies American TV all the time, but they don't bother actually licensing the name and matching all the characters exactly. I figure that's because they don't have the budget or the potential profit.
I can't think of much actual copying (without keeping the name), not that a lot of imitation doesn't go on. The only one that springs to mind is "The Upper Hand", based on "Who's The Boss?". But the US habit of remaking series directly just isn't as common - we just import the US version.
The classic counterexample, of course, is Sandford and Son, which was based on Steptoe and Son.
The classic counterexample, of course, is Sandford and Son, which was based on Steptoe and Son.
and All In The Family, based on Till Death Do Us Part.
Another classic counterexample is "All in the Family," based on "Till Death Do Us Part."
Also Sanford and Son, based on Stepto and Son.
10.1: what makes it funny is that roubini believes he's talking to a dog in a Tyler Cowen suit.
OT: What's the hivemind take on Rand Corp.?
19: I knew somebody who worked there doing something non-evil. So there you go!
19: You know, I sort of forgot they existed. There has been so much dumb war-making evil of late that you forget about smart war-making evil. But they've been involved in a lot of interesting stuff for sure.
Then there was "Three's Company", which was based on "Man About the House".
I have a friend in library school who's going to Rand for a site visit and wanted to know how evil they are: accidentally-spill-some-hydrochloric-acid-on-the-main-server evil or IED evil. I don't know much about what they do on issues not directly related to war mongering.
"Three's Company" wasn't quite evil, but it was IED-level stupid and offensive.
I've seen some "Three's Company" in the past year and been pleasantly surprised. It's not any stupider, than, say, "Are You Being Served". There's a lot of well-timed physical comedy and not as many canned punchlines and put-downs as I'm used to in sitcoms.
I'd argue that it's not even particularly homophobic, because it's playing on the notion that old fogeys are still residually homophobic, which can be exploited if you don't care if people think you're gay.
23: I'm not entirely sure how much war-mongering they do anymore (although I'm sure they aren't opposed in principle); they tend (from what I've heard) to be a somewhat bog-standard econ research outfit. Which is, admittedly, not not evil.
Per usual, Wikipedia has both sides covered. The Brit->USian list is longer and more "weighty" than the reverse.
Wind-surfing invented by a RAND dude and described in a RAND paper. Evil or not left as an exercise for the reader. Also over 40 years ago.
I have only the dimmest childhood memories of watching "Three's Company", but for some reason find pleasing the weirdness of the fact that not so long ago the very idea of a single guy sharing a flat with two single women was considered in itself titillating.
Huh, I tried to find it one Wikipedia but failed. Anyway, it does confirm my hunch, which is that, for US-->UK, gameshow formats are much more commonly copied.
Everyone I've met associated with RAND has been a totally normal academic doing totally nonevil policy work. I'd say "about as evil as Harvard" and leave it at that.
31: Like Rand E. Quaid. Currently on the lam in Canada to avoid the notorious Star Whackers of Hollywood.
"I asked them when they believed their troubles began. They said it was in Marfa, Texas, the rural artists' community where Giant was shot. They said they had traveled there in the summer of 2009 to 'look at ranches and stuff' and erect a 'Randy Quaid museum.'"
Well, right.
Selling TV shows to foreign markets is much less profitable, and licensing ideas from foreign markets less cheap, than it was just 10 years ago. Wilfred looked like it totally sucked but maybe I'll give it a chance.
OT: Just got about ten inches of hair hacked off. I'm not sure if I like it, but my head is certainly a lot lighter.
Selling TV shows to foreign markets is much less profitable, and licensing ideas from foreign markets less cheap, than it was just 10 years ago.
Is it? BSkyB just paid HBO £150m for HBO's catalogue. Seems pretty profitable to me for just one market.
The only person I've spent substantial time talking to who worked for RAND was this very old guy who worked in Vietnam during the war running studies on Agent Orange and the like, trying to figure out how best to decimate the Vietnamese people. He was also a pedophile and spoke very wistfully about his liaisons with Vietnamese children. He also showed me photographs of the children, who were, no kidding, really little kids, like ten or twelve or so. This is most of my first hand knowledge of Rand corp.
That's horrible. What did you need to talk to him about?
41. He was a friend of a friend. (More specific than that is possibly compromising to other people, and anyway the story is complicated and doesn't make a whole lot of sense, even to me.) Anyway, I expect that 99.99% of people who work for Rand Corp. are way less evil than that. Harvard people I'm not so sure.
||
OK, somebody's shot me an invite to google+. Do you lot count as friends, acquaintances or something completely different?
|>
The one person I knew who worked at Rand quit to open a cooking school (now a chain of cooking schools) for hipsters. So, pretty evil.
39 -- yeah, but it's not like the olden days where you could just sell at whatever price you wanted to a foreign mogul starved for content.
The one person I knew who worked at Rand was specializing in modeling the boring fiscal consequences of drug legalization. So, highly non-evil.
Google+ keeps telling me to add Sifu to a circle. Under the name "Sifu." As if that wouldn't give away my Unfogged habit to everyone else I know.
"RAND"-- "Research ANd Development. That may wrap around the lameness scale to awesome.
I can't join Google+ because I already feel guilty about never updating my status on Facebook.
||
TPM is reporting Ron Paul is retiring from Congress in order to focus on tilting at windmills running for president.
|>
I've been added to a circle by somebody whose name I don't recognise but I think must come from here. This is so embarrassing. What is the protocol?
OT: Just got about ten inches of hair hacked off. I'm not sure if I like it, but my head is certainly a lot lighter.
Photo! Photo!
First RAND report (1946--they spun out of Douglas Aircraft) "Preliminary Design of an Experimental World-Circling Spaceship". They take (and I will grant them) credit for a good call in a follow-up paper.
"Since mastery of the elements is a reliable index of material progress, the nation which first makes significant achievements in space travel will be acknowledged as the world leader in both military and scientific techniques. To visualize the impact on the world, one can imagine the consternation and admiration that would be felt here if the United States were to discover suddenly that some other nation had already put up a successful satellite."
54: Done, if a cellphone picture where you can't see much counts.
Is it on Flickr? I can't tell if Flickr is being weird with me or not.
56: Can you put it in the Unfogged flickr pool?
57, 58: Whoops, I hadn't put it in the pool. It's there now.
It looks light and bouncy and lovely. Your hair must have been super long - I was expecting something much shorter.
Yeah, RAND does a lot of good expert stuff, with the wherewithal to think about longer-term issues than the government tends to contract on, and even has its own Ph.D. program. Plenty of it is bent toward evil, probably in about the same proportion that the US government is. But for example, they were commissioned to study allowing gays in the military in 1993, and wrote a massive report concluding from every angle that it was fine (some narrative).
It was getting pretty long, in a sort of dreary looking way. I think this is better.
It looks light and bouncy and lovely.
Nicely bouncy, even.
And my hair isn't even wearing any panties.
I remember seeing a couple of reruns of Citizen Smith while in the UK and thinking it resembled a jokier All in the Family. The basic family structure of cranky conservative dad, somewhat ditzy mom, somewhat ditzy daughter, and non-conformist boyfriend/son-in-law was there, anyway.
Regarding television, I just resumed trying to catch up on Dexter, and (spoiler alert!) I find John Lithgow incredibly creepy as a serial killer.
I have a G+ circle called "Unfogged". Circle names aren't supposed to be visible to others, right? If so I should rename "noisy".
Other people can tell whether you have them in a circle or not, but nothing else.
I haven't even joined G+ yet, clew. How can you be putting me in circles already?
LB, can I see the picture of your haircut? To my work email.
I'm hoping for set operations on circles; you can be the animation for "noisy" intersect "naked", Megan.
12, 28: I've only seen the first three episodes of Misfits so far, but it seems very strongly inspired by Heroes. There's one US-to-UK show that doesn't appear on Wikipedia's list.
10: This is all I could find from Cowen:
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/10/what-caused-the.html
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/08/fessing-up-to-incorrect-beliefs.html
Pretty weak tea, though maybe I missed one.