Becky and I are watching our Sports Night DVD set all the way through. We watched every episode rabidly the first time around, and we are thouroughly enjoying it this time. I think I’ve figured out why so many of my favorite TV shows (Sports Night, Freaks and Geeks, Firefly, Joan of Arcadia) get canceled, though. Neilson families just don’t care for bittersweet. There may be a media analyst essay in that idea, but I’m too lazy to write it.

I’ve been reading memorable quotes at IMDb, tearing up at the ones I’ve seen in the past couple days, eagerly awaiting story lines to come — William H Macy has mad skills, and 2006 Oscar Nominee Felicity Huffman is a dynamo — and one of the quotes drew me into a little research on the topic of Philo Farnsworth, the man who invented the television. God bless him even though he later told his son “There’s nothing on it worthwhile, and we’re not going to watch it in this household, and I don’t want it in your intellectual diet.”

Gordon Parks passed away. We should all take a moment and remember the man who brought us Shaft and so much more.

From Wikipedia’s entry on Religious restrictions on the consumption of pork:

Archaeological significance

The relevance of the pork taboo for archaeologists is that the teeth of cooked pigs are highly resistant to biodegradation. This facilitates the pinpointing of the moment at which Islam took hold, for example, at points along the Indonesian archipelago. Plentiful pig’s teeth are found in digs of pre-Islamic settlements. Pigs’ teeth disappear from the traces as soon as Islam is adopted.