Links of the Week

Green Lantern First Look
In what is probably a test run of the all CGI costume, Entertainment Weekly has scored the first look at the Green Lantern costume. The movie is expected to hit summer next year. The result is rather interesting but a little too painted on for my taste. Really hard to tell for sure until the final look is decided and seen in action.

Price is Right Perfect Bid, Wasted Moment
An interesting story from Esquire that details how Terry Kniess became the only person in 38 years of the Price is Right to guess exactly value of the prizes in the Showcase showdown. The part that annoyed me was how Drew Carey and the show’s producers handled it. Which was very poorly. They basically assumed the guy cheated and was trying to make them look stupid. Carey has just recently replaced Bob Barker on the show and the long time executive producer Roger Dobkowitz was fired so he could be replaced by a cheaper newbie named Mike Richards. The next result is a whole lot of inexperience led to a horrible handling of a game show historic moment. It is kind of expected that the producers would be worried about image and credibility; however Carey's response was just wrong. At their core, a game show host's job is to advocate for the contestant. They should want the contestant to not only win, but win in the most dramatic way possible. By doing that, they create good television. Instead, all Carey focused on is his ego. How bad he would look and more. Basically, reading this article confirmed what I suspected. The Price is Right is no longer worth watching because the guy at the top doesn't recognize what his core job is. It is tragic.

Apple Deleted Consumer Reports Thread
For a few weeks now Apple claimed that the antenna issue on the new iPhone 4 was just a bad math calculation that caused the bars to display incorrectly. Then Consumer Reports ran a series of tests that verified the problem truly exists and decided they could no longer recommend the phone. This spread all over the place and created more bad press. It seems as a result Apple decided, must like the 1984-ish company it use to pretend not to be, to delete any threads on their forums that mentioned the report for half a day. Only Apple approved press is allowed I guess. The next result is multiple bad PR blows is leading to a press conference where Apple will announce something about how it may or may not handle the iPhone problem.

Companies Pledge $200 million to GOP
The fallout from a Supreme Court decision essentially granting companies the right to spend unlimited amount of funds to support a candidate has begun. Ten Political Action Committee (PAC) "Companies" have pledged $200 million for the election fund for the GOP. The way they can do this is there is obviously no limited on how much a person can "invest" in a company. This company then in turns funnels all hat "investment" to a candidate. The net result is now not only can real corporations buy elections but individuals can too as this method doesn't hit any cap limited based on individual contributions. It’s a sad day for Democracy (not like the GOP really cares about that).

80s Style Firefly Credits
Basically for giggles, IO9.com created the below opening credits for Firefly, the great short-lived show, that mimics the style from the 80s. The result is pretty amusing.