That’s the Tag line of Deadwood, the HBO series that ran from 2004 to 2006. I just finished watching the 1st season, and I really recommend it. The show, like the tag line, can be a little corny and clichéd, but it makes up for it with great production value, well written dialogue, and a strong cast of compelling characters. The show is very much about the just vs. the unjust, and makes a pretty sharp distinction between who is which. Normally that would turn me off (like 300 turned me off), but Deadwood still manages to be nuanced, and isn’t your stereotypical good verses evil story.

Deadwood delivers more or less what you’d expect from an HBO series set in the wild west. In other words, don’t watch it with anyone easily offended, because it’s main subject matter is violence, prostitution, gambling, drug abuse, and profanity. According to Wikipedia, for instance, “The word “fuck” was said 43 times in the first hour of the show.” I would guess “cocksucker” was used at least as many times in that span. My parents, by the way, never made it through that first hour. The show’s been criticized for overdoing the profanity, and there have been a couple times that it was so dense as to be distracting, but for the most part I think it’s within the realm of believability given the setting and type of characters.

I’ve already started the second season and didn’t like it quite as much at the start, but it’s growing on me, and I hear that the 3rd season is even better than the first. I never did watch Six Feet Under or The Soprano’s, which received more critical praise, but Deadwood is now in my all time list of kick-ass TV shows (watch for this list in a future post). I mean, it’s no Aqua Teen, but it’s pretty fucking good. Cocksuckers.

Why do images like the one above translate into millions of women paying $40 for lacey cotton over-the-shoulder boulder-holders? If really sexy men strutted around almost naked in underwear would men rush out and buy them?

I just released the World Freedom Atlas — my project for the past 6 months or so (on and off). I describe it thusly:

The World Freedom Atlas is a geovisualization tool for world statistics. It was designed for social scientists, journalists, NGO/IGO workers, and others who wish to have a better understanding of issues of freedom, democracy, human rights, and good governance. It covers the years 1990 to 2006.

The beast includes over 300 variables from dozens of datasets. It is meant to complement efforts such as GapMinder World and the World Bank Online Atlas of the Millennium Development Goals, though I intended my atlas for a somewhat more expert audience (social scientists and the like). This was a great project for me. I solidified my knowledge of Flash/Actionscript, learned a bit of PHP, even some Python, and worked for the first time with mySQL databases, web servers, and whatnot.

I have been lucky enough to get some attention from the blogosphere — so far the foreign language blogosphere. Check out this Spanish blog and this Italian site.

This may only be of interest to Z-murder (since I think Ben already reads it), but I know it’ll be of interest to Zach, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the rest of you are interested enough in web-design/programing/development/etc. to appreciate this blog:

Smashing Magazine

They don’t produce a lot of their own content exactly, but they link to lot’s of great articles, quality free fonts, etc. I like to think of the site as a filter for all the info that is out there for web developers; if you can keep up with their infrequent, but often lengthy, posts you would be pretty up to date on what’s happening with web technologies.

A good example is their best of the month series of posts (e.g. August). There is almost too much stuff to digest, but it’s all pretty good (if your into this type of stuff anyway).

One of my favorite parts of the post is at the end, and should be interesting even for people who don’t care about web development. It’s a cool video demonstrating a new technique for content aware image resizing. That may sound boring, but it’s hard to explain, and worth checking out.

As some of you know, I like music. As only Joel knows, I like The Go-Betweens. No, they are not the next hot indie band; they released their best music in the 80s - just in time to inspire U2’s work on Joshua Tree. I only have two of the Australian’s many albums, but they are so good that I feel like they must be their bests. I’d liken them to Badly Drawn Boy, old U2, Rusted Root, and The Shins. Start with the album 16 Lovers Lane (tracks: “Dive for your Memory;” “You Can’t Say No Forever;” “The Devil’s Eye;” “Clouds;” You Won’t Find It Again;” “Apples in Bed.”) Then move on to Oceans Apart, their 2005 release. Now the bad news - lead dude died last year.

This is probably only interesting to ZJohnson, but Hoyt Purvis was interviewed for the piece on Mike Huckabee. It is part of the “First Race” series running on Morning Edition. Purvis is one of my favorite people at the UA, and I’m glad he’s still around the campus.

Has anyone had the notion to go back and try to take an old professor out for a beer or something? There are a couple that I wouldn’t mind knowing socially.

I think most of you know but I’m going to be in Cairo Egypt from August 07 through June 08 while Lizzie is studying at the American University. So far it has been great! We landed around August 18th and scrambled to find an apartment we liked, we saw about 6 or 7 the first day and ended up finding one we loved. Unfortunately due to some communication problems what we thought cost 3100 Egyptian pounds was actually 3100 US dollars, it was an amazing 12 foot ceiling view of the nile apartment. Anyway we found another one we liked down the road that was in the right currency and love it. You can see some pictures of it here at my SmugMug setup.

We have an extra room so if anyone wants to visit we will be here all year except for some time during Christmas. It is super cheap to buy food and get around and everyone is incredibly nice! We went to Alexandria this weekend on the Med coast and Lizzie just posted some pictures here.

Got a cute kitty cat. Delphi (Dell-fee) is her name. George and Murray have not acctepted her yet, but I’ll give them another day or two before I kick them out of the house.

Here’s an unrelated video you should check out: model falls down

I was talking to Daniel today, and he asked me if the blog was dying. I certainly hope it’s not, and I feel bad that I’ve been feeling bad for a while that I’ve slacked off so much in my posting. I think that part of the problem for me is that the bar has been set pretty high in terms of what counts as a good post. I’ll dash off a quick comment, but posts have become reserved for well-written, mini-articles, and I rarely have time to write that kind of post. My solution, in part, is that I’m going to lower my standards. If I have something to say, I won’t wait until I have time to write a small essay on it, because then I won’t ever get around to it. So in advance, please forgive the spelling and grammatical errors I’m sure I’ll soon be subjecting you to.

The better part of my solution, though, is just to start posting again. The original idea was that none of us probably had enough posts in us to update the blog daily, but between the seven of us we could get pretty close. I’m going to do my best to post something once a week, and I encourage anyone else who feels like they don’t post enough to pick a weekly or monthly goal for posts.

Oh and I’m totally counting this for my post for this week.

Is anyone else liking football more these days? With so many players, strategies, and coaches, there’s just a richness to football that other sports don’t have. Plus, there’s Darren McFadden and Felix Jones.

I’m trying to not get too excited about Arkansas this year, since they just have so many glaring weaknesses. However, it’s hard not to think that our dynamic duo can’t overcome all of them, especially considering last year’s incredible season. And one thing really stands out after the Troy game - even though our offensive line isn’t as dominant as Arkansas has become accustomed to, and even though Marcus Monk wasn’t in the game to draw attention from the defense, and even though Casey Dick only completed one or two passes to wide receivers, and even though Troy (an athletic team) knew we were going to run, Jones and McFadden still combined for more yards than any other RB duo in the nation (watch McFadden knock that guy 20+ feet on Jones’ kickoff return).

This is true - McFadden, Jones, Hillis, and Michael Smith make up an NFL-caliber backfield. Throw in Luigs, Felton, and Monk (in a few weeks) and half of the offense will soon be NFL-bound. Plus, although Robert Johnson is an average receiver, he can throw the football as well as Casey Dick, thus providing another creative way to get the ball to McFadden and Jones. It’s hard to imagine any defense in America that can shut this crew down, especially after McFadden ripped that 80-yarder on LSU last season.

But can they overcome our inexperienced and penalty-prone secondary? Can they overcome a quarter-back who can’t handle pressure? Most importantly, can they overcome a coaching staff in denial? The most upsetting part of the Troy game was that the coaches, although they know our passing offense sucks, are still calling passing plays in important situations. I guess this is fine when you’re way up on Troy, but incompletions by Dick killed two drives in the FIRST quarter. Houston Nutt likes to be tricky, and for the most part I like that about him, but Nutt has a history of trying to fool defenses with a passing play when it seems obvious that a RB should get the ball (like in 3rd and short situations).

One last complaint about the Troy game. Where in the hell was the “wildcat” (aka “wildhog”) formation? They were running a “racehorse” formation that looked like the “wildhog,” but it was definitely not the same thing, nor did it produce like the “wildhog” did last year (except for the one 42-yard bomb from McFadden to Tuck). I hope that David Lee (the new offensive coordinator) is just trying to add more options and that the “wildhog” will show up against Alabama.

Oh, and if McFadden, the current frontrunner, doesn’t win the Heismann, it better be because Jones does.

Anybody else following McFadden’s Heisman hunt or the Razorbacks this year?