"The Magic Bean Talks" appeals to my slysdexic half. It's probably also still available as a twitter handle, domain, etc.

Huh....I saw the Toronto version of the Lord of the Rings musical and it was bad. Really bad. For example the Lothlorien song was Galadriel divaing for 6 minutes about how sad she was that Lothlorien and the Elves were fading away. No singing Legolas or acrobatic elves. No particular relation to the plot or overarching themes otherwise in the musical.

I heard they'd revamped it for London, but hadn't realized they changed songs too. Huge improvement. I hope they didn't change the Balrog. That part was awesome.

I love these costumes and would seriously consider making one for my daughter (or myself) for Halloween. They are classytastic. Click for the rest.

(for those who don't know all the characters, this repost has titles: http://www.geeknative.com/38733/drawing … rheroines/)

What's up with the techno soundtracks on the trailers? It makes my brain hurt trying to mash TRON into Game of Thrones...

Otherwise, awesome trailer.

The typical non-musical-soundtrack* tenants of my CD player:

Temptation, Holly Cole

Hush, Bobby McFerrin and Yo-Yo Ma

In Your Own Sweet Way, Dave Brubeck

Something Fierce, Marian Call

16mm, Jorane

Most of the videos are live versions instead of studio versions, but they're also mostly jazz so it works.

*I excluded musicals. Otherwise Les Mis, JCS, and a bunch of Sondheim would be up there.

Edit: Hey Ash, Temptation is a CD of Tom Waits covers. You might like it. Or not, since they're done in a totally different style.

For the sake of my sanity and ongoing happiness, I'm just going to forget this exists.

I assumed that Seth's memories of his previously awesome 30 year retirement were being changed as he was dismembered, which was freaking him out as much as loosing body parts. If he did manage to get there quickly he figured he had a chance at a decent life? The theory only holds a bit of water. Presumably young Seth did not get a very nice retirement.

Moon rise from APOD

What if Johnathan Coulton wrote new lyrics to go with the new tune, chord structure and rhythm? Then it's definitely his song. What if I do a 'cover' of two songs by sticking the lyrics of one onto the tune of another. Who's song is it then?

There's also a question as to whether they used Coulton's recording (with vocals removed). There is some evidence to suggest that they did, and I understand that could actually get Fox in hot water.

Edit @Teague: Paul would still have to pay the license and send money to Zarban. But apparently could just give you the middle finger.

Rise of the Dark Red Sky (2014)

Resident statistician reporting!

They used a method called 'reweighted range voting' to select the VFX nominees. The range voting part is what Trey described (rate all entries independently from 0-10). The reweighting part of is in the backend of calculations and is described here for the curious. Basically they use math so that if you highly rated the first nominee then your ballot has less influence on picking the second nominee and so on. It's usually used to prevent a majority group of similar voters from denying representation to smaller groups. Not sure why they went with the reweighting, but is it possible that members from each VFX company tend to vote similarly? I know Trey has mentioned that ILM historically had a disproportionate influence on the outcome. I'd have to have more information about the specific votes to know how it affected the outcome.

As for going with the rating vs ranking, it's supposed to be less prone to tactical voting and to better express people's opinions. Of course, every election statistician has their favourite voting system and will claim that all other systems are flawed. They should really all get together and have a vote to determine which system is best once and for all...

I also found some election statisticians geeking out over how awesome it is that the bake off used reweighted range voting, which is cute.