Noiseless Chatter Archive

  ALF Reviews: “Lookin’ Through the Windows” (Season 1, Episode 20) Just as the Jodie episode gave way to the deplorable “Help Me, Rhonda,” last week’s experiment in competence spits us right into “Lookin’ Through the Windows,” which is awful. But before we dig into what happens in the episode, I’d like to talk for a bit about the concept. “Lookin’ Through the Windows” parodies Hitchcock’s excellent  Rear Window . It’s an undeniably great film with a solid central premise and culturally indelible imagery, which makes it a relatively common reference point for other films and TV shows. The film stars Jimmy Stewart as a photographer with a broken leg. Boredom, limited mobility and an unfortunately timed heat wave lead to Stewart’s character spending nearly all of his time at an open window, and his idle hobby of watching the neighbors turns obsessive when he believes he’s seen evidence of a murder. It’s one of those rare films that could probably be pieced together by those who ...

Personal musings on new geometry and the state of journalistic integrity in the information age by Adam Lore Newly Discovered Forms I really like polyhedra. Okay, that is a bit of an understatement, I am completely obsessed with polyhedra! So when I heard that a new type of these shapes had supposedly been discovered I became very excited. (Just really quickly, for anyone unfamiliar with the term, a polyhedron is a solid three dimensional geometric shape with straight edges and planar faces.) As it turns out, though, the media coverage of this new finding at first left me totally confused about what was discovered. In the first articles I read, there were conflicting reports and major errors. It was unclear whether these were new at all, and there was a lack of clarity as to exactly what attributes these new shapes had. You see – my apologies to those of you who already know this stuff – people who study the attributes of polyhedra are usually interested in the ones ...

Well, I’m off to sunny Las Vegas, where the wine flows like prostitutes, and I couldn’t be happier. I’ve asked a few talented honchos to fill in for me while I’m gone, so Noiseless Chatter won’t be going dead, and you should still check back, because these guys know more than I do, and one of them wants to talk about math or something. You should follow my new-ish Twitter feed if you aren’t already doing so…I’ll try to keep posting things there and sending pictures and stuff because hot damn, baby, I have always wanted to go to Vegas and this is going to be GREAT. I heard there’s a neon light there somewhere and I’d really like to see it. There will still be a new ALF review on Thursday, but I won’t be around to fix all the typos I missed before it went live. There shouldn’t be too much of a drop off in activity here, mainly because I never post all that much in the first place. Yes, it’s now that my laziness will truly pay off. Also, regarding The Lost Worlds of P...

A month or so ago there was a pretty interesting Facebook trend; folks would post an offer to create art of some kind to the first five people that “liked” their status, and then each of those five people would be obligated to post the same offer to their friends. Sure, it’s silly, but I also thought it was kind of neat. So neat that I posted it twice…for a total of ten people. I wanted to share here the art I did, because while I went into it having no idea what to do, I thought at some point about ALF recreating famous scenes from the life of Christian Weston Chandler. And, well, once I got that idea in my head, there was nothing I could do but buy a pack of colored Sharpies and get to work. This was hugely fun, and I hope you enjoy / are disturbed by what you are about to see. The deeper I got into this project the more I realized that ALF and Chris Chan have a lot in common, thematically speaking. But that’s a story for another day. Reference: Reference: Referenc...