Last Chance To Import Your Google News Feeds To Another Program

Hopefully by now everyone who uses Google Reader is ready for its close. In case you are procrastinating, here’s how to do it quickly.

There are many choices of programs out there. If you haven’t checked them out yet, I’d suggest getting into one program and you can always change later. Feedly has been improving tremendously over the fast couple of months, duplicating much of the look and feel of Google Reader for those who desire to customize it this way. It is also pretty easy to sign in with your Google account and have the feeds imported (provided you don’t wait too long). Feedly  has apps for Android and iPhone. This allows users to read feeds on a pc, tablet, or phone and have it all synchronized. Feedly is also free. While I would be willing to pay if the quality was better, I figure it is better to get set up with a free service and then shop around in the future.

Feedly is working with other programmers to provide more options. This includes additional programs for Android and iPhone which will synchronize with the new Feedly cloud. For Android, gReader already works with Feedly and D7 Reader is working with Feedly. Both come in free and paid versions.

While Feedly has been rushing to upgrade to satisfy Google Reader users, there are still a number of functions they say they are working on which aren’t completed. This includes exporting feeds in case you decide you want to use a different program. While not essential if you use Feedly until they add an export function, I would suggest using Google Takeout to save your data.

Digg Reader just went live, also with the ability to import from Google Reader. At quick glance it looks like a potential replacement but it only has an iPhone and not an Android version. AOL Reader is currently in beta, available by invitation.  They offer the ability to sign in with your Google account, but this might not do any good unless they open up the service quickly. Several other programs are around. A Google search for Google Reader Replacements should provide more information.

 

SciFi Weekend: Hannibal; American Gods; Dexter; Under The Dome; Terminator; Nudity in Game of Thrones; Catwoman; Put A TARDIS In Space

Hannibal - Season 1

Bryan Fuller has offered David Bowie a role in Hannibal, and revealed more about his plans for the second season:

“We have reached out to David Bowie to see if he’s interested and available,” Fuller reveals. “We would love for him to play Hannibal’s uncle, who is a character from the literature and in the books.”

Fuller explains “we don’t have an answer yet,” but is hopeful Bowie can join the NBC series, which resumes production in August in Toronto.

Hannibal’s uncle, Count Robert Lecter, was killed by Nazis in the books, but “since our timeline is a little more present,  there’s a little bit of J.J. Abrams-style alternate universe storytelling where he could still be alive,” Fuller explains.

Another pivotal role in season two will be that of Barney, an orderly at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, where Will Grant (Hugh Dancy) will be kept captive. “That will be some fun stunt casting,” says Fuller. “I would love to bring in Chi McBride, if he’s available. There are so many great actors I would love to work with.”

Not much of season two will be taken from the literature, according to Fuller. “We’re going to see Will Graham [Dancy] institutionalized and what we know from Red Dragon, the backstory that is given, which is very, very thin, explains that Will Graham was so psychologically compromised from investigating the Minnesota case that he had to be institutionalized. And that’s sort of one sentence that we can do quite a bit with. As you can see from the first season, we held true to that backstory in a very faithful way, but obviously we took huge liberties in how we interpreted that one sentence. So right now, for season two, we are in fresh territory with a chapter that hasn’t even been written by Thomas Harris. It’s exciting.”

SIT Blog

I’m pretty much limiting to links for now as I’m on vacation and will be at our summer offices at Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island this weekend through next. Considering where SciFi Weekend is currently coming from, I must note the recent death of Richard Matheson. Among his many works is Bid Time Returns which was turned into Somewhere in Time which was filmed here at Grand Hotel.

HBO plans to devout six seasons to an adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. This makes me wish that Bryan Fuller had taken Hannibal to HBO. It is hard to see it surviving on NBC to complete Fuller’s seven year plan.

Michael C. Hall interviewed on the end of Dexter.

Under the Dome will (not surprisingly) differ from Stephen King’s novel.

The Terminator series is being rebooted as a new trilogy. This isn’t encouraging:

Another interesting factoid added by Deadline is that the rights to Terminator will eventually revert back to James Cameron in 2019, who has yet to be satisfied with any of the follow-ups and spin-offs that came after his two films. So they’re hauling ass to make three movies before that happens. Always a recipe for a quality product.

The Mary Sue recommends thirteen independent science fiction and fantasy movies.

Lena Headey on nudity in Game of Thrones:

I’ve said from day one that I’ve got no problem with nudity. I’ve done it throughout my career. But for this character, it’s been better for her regality and her feistiness to not bare her flesh until she has to. When it’s out of her control. And if that ever happens, it won’t be Cersei being seductive or sexy. She’ll be stripped. That kind of a scene will have more power if it’s not an everyday occurrence.

Here’s a rundown as to how the third season of Game of Thrones differed from the novel.

Starz has ordered a full season of Ronald Moore’s series Outlander.

I’m certainly not surprised that Catwoman isn’t really dead.

Here’s a device to convert your currency from different genre sources.

There’s a Kickstarter campaign to put a TARDIS in orbit.

Modern Family is considering a gay wedding following the recent Supreme Court ruling

The Obama Scandals, A Look Back At The Fiction

Jonathan Chait looks back on those days not very long ago when the media was obsessed by scandals involving the Obama administration now that the claims of scandal have been debunked.

Do you remember how all-consuming the “Obama scandals” once were? This was a turn of events so dramatic it defined Obama’s entire second term — he was “waylaid by controversies,” or at least “seriously off track,” “beset by scandals,” enduring a “second-term curse,” the prospect of “endless scandals,” Republicans “beginning to write his legislative obituary,” and Washington had “turned on Obama.” A ritualistic media grilling of Jay Carney, featuring the ritualistic comparisons of him to Nixon press secretary Ron Ziegler, sanctified the impression of guilt.

After providing evidence as to why the IRS scandal was not a true scandal involving Obama, Chait resumed:

Why did we think the agency was targeting only conservatives? Because apparently Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, ordered the agency to audit its treatment of tea-party groups, and only tea-party groups. The IRS dutifully reported it was indeed targeting tea-party groups; everybody assumed it was doing no such thing to liberal groups. The IRS inspector general is defending its probe, but the IRS’s flagging of conservative groups seems, at worst, to be marginally stricter than its flagging of liberal groups, not the one-sided political witch hunt potrayed by early reports.

What about the rest of the scandals? Well, there aren’t any, and there never were. Benghazi is a case of a bunch of confused agencies caught up in a fast-moving story trying to coordinate talking points. The ever-shifting third leg of the Obama scandal trifecta — Obama’s prosecution of leaks, or use of the National Security Agency — is not a scandal at all. It’s a policy controversy. One can argue that Obama’s policy stance is wrong, or dangerous, or a threat to democracy. But when the president is carrying out duly passed laws and acting at every stage with judicial approval, then the issue is the laws themselves, not misconduct.

The whole Obama scandal episode is a classic creation of a “narrative” — the stitching together of unrelated data points into a story. What actually happened is this: House Republicans passed a twisted account of a hearing to ABC’s Jonathan Karl, who misleadingly claimed to have seen it, creating the impression that the administration was caught in a major lie. Then the IRS story broke, which we now see was Republicans demanding a one-sided audit and thus producing the impression of one-sided treatment. In that context, legitimate controversies over Obama’s civil-rights policies became the “three Obama scandals,” exposing a government panopticon, if not a Nixonian administration bent on revenge.

The collapse of the Benghazi story happened very quickly, when Jake Tapper’s reporting found that Karl had peddled a bogus story. (It’s notable that the only misconduct in both the Benghazi and the IRS stories was committed by House Republicans.) But the scandal cloud lingered through the still-extant IRS scandal, which in turn lent the scandal odor to the civil-liberties dispute. Now that the IRS scandal has turned into a Darrell Issa scandal, we’re left with … an important dispute over domestic surveillance, which has nothing to do with scandal at all. The entire scandal narrative was an illusion.

The biggest scandals here are that Republicans are misusing their positions to fabricate scandals, including hiding testimony from the American people which doesn’t support their false narrative.

Quote of the Day

“In New York, the new front-runner in the New York City mayor’s race is Anthony Weiner. Some analysts say it’s due to name recognition. Actually, I think a few people recognize more than just his name.” –Conan O’Brien

Wingnuts Say The Darndest Things: Rape Kits, Sex-Ed, and Muslims Coming Here With Three Wives

Texas Republicans, with their usual strong support for owning guns and opposition to women owning their own bodies, recently tried to push through a bill to restrict abortion rights. When Democrats pushed for an exception in case of rape or incest, Republican Representative Jody Laubenberg made this claim for why it is not necessary: “In the emergency room they have what’s called rape kits where a woman can get cleaned out.”

Rep. Louie Gohmert gave this reason for opposing sex education:

Let the kids be innocent.  Let them dream. Let them play. Let them enjoy their life. You don’t have to force this sexuality stuff into their life at such a point. It was never intended to be that way. They’ll find out soon enough.  And, in fact, … mankind has existed for a pretty long time without anyone ever having to give a sex-ed lesson to anybody.  And now we feel like, oh gosh, people are too stupid to unless we force them to sit and listen to instructions.  It’s just incredible.

And there is a natural law that parents should be involved in education, they should know about, they should be part of the training – that’s a law of nature; Alan Keyes was just talking about it this weekend when we were together. That is such an important part of nature and yet that is the very thing that some of these liberals want to take away.

And it reminds me so much of the summer that I was an exchange student in the Soviet Union back in the Seventies and I was shocked when they were saying ‘no, the children don’t belong to parents, they belong to the state.’ And if any parent said anything in front of their children negative about the wonderful Soviet Union, then we will take their children away and give them to somebody more deserving.  And I just thought how horribly shocking that was, that of course parents were the ones who love the children, not the state. And I thought thank God that we don’t have that in our country.

And now I’ve seen this coming with a lady from MSNBC saying “hey, children belong to the state” … and it just sent chills because it took me back to the Seventies when that’s what the Soviet Union used to say and we know how well that worked out.

Ignoring the idiocy about the Soviet Union, is Gohmert aware of all the misconceptions floating around about contraception and prevention of sexually transmitted diseases? Mankind dealt with lack of education for a long time. It was bad enough when this led to syphilis. Now we have to contend with HIV.

Rand Paul is with him. Shorter Rand Paul (my interpretation of his views, not a quote): My daddy taught me to hate minorities and I will always find an excuse to keep them out of the country.

Claims of Anti-Tea Party Conspiracy Fall Apart With Revelations That IRS Also Targeted Progressive Groups

After the disclosure that the IRS had been placing Tea Party groups under extra scrutiny for tax breaks, Republicans thought they had a real scandal. When the facts didn’t support their claims, they tried everything from fabricating fake facts to hiding the actual facts which came out in Congressional testimony. Their claims of a conspiracy orchestrated by the Obama White House took another blow when Bloomberg reported that the IRS was similarly taking a closer look at progressive organizations:

The Internal Revenue Service used terms such as “progressive” and evidence of advocacy on Israel to flag groups’ tax-exempt applications for extra attention, complicating what had been seen as targeted scrutiny for small-government groups.

The IRS’s disclosure yesterday of 15 redacted versions of its Be On the Lookout document, or BOLO, bolstered its contention that delays experienced by Tea Party groups applying for nonprofit status were a symptom of mismanagement and not politically motivated action.

As other evidence has also demonstrated, low-level career bureaucrats were taking shortcuts, faced with interpreting poorly written laws which determine tax-exemption based upon whether an organization’s activity are primarily political. While it is necessary to treat all groups equally, it comes as no surprise that IRS agents suspected that organizations with words including Tea Party and Patriot might be primarily engaged in political activity without any direction from the White House.

First Read put this and another faux scandal in perspective:

IRS controversy loses its punch? In the past week, we’ve seen two revelations that have taken some of the punch out of the IRS controversy. First, per the testimony of a self-described conservative Republican IRS frontline manager in Cincinnati, the employee had no reason to believe the Obama White House played any role in seeming to target conservative-sounding groups, confirming the inspector general’s conclusion. Then yesterday, we discovered the IRS “used terms such as ‘progressive’ and evidence of advocacy on Israel to flag groups’ tax-exempt applications for extra attention, complicating what had been seen as targeted scrutiny for small-government groups,” Bloomberg News writes. “The IRS’s disclosure yesterday of 15 redacted versions of its Be On the Lookout document, or BOLO, bolstered its contention that delays experienced by Tea Party groups applying for nonprofit status were a symptom of mismanagement and not politically motivated action.” Bottom line: The IRS controversy/scandal looks much more like an agency controversy/scandal (where wrongdoing was committed by bureaucrats) than a full-blown political controversy/scandal (where it goes all the way to the top). And in retrospect, that also applies to those Benghazi talking points.

Man Without A Country

Edward Snowden is in the transit area of the Moscow airport, unable to return home and without a valid passport. Didn’t Tom Hanks do a movie like this a while back?

Quote of the Day

“NASA is challenging Americans to help them figure out a better way to find threatening asteroids. Americans said, ‘What do we get if you pick our idea?’ And NASA said, ‘To live.'” –Jimmy Fallon

Edward Snowden Leaves Hong Kong

Edward Snowden has arrived in Moscow with Cuba one of his potential final destinations. He seems fated to wind up in Cuba regardless of what happens–Havana if he remains free or Gitmo if captured.

Update: Snowden has applied for asylum in Ecuador.

In related news, David Gregory asked Glenn Greenwald this question: “To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden, even in his current movements, why shouldn’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?” Our “liberal” media at work.

Greenwald tweets: “Who needs the government to try to criminalize journalism when you have David Gregory to do it?”

SciFi Weekend: Hannibal Finale; Matt Smith Says Good By; Marvel Movies; Veronica Mars; True Blood Sex Scenes; James Gandolfini; Disney Princesses and the Doctor

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Those who haven’t watched Hannibal may want to skip down below as there are some major spoilers here. The first season of Hannibal ended with a scene which was sort of a reverse image from Silence of the Lambs with Will in the prison for the criminally insane. Looking back, this ending seemed almost inevitable, but I am glad we didn’t actually see Abigail’s death. As for Will, it appears that having been framed for her murder is a problem which will not be resolved quickly. Bryan Fuller gave some hints as to where next season will go:

Jack conveniently comes in after Will accuses Hannibal of all the murders. Would Jack have been swayed if he had heard Will’s thoughts?
Fuller: In Season 2, Jack will be investigating those accusations. I think after Will woke up from getting shot by Jack and before he was put into the institution, he shared his theories about Hannibal. Now it’s up to those characters and Hannibal Lecter to either support or deny those accusations in a properly investigated way.

Do you intend to keep Will locked up for a while?
Fuller:
He will be incarcerated, and we will be dealing with all of the threads of that. We need to see all of the things happen that would happen in that scenario. Will Graham needs to go on trial for the murders that he may or may not have committed. Jack has to be brought before a review board for his participation in what happened to Will, and Hannibal, as Will’s psychiatrist, is going to continue to try to help Will see the truth that Hannibal wants him to see. The ball is up in the air in so many ways for Jack and Hannibal and Will. The fun of Season 2 will be spiking those balls…

From the beginning, you made it clear you were telling your own story, but do you fear that this choice will alienate some of the diehard Red Dragon fans?
Fuller:
If you look at the scant two pages that talk about Will Graham’s back story, they tell us that Will was so psychologically compromised from investigating the Minnesota Shrike that he had to become institutionalized. So, I feel like I’ve got a car jack and I’ve wedged it in between those lines. I’ve just opened them up for room to tell more between the lines than what you may have anticipated. But we’re also sticking to the canon. We will deliver what we’ve come to expect in Red Dragon of Will Graham, but he’ll just have a longer, harder journey to get there. I gave myself room to wiggle, so we’re going to see some wiggling in the next two seasons.

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Bryan Fuller revealed his seven year plan for Hannibal, getting into the novels by season four. Beware, this contains spoilers for the books as well as future seasons.

AX: How many seasons do you have plotted?

FULLER: I can see pretty clearly seven seasons. I think that there are always shifts and alterations and course corrections that you have to take, because you’ll be cruising along and then you’ll hit an idea and go, “Oh, wow, that’s a great idea, we have to do that now.” That being said, I can see the structure for a seven-season arc for the show, but then I also am very open to course corrections along the way to adapt to changes.

AX: If you don’t get to run for seven seasons, are you going to make available to the public in some form what the unaired seasons would have been?

FULLER: Well, when you get into Season Four, you get into the literature. And so Season Four would be RED DRAGON, Season Five would be the SILENCE OF THE LAMBS era, Season Six would be the HANNIBAL era, and then Season Seven would be a resolve to the ending of that book. HANNIBAL ends on a cliffhanger. Hannibal Lecter has bonded with Clarice Starling and brainwashed her and they are now quasi-lovers and off as fugitives, and so that’s a cliffhanger. It might be interesting to resolve that in some way and to bring Will Graham back into the picture. So once we get two more seasons, say, of the television show, those are the aren’t-novelized stories, and then we would get into expansions of the novels after that and kind of using the novels as a backbone for season arcs that would then be kind of enhanced.

AX: Assuming you cover the eras of SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and HANNIBAL, when Will Graham isn’t a character in the books, what do you do with Hugh Dancy for those two seasons?

FULLER: Well, it would be about incorporating him in a way that he hasn’t been incorporated in the books, because Will Graham was only mentioned in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, he was not seen, and so I would be curious to see what happens to Will Graham after RED DRAGON. By the time of RED DRAGON, he’s married to Molly and has her son from a previous marriage, but doesn’t have any children of his own. And then that relationship is more complicated by Francis Dolarhyde and there were suggestions that there was a not-so-happy ending for Will Graham after RED DRAGON because he has his face carved up and you wonder what’s going to happen to Will now, and I’m curious to see what happens to Will after that.

More from Fuller here.

Matt Smith says thank you in the video above. Interested in tea at the Ritz with him? Check it out here.

Jenna-Louise Coleman will be appearing in Death Comes To Pemberley:

Last month, BBC One set Matthew Rhys to play Mr. Darcy in Death Comes To Pemberley, the three-part serial based on P.D. James’ suspense novel which revisits Jane Austen’s most iconic characters. A vast lineup of British TV talent has now been added to the cast, including Doctor Who star Jenna-Louise Coleman as Lydia Wickham, the sister of Austen’s Pride And Prejudice heroine Elizabeth Bennett. As previously announced, Anna Maxwell Martin is playing Bennett and Matthew Goode is George Wickham, Lydia’s husband. The story picks up six years into Elizabeth and Darcy’s marriage as they prepare for their annual ball. When Lydia arrives, she brings a shocking halt to the proceedings and a murder investigation unfolds.

It looks like there may be no truth to the rumors reported last week of finds of more lost episodes of Doctor Who. They are being described as destroyed rather than lost, which doesn’t sound very encouraging.

Joss Whedon says Loki won’t be appearing in The Avengers 2. More importantly, Robert Downey, Jr. will be back for The Avengers 2 and 3. Like we really thought there was any chance they would do it without Tony Stark, or anyone else could replace him. At present chances don’t look good for another Iron Man movie. More Marvel movie news here.

Shailene Woodley’s role as Mary Jane Watson has been cut from The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and MJ won’t appear until the third film. Maybe this means that the rumors that Gwen doesn’t get killed off in the second movie are true.

Veronica Mars

Filming on the Veronica Mars movie has begun. I’m looking forward to getting my digital copy when the movie opens due to contributing to the Kickstart campaign.

Secrets of True Blood sex scenes here.

Dan Harmon didn’t like season 4 of Community any more than we did.

Sopranos Diner

The scene went to black for James Gandolfini in the past week. It looks like he was way too busy to die. Here’s a list of his unfinished work. Apparently the Grim Reaper isn’t a fan. Some of Tony Soprano’s best quotes can be found here.

Last week we looked at the combination of Disney and Marvel characters. This week we’ll look back at prints by Karen Hallion combining Doctor Who and Disney princesses and other stories. (More here). Incidentally, Disney recently had a coronation for their eleventh princess. Eleven Disney princesses. Eleven Doctors. Sounds suspicious to me. Glenn Beck has devised elaborate conspiracy theories based upon less.

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