The show really lost it in Season 2. I have a feeling that Fox needed to prep their viewers for Fox News. It starts off with a President Palmer (who is black and got divorced just 6 months before he won the election) requesting Jack to help save LA from a nucular bomb. Jack (the good guy) agrees and then less than 15 minutes later, in order to get results, shoots a convicted child molester (a bad guy) in the chest and uses a hacksaw to cut off his head. It all goes downhill from there with the President (a good guy) ordering the torture of the head of the NSA (a bad guy with good intentions?) to find out what information he is withholding. After that it gets complicated with the nucular bomb exploding and some more torture and trying to prevent war with three middle eastern countries. I didn’t finish watching Season 2 because when Kim got kidnapped for the 4th time, I couldn’t take it anymore.

• Hank Stuever has an nice helpful article in the Washington Post, titled Run, Kim, Run! On ’24,’ a Ludicrous but Alluring String of Perils.
• Schneier’sblowfish algorithm was mentioned on 24. Some of the comments on that blog post are pretty funny.
• Zee has ripped off 24 with its own series called Time Bomb 9/11. Fox claims that this is a episode by episode copy of 24 and sued for copyright infringement in a Delhi High Court. Don’t miss the amazing quote by Arun Jaitley.
  

  Senior advocate Arun Jaitley [sic] appearing for Zee refuted the allegations, saying that Time Bomb 9/11 was its original concept and a sequel to its earlier serial Pradhan Mantri, launched in 2001. “Nobody could monopolise on the concept of terrorism,” he said. ¹

1. From the Financial Express.
2. Image credits to The Elisha Cuthbert website

The Long Tail is about how our economy and culture is shifting from mass markets to million of niches.

This fascinating Wired article written by Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired, in October 2004, is now becoming a book.

The article (and the forthcoming book) is about the effect of the technologies that have made it easier for consumers to find and buy niche products, thanks to the “infinite shelf-space effect”–the new distribution mechanisms, from digital downloading to peer-to-peer markets, that break through the bottlenecks of broadcast and traditional bricks and mortar retail.

What I find interesting is that he has a blog about the book which is an experiment on writing a book in public. He discusses source material and asks for (and gets lots of) feedback about ideas.

Anderson has a very interesting background. He started with studying Physics and doing research at Los Alamos and then spent 6 years at the scientific journals Nature and Science. Then he was with the Economist for seven years in various positions before becoming editor-in-chief at Wired in 2001.

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