That’s why, when watching ABC World News Tonight last December, my mouth dropped open. Charles Gibson suddenly started talking about Ghana! The story, from London-based correspondent Mike Lee, was all about Paga, a small town far in the northeast that is famous for one thing: crocodiles.

Note that Mike mispronounces the town’s name: It’s pägä, not pāgä. (Surprising, given that he actually visited the place.) Otherwise, it’s a nice segment that provides a fun glimpse into Ghanaian-style tourism. If you’re interested in even more scenes from Paga, check out the videos Straddling a Crocodile and sight n sound from the jungle.

These videos are especially fascinating for me because I’ve never actually been to Paga, even though I lived for twenty-six months in Tumu, a town less than 100 kilometers away. And I would often pass through Navrongo, a town just 10 kilometers from Paga, for my trips south. (If you use Google Earth, see just how close I was.)

So why did I never end up in Paga? At the time, I was much more interested in using my vacation days to head down to Accra, the only place in the whole country where a guy can get a burger, a shake, and a movie! But the next time I visit Ghana, I’ll definitely be swinging by Paga.

The BBC documentary, Tetris: From Russia with Love, chronicled how a simple, black-and-white, silent computer game started out as a prisoner behind the Iron Curtain, then suddenly escaped and went on to become one of the most popular titles of all time. Well-written and artfully photographed, the first half of the show focused on the birth of Tetris, explaining how Alexey Pazhitnov came up with the original idea and programmed it on his Electronika 60 (a Russian clone of the PDP-11) while working for the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow.

The second half of the show was arguably more exciting, but it focused on the business aspects—contract disputes with the Kremlin, million-dollar royalties, that sort of thing—and ironically, that’s when I got a little bored. I was much more interested in the video clips of “ancient” computer systems. For instance, check out how big the floppy disks were back in the early 1980s:

Still, the documentary is well worth watching, especially if you played Tetris as a kid or have any interest in video game history. If it ever comes back on the air, I highly recommend tuning in.

• Video Values Education: “Star Trek” As Modern Myth
• A Critical Examination of the Mythological and Symbolic Elements of Two Modern Science Fiction Series: “Star Trek” and “Doctor Who”
• “Star Trek” As Cultural Text: Proprietary Audiences, Interpretive Grammars, and the Myth of the Resisting Reader
• Phenomenology of Communication and Culture: Michel Foucault’s Thematics in the Televised Popular Discourse of “Star Trek”
• The Final Frontier: Critical Theory and the Star Trek Phenomenon
• Teaching Towards the Twenty-Fourth Century: The Social Curriculum of Star Trek in the Schools
• Communication Contexts on “Star Trek: The Next Generation”
• The Wrath of Whiteness: The Meaning of Race in the Generation of “Star Trek”
• Jung and Picard: Archetypes and the Modern Myth of “Star Trek: the Next Generation”
• To Boldly Go: A Hypermodern Ethnography of “Star Trek” Fans’ Culture and Communities of Consumption
• The Best of Both Worlds? Examining Bodies, Technologies, Gender and the Borg of “Star Trek”
• Star Trek: Return to Paradise. The Research, Treatment and Screenplay (With Original Writing)
• To Boldly Go Where No Other Has Gone Before: The Construction of Race and Gender in “Star Trek”
• “Star Trek” and the Anthropological Enterprise: Cultural Relativism and Tolerance in Contemporary America

And this list includes only Ph.D. dissertations in English that have the phrase “Star Trek” in the title. I’m sure there are many more theses that involve Star Trek in some peripheral way, not to mention journal articles, conference papers, and non-English publications.

As a Star Trek fan, I’m rather pleased that my favorite sci-fi franchise is considered worthy of serious academic study.

Somehow, I’ve always found these commercials slightly annoying. I never knew why; there was just something about them that bothered me. Today I happened to catch the “Thelma and Norma” spot while watching the NBA Finals, and that’s when it hit me: The commercials have it all backwards!

You see, the premise of each commercial is that the person on-screen has had his or her identity stolen. That’s the reason why the characters speak in a voice that doesn’t match their appearance. But wait a minute… That’s not how identity theft works!

If someone steals my identity, they’ve effectively stolen my “voice,” right? In other words, identity theft allows a criminal to speak with the victim’s voice. But Citibank shows the exact opposite: The victims speak with the criminals’ voices, which makes no sense at all. I realize that these commercials are supposed to be funny, but you’d think they’d at least get the concept right.

Oh, well. Now that I know why the commercials always felt wrong to me, maybe I can begin to enjoy them for what they are.

I finally fixed that problem by renting the series on DVD from Greencine. I just watched the first episode this evening, and I was quite impressed. Some notes:

• Exciting story, interesting characters, fine acting, great special effects (especially for a TV show), solid pacing.
• All-around top-notch production quality. Bonus: It appears to have been shot in HDTV. Very progressive for a 2002 show!
• Firefly is one of the few (only?) sci-fi shows that is set in outer space but has no aliens. (Not in the first episode, anyway.) I’m not sure if I like that or not.
• Whenever the camera cuts to a wide angle from space to observe a ship blasting off, there are absolutely no sound effects. This should make those who complain about realism in certain other sci-fi shows very happy.
• Why is it that whenever a spaceship visits some far-away planet, it happens to possess an Earth-like atmosphere and bear a striking resemblance to southern California?

THE FIREFLY CREW VISITS THE PLANET OF SAN BERNARDINO

All in all, this is a series no self-respecting sci-fi fan should miss. I wish I had gotten around to seeing it sooner.