I adore David Suchet’s portrayals of Agatha Christie’s Belgian detective for British satellite television. Suchet has filmed nearly every Poirot story and hopes to finish them out before retiring. Most of the short stories were filmed in an hour-long episodic format in the early and mid ninties. The longer stories are shot as TV movies.

One of the longer stories, Sad Cypress, first aired in late 2003. If you do not know the story and don’t want it spoiled, you should go away now. In Sad Cypress Elenor Carlyle is accused of (and indeed tried for, convicted of, and sentenced to die for) the murder of Mary Gerard, a romantic rival. The trial concluded that she had poisoned a fish paste sandwich with morphine, which she then fed to the unfortunate Miss Gerard. Miss Carlyle did not press her defense very strongly, because she had actually fantasized about killing Miss Gerard with the fish paste and felt, when Miss Gerard did in fact die, that her desire had made it happen.

In Poirot’s dénouement, the sleuth proves that the fish paste was not the vector for the poisoning of Mary Gerard with the following exposition, which is one of my favorite scenes in all of the Suchet stores. It really has to be seen to be appreciated, but if you’d like to do that, you’ll need to get it from Netflix.

POIROT: Now this person has the phial of morphine, and the chance, it comes! And this is what he finds.

Poirot unveils a plate of six small, triangular fish paste sandwiches, each wholly indistinguishable from the others.

POIROT: The sandwiches. One of salmon paste, the other two of shrimp and crab. Alors, our murderer approaches the sandwiches, and at once he observes that the color and the texture are identical. So which one is the salmon paste, eh?

Poirot lifts the plate of sandwiches and sniffs them delicately.

POIROT: Non, there’s no way on earth he could distinguish by smell. So, what can this person do? I am afraid that there is only one thing he can do.

Poirot produces a tiny silver spoon.

POIROT: He tastes.

Poirot proceeds to taste the fish paste filling of each sandwich, producing a more pronounced facial expression of disgust with each taste.

POIROT: It was bad enough the first time! But then, suddenly I realised how stupid I had been! I, Hercule Poirot, had followed my reasoning, yes, but I had failed to take into account the madness of the English palette. For, gentlemen, what do we find? We find that we are entering into the realms of lunacy. I do not care if our murderer had the palette of a master chef, he could never distinguish between these slurries! No, it is a fact. These sandwiches are all but indistinguishable. So, I come to the conclusion. I, Hercule Poirot, do not care what was said at the trial! This could never, ever be the practical method of murder!

DR PETER LORD: So Elenor Carlyle did not poison the sandwich?

POIROT: No she did not.

DR PETER LORD: Who did?

POIROT: Nobody.

TED HORLICK: So it was an accident?

POIROT: No, no, no, no, she was murdered. But not by these disgusting sandwiches.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzCe80RYxD8

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in conjunction with the Ad Council (both organizations about which I have nothing positive to say), has funded and produced an advertisement featuring religious figures endorsing and promoting government programs. No mention of the featured anthropomorphic vegetables’ religious affiliation is mentioned. Something about using explicitly religious characters to encourage children to follow government health advice strikes me as something less than neutral to religion, despite the secular purpose.

But because promoting the health of children is a “legitimate secular purpose”, this kind of thing doesn’t violate the current interpretation of the Establishment Clause. Tax dollars have been used to pay Veggietales licencing fees, but just like school vouchers and state-funded busing to religious schools, the underlying “legitimate” secular purpose allows for subtle but persistent interaction between government and religion that only helps to further erode cultural recognition and acceptance of the “wall of separation.”

Atlas Shrugged was featured as the question to the $200 answer in this evening’s “Literary Titles” category (Jeopardy Round). It was the first answer of the game. I don’t think the Jeopardy! people like having clips from the show up on the YouTube, so I can’t post a video. The clue was cute. Alex gave a spoken clue (“1957 novel about a strong female executive”) while a video clip ran. The clip depicted a member of the “Clue Crew” with a giant inflatable globe on his shoulders, which he set down and “shrugged” in an exaggerated fashion. The other clues in the category also included humorous visual puns. It made me smile.

Kathy tried her hardest to get Anderson fired, at one point asking him who, in the current administration, he would most enjoy waterboarding. Of course we all know Anderson’s position on waterboarding (even though he never really comes out and says it), so he was quite perturbed, refused to answer, and accused Kathy of “crossing the line.” To which Ms Griffin responded by looking at the camera and saying, “That’s what I’m here for!” They moved on, but Anderson was just a little bit more prickly to Kathy from then on. I couldn’t tell if he was just playing off her aggressiveness, or if he had actually grown uncomfortable.

Notably absent were Kathy’s frequent expletives and any jokes about Anderson’s mysterious sexual preferences.

All in all, Kathy was well behaved and generally amusing, and Anderson was his usual collected self, even if he wasn’t sure what to make of Kathy.

Happy 2008 everyone!

Augh!

For some reason, I’ve been watching Season 4 of Project Runway. I blame Flibbert, but it’s not really his fault.

Last week, Chris March left. I disagreed with that choice, purely on quality-of-product grounds. I think the judges booted him because of his poor performance as leader, rather than the quality of his own work. Leader in a group challenge. A group challenge really early in the show. The second group challenge in the show. On the fourth episode. In my uneducated and inexperienced opinion, group challenges this early in the game are putting too much emphasis on interpersonal dynamics and not enough emphasis on quality of product. I don’t think the show should be so much about personalities, but it is. Even so, Ricky’s mess last week was far worse than Chris’.

So I was a bit distressed when Chris left. But today, Chris came back.

He got un–aufed.

Joy!

Everyone says he’s too costumey, but if Chris is costumey, then I like costumey.

Normally, this would be a delightful turn of events, but it comes at a horrible cost — Jack Mackenroth (whom I found mildly irritating, but whose designs I universally enjoyed) elected to leave the show for medical treatment of an MRSA infection.

Agony!

If I were more invested in this show, I’d be very conflicted about this.

Update: Bah. I’m done with Project Runway.

Once again, The Closer proves itself to be the best damn show on TV.

Apparently this is old hat, and had I been paying any attention to the Internets, I would have know this since August. Still, it is quite disappointing.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3w-oDZSLUrY

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2e5q6ubDlZE

I don’t think so!

From what I’ve been able to dig up on the Internets, “Macgyver” was composed by Randy Edelman and “Rescue Rangers” by Mark Mueller. “Macgyver” predates “Rescue Rangers” by 3½ years. I think “Rescue Rangers” was intended to be evocative of “Macgyver.”

Again, both are favorite shows from childhood.

Since I posted about this week’s episode of House, M.D., my hits have quadrupled. Apparently, many people want to know about the phrase written on the chalkboard behind House in the classroom where he grilled his 40 or so candidates:

Tesla was Robbed!

The phrase appears alone on the board early in the episode. But later in the episode, House writes the following above it:

SYN
RBC
TACH
PANIC

for synesthesia, red blood count, tachycardia and panic attacks.

These latter are part of House’s diagnostic procedure. He’s using the chalkboard instead of the old whiteboard in the office. But the Tesla remark, which appears, on a cursory examination, to be written in a different hand (though the style of the R is similar), is incongruous.

Nikola Tesla was born in Croatia in 1856 and emigrated to the United States and became a citizen there. He was a prolific and eccentric inventor. Among his more enduring inventions are fluorescent light bulbs and alternating current. AC is the operating standard for all major electrical distribution the world over, and Tesla’s AC generator design is used to generate very nearly all of the electricity on the commercial market. Having revolutionized the world with AC, Tesla next tried to move into wireless transmission of electricity. Tesla constructed large air-core resonant transformers for the purpose, and was extremely successful in getting them to transmit high voltages great distances without wires. Tesla invented long-distance radio communication in 1897 and was awarded US patents on the technology in 1900.

An upstart Italian, named Guglielmo Marconi, was working on achieving a similar feat. He was initially successful only in transmitting electrical signals a short distance. Nothing compared to what Tesla had been able to accomplish at his Colorado Springs laboratory. Marconi applied for patents on radio technology beginning in late 1900, after Tesla had been awarded his patents. Naturally, the US Patent Office denied Marconi’s applications.

Tesla is rumored to have once quipped,

Marconi is a good fellow. Let him continue. He is using seventeen of my patents.

That Marconi used technology that was covered by patents held by Tesla is a matter of historical record. Whether Marconi actually got the ideas from Tesla, or developed them on his own, is debatable. What is also known, however, is that Marconi’s major American investor was a man named Thomas Edison. Edison was also a prolific inventor, and was a proponent of direct current electrical transmission. The electric chair was invented by Edison, using Tesla’s alternating current, as part of the two inventors’ ongoing and often bitter feud. But so long as Tesla held the patents on the technology Marconi was using in his radio experiments, Marconi could not obtain a patent.

That changed in 1904 when, for reasons unknown to history, the US Patent Office reversed its decision not to award Marconi a patent on the radio. Marconi also eventually won the Nobel Prize for his “invention.” Tesla never won one, even though he made a much more lasting contribution to electrical science than any other inventor of his time. Tesla eventually went broke and died in massive debt.

This is, I believe, what “Tesla was Robbed!” refers to. Not only the loss, during his life, of his radio patent, but the loss of the Nobel Prize to Marconi.

But Tesla wins in the end. In the same year as his death in 1943, the United States Supreme Court finally upheld Tesla’s prior patent on radio technology. To this day, as a matter of US law, Tesla, not Marconi, is the inventor of the radio. Tesla has even triumphed over Edison. Edison’s most celebrated inventions (phonograph, movie projector, light bulb) have largely been replaced by technologies that rely more heavily on Tesla’s contributions (CDs, digital video projectors, fluorescent bulbs). Today, Tesla’s inventions touch and improve every corner of modern Western Civilization.