Brendan Doms

I want to take a closer look at some points I've seen floating around online about COVID-19 vaccines. I believe we should all be skeptical when presented with new claims, and investigate their merits. So I'm going to examine a few key points that have been brought up repeatedly, and try to address them objectively.

1. Pharmaceutical Companies are Immune from Liability

When you get sworn in to testify as a witness in court, you swear "to tell the truth, whole truth, and nothing but the truth." The statement "pharmaceutical companies are immune from liability" is the worst kind of lie, because it's a lie of omission. There is some truth to it, but there's more to the story. It's not the whole truth.

A more complete way to say it would be this: a small number of pharmaceutical companies are immune from liability, specifically when it comes to developing a COVID-19 vaccine, in the United States alone, and only until 2024.

This is because of the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act that was signed in to law by President Bush in 2005. It was meant to be used in case of a public emergency, so that pharmaceutical companies could develop new drugs, treatments, and vaccines faster. Shockingly, for once, the law is being used exactly as it was intended in this case: to expedite the development of a new vaccine in order to save lives.

This limited immunity only applies in the US. Europe and most of the rest of the world - including Germany where the vaccine was developed - have not granted this same immunity. In fact, Italy has threatened to sue Pfizer over the vaccine, although it has nothing to do with safety or efficacy: it's because of shipping delays.

From a business perspective, wouldn't you still be worried about when your immunity expires? The impending threat of a class action lawsuit being filed in only 3 years would tank stock prices.

This is far from total immunity. I don't see it as a good reason for the pharmaceutical companies to behave in some way that overly exposes them to liability, since they still have to worry about lawsuits in the future as well as in other countries.

And what's more, it has no bearing on the science of the vaccine itself.

2. Pharmaceutical Companies Have a Bad History

I have first hand experience with how bad pharmaceutical companies can be: I worked in electronic evidence on a case where the defendant was a pharmaceutical company in a major class action lawsuit, and they were clearly in the wrong. They can do some really bad things, yes.

But here's the problem with trying to use this as an argument against the vaccine: you can't hide from the science. As soon as the vaccine is out in the wild, researchers are investigating it, examining it, and there's a lot of really good breakdowns available out there. We know exactly what each piece of it does.

And pharmaceutical companies are mostly evil in the same ways that every corporation is evil: they're obsessed with profits. In this case, that means creating an effective vaccine that the entire world will want to purchase. Capitalism and its market forces are working for us: the pharmaceutical companies are in competition with each other, and there's billions on the line. There's no good evidence to prove that these companies would do anything other than try to create the safest, most effective vaccine possible, in order to generate the most global sales.

I've also worked in healthcare before, and one of the key metrics that pharmaceutical companies use to determine success is patient health and survivability. They want you to live for longer, because it means you have more chances to buy their drugs.

As with the previous point, this is an ad homonym logical fallacy: it's attacking the entity behind the vaccine, rather than the vaccine itself.

If you're worried about evil companies you probably shouldn't buy anything from most major corporations. Especially that new iPhone.

3. Previous Attempts to Make Coronavirus Vaccines Failed

Previous attempts at a coronavirus vaccine did fail. We got lucky with when this pandemic hit. Had it happened a few years earlier we might not have been able to develop a working vaccine. At the very least it would've taken a lot longer.

Coronaviruses are one of the causes of the common cold, so there's always been a lot of interest in them. But yes, developing a vaccine has been hard. One of the silver linings of past epidemics like SARS and MERS is that they gave us a lot of data about coronaviruses that we didn't have before. Examining that data is part of what led to new vaccine developments.

There was a lot of research that went into these vaccines. And it didn't happen overnight. It took a decade. And then on top of that, when the pandemic hit the world poured billions into turning that research into a reality.

4. The Data Submitted to the FDA Has "Gaps"

This is a scare tactic - there are no "gaps" in the data. Nothing's missing. The FDA received all of it.

They had everything they needed to make an informed decision. If you read the FDA briefs yourself, you'll see that the parts in question read a lot like the standard legalese you'd see anywhere else.

What the FDA means when it includes caveats is that it can't predict the future, and it's not going to approve the vaccine for populations where it hasn't been determined to be safe - that's why it hasn't been approved for small children yet, because they're still gathering that data. Those are the "gaps."

5. No Access to Raw Data from Vaccine Human Trials

This is a misleading half-truth. Researchers absolutely do have access to the data from the vaccine trials, including third parties that are not affiliated with the pharmaceutical companies. They have overwhelmingly found that the vaccine is what it appears to be: effective at preventing illness caused by COVID-19, and without safety concerns.

There's no public access to the "raw" data because that contains personal information that could be used for identity theft and other malicious purposes. When people sign up for a trial they're considered a patient, and afforded all the same rights, including privacy under laws like HIPAA. Would you want to sign up for an experiment if part of that was having your name and social security number and date of birth available to the public? I don't think so.

6. Long Term Vaccine Safety Concerns

If you can remember back to mid-2020, you might recall that there was a lot of public discussion about why it was taking so long to develop a vaccine. This is in a large part because of one thing the FDA did not let the pharmaceutical companies rush: the human trials. And a decent amount of that time is just waiting: do people have adverse reactions? Are they still ok a month later?

There's simply no way to speed this part up, and as I mentioned earlier, there were no safety concerns found.

What's much worse, and actually has data to prove that it's happening, are the long term effects of a COVID-19 infection: assuming you survive, then you may lose your sense of taste, smell, or experience brain fog for months afterward...or maybe even longer.

7. Anyone Who Gets Vaccinated is Still Part of the Clinical Trials

This is simply false. I don't know how this rumor started. The Pfizer Phase 3 trial concluded in November, 2020 for this version of the vaccine. There are many new trials both for these vaccines to do things like trying to prove their safety for younger people, and there are also trials for different versions of the vaccine still ongoing. But if you're in one of those trials you'd know it, and you'd be getting paid for it.

You will not have your data included in a trial by getting vaccinated. It is illegal to experiment on people without their consent.

8. Under-Reporting of Bad Side Effects of the Vaccines

People aren't shy about saying you might feel under the weather for a day or two after getting the second shot of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. But that's better than dying, being hospitalized, or losing one of your senses.

There simply isn't any data to support that there are serious side effects from the vaccines. And there have now been hundreds of millions of doses administered. In short: we'd know by now.

9. The Vaccines Do Not Stop Transmission

This is a question of semantics - while technically it's true that the vaccine doesn't prevent the virus from touching you (but how could any medicine possibly do that? it's not a force field) it does mean that your body starts fighting immediately. And that means the amount of time the virus is alive and replicating in your system is as close to zero as possible.

There's already good data to show that you getting vaccinated stops the virus from spreading to others. And if you look at any of the infection or fatality graphs out there, they're clearly trending downward in areas where vaccines have been widely rolled out. That should be reason enough for everyone to get vaccinated.

10. People Can Still Get COVID-19 After Being Vaccinated

This is another case of semantics. You don't get full immunity to the disease until two weeks after the second dose for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Many cases of people saying they got sick after getting "vaccinated" are usually happening in a much shorter time frame. And although highly unlikely, in the rare case that the virus does still take root later on, the vaccine will still lessen the effects of the infection and your chance of dying because your body will better know how to fight it.

People who have been vaccinated simply aren't being hospitalized for COVID-19.

11. The COVID-19 Death Rate Isn't that Bad

There is a lot of flat out wrong information about the death rate. Globally, it ranges from about 1% to about 10%, varying based on the population's health, how widely healthcare is available, and a slew of other factors.

Right now the US rate is hovering just below 2%. That's nearly 1 in 50. Do you really want to take that chance?

But even if you don't die, there are still the long term neurological effects to contend with, including losing your sense of taste, smell, and brain fog.

12. COVID-19 Death Numbers Are Over Reported

There is no evidence to support the claim that COVID-19 deaths are over reported. Instead, the reverse is true: the data has shown time and time again that the numbers are probably UNDER reported by as much as 35%.

There was also a highly unusual spike in "pneumonia" that was probably caused by many cases where COVID-19 was never tested for.

13. Fauci Owns Patents of the Moderna Vaccine

This is a lie that spread simply because someone said it out loud, but there was never any evidence to back it up. And yet people still repeat it as if it were fact.

14. Fauci and/or the NIH Funded Illegal Gain-of-Function Research in China

This is another lie that is being spread around without any basis in reality.

15. The Virus Continues to Mutate

Yes, the virus can mutate in the wild...but this is exactly why you should get the vaccine! If there are fewer transmissions and infections then there are fewer chances for mutations.

Plus, the vaccine has been found to also be effective against some of the new variants.

I don't want to be fighting a different version of this virus again any time soon. And the best way to stop that from happening is by as many people getting the vaccine as possible.

16. Lack of Scientific Debate About the Vaccines

This is a lie. I feel it goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway: this is the biggest event in public health in modern history. Researchers and scientists from countries all over the world have been talking about little else for the past year and a half. And they agree that the vaccine does what it's supposed to do.

17. Experts Are Sounding The Alarms

No. They're not. The experts all agree.

There are a few quacks out there of course, but the general consensus of the vast majority of the scientific and medical community is in favor of the vaccine.

Here's a full, in-depth analysis debunking one of those people that thinks they know better than everyone else.

18. I Don't Need the Vaccine Because I Already Had COVID-19

Then the vaccine will help your body fight it off better next time!

This isn't a reason not to get the vaccine. It's like saying, "I worked out last week, so I don't have to work out again this week."

19. It's a Personal Choice

Legally, yes, you can choose to get the vaccine or not. But some people in your community can't get vaccinated, maybe because they're too young, or they're immunocompromised. If you don't get vaccinated, then you are putting those people at risk. You're making the choice for them.

Every person that gets vaccinated helps reduce transmissions and variants. That's good for everyone. And after examining lots and lots of evidence in researching all this, I have yet to find a good reason for you to put your personal choice above the health and safety of others.

Additional Reading

• Vaccine Benefits
• 6 Myths About COVID-19 Vaccines

I first picked up A Game of Thrones based on its striking, snowy cover while lazily perusing a bookstore by myself twenty years ago. I had gotten up to date with another epic fantasy series, The Wheel of Time, and was looking for something similar.

I was in for a big surprise.

This is what GoT looked like in 1997.

Now two decades later, the book has spawned a show that has captured the imaginations of a much wider audience, and is also more up to date than the source material. Despite starting with the book, this fact makes me quite happy, because if we didn't have the show right now we might be feeling a lot like fans of The Dark Tower when Stephen King got hit by that van.

Instead of never knowing if we'll get an ending, we know that the story is being finished under full creative control in two more compressed seasons, with season seven bearing down upon us right now. It returns in exactly one week.

I'm assuming if you're reading this that you're all caught up, but if you're not, fair warning: SPOILERS AHEAD. And if you'd rather not read speculation about the finale then you should move along too.

Let's start super basic. The name of the book series is A Song of Ice and Fire. And if two characters were two embody those two elements, who would they be?

There's one main character who has spent the vast majority of his time in cold places, mostly on or under a giant wall of ice. He has fought enemies that shatter into chunks of ice when killed. His family comes from the North, and his last name is literally a state of matter that is a form of ice. Yeah, Jon Snow is Ice.

There's also a main character who hangs out in deserts, and has been consumed by a blazing inferno only to survive without a scratch. Twice. She is also the only mother and rider of fire-breathing dragons in the world right now. Finally, she has the support of a god who likes his sacrifices nice and crispy, and whose icon is a flaming sword. So, Daenerys Targaryen is Fire.

One has spent the entire series in the West, one in the East. One is female, one male. One has jet black hair, the other platinum white. There is definitely a yin-yang balance thing going on here. Plus they're both young, attractive, and single (there's a reason the writers forced that awkward break up with Daario at the end of last season). Not to mention the fact that these two are related (technically she's his aunt), which is something the Targaryen dynasty has always seen as a good sign when matchmaking.

The inevitable conclusion is that these two are headed straight for each other.

This isn't a novel idea or anything revolutionary. You can find speculation on it over a decade old at this point. Bare with me. We're building up to something.

The current macro situation is poised for an explosive couple of seasons. Westeros in the south is pretty much every noble family except the Lannisters (and maybe even some of them) eagerly planning for a power change in the existing regime. Add to that a massive army - dragons included - headed straight for them. Meanwhile, in the North the White Walkers keep bolstering their numbers, while the human forces continue to dwindle.

Let's extrapolate. Dany plus allies retake the throne and oust Cersei, who will almost certainly not survive to see the end. At the same time, Jon and his forces are pushed harder and harder into ever more dire circumstances. Possibly they have to retreat far south of The Wall, to someplace like Winterfell, although my money's on Moat Cailin because it's the transition between the North and the South (so, symbolic) and because it's also the thinnest piece of land on the whole continent. Wherever the ultimate battle happens, when all hope seems lost and the White Walkers are on the high ground about to push past the last line of defense, that's when the dragons swoop in and all Seven Kingdoms come rushing onto the field to push back the blight. Some kind of magic might get done to end the curse of the White Walkers forever and then BAM, the series is over.

But that can't be all. GoT's showrunners have consistently put the climactic episodes in slot nine of their ten episode seasons. There's no reason to think the true ending will be any different. If a season needs a denouement, how much more an entire series?

I think the final hour of the show is going to be concerned with seeing our favorite characters off. Bran will probably be dead because his only worth to the overall plot at this point is the information he has on Jon's parentage and how the White Walkers were created - and we saw what happened to Rickon when the writers had no use for him. Although, now that I think about it, Meera Reed has all the same information, so maybe Bran will be killed off even sooner just to surprise and depress us.

Beyond that I think guessing about characters is probably a crapshoot. But what about the world as a whole? Dany and Jon live happily ever after as queen and king?

No. A thousand times no.

This isn't that kind of story. It would be a nice twist for things to actually go well. There'd be a funny irony to that. But I think the final twist most people won't see coming is actually political. And it will take place after the last soldier has laid down their arms.

Let's go back to episode eight of season five, "Hardhome." Dany and Tyrion are talking families, politics, and the future.

The whole scene is excellent, but I'm going to transcribe the most relevant part, right after Daenarys points out that her entire raison d'etre is eliminating slavery so that the average person can live free:

TYRION: When you get back to your home, who supports you?

DAENERYS: The common people.

TYRION: Let's be generous and assume that's going to happen. Here in The Slaver's Bay you had the support of the common people, and only the common people. What was that like, ruling without the rich? House Targaryen is gone. Not a single person who shares your blood is alive to support you. The Starks are gone as well. Our two terrible fathers saw to that. The remaining members of House Lannister will never back you, not ever. Stannis Baratheon won't back you either. His entire claim to the throne rests on the illegitimacy of yours. That leaves the Tyrells. Not impossible. Not enough.

DAENERYS: Lannister, Targaryen, Baratheon, Stark, Tyrell - they're all just spokes on a wheel. This one's on top, then that one's on top, and on and on it spins, crushing those on the ground.

TYRION: It's a beautiful dream: stopping the wheel. You're not the first person who's ever dreamt it.

DAENERYS: I'm not going to stop the wheel. I'm going to break the wheel.

Tyrion thinks Dany is referring to creating a dynasty: one family line that reigns forever. She is not. Her character has been startlingly consistent: she has upheaved the status quo for governments and economies in every single place she's ruled. Westeros will suffer the same fate.

I think she'll win the battle against the Lannisters and take the crown. But I also think that it's a temporary solution until all the other threats to the Seven Kingdoms are eliminated. Once that's done, her final plan will come to fruition.

Democracy.

That's going to be the big twist at the end of season eight. How do you break a wheel of families squabbling for power? How do you win with only the support of the common people? You eliminate the throne itself.

There's precedence for this within the lore and evidence without. Within, we have only to look at some of the Free Cities as examples of at least semi-democracies or republics. Without, we know that none of the spinoff shows in development take place after the conclusion of Game of Thrones. That implies that the world is going to be much less interesting - imagine this show without the noble families competing with each other for power. Boring! We also know that George R. R. Martin based a lot of his story on actual European history, but he's still fundamentally an American. I think he'd want to write his own country in somewhere. It'd be fitting and poetic to put a revolution at the very end.

That's my theory. Take it or leave it. Feel free to disagree. But if I'm right, then the show may end not with Queen Daenarys, but President Daenarys instead.

After Battlestar Galactica wrapped up in 2009, what happened to television science fiction? There were some fantasy shows, some horror, things that might approach sci-fi, but overall there was a definite dearth for years.

As I noted in another post about TV shows, Orphan Black premiered in 2013. It doesn't take place in the far future or deal with aliens, but it did mark the start of an increase of sci-fi on TV.

I also mentioned The 100 in my other TV post, and it's worth saying that I still think it's one of the best continuing shows right now. I care more about its characters and I'm on the edge of my seat watching it more than I am with most forms of entertainment.

But what's happened since then? What's new? Has sci-fi made enough of a comeback to start sporting some space ships?

The answer is a definitive yes. Below I'll examine the front runners, giving a broad overview of the most prevalent shows in the genre, generally descending in the order that I like them. I thought about including some shows I think are downright bad and critiquing them, but ultimately decided against it. For what it's worth: avoid Extant and Humans. They're both a waste of time.

Continuum

Continuum is the only show on this list that has aired its final episode. It also had the lowest budget. I'll be the first to admit that it's probably not for everyone. Time travel inevitably leads to plotholes. And there are some slow spots. But it is filmed in Vancouver, which is always a good sign, and it means there are some familiar faces, namely Tamoh Penikett and Alessandro Juliani.

The casting is particularly good. Rachel Nichols and Victor Webster are the leads - I've never seen either before, but they both give great performances. Nichols in particular gets great at conveying complex emotions toward the end of the series. She's put in some unique situations that most actors couldn't handle, but she deals with them deftly.

The supporting cast is also worth mentioning, with Erik Knudson and Stephen Lobo both playing quirky characters. Lobo's "Kellog" is a favorite of mine. Charismatic and pragmatic, he supplies comic relief and occassional villainy.

The action and intrigue keep things moving, and there are some awesome special effects sequences involving the stealth suit. Sadly, the series is marred by some equally bad CG at points. But when it shines, it shines brightly.

I'm really thankful that Continuum got a controlled ending. It was very satisfying, albeit bittersweet, worthwhile journey.

Colony

Colony is the most criminally under-watched show on TV right now. It's a harsh, modern dystopia where the US has been divided into blocs by massive walls. Friends and family are separated from each other, travel is heavily restricted, curfews enforced, while people are disappearing or shot on the spot. This is all overseen by a hostile occupying force.

And that force is alien.

No one has ever seen or spoken to an alien directly, but they have terrible weaponry and don't tolerate resistance. Nonetheless, resistance persists. And one family gets caught up in the middle of it.

Colony excels because it focuses on the human aspect of an alien encounter. It's about how humans treat each other, as well as how they react to circumstances out of their control.

It also uses a realistic style to make this sci-fi setting more believable. The cinematography has occasional moments of excellence, such as in the recent Season 2 Episode 8 "Good Intentions." There's a continuous shot action scene that has a Banshee quality to it: fraught with tension and executed perfectly.

There are mysteries slowly being revealed, and all I want is for USA to give the show enough seasons to get through them all without rushing. It has so much potential.

The Expanse

I originally had The Expanse at the bottom of this list. I did not enjoy most of the first season, nor did I particularly like the book it's based on. I read it a while ago for the same reason this show was probably greenlit: one of the authors works with George R.R. Martin. I also love the idea of sci-fi taking place throughout the solar system once humanity has spread out a bit - indeed, that's the setting for my own first novel - but in this case I was thoroughly unimpressed.

Season 1 Episode 4 "CQB" was a solid action entry in the series, but I found the show otherwise incomprehensible. Production techniques like desaturating an already ill-light set made it hard to see what was happening on screen. Accents not based in reality made it hard to hear what was being said. Hand cams and fast cuts exacerbated the problems. The plot was far too meandering. And I really didn't like Miller.

But the second season. Wow.

They've improved on everything. The difference is palpable even in the first episode. Gone are the gray scenes and frenetic shots. Instead the camera remains still, moving only with purpose. Neon purples and reds keep the scenes lit, while remaining distinctly sci-fi. The direction and cinematography are both so much better that it feels like a totally different show. It's like the crew grew up a bit, or hired some veterans, or possibly even listened to some critics. Whatever the reason, the change is welcome.

On top of fixing all its production woes, The Expanse actually hit its stride when it comes to story too. The stakes are incredibly high - like planetary destruction high - and it's exhilarating to watch each episode. Having a sci-fi show back on the air that has actual space battles is a watershed event.

Despite my harsh critiques I'm beyond happy that this show has matured. It has quickly turned into one of the hours I most look forward to each week. Over half this list is made up of shows on the SyFy channel, and The Expanse is now the unquestionable leader.

Killjoys

SyFy started airing two sister shows in back to back timeslots: Killjoys and Dark Matter. They are both futuristic settings where Earth exists somewhere, but isn't as important as it used to be. Thy also both feature a small crew operating out of a single ship, and focus on the dynamic of those crew members with each other.

I prefer Killjoys because it's irreverent. The first season does not take itself seriously, and despite the life or death situations the characters often find themselves in they still have time for comic relief. There's love and messy relationships and desire and greed and guilt all contained in a little ship controlled by a sassy AI that goes by "Lucy." They're not afraid to talk about religion, and they're not afraid to hash it out with each other. Throw in a woman called "Dutch" that knows how to fight better than either of the men and you have the closest thing to Firefly since Serenity left theaters.

The second season didn't quite live up to the promise of the first: the show starts to take itself too seriously, and as a result loses some of its charm. But they've built an intriguing universe here. One filled with multidimensional characters, conspiracies, and conflicts. And that means there's still plenty of good TV to be made.

Dark Matter

I read the Dark Matter graphic novel and really didn't like it. The story is filled with predictable tropes: the crew has amnesia, one of them is a traitor, what a surprise.

The early episodes are the worst. The characters don't know themselves, don't trust each other, and generally run around in circles, never progressing anything. Once the characters actually start to get backstories fleshed out and personalities finalized things improve a lot. This means the second season ended up being much better than the first. It also features Wil Wheaton as a bad guy, and that's worth the price of admission alone.

I think Dark Matter has potential to get even better, but it hasn't fully found its footing yet. It needs to give up entirely on the amnesia thread and not knowing who's who. Once it gets out of its own way there's plenty of plot to explore.

Into the Badlands

I forced myself to get through Into the Badlands. The intro music is done by Mike Shinoda, but that wasn't enough to make the pilot very good. Or the next couple episodes either. I was still so enthralled by the setup - a future US reverted to feudalism where all guns are gone - that I had to see it through all six episodes. The utterly bland Revolution had something similar and squandered it in mediocrity. It seemed impossible that another show would do the same.

And yet it seemed likely, until somewhere near the middle of the season. The last two or three episodes actually focus enough on moving the story forward rather than dreary exposition that it became enjoyable to watch.

You have to embrace the crazy unrealistic fight scenes. They evoke images of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The swordplay is quite good at points, and that's something most sci-fi that isn't Star Wars lacks.

AMC certainly took a gamble on this wild premise. It's the only show on this list not into its second season yet (although that starts very soon), and it has the least number of episodes in its first season to boot, so there's not a lot of material to judge. Yet what's there is trending upwards. Add that to the supernatural powers we only get a glimpse of and I'm excited for the future of Into the Badlands.

Fantasy Bonus: The Magicians

I'm writing about sci-fi and it's forever intertwined with fantasy so I have to include The Magicians. I think it's my favorite show on TV right now.

It does not start strong. The first four or five episodes are largely exposition, and if you're at all familiar with The Chronicles of Narnia then it feels redundant in extremis.

The Magicians starts with a purely cliche setup: normal boy living a depressing life suddenly finds out magic is real and he's special and has powers and gets whisked away to a magic school where he's at the top of the class except for the hot girl who's smarter than he is. Yes, it draws from Harry Potter heavily. And The Name of the Wind, all the way back to The Wizard of Earthsea. The Magicians is supremely aware of its place in the history of the genre. It's post-modern fantasy.

Then they start playing with your expectations. The tropes turn on you. Around episode 7 or 8 I went from mild disinterest to addictively hooked. It was a race to the finish from there. The show gets DARK. Eliot and Margo are some amazing comic relief characters, but the drama unfolding around Alice and Quentin and Julia works itself up to a feverish sprint and then doesn't stop, even into the second season.

I really can't say enough good things about The Magicians. Everything you think you know will be turned on its head. There's reveal after reveal after reveal and they all make sense and fit together. Go watch it.

Graphic novels are long-form storytelling by way of merging art and words. They differ from comic books in that they are generally longer and not planned to be perpetual - i.e. they have an overall story to tell; they're working towards an ending from the beginning. It's a relatively new medium, as most consider Will Eisner's 1978 A Contract with God to be the inaugural release. I had the pleasure of reading that book recently, and it's clear even today that Eisner was a visionary as well as a master craftsman. And in fact it's his name that's used to honor the top contributions to the field each year with the industry's highest form of recognition: the Eisner Awards.

In the decades since we've seen classics get converted into movies, TV shows, and games. The likes of Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Wanted, The Walking Dead, and Preacher have all graced our screens. The late 90's and early 2000's saw some modern geniuses rise to prominence: the likes of Warren Ellis (Transmetropolitan, Planetary) and Brian K. Vaughn (Y: The Last Man, Ex Machina) continued moving the genre forward.

And inexorably, we keep moving. This post is concerned with recent additions - only the last couple years - and specifically highlighting the best of the best. There were some close calls and a lot of others I'd love to talk about. Prophet has amazing artwork that blew me away when I perused the first volume, but I found its writing amateurish. Lazarus nails the writing, but it's impossible to tell what's going on in the frenzied artwork. Rather than digging into what those could have done better, I limited myself to only highlighting those that excel in both parts of the medium.

These are the ongoing series that succeeded in the synthesis of words with visuals. All of them are still releasing new issues. These are my top 7 graphic novel series for 2017, in the order that you should run out and buy them.

Saga

Writing by Brian K. Vaughn, Art by Fiona Staples

Volume 1 on Amazon

Saga is the gold standard nowadays. It's referenced on social media, in TV shows, all over. One of its characters is a cat that can only say the word "Lying," and then, only says it if a lie was actually told. Lying Cat has become a semi-famous meme: it can be found on t-shirts and making cameos everywhere, even by those who don't know where it originated.

Beyond the popularity, Saga is also notable for the artwork, which is refreshingly bold. The colors pop in over-saturated pastels. Bright pinks and teals and yellows dominate. The adventure explodes into life, and I love it.

The story is told from the perspective of a baby, which is unique and surprisingly effective. It feels like a space opera Romeo and Juliet, but there are still some nuances within that. Saga manages to mix adventure and drama and romance and comedy into something magical, giving it that Star Wars quality everyone strives for.

If you have to start somewhere, start with Saga.

Low

Writing by Rick Remender, Art by Greg Tocchini

Volume 1 on Amazon

The first volume of Low was a book I bought based solely on the premise: in the far future the sun has expanded, driving humanity beneath the ocean waves to escape its deadly radiation. Thousands of years pass while human culture, technology, even biology change while they wait for a response from probes sent to find another planet with a habitable surface somewhere.

Despite mostly taking place underwater, the artwork is very warm: there's a reddish-orange tone to most of the sets and backgrounds. It looks a little sketched and the lines aren't always clean, almost as if being viewed through water. But where it really excels is in the frequent large spreads: there are a lot of full-page and multi-page pieces, and they're filled with tiny details.

The surprising thing is that while the setting drives the action, it is not the reason Low continually impresses me: it's the characters and their journeys. There's an extreme amount of loss and pain here, showing the worst of what humanity is capable of when put into life or death situations. But throughout all of it there's also a persistent thread of hope. And that hope helps the characters keep moving forward.

Low takes a totally fantastic world and puts very real people smack in the middle of it.

Revival

Writing by Tim Seeley, Art by Mike Norton

Volume 1 on Amazon

The dead have come back to life! In a single small, rural town. But they're not zombies. If this sounds familiar, that's because there's a TV series called The Returned that has a very similar premise, and has been remade and adapted several times. But where The Returned feels derivative, Revival is refreshing.

The genre is one the creators call "rural noir" and it shows a lot of promise. Specifically, they're asking the question: how do average people cut off from the rest of the world behave when confronted with both the supernatural and the mundane? It focuses on families and relationships, as well as power struggles within the tight-knit community. It's powerful and intimate at the same time.

The art is very clear, concise even. Character outlines are thicker than usual, so you can easily separate them from their surroundings. This clarity makes the horrific events happening all the more impactful.

If we have to compare it to a TV show, Revival actually feels much closer to The Leftovers, which is high praise from me. In both series I'm not sure we'll ever find out what actually happened, but that matters far less than what the people in these worlds go through.

Wayward

Writing by Jim Zubkavich, Art by Steven Cummings and Tamra Bonvillain

Volume 1 on Amazon

Imagine that Japanese mythology is real, and a bunch of teenagers turn out to have super powers and have to fight demons and monsters in the street. Wayward is just that, and it's chalk full of tropes. But I can't help liking it.

First, seeing the research done into the mythos is incredible: each volume contains a large prose section explaining the history of each of the legends. It's great background if you're interested, but you can also safely skip it if you're uninterested.

There's a lot of action: this is a modern, more grown up Ninja Turtles taking place in Tokyo, so there's plenty of punches and kicks thrown right beside swords and spells. But the art keeps it all in check: energy strands are bright and movements are precise. In less skilled hands all the explosions would be a hindrance to the storytelling, but instead we get some epic battles worth re-reading.

This is a coming-of-age story about superheroes: it's fun, and probably less serious than most of the other entries on this list. I keep looking forward to it as a nice diversion, and because the plot keeps thickening with every issue.

Trees

Writing by Warren Ellis, Art by Jason Howard

Volume 1 on Amazon

Trees is...

Well, it's about aliens.

But they don't talk to us or interact with us in anyway. They're just there. Like the TV show Colony, or the book Neon Green.

Ok, it's not really about aliens.

It's about us. And our ability to adapt.

The art is hurried - not always clear, but consistently emotional. Silence is used to great effect: it's not uncommon to see 4 to 6 pages in a row without a single speech bubble. This is the epitome of show, don't tell. It's brave and masterful.

Trees isn't quick to explain the aliens or why the came to Earth. It uses them instead as a mirror to tell us about ourselves.

Injection

Writing by Warren Ellis, Art by Jordie Bellaire and Declan Shalvey

Volume 1 on Amazon

Injection begins with these words:

There's not much left of Maria.
The wind from tomorrow is scouring her away.
The talons of the old world are reaching up out of the dirt for her ankles.
She can barely remember what hope and peace felt like.
She dreams of those infinite childhood Augusts when she didn't know anything and nothing was coming, and wakes up with cold in her bones.

That was more than enough to hook me immediately. I don't want to say much more, because part of the experience of Injection is discovering what's happening and why. Suffice it to say that a group of experts is gathered to combat some bizarre phenomenon. It's roughly comparable to something like Torchwood, but there's a lot of depth beneath the surface.

The art is simpler than normal here, but it's still effective. Characters are a bit desaturated and plain, while backgrounds are often just a solid unadorned color, but it allows for particular and purposeful emphasis. At one point in the second volume the background shifts through a rainbow as the tone of the scene changes. It's visually striking, and powerful.

Injection is fundamentally about facing the consequences of our prior actions. It chooses its visuals and words deliberately, to great effect.

The Autumnlands

Writing by Kurt Busiek, Art by Benjamin Dewey

Volume 1 on Amazon

Animals have the ability to talk, and they've created a civilization up to the level of something approximating our own feudal/medieval time period. It's fantasy complete with spells and wizards and barbarians.

Normally I would find this boring. It seems like you could predict everything that's going to happen just based on the genre and all the cliches built up over time. But The Autumnlands surprises in the best ways. The art is subdued and somber, until magic explodes onto the page. I love the way spells look here: they're bright and violent.

The story goes down dark, dark paths. There's a particularly forceful event early on that went the opposite way than I expected it to. That moment hooked me.

The Autumnlands is a tragedy about the trappings of power, the loss of innocence, and trying to maintain friendships through hard times. It doesn't matter that the characters are animals: they're people in all the ways that matter.

Two years ago I wrote about the best new TV shows from the previous year and now I'm doing it again. This time I'm considering shows that started in either 2014 or 2015. I'm continuing to avoid the biggest names because you probably already know about them (unsurprisingly, Game of Thrones is still constantly obsessed over).

On to the list! Here are the top shows from the last two years I think you should check out, in order of importance.

The 100

The 100 is often dismissed by people who saw early ads for it or watched only the pilot. And given those impressions, I can't blame them. From the outside it looks like a cheesy teen romance. The pilot is complete with angel lighting, soft glows, and makeup that's too perfect. Add to that the fact that the show is on The CW, and you can see why so many might avoid it.

But The 100 is a humbling lesson in not judging a book by its cover. Once you move past the pilot the show quickly pivots into a gritty sci-fi drama. The angel lighting is gone. The characters get dirty and hurt and they don't get cleaned up between episodes. The closest comparison is Battlestar Galactica, because it revolves around a group of humans struggling to keep the species alive balanced against the morality of their choices (not to mention that I've counted at least three BSG alums making appearances). And if you know how much I loved the aforementioned Peabody-winning BSG, you'll know that this comes as especially high praise.

The 100 deals with the worst of humanity when faced with agonizing choices of life and death. There's warfare, chemical weapons, and sacrifices in the name of information theory. On top of that, the characters are dynamic and grow as the series progresses. People you hated will become empathetic, their previously malicious choices turned positive by new information.

To pull this off, the creators managed to put together a stellar cast. The lead, Eliza Taylor as "Clarke," gives one of the best performances I've seen on television. And the rest of the cast supporting her - especially Bob Morley as "Bellamy" - is also incredibly talented. At its core, The 100 is a show about what it means to be human, and these actors make that journey of discovery a believable struggle.

On a side note, the CW has started churning out a surprising amount of award-winning content. Take the Vancouver-based shows like The 100, Arrow, and Flash plus hits like Jane the Virgin and it's easily the network where I spend the most time nowadays.

Mr. Robot

Mr. Robot came out of nowhere this past summer (and from USA to boot). I hadn't heard about it at all, but I saw a single ad that intrigued me, so I watched the pilot. Rami Malek as the lead was brilliant. Christian Slater was amazing backing him up. I was hooked immediately.

It's a show about New York city, mental health, the state of democracy and surveillance and the economy, as well as complicated interpersonal relationships. It's full of fun references to similarly themed movies, from Fight Club to The Matrix. But ultimately it is its own story, and told in a singularly unexpected fashion. You should avoid spoilers at all costs.

The music is like nothing I've heard before. A kind of electronic percussion, subtle and subdued in the best way possible. It emphasizes and underscores vital scenes perfectly. Combined with that, the title card placement and timing is absolutely fantastic. It's the sort of thing that should be taught in film school.

Altogether it was over too fast. Considering how crazy things got by the end and that the show's creator (Sam Esmail) has said that the first season was just a setup for the second, I can't wait to see what happens next.

The Leftovers

Maybe you've been wondering what Liv Tyler's been doing with her time recently. Or if there inevitably had to be an HBO entry in this list. In both cases, it's The Leftovers.

This show takes the concept of the biblical rapture and explores it from the side of those left behind. What would happen to society if millions of people unexpectedly disappeared in an instant? Or arguably more important: what would happen to a person's psyche if they witnessed it but weren't included? The Leftovers appears to be a show seeking to answer those questions by examining flawed individuals who are all to real and familiar. But the writers are actually asking what it means to be a person - a friend, a husband, a daughter - and using this unique event to dig into the depths of questions we are too afraid to ask ourselves under normal circumstances.

The show does start slow. It takes time to build up speed. And it's obviously fairly low budget. But it explores themes like survivor's guilt and religious uncertainty with a raw ferocity, unable to let go of a subject even when it becomes uncomfortable. By the end of the second season every episode had me feeling some deep, powerful emotion. If that doesn't sell you on The Leftovers I don't know what will.

Better Call Saul

AMC's Breaking Bad prequel series got much fanfare before it came out, but the first season is not something I often hear people talking about. It seems to have largely been missed. I attribute this to a slow pilot and equally laggy first few episodes. The pacing there really needed to be improved, and the focus of the storytelling should have been more on the core characters. But if you can make it past that the show does self-correct and become one absolutely worth watching.

The cinematography choices in Better Call Saul are breathtaking. How they managed to turn a parking lot under an overpass into something beautiful is beyond me. And the show uses tools like still shots and silence to masterful effect. This is a team of experts working in a medium they know extremely intimately.

Bob Odenkirk as the eponymous "Saul" delivers a tremendous weight and skill to the role. I was a little doubtful he could carry a show before seeing it, but now I believe he's one of the best actors out there. And I'm excited to see him continue as a leading man.

Man in the High Castle

Amazon entered the original content market recently, and Man in the High Castle is the first show I've seen by them. It's based on a novel of the same name by Philip K. Dick, the sci-fi writer whose works - such as Blade Runner and Minority Report - always seem to translate well to the screen. Man in the High Castle is no exception.

The first season's release in November coincided with Netflix's Jessica Jones - a solid series showcasing a marvelous Krysten Ritter, David Tennant, and Mike Colter as broken people in a Marvel superhero-filled Hell's Kitchen. But Jessica Jones ultimately maintained tension for too long, to the point that the audience is able to bear it, and thus becomes uninteresting. It's an odd problem for a TV show to have, but there nonetheless. Sadly, Netflix's reputation and popularity let them steal the spotlight, eclipsing Man in the High Castle to the point where it didn't get the attention it deserved.

The show is set in an alternate history version of America in the 1960's. But it's an America divided: the Axis won World War II and the continent has been split between Germany and Japan, with the Rockies forming a natural neutral zone between them. The machine of war has stopped, and both forces are now set to the task of a long-term occupation. But that comes with all the usual problems; there are tensions and threats from both within and without for the new oppressors.

Alexa Davalos - you might remember her as "Gwen" from Angel - plays the lead "Juliana." She makes this complex, difficult part look easy. She has to navigate unfamiliar, treacherous waters and we get to join her for the exciting ride.

Man in the High Castle ends particularly well: the finale is full of shocking reveals and delightful surprises that had me on the edge of my seat, but also opened up even more questions for the next season to explore.

Honorable Mention: Ascension

The SyFy channel has been trying to create a lot of new franchises recently (something I plan to explore more in a separate, exclusively sci-fi post) but they've largely failed. Personally, I think Ascension was the best attempt.

It's a miniseries that aired in late 2014, and had a strong viewership to start, but one that abandoned even the small number of episodes quickly. The most common complaint was that the show was advertised as a space opera, but instead delivered something more concerned with characters and psychology than spaceships or aliens. Of course, I didn't mind the bait and switch. And if those people had continued to watch they would have discovered some awesome space opera elements that only appear later on.

Ascension brought BSG's Tricia Helfer back to SyFy and she's awesome. But the rest of the cast has some weak points. Combined with occasionally bad writing - the writers clearly needed a consultant about the basics of physics and relativity - and I can see why it didn't gain wide appeal.

But there are some very interesting ideas they began to explore. And it was only the tip of the iceberg. The show also had this amazing retro-50's-chic style to its sets and costumes that really set it apart visually. Ascension could have been the base for an amazing full series. I'm disappointed that we'll never find out, because unlike everything else on this list it never got renewed.

What's Next?

TV is such a great medium for telling long-form stories, and there's more coming all the time. Netflix vowed to double its original programming in 2016. And I'm still waiting on some new shows from AMC and SyFy. Until then, this list will have to do.

Destiny has been out for three weeks now and it seems safe to say that for most people the game is over. For anyone not interested in the hours and hours of grinding repetitive content required to move past level 20, the short, lackluster story can't have lasted even this long. For those who manage to get to level 26 and unlock all the content the game has to offer, the game is similarly finished by now. The only way to upgrade their gear any more (which is pointless anyway since there's no more content to use that gear on) is to get extremely rare materials, which requires potentially hundreds of more hours grinding from the exact same pool of missions they've already had to complete dozens of times. For a while during the beginning of the limited-time Queen's Wrath event it seemed there would be a more reliable way to get at these materials, but once Bungie discovered that it became clear they didn't intend it, and they removed that ability.

This boils down to a simple fact: as exemplified by the comments in this Reddit thread, for players of all skill and commitment levels, the game is simply begging you to stop playing it.

It's a stroke of pure evil genius. And I'll explain why.

Consider the timing. On July 25th, a week into the Destiny Beta, Warner Brothers announced that Shadow of Mordor would be releasing early, on September 30th instead of October 7th. Do you know how many times a game is released EARLY? Even just one week? It's exceedingly rare. My guess is that by the middle of the beta Bungie had enough data to estimate how long players would take to get through the game, so they used industry backchannels to convince Warner Brothers to move up the Mordor release date so that players were not left hanging without a game to play. Early reviews generally favor Shadow of Mordor over Destiny, despite the former's lower budget and considerable lack of hype.

See, now that Destiny is finished for most people, Bungie doesn't want them harping on it, complaining about it, or really thinking about it at all. They even went to the trouble of hiring such amazing writers that they were able to create a story that is utterly forgettable. If players start to think about Destiny, they may start to think about their actual experience rather than just the shiny visuals and tight gameplay. They may wonder why they spent so much money on it, especially considering how short the campaign is. Players may notice that the classic video game trope of changing enemy colors to denote different types was simplified even further to the point of only changing the health bar colors, rather than anything on the models themselves. This is just one micro example of their genius: Bungie has pushed repetition and re-use of content as far is it can go.

With Shadow of Mordor hearkening the beginning of the fall craze of new releases, it means players won't have time to think about those things, or why they've been playing a game that to fully enjoy demands as many hours each day as a full time cubicle job and also entails sitting for long stretches staring at a screen hoping something interesting happens. It means that when the DLC comes out several months from now, players won't remember any of that, and they'll be willing to shell out the money for any new content, no matter how small. The DLC will probably perpetuate the cycle so that a few months after that another DLC release will follow, each forgettable, each a tiny ball of repetition, ad infinitum.

So here's the real genius: by purposefully making a game so utterly forgettable and timing it so that other releases in the industry with better reviews eclipse it the perfect amount of time later, Bungie has been assured of maximum profits (it's not like you can return your digital download for a $60 refund) while minimizing costs. Because no one will be playing Destiny, they won't have to spend nearly as much money maintaining their servers. Maximizing sales while minimizing the number of active players is a formula EA has been trying to nail down for a decade. I'd say Bungie has finally succeeded. Maybe once investors realize that, Activision's stock will start to recover from the huge drop it's taken since Destiny's release.

Planned obsolescence as a service is here to stay. And personally, I'm glad to have spent my money on a game that has a worse script, worse voice acting, and a more convoluted, pointless story than any recent entry in the Call of Duty series. Because Bungie's genius deserves to be recognized and financially compensated. Plus the alternative - that this is the game the creators of almighty Halo actually meant to make because they thought it would be memorable or fun - is too terrifying to contemplate.

Here we are a week into 2014 and I find myself reflecting on all the media I consumed last year. The games and movies, novels and shows. In particular, I think TV as a medium continues to get stronger with every passing year. As soon as we as a culture started to prefer a show you had to pay attention to rather than the "monster-of-the-week format" (that's a quote from Joss Whedon talking about what made Buffy good) it allowed us to follow long running, deeply impactful storylines, full of large casts of multifaceted characters. Essentially, what we have now are video novels where each installment is really a season, not an episode. That's a concept that got popularized by 24, but I'd argue it was the second season of Babylon 5 that really started it. B5's creator and primary writer, J. Michael Straczynski, was the first source of the phrase "video novel" I ever heard, and he was certainly a pioneer when it came to successfully executing on that idea.

So which shows from last year live up to my gold standard? If you're a TV connoisseur at all then you already know about shows like Breaking Bad, House of Cards, and Game of Thrones. I felt that rehashing the Emmy's list wouldn't be adding anything new to the conversation. Instead, here are a few shows that were probably off your radar, but I think are some of the best the year had to offer. Each one had its first season in 2013, and they're listed in the order of importance for you to go watch right now.

Utopia

Utopia is just brilliant. I seriously loved every minute of it. As pictured, there are continually these vast, sweeping shots of brightly colored fields that have absolutely nothing to do with the plot despite their prevalence I swear. The cinematography is simply top-notch. There's incredibly tight focus. The color palette is over saturated and well thought out in every scene. The actors nail their roles. The music is haunting throughout. And it brings up some frightening concepts about the future of the human race. For a sci-fi-light show from the U.K. based Channel 4 it was so much more than I expected.

The synopsis on IMDB says:

Utopia will follow a group of people who find themselves in possession of a manuscript of a cult graphic novel. The tome is rumoured to have predicted the worst disasters of the last century and the group soon find themselves targeted by a shadowy organisation known only as The Network.

That's all you need to know. Well, that and maybe the fact that Misfits' "Curtis" Nathan Stewart-Jarrett stars in it, since it's always nice to see a familiar face. But seriously do yourself a favor and don't look up anything else about it. The show is worth it and you don't want it spoiled. Trust me.

Orphan Black

I'm really proud of AMC. They started as just another cable channel that showed movies with commercial breaks all day long. It was a simple formula, and it worked to sustain them. But then they took a risk and started producing original content. Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and The Walking Dead are all evidence of what they've accomplished. Almost more importantly, by doing it they opened the doors for others. The History channel now has Vikings. And BBC America - which previously was just a region to region importer - has Orphan Black.

Just like Utopia, Orphan Black is sci-fi-light. It takes place in the near future, and there are some technological advances in its world that we don't have, mostly of a biological nature. But it's otherwise very familiar. There are conflicts and crime, families and lovers. And although the show is mostly filmed in Toronto it gives a nice shout out to the University of Minnesota, a refreshing change of locale to the Midwest instead of the usual coasts.

The story revolves around a girl who sees a twin she didn't know she had on a train station platform. Things get crazier and crazier from there. The show is not as strong visually as the others on this list, but the acting more than makes up for it. The lead, Tatiana Maslany, blew up on social networks like Twitter, where the internet masses demanded that she be nominated for an Emmy for her performance. She didn't get it, but she certainly deserved it. And a lot of media outlets called it the biggest awards snub of the year.

Her sidekick and adopted brother in the show, Felix, played by Jordan Gavaris, might be my favorite new character of the year in television. He's hilarious as the comic relief most the time, but he can also put on a doesn't-take-crap-from-anybody attitude. Both work marvellously, and I can't wait to see him resume this role.

The other notable cast member is Maria Doyle Kennedy, playing the aforementioned two's adoptive mother. She's the only one I had seen before, and her past roles are each a knockout: Queen Catherine in The Tudors, the babysitter Sonya in Dexter, and the ex-Mrs. Bates in Downton Abbey. She's at the top of her game here in Orphan Black.

Broadchurch

Another U.K. based show, this time from iTV, Broadchurch is on the surface what I would call a "whodunnit" murder mystery. Normally that kind of show would not appeal to me at all, as I typically loathe stories that are dependent on their plot twists to be good (see Fight Club as the exception with a drastic twist that still manages to be awesome on repeat viewings, but Mystic River as a case of one that is not). However, while the characters in Broadchurch are quite obsessed with finding the murderer, the show itself is more about their interactions with each other and the challenges they face along the way. It's an excellent example of the journey being more important than the destination.

In addition to having great characters that experience a full range of emotions throughout this tragedy, Broadchurch also excels technically. With a subdued tone and wide shots, the camera is actually helping to tell the story rather than getting in the way. And there's one transition early on that is just fantastic. It's worth watching the pilot for that alone.

Broadchurch is getting both a second season and an American remake (to be called Gracepoint), but it doesn't need either. It's a complete story on its own. And for good or for bad it will make you feel something, deeply.

Banshee

The most surprising network to have a show on this list is Cinemax. Yes, they made a serious drama, and it is suprisingly good. It is the most graphic show on this list, with some extreme violence, so if that makes you squeamish you my want to avoid it. But if you can get past a couple of the more gruesome scenes, the show is totally worth it.

Banshee takes place in an eponymous town in Amish country in Pennsylvania. Its new sheriff is recently freed from prison and the star of the show. His appearance causes the small town politics and relationships to quickly grow in complexity, and the story branches out from there in multiple directions that miraculously find a way to relate back to each other eventually. The action - particularly the gun fights and car chases when they happen - is quite possibly the best I have ever seen on a TV show. Cinemax really spared no expense.

I have to mention that Hoon Lee as "Job" is an equivalent character to Orphan Black's Felix in the best way possible. Every scene he's in is either hilarious or epic, and I can't wait to see more of him.

The show is also worth noting for its penchant for continuous shots that seem almost impossible to pull off. Add that to the writing, the action, and not one but two of the best villains I've seen recently (including one who - coincidentally? - has the same name as a villain in Utopia, "Mr. Rabbit") and Banshee is absolutely a show worth watching.

Into the New Year

In addition to following all of those shows (they've all been renewed for a second season) there are several new shows coming out in 2014 that I'm excited about. At the top of the list are AMC's Ballistic City, which is about a cop on a generation-spaceship, and Netflix's Sense8, which is being penned by J. Michael Straczynski and directed and produced by the Wachowskis. It's an exciting time for storytelling.

This might be old news for some, but I had never encountered this particular IE bug before. It's such a good example of what is utterly wrong with Microsoft and the quality of their product that I had to write it up. If you ever hear someone say, "Oh, IE's not that bad" then please send them a link to this post. This is the kind of bug that is ridiculous to deal with as a developer. We spend way too much time hunting down these bugs. It's not even behaving like their own documentation says it should.

So here's the situation: you want to use tabindex to skip over a radio button. In IE, only checked radio buttons are focusable anyway, so here's a test case showing a few radio buttons all checked without any tabindex set, except for the middle one that's set to -1, which should make your tabbing skip over it. Just click on the first one and you can use tab and shift-tab to navigate back and forth along them:

• no tabindex set
• tabindex=-1, should be skipped
• no tabindex set

Notice how using -1 doesn't actually skip over that radio (if you're using IE9). That's surprising, because it seems to work for every other element type, so why should radios be any different? Searching around will yield some results that tell you that setting the tabindex to -40000 will fix this problem.

Oh, of course. Obviously. -40000. Why didn't I try that first?

This is the part where I take an ax to the mannequin I have with the IE logo pasted to its face. It is so incredibly frustrating to deal with quirks like this that every once in a while you just have to let out your rage by chopping some heads off.

I couldn't just let that answer fly though. After some investigation, I figured out that the actual number this starts working at is -32769. -32768? No go. But -32769 and anything below that works. Wait. 32768 looks vaguely familiar...oh, it's 2^15. So obviously that's Microsoft's limit for the memory assigned to the tabindexes integer (this is actually mentioned in the documentation linked to above), and we're now able to skip the radio because it's out of that range. But it doesn't explain why -1 doesn't work in the first place. At least the mystery of -40000 has been solved - it's just the next nice round number. To conclude, here are some fun radios showcasing these numbers and this bug:

• tabindex=0, normal page flow
• tabindex=-1, should be skipped
• tabindex=-32768, should also be skipped
• tabindex=-32769, actually skipped
• tabindex=-40000, also skipped
• tabindex=0, normal flow again

Dear Microsoft, this bug is in IE9, the current release of the browser right now in 2012. Not IE6, so you can't claim it was made a decade ago and you didn't know what you were doing. Shame, shame on you.

I've been developing for Google App Engine (GAE) ever since it first came out. Along the way, I've built up a list of open source software to help accomplish tasks I found myself repeating. Each of these are hosted on GitHub, which provides free hosting for any open source project.

GAE Blog

The Blog project provides a fully functional blog, complete with support for multiple authors per blog, multiple blogs on the same site, commenting with moderation and spam blocking, image uploading, RSS, pagination, and more. It can easily be dropped into an existing project or serve as a stand alone. It will also automatically use the HTML project below if it is available.

GAE Scaffold

The Scaffold project provides skeleton code for setting up new sites quickly. It handles writing a lot of boilerplate, creating a jumping off point for feature-rich, high-performance sites. It is thus similar to small-scale web development frameworks, though unlike many it remains front-end agnostic. And it includes the Deploy and HTML projects below automatically. From the start, it supports sessions, templates, minification, caching, testing, and human readable error messaging. With just a little work, it can be configured to do anything you want on the GAE platform: run new cron tasks, serve a dynamically generated sitemap, access the datastore, and more.

GAE Deploy

The Deploy project handles cache-busting for a site's static resources. Specifically, it will create new minified versions of JavaScript and CSS files, and then reference those files in production. It smartly serves the full non-minified version in development, and cache-busts when a change is made to a file. Images are supported by simply appending the timestamp of the most recent deployment. This project could easily be extended to include processors for things like LESS or SASS.

GAE HTML

The HTML project handles minifying and caching rendered HTML. This makes it easy to do things like immediately displaying a cached version of a page without having to go through that page's normal controller processing. Fewer processor cycles combined with smaller outgoing bandwidth means the GAE free quotas last even longer.

I hope that these projects will help others see how easy and fun it is to get web applications up and running on GAE. Feedback, bug reports, feature requests, and patches are all welcome.

There came a day
When they had explained
Everyone else away

"The poor are too poor!" they said
"They'll leave nothing for the rest"
So the poor disappeared
Despite doing their best

"The sick are too sick!" they said
"They'll infect us if we try"
So the sick all died
Without saying goodbye

"The queer are too queer!" they said
"They'll make us weird and strange"
So the queer went into hiding
Hoping for a change

"The smart are too smart!" they said
"They'll challenge with words"
So the smart were all silenced
None left to be heard

There came a day
When they had explained
Everyone else away

A people who worship
A man who said, "Blessed be
All those different than me"

And cheer for a country
Holding onto a sign:
"Send the poor and sick to my side"

With fists clenched, pounding the floor
They finally found they could ask for no more

They simply watched as the world would fall
Screaming: "Only me! Only my kind!
I want it all!"