Dusk falls on 24

MILD SPOILER ALERT

Anyone catch the latest episode of 24? We've been continuing to follow it despite the declining level of quality/novelty, but I think this might be the last season for us.

Making a thinly veiled representation of Amnesty International into one of the bad guys, and not terribly subtly dismissing arguments against torture? Hmm. I remember the show used to play around with moral ambiguity, but the heros don't seem quite so anti anymore. Torture used to be used sparingly, and the shock value used to be recognized, but I can't count the number of times it's been used in this season. Notwithstanding the recent mediocre attempt to show that not all middle eastern types are bad guys (only 8 out of every 10 or so), the underlying apologetics are giving me the creeps, and the show isn't cool enough for me to suspend moral judgment.

In other indignant news, we've sent off a letter criticizing an article promoting tourism in Myanmar/Burma in Metropolis, the biggest English-language magazine in Tokyo (mainly because it's free and readily available). The article made a passing nod to "obvious political issues", which is more of a joke than anything else, considering that based on some discussions Kate has had on the subject we might as well be the only two gaijin in the entire freakin city who are the least bit aware of the "political issues". Anyway, the letter was kinda long, and worded a bit combatively, but I hope they like it.