I was watching the Spider-Man trilogy in glorious HD the other day and I started thinking about the science behind superheroes. I remembered that there was some book written on just that topic. Feelingsomewhat lazy, I just asked ChaCha to find me the most popular book on superheroes and science. They gave me James Kakalios’s “The Physics of Superheroes”. I checked it out and thought I’d get a steal on Half.com, but eventually ended up buying it from Amazon.com along with Gresh and Weinberg’s “The Science of Superheroes”.

I was watching Columbo. I absolutely love the show, and if there is one superhero that I’d want to dress up as for Halloween, it would be the good ol’ lieutenant. I’ve since watched eight seasons, with the ninth one being my current time waster. I realized that the show is a cross section of American culture. The show spanned several decades, and watching eight (going on nine) seasons in a row really gives you some perspective.

Consider this. Television, like Hollywood, demands pretty people. Whether you’re on a stage, on a television screen, or the silver one, the vast majority actors and actresses in work are attractive. Whether or not it’s the public who refuses to watch a story play out in front of them unless the actors and actresses are pleasing to the eye is up for debate, but either way, beauty is represented in these visual forms of media.Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But it is inevitably a cultural sensation that is represented in the moving pictures consumed by the public. While I may find a smallish woman with thick thighs, curvy hips, and a very round bottom attractive, the rest of society finds tall and thin women with long slender legs to be the ideal beauty. As such, when I watched Columbo, I noticed that the public image of beauty has changed. I didn’t study it in depth since I was only trying to enjoy the show. All I can say is that I did notice that what people find beautiful has changed in the forty years since the first episode of Columbo.I have a knack for spotting faces. Well, I don’t know if you can call it a knack…in fact, I recognize now that it’s no feat. Anyway, in Columbo Cries Wolf (Season 9 Episode 2), I recognized Cosner, the limo driver. I couldn’t quite place who he was though, not for a small bit. Then it struck me: he was the assassin in Scarface (the Al Pacino version).

And there you have it ladies and gentleman: my great accomplishment of the day.