King of the Hill cancelled by Fox, may be renewed by ABC

It was announced over the weekend that next year, King of the Hill is finally going to end its television run at Fox.

Of course, King of the Hill has been on the scrap pile before, and come back before, but there seems to be a certain finality to the recent announcement of its cancellation. While I haven't read a statement from Mike Judge, I have a feeling he was aware this was coming.



As the second longest running primetime animated series in history, it has covered a lot of ground and has made a lot of comments about American society in its simple and quaint way, and I think that's why it lasted so long.

In fact, as a sitcom, it was probably one of the few that was most grounded and in keeping with reality, which is really ironic given the number of series that during the same time period ended up so far removed situationally from reality, they were cartoonish themselves.

I also think that it is a testament to the show's quality that Trey Parker and Matt Stone have been very respectful to the show over the years when they've at some point mocked their other peers on one level or another.

While I am sad to see it go, I also accept that every show has a shelf life, and I think it is unfortunate that the show likely got the axe to make way for The Cleveland Show, especially since the most recent episode of King of the Hill beat American Dad, another MacFarlane creation.

Of course, I get to look forward to the upcoming animated show Judge is working on for ABC called The Goode Family, which seems to take the King of the Hill model from the other perspective, as it seems to follow a family with a more urban and far more liberal spin to them. From what I've read, the Goodes seem like exactly the kind of people that so irked Hank Hill, which may end up being the strength of the show, and I hope that the audience that Fox is abandoning could conceivably follow Judge to a new network... especially if ABC sees value in renewing King of the Hill for themselves like the network did with NBC's Scrubs, as Fox has acknowledged that there is another network interested in taking over the show. Of course, only time will tell what will happen with the various projects of Mike Judge.

Tags: mike judge, king of the hill, goode family, fox, scrubs, cancelled, abc, animated, hank hill, seth macfarlane, american dad, situation comedy, sitcom, arlen

Politics and candy

Yale's Dean Karlin and a group of his students have taken Halloween activities to a whole new level. They decided to see how strong children's political allegiances were by having them choose between getting their candy from an Obama or a McCain stand-up. Here are their results (impressive given the day two turn-around) and here is Emily Bazelon's take in Slate (her children were subjects in the experiment). Apparently, Obama supporters are more likely to take candy hidden in a brown bag than McCain ones but not so much more if they have to switch tables. I wonder whether their candy demand would have been so inelastic had it not been in the midst of such a candy rich environment?

It is hard to tell if this had as much to do with politics or even parental politics than the measure of image as close to Disney ideal -- of which I am pretty sure Obama comes up trumps. In our household, Child No.1 is definitely for Obama but I am pretty sure that she would have gone for the extra candy from McCain.

Also, in the spirit of "you let our kid watch what?" our eldest two have been watching The Colbert Report with me. Despite its M rating it is very family friendly. What has surprised me is that they seem to get it. It took them some time, and I must admit I let it run without commentary or explanation, but they worked out that his extreme support for McCain and Palin was a put on. They seem to laugh at the appropriate bits. This is without any of the background in terms of history and media bias that really underpins the show. They find him funny and are just happy to watch. I guess they are so TV deprived that they will watch anything.

Introducing Powerful Visualizations for your server-side data

By Itai Raz, Google Visualization API Team

Today, we're publicly documenting the Google Visualization API's open-wire protocol, thus dramatically expanding the capabilities of this API beyond what had been available since we first launched in March of this year. Organizations can now expose their server-side data, such as in SQL databases and even in Excel spreadsheets, and display this data through visualizations from our growing directory. This flexibility makes it possible to connect easily almost any data source to a wealth of 40+ visualizations, including standard pie and line charts and complex heat maps and motion charts.

To make it even easier for developers to get started, we have documented an open-source Python library that enables any Python developer to quickly start using the API. What we find particularly cool about this library is that it also runs on Google's AppEngine. You don't even need to be an owner of your own servers to expose your data: You can place it on AppEngine and use the Visualization API to expose your data in meaningful, insightful ways in dashboards and reports. Expect to see additional server-side tools for the Visualization API in the near future.

Moreover, this week at the Dreamforce conference, Salesforce announced they've created tools, including code snippets and API harnesses, to make the Google Visualization API even easier to use. Salesforce customers can now quickly and easily add dashboards and custom reporting applications over their Salesforce data and publish these on any webpage. ISVs and BI firms such as Panorama and Conceptual Clarity, who are already marketing their powerful reporting tools over Google Spreadsheets using the Visualization API, now have access to Salesforce customers. The icing on the cake: since they use the Visualization API, they can address this new market without adding new code to their existing applications.

To learn more about how to implement your data store as a Visualization API data source, by checking out our documentation.

Economics education on the iPhone

Just released for the iPhone is Lemonade Stand. It is $0.99 (click here). It is the best economics teaching tool for school aged kids. Basically you run a Lemonade Stand. This involves looking at the weather, setting price, choosing quantity and also your level of advertising. To make a profit you need to get close to the demand curve in these choices and pay attention to costs.

Child No.1 is, not surprisingly, playing it intensively. Indeed, I think she is outplaying me in terms of earnings. Then again she cares about virtual money much more than I do.

Sunday Night Video: Artist on Artist Rogen and Smith

I saw a little snippet of this elsewhere online and I thought it was worth sharing with my readers.

Myspace has this feature called Artist on Artist, which is like a condensed version of the Sundance Channel's Iconoclasts, and recently they put Seth Rogen and Kevin Smith in a situation where they basically just interacted with each other in front of the camera.

Embedded movie changed to link because it was autostarting

Naturally, it is full of swearing. Unfortunately, it has been bleeped, so the 5 minute mutual interview is more like 3 minutes with that content not present. That being said, it is still a rather interesting little video.

Tags: artist on artist, kevin smith, seth rogen, myspace, zack and miri, make a porno

Bravado: A Culture Kills Comic

I don't think I am even clever anymore.

Tags: police, strip generator, culture kills comic, bravado

What possessed us?

There is some collective wisdom in parenting. You know, there are some things you might choose to do that everyone who has had any experience in doing it will advise against it. Or at the very least they will give you a frank and brutal description of the costs. And the precision of their estimate is very high indeed.

One such activity is when your 9 year old daughter asks for her birthday party to be a slumber party. This is when your daughter and say 4 of her friends stay the night and engage in what can safely be termed, 'all night partying.' The collective wisdom suggests that this will be a shock to your household that could involve weeks, months or years of recovery. And you take that into account when you agree to said party. I guess there is something going on in your mind saying, "well, I had better see this for myself. That way I will have a story to tell."

But there is no story to tell. Others have told it time and time again. The misnomer of the term, 'slumber,' the predictable results from continual hours of eating sugar, the screams or worse, the actual conversation. We had got through a basketball game, a chocolate eating game (which involves throwing dice, changing clothes and taking turns in stabbing a 500g block of Cadbury dairy milk chocolate to death), a drawing game, an ice cream eating contest (necessitating another change of clothes), dinner out at a Chinese restaurant and a treasure hunt (that had previously involved months of planning and treasure in the form of sugar to fuel the festivities for the rest of the night). I looked at my watch after that and remarked "only 14 and a half hours to go!" All exactly the same story, regardless of era or locality.

Our, now 10 year old, daughter had engaged in an extreme amount of planning for this event. Every minute was accounted for. I couldn't see how she would get through it. But she did and what is more, all of her friends went along with it. She had even scheduled the times her younger brother would spend annoying or playing pranks on them. He had agreed to that schedule as it all made some sort of sense to him. And he kept to it and they had, much to my surprised actually been annoyed by it!

We had one activity that was claimed to have parental approval, that we did have to put a stop on in the middle of the night. We heard a giggling mob converge up the stairs before said younger brother's bedroom armed with an array of cosmetics products. The plan was to give him a make over during his sleep. We deferred that activity until the morning whereby they bribed him to sit still by giving him a portion of their remaining sugar supply. The result was apparently so bad that he volunteered to have them take a picture of his bare butt rather than his face. It now sits in iPhoto as a precious memory of the occasion.

It was one night but I feel as if it has taken some months off my life expectancy. And so I write this post not to you folk reading it as a word of caution. That word is already out. No I write it so I can read it before we agree to any more of these things. I am not sure that will work but it is worth a shot.