Person of Interest was rating so high in popularity on my TV and Movie app, I grabbed a copy of season one. To be perfectly honest, I laboured through the first three episodes. There were not enough female actors and I had trouble connecting with the characters of John Reese (Jim Caviezel) and Harold Finch (Michael Emerson). Finch seemed to be a stereotypically nerdy genius and Reese was … well he was Reese (if you watch the show you’ll know what I mean). The premise – a super computer/artificial intelligence that can predict crimes against ordinary people (read: they are about to die), was also not an idea that intrigued me. I perservered because I had nothing else to watch at the time, and as the through-story began to grow, so did my interest.

The introduction of Root (Amy Aker) in S1 and then Samantha Shaw (Sarah Shahi) in S2 added new layers and tensions, and I began to feel the familiar tug of engagement as the series evolved into more of a complex thriller, than a predictable episodic.

Both the Reese and Finch characters gain nuance and depth as their back stories are revealed. Their relationship builds from what begins as something based on mutual but mistrustful need, into a rather sweet friendship. A quaint bromance between a one man wrecking ball with no respect for the law, and a morally questionable genius.

As for the secondary characters. Well, I fell instantly in love with Agent Shaw (what’s not to love about a kick ass operative with a self-proclaimed personality disorder?), and Sarah Shahi does a wonderful job of being obsessive and indefatigable. Detective Fusco (Kevin Chapman) is perfectly cast as the corrupt but ulitmately good-hearted cop who’s got himself in too deep, and Amy Aker’s portrayal of brilliant hacker Root is pretty convincing. I still feel a little ambivalent about Taraji P. Henson as Detective Carter. Some episodes I’m totally on board with her, and other times, I feel irritated with the dialogue she’s been given. It’s like the writers want her to be smart but don’t always give her smart things to say (and then stuff happens with her in S3 – but I haven’t seen that yet, so no spoilers please!). By S2 episode episode 10, I experienced one of those rare goosebump WOW! moments as Gimme Shelter plays in the background as Reese is arrested by the FBI (see below).

Corrupt police, shady CIA, interfering FBI, shadow government organisations and powerful criminals all play their part in the POI tapestry. As the series grows, the ideas are fleshed out and the plot begins to show signs of some clever basket weaving, all the while tickling our palates with a taste of a possible future.

Fans of the series call themselves Irrelevants, which is a reference to the ordinary people who are about to become victims. And they can surely count me as one of them.

S2 ep 10. One of my favourite scenes in a TV series, which probably needs full context to be appreciated.

Reviewed by Joelene Pynnonen

What if everyone had the means and ability to make their lives better but they simply lacked the knowledge to do so?

This is the theory that Janette Dalgliesh posits in her short but hefty book, Your Everyday Superpower. Coming from a scientific background, she studies the theory of Deliberate Creation or the Law of Attraction (LOA). Though the two seem mutually exclusive, Dalgliesh argues that new scientific evidence into the human brain actually supports the subject of Deliberate Creation.

For four centuries, the accepted scientific theory had been that the brain was elastic during childhood but became fixed as people reached adulthood. Since the 1920’s however, some trail-blazing scientists found evidence to suggest that this theory was wrong. When Norman Doidge’s book, The Brain That Changes Itself, hit the shelves in 2007, it became more commonly perceived that our brains are far more elastic and incredible than we knew.

Your Everyday Superpower takes its theory a step further. If the brain (as Doidge and many others have provided substantial evidence for), can change a person’s perceptions by altering its thoughts, could it not then change the person’s very reality?

Your Everyday Superpower explores the extent to which we might be able to utilise our brains in order to make our realities better. Dalgliesh does not suggest that ‘like attracts like’ as many of the LOA theorists do. Rather, she makes the argument that reality is largely a state of mind and that altering our state of mind will alter our reality.

While a lot of the ideas here are interesting ones, the book itself is a little too compact to explore them in great depth. The logic of the book works well though. We’ve had a social awareness of the impact of positive and negative conditioning on the brain for quite a while now. Negative thoughts lead more deeply down a negative path, while positive thoughts can pull a person out of a bad situation. I’m on board for that.

However, where the science merges with the concept of Deliberate Creation, I would have liked explained in more detail so I could take a stance on it. Nor am I sure how to put what I’ve learned into practice. I do like the idea of rewarding oneself for changing one’s thinking to something more positive. The thing I’m unsure about is the limitations of Deliberate Creation. Reality may be based on individual perception to a degree, but there has to be a limit?

Your Everyday Superpower is a good introduction to both neuroplasticity and the LOA with an abundance of further materials to both read (and watch) throughout this book but also collated at the end. So, over the holidays I’ll be looking into a few of these TED talks to see if I can find out more about how to use my everyday superpower.

Your Everyday Superpower – Janette Dalgliesh

 Difference Press (November 30, 2013)

 ISBN: 9781936984299

It’s. About. To. Go. Down. ~ Pitbull

With 39 million views on YouTube, Timber has well and truly gone down! This song is an irresistible dance track which brings some serious energy with it.

For the video though, they clearly couldn’t get Kesha and Pitbull in the same place to film. The outcome is an odd, mashed-together dance sequence. Kesha, posing in and around a saloon in her boots and best fingernails, supported by a cast of female dancers whose shorts got ravaged by werewolves.

And Pitbull, channelling Fred Astaire with a beautiful, adoring woman on an impossibly idyllic coral atoll, interspersed with dives into the water to swim among sharks.

Was that meant to be a sign of his daring and bravery, or did I miss some symbolism? (Oh, and there’s that random pig swimming by! What’s up with that?)

The whole thing is weirdly disjointed for sure, but I tell you what … the clip beats the hell out of Kayne’s catastrophic disaster, Bound 2 (which leaves me speechless) – aha, honey!

Despite it being only semi-original, I say thumbs up to the remix/reinvention of Timber, and the boot scooting. And thumbs down to the girls dressed in microdots, and the fact that the two singers couldn’t be arsed getting together to make a cohesive clip.

Wiki says: The song was produced by Dr. Luke, Cirkut, and Sermstyle, with additional production by Nick Seeley. The song interpolates “San Francisco Bay” (1979) by Danish harmonica player Lee Oskar, which was written by Lee Oskar, Keri Oskar, and Greg Errico. “Timber” features harmonica player Paul Harrington of Rockwall, Texas, who plays through the entire song.

And yes, I downloaded it!

Here’s the original harmonica by Lee Oskar that Pitbull had Harrington emulate in his song.