TONIGHT ON THE INDEPENDENTS (written by Matt Welch, taken from Reason)
---------------------------
Does the news these days make you feel like Winnie the Pooh, stumbling toward the Apocalypse? You are not alone, brother. Which is why tonight's theme episode of The Independents (Fox Business Network, 9 p.m. ET, 6 p.m. PT, with re-airs three and five hours later) dives right into the Fear, interrogates it, embraces it, and fights back with some hard-won rationality.

"Apocalypse How?" stares into the abyss with the following tour guides:

* R. James Woolsey, Jr., the 16th director of the Central Intelligence Agency, former under-secretary of the Navy, 1980s nukes negotiator, and all-purpose alarm-sounder. Woolsey will assess (yet again!) the threat of ballistic nukes from rogue states, and scare the crap out of you about the looming EMP threat (sample mongering: "within 12 months of a nationwide blackout, up to 90% of the U.S. population could possibly perish from starvation, disease and societal breakdown").

* K.T. McFarland, former Reagan-administration deputy defense secretary, who will talk about the nexus between failed states and nuclear weapons (in other words, Pakistan).

* Dr. Manny Alvarez, resident Fox News doctor guy, who will describe how Ebola can and cannot wipe out populations, and whatever nasty viruses we should be skeered of.

* Harvard economist and occasional Reason contributor Jeffrey A. Miron, who will assess the possibilities of a U.S. debt crisis, and the pros and cons of hoarding various metals.

* Ridiculously over-accomplished scientist and backyard tinkerer Travis Taylor, star of Rocket City Rednecks, who will describe the human race's vulnerability to asteroids, super-volcanoes, and alien invasions.

* Beloved New York Times science writer John Tierney, who will coo soothingly and tell us to relax already about looming civilizational collapse.

You'll learn, you'll laugh, you'll get a thousand dollars worth of ones and fives ready, just in case....



INFO
----
Ripped with the Diamond VC500. Using the software that came packaged with the dongle. (It's called EZ Ripper.) In that software there's a "DVD Standard" which rips the video to .mpg at 720x480 with some terrible black bars. I load that file into AVIDemux. Cut the file into multiple parts to remove the commercials. Rejoin, crop, and resize those files using the same tool. For conversion I used MPEG4 AVC (x264), 2 pass on video and AAC (faac) on audio.

I am not part of the scene. I just admire their naming standards.

General 
Complete name : The.Independents.2014.10.03.WS.SDTV.x264-XAiO.mp4 
Format : MPEG-4 
Format profile : Base Media 
Codec ID : isom 
File size : 352 MiB 
Duration : 42mn 21s 
Overall bit rate : 1 162 Kbps 
Writing application : Lavf54.63.104 

Video 
ID : 1 
Format : AVC 
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec 
Format profile : High@L3.0 
Format settings, CABAC : Yes 
Format settings, ReFrames : 4 frames 
Codec ID : avc1 
Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding 
Duration : 42mn 21s 
Bit rate : 1 023 Kbps 
Width : 720 pixels 
Height : 404 pixels 
Display aspect ratio : 16:9 
Frame rate mode : Variable 
Frame rate : 29.970 fps 
Minimum frame rate : 14.985 fps 
Maximum frame rate : 29.970 fps 
Color space : YUV 
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0 
Bit depth : 8 bits 
Scan type : Progressive 
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.117 
Stream size : 310 MiB (88%) 
Writing library : x264 core 123 r2189 35cf912 
Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=3 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x133 / me=hex / subme=7 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.00:0.00 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=1 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=6 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=1 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=2 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=40 / rc=2pass / mbtree=1 / bitrate=1023 / ratetol=1.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=10 / qpmax=51 / qpstep=4 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00 

Audio 
ID : 2 
Format : AAC 
Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec 
Format profile : LC 
Codec ID : 40 
Duration : 42mn 21s 
Bit rate mode : Constant 
Bit rate : 128 Kbps 
Channel(s) : 2 channels 
Channel positions : Front: L R 
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz 
Compression mode : Lossy 
Stream size : 38.8 MiB (11%) 
Language : unk