TONIGHT ON THE INDEPENDENTS (written by Matt Welch, taken from Reason)
---------------------------
Fridays are theme-show nights chez Independents, so tonight's was a no-brainer. I MEAN YES-EAT-BRAINS-ER, amirite?

Happy Birthday, Kmele! |||On Fox Business Network at 9 p.m. ET, 6 p.m. PT (with repeats three and five hours later), you will be treated to:

* Daniel Drezner, author of Theories of International Politics and Zombies, on how various schools of American foreign policy thought are equipped to combat the triple-threat of zombies, Ebola, and ISIS.

* Timothy Sandefur, principal attorney of the Pacific Legal Foundation, on the surprising legal, regulatory, and jurisprudential treatment of haunted houses, psychics, and cannibals.

* Steve Gonzalves, star of the paranormal-investigative reality series Ghost Hunters and Ghost Hunters Academy, on his elusive search for a wandering spirit.

* Benjamin Radford, Snopes.com contributor and deputy editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine, on why claims of the paranormal should be treated with a raised eyebrow or three.

* Party Panelists Michael Malice (n'er-do-well) and Jimmy Failla (comedian) on Halloween urban legends, appropriate/inappropriate costumes, and important Hallow's Eve trivia.

* Kmele Foster losing his shizz in a haunted house (pictured).

No better way to come down after a night of drinking blood than watching your favorite weirdos make merriment and at least some public policy out of Halloween night on the television!


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.2014.10.31.WS.SDTV.x264-XAiO.mp4 
Format : MPEG-4 
Format profile : Base Media 
Codec ID : isom 
File size : 352 MiB 
Duration : 42mn 22s 
Overall bit rate : 1 161 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 22s 
Bit rate : 1 022 Kbps 
Width : 720 pixels 
Height : 404 pixels 
Display aspect ratio : 16:9 
Frame rate mode : Variable 
Frame rate : 29.970 fps 
Minimum frame rate : 9.990 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=1022 / 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 22s 
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