I recently had some very, very dull work to do, still do actually, work that involves counting stuff with a spreadsheet over. After a day of it I feel kind of like a zombie. That means it’s the right sort of work for watching TV at the same time so I’ve been watching The Walking Dead. I’m uncomfortable with gender roles in the show, but I like the action and suspense and whatnot. I also like the recurring thread about politics and numbers and cost/benefit analyses: how much should groups make their decisions based on calculating the greatest good for the greatest number, do different degrees of suffering by different people and groups weigh against each other, and if so how, and who is authorized to make those decisions, are Our lives and Their lives comparable? What I particularly like is the way the show dramatizes how all sides of those calculations are made plausible and empathetic under different circumstances – some of their social/institutional stickiness shows up to some extent in story form.