February 08, 2010
Here are a few things that caught my eye the last few days.
Vikings Versus Pirates !!
The Danes have boarded a buccaneered ship freed it from Somali pirates. The Russians assisted with mop up as well.
Interestingly, the Danish warship involved was HDNS Absalon a vessel which has been of considerable interest to many naval enthusiasts. More on this incident here, here, here, and here.
The Obama administration is actually making some good movesregard to nuclear power. However, Brian Wang reports that the US suffers from serious deficiencies in industrial capacity in that area.
Rand Simberg sees a lot to like in Obamas space policy. While I disagree with Simberg on his notion that there is no utility a heavy lift capability, I heartily agree that the emphasis on using commercial vehicles (like Falcon and Dragon), and focusing manned operations on techniques for orbital refueling and construction as well as asteroid missions is likely to be very beneficial in the long run. There is irony in this. The administration obviously believes in a top down big government model as the proper way to do most things. This space policy is so out of step with everything else they have proposed that it may actually be a gesture of contempt on their part. If alt-space is indeed contempt....then yay for contempt! More here.
Dr Zero has a long piece on Socialism and how to deal with it before we go the way of Europe and ultimately Argentina.
Good grief....even Keynes is spinning in his grave.
I disagree with the premise behind this kerfuffle. PC is a blight upon the land. There are quite few other reasons that the WH chief of staff should resign. He's a thug. More importantly, he is an incompetent thug. Much of the visible failures of this administration have been the result of poor staff work. That would be the chief of staffs job.
On the other hand I liked what I heard of the speech.
Not that it matters 'cause.....Oh noes...GAME OVER MAAAN!1! ... GAME OOOVER!
UPDATE: HI Mom!
A true jerk, brought to justice.
On the lighter side...
Colleen Doran has a new portfolio website up and her blog continues to be updated as well.
A lot of what people think they know about the internet is actually quite wrong. This enlightening video explains the structure of the system and points out the cause of potential capacity problems.
HT Meryl Yourish
HT Hot Air
Started His and Her Circumstances, Ikkitousen....progress...slow...brain hurts.
In the DVD que, Fate Stay Night, This Lovely Yet Beautiful World, Evangelion special edition.

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February 07, 2010

If you don't understand just by looking at the picture, don't worry. It's because you are a good person. Steven explains the problem in depth here.
There, now you can worry.
UPDATE: The originator of the photoshop has been found and he has just been made aware that his work has graced at least two newspapers and has become a template for bootleg merchandise.
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February 01, 2010

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January 30, 2010
What would be a trivial a moderate example of snow in many northern cities has a disproportionate effect on areas that go years with no more than a dusting. Case in point: the cities of the Tidewater area of Virginia where it has been snowing for 18 hours.
Roadway pandemonium.
I'm currently semi-stranded at Worlds Best Comics looking at weather radar website that tells me the snow has passed on....and out he window where my own eyes are telling me that it is still coming down fairly hard. We've got perhaps 6-8 inches here in Newport News but there is a considerable amount of ice on the roads (over an inch) and the snow has alternated with sleet. On the Southside ( the other side of the 'Roads" ) where accumulations of more than an inch are unheard of, they got hit quite a bit harder. I'm watching cars drive sideways down Warwick Blvd. Given that the wind is howling, the bridge-tunnel is iced over and things are notably worse in Portsmouth, I'm just not gonna deal with that.
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January 27, 2010
Random, real time stream of consciousness thoughts on the State of the Union speech. Now mercifully hidden below the fold.
Other reactions here, here, here and Wonderduck has one of the healthiest and well grounded SOTUS night posts right here.
more...
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January 26, 2010
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January 12, 2010
It looks really bad ( BBC video here). It may be the largest earthquake on Hispaniola in recorded history. fRom the video, the presidential palace appears to be demolished. Most buildings in Haiti are not nearly so well built. Thousands are believed dead but there is very little info out of the country right now. Most of the pics seem to be via Twitter.
Los Angeles and South Florida rescue teams are already mobilizing.
The Anchoress has a round-up on charities that can help and recommends Food for the Poor, which not only focuses on Latin America and the Caribbean but has a better than 95% efficiency rating with their funds. I've heard good things about them as well.
More here, here, here, here and here.
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January 11, 2010
Well, now I'm behind the curve, 'cause all the cool kids are talking about it now. Also, upon reflection...I AM a geek.
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Also: New computer, which should arrive Thursday or Friday. (I anticipate that the arrival of said item will make for easier blogging).
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January 05, 2010
Specific numbers are, of course, proprietary. However, volume was down a bit overall. It seemed that we had a little more volume going to the stores than last year. It also seemed that residential deliveries were down a bit from last year. Both of these observations are subjective and as I was completely uninvolved in any deliveries this year (for the first time in 16 years) I was in a poor position to gauge, but that was certainly the way things seemed to be rolling. I suppose this makes sense last year the retailers were a bit panicked by the crash and consumers hadn't groked the gravity of the situation, whereas this year consumers are looking at the job market with fear and retailers desperately need to clear inventory for tax purposes.
Even to the extent these observations are accurate they may not be typical. Southeastern Virginia got quite a kick in the teeth with the closing down of the meat packing plants, paper mill and sawmill in Isle of Wight County as well as several businesses (trucking companies for instance) dependent on their operations. This happened right before Thanksgiving.
It's also hard to get a good feel for the overall picture because volume was deperessed for several days due to weather delays.
Interestingly, despite the lower overall volume, we had what was, I believe, our heaviest day ever in our building. This was due to the backlog of stuff that had been delayed by the big snowstorm arriving all at once, on what would have already been the heaviest day of the year.
Cardboard tsunami.
All in all not terribly encouraging, but not quite the disaster some had feared. As an aside, the last two days have been exceedingly hectic, due again to dealing with the backlog of weather delays
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January 04, 2010
There are a couple of issues to deal with yet but the blog seems to be running almost normally. The rest is just tweaking.
Now I'm off to work.
Thanks Pixy!
UPDATE: All seems fixed and back to normal now. To drive that fact home, the third comment after we got up and running was shoe sales spam.
YAY NORMALCY!
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January 01, 2010

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December 31, 2009

Artist Unknown
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December 27, 2009
However, I think I just umm.....broke it more worser.
I'm beginning to strongly suspect that the problem involves a PEBKAC issue
UPDATE: Pixy's seems confident that the issues can be fixed, but I'm still missing the half the blog that is "below the fold" and none of the hyperlinks to the site work. I can post, but with limited functionality, and comments still don't work. I'll do another status post Saturday night (EST). Either everything will be resolved, things will be very close to being fixed or I'll have instructions for people to update their bookmarks.
In the meantime, Happy New Year!
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December 24, 2009
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December 15, 2009
The show concerns several frog like aliens who are trapped on earth after
their ill-conceived invasion attempt went awry. Their leader now lives in secret as the sort of housekeeper for a comic book creator and her children. Other members of his squad are scattered around the neighborhood and similarly ensconced with various humans...all of whom possess significant normalcy deficits. Every week he contacts his teammates and they join forces to conquer the planet Pekaponia (Earth)... hilarity ensues. As an aside, the show teaches younger viewers important life lessons as well...such as the fact that women are scary and dangerous and best avoided....even if they are wearing sweatervests.Given its spectacular success and very broad demographic appeal in Japan it was natural that somebody would try to bring this show to the U.S.A. The theoretical potential of the show to be a genre crossing hit was immensely appealing at first blush. However, there were major hurdles, most daunting being the fact that the pop culture references that litter the show are overwhelmingly Japanese specific.
As the target audience would be Americans the references would make as much sense as an episode of Robot Chicken would to a North Korean. This would seem to be a show stopper, but one must remember that US television has long made good ratings on incomprehensible stupidity so this was not necessarily an insurmountable obstacle. Additionally there was the fact that the company that actually bought this marketing conundrum was ADVision...and the people at ADV were geeks who dearly loved the show and really wanted it to succeed.
ADV seemes to have really tried to get the show released on television, which despite its niche appeal in the US was not an insane notion but merely a far fetched one at the time these decisions were being made. Cartoon Network was showing a lot of Anime then and a number of the in-jokes (perhaps as much as a quarter ) referred to those shows. ADV had assembled over the years a very fine cadre of voice actors and they were certainly capable of doing comedy well. The problem remained the very culturally specific nature of many of the verbal gags, The episodes required rather more extensive rewrites than usual though the basic plots and overall story arcs could be brought over with little trouble.
There was an even bigger problem that ADV did not foresee....ADV is no more.The show was one of those bought by Funimation and it is now being aggressively marketed by them....with a series of adds that don't quite do the show justice.
The show is one I found fairly enjoyable before this release and it should be noted that the subtitle track is a pretty straight translation of the Japanese, which is what most readers here will watch anyway.
The dub fascinated me as I was very curious as to how they were going to play it given what to the target audience is the alien nature of much of the shows humor.
I don't know how many episodes ADV dubbed before they lost (or found out they didn't have) the rights in the Sojitz fiasco but the first 8 episodes are using most of the same voice actors that appeared in a preview ADV put on you tube some years ago. I am pretty sure that what we are seeing is very close to ADV's plan for the show, if so it is a worthy legacy because the dub is quite good. Funimation, which has a good reputation in its own right seems to have kept the bulk of the voice talent and there has been no jarring change in quality as of yet.
The dialog on the English track is fast paced,almost like a '40s screwball comedy. The acting is good and although the dialog has indeed been tweaked, the the Woolsyism's generally work quite well. All in all I was very impressed. In my initial viewing I watched all but the first two dubbed and felt it did not suffer at all , in particular I...oh wait...you aren't reading this....

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December 06, 2009

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December 05, 2009
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Renamed Dullos by her current owners, the vessel is now the oldest operating passenger vessel in the entirety of the Earths oceans.
Such a long and storied history would be worthy of comment on its own, but Dullos is doubly remarkable. Operated by the German charity GBA , her passenger list consists not only of fare paying travelers but volunteers who see to her cargo. That cargo consists of tons of books for Dullos is a floating library and bookstore traveling the world hosting floating bookfairs.

Now, in the ships 95th year her long voyage is at an end. The inexorable toll exacted by the corrosive and violent sea has accumulated over the years and it was decided after her latest survey that the old vessel is to be decommissioned on Decenber 31, 2009.
Of course...if any of you have 10 million Euro laying around, there is a campaign to preserve the historic old girl.
95 years....the shipping industry, indeed the world has become unrecognizable since the time this ship first split the waves. If ships could talk...
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November 21, 2009
I hereby announce my candidacy for the seat in the United States House of Representatives that will represent the unassigned congressional district of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Among my qualifications:As I am currently homeless, I am able to meet the strict residency requirements for a congressional district that has not existed since 1935.
My legislative experience is, likewise, nonexistent.
I have no degree at this time.
*I will also work to protect "you" (my constituents) from the existential threat of the Dero who even now conspire against our democracy.
*I oppose listing the Mothman as an endangered species due to the principle that PEOPLES SAFETY MUST TAKE PRIORITY!
*I oppose deportation for the Bat Child as he is a natural born citizen.
*I support composting toilets.
* I support the teaching of the number eleventy in our schools.

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November 19, 2009
Most everything was indeed lost. It rained like cats and dogs for days and I was not allowed to re-enter the trailer to move stuff out of the affected areas until Sunday.....
The city has cut off the power to the end of the cul de-sac and forbidden anyone from being in the trailer after 5pm. The last few days have revolved around salvaging what little I can...some were surprising. Protected by their wrapping and the drawer they were in, which itself was in the closet, two long forgotten 2003 and 2004 Masamune Shirow calenders were unscathed...The thing is, they'll be good again in 2010 and '11.
Well I laughed....
Blogging has been and will be quite light for a few more days. I have to have everything out in a few days and make arrangements to haul away my home of the last 9 years for scrap.
Thanks to everyone for the kind thoughts.
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November 13, 2009
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