November 18, 2012

I'm Hoarding JUSTICE!

While everyone else was denuding the Hostess displays of Twinkies I noticed a commodity that was ignored.


As we all know, villains are powerless before the real fruit filling of Hostess Fruit PiesTM. I'm now a prepared for the dark days ahead. A few more and I'll be able to fight crime.

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November 16, 2012

Oh Noes!




NOT THE TWINKIES!!!
THE TWINKIES!!!
"sob"


This is as bad as when that herd of butterflies swooped in and threw up on my waffles.

Ummm...what she said.
I think.
In the meantime, it's time to stock up! They'll last forever and with the world ending next month we'll need stuff to barter.

Appalled young twinkiephile is Rin Tezuka from Katawa Shoujo.
more...

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November 15, 2012

The Wonders of a Modern Education

I've been in and around colleges and universities off and on for 20 years. While this is certainly amongst the more crazy lecturers I've seen, I can say that yes, things are indeed getting this bad. This is especially true regards China/ Mao et al.

This is not below the fold because it's history.


Note the applause...

OK, actually it's the evil opposite of history but hey...

Via Legal Insurrection which has compiled some interesting related links.

This is closely related. It's deeply troubling and fairly accurate.

 


In my limited experience, it tends to be almost exclusively older professors (a rapidly dwindling demographic), or some of those from abroad that occasionally buck this trend, and they do so at their peril.


UPDATE: For those who did not look at the 3 minute video, it's a professor adamantly denying that Joe Stalin killed anybody.

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November 13, 2012

Out and Proud.

I don't shy away from expressing my views, but I generally put my overtly political posts under the fold because some of my readers get the vapors if exposed to opposing viewpoints in their fluff and in any event, the blog is usually about fluff.

Occasionally though one or two things pops up that  are political and yet need to be read.

This is one of those times.

Sarah Hoyt has generally stayed away from politics on her main blog but recently posted some things that made some of her views known.

This has caused some of her readers concern.

In this fairly epic post she responds to her "concerned" readers.

Oh, do read the whole thing.

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Terrible News

 Steven Den Beste, who was one of my inspirations to get into blogging and now runs the highly regarded anime blog Chizumatic  has reportedly had a stroke.

He is in the hospital and thankfully seems to be recovering. Go send him some good wishes.

UPDATE:
It's bad. However he is conscious and lucid enough to post this comment.


My brotheri s loaning me a laptop which I can use on the hospital's wifi.

Looks like Thursday morning, I'll be transferring to a rehab place where I'm probably going to be staying for a week. I'm not looking forward to it but I'm also not thrilled about being profoundly crippled for the rest of my life, either.



I don't know if I'll have wifi access at the rehab.

In the meantime, my left hand is useless and I'm typing this with one finger.


Get well Steven!
がんばて!

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Further Thoughts on Where to go From Here

Before I get to any solutions, it's important to look at the situation. Author Melanie Phillips looks at the situation from a UK perspective. 

So what now?
Now that more information is in, it appears that...
Wait.What?


"Please stop talking about politics. It's REALLY depressing me right now."

OK, how 'bout we put it below the fold then?
more...

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November 11, 2012

So..in Girls und Panzer..

This is what the shopping center in Oorai is called.


I wonder if any of the cakes in the cafe are Mullberry. I imagine that the Overlords of the town are behind the tournaments' Jubilee atmosphere.

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Thank You




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Sword Art Online 19


If only we could...FLY or something.

Our party gets bogged down with in-game politics.

No Asuna.

No Asuna at all.

This episode has more questions than answers. We do find out who is stalking our heroes, and it seems that they have simply run afoul of gamer intrigues. The VERY long battle that ensued was one of the less satisfying as he seemed to pretty much pull that monster out of his butt.

It is perhaps significant that the monster is from the SAO game. It may be that Yui is pulling some moderator tricks.

Not one of the better episodes, but it's interesting nonetheless. That is, for an episode  that mostly consists of a fight, they do manage a surprising amount of pretty cool character exposition.

Hopefully next episode will have less of an Asuna deficit.

UPDATE: J.Greely over at .clue. has some succinct thoughts on this.

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November 09, 2012

Well, Now the Week is PERFECT

Went to school..
Got called to pick up car.
Left School, drove van to my dads, had him drop me off at car place.
Paid for new power steering pump.
Watched dad drive away with all my books in the van. 
Pursued him. 
Had my battery choose the Suffolk/Portsmouth city line as the embarkation point to go to battery Valhalla.
Wasted hours.
E-mailed a research paper outline...from memory, via blackberry.
Went home.
Became ill.
Became very ill.


Where I spent the evening.
I just got discharged. 

It turns out the kidney stone precipitated a nasty UT infection. I have antibiotics and a painkiller I can't use because I need to drive to school in 5 hours. 


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November 08, 2012

A Few Quick Notes on Status and Such

Well, Tuesday/Wednesday was a bummer for other reasons. In addition to a funk I think I've been passing the last item in my kidney stone reserve. Wednesday evening I was assaulted by a plate of Szechuan beef which wrought chaos upon my digestive track.

My plans to graduate in the Spring or Summer, comes down to class availability. I was informed that one class I need is unlikely to be available until next fall. In the grand scheme of things a 4 month delay and a very light load last semester is not THAT big a deal, but it is highly annoying. I'm going to speak to my adviser next week about taking it as a topics course over the summer, but I'm told that is unlikely because....'Because.' Meh...I'm almost there.

Lots of papers this semester. I still have 12 page, 8 page and 5 page papers coming up in various classes over the next 2 weeks.

I split the B&tB clip from the assessment post, which started out as just a cheer-up post when I got to rambling,

I've started to...oh my...What is this?

It’s IJNS 無理ですsource unknown Click here to embigulate

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Dealing With Adversity

Sometimes, things unexpectedly fall apart.
When that happens it's vital that one be able to think on ones feet and improvise.

Here's an example of what I mean.


Also, if you're depressed for some reason, I strongly recommend The Brave and the Bold.

....
Actually...upon reflection, perhaps that's not strictly applicable to most of us.

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November 07, 2012

So What Now?


So...what's the backup plan?


Well, to begin with, we must deal with what is in front of us, and it is not pleasant.



 



more...

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November 06, 2012

The Wait




more...

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2012 First Election Results

Dixville Notch, a town in New Hampshire traditionally opens the polls at 12:01 on election day. As the town has less than 20 people they certify their vote early. They've been an accurate predictor in the past every single year since...um...2000.

Anyway they're the first polling location to have certified results as of a few minutes ago and the result was...A TIE!




I think we can all reach a bipartisan consensus that as omens go, this is a bad one.

UPDATE: Oh yeah...a prediction.

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"How Can You Possibly Believe That?"

I hear that from time to time. As some of you know I'm in college. So on those occasions I allow myself, either be accident or design to by "outed" as to my political leanings I frequently get words to that effect.


"Oh you have got to be squidding me! He's carping about pollacktics again. Thank Cod this election season is fin-ally over"




more...

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November 04, 2012

Regaining Their Stride


"You're back quick!" "Yeah...darnedest thing...my sister had left me a sammich."

The last two episodes of Sword Art Online seemed a bit muddled and occasionally forced but they did advance the story.

This episode did not actually move the merry band of travelers along very much but it DID regain the shows earlier pace and character oriented feel.

It also established a few things:

*The racial divisions in the Fairy Game; They had mentioned this in passing previously, but it does seem to be a plot element. I'm not sure how much of this is the Japanese cultural "In/Out group" dynamics and how much of this is supposed to feel wrong to the audience, but it certainly seems like an unhealthy dynamic that is hardwired into the game setup. Somewhat related, there is a very strong prejudice against  players not in guilds and teams from different races.

*This is further complicated by the fact that one really needs to be in a town or other designated safe place in order to log out (or ones avatar will get looted/killed and one will take the hit in a loss of XPs and items.)

*The guilds and adventure parties in the game are 'seruius bidness'. "Leaf" tells her guild leader that she won't be gaming with them for a few days and he freaks to the point that the guild are no longer contacts, they are enemies. This dovetails into the unhealthy "culture" of the games world.

*Our party is being stalked.

*Meanwhile, Asuna is in an impossible and demoralizing situation, but while she may be the 'princess trapped in the tower', (of both the game and the plot) she still has kept her wits about her and she manages to remain an impressive and interesting character.

"Oh, I'm just reflecting on my next move."

*****



This leads to an interesting dichotomy. On the one hand, our hero probably* won't die if killed in the game, ( he'll take an XP hit and probably loose his kit) but he does have two major time critical issues (one he doesn't know about yet).


This means that the stakes are actually much higher than they were in the first half of the series.


All in all the show seems to be well and truly back on track.

* I say "probably" because due to poverty and lack of time he's using the nerve gear headset from the original game. It's possible (albeit unlikely) that, while he can log out now, "dying" might still trip the brain-fryer.

UPDATE: That last paragraph was previously an incoherent word salad that has now been fixed.

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Dude...


From episode 1 of Girls und Panzer...No baseball team?
more...

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I'll Just Leave This Here


It's just 36 seconds.
Compare and contrast.
The election Tuesday is rather more important than most.

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October 29, 2012

Catastrophe

After some flickering, we have power back here, but in NYC, It's as bad as was feared.



As I type this power is out in Manhattan, the subways are flooding and the storm is not half over. AOL reports at least 13 people are dead.

This security cam pic is making the rounds, purporting to be of one of the Tunnels.


Robert Costa Tweets this pic of the Ground Zero construction site.



Via Hot Air,  walls are being ripped off buildings..





No power and 3 feet of water in the streets...


Weather Nerd posted this pic of the situation in Brooklyn:



UPDATE: and to the South, the Graveyard of the Atlantic claimed another ship and two of her crew.

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