It is November.
It is 56 degrees.
If you are a mosquito in the city of Portsmouth VA you are wrong.
There seems to be considerable confusion on this point.

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I'd been up for 2 and a half days dealing with butler issues when I finally got a relief in the form of my sister, who came by Saturday afternoon. So when I laid down, I stayed down and slept through the Gingrich/Cain debate on entitlement reform. Fortunately, being C-SPAN, it is available here.

As expected, Gingrich won. He excels at this format. Indeed at one point Cain dropped a bit on defined benefit vs defined contribution plans. However, he did recover and otherwise did alright. Cain really was no slouch and showed he had a lot of good ideas, but Newt really owned the stage.

  Gingrich deserves credit for setting this up and Cain deserves credit for agreeing to this. It is telling (and a sad commentary on the state of politics) that no one else in the Republican field agreed to talk specifics  about this third rail stuff. These two are at least serious about dealing with these problems. Gingrich's outstanding performance may well have given himself a considerable boost towards escaping third place. However, by virtue of participating, and speaking thoughtfully in intelligent English rather than bumperstickerese both guys are on my shortlist.

A lot of Cains's arguments, tended to be more philosophical, though it is obvious he has given considerable thought to the issues at hand. Gingrich on the other hand was a cornucopia of facts and figures replete with anecdotes related to the mind numbing stupidity he witnessed first hand in congress.

What was most refreshing about the debate was its intelligence and civility. I strongly urge you to take 90 minutes and watch it. Two really smart guys discussing entitlement reform is certainly no roller coaster of thrills, but it is damned refreshing and was a really informative talk.

There is going to be a similar exchange hosted by the Heritage Foundation (with the addition of Paul and Romney) on national security on November 22.

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My dad has managed to pull a hernia.
My mom is sick.
My grandmother is also sick and can't walk right now.
I need a butler outfit.

Between this and various other issues things have been hectic this week.

One of those issues involved a History paper.
I finished it a day early and saved it with the intent of going over it one last time after sleep to catch any typos.

Three hours prior to the class....

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^{Lucky*Stars Kagami by Atutagawa Manbou}

It's time for the ritual of the cleaning of the tabs.

First off, giant amoebas. Yes! GIANT AMOEBAS!
^{( Or baby shouggaths? You be the judge.)}
Marine biologists exploring the Marianna's Trench have discovered amoebas that are 4 inches across.

2005U55 an asteroid over 400 meters across will pass within the orbit of the moon on November 8. Unfortunately, due to the gibbous moon, it will require a telescope with an aperture of 6 inches (152mm) or greater.

Cosmic Butterfly.

I probably ought to be appalled... but this is the first time I've won an election....and at this typing it looks like a blowout. 

Ubu seems to like Ben-To. He gives many reasons, but I suspect it's the syllable count.

Um....Neither do I.

What the hell good is a tractor beam that doesn't work in a vacuum?
Wait....TRACTOR BEAMS!1?!

Ten more days.

Robert Stacy McCain (Magnificent Bastard) has jumped on the Cain Train with a brilliant and cunning plan that I wish I'd thought of.


The mice were feet down.
via

Gone to Amerikay is now in the dead tree version of Previews...so order it now!

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Uh-Oh!
That title looks like this post might involve politics or something!
As a precaution we've put the post below the fold and replaced it with Squid Girl (Who we assume to be non-partisan).

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  The local movie critic said it was "delightfully campy". In retrospect this is a bizarre way to describe this film. However it gave me confidence that I could take a friend without fear of reprisal*. Both the Howard Hawks, and the John Carpenter versions are classics and this not only had big shoes to fill, it is a prequel to boot so we know how it's gonna end...pretty much. 

The staff at a Norwegian research outpost in Antarctica discover someTHING buried in the ice.

The Carpenter version had a sequence set in the Norweigian base with the Americans finding really odd "clues" to the mayhem that transpired there. This film fastidiously explains every one of those shots. In that sense it almost feels like fan-fic, complete with a Mary Sue.

But it's good fan-fic. The film may not be on the same level as the other two but is a perfectly solid thriller. The suspense, paranoia and confusion are excacerbated by the language barriers in the international team, with people at one point literally having 2 different conversations with one another.

My only real complaint is the heavy use of CGI, to complement the excellent puppet work, but it is, all in all, quite well paced and creepy. I actually recommend this one.

A few random and spoilerish thoughts The Douchebag Control Freak Norwegian Scientist is clever in his douchebaggery. He picks Mary Winesteads character not just because she is competent, but because she is newly minted and an
American.
woman.
who doesn't speak Norwegian.
This gives him carte blanche to treat her like a Grad Student and ensure she's not taken seriously outside of her narrow area of expertise.  

For a movie filmed by by a Norwegian director, and largely cast and crewed by Norwegians the Americans actually come off pretty well. The only real prick is the DCFNS.

In the 'overthinking it' department.
One of the things that bothered me about the 1982 film was McReady yelling for Childs to "GET THE FLAMETHROWER!"....and I'm all like...'Wait, why did they have a flame thrower?' That's just does not strike me as a piece of kit an Antarctic research station is likely to have lying around.  In this film one of the Norweigians , who is a mechanic and a bit of a survivalist puts some together after they get wind of what they are facing. The 'grenades' are thermite charges so that much is reasonable.

The bit with the fillings was clever. Remind me never to get porcelain.

The twist near the end makes little sense, as the dude in question did, in fact save her from imminent thingimization and help her out of the spaceship and cave. If he were a thing he would have...not fired the flamethrower, not stood by while the ship was wrecked, not refrained from thingimifying her while she was unarmed and alone with him. OTOH it does make sense if he simply lost his earring in the fall and she accidentally screwed up and killed a human. I note that he died with out sprouting tentacles and stuff.

The very end, with the footage morphing into the opening scene of the '82 movie was a very nice touch.



_{*Red Planet and Hulk still have not been forgiven.}

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A clip from a 2006 Russian animated film about the legendary hero Dobrynya Nikitich.

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The debris field from the Tohaku quake/tsunami is now just west of Midway.

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One of life's calamities has hit an Otakuette who goes by the handle of "Arlnee". She is currently selling her collection on E-Bay to raise funds.

^{Ooohmygod she's got some of the most awesomest stuff ever!}

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I must alternate between disapproval and toasting these clowns.

State police have arrested two men accused of stealing a privately owned steel bridge from a secluded area in Lawrence County.

^{Our resident expert on evil seems to approve.}

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This is a few days old but Wonderduck has knocked one out of the park, with a tightly written overview of what went wrong with the sortie from USS Hornet during the Battle of Midway.

I had never been clear on why the ships air group seemed to disintegrate or why Torpedo 8 was without any support when they went on their death ride. The answer is appalling. Read the whole thing.

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I initially thought this was an idiot gag by some fanboys. (via)

No...

Somebody in the Hornady marketing department who was paid actual money decided that proposing anti-zombie ammo (with a straight face)  would help justify his/her salary. Inexplicably, it appears that said person was given a budget rather than a pink slip.

^{The disclaimer would seem to reduce the products real-world utility.}

^{Quick dear, sell our Hornady stock now.}

Ignoring for a minute the political ineptitude involved in greenlighting this asinine ad campaign, in the unlikely event of a zombie apocalypse (as seen in the...umm...movies), regular ammo ought to work just fine. Moreover, given the supposed necessity for head shots (as seen in the...umm...movies), .22 LR is probably a preferable round due to its light weight and wide availability. 

On the other hand, if they are serious about...contingencies....then it should be pointed out that they are ignoring the werewolf menace. To this end reloaders need to be provided with 100% silver bullets (don't bother with cartridges 'cause only the reloaders are hardcore enough to buy such things). Yes...silver...In fact, to save money, just sell ingots...we'll use our own molds...and frankly, no one is talking about Cybermen....they are best dealt with by gold...so yes, Hornady should sell gold ingots. Then Hornady customers would have a hedge against....contingencies and I could get behind that.

This...not so much.

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Via ACE. A report that all 100 senators have been called into a security briefing regards the alleged Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in DC.

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While I was sick I was alternating between bed, watching volume three of K-On!, playing Portal 2 and.....GHAAAA!!!

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I may never live down the atomic car post, but at least I did not fall for this. Now it appears that Gordon Ramseys dwarf porn star look-alike does not actually seem to exist and therefore is unlikely to have been eaten by badgers. 

^{...the hell?}

UPDATE: Steven is one-upping us by disbelieving far wackier crap.

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Steve Jobs just died.


Professor Jacobson has thoughts on Jobs who had just recently retired from Apple. Ars Technica has an obituary.

Jobs really changed the world and ultimately for the better.

Few people remember what a change this was....

He was only 56.
His short time amongst us was not certainly wasted.

UPDATE: XKCD

^{"There’s always the hope that if you sit and watch long enough, the beachball will vanish and the thing it interrupted will return."}

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I don't have much to add but AllahPundit sure does.

I agree with a lot of his analysis, though calling it a "smart call" rather misses the point. Palin was the only candidate talking about the inherently corrupting nature of corporatism and the worrisome implications of an increasingly insulated political elite. I'd have liked to see her run to push those issues.

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One of the Brickmuppets Crack Team of Science Matangos  brings us some intriguing news from the manned space field.

...The only problem was, it didn't work. At the Space Access conference in April, Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX's president, admitted: "We have recovered pieces of the first stages." The first stages weren't even getting as far as deploying their parachutes – they were breaking up during atmospheric re-entry...

^{Good Choice of BGM}

Scott Lowther, who, unlike me, is an aerospace engineer, comments.

...it looks reasonably practical, with a minimum of ridiculocity… no wings, scramjets or need for advanced materials. The basic concept is more than forty years old, going back to not only Phil Bono’s Saturn S-IVB stage recoverability concepts, but even further to Chrysler Mercury-Redstone  recoverability concepts. Ditching parachutes entirely is a ballsy move, but if your rockets are sufficiently reliable – maybe Xcor rockets on the capsule – then chutes aren’t needed.

It is different. To my layman's eye the second stage recovery seems a bit more iffy simply because it will need a lot of heat shielding. OTOH it will be almost empty so perhaps its low sectional density will sufficiently assist. Even if that is a failure (and people with more Letters than me are signing off on this)  economical reuseability of the first stage and the spacecraft itself is a very big deal.

In other space news China has launched its first space station successfully.

^{Strange choice of BGM}

Dutch Formula One Tycoon Michiel Mol has teamed up with Dutch Airline KLM as well as XCOR Aerospace to put together a suborbital space tour operating out of the Dutch island of Curacao in the Caribbean. They will be using XCOR's  Lynx spacecraft. Mol and KLM also have more ambitious suborbital plans.

Today was the 54th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik by the USSR. While an admirable and historic achievement, one thing that historians tend not to stress is that it proved to all the world that a nation that had murdered millions of its own citizens and defined peace as an absence of opposition to world communism could in theory then place an atomic warhead anywhere in the world. 
Bummer...
OTOH it was humanities first step into space...so Yay! Sputnik!

Rand Simberg has thoughts and reflections.

_{Science 'Matango' is, of course, Ritzu from K-on!}

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Intestinal bacteria are REALLY important.

Which relates tangentially to the fact that composting toilets are surprisingly versatile. ( 日本語 here )

Some things will never be known.

Wall Street is being occupied by Mercedes Benz.

Steven is soliciting assistance with a personal matter, and as a result so are his readers.

All this time, James Rummel has been blogging on dial-up. Bow before his determination and patience!

Ducks don't travel in a flock...but in a corps.

Wan Hu has been reincarnated and is giving it another go...with less 'splody , more choppy. (via)

Ubu has found his show.

And finally...

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