Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 07:55 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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...my earlier post, linking to a post on the Bear was not in any way, shape, form or fashion linking to anything regarding this bear.

Thus you may click without worry.

Er....in that post..but not in this one...'cause if you click on the hyperlink in in this one you'll find the wrong bear...and that would be bad....

...if you're good.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 02:29 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The Australian government has begun censoring the internet.

As Pixy explains, it gets even stupider from there.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 02:11 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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OK. I have very little time right now but this needs to be said.

Give the POTUS a break.

The other night the President made a self deprecating comment about his bowling score. In the process he offended some people. It was not a politically correct comment and was inartful for a political leader to utter. 

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 03:50 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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For the benefit of those with lives or weak constitutions, the hyper-partisan hyperlinks are below the fold....For the benefit of everyone, there's this...

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 09:48 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Eagle One has taken the time to put a long and well researched  post up concerning one of the finest and most storied ships to ever split waves and break ice. The mighty cutter Bear.

Go now...Go read the whole thing.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 06:45 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Fear the might of the DPRK...

It has taken almost 10 years of work, but North Korea has acquired the technology to launch a project very dear to its leader's heart - the nation's first "authentic" Italian pizzeria.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 06:35 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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THAT Anime Blog has a roundup of most of the upcoming season. It makes an interesting comparison with this prediction I recently received via E-Mail.

As your brains may grudgingly recall, this time last year I predicted some of the anime trends we'd be seeing soon. For those of you whom
time has been a balm to soothe the mind, let me rub raw some
old wounds: remember Hobos, Hairdressers, Veterinarians, and Mushrooms.

I confidently measure my predictive powers against the track records of
such luminous benchmarks as Nostradamus, any economist (other than Adam
Smith), and the Christian Bible. As we venture forward further, the
producers of Japanese manga and anime have begun to make their intentions
known. I predict 2010 shall be the year of:

1) Demolition Derbys (a.k.a Banger Racing in Europe)
2) Reptiles/Dinosaurs (listed separately because there are too many people
on this list who know the difference).
3) Gardening
4) Belgians

As usual, at first the new elements will be introduced into fairly safe
territory:

Thumb Green : A heartfelt series about an orphan, Tanazaki, who is adopted
into a family of estate gardeners. Mom works in topiaries and Dad prefers
tea roses, but the adopted son follows in bonsai-enthusiast grandfather's
steps. When the last Japanese heir to the estate dies and the manor falls
to the young Belgian heiress, can Tanazaki learn to forgive her shameful
secret and teach her to live in harmony with the back lawn? And will
Tanazaki's new sister, who may feel more than sisterly-affection for
Tanazaki, ever perfect her compost pile? Look for the hidden symbolism of
the koi pond as it reflects the state of romance between the heiress, the
orphan, and the possibly-insane sister.

Crash 1911 :  A truly anachronistic and jingoistic offering, Crash 1911 is
set in 1914(!) in a Miyazakiburgstein (one of those generic
Western-Central European with steampunk touches) setting. "Crash 1911" 
refers to the undefeated reign of driver Josef Tildeff's and his 1911
season winning twelve-competitor collision. Now in 1914, most of the
participants of that epic season have returned with even more-outlandish
cars and unlikely proteges, including a deaf Mongolian, a Cajun
zydeco-playing grandmother, and Tildeff's own protege who is (you guessed
it) a Japanese orphan. How will each of the competitor's life experiences
aid them in the upcoming derby? And why is it every non-Asian character
except the son of the Belgian calvary officer painted in such a negative
light?  Still, all the mechanical designs will look like "the Secret of
Blue Water" meet "Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bag" to the point that the only fan
disappointment will be that none of the cars actually fly.

Sensai Crocogator-san's Class Trip : Middle-school Crocogator takes his
students on a different class trip each week, visiting factories, places
of historical interest, zoos, etc. Students from different walks of life
(dirt poor, privileged rich, brains, jocks, and just-average-losers) all
learn important lessons each week while they face the challenges of
growing up Japanese. Each week at least one student will be eaten by this
pedagoguish member of Osteolaemus holtzus (common name:  the Too-Clever
Crocodile), but never fear - they tend to reappear in the middle of the
episode with no apparent ill-effect. The series will impart a love of
history. Season highlights will include the hilarious Alligator-wrestling
episode and the tour of the Diet building.


Later, as fallow ground goes further a-weed, we will see:

Caimen Maid Crisis! : This rather pedestrian tale will be a complete
ripoff of last season's 'Matic-Panic Stylist Yuki, except the
cybernetic-valet will be replaced with an alien Crocodilian Princess and
the original threatening alien invasion will be replaced by Atlantean
golems. There will be no plot-twists that couldn't be predicted by
hyper-active ten year-olds. Sales of the figurines of the Caimen Maid will
convince the producers to put out 19 OVAs, each of which feature her in a
different provocative outfit that can be lucratively merchandised.

Pumpkin Road-rage: It's the future, and a growing segment of the
transportation market features mutated, semi-intelligent vegetables. The
smartest of these appears to be Pumpkin Buggy, an orange sports-car with a
seed-spitting cannon. When rogue cars from the Belgian-based Zucchini
Biotechnical begin causing traffic havoc, Pumpkin Buggy and his owner are
drafted into the Tokyo Police Department to fight these street-racing,
squash-smashing renegades. It's "Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors" meets
"Speed Buggy" with a hint of "Riding Bean" and "ADP Police."

(Name Witheld For His Protection)

The story about four high school girls that try to sustain their school’s popular music club despite being unable to read music or play instruments.

Oh be still my beating childhood!
Wow...Sad case of arrested development that I am, I fear I am going to have to watch this. I mean what could be cooler?

Oh yeah....that.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 05:54 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 02:22 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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It burnnnnsss!!!!!!!!!!

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 12:54 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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A few months ago I rather furtively purchased an item from Aerospace Projects Review. The item was on the stillborn project Meteor, a 1950's proposal for an orbital space station I mentioned in passing here.

I immediately bit the bullet and subscribed.

It is worth every frigging penny.

 Lowther is an aerospace engineer and has meticulously researched and obtained information on all manner of historical projects, both those that were built and those that weren't.

Mr. Lowther is also an accomplished draftsman and he provides superb artwork both by himself and people like Damon Moran to complement the existing schematics and his in depth analysis...

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 10:26 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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For the first time ever, a  vertebrate has been discovered that uses mirrors in addition to lenses to focus light in its eyes.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 09:40 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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more...

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 07:36 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Yes Brickmuppeteers, a new word is born.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 09:37 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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  As anyone who has perused this blog at any length is aware, as a citizen I am NOT an advocate, fan or booster for the current President.

However....

He IS the President and he is damned well due the respect, even in disagreement, that Americans who are not hyperpartisan douchebag putzes accord a holder of that august office. (Just as Bush was.)

I was going to do a normal below the fold politics post on the cacophony of fail currently emanating from the oval office when I discovered that this piece of excrement had arrived in my inbox.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 09:01 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Colleen Doran laments the disappearance into the publishers aether of the last of the "Big Books" the Big Book of Wild Women which would have featured a story illustrated by Ms. Doran about the warrior queen of the Celts. In fact she laments its disappearance so much that she went ahead and published her story as part of a long, informative post concerning the historical Boudica.

Anyway, read the whole thing.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 11:31 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Wonderduck has started a conversation about what sort of geekery geeks should grok.

I'm not one to really ask about this as video games are a big part of the geek culture that long since passed me by and...well...I don't play many video games. I can count the ones I have played over the last 5 years on 1 hand.

 Avatar however, has picked up the baton and run with it.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 11:14 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Amongst the 37 songs I've thus far hunted down and put  in the Blogradio rotation is one I blundered into quite unexpectedly: The radio edit of Hoshi no DejaVu,  the OP song from Southern Cross.



I've been told that the song, (rather unlike the show) was fairly popular in Japan, topping the charts in 1984 at one point. It's an oddball find and it sort of blends with the other stuff too...

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 08:05 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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We`ve talked about launch techniques including space cannons before, and we`ve talked about pulse nuclear drive as well. Now in this post Mr. Wang brings these two indescribably cool things together with a touch of Jules Verne. He proposes a cannon powered by underground atomic bombs using underground nuclear testing testing technology. This is akin to Project Plowshare...but rather more sane as the radioactivity can be kept underground. Of course it is unworkable in the current political climate and a failure of the vessel would, of course, be....bad.
It is probably best suited for a lunar site but it is an interesting proposal nonetheless.

 Rand Simberg has a response here. And Mr. Wang continues his proposal here and here.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 07:07 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I've now been formally accepted  into the College of Oceanography!

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 04:08 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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