May 20, 2014
Thoughts on Tyson's Dismissal of Philosophy
While I share some of the frustrations Neil DeGrasse Tyson has with those who endlessly debate inane philosophical points, l a bit am wary of those dismiss all philosophical inquiry or ethical questions as pointless inhibitions on the road to progress. Such admonitions bring to mind the utopian efforts of the eugenicists, a group who surely were not questioned enough about the details and implications of their premises, objectives and methods. Those involved in the experiments upon Albert Stevens and others could have benefitted from "asking deep questions". Elsewhere, similar avenues of research, divorced from any inhibiting tendencies that philosophical reflection and debate might have produced, resulted in Buchenwald.
Thus, as much awesome as he exudes in popularizing science, Tyson's statement that students should actively avoid any philosophy courses and that any questions along philosophical lines are a waste of time is rather worrisome. His argument is superficially utilitarian...the irony of which is no doubt lost on Dr Tyson, but somewhere David Hume and Jeremy Bentham are amused....but unimpressed.
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Well, I Know What I'll Be Watching This Winter.
Like the previous one, this trailer for the upcoming Yamato film has no animation. But it's 31 seconds long as opposed to 16. Also, there is music this time, music that will mean nothing to those who did not watch the old show. The rest of us however, are a bit enthused.
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A Bit of Lost History Found
I just received this via E-Mail. I seem to recall hearing about it years ago, but had no idea it was finished or available or especially on You-Tube.
Behold! The long lost 1946 collaboration between Walt Disney and Salvador Dali.
This has been up since 2011 so I guess that Disney just put it out there due to its experimental nature, historical interest and the fact that its a short.
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Technical Difficulties
Since Saturday evening I've begun 4 posts, I started typing one of them 3 times and two of them have actually gotten published without vanishing into the web ether.
I have particularly come to HATE the sentence "Connection timed out.".
As of this morning, everything seems to be running fine though.
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The Memetic Madness That is Fandom
Having finally finished Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions - Heart Throb I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed it, though it's not quite on the same level as its predecessor.
The original show, in addition to being funny, was a touching, beautifully portrayed love story that amongst all the hilarity, involved Rikka coming to terms with her loss and getting her act together. The sequel has her pretty much back to where she was for most of the series...except that Rikka and Yuta are definitely a couple. I confess that at first I thought the two of them were just joking with regard to Rikka's active fantasy world, but alas no, and no explanation is given for the regression. Were it not for specific references to the Christmas party in the first serie,s this show could easily have been set during the same time frame as that show...and it might have been more satisfying.
Whereas Love, Chunibyo and Other Delusions is about moving forward and growing up, '...Heart Throb' is, in many ways, a renunciation of that. On the surface the show glorifies stability above all else and seems actively hostile to the notion of personal development. For instance, the new character Sophia comes dangerously close to character development...but dodges that bullet with great verve and skill. Great effort is made to ensure that everything remains exactly as it is at the beginning*. I know nothing about the source material for this show, but the this glaring difference makes me wonder if the sequel is a response to fan complaints.
However, the show is quite entertaining in its own right and it made me laugh out loud several times.
With the two main lovebirds relationship pretty much fixed, there is some development exploration of the other characters.
Nibutani in particular, actually comes off as quite likable and decent in this series. She is an important part of a rather unexpected dynamic in the show that it is a bit deeper and more nuanced in its view of Otakudom than one might expect.
Despite the show's overall tone of aggressive Otaku affirmation '...Heart Throb' is not entirely sanguine about the subject. There is a somewhat creepy cour (with VERY creepy undertones) that involves the implications of fandom as a cult and it's handled pretty well...imaginary magical battle notwithstanding.
The show is cute, wacky and often quite weird...
...and occasionally even weirder still.
While it is not quite as good as its predecessor in that it does little to advance the cast, it is still a thoroughly enjoyable show
*...well...except for Isshiki, who is last seen dealing with a development that might or might not be truly horrible for him...the writers are rather vague on that point.
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May 17, 2014
The Thing in The Hague
The Chrysler Museum of Art reopened last Saturday after a long hiatus. This was a most welcome development as The Chrysler is one of the finest art museums in the Southeastern United States. It's collection is vast and includes the original piece that was the inspiration for this profound and thoughtful work...
more...
Ahem...
In any event, I had not had time to get through the whole museum last Saturday so the plan for today was to spend the afternoon at the museum.
However, I noted as I headed down Hampton Blvd. that all was not right near the museum. SomeTHING was peering out from behind the Unitarian Church. This THING seemed to actually be in the Hague (the tributary of the Elizabeth River that the museum overlooks). As I turned the corner I began to grasp the sheer scale of the doom that had come to Norfolk....
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May 15, 2014
Is That Foamy?
(Language warning.)
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Mr. Ice Cream has Passed On
Albert Doumar passed away yesterday at 92.
His father, Abraham Doumar, a Lebanese immigrant, set up a snack stand at the St Louis Exposition. There he ran out of cups for his ice cream but extemporized a work around using waffles wrapped into cones as edible containers. This was a spectacular success and Doumar made enough money there to set up a buisness in Norfolk in 1905. After refining the concept of the edible ice cream container into something slightly more durable than a waffle, he had a local machine shop build him a semiautomatic cone making machine, the first one in the world. In 1907 Abe and his brother sold 23,000 cones at the Jamestown Exposition. The original ice cream parlor was destroyed in the disasterous hurricane of 1933 and relocated (along with the cone machine) to 1919 Granby Street in 1934.
Albert Doumar returned from sevice in the Pacific Theater in World War Two and took over operation of Doumars when Abraham died in 1947. Shortly thereafter, he remodeled the ice cream stand into one of the first drive-ins with curb service and waitresses on rollerskates.
Doumar's has been a Norfolk institution for decades, with astoundingly good ice cream and barbecue as well as a small, nondescript looking cheeseburger that is so good it defies logic. Doumars is still a soda shop and all manner of carbonated bliss can be had there from modern sodas to old fashioned creations like lime or cherry-aid.
For as long as I can remember Albert Doumar was a fixture at the ice cream parlor that carries his family name, making ice cream cones and talking to customers. He rebuffed numerous offers over the years by the Smithsonian to take his fathers machine and display it in DC. Instead he continued to use it to make the stores signiture cone...which I strongly advise people to partake of while the machine is still there. The store which was ahead of its time in so many ways is something of an anachronism now, but its still in operation, complete with bobbysocks, rollerskates and a 109 year old cone machine.
He was always friendly and courteous. Several times, I took exchange students there and he would break out old photo albums to show and explain to them a world long past.
Albert Doumar lived a full life, and was a thouroughly decent fellow who, via both his business and personality, made Norfolk a more pleasant place.
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May 14, 2014
We're BAAACK!
As some of you may have noticed, there was something of an issue here over the last few days. If you didn't...then I need to up my blogging game rather dramatically.
As I understand it, this is what happened.
A large number of razorback hogs with beehives straped to their backs were set loose by unknown parties in the Texas bunker containing our RAID server, sucsessfully distracting the staff long enough for a number of trained Ghost Faced Bats to plant their C-4 charges in the facilities fire control computer without being noticed which precipitated the destruction of the buildings point defense system thus allowing a low flying UFO to fire an asteroid into the server building with the following results...
Actual footage from the Mee.Nu Zeppelin which was arriving with a shipment of Vegimite at the time.
So yeah...aliens.
Despite this, our crackerjack team of antipodean tech unicorns have restored everything except for any images or files uploaded after mid-March. Restoring some of those will be problematic as the frame grabs were discarded. In any event I've restored the images on the front page as I type this.
In all seriousness, Kudos to Pixy (our Antipodean tech unicorn) who has been working his Aussie posterior off the last three days rebuilding everyones websites despite a disasterous hardware failure and the difficulties inherent in being upsiode down all the time.
In possibly (but probably not) related news, my Twitter account got hacked yesterday as well, sending all 45 of my followers 150 solicitations to invest in a bitcoin enterprise. Between this and the spoofing a few weeks ago it's been a bad month for me and tech.
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May 11, 2014
They Couldn't Just Hire A Couple of Russians?
The Girls Und Panzer DVD has been sitting on my shelf for months and I suddenly realized I have time to look at it.
The dub is a bit uneven and rather rough at the beginning (Miho pronounces Oorai as O-O-R-I amongst other things) making it look like it was done on one take. To be fair, the voicework rapidly gets a lot better as the show progresses and Molly Searcy absolutely NAILS IT with her portayal of Mako. After about episode two the dub is pretty decent.
Then...suddenly.
They'd avoided the temptation of wacky accents...until the Pravda battle at which point there is an ill concieved attempt...from time to time...to affect something that probably sounded Slavic to somebody late one night in the studio when they were all strung out on Red Bull and Mountain Dew.
It gets worse...There is that moment in the Pravda battle that Crunchyroll edited out the Katushya song. Crunchyroll just cut the scene...the dub keeps the footage (minus the mouth movements) and replaces Katushya with an unrelated accordion solo.
" Well...THAT was regrettable. "
The accordion solo is present on the subtitled track too, indicating that they were not able to resolve the rights issue. However, it's unclear why the scene wasn't simply cut (like Crunchyroll did with the sub) as the result is most jarring.
Wait...
Can someone explain to me how a commie song from before 1945 is a copyright issue anyway.
Sentai has done some pretty good dubs (and Highschool of the Dead was absolutely superb) so this is more galling than it ought to be.
UPDATE: The dub on OAV release is actually excellent. Even when a silly accent raises its head, it's intentionally silly and fits perfectly.
I'd not seen any of them previously. They are entertainingly odd.
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May 10, 2014
Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions - Heart Throb
Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions was an absolutely superb series, being both hilarious and poignant. It also had a satisfying ending that quite effectively wrapped things up, so I've been ponsdering the sequel with some trepidation.
Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions - Heart Throb is set just a few weeks after the end of the previous show and pretty much takes up where it left off. There is a bit of hand waving regards the progress Rikka seemed to make in the last episode and some hand waving to explain why a class concious climber like Nibutani is still hanging with these whackadoodles, and further hand waiving regards Dekimori's hair, but it otherwise continues the story, and, well, two episodes in, I've laughed out loud a few times.
It certainly seems to be worth the time thus far.
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May 08, 2014
Their Texture...
...has always been a source of speculation for me. However, now that I seem to have discovered where Pringles come from, I find that I rue my foolish curiousity.
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Perhaps It's Just My own Insecurity...
...but I have come to the deeply disheartening conclusion that all those complementary comments from Michal Kors and Oakley may not, in fact, be entirely sincere.
Also: If you haven't already, you should go watch Nichijou. It makes the bad news bearable.
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Captain America: The Winter Soldier
This film has a lot on it's plate. It's a sequel, a prequel, and a fairly pivitol stand alone thriller that moves the overall plot of the Avengers tie-in franchise quite a bit. It could easily have become a mess, but Captain America: Winter Soldier is a surprisingly solid film.
This film is a very interesting hybrid of superhero flick and spy thriller, with the latter predominating at first. The "superheroes" in this movie are not earthshakinglty powerful in comparison to a lot of others, being for the most part, just very skilled people. A good chunk of the movie has a sort of espionage vibe, but the threat the heroes find themselves fighting against is one of earth shaking gravity. Furthermore, the heroes are super-heroic, not so much in their power level, but definitely in their attitude. Three of the leads are fine examples of "The Cape"and the fact that they are decent, ethical people becomes much more obvious as well as pivotal to the plot as the film progresses. There are also plenty of references reminding the Marvel fans in the audience that this is firmly "in universe".
All in all, I was quite pleased with it. One minor spoiler; as with most of the films in this franchise, you'll want to stay for the credits.
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May 07, 2014
Umm....
Yesterday my friend BOB! and I went to see Captain America 2. As there was no usher at the moment, we went roaming the Cinema Cafe multiplex looking for our theater and found something that needs an explanation.
more...
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May 05, 2014
Solving the Millennials Employment Problem
This New York Times article indicates that we may soon find something for all of them to do.
Young Blood May Hold Key to Reversing Aging
To my considerable alarm, the article actually has all of the awkward implications the headline suggests.
"Stop yer whinin'. We're payin' yer college loans!"
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May 01, 2014
OK
I'm drawing a blank.
What the HELL does this damned blimp say?
It is allegedly the Sapporro Beer Blimp of 1909...but that Katakana has me stumped. "Ru-bi ro bo sa su bi a ?"
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Happy May Day Everybody
In honor of the day here is an animated celebration of the third 5 year plan,
more...
Note in particular the bit between 2:20 and 2:34, and remember that this is a propoganda film intended to put their best foot forward.
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April 30, 2014
Preparing the "SPLODY!"
These three videoes of nuclear tests are pretty dry, as they deal mainly with the preparations for the tests, but they are also facinating as they give a detailed oveview of how these test were conducted and how scientists were able to get a detailed picture of the progress of these horriffic explosions at intervals measured in millionths of a second.
The first video (Tumbbler/Snapper) gives a very neat overview of the gadgets involved in monitoring these tests. It seems that a previous test had demonstrated vastly lower blast effects than predicted, indicating that their computer models, and more importantly their field manuals on how to use these weapons were completely wromg. The film goes into surprising detail about how they went about testing various theories on the cause of the anomaly and the mechanics of the devices used. Those smoke trails one sees in test footage...they were smoke rockets intended to give a visual reference for the blast wave...also the trees one sees getting all abused in test foottage are not native to the Nevada test site, but a transplanted forest.
Two of these tests were very small (1 killoton) and aren't particularly impressive visually, but there is a satisfying 30 killoton blast at the end, so our tax dollars weren't completely wasted. Amusingly, there is a bit of audio censorship at 24:10 and 26:20. "We used a normal casing because of its...."
The second test, Teapot, three years later elaborates a bit on the techniques used to gather the data with 1950's technology and is also interesting because it is the test that involved the metal sphere experiment that ended up inspiring Project Orion. (Stanislaw's Balls can be seen at 19:07) At the time the film was made no one knew the significance of this test and it's presented as a curiosity.
The final test lacks the engineering detail of the first two, but is also quite interesting, being a VERY elaborate civillian nuclear test by the civil defense authorities. Operation Cue was nominally one of the operation Teapot series of tests, but this particular test was administered by civil defense authorities and was intended to observe the effects of a nuclear bomb on civillian structures, provide a civil defense rescue and response drill under realistc conditions, and evaluate construction techniques to mitigate blast and radiation. Various civillian contractors were invited to test out their ideas. Operation Cue involved building a suburb and industrial park, populating it with manequins and dropping a 30 killoton bomb on it. Cue followed on the heels of several military tests that investigated such effects as an aside and made use of lessons learned in those.
One sobering detail is the somewhat more elaborate nature of the PPE in the Teapot tests.
One unrelated, but still interesting thing I noted thanks to Epic's tracking monitor is that when one looks at nuclear test footage on you tube one is beset by about an order of magnitude more trackers than is normal for a you tube video.
Hello!
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April 29, 2014
What's This?
"Must...text....EVERYBODY!"
John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, Oscar Isaac, Andy Serkis, Domhnall Gleeson, Max von Sydow, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew, Kenny Baker .
A text with a bunch of random names?
Whatever could this MEAN?
Oh well, I'm sure it's of no interest to anyone.
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