So...What's a TOWINC3 Anyway?

This polysyllabically titled show airs on Crunchyroll a week late, so despite my judicious attempt at avoiding spoilers I'd heard considerable chatter about this episode being just wretched and 'worse than the last one'.

Given that the last episode was about our poorly socialized protagonist getting tunnel vision and missing the point of her hobby, I fully expected this episode to be a bit of a downer with Yura's Ahab complex causing issues.

Boy howdy.

One of the overriding themes of this show is sportsmanship. This episode also focuses on the importance of not becoming what one despises and how easy it is to fall into that trap, especially if one feels strongly that one's cause is noble.

The other major point of the show is that the raison d'etre' of a hobby is to enjoy oneself. This is not to say that winning is not important, but the enjoyment is the goal. If lives are not at stake and what you are doing  is unpleasant and wearying without an enjoyable payoff...then one needs to stop doing it or start collecting a paycheck for it.

  As expected, Yura drives her team hard to the point of misery, at one point disregarding a fairly severe leg injury incurred by Kirishima. The kicker is that at the last minute Yura fires the winning shot....a split second after being hit.
By the rules this means Yuras winning shot was illegal but it's undetected by anyone except her opponent, the malevolent Haruna.....who smiles knowingly, informs Yura that she now respects her because she'll do anything to win and walks away.

The episode ends a tad ambiguously. Yura has the opportunity to make this right, but she's feeling a profound obligation to her teammates who she ran into the ground to get this victory....what does she do? Well we'll know for sure next week.

Of course most people reading this know that there is only one correct answer, but Yura doesn't. Her backstory is that she's never had friends. She hasn't learned about sportsmanship and she's carrying the shock of the earlier lesson about fighting to the end...for which she is seriously overcompensating.

I expect that the NEXT episode will be the nadir (emotionally...dramatically it might be quite compelling)



This is the antithesis of a shonen manga. Japanese society puts a VERY high value on giving your all and going all out whatever the cost. Shonen manga and sports manga tend to do the same with the former focusing on crushing the villain utterly.

This show, is about remembering to step back, breathe, and keep things in perspective...and how easy it is to fail to do that.

Yura is not an idiot, she's young and ignorant. She's learning, like we all do, as she goes and she's making mistakes. There is actual character development here. I'm still liking this show quite a bit though I think I may actually be the only one now.


So...for those of you who've been watching...any bets on whether or not she just flat out shaves her head this time?

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Just in Case You Were Wondering

...what happens when you drop a nuke near a blimp.

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But No 'Splodies Were Had That Day

I've been trying to get various things resolved at ODU over the last few days and while I accomplished a great deal, many of my efforts were to no avail. Several people I needed to talk to won't be on campus until classes start tomorrow and I don't have a good E-mail address for an instructor I NEED to get a hold of.

Then there was the little matter yesterday of the 'ODU SAFETY ALERT' which chimed in on my library workstation as I was trying to print out syllabi. ODU sends these to student's campus E-mail accounts. However ODU's G-mail system doesn't allow its E-mails to be forwarded to mobile devices so one has to physically log in to ones Student account to recieve E-mails. While I was logged on yesterday, I received the following E-mail:

 

A gas main has been broken during construction in Lot 19/20 behind the Batten Arts and Letters Building. ODU Police and the Norfolk Fire Department are on scene and restricting access to the area.  The Fire Department has confirmed no buildings need to be evacuated at this time.  Access to Perry Library is restricted to the 43nd  street entrance. The area should be avoided until police and fire units clear the area. 

20 minutes later the fire alarm went off and the library was evacuated.  This would have been a good to receive on my Blackberry, or the many more fashionable phones out there, but alas, ODU wants students to actually log onto their email accounts so...no.

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Gatchaman Crowds

 Science Ninja Team Gatchaman was one of the most important and influential shows in the history of anime. It looks dated today but in 1972 it had the best art and animation that had appeared on weekly Japanese TV and it was not equaled for almost a decade in that regard (Mazinger Z aired at the same time). The show was a remarkable break from the norm. Tatsuo Yoshida cherry picked elements not just from Japanese Sci-Fi films, but also Marvel Comics, Johnny Quest, '60s spy movies and the chaotic and terrifying headlines of the day. I've heard the show described as cliched..but Gatchaman MADE those cliches. The idea of the sentai team largely originated with Gatchaman,: June the exceptional strong heroine is in the finest Xia brothers tradition, Joe, the somewhat mysterious and dark second in command, occasionally complex villains, crazy malevolent transvestites....OK that last one didn't really take off but a HUGE number of anime tropes originated with Gatchaman.

I mention all this to put into perspective the epic nerd rage that seems to have gripped a number of my fellow old farts at Gatchaman Crowds, a show that is by today's standards poorly drawn, poorly animated and seems at first blush to have nigh-on nothing to do with with it's epic and beloved namesake other than the name and trademarked logo. So if you encounter one of these people just understand that this was not at all what they had hoped for and they are feeling quite depressed and alienated by "these kids today". Thus the best thing to do is quietly get off their lawn and give them a bit of space while they write their angry screeds in their APAs.

While they do so I recommend that you go to Crunchyroll and catch up on Gatchaman Crowds which is not particularly well animated and has a strange art style but makes excellent use of color and is exceedingly interesting.

This show is whacked.

Meet Hajime Ichinose.   Some people march to their own drummer. She disassembled the drum to make a lampshade, a dream catcher and a flower pot because she's quite happy to skip instead.

How this girl got through Japanese school being such an elevated nail without being bullied to suicide is explained by the fact that she is possessed of a tragic affliction... preternatural perkiness. She is completely offbeat in her outlook and hobbies, one of which is collecting notebooks. When a strange 7 foot tall grey skinned man with 30mm fangs appears before her and offers her a notebook after ripping it from her very being...she gleefully adds it to her collection without reservation or concern.

She soon learns that she has been inducted into Gatchaman, a team of 3  aliens and 3 earthlings assembled by the aforementioned grey guy who all have unique abilities and are charged with defending Earth against malevolent Rubick's Cubes.

...and then the show gets strange.

I'm not entirely sure what this show is about, as it keeps changing its mind, but as it wanders down the circuitous path that is its plot I find myself enjoying the journey.

This show is clever in a lot of ways, not the least how gently and quietly it puts to rest the misconception that it has nothing to do with the old show. (It was about the third time I heard a particular word that I realized..."Hey!" ) Most of the homages and re-imaginings will be lost on today's generation, but it's obvious that the writers are all fans of the old show.

Gatchaman Crowds is quite odd and a lot of people will just break morale over the fact that Hajime is a Genki Girl cranked up to 11. I find her to be a delightful loon but your mileage may vary. The very straight laced nominal leaders of the team  (one of whom is NOT a Panda) are horrified by her nonlinear habits. The rest of the team is pretty laid back about her though.  Interestingly, Hajime may come off as a whackadooldle but she displays a certain uncommon sense that is sorely lacking from a lot of shows....and a lot of people.

Despite being a show about a desperate struggle against a bloodthirsty peril from beyond the stars, this show has managed to become remarkably upbeat and enjoyable and that's just part of this shows peculiar charm.

UPDATE: Don, who is liking the show too, makes a good point about the notebooks I had not caught, but which seems obvious in retrospect. He also has a lot of screen-caps.

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Titanic Musical Pig Fixed: Mystery Solved!

Allow me to explain...

When the RMS Titanic sank in 1912, the band played to cheer the spirits of the passengers until the ship slipped beneath the waves. However there was long reported to be a mysterious piece of music that was heard AFTER the ship sank.

It turns out it was a pig.

A toy pig with an internal music box to be precise. It was played after the ship sank to comfort children in the lifeboat and drown out the sound of the people dieing in the water around them.

Well, curators at the museum where the pig resides have fixed it. They made a recording of the tune that wafted across the waves of a frigid Atlantic night 101 years ago.

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Unhappy Saturday

The weekend is opening with CBS reporting that the US is preparing for a cruise missile attack on Syria.

Given that Syria decided to nerve gas a town on the one year anniversary of the President's 'RED LINE' speech this may be the least bad option.

I don't believe that proportional responses are generally advisable or ethical. If one must use violence one should, as a rule, use overwhelming force. Such a policy is more likely to have a deterrent effect and save more lives in the long run (either through quick victory or deterring violence in the first place) than a predictable escalation of response which can be planned for and factored into cost benefit analysis by bad actors.

However, an overwhelming response in the case of Syria might topple the government. This would ordinarily be a good thing, but give that the opposition forces are AlQuaeda and similar groups, such an outcome would result in wast quantities of weapons including nerve gas plus Syria's stock of radioactives to fall into the hands of a bunch of feral crazies who dearly want to kill us and our Israeli allies.

So a painful but not crippling attack may be the least terrible option.

Of course, this supposes that the President, in his zeal to thwart the execrable Assad regime has not allowed himself to become blinded to the threat posed by its collapse, and doesn't actually intend to bring it down...which as we have discussed before would probably make things even worse.

more...

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Obviously, Nuclear Weapons are More 'Splody in the Arctic

Alex Wellerstien's Updated Online Nightmare Facilitator has a use other than depriving people of sleep.

It helps one to visualize the extent of distortion in a Mercator Projection.

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A Practical Demonstration of the Correct Delivery Method of a Convocation Speech at a United States Engineering College

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Not Quite a Combo Breaker but.... It's Time for PAINTBALL!

Well after dwelling on dark matters for a bit I was damned happy to see Tuesday roll around because that means StellaWALLOFTEXTc³ is finally up on Crunchyroll.

In this episode we learn that the KGB club is even more co-ed than we thought.

One of the points that this episode touches on is the importance of having something to fall back on in the event of unlikely contingencies.



Oh...there was one other thing...

Oh my... 


The series takes a surprisingly dark turn in the first 45 seconds.

Someone, quite likely a competitor, is playing for keeps. They're using an illegally overpressurised air-gun and start sniping at the girls.
Now Sonora is in the hospital with a concussion and Yura blames herself.

Although the other teamates decide to sit out the much anticipated 24 hour tournament, Yura somewhat rashly decides to sign them up, to honor Sonora with a win.
And the wallflower takes control...

As an aside, I think this is the first episode where Yura hasn't had a vision.


This show continues to completely surprise me.

In addition to a rather unexpected  direction, this episode does develop on a couple of things we've seen previously.....
*Yura really is beginning to miss the plot...The point of paintball is to have fun, it is a leisure activity.
*Something BIG went down between Sonora and Haruna in the U.S.A. It's not at all clear WHAT but it seems to be developing into a major plot thread.

The series emphasis on sportsmanship is still very much in evidence. This particular episode touches slightly on the do's and don'ts of leadership as well.

I am really impressed. I have no idea where it is going but I'm increasingly confident I'm going to enjoy finding out.

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These Posts Seem to Happen in Threes

In keeping with the carefree and optimistic tone of the previous two posts, I find myself asking recently why the story about the Stingers has gotten so little coverage except in overseas papers and certain partisan circles here.

more...

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Simulating Nightmares

In keeping with the chipper and upbeat nature of the last post, one of the Brickmuppet's crack team of Science Babes informs us that the Federation of American Scientists has recently started running simulations of various scenarios involving nuclear exchanges between the USA and China.


Their published report on the subject is here.

This is a sobering document. The scenarios examined would seem to be beyond possibility...until one remembers the events of 1914 and 1939.


A couple of things leap out. Fallout shelters, despite the protests of the ignorant are a very good thing to have in this sort of situation.

Neutrality does not apply to Tijuana, Quebec, our friends the Bahamians or the Maritimes. 

I question the FAS's targeting assumptions, although it cheers me greatly not to see a big smouldering scab in place of Hampton Roads, I can't fathom that an area with this many military assets would escape while they'd waste a missile on Detroit. This dubious supposition may reflect the fact that China's nuclear deterrent is counter-value, not counter-force, that is, the Chinese ICBMs target cities rather than US Missile batteries. Chinese missiles have big 3 or 5 megaton city buster warheads (assumed to be 4MT in the FAS study).

The FAS study assumes that China has around 20 ICBMs which is the official line, but the Russians credit them with a somewhat larger ICBM force and around 1800 warheads albeit mostly medium range for use against Russia and India and only half on alert. Other estimates go as higher.

The US by contrast can't currently make new nukes and isn't developing any. The FOGBANK fiasco from a few years ago shows what can happen when a technological capability atrophies.

This has implications.

Deterrence rests on the assumption that an attack on the US is national suicide. If the US is attacked by nukes right now it will go full Jacksonian as is our habit when we are REALLY pissed off. The rape of Atlanta or the bombardment of Japan will pale in comparison to what would befall the entity stupid enough to do such a thing. US bombs have much lower yields than other nations but they are all over 300 kilotons and there are about 2000 of them. A society that incited the use of such weapons upon itself would pass into history as completely as the Minoans, the Toltecs or the Carthaginians. This is true for most of the  other nuclear nations as well. That's why there haven't been any nuclear attacks since Nagasaki. Note though that as our deterrent decays and/ or is whittled away in arms control treaties the notion that a nation, especially one led by admirers of Mao Tse-Tung  might come to the conclusion after ruthless cost benefit studies of omelets versus eggs that any retaliation would be endurable.

The FAS study is science fiction now, it's an exceedingly unlikely set of scenarios. However that may not be the case in a decade or so.

There's also the unpleasant possibility of a nuclear nation in the grip of someone who is utterly bat-scat bonkers and to whom deterrence is of limited value...which brings up a question I've had for a couple of months about the seemingly 'gimp' performance of the North Korean nuclear tests. None have even been as powerful as Little Boy. The biggest was 10 kilotons and a few were only a few hectotons, but it occurs to me that these are all  in the ballpark of the weapons built around the now decomissioned W-54 warhead the US developed in the 1960's. Weighing only about 50 pounds its yield could be varied from 200 tons of TNT to one kiloton. It was used in backpack bombs, air to air and air to ground missiles and a perfectly functional but somewhat dubiously conceived atomic bazooka. Impressively, the W-54 warhead was able to give a yield of 6 kilotons as demonstrated in the SOCORRO shot of the Hardtack 2 test series, though tactical applications of the weapons that used it  required lower yields.

more...

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Oh....Joy

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RWBY is Now on Crunchyroll

There's not much to add except that having watched it again, Crunchyroll can handle the load in the exact same way that that RoosterTeeth's server's can't. (I tried to show it to a friend last night and it was all out of synch). It stays in sych at high rez too.

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Haganai Season 1

This is probably better known to most fans as Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai which is abbreviated as Haganai because....kanji.
In any event due to the fact that "I Don't Have Many Friends" was thought to have insufficient market appeal, Haganai is the title Funimation chose to release the DVD under.

This is not a show I would ordinarily watch. It screams harem show...and it's scream is not entirely misleading. However, last night, a friend of mine insisted that we watch it and suddenly it was 3AM and all 13 episodes were over....and I had finally found out where this .gif came from..

Haganai revolves around the misadventures of a high school club that is formed for the stated purpose of helping people with poor social skills. Of course this results in a group of awkward misfits in an enclosed space, interacting with each other thereby creating a critical mass of social ineptitude.  Hilarity ensues.
This show is a complete and utter train wreck but I laughed my ass off. While most of these characters are deeply flawed, they are flawed in fairly interesting ways. Furthermore most have at least some redeeming characteristics and a surprising bit of depth.

One thing that is surprising is how the show inverts a couple of tropes. One of the characters is the sort of Haruhi/Tsundere type character the audience is generally expected to root for and another is the quintessential 'rich bitch' everyone loves to hate. However, Yozura is such an unlikeable, mean and manipulative character that, for me at least, she comes off as just plain loathsome. She has been completely consumed, by her bitterness and in particular her hatred of Sena...

^{I...don't understand all that but I think I should apologize to the Netherlands.}

....now she can be funny, but she is actually the shows antagonist/villain.  At one point they are talking about bullying and she makes a case for the bullies point of view...because she's not a good person.
By contrast, Sena, the rich blonde with everything has all sorts of unlikeable traits, but she is also sincere and there actually seems to be a decent person there. The intense loneliness and vague paranoia of someone who fears that anyone being nice to her is up to something is well conveyed....and they manage to pull this off and be funny. 



Funimation actually put out for a dub which in this case is rather above average. Well written and well acted, the stacatto dialog and superb pacing very effectively brings to life a group of not always likeable but generally interesting characters.....


more...

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Well, it Looks Like Pyrrha Gives it a Thumbs Up

...but she would. She's in it. By the way, what DOES she see in that guy?

The latest installment of RWBY is only four minutes long. Well acted and nicely paced with even better music than previous episodes it...well it ends after four minutes which SUCKS cause I've gotta wait a whole WEEK to see what happens!

It's a cute show, plus it's always nice to see people who genuinely enjoy their work.

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I Dream The Bannana Electric

 Those who can read these do not pine for them.

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It Strikes Me

...that while this banner does make for admirable honesty on their part,  such a high visibility release of this information is potentially counterproductive from a marketing standpoint.

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Another View

The other day, Brickmuppet Blog commented upon  Elon Musk's Hyperloop concept. This article takes a 180 degree different view of his business model from ours.

UPDATE: Rand Simberg strongly disagrees with the characterization of Musk as a corporatist at least as far as Space-X is concerned. Space-X does seem to be rather different from Tesla in that it's paying it's own way and not getting vast piles of taxpayer money as loans and subsidies plus government mandated payments from his competition. I was probably wrong to not put that venture in the same category as Paypal.
Still...
The huge ammount of political shenanigans he's engaged in to get his Car and solar panel company to float should give one pause. Dr. Simberg's argument is that if the government offered him a dump-truck full of our money it would be a breach of fiduciary duty not to accept it. This is true to an extent, depending on the strings attached, but given that at least 2 of his ventures seem to be quite nonviable economically without the government subsidies one can rationally wonder about whether a mass transit system (a type of venture with a poor history of viability in this country) is not a boondoggle.

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Other Reasons

Steven has asked his readership to remind him not to fly into Gibraltar International airport.

As it happens, there are other more compelling reasons not to fly to Gibraltar.

First there's the little matter of the place being afflicted with rampaging apes that, in the words the colony's environment minister...

Well, I see no reason to read any more on that topic but if for some reason you wish to be lulled into a false sense of security by 'context' the full terrifying story is right here.

Much more ominously as Cdr Salamander reports, there's a sudden, unexpected flair-up of geopolitical craziness.

Spain's foreign minister says his country may bring in a border crossing fee and even close airspace to the British territory.

Oh look!  Now Catalonia, which is trying to secede from Spain has sided with Gibraltar.

Oh wait...Argentina and Spain are joining forces against a common foe.

This seems utterly blinkered and almost funny.



On a completely unrelated note, next August marks 100 years since some smacktalk, an ill timed gunshot and a complete breakdown of common sense  got out of hand and accidentally thrust the world into an orgy of auto-cannibalism from which the west has never recovered. 

There's a gallery of WW1 color photos here.

Very ugly wars can start quite stupidly.

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Calamity Most Foul

Typhoons, volcanoes....now Pepsi flavored Cheetos have hit Japan (no word yet on casualties or property damage).

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