I want to start a band with a Harpsichord, a Ukelele, a Dulcimer, a Clavichord, a Theremin, an Armonica, a Calliope and a set of Bagpipes.

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Via Ace of Spades: There is an article on tankery in the Wall Street Journal.

^{"Best...article...EVAH!"}

_{Enthusiastic young lady is Yukari Akiyama from Girls ind Panzer.}

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...the tweet being mocked here is depressing and not a little frightening. 

Bob Woodward of course is one of the reporters who took down Nixon. This is major 20th century history, and history it seems is at least as poorly understood by our polity as civics.

Of course one might ask why Bob Woodward came up in casual conversation and then one would find oneself in the middle of something even more disturbing.



Worse it involves  #politics.....so we'll continue this below the fold.

 
more...

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Ben at Midnight Tease just revealed a dark secret about himself. However, we won't hold that character flaw against him as he has been doing an interesting day by day post of the battle of the Alamo. He's up to day 5: here, here, here, here and here.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 09:20 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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...that's making the rounds, is here. Everybody else on the starboard side of the blogosphere seems to be missing two, which is much better than most Americans.

• Full Civic Literacy Exam (from our 2008 survey)

  Are you more knowledgeable than the average citizen? The average score for all 2,508 Americans taking the following test was 49%; college educators scored 55%. Can you do better? Questions were drawn from past ISI surveys, as well as other nationally recognized exams.

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Despite the music choice this AMV is actually surprisingly faithful to Song of the Sky....and yet it is COMPLETELY misleading as to what sort of tale this thoughtful and inspiring show is.

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As one of the Brickmuppet's Crack Team of Science Babes points out, "Boom!" does not do justice to what may be coming to the planet Mars.

"2x10¹⁰ Megatons is hard to visualize so think of it as being about this much 'splody."

It seems that recently discovered fast parabolic comet C/2013 A3 is going to pass pretty close to Mars. Exceedingly close. Best guess now has it passing within 63,000 miles of Mars. However the margin of error in plotting its course due to uncertainties about it's mass, its extreme speed and the limited time this object has been observed mean that the cone pf probability extends from 74,000 miles out from Mars to 0.000 miles.  This is much closer to Mars than the moon is to Earth.

The comet is moving exceedingly fast and is a retrograde orbit to boot so its relative velocity is around 35 miles per second, or 5 TIMES Earth escape velocity!

Since C/2013 A1 is a hyperbolic comet and moves in a retrograde orbit, its velocity with respect to the planet will be very high, approximately 56 km/s. With the current estimate of the absolute magnitude of the nucleus M2 = 10.3, which might indicate the diameter up to 50 km, the energy of impact might reach the equivalent of staggering 2×10¹º megatonnes! This kind of event can leave a crater 500 km across and 2 km deep. Such an event would overshadow even the famous bombardment of Jupiter by the disintegrated comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 in July 1994, which by some estimates was originally 15 km in diameter. - See more at: http://spaceobs.org/en/2013/02/25/comet-c2013-a1-siding-spring-a-possible-collision-with-mars/#sthash.SS7W2n7v.dpuf

The comet is 50 clicks across (by comparison the "Dinosaur Killer" was only 10 clicks in diameter). This would be a planet changing event.

Scott Lowther has thoughts on what the (admittedly unlikely) impact might mean for ambient Martian atmospheric pressure. Assuming it didn't blow the atmosphere clean off, it could be interesting indeed.

In any event, with a magnitude of 8.0 as seen from Earth, the comet should be visible with the naked eye in rural areas, which means we get a neat show regardless of whether it hits.

_{"Science Babe" is Shizune Hachimaki, from Katawa Shoujo.}

Since C/2013 A1 is a hyperbolic comet and moves in a retrograde orbit, its velocity with respect to the planet will be very high, approximately 56 km/s. With the current estimate of the absolute magnitude of the nucleus M2 = 10.3, which might indicate the diameter up to 50 km, the energy of impact might reach the equivalent of staggering 2×10¹º megatonnes! This kind of event can leave a crater 500 km across and 2 km deep. Such an event would overshadow even the famous bombardment of Jupiter by the disintegrated comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 in July 1994, which by some estimates was originally 15 km in diameter. - See more at: http://spaceobs.org/en/2013/02/25/comet-c2013-a1-siding-spring-a-possible-collision-with-mars/#sthash.SS7W2n7v.dpu

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 10:21 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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It seems that Seven Seas Entertainment has picked up several new titles including Monster Musume no Iru Nichijou.



I note that all the titles involve monster girls. I was unaware that this was "a thing" (I mean outside of 4chan and Pixiv ). This is a genre now?

We live in interesting times.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 11:01 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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While virtuously scouring the internet for content to further the causes of science and liberty, I, by merest happenstance, encountered this...

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 09:55 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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I'm massively busy and may not be online for the rest of the week. However, I note that Steven Den Beste has made an argument  which, although, admittedly compelling, is nevertheless one I cannot allow to go unanswered.

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Just got this via twitter.

CNN.com is reporting this afternoon that NASA has lost contact with the International Space Station.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 04:30 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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The Google Bubble is is explained here. Note that it's basically an ad for Duck-Duck Go, but it does explain the problem succinctly.

How bad can it get?

I noticed hadn't cleared my search history or cookies all year when a recent search on my computer for BAD APPLE CHINESE resulted in Newt Gingrich vs. Piers Morgan  and a search for AMVs in general included Bill Whittle videos.

No doubt someone to the left of me would be getting Obama hymns and  such.

It can be somewhat mitigated by clearing ones search history and all cookies periodically.

 On the political level this means that getting people to change their minds about things political is going to be even more of a herculean task than is discussed here, here, here and here.

On a rather more profound level it cannot be good for the nations polarization or getting people to change their minds about important things like immunizations and GM foods.

This is a huge structural problem, but I'm at a loss as to what to do about it.

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One of our readers from Canada, Peter (TNSG), has some questions about US politics.

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Well, that was exciting.

We had a near miss from an asteroid big enough to cause a 5 megaton blast if it hit. Over a thousand people were injured in Russia  this morning when a small meteor detonated above (and impacted just outside of) the town of Chelyabinsk. This afternoon, bolide exploded above Rodas Cuba causing minor damage and another bolide lit up San Fransisco this evening but did no damage.

The near miss asteroid has pretty much been established to be unrelated to the Russian meteorite, though its unclear if the two bolides were related to the Russian event.

2012DA14 which passed inside Geostationary Orbit got some buzz in the press over the last few days and Drudge, of course, hyped it like it was the Sweet Meteor Of Death. It was discovered by an amateur astronomer in Spain, not NASA or any other credentialed body, so if not for him we never would have seen it coming until it was upon us (if then). If it had been the tiniest bit off its actual course it would have hit. At this point we could have done nothing about it.

The objects that caused so much excitement in Chelyabinsk, Rodas and  San Fransisco, well, we never saw them coming.

This pic is making the rounds today....because it's true.

Next time the S.M.O.D. Squad comes visiting they may not be so congenial.

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Doom. It is upon us.

UPDATE 2:

But I did laugh...

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 02:28 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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1 Where's the ka-boom?  I was expecting an Earth-shattering ka-boom....

Posted by: Siergen at Fri Feb 15 17:38:01 2013 (Ao4Kw)

2 The ka-boom is here.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sat Feb 16 03:24:25 2013 (vp6an)

3 What, no animated siren?

Posted by: Mauser at Sat Feb 16 04:51:15 2013 (cZPoz)

4
Here is an animated Siren for you.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sat Feb 16 15:05:44 2013 (vp6an)

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One of the Brickmuppets crack team of science babes brings us news of asteroid 2012 DA14 which is going to pass incredibly close to Earth this afternoon. The space rock, about the size of....What?

 ^{Spectacularly so!}

...Oh! An asteroid, apparently unrelated to 2012DA14 and estimated to have only weighed about 10 tons, entered the atmosphere and came down on Russiaa bit before 9:30 this morning local time, but due to its small size it was not detected before entry.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 11:26 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Tearful, fearful, Sayaka is giving me the creeps, so I've gotta post something just to get the creepiness off the top front post. 

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 08:29 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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...because it is the surest path to oblivion.

Do not give up hope.
Do not yield to anger.
Do not succumb to fear, for while the situation is dire, all is not lost.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 07:51 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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...of late. I missed 11 days of school (out of 20 so far) due to the shot-proof flu and subsequent pneumonia, combined with a violent reaction to an antibiotic. Also the alternator died. Thus I've been playing catch up.

I have a couple of unfinished posts on current events and tech...but they are depressing me and sapping my energy.

Additionally I haven't been blogging about anime much because nothing that's streaming right now interests me and Nisemonogatari made me feel quite unclean. 

So, gentle readers,  here's another random picture to tide you over till I catch up .

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 06:39 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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