Saaay. I Have a Tech Question
Say you have a .wav file.
Say it is not capturing the sounds of a conversation between two bats reviewing a performance of the Moscow Philharmonic doing a fusion mash-up performance of Chinese opera and baroque classical.
Say instead its just something of lower bandwidth and complexity, like industrial or dance.
Say its run time is an hour and a half long.
Would there be any non-worrisome reason that, say,1.58 gigabytes would be a reasonable size for that file?
1
Well, a 60-minute audio CD would produce an uncompressed WAV file around 600 megabytes in size, so that sounds a bit large.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at Wed Jan 30 21:53:43 2019 (tgyIO)
2
According to my calculations, 1 hour 30 minues of 16-bit dual channel samples (4 bytes) at 48 kHz take 1036800000 bytes, or basically a gigabyte. It's still a bit short of 1.58 G.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Wed Jan 30 22:17:26 2019 (LZ7Bg)
So...
...I'm lookin' at Crunchyroll and seeing a vast wasteland. Heck, even the slime show is pretty much painting by numbers now.
Any recommendations from my loyal readers?
ISTR there was supposed to be a show about cute girls doing air mercenary work in Ki-43s (cutely) but searches for variations on [cute girls flying Hayabusas anime] turns up zilch. Perhaps it's a movie or a game. Perhaps I imagined it.
Oh well. Enough of my 1st world weeb problems. Back to homework.
1
Several friends are into Kaguya-sama. Haven't had the chance to sit down with that one yet.
Likewise, Quintuplets may end up as a fun romantic comedy. Like what I've seen so far.
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Wed Jan 30 15:50:12 2019 (v29Tn)
2
Yeah, I haven't found anything worth watching, either, so I've taken up weaving to kill time.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at Wed Jan 30 16:02:21 2019 (tgyIO)
So far the wife and I have been watching S2 of Mononokean (Fuzzy!), Ueno-san wa Bukiyou (slapstick, but bearable in 10 min doses), Kemurikusa (Kemono Friends/Girls Last Tour mash-up), Doukyonin was Hiza... (a neurotic with a cat; it has its moments), Kouya no Kotobuki Hikoutai (cute girls in cute planes; writing is middling and the plot hasn't shown up yet, but the dogfights are to die for).
After being so thoroughly conditioned by Steven all these years to never make recommendations, this was rather a novel experience.
Posted by: Clayton Barnett at Wed Jan 30 18:14:43 2019 (/BgZy)
4
I just caught up on Re:Slime, and yeah, it is starting to get a bit paint-by-numbers. Still enjoyed it.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wed Jan 30 18:44:05 2019 (PiXy!)
I have been trying to watch Kouya no Kotobuki Hikoutai but so far, I have been having trouble maintaining interest in it. I am incline to watch it for the unusual premise, but there is a limit to how far the premise, by itself, can go.
The Price of Smiles (Or Egao no Daika.) is one series that I have been waiting for each week, but it suffers from a story with pacing issues that needs to actually get on with the plot.
I am enjoying Grimms Notes, even if they did make me want to hit my head over the depiction of Don Quixote.
Posted by: cxt217 at Wed Jan 30 19:20:18 2019 (LMsTt)
6Kemono Friends 2 is departing from being just a remake of the first series by only a token amount, and is falling short of the charm and emotion of the first.
That being said, that still makes it worth watching so far. That's it for me, so far.
Posted by: Ben at Wed Jan 30 21:04:27 2019 (4TRZx)
Posted by: Mauser at Wed Jan 30 21:35:15 2019 (Ix1l6)
8
I dropped manga for Kaguya when they decided to reset it. I really hate when an author sells out.
I dropped 5tobun manga after some 10 chapters. It was just too dumb with all the "powerful company president" nonsense. I had my fill of that with 37sai. Also, the protag was unpleasant. So were the girls, frankly.
I'm still reading the Slime. It's a bit endless though, like a LN.
The Ueno-san is hanging by a thread.
This season, a few worthy shows are not at Crunchy. I have no choice but yarr them. Kotbuki is one such.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Wed Jan 30 21:49:02 2019 (LZ7Bg)
OK. This is Going to Annoy Some People
Apparently having learned A lesson from his magazine's recent defenestration of some high-schoolers and the resulting blowback, Kyle Smith over at NRO decides to go after less formidable prey; a fellow who can't defend himself because he's dead.
You see, there's a new documentary out now that has premiered at Sundance, that regurgitates all the vile allegations against the late Michael Jackson.
Now, I am very open to believingjustaboutanyhorrifictale of predation comingout of Big Media. Such atrocities, particularly against children are a real issue that warrants attention and implacable sanction. However, these allegations against Jackson have been pretty much debunked.
Somewhat to my astonishment, Razorfist of all people seems to consider this matter a personal crusade and has been doing the research the press won't do for at least two years. if you are interested in WHY these allegations are complete BS, well the prime paragon of profanity has got you covered here as well as in the embedded video below which he posted yesterday.
Trigger Warning: Rated T for Tourettes
Here's the thing...
While acknowledging that he was extremely talented, I'm actually not a particular fan of Michael Jackson and, frankly, his effete mannerisms give me hives. However, I also think its important that my hangups not be someone else's problem.
Something is truly whacked in our society when I (a bit of a social conservative) have to be the one speaking up for whackadoodle eccentrics and the libertarian blog Instapundit, has as I type this, 131 comments on the matter almost universally supportive of what appears to be a meritless hit piece.
It is crucial to the health of our culture that our society allow eccentric oddballs to exist. That was Michael Jackson's REAL crime. He was a goofy loon who didn't give a tinkers damn about how the scolds and meangrrls thought he should comport himself. I think that he showed poor judgement at times and if there were actual proof of these allegations I'd be on board with digging up his grave and desecrating his corpse. But, there's no proof and a lot of evidence to the contrary. Jackson's good name is being sullied by a bunch of lying lampreys who are, in turn, being facilitated by a culture that has, even more than usual, become the implacable foe of zany bohemians.
1
It's kind of tough to listen to someone speak with such a fast cadence.
Posted by: Rick C at Tue Jan 29 14:51:23 2019 (Q/JG2)
2
When the Cosby stories started to come out, one of his accusers from Way Back When was a friend of mine. I believe everything she said about the incident, and that she wasn't seeking attention or money when she came forward, but her story was still decades-old, one-sided, and completely unprovable. And, quite possibly, not a crime.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at Tue Jan 29 15:25:59 2019 (tgyIO)
1
I remember where I was when that happened. I was in the bookstore at Drexel University buying floppies, and someone came in and said the shuttle exploded. The TVs in the student center next door were tuned to it, and I had to watch.
Posted by: Mauser at Mon Jan 28 20:52:50 2019 (Ix1l6)
An interview by John Michael Godier with the same Dr. Avi Loeb who we noted previously had suggested that the bizarre acceleration of the interstellar object might be due to its being artificial. While this was the last of the list of possibilities listed in the short paper, it was (not unexpectedly) the only hypothesis of his that really made it into the headlines.
It appears now that they've effectively lost Omuamua, which turns out to be even weirder than originally thought.
"It's probably much smaller than initially thought."
More on "Ultima Thule"
Well, the high-rez images are starting to come in. It looks like it's pretty much what we'd expect a typical proto-comet to be, aside from the contact binary aspect (though as Wikipedia notes 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, the Shirtstorm comet, is one as well).
The fact that they are able to get pictures like this from a probe the size of a grand piano over a light day away is absolutely incredible. In spite of all the idiocy happening down here we can take pride in this amazing accomplishment of science and engineering and rejoice that its celebration is untainted by any of our contemporary stupidities, giving us all hope that...
"You do know the next video on the page is Richard C. Hoagland
explaining that this is an abandoned alien spaceship right?"
Neo has a good piece on the attempted defenestration of the boys from Covington.
Way too many people reporting this sort of thing and making it go viral on Twitter are uninterested in getting the facts right or telling the truth. They know from previous experience that a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on. They count on it, and they know that most of the people ranting and raving about this and wanting to punch that Covington kid in the mouth and ruin his life will never, never ever, believe that the first story wasn’t the real story.
Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
— Michael Crichton
There are people foreign and domestic who want us to fall upon each other without mercy. A huge amount of what passes as news is intended to facilitate this. Double check everything you can.
A Troubling Conversation
One of the advantages of being on a College Campus is that there will often be some sort of academic shindig which will bring together a bunch of people at the top of their field who are, for a brief time, accessible to us interested laymen. I recently had a conversation with an academic who specializes in China. I asked what said academic thought about the situation in The Middle Kingdom and where it was headed over the next 5-10 years. I mentioned things that I'd heard regarding the economy, social credit system, consolidation of power under Xi Jinping and the analogies to Germany in the lead up to WW1. This can be gleaned from reading the news or the output of any think tank (not purchased by China). However, Chinese culture is so very different from ours that I don't feel very confident about what can be gleaned from such analogies. I'm old enough to remember the U.S.S.R. (a rather less inscrutable organization) just collapsed to the utter astonishment of all the best experts and we're 4 years past the centenial of a previous group of experts being amazed at how some damned fool thing in the Balkans suddenly became rather consequential.
To my surprise the academic in question pulled me aside partially closed a door and spoke to me in hushed tones. Now I should note that this individual has a reputation for being very positive and optimistic about the P.R.C. and had been doing research in China last month. What they'd seen had caused a reassessment of the academic's premises. China outlawed Christmas this past year. I'd heard something about this but its significance had been lost on me because I was unaware that China celebrated Christmas at all. Aparently it was, until this year, a fairly big deal in the cities. More significant to the China Hand I was speaking to is the fact that the Yuletide festivities were replaced with a celebration of another birthday; That of Mao Zedong .
The academic in question was even more concerned about the recent Provincial elections. There's now a colonel or a general on the provincial politburos. I'm told there's also a political officer and that neither of these positions have existed in the civilian government since the cultural revolution. The Historian I was talking to says that this is a very recent (past several months) development and indicates that the C.C.P. may be preparing to deal with something along the lines of civil unrest, or a major war.
The China expert was also somewhat freaked out by the Winnie the Pooh thing and the general censoriousness that has become so much more marked in the last two years.
Anyway, after the conversation I was presented with a big stack of books and was told to return them to a contact person by the end of Spring Break. So I have reading to do on top of my other work.
Not reading simplified Chinese, I can't confirm anything and I don't want to give the professor's name because I got the distinct impression (from the hushed tone) that discussing this might cause them issues.
So this whole post is about as well cited as a Buzzfeed article. However, the conversation did drive home the fact that we don't know what we don't know and the few tidbits I gleaned did not give me the warm fuzzies.
Take with a grain of salt, but I get the distinct impression that china, and perhaps by extension the world are, over the next few years, likely to experience interesting times.
1
What things will be like in a year or two I couldn't tell you, but at least in the "free-er" economic and social areas in China, they don't seem to have noticed the Christmas ban. Christmas videos from Shenzhen were very popular this past holiday season.
Of course, Shenzhen is one of the very special cases in China, as it has a high Western ex-patriot population...appearances are very important there.
Posted by: Ben at Sun Jan 20 02:54:43 2019 (4TRZx)
Given that Xi has gone out of his way to fashion himself after Mao - and he has been public about his admiration of the dead librarian - these kinds of news have not been in the least surprising. The expansion of the PLA into the political sphere is slightly more surprising. Since the central government has forced the PLA's officer corps to divorce themselves from their business empire, diverting their attention with politics makes sense, though it is a major issue for a Communist state to do so, given the traditional unease over that.
Oddly enough, I was talking with a family friend last week who mentioned about a trip to the PRC that one of their siblings intern was going to make later this year. Apparently, a big thing in the PRC now is the virtual replacement of cash transactions with purchase via smartphone apps, whichis easy for the young people today...As well as making it easier for the government to track your purchases and activities.
Posted by: cxt217 at Sun Jan 20 17:21:56 2019 (LMsTt)
3
Another point, which might been making the expert you talked with uneasy - it is easy to forget these days, but the Tiananmen Square protests initially started as demonstrations against corruption among the officialdom of government and Communist Party. One consequence of the crushing of the protests was the realization that future public outcry against corruption would be equated with treason by same officialdom, with corresponding undermining of the confidence and respect in the same. Given how corruption has bloomed under Xi, despite the occasional show trial, it would not surprise in the least that certain parties are preparing for massive civil unrest in the PRC.
Posted by: cxt217 at Sun Jan 20 17:29:06 2019 (LMsTt)
4
Interestingly, the professor was of the opinion that one of Xi Jinping's good points (at least in the professor's initial assessment) was his anti-corruption stance. I was told that careful analysis of the anti-corruption policies under Xi indicated that it was a remarkably sincere and effective attempt to root out corruption. I was taken aback by this but have no research on hand to debunk it. Certainly it flies in the face of what I've read in the western press on the matter. However, (with 20/20 hindsight) one should probably keep in mind that many of the officials whose defenestration raised eyebrows in the west had deep and broad ties to western business interests and perhaps advocates there as well. The initial lack of corruption in this anti corruption campaign was one of the larger influences on the professor's previous optimism regarding China's prospects.
Note though that since Winnie-the-Pooh-Gate the definition of "Corruption" has broadened considerably and the academic I spoke to agreed with me on this.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sun Jan 20 19:02:18 2019 (gxCG3)
I tend to be very suspicious of any claims of a Communist official being honest. It is possible, like anything else, but they are very unlikely, given how corrupt and hypocritical the average Communist is (At least then they are not bloodthirsty.). Unfortunately, past experiences in the family have tended to confirm the impression.
Amusingly enough, Ace of Spades had a link to an article from Forbes talking about the impact of the trade war on the PRC, but they ended with the conclusion that the PRC will ultimately win, no small part because they take the long view on things. That might very well be true, but 'taking the long view' generally does not work well when dealing with civil unrest and rioting crowds (Another point that raised an eyebrow was the way the article portrayed Vietnam as some sort of junior accomplice to the PRC...)..
Posted by: cxt217 at Mon Jan 21 22:34:51 2019 (LMsTt)
1
Hmm... I've already rented a VPS for Pleroma a couple of days ago. But I suppose if Pixy whips up something, I'll have a look.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Sat Jan 19 16:51:16 2019 (LZ7Bg)
2
Given the workload at my day job, I would not recommend anyone hold their breath, but I am devoting all my spare minutes to getting a functional UI on the already working server code.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sun Jan 20 00:12:53 2019 (PiXy!)
I'm pretty sure any lingering confusion is not the fault of Ms. Doran, who has graciously provided us with the answer to "What will get flagged at Tumblr?". Note that no attempt was made to address the larger question of "WTF Tumblr?".
1
I think they wrote their own NSFW filter to avoid the cost of using one of the big players (Amazon, Google, and Microsoft all charge about one cent per image).
Unsurprisingly, their filter is complete garbage.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sat Jan 19 09:42:09 2019 (PiXy!)
2
The filter has previously been noted for flagging Tumblr's official examples of SFW content as NSFW.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sat Jan 19 09:43:03 2019 (PiXy!)
3
Tumblr is in a long-term decline anyway. The tolerance of pr0n, gore, and other NSFW content was basically the only thing that kept it afloat.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Sat Jan 19 15:53:18 2019 (LZ7Bg)
Subscribe Star Status
I actually managed to secure a Subscribe Star account some weeks ago just under the wire before they shut down subscriptions, so I do get their updates.
It appears that after several false starts, and unhelpfully pollyanish reports from their advocates, they have managed to start processing payments.
Dear Friends,
We are at the point when we start getting back to our normal operations. Starting this Monday, we will begin charging live accounts of the existing subscribers in order to restore money flow to our content creators. Simultaneously, we will enable a few selected profiles to accept new subscribers.
Started with smaller size accounts, we will progress towards the bigger ones, just to keep the load under control while testing everything along the way.
After we done with the processing of all existing billings, we will get back to the long list of applications that are waiting in line for the review and approval. And right after that, we will enable all profiles to accept new subscribers and receive donations. At the same time subscribers, who joined the "free tier†with $0 subscription price may change the subscription tier to ones with real USD values.
Always yours,
SubscribeStar.com Team[ /quote]
Now.
Having looked at the site off and on for a few weeks I think that they need a much better search function to browse their various creators which vary in interests about as broadly as the electromagnetic spectrum.
It's also a Russian site and all that that implies.
And they're not quite fully up and running yet.
On the other hand, the site seems to work. The site blog is regularly updated. Anecdotally, people who have moved there seem happy with their overall experience (current unpleasantness notwithstanding).
Finally, the Subscribe Star team have been Gandalf at the bridge with regards to internet censorship and they took a serious hit for it. Free speech is their only brand now and they will live or die as much by their adherence to that ideal as by more normal market forces.
Full disclosure: I (theoretically) get a cut of the profits from anyone who subscribes through that "sign up"link. This is theoretical because I'd need to give them my checking account info regards which I am still "waiting and seeing". Take that for what you will.
1
I signed up a few weeks before PayPal pulled out. I subscribe to 3 creators there, and they've only received one month of support from me, so far. I've been a big supporter of PayPal from their beginning, but I'm watching now to see how quickly Amazon payments propagate to new sites. I'm sure as heck not going to use Google Wallet.
Posted by: Ben at Fri Jan 18 22:04:43 2019 (4TRZx)
And Then More Stuff Happened
Apologies for two consecutive posts concerning the banality of my Walter Mitty lifestyle. Here, as partial compensation is something pleasant by Sukabu.
Additionally, Sukabu still has a Tumbler page...somehow...Infer what you will from that statement.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Fri Jan 18 09:01:31 2019 (PiXy!)
3
The "computer" overwrote an "A" with an "F"? Not that it matters at this point, but that's either one hell of a bug that's likely affecting hundreds of students, or someone is fibbing to you.
Posted by: Ben at Fri Jan 18 13:27:42 2019 (yXPNh)
4
Yeah, that's a bogus explanation. Reminds me how one assistant professor in my wife's department was fixing to get a tenure. So other professor broke into an office (I don't remember if Dean's or some clerical office) and trashed the assistant's file with all the tenure docs.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Fri Jan 18 13:37:21 2019 (LZ7Bg)
...that's either one hell of a bug that's likely affecting hundreds of students, or someone is fibbing to you.
That is the professor's story. And the professor is sticking to it.
It might well have been a PEBKAC error of course, something as simple as clicking on the wrong icon in the rush to turn grades in before deadline.
However, I THINK that what happened is that the computer system now automatically assigns a grade of "F" to any class that was marked as "Incomplete" and this has to be corrected. There may be other issues as well. For example, it's possible that if a person in a class with a strict departmental attendance policy is given a waiver because of, say, a doctor's note, the actual attendance figures might cause the system to override the teacher's waiver without additional steps being taken on the instructor's part. Both situations would have applied to me in that class.
The school has had various "issues" with its IT upgrades for months.
There is circumstantial evidence against the PEBKAC theory;
Yesterday, when I went to registration to get entered into my new class (which, as I'm an undergrad, required a waiver) I asked if THEY could see my change in status (I sure as hell couldn't). The young lady in registration who was helping me said it wouldn't be visible for a day or so, but she also mentioned that this was not a unique issue and that she'd been in the same position previously. I inferred the conversation that this was a not-unheard of situation. I don't know WHAT is going on, but I suspect (albeit with no hard evidence) that the root cause is someone in the administration with micromanagement tendencies.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Fri Jan 18 15:53:30 2019 (gxCG3)
6
At the university I teach at, incompletes become Fs after one calendar year. And it requires moving heaven and earth on the part of the prof to undo that. (I had a student once with a SERIOUS, and I mean SERIOUS health problem, who couldn't come back within the year and....well, he finally completed the class but I will note the then-Dean made *me* cry in her office with all of the rigamarole about what I had to do (she was also quite rude to me)
It's also totally possible, at least in today's grade-entry systems, for a professor to fat-finger the wrong grade. I've done it. Fortunately, not often, and the student usually e-mails me to go "this can't be right, can it?" (I have an online gradebook so each student should be able to look up what they are earning). If they let me know within a couple days, it's an easy fix. Longer, it's a bit more complicated but not hard...
it's entirely possible you F is an F for fat-fingering...
Posted by: fillyjonk at Fri Jan 18 19:14:02 2019 (+MBAo)
7
Hm. It's certainly true that "the computer made me do it" is usually shorthand for "that's the way the bureaucracy is set up to work oh god are you going to make me go in there."
The true a**holes of the world are the ones who want a computer system to make irrevocable changes. The entire history of computing is is trying to get AWAY from that. The computer is meant to be your friend, not Friend Computer.
Posted by: Ben at Fri Jan 18 22:11:21 2019 (4TRZx)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sat Jan 19 09:18:44 2019 (PiXy!)
10
Yeah, that pretty much encapsulates it Pixy. Badass thug-girl in a fictional Brazil-like country who's not as smart nor as badass as she thinks she is, but gets through on pure oblivious stubbornness. Rescues her kid from rotten foster parents and searches for the father while the girl tries to talk sense to her.
Posted by: Mauser at Sat Jan 19 18:57:27 2019 (Ix1l6)
1
Bifocal prescription safety glasses here, with removable side shields. Used to have the "Transitions" lenses, but they actually have to screw up the close prescription to make that work, leaving you with only a small spot that isn't distorted. Got regular bifocals this time. Much better.
Posted by: Mauser at Wed Jan 16 23:46:34 2019 (Ix1l6)
2
Cool! You're only five or six years behind me...
Posted by: Wonderduck at Wed Jan 16 23:49:22 2019 (PzbzM)
3
I've got progressive bifocals and I'm not sure I like them much. I get a lot of eyestrain from various screens...
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Thu Jan 17 04:31:49 2019 (v29Tn)
4
I'm just getting three different pairs of glasses. This clearly proves I am not old.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thu Jan 17 06:56:49 2019 (PiXy!)
5
Progressive trifocals here, but the place I went screwed up the last set. Twice.
Posted by: ubu at Thu Jan 17 07:25:07 2019 (UlsdO)
6
I have driving glasses and kanji glasses. I also have a pair of Foster Grant Multi-Focus cheaters that I bought at an airport that range from 0.5 to 1.0, which come in handy for late-night reading. (I haven't seen these in stores outside of airports, oddly enough)
-j
Posted by: J Greely at Thu Jan 17 17:36:13 2019 (LGSd2)
7
Yeah, the Progressiveness is not worth it. At least if you have any astigmatism.
Posted by: Mauser at Thu Jan 17 22:03:24 2019 (Ix1l6)
8
I got progressive trifocals last year, and I've had near-constant eyestrain ever since. I imagine next year I'll go to some basic bifocals.
Posted by: Ben at Fri Jan 18 13:22:12 2019 (yXPNh)
Hobby Space News of the commercial space industry A Babe In The Universe Rather Eclectic Cosmology Encyclopedia Astronautica Superb spacecraft resource The Unwanted Blog Scott Lowther blogs about forgotten aerospace projects and sells amazingly informative articles on the same. Also, there are cats. Transterrestrial Musings Commentary on Infinity...and beyond! Colony WorldsSpace colonization news! The Alternate Energy Blog It's a blog about alternate energy (DUH!) Next Big Future Brian Wang: Tracking our progress to the FUTURE. Nuclear Green Charles Barton, who seems to be either a cool curmudgeon, or a rational hippy, talks about energy policy and the terrible environmental consequences of not going nuclear Energy From Thorium Focuses on the merits of thorium cycle nuclear reactors WizBang Current events commentary...with a wiz and a bang The Gates of Vienna Tenaciously studying a very old war The Anchoress insightful blogging, presumably from the catacombs Murdoc Online"Howling Mad Murdoc" has a millblog...golly! EaglespeakMaritime security matters Commander Salamander Fullbore blackshoe blogging! Belmont Club Richard Fernandez blogs on current events BaldilocksUnderstated and interesting blog on current events The Dissident Frogman French bi-lingual current events blog The "Moderate" VoiceI don't think that word means what they think it does....but this lefty blog is a worthy read nonetheless. Meryl Yourish News, Jews and Meryls' Views Classical Values Eric Scheie blogs about the culture war and its incompatibility with our republic. Jerry Pournell: Chaos ManorOne of Science fictions greats blogs on futurism, current events, technology and wisdom A Distant Soil The website of Colleen Dorans' superb fantasy comic, includes a blog focused on the comic industry, creator issues and human rights. John C. Wright The Sci-Fi/ Fantasy writer muses on a wide range of topics. Now Read This! The founder of the UK Comics Creators Guild blogs on comics past and present. The Rambling Rebuilder Charity, relief work, roleplaying games Rats NestThe Art and rantings of Vince Riley Gorilla Daze Allan Harvey, UK based cartoonist and comics historian has a comicophillic blog! Pulpjunkie Tim Driscoll reviews old movies, silents and talkies, classics and clunkers. Suburban Banshee Just like a suburban Leprechaun....but taller, more dangerous and a certified genius. Satharn's Musings Through TimeThe Crazy Catlady of The Barony of Tir Ysgithr アニ・ノート(Ani-Nouto) Thoughtful, curmudgeonly, otakuism that pulls no punches and suffers no fools. Chizumatic Stephen Den Beste analyzes anime...with a microscope, a slide rule and a tricorder. Wonderduck Anime, Formula One Racing, Sad Girls in Snow...Duck Triumphalism Beta Waffle What will likely be the most thoroughly tested waffle evah! Zoopraxiscope Too In this thrilling sequel to Zoopraxiscope, Don, Middle American Man of Mystery, keeps tabs on anime, orchids, and absurdities. Mahou Meido MeganekkoUbu blogs on Anime, computer games and other non-vital interests Twentysided More geekery than you can shake a stick at Shoplifting in the Marketplace of Ideas Sounds like Plaigarism...but isn't Ambient IronyAll Meenuvians Praise the lathe of the maker! Hail Pixy!!