1 Naked mole rats. That was an interesting article, but it seemed liked the main point was that it will be replacing the white mouse in the lab. I feel sorry for the ugly little things; but, if you can research more with it, then that's a good thing. 

2

Not second.

 

3 Out of the way peck.

4

Not second, too

Gabe you up mighty early for a West Coast guy.  Two days in a row!

5 Hey, is it just Time Warner, or is the internet seem slow to anyone else this morning?

6 slow intertubes is a clear and troubling sign of climate change

7

MCLEAN, Va. — On the eve of the unveiling of the nation’s new Afghanistan policy, former Vice President Dick Cheney slammed President Barack Obama for projecting “weakness” to adversaries and warned that more workaday Afghans will side with the Taliban if they think the United States is heading for the exits.

In a 90-minute interview at his suburban Washington house, Cheney said the president’s “agonizing” about Afghanistan strategy “has consequences for your forces in the field.”

“I begin to get nervous when I see the commander in chief making decisions apparently for what I would describe as small ‘p’ political reasons, where he’s trying to balance off different competing groups in society,” Cheney said.

Barry had more important things to do. Like make his football video and show us what a total femme he is at every sport.

8 Fox is giving a big show of John McLame spewing about the healthscare bill.  Hey Fox, McLame is yesterday's nightmare. His mavericky bullshit meme got old in 2006.  Find a new RINO to push.

As for the CBO numbers on the cost of the bill and its impact on people who already have insurance. Based on their track record you can multiply both of those by 20 to get closer to the truth.

And the real laugh, the communists want to raise taxes to pay for sending 30K troops to the 'Stan.  BEFORE we send them.

9 BTW; PAB is teh hawt today.

10

OK, I never heard of me either. 

You think "Never Heard of It"  might be on a T shirt at the Acepoloza in Vegas?

11 For a long while, I have had an on-again, off-again fascination with Japanese anime. I was and remain a big fan of Akira, but lots of the other popular stuff either leaves me cold or just confuses the hell out of me. I loved Miyazaki's Spirited Away, was meh about Princess Mononoke. So a good friend of mine out in L.A. decides to send me the full DVD set of Neon Genesis Evangelion. So finally finished it last night, and...

...I am more convinced than ever that the Japanese simply have different notions of what constitutes dramatic storytelling than we in the West do. The begin with different axioms, draw on different assumptions about audience expectations, and rely heavily on cultural "keys" that often mystify westerners. I wasn't all that pleased with it -- it was incoherent much of the time, even for Japanese anime -- but it was very striking sometimes. However, I really don't understand the praise that is heaped upon NGE by its fans (unless, as I've said, there is some cultural subtext to it that is escaping me entirely). It wasn't dramatically satisfying in the way that Spirited Away was, and not exciting in an action-move sense as Wolf Brigade was.

My friend also sent me the Serial Experiments Lain DVDs, but if they're like NGE, I think I'll pass. Anyone else ever watch the Lain series or NGE who can fill me in on what I'm missing?

12

Carbone claimed the sovereignty of Seborga (pop. 364) from the Italian government in 1963 and took the title His Tremendousness. A former flower-grower, he produced documents from the Vatican archives to prove that the village was never the property of the House of Savoy and therefore not part of the Kingdom of Italy after 1861. He insisted that Seborga had been a sovereign state since 954, a principality from 1079, and minted its own coins after 1666.

Wasn't there a guy in England that took control of a WWII anti-aircraft battery that was outside the territorial waters and claimed it as his own nation?

13 Re: Naked Mole Rats sidebar:

SAN ANTONIO (AP) - Naked mole rats don't get cancer. They shrug off brushes with acid and age so well, some are older than the college-aged researchers handling them.

I can attest to that. I have recently gained an infestation of these little SOBs in my lawn. I have tried traps, poison, and repellents.  All to no avail. The little SOBs are superrats.

Anybody no where I can get some Kryptonite?

14 To understand anime or even appreciate it for other than a cheap laugh you have to be a skinny nerd whose idea of a fun friday night involve a fresh box of kleenexes, anime, and a two scoops of loneliness. I saw bits and pieces of that stupid shoe neo whatever on a youtube video of "Beer is Good". It looked like spanking material for 12 year boys without an internet connection.

15

Wasn't there a guy in England that took control of a WWII anti-aircraft battery that was outside the territorial waters and claimed it as his own nation?

And then a bunch of 2 bit German businessmen invited him to talk business, and while he was away stormed the battery and took his family hostage.

And then the dude hired a bunch of mercenaries and went in and kicked their asses and then put 2 of them on trial for treason.

16

To understand anime or even appreciate it for other than a cheap laugh you have to be a skinny nerd whose idea of a fun friday night involve a fresh box of kleenexes

Nah... anime is a medium not a genre dude.

That's like if the only film I ever saw was Showgirls and concluded that all movies were just badly acted softcore pornos.

"Ever see Schindler's List?"

"Nah I don't watch porno."

17 Art and "climate change." 

If the scam persists, I think I'll try to get in on it when I become funemployed.

18

...I am more convinced than ever that the Japanese simply have different notions of what constitutes dramatic storytelling than we in the West do.

My eyes used to literally cross during some of the kids show my son used to watch. "WTF?" went through my head about every 1.2 minutes.

19

I wasn't saying I had never watched any anime I just think it is retarded. I have actually watched Akira. Plot is a bunch of psychic kids on kemo are all crazy and try to kill everyone. One dude starts getting all fat and swallowing everything and people are running around shooting eachother while same fairy looking wannabe japanese gangbanger on a bike tries to be friends with the fat monster. I also watched some other one where a chick was riding an elk around the woods. Both were on Sci fi channel at odd times of the night when nothing else was on. I doubt they would win in a ratings war with a ShamWow commercial.

20 Sorry I am really bitter this morning. Some ahole stole my MP3 player out my car the other night and I keep staying up trying to catch them. I have been praying they break into my car again.

21 Just heard some news that a roadblock to the sale of NBC to Comcast (by GE) has been cleared.....How would a sale affect those we hate?

22

...I am more convinced than ever that the Japanese simply have different notions of what constitutes dramatic storytelling than we in the West do. The begin with different axioms, draw on different assumptions about audience expectations, and rely heavily on cultural "keys" that often mystify westerners.

Duh.

They're Japanese. It's a very different culture. And hell that's half the point - you get stuff in anime you won't likely get anywhere in US media. It's decidely different.

Neon Genesis Evangelion however, was highly psychological and symbolic. It was originally supposed to be shonen (action cartoon for young boys) for children, but the writer is a demented fuck who was suffering from clinical depression and had a nervous breakdown 3/4 of the way through the series, producing one of the most violent, graphic and soul-crushingly brutal anime series ever up to that time (at like 4:00PM on the kid's channel).

Shinji, Rei and Asuka are symbols of the Ego, Superego and Id.

At the end, (around the time of his nervous breakdown) the entire series becomes abstract and takes places within the characters sub-conscious.

23 November 31st, eh? I was told to expect my unicorn on that day.

24

Plot is a bunch of psychic kids on kemo are all crazy and try to kill everyone.

That's pretty typical fair for anime. And I love Akira.

But again, it's a medium and not a genre. There's some anime film out there that everyone would love, because there's all different kinds of anime films and series.

There's sports shows, romantic comedies, porn, scifi, historic period pieces, action driven content and character driven content and ends-driven allegories, psychological thrillers, cop dramas, horror flicks, high melodrama soap operas.... etc. etc.

25 Vaguely entertained by @kirstiealley complaining only two people applied for her $10/hr housekeeper job. 

26

However, I really don't understand the praise that is heaped upon NGE by its fans (unless, as I've said, there is some cultural subtext to it that is escaping me entirely). It wasn't dramatically satisfying in the way that Spirited Away was, and not exciting in an action-move sense as Wolf Brigade was.

1st of all, NO ONE likes the ending. It IS incoherant. Even the creater was displeased and redid it like 5 times with alternate endings because the first was incoherant. They ran out of time and funding and he tried to cram like 5 episodes of very abstract (and hard enough to exposit as it was) material into 2 episodes, and failed.

Beyond that, there are a lot of cultural critiques in NGE, which require some familiarity with Japanese Otaku culture to appreciate, but there's also a lot of metaphysical and psychological subtext that can go over people's heads without a fair bit of analysis.

It's got the oddity, the uniqueness, the ambitious execution of what the writer was trying to pull off, and the crushing atmosphere and powerful mood of despair that the show puts off that wins it it's fans.

It's also interesting as "art as therapy", in that it gives you a rather deep look into the mind of it's wacked out creator who was struggling with very bad depression for several years.

27 I have never even seen the show just clips on a music video. The girls were bending over showing cleavage and it looked like they all ended up gettin it on.

28
Chance of snow in Houston, that's right, HOUSTON, on friday.

The science is settled.

29 It's got the oddity, the uniqueness, the ambitious execution of what the writer was trying to pull off, and the crushing atmosphere and powerful mood of despair that the show puts off that wins it it's fans.

I get that, but I don't get it, if you know what I mean. Maybe you have to be Japanese to get it. I "get" Spirited Away; it's got a lot of Shinto elements to it, but it's quite approachable, and it's got a plot (in the Western sense) that you can follow. It resolves. NGE doesn't resolve; it just blows into weird, disconnected, incoherent pieces. And even that incoherence doesn't feel intentional, because it wasn't foreshadowed (at least not that I could tell).

Stephen Den Beste often recommends anime at his Chizumatic site, and I suppose I ought to go over to his place and see what he has to say about Lain before I dive into it....

30 MilkyLoads apologized to Krauthammer.  Safe link to NRO.

31 During these ever so embarrassing/depressing times (Odumbass not being able to stop looking in the mirror long enough to something positive for this coutry) I find it almost medicinal to just poor a glass of homemade booze and crank "Stronger than Death" by Black Label Society.

...Ahhhhh  That's MUCH better.

32 Oh yeah.  Beer and Bacon Tastings.  Look under Events

33

NGE doesn't resolve; it just blows into weird, disconnected, incoherent pieces. And even that incoherence doesn't feel intentional

No, Monty, you get it dandy.

Like I said - you're right, it doesn't. That's not a Japanese thing it's just an Eva thing.

The Japanese hated the ending too. All NGE fans will tell you, Eva rocks, but the last 2 episodes sucked and should be ignored or skipped, watching the later made movie (Neon Genesis Evangelion: End of Evangelion) with the revised ending instead. That movie takes place, chronologically, in place of the last 2 episodes.

The author didn't intend it. He f'd up, and admitted as much, the ending was incoherant and did not convey what he was trying to convey.

But that's it's ambition, at any rate. He was trying to convey concepts that are almost impossible to convey visually through the anime medium. The movie does alot better, but it's not exactly clear either. (And then the fact that this visceral psychological brutality was airing in the after school slot, which generated a lot of controversy when it was airing in japan, and led to advertiser withdrawal and funding and time issues to boot).

I'm not exaggerating and I'm not shitting you - the dude who wrote it was nuts.

Nutso. Bonkers. Screw loose. Not altogether there. And an overly emotional suicidally depressed artsy type, to boot. The show basically amounts to him psychologically flashing the audience. It's the internal monologue of him working through his depression and unhappiness with his life, externally, through the writing of the show we're all watching, unwittingly expecting entertainment.

But yeah - not all anime is at all like that but some is. Much more then you'll get in western TV. Maybe it's owing to the fact that anime creators all start off having to draw their stories (you know, painting, art), but a (relative) lot of anime creators are willing to try to be expirimental and convey these philosophical concepts in their 'art'. But that doesn't always succeed at being coherant or well done.

Take Ghost in the Shell: SAC... it's mostly done with character exposition with rather rigid dialogues where they toss off college level philosophy terms to the point of cryptic absurdity, but in between the fight scenes in an anime about an anti-terrorism squad combating civil unrest in the future, a large part of the show is really about pondering the meaning of the consciousness and the soul, and it's relation to the physical body, in a world where consciousnesses are copy/pasteable and people are replacing their body's in part or in whole with machines.

34 Chance of snow in Houston, that's right, HOUSTON, on friday.

Sorry, we already beat you. Have had snow here in SC but it did not stick.

35

In other news....

 

HOW 'BOUT THEM SAINTS??!!

36 Just saw a piece by Ed M. at HA regarding the Minaret ban in Holy Cheeseland. Here's a portion: " Even for those who see Islam itself as an existential threat anywhere it resides, the minaret ban hardly addresses the issue. After all, terrorist recruiters donÂ’t use minarets to attract and radicalize followers. ItÂ’s not the lofty architecture that makes people into crazed terrorists. The message of the ban is very much the same as Saudi ArabiaÂ’s treatment of Christians and Muslim minorities with their building code: theyÂ’re not welcome and should leave." Ed can't see more than one or two moves ahead and once again fails to understand a situation before opening his fat keyboard.

37

Monty, I'm convinced the 'anime' fad is just that, a fashion statement, similar to voting for BO or being a Yankees fan.  There's safety in numbers and no thought necessary.

38 Is Ace taking a job with Breitbart at Big Journalism?

39 Nutso. Bonkers. Screw loose. Not altogether there. And an overly emotional suicidally depressed artsy type, to boot. The show basically amounts to him psychologically flashing the audience. It's the internal monologue of him working through his depression and unhappiness with his life, externally, through the writing of the show we're all watching, unwittingly expecting entertainment.

As a student of World War II, I can only wonder if this is what losing a major war does to the males of the conquered nation.

Japanese men went from being some of the most proficient and ruthless bastards in the world to being...kotaku. Even Japanese women seem to find these dudes creepy, and hence the cratering of the Japanese birth-rate. So much of anime seems to consist of either covert or overt sexualization of children, of existential agonizing, of hyper-symbolic but impersonal violence. You rarely see, for example, one character murder another -- usually it's some giant robot laying waste to an entire city, or a nulcear explosion destroying Tokyo. (Japanese animators really love to lavish a lot of detail on large explosions -- understandable, I guess, given that they are the only people in history to be on the receiving end of not one but two nuclear bombs.)

I found Spirited Away so charming because it delved back into feudal Japan's shinto heritage. There was some ambivalence there, but a lot of real love too. Love is an emotion that seems completely alien to about 99% of the anime I have watched. I find that very odd, and rather a sad comment on Japanese culture.

40 Monty, I'm convinced the 'anime' fad is just that, a fashion statement, similar to voting for BO or being a Yankees fan.  There's safety in numbers and no thought necessary.

Oh, I don't know: I first saw Akira in the late 1980's (along with Robot Carnival). Battle of the Planets (butchered though it was) was on American TV way back in the 1970's. If it's a fad, it's been a fad for a long while. And I think Macross and Lensman* have both been around since the early 1980's or so.

*Which was based on a series of sci-fi books by an American author E.E. "Doc" Smith.

41

And I mean, besides being fairly gripping (at least until the unsatisfying ending), keeping you watching, it's just horrid. In a good way.

It's really a crushing show. You've at some point both Shinji and Atsuka breaking and going outright catatonic, the other main character Rei being damn near catatonic to start with throughout.

The relationships are perverse. The characters are all abhorrent. You're watching it and it hooks you, and you're LOOKING for some normal storytelling, some hero, some goal, some NORMALITY in a story, but it teases and doesn't deliver, none of it's there. IT's all psychological symbolism. And it's all just disgusting. It throws in the heavy despair (kind of like some parts of BSG), and you're waiting for them to overcome it... but the depressive fuck of an author just has them wallow forevermore.

You keep waiting for that oh so obvious character development you think must surely happen, that will turn Shinji into a real hero, or that relationship building interaction that will turn these forcefully individual and antagonistic kids into a team, that you'd get in any and every other story, but he never does it.

Rei is a submissive automaton, Atsuka is an cruel self-obsessed egomaniac compensating for her hidden abandoment issues, Shinji (who also has abandoment issues), the main character and the hero, is a pathetic passive aggressive effete coward, with daddy issues. He actually doesn't want to fight, really, and only saves the world because people told him to and he's too cowardly to make his own decisions and would rather take orders, and too desperate for approval. His cold and distant dad is a meglomanaical sociopath who blames his son for his mother's death.

The most normal character and the most decent and likeable of the bunch is probably the Major, who herself is an self destructive achoholic, (also with daddy issues) and in denial, who runs from all her problems until it's too late for anything but regret.

In the end, the ostensable main plot to save the earth from the quasi-explained cabbalistic Angels, is not the story. It's about a dozen things, and the actual action going on is the least of them, and the author decides toward the end the fate of the world is actually a totally unimportant subplot and not worth even resolving!

That's part of the ambition. None of that is normal. None of that is ever done in stories because it never should feasibly even work as a story.

It wasn't perfect, and has flaws, but it pulled it off pretty damn well.

42

The MSM giving reasonable (although not perfect) look at Steve McIntyre and Climategate. (Mind you, it is from what passes as a "moderate" conservative in Canada.)

43 The only Japanese film that made any sense to me was Seven Samurai.

44

Interesting Op-ed andy. But there were a couple of enlightening things in that piece.

“The worst scientific scandal of our generation,” declared one opinion writer in the Telegraph. Not quite.

So what exactly WAS the worst scientific scandal? I notice it wasn't mentioned.

The other.

On the other side are the “denialists,” who, backed by Big Oil billions, are out to prove that global warming is a hoax.

Seems this writer missed a point. That the "warmists" are certainly paid big money by grants and such.

Seems to me a big hurdle for some people to get over. And the fact that a critic may be doing it on their own never occurs to them. Obviously that critic has to be in somebody's pay.

Odd that. Scruples, morals, wanting scientific accurecy seems to never come into play. Your just being a shill.  I wonder why they think that?

45 According to HarperCollins, sales of Sarah Palin's "Going Rogue"  have exceeded 1,000,000 copies (platinum).   The publisher is also increasing the print run to a total of 2,800,000 books.   LINK

46 BREAKING: D.C. City Council Votes 11-2 for Gay Marriage Bill

Breaking? They had already announced they would vote for it.

BREAKING : The Copenhagen Conference is going to back Global Warming to the hilt.

47

I'll never have the opportunity to see a hairless rodent since our cats and the new dog practice a scorched earth policy when it comes to little critters roaming their property.

48

Monty, here'd be my anime reccomendations for you based on a wild guess of what you might like (other then Miyazaki flicks).

Trigun (series). Starts off goofy but then gets rather seriously into dealing with the consequences of pacifism and letting killers live to kill again.

Full Metal Alchemist (series) About the bond between a pair of brothers as they try to redeem themselves in a universe that might as well have been written by Milton Friedman - to acquire anything, first you must give something of equal or greater value. Even with magic alchemy there's no free lunch.

Royal Space Force: Wings of Honneamise (film) In some ways it reminds me of the Peanuts cartoons. Very subtle, dry, melancholic comedy, about astronauts in a ficticious civilization engauged in a space race to put the first man in space, taking place during a cold war.

Grave of the Fireflies (film, Japanese animated version of Schindler's List following orphans after the bombs)

And if you can find it, Galaxy Express 999, or anything else in the 'leiji matsumodo-verse'.

Most of his stuff he did back in the 70's or early 80's, and it's quite a bit different from the modern stuff. 

Arcadia of My Youth definetly harkens back to the old school notions of Japanese masculinity, although it's a bit melodramatic about it. He was the big name in anime before Miyazaki came along, but more geared toward family/child flicks toward boys rather then Miyazaki's perpetually female heroines, strong eco/nature themes and kinda feyish stories and worlds.

Captain Harlock fights even when he can't possibly win, aiming to die well, out of sheer duty (and an ideological passion for liberty, he becomes a pirate after the humans surrender to aliens). Very old fashioned stories. He loved 1 woman, who dies and he keeps her coffin on his spaceship. Him and his compatriots never cry, except when remembering the sacrifice of their fallen brethren. Except Harlock himself, he never cries at all.

Both Harlock and his enemies always tend to respect and admire one another, fighting only out of duty, and reserve their hatred only for the cowardly and opportunistic traitors and those who haven't the will to fight.

His films are kind of early steampunk space operas, the spaceships are modeled after old Galleons and fire broadsides like a naval battle despite 3d space. People fly around the universe on galatic steam trains and Harlock carries a sabre.

It's pretty heavy handed stuff but good. Ridiculously romanticized. Fatalistic. Arcadia has some allusions to WWII and the occupation. Matsumoto seems to be quite a liberal and favorable to democracy and against imperialism, but can't quite square how his fellow japanese would be so copacetic with occupation, and makes quite a few excuses for the japanese and germans.

For a Japanese perspective, Matsumoto's The Cockpit would probably be a good watch for any WWII buff. 3 fictional stories all taking place in WWII, 1 from the perspective of German scientists and pilots, one following a Kamikaze pilot, and the last Japanese infantry in the Phillipines. He doesn't paint the allied forces poorly, they're as human and as honor bound as the axis heros. But it's all fatalistic duty, noble kamikaze pilot, just following orders.

49

As for Lain... never seen it. It's suppose to be good, one of the well known greats. Lots of hype.

I might check it out sooner or later. It's suppose to be real trippy though too, and somewhat abstract.

I about had my fill of that with Boogiepop Phantom, which was entertaining but practical requires additional material/information they don't give you in the anime adaptation in order to decipher.

I don't really go to Chizumatic much, because Den Beste's taste are like polar opposite mine. Dude likes to watch cutesy moe childporney situation comedies I'd be embarassed to buy. Revolts at any violence or dark themes.

Most of my top 5 is on his "Will NEVER watch" list because of violence or something. I tend toward horror and tragedy in anime... something about the contrast with the cartoonyness makes it seem that much more powerful in the stories.

This site has great reviews. I think he's a pastor of a church or something that reviews anime in his spare time. Here's the glowing Serial Expiriments Lain review.

http://tinyurl.com/yzpvtkw

He compares it to a cross between The Matrix and Jacob's Ladder. He's got reviews up for Neon Genesis and a bunch of Miyazaki flicks for comparisons sake. You can sort them alphabetically.

50

Global warming causing longer months....November 31st ?...Libs are gonna have a field day we are DOOMED 

51 There just does not seem any way this whole powdered/pill alcohol thing can be true. And thank God for that. http://tinyurl.com/y97ql2q