Ecchi!

AP: $10M Prize for Hydrogen Fuel Technology

Scientists, inventors and entrepreneurs will be able to vie for a grand prize of $10 million, and smaller prizes reaching millions of dollars, under House-passed legislation to encourage research into hydrogen as an alternative fuel.

This is pretty cool! But what are they calling it?

The H-Prize.

XD

Legislation creating the "H-Prize," modeled after the privately funded Ansari X Prize that resulted last year in the first privately developed manned rocket to reach space twice, passed the House Wednesday on a 416-6 vote. A companion bill is to be introduced in the Senate this week.

Via Slashdot.

Exhausted and happy

My job is so fulfilling.

Today we all got free pizza for our hard work covering the Linda Schrenko trial. Later, I was told that the E-Alert I sent out concerning Schrenko's plea bargain had made it out five minutes before the Chronicle sent theirs.

Do I rock, or do I rock?

It is so much fun working in the news.

And I love my position, because I have powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men--err, you know, I run the website. I get to use what my boss calls my "expertise". I'm not autonomous--I have to run changes past her--but typically my ideas are very well-received, and I'm free to implement them.

Our Schrenko reporter has showered me with praise lately, too.

I hardly notice when I work through lunch or stay late, because I'm good at what I do and I enjoy doing it.

It's great. :)

It doesn't erase what happened to Kazuya

And nor should it. It doesn't cringe away from life. It's real. It's one of the most real anime I have ever seen.

Things aren't black and white, and yet decisions still matter, and everything is a "what if".

What if Tatsuya had run after Kazuya to give him the good luck charm?

What if he'd never admitted his feelings for Minami, even indirectly?

What if Minami had gone with Kazuya to the meeting?

What if she'd let him kiss her, even though she didn't want him to?

They feel responsible, and because of that they feel they can't be together.

And there is such a long road to redemption ahead.

Minami has to grow too, and become less of a cheerleader and more self-reliant.

And Tatsuya has to give up on chasing a shadow and be who he is.

And you're left wondering...would either of them have grown, had Kazuya lived?

Did he die so they could mature?

Do they feel responsible for that, too?

I know it gets better

I know Tatsuya grows, and works hard, and learns who he is, and is finally able to separate his identity from his brother's. And he's finally able to accept Minami's love, and she's finally able to give it. And through their ordeal they bring another man back from the brink of self destruction.

I know it gets better.

But that doesn't erase what happened to Kazuya.

I know you've been missing them

I realized the other day that I hadn't uploaded photos in over half a month. My mom was starting to wonder if there was something wrong with me.

Never fear! I was still taking photos; I just hadn't gotten around to uploading them.

That situation has been rectified.

2006/04/18 - Lunchbreak in the park near work

2006/04/18-2 - Greeneway after work

2006/04/27 - Greeneway and Hammond's Ferry construction

2006/05/03 - Back roads near Georgia and Knox Avenues, North Augusta

There are also some pictures of the apartment you might not have seen, starting here with our second set of dishes. They match the kitchen!

Rewatching Touch

And the lemons are nigh.

There is an amazing amount of foreshadowing that I never noticed before, too. A glance between characters, an offhand comment...

I understood Tatsuya well enough before, but seeing his decisions again with the knowledge of why he's making them adds a whole new layer to the experience.

I wonder how things would have gone if he'd joined the baseball club despite Minami being the manager. Would he have become the backup pitcher? The regular pitcher?

Would Kazuya have left earlier or later the day of their first Koushien?

Does Tatsuya ever think about this? Does he regret?

He already regrets so many things.

It's going to be painful to get there and watch it all again.

Growing as a writer...through blogging

It always surprises me to see how my blogging style has changed (for the better) over the years. Today I reread my Pulp Fiction post in the process of writing about movie memories, and it really drove that point home.

Back when I first started blogging, I would mix topics and go off on tangents that were mainly uninteresting and didn't even relate to the rest of the post. As essays, these posts clearly fail. I've noticed that nowadays, when I'm writing something and a new idea occurs to me, I think about whether or not it will fit in the current post before I add it. Two examples: my Kyou Kara Maou post from last night (which, admittedly, isn't very well-written) has a tangent that I didn't think detracted too much. The subject wasn't meaty enough to warrant its own post, but I wanted to mention it. And today, while writing about movies, I wondered if I should include my thoughts about my personality, how I'm afraid I'm too naive in many respects, how I subscribe to the "Shibuya Yuuri school of diplomacy", how these thoughts relate to my reaction to the Moussaoui verdict, and what kind of president I think I would be. Obviously these things stray wildly from the point at hand...so I chose to reserve them for later.

I see my posts now as individual capsules. If I link to one of them, I'd like for people to know immediately why there was a link, and not have to stumble through random remarks about what I've eaten that day and references (without links!) to other posts. Reading that Pulp Fiction post really made me cringe, and I'm terribly tempted to go back and edit it.

But I'm the type who likes to leave things as they originally existed, "for the record", so if I ever do edit that post, I'll leave the original up too.

Scary movies

Andy Gray asks, "What was the first movie you ever saw? And the first time you experienced terror in a movie theater?"

I remember wanting to see a movie in the theater, and not being able to, but I don't know if I had seen a movie before that time or not. I think the movie was Snow White, and Mom and I (and the boys, probably) were walking in a mall, and I saw a poster for the movie and asked if we could see it. It's hard to remember exactly what the place looked like, but I think we were in Turfland Mall, because Mom used to always take us to the Walgreens there.

She said no, and I thought it was unfair, but the truth was we really couldn't afford to go to the movies, and we probably didn't have time, either. What with Mom's 36-hour weekend work schedule and Dad's inconsistent journeyman wireman jobs, it was hard for us to get out a lot.

I do know that one time we managed to see E.T. at a drive-in. I think we had the station wagon at the time, because I remember lying on blankets in the back. You could lower all the seats behind the driver into a flat surface, so I think that's what we did. It was late at night, and I fell asleep. Years later, I finally watched E.T. in its entirety on TV.

There is one other movie memory from my youth that is also my scary movie memory. Mom took us to the theater to see Baby, a movie about a baby dinosaur. Only there were dinosaur hunters in the movie, and during one scene they attack and kill the baby's mother. The scene was so upsetting that we left immediately; I have never seen the whole movie, nor do I have any desire to.

I was always the type to be very sensitive to what happened in the story. Many things scared and upset me. As such, I have avoided standard horror movies into my adulthood.

During college I did discover that I enjoy some thrillers (Breakdown), gory action movies (Desperado), and dark comedies (Grosse Pointe Blank).

It's only in recent years that I've seen films like Carrie (and not in its entirety), Event Horizon (terrible--and not because it was scary, it was just stupid), and Piranha (which was hilarious). As longtime readers know, my attempt at watching Pulp Fiction was unsuccessful.

Kyou Kara Maou names

It's been interesting to see the name spellings in the Geneon DVDs as opposed to the fansubs.

I've mentioned Conrart Weller and Dorcas/Dakaskos before, but I don't think I commented on Khrennikov/Karbelnikoff yet.

But the real point of this post is that I just got three more DVDs, and that means I've gotten to later characters.

Rinji von Wincott is now Lindsay, which I guess is okay except that he's a boy. I don't think ji sounds very much like the zi in Lindsay, but it's possible that's what they were going for. (The Japanese language doesn't have a /zi/ sound.)

And "Flurin" (the fansubbers' version) is "Flynn". In the roundup episodes, I noticed that the katakana is furin, which would make "Flurin" wrong anyway. I would think "Flynn" would be furiin, but what do I know?

Jim Breen's WWWJDIC agrees that rinjii is "Lindsey"/"Lyndsay" and furin is "Flynn". Do the Geneon translators use the WWWJDIC to help them, or are these pretty standard name transcriptions?

Regardless, I think I do like "Flynn" better than "Flurin".

But Wolfram's name for Pochi was "Liesel" in the fansub, and on the DVD it's "Reese-aire". Surely that's a mistake, right? "Liesel" is so much better...

Other changes:

Big Shimaron => Big Cimaron
Saralegui => Salaregui
Bandarbia => Van Da Via
Yozak => Josak

There are more, but I'm tired of writing this post. You can see a few of them here.

I like that the DVDs translate soukoku as "double-black". So many of the scenes make soooo much more sense that way.

Tangent: There's a Kyou Kara Maou RP Livejournal community, and the players' names are hilarious. I mean, you've gotta love someone called "knittingismanly". And don't forget "hero_in_a_skirt".

(By the way, I don't really recommend actually reading that RP...unless you're into gratuitous pairings-off, and the fanfic "escapades" thereof. I'll just say this: ShourixYuuri = ick. However! Anissina's journal is fairly interesting, and well-written.)

Moussaoui verdict

People keep saying things like the jury "spared his life" and that they decided "he didn't deserve" to die, making it seem like the decision was favorable to Moussaoui. But I'm not so sure it is. Wouldn't he have preferred to die immediately, to be martyred for his cause? Won't he suffer more now, living out the rest of his life locked away from the rest of the world?

Moussaoui's mother and Judge Leonie Brinkema seem to agree with me.

Brinkema firmly refused to be interrupted by the 37-year-old defendant as she disputed his claim that his life sentence meant America had lost and he had won.

"Mr. Moussaoui, when this proceeding is over, everyone else in this room will leave to see the sun ... hear the birds ... and they can associate with whomever they want," she said.

She went on: "You will spend the rest of your life in a supermax prison. It's absolutely clear who won."

And she said it was proper he will be kept away from outsiders, unable to speak publicly again.

"Mr. Moussaoui, you came here to be a martyr in a great big bang of glory," she said, "but to paraphrase the poet T.S. Eliot, instead you will die with a whimper."

At that point, Moussaoui tried again to interrupt her, but she raised her voice and spoke over him.

"You will never get a chance to speak again and that's an appropriate ending."

[...]

Moussaoui's mother Aicha El Wafi, pressed for her country to intervene, CBS News correspondent Elaine Cobbe reports. "Now he is going to die in little doses," she said. "He is going to live like a rat in a hole. What for? They are so cruel."

And so is he.

Chaucer helps you get it on

Because

a whetstone is no kervyng instrument, yet it maketh sherpe kervynge toolis.

From Chaucer's blog, GALFRIDUS CHAUCERES LYNES OF PICKE-VPPE.

Yf thou were a latyn tretise ich wolde putte thee in the vernacular.

[...]

Woldstow haue me shyfte thyne voweles?

[...]

Makstow a pilgrymage heere often?

[...]

By my soule, thou art a verye mappe of helle. For thy face lyk the rivere Styx wil make me swere oothes neuer to be fforsworn, and thy embrace lyk the Lethe shal make me foryet al else, and lyk vnto the Flegeton thyn arse ys ON FYRE!

XD

Immigrant issues in Europe

This is an interesting development. From the Washington Post:

Paula Mitchell, cutting fresh flowers in the Gale Street Florist shop in east London, said she's voting for candidates of the British National Party in local elections on Thursday -- but she hopes they lose.

"If they got in, I'd be absolutely horrified," said Mitchell, 38, who described her planned ballot for the vehemently anti-immigration BNP as a protest against what she sees as out-of-control immigration to Britain.

"We're against people coming in and taking our jobs, taking our school places, getting priority in housing," said Mitchell. "Everyone is fed up, and we want to make our feelings known."

The BNP declares itself "wholly opposed to any form of racial integration between British and non-European peoples." It seeks to restore the overwhelmingly white makeup of Britain before 1948; its leader has called Islam a "wicked, vicious faith." Support from people like Mitchell, a white mother of three whose political views otherwise appear generally mainstream, illustrates rising anti-immigration sentiment in Britain and across Europe.

Parties long dismissed by many as the racist fringe have become increasingly popular as governments that once freely accepted immigrants question how many more their nations can take.

"It should be a worry for all Western democracies," said Nick Lowles of Searchlight, an anti-racist group that publishes a magazine in Britain. Lowles said many voters were turning to extremist parties to vent anger at their political leaders. "People are shouting out," he said, "and they want to be heard."

In France, a public opinion poll last month showed that more than a third of respondents believed the anti-immigrant National Front, led by the outspoken Jean-Marie Le Pen, was in line with "the concerns of French people." Numbers like that could make the party a power in presidential elections next year.

The anti-immigration Danish People's Party in Denmark and Progress Party in Norway, meanwhile, both reached record levels of the vote -- 13 and 22 percent, respectively -- in elections last year.

Will this sort of shift take longer in the US, given our country's size?

I really find the idea of British people secretly voting for an obviously racist political party intriguing, and scary. I understand why they're doing it, but ick. What if that happened here in the US...can you imagine the riots?

(Living in "flyover country" ;P, I might not have to deal directly with something like that, but it would still have an impact on me emotionally, and probably economically.)

ORIGINAL STAR WARS TRILOGY ON DVD!!!!!!!!

OMGOMGOMGOMGOMG

In response to overwhelming demand, Lucasfilm Ltd. and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment will release attractively priced individual two-disc releases of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Each release includes the 2004 digitally remastered version of the movie and, as bonus material, the theatrical edition of the film. That means you'll be able to enjoy Star Wars as it first appeared in 1977, Empire in 1980, and Jedi in 1983.

Via Kelly.

Man! I half-wondered if I'd ever see the original versions again, after I lost all my VHS tapes and laserdiscs in the stupid fire.

I love that we get both the cleaned-up versions and the original versions. :D :D :D :D

Note that they didn't call Star Wars by its retcon name, A New Hope. They've been trying for years now to rewrite history, to say that the movie's name is Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope, or A New Hope for short. But the movie's name is Star Wars, damn it. Maybe they've finally given up. ;)

New (to me) opinion writer

Mom sent me an article by a gentleman named Shelby Steele today. It is really interesting.

White Guilt and the Western Past

There is something rather odd in the way America has come to fight its wars since World War II.

For one thing, it is now unimaginable that we would use anything approaching the full measure of our military power (the nuclear option aside) in the wars we fight. And this seems only reasonable given the relative weakness of our Third World enemies in Vietnam and in the Middle East. But the fact is that we lost in Vietnam, and today, despite our vast power, we are only slogging along--if admirably--in Iraq against a hit-and-run insurgency that cannot stop us even as we seem unable to stop it. Yet no one--including, very likely, the insurgents themselves--believes that America lacks the raw power to defeat this insurgency if it wants to. So clearly it is America that determines the scale of this war. It is America, in fact, that fights so as to make a little room for an insurgency.

Certainly since Vietnam, America has increasingly practiced a policy of minimalism and restraint in war. And now this unacknowledged policy, which always makes a space for the enemy, has us in another long and rather passionless war against a weak enemy.

Why this new minimalism in war?

It began, I believe, in a late-20th-century event that transformed the world more profoundly than the collapse of communism: the world-wide collapse of white supremacy as a source of moral authority, political legitimacy and even sovereignty.

It's a fascinating article; give it a read.

Mr. Steele has written other intriguing pieces, including the following:

Selma to San Francisco? Same-sex marriage is not a civil rights issue.

The true problem with gay marriage is that it consigns gays to a life of mimicry and pathos. It shoehorns them into an institution that does not reflect the best possibilities of their own sexual orientation. Gay love is freed from the procreative burden. It has no natural function beyond adult fulfillment in love. If this is a disadvantage when children are desired, it is likely an advantage when they are not--which is more often the case. In any case, gays can never be more than pretenders to an institution so utterly grounded in procreation. And dressing gay marriage in a suit of civil rights only consigns gays to yet another kind of mimicry. Stigma, not segregation, is the problem gays face. But insisting on a civil rights framework only leads gays into protest. But will protest affect stigma? Is "gay lovers as niggers" convincing? Protest is trying to hit the baseball with the glove.

The problem with so much mimicry is that it keeps gays from evolving institutions and rituals that reflect the true nature of homosexuality. Assuming, as I do, that gays should have the option of civil unions that afford them the legal prerogatives of marriage, isn't it more important after that to allow quiet self-acceptance to lead the way to authentic institutions?

Hillary's Plantation

Precisely because Republicans cannot easily pander to black grievance, they have no need to value blacks only for their sense of grievance. Unlike Democrats, they can celebrate what is positive and constructive in minority life without losing power. The dilemma for Democrats, liberals and the civil rights establishment is that they become redundant and lose power the instant blacks move beyond grievance and begin to succeed by dint of their own hard work. So they persecute such blacks, attack their credibility as blacks, just as they pander to blacks who define their political relationship to America through grievance. Republicans are generally freer of the political bigotry by which the left either panders to or persecutes black Americans.

Witness

In the '60s--the first instance of open mutual witness between blacks and whites in American history--a balance of power was struck between the races. The broad white acknowledgment of racism meant that whites would be responsible both for overcoming their racism and for ending black poverty because, after all, their racism had so obviously caused that poverty. For whites to suggest that blacks might be in some way responsible for their own poverty would be to relinquish this responsibility and, thus, to return to racism. So, from its start in the '60s, this balance of power (offering redemption to whites and justice to blacks) involved a skewed distribution of responsibility: Whites, and not blacks, would be responsible for achieving racial equality in America, for overcoming the shames of both races--black inferiority and white racism. And the very idea of black responsibility would be stigmatized as racism in whites and Uncle Tomism in blacks.

[...]

Bill Cosby's recent demand that poor blacks hold up "their end of the bargain" and do a better job of raising their children was explosive because it threatened this balance. Mr. Cosby not only implied that black responsibility was the great transforming power; he also implied that there was a limit to what white responsibility could do. He said, in effect, that white responsibility cannot overcome black inferiority. This is a truth so obvious as to be mundane. Yet whites won't say it in the interest of their redemption and blacks won't say it in the interest of historical justice. It is left to hurricanes to make such statements.

I think I may start reading this guy regularly.

Captchas for the visually impaired

I haven't enabled captchas on my blog, partly because I think they're annoying, partly because I really haven't had trouble with spam comments that I know of (I must not be popular ;_;), and partly because the Blogger captchas weren't accessible to the visually impaired--if you can't see, and your browser can't read the captcha to you (which is kind of the whole point of captchas, not being machine-readable), then you can't post a comment.

I'm pleased to say that the last issue has been resolved.

Good for Blogger!

Sushicam has an interesting captcha system: instead of being some weird warped letter-number combination that you have to read and type in, it's a math problem. I thought that was a unique solution, though I wonder how long it will take for spam proggies to be programmed to pick out the numbers and the math terms and figure out what the answer should be.