Trivia that matter
I’m not compiling a top-ten list of this year’s anime because I didn’t watch ten series all the way through. These are the shows that I started and didn’t quit watching in disgust or boredom.
Tolerable
I Couldn’t Be a Hero, So …: It sagged badly in the middle, and there was more fanservice than I care for throughout. However, Yu-Shibu pulled itself together for a satisfying grand finale. Also, any show that espouses the free market deserves credit.
We got about four inches of snow last night. I snapped a few pictures at a nearby steel company this morning. It’s possible that some of it will still be on the ground Wednesday.
… Ken the Brickmuppet condemned by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Details here.
*****
For those of you who use your computer to make noise, Native Instruments is offering a nice little compressor for free through the end of the year. NI’s Mikro Prism is another interesting freebie, a soft synth with a distinctive sound.
*****
![Dark [K]night](http://shuffly.net/zoop/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/night.jpg)
(Via man with black hat.)
Life is busier than usual right now, and it will be a week or two before I have time for a proper post. Until then, here are a few odds and ends.
• The true and proper words to the traditional Christmas carol:
• Some more silly stuff I’ve come across recently:
• If Kyousougiga ends well as well as it began, it likely will be the second-best show of 2013 (I don’t expect any current series to top the second half of Shin Sekai Yori). Here’s a tune from the OST that illustrates one aspect of the show. If Carl Stalling wrote anime music, it might sound something like this:
• Kill la Kill is currently in the middle of a tournament arc. Once that’s resolved, I expect that the show will shift gears, and then we’ll see just how good it really is.
• Arpeggio of Blue Steel, when it isn’t annoyingly silly, has been a surprisingly good series. Ubu has more to say about it. See Jusuchin for episode-by-episode discussions, with plentiful spoilers.
• Despite my better judgement, I’m still watching I couldn’t, so, etc. The creators can’t decide whether it’s a comedy, a fanservice vehicle, an action story or a romance; too often, it’s none of the above. Still, it’s just interesting enough that I want to see what happens. I wish Fino were in a better show with better writers.
• Today’s quote:
History is satire, and histories that are simply serious are simply false.
Something I came across this morning: Christian “popular” music that isn’t embarrassing. ((Although there are many good musicians who are seriously religious, the only one marketed as a “Christian” performer whom I enjoy listening to is Phil Keaggy, a superb guitarist and pretty good singer and songwriter.)) In 1976, Sister Irene O’Connor, a Franciscan nun in Australia, recorded the album Fire of God’s Love, playing every instrument and singing every vocal part. It wasn’t exactly a runaway hit in its day, and the vinyl now is a fabulous rarity. Here’s the reverb-drenched “Fire (Luke 12:49)” from the album:
Far more listenable than anything the St. Louis Jesuits and their ilk ever produced (faint praise, yes). You can listen to two more tracks here, but apparently that’s all there is of the album that’s online.
Sister O’Connor is still around and making music. There’s an interview with her here, and she has a facebook page.
On the way to work this morning.
In the ninth episode of I Couldn’t Think of a Proper Title, Fino, the daughter of the Demon Lord, receives her first paycheck in the human world and goes shopping. (If the pictures are not visible, click on the boxes where they should be.)
Update: … and it’s fading away. The weather was cloudy most mornings before Thanksgiving week, so I didn’t see it when it was bright. At least I caught PanSTARRS with my camera earlier this year.
I gather that there are a bunch of football games going on today on planet Earth. The game I’m interested in is happening about 93 million miles away less that an hour from now.
Update (1:08 p.m. CST): It’s not looking good for ISON.
Nintendo games are hopelessly sexist and racist. Fortunately, the Diversity Chronicle is here to call them out:
Invariably in virtually all of these Mario games Mario rescues the princess. In other words the old sexist staple tale plays out. The weak, docile, insecure woman is captured and kidnapped. Unable to defend herself or rescue herself, she invariably waits for a man, in this case Mario. This is nothing but sexist gender-stereotyping for children.
My life-partner is a very resourceful woman. I would like to think that if she were ever kidnapped she could even rescue herself. She wouldn’t have to wait around for some man to do it! That’s not her style, she’s a strong, intelligent and independent woman! I would never try to demean the woman I love by attempting to rescue her. Nor would I dishonour her by asking violent racially-profiling reactionaries like the police to go out and try to find her!
The Zelda games are no better:
Zelda and Link are depicted as Nordic Aryans, albeit with dwarf like ears, reminiscent of something out of old Nordic Viking mythology. If Richard Wagner, that old Anti-Semitic Nordic supremacist had been alive today he would probably be creating video games like Zelda. In fact the latest Zelda game features music recorded from an actual orchestra. How many people of colour do you think there are in a typical orchestra? The conductors are invariably old white men, it never fails! Haven’t we had enough of this tired old white man music? Why can’t Nintendo adopt vibrant African or Rastafarian music? Maybe some Bob Marley?
… Dr. Who debuted. If it had been an anime, it might have looked something like this:
What’s the word? Oh, and stop by Google today if you haven’t already. Update: the doodle is archived here.
If you want do something special to observe the fiftieth anniversary of November 22, 1963, I suggest rereading Brave New World or Till We Have Faces.
… until Beethoven’s birthday. (Via Fillyjonk.)
If a pop song isn’t based on the Pachelbel chords, it likely uses the Sensitive Female Chord Progression, I-V-vi-IV.
Episode seven of Arpeggio of Blue Steel was mostly just plain silly, with the “mental models” of the warships behaving like infatuated adolescents. The show is partly about about artificial (or alien) intelligence, as embodied by the models, acquiring human-like emotions and behavior, but this was ridiculous. Oh, yeah, it was a beach episode, too. It was set on Iwoto/Iwo Jima, and, as I anticipated, there was no indication that the writers had any awareness of the geological nature of the island.
Episode seven of Kill la Kill was also subpar. All the absurd invention and energy couldn’t redeem the trite moral: wealth isn’t necessarily a blessing. (I would like to verify that for myself, though. Would anyone care to subsidize a few months of luxury for me?) It’s still worth watching, but I expected something better.
Incidentally, I recently discovered that Kazuki Nakashima, the “series composition” guy for Kill la Kill, also wrote the play that Oh! Edo Rocket was based on.
Just another weekend at Mt. Etna.
Man-made vs. natural disasters:
During the last year or so I have had reason to study Sweden’s largest environmental disaster, the Nautanen Mining field. The Nautanen mines where active from 1902 until 1909 and in comparison to other Swedish mines the Nautanen field is puny. Still it releases more heavy metals into the surrounding waters than all other Swedish mines, historic and present, put together. It is estimated that if Nautanen is left without any measures taken somewhere in the range of 50 to 100 tons of heavy metals (mainly copper) will be released into the surrounding waters….
Let us go through what was released during [Pinatubo’s] VEI-6 eruption. While reading the numbers keep in mind the Nautanen maximum figure of 100 tons of heavy metals. Pinatubo produced 800 000 tons of zinc, 600 000 tons of copper, 550 000 tons of chromium, 300 000 tons of nickel, 100 000 tons of lead, 10 000 tons of arsenic, 1 000 tons of cadmium and 800 tons of mercury. All of it in the form of ash that was spread not only locally in layers tens of meters thick, it was also dispersed across the globe.
The concentration of heavy metals is so high that it causes birth defects, cancer, neurological disorders, liver and renal failure, heart and lung deceases and the list just goes on and on. It has been estimated that Pinatubo has shortened the lifespan on the island of Luzon by as much as a decade. That equates to 7 000 000 people in mortality if we recount the lost life years into average human life expectancy in the Philippines.
This is a joke, right?
“In an article on Saturday headlined ‘Flying saucers over British Scientology HQ’, we stated ‘two flat silver discs’ were seen ‘above the Church of Scientology HQ’. Following a letter from lawyers for the Church, we apologise to any alien lifeforms for linking them to Scientologists.”
I’d suggest harvesting organs from legislators, but that brain-death issue would still be a factor.
I’ve been watching Haiyan the way I watched Katrina in in 2005. This is going to be much worse. (Click the graphic to see the animation. Note the bakeneko that forms above the core of the storm.)
If this were a tornado, its sustained winds would make it an upper-end EF4. With gusts up to to 235 mph — well, you just wouldn’t want to be there.
