Miscellaneous notes:
A few months ago I cancelled my minimal-speed DSL connection and signed up for cable internet. I am supposed to get downstream speeds of 18.5 megabytes per second, and according to online speed tests, I do. In fact, I can download a gigabyte-plus torrent in the time it takes me to shave and brush my hair. However, surfing the world wide wait web is still an exercise in patience. No matter how fast your connection is, a page that is assembled from 150 little items stored on several sluggish servers will always take forever to load, even if you have ads and Flash blocked.
By the way, if you are building a website and want to add comments, please don’t use Disqus. It takes far too long to load, if it loads at all.
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The future ain’t what it used to be: science fiction writers of 1987 speculating about 2012. SF writers are lousy prophets and sanctimonious pricks, particularly Isaac Asimov. (Via Eve Tushnet.)
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The fourth episode of Dog Days II emphasizes its descent from kid’s show to fanservice vehicle. I’ll probably keep watching Shinku and his friends, but I can no longer give the show any recommendation. (The first season is fine entertainment, and I can almost recommend it for all ages — almost.)
The fifth episode of Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita airs tomorrow. We’ll see if it continues to be the best anime satire since the first few episodes of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei.
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Here are a couple of nice magazine covers featuring warrior women.
(Via John C. Wright and The People’s Cube.)
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Sakurajima continues to be the greatest show on earth.
Note the lightning.
I like the second “warrior woman” cover, even though it’s a hoax. She really ought to be hunting moose or caribou, though.
The next issue tag from that gag cover sounds a lot like a brief description of the Fuller Memorandum. Stross went pretty sour, fast…
It’s amusing how nobody called the fall of the Soviet Union in that 1987 futurist fail. Budrys seemed to be better at that game than I would have credited at the time – he struck me as a mediocre book critic when I was growing up, reading F&SF. Nobody predicted the near-cure of AIDS… surprising shortage of second-amendment fanatics. Pournelle was very terse – the people soliciting the predictions must have been forbidding lefties, judging from the submissions.