Author: Don

If I had a hammer

The Hammer

Charles Martel

Update: Lydia McGrew comments on France and related matters.

What must be recognized is that the West does no good to the world at large by committing suicide through an excess of generosity and sentiment. Where will the refugees of thirty years from now, any of them, even a small number, turn to if Europe has become part of a Caliphate? How much can the U.S. help others or act as a beacon of freedom if its already weakened economy and infrastructure are further strained by bringing in numbers of people with problems we do not have the resources to handle? And as we turn into more of a police state in response to the terrorist threats we have fecklessly welcomed in, how much do we remain an exemplar of freedom to the nations and a place of safety for others to come to? And, finally, face this: The government of Germany, or the U.S., or France, has more of a duty to protect its own citizens from terrorist attacks than it has to welcome the destitute and oppressed from other countries. That’s just a fact. There are concentric circles of duty, though it is politically incorrect to say so.

See also What’s Wrong with the World.

Update II: Anthony Sacramone presents some notes on that magical era when Christians, Jews and Muslims lived in harmony in medieval Spain.

CO2 and SO2

Volcano Café has compiled a convenient list of the nine “New Decade Volcano Program” candidates announced thus far and invited speculation about the top spot on the list. A few weeks ago I wrote about Lake Kivu in the East African Rift, which is ominously close to Nyiragongo. I guessed then that a volcanic complex involving the lake would be first or second on the list, and I still think so. The most dangerous volcano on the planet, to the best of my (superficial) knowledge, is likely the Nyiragongo/Lake Kivu combination.

Continue reading “CO2 and SO2“

Odds and ends

Life is annoyingly busy, and I will have less time than usual for maintaining my websites until the middle of December. Expect even less activity here than usual. There might occasionally be posts of miscellaneous nonsense, such as what follows, but probably not much more.

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Magical algorithm 1

Flickr recently introduced a “camera roll” feature that displays thumbnails of your pictures arranged either by the date taken or according to its “magic view,” which sorts them into subject-based categories. The algorithms for the latter need a little refinement.

Magical algorithm 2

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Details, details

Paphiopedilum "Tokyo Black Knight"

Saturday was the fall orchid show at the botanical garden. Although it was Halloween, Dracula vampira 1 was missing. However, there were plenty of others to photograph, some spectacular, some bizarre.

The show gave me an opportunity to test Helicon Focus, another focus-stacking application. The picture above was compiled from four slices using the default settings, the one below from five.

Holcoglossum wrangii

I also ran a stack of images that Photoshop had trouble with through Helicon. It did much better, though the result could be just a tad sharper. The lack of resolution might be due to the particular settings, and once I figure everything out I might be able to get better results. (The same set processed by Zerene Stacker can be seen here.)

Bidens bipinnata

Demon cats and other holiday fun

Such a sweet smile
So it’s Halloween, and you’d like to watch some spooky anime, preferably available online legally for free? There are some suggestions here, but there are other series I prefer. For monsters, there’s the currently-airing Ushio and Tora. For Shinto 101 and yokai, there’s Natsume Yuujin-cho. But my first choice is Mononoke, Kenji Nakamura‘s first series and still his best. The medicine seller’s investigations are as much moral detective stories as horror shows, informed by a stringent sense of justice. If you merely want to be scared out of your wits, there are many other shows to choose from, but if you want a work of art worth rewatching and thinking about, try Mononoke.

The medicine seller

Definitely not Jeeves

Black Butler

I watched the first episode of Black Butler years ago and decided that it was not for me. Nevertheless, I’d like to attend tonight’s performance of OperAnime, which combines the peculiar anime with an opera from 1880. Unfortunately, the event is being held outdoors, and it is likely to rain all evening.

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I may need to watch this week’s episode of My Little Pony. What would Ranma’s cutie mark be?

MLP-Friendship Is Anime

The microwave of doom

Death on a paper plate?

The dangers of dihydrogen monoxide are well-known, but there are other hazards that you might have been unknowingly exposed to. For instance, studies have demonstrated that over 93% of all cancer patients have at some time inhaled O2, a powerful oxidizer. More than 87% of people with bipolar personality have looked at a full moon without adequate eye protection. Anecdotal evidence suggests that individuals exhibiting egregious political activism ingested acetylsalicylic acid during childhood. It has been hypothesized that the majority of people who during early adulthood order a steak rather than a salad will not live to see their 100th year.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have important culinary matters to attend to.

Murder and meh-hem

Imperfection

The Perfect Insider has very good opening and closing animations. The stuff in between, which falls somewhere between a locked-room mystery and And Then There Were None and concerns people tediously self-conscious of their high IQs, is less enthralling. I did spot a pair of red half-rim spectacles, though. If there were any rubber ducks, I missed them.

Speaking of ATTWN, here’s Eve Tushnet on Agatha Christie: “Never trust the cute ones.”

Notes from the Psychiatric Center for Research on Regressive Tendencies

Various odds and ends:

Fillyjonk linked to an old but not outdated story by Ray Bradbury, “The Murderer.” I found a couple of other favorites, “The Veldt” and “The Pedestrian.”

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Perhaps not entirely unrelated to the Bradbury stories:

Having time each day merely to amuse oneself, or just to sit and think, greatly improves one’s life. Yet we’re practically taught to avoid such periods – to stay as busy as possible virtually all the time. The emphasis on work, on “multitasking” (which, as a former expert in the architecture of multitasking operating systems for embedded devices, I can assure you is always an illusion) and on achieving ever more per unit time is using us up in ways we don’t always perceive and even less often appreciate. You’d almost suspect that time spent in introspection had been deemed an offense against the social norms.

(Via Dustbury.)

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While Sakurajima is ominously quiet, in the South Indian Ocean Piton de la Fournaise is putting on a modest, colorful show.

Continue reading “Notes from the Psychiatric Center for Research on Regressive Tendencies”

Japanese dream

Roger, who is spending the current semester in Japan, recorded a theme from Someday’s Dreamers, playing both the piano and fiddle parts. Unfortunately, I don’t know how to embed Facebook videos on my site, but you can listen here.

Update: It’s on YouTube now.

Update II: Roger with some of his Japanese friends playing a different sort of music: