I'm in the future. Like hundreds of years in the future. I've been dead for centuries.
Oh, lovely, you're a cheery one aren't you?

Sgt. Bullfrog

Sergeant Stryker runs a warblog;
It's a long-time fav'rite of mine.
I never disagree with a word he says,
And I help him keep the lefties in line.

Singing
All our boys and girls,
'Gainst the tyrants of the world,
Depth charge the fishies in the deep blue sea,
Sushi for you and me.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:05 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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The Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect

Fearless Leader links to another speech by Michael Crichton, this time on speculation (also known as "wild-assed guesses" or "making stuff up") in the media. Here's what jumped out at me in particular:

Media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved. You have all experienced this, in what I call the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. (I refer to it by this name because I once discussed it with Murray Gell-Mann, and by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have.)

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

We've all seen this. I know computers. Not everything about them, but I've dropped out of a Computer Science degree, and on my own time I've studied every relevant topic from solid-state physics to psychology. And the great majority of what is printed in the newspapers regarding computers is, frankly, rubbish. I don't even notice this any more, unless it's a close relative being misquoted (I come from a geeky family) or a particularly obtuse reporter failing to understand anything about the concept of open source. It's what I expect.

I've seen reports on events that I was personally involved in that, if I was lucky, touched on accuracy once or twice within a dozen paragraphs of nonsense. I don't bother to read the paper at all these days. I don't even buy it for the TV guide, since I don't watch TV more than twice a year now that Buffy and Futurama are gone. (That is, I don't watch broadcast TV; I watch plenty of DVDs and downloaded video.)

About the only thing that many newspapers are good for now is to let you know that there is a story, so that you can go and find out the facts yourself.

The cure I found for the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect was the New York Times. The nonsense they were printing in the first half of last year was so egregious that it became obvious even on subjects I didn't know anything about. Oh, and blogs too.

Read The Whole Thing.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:42 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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And Sometimes A Pig

... is just a pig. Since the cat and the rabbit are shinigami (death spirits), one had to wonder about the pig. But no.

Pixy Misa is still watching: Full Moon wo Sagashite

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:35 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Full Moon

In episode 19, Full Moon wo Sagashite breaks the mould. If you've ever watched a Magical Girl show, and thought Things would be so much simpler if she would just...

Well, in episode 19, Mitsuki does.

It will be very interesting to see where it goes from here, because in Magical Girl shows, you just don't do that. (Waiting now for my readers to present innumerable counterexamples.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:05 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Subsubsub Genre

Has anyone worked out a classification system for anime series about young girls who long to be idol singers and are suddenly granted the power to turn into teenagers and launched into a successful but traumatic career?

Taking into account such factors as the species of their talking animal companions, whether or not they are dying of cancer, that sort of thing?

Just wondering, that's all.

It's getting as bad as robot maids and schoolgirls falling into parallel universes that only they can save.

Pixy Misa is currently watching: Full Moon wo Sagashite

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:36 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Aha!

A little reading up on DNS and Apache, and now I know how to set up blogs without... Well, without all that tedious mucking about with DNS and Apache.

Yay!

This will come in handy if I ever need to set up another blog...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:30 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Giant Snake Alert

Strike Sumatra off your list of holiday spots, folks:

A TINY zoo in Indonesia is holding a 15m python captured in a forest in Sumatra.

If its vital statistics are confirmed, the python could be the world's longest snake.

The reptile measures 14.85m and weighs in at 447kg, the Suara Merdeka regional newspaper reported.

The serpent, which staff in the small recreation park have christened Kembang Wangi or Frangrant Flower, was found in a forest in Jambi on the island of Sumatra.

The snake, which was bought from its captor before being put on show, could be the largest serpent found in nearly 100 years.

According to the Guinness Book of Records, the world's longest snake ever captured was a reticulated python, which was 10m long, and shot in Celebes Indonesia in 1912.

Of course, that means that this is the largest serpent found ever. If it was the largest in 100 years, that would mean that some snake was found previously that was even larger.

Anyway, I've seen it on TV. I can't say for sure if it's 15 metres long, but it's one big slithering hisser.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:12 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Happy New Year!

My neighbours were busy taking photos of the fireworks... With the flash on. That'll work real well.

Okay, so it's only the new year for little kids so far - there's more and noisier fireworks about three hours from now. But sometimes I am only ten years old.

2004, eh? Where's my flying car? I was promised a flying car!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:13 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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