In that thread, one poster notes that Haruhi is like an anti-Yurie (from Kamichu!) because [spoiler spoiler spoiler]. Interesting point.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:50 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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1) Repeal the estate tax repeal: No. All it does is force people to restructure their finances. Estate taxes are transaction fees, not taxes as such, and excessive transaction fees simply lead to shifts in transactions. The proposal to charge substantial fees for wire transfers to Mexico is idiotic for precisely the same reason.

2) Increase the minimum wage and index it to the CPI: No. Ask for a raise if you think you've earned it.

3) Universal health care: Define it. Australia has universal health care, more or less, and it hasn't run our economy into the ground yet. But if your life isn't at risk right this minute, you could be waiting quite a while for that operation.

4) Increase CAFE standards: Stamp out Starbucks! I have no idea what this is.

5) Pro-reproductive rights, getting rid of abstinence-only education, improving education about and access to contraception including the morning after pill, and supporting choice: Mostly, yes. Not that I think abortion is a good thing, but education is.

6) Simplify and increase the progressivity of the tax code: Simplifying the tax code is going to make it less "progressive". Which would be a good thing, in my opinion. Wipe out income tax entirely and replace it with a flat value-added tax. No exemptions. Carrots are cheap enough as it is.

7) Kill faith-based funding: Drag it out behind the barn and kill it with an axe, just like P. J. O'Rourke did the Omnibus Farm Bill. Apply funding based on effectiveness alone. If the Salvation Army gets the job done, I don't have a problem with them getting some of my tax money. They already get some of my non-tax money anyway.

Reduce corporate giveaways: Yep. Simply reduce corporate taxes across the board and they won't be necessary any more. All they do is distort the market.

9) Have Medicare run the Medicare drug plan: Axe.

10) Force companies to stop underfunding their pensions. Change corporate bankruptcy law to put workers and retirees at the head of the line with respect to their pensions: I'll defer to Insty on this, who says the question is based on a false premise.

11) Leave the states alone on issues like medical marijuana: Yes. And again, Glenn notes that where we need strong legislation is on antibiotics, not recreational pharmaceuticals.

12) Paper ballots: We have those, and redistribution of preferences, and we get our election results back within hours. Except when strange things happen and the Fishing Party of Queensland ends up deciding the balance of power of the Federal Senate.

13) Improve access to daycare and other pro-family policies: Mmmno. On the whole, I'm inclined to say cut taxes, and let families pay for it. Dear government, butt out!!!

14) Raise the cap on wages covered by FICA taxes: No, whatever that is. Abolish it instead.

15) Marriage rights for all, which includes "gay marriage" and quicker transition to citizenship for the foreign spouses of citizens: No. Just nullify all laws involving marriage. You want to marry your pot plant? Whatever. You've married a decendent of George Washington? Don't care.

16) Undo the bankruptcy bill enacted by this administration: I seem to recall thinking that it was a bad idea, but not the details, so pass.

The questions seem to be of two varieties: The most prevalent is Do you live in economic fairyland, where the magic power of the State to print money removes all personal responsibility?, and the second is Do you like drugs? Drugs are great; I don't think my life has ever depended on them, but my quality of life is quite reliant on dexchlorpheniramine and the occasional dose of ibuprofen. But if you answered positively to question one, you may be a little too devoted to question two. I'm just sayiing...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:09 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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There's an organic molecule shown there as well, but it's been twenty years since I did any organic chemistry, so I didn't see what it was. Anyone? It might be relevant to the plot; I've been told that you need a solid understanding of physical chemistry and some relativity and particle physics to understand the original novels, but since you also need to be able to read Japanese, I don't even make it to the starting post. (Okay, I watched it again. It's just benzene. ⌬ I thought I saw some oxygen in there, but that was just Haruhi's head getting in the way.)

And though I don't know what all the algebra and calculus is, I did spot the Drake equation. Which kind of comes unstuck when you throw someone like Haruhi into the mix, ne?

There may even be something going on in the background when Mikuru is waving her pompoms about, but I guess we'll never know.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:34 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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So we want to teach something that we cannot possibly scientifically support as the origin of mankind, but toss out the cultural and religious experience that has made Western Culture what it is.

No.

Any further questions?

Look, I don't like ignorance and liberal hypocrisy any more than you do, but I don't like ignorance and conservative hypocrisy either. And you are arguing here from a position of near total ignorance of the subject. For example, you ask:

Was the first single cell organism an animal or plant?

And the answer, again, is no.

These are just the questions that come off the top of my head.

That's the problem. The questions you ask about evolution have already been answered in painstaking detail. The questions you ask about abiogenesis - how the first life forms (which were much simpler than single cells) came into existence - have been answered too, but rather more speculatively, since we don't know for sure.

I note that you focus most of your attention on abiogenesis rather than evolution. Intelligent Design actually focuses primarily on evolution, arguing that certain subsystems of already complex lifeforms cannot have arisen naturally. Unfortunately for ID's supporters, every example they have proposed has been shot down in flames, with clearly plausible evolutionary pathways identified.

What's more, we know that evolution happens. It's quite simple: We can see it happening. Whether all the details of the theory as it presently stands are correct is a question for considerable research and debate, but evolution is real, and it continues today.

We have seen, for example, a bacterium evolve the ability to eat nylon. This is not something that already existed, since we have earlier samples of the bacterium in question and they could not digest nylon at all. What's more, until quite recently there was no nylon for them to eat.

What's even more interesting is that we know exactly how this happened. It wasn't mathematically improbable, and did not require the hand of the divine (or of time travellers or space aliens, as some of the fellows of the Discovery Institute would have it). It was a single mutation, where part of one gene was copied into the wrong place. This then coded for a new protein, an enzyme that allowed the bacterium to digest nylon.

Read some of the work of the late Stephen Jay Gould. His work is marvellously accessible; he truly loves his subject matter and wants to share it with people. You can start with his collections of essays, beginning with The Panda's Thumb, or pick up Wonderful Life, which is the story of the Burgess Shale, a rock formation which contains marvellously detailed fossils of some of the earliest complex animals.

Give it a try. Please. There is so much beauty there in the world if you are willing to accept and understand it, rather than rejecting it because it does not fit your preconceptions.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:59 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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(Cues up 20GB of miscellaneous anime in Azureus. Or queues up; works either way.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:12 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:51 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Let me watch a couple more episodes and I'll see how it goes.

Meanwhile, Wikipedia entry and AnimeSuki page. Fairly impressible that a show that finished airing a year ago still has 235 concurrent downloads as I write. (Yep, it hasn't been licensed yet. Grab your copy now!)

(As a note: I must be approaching 2TB of fansubs, if I haven't passed that point already. I no longer have any real idea what is on my server; it's not even sorted in alphabetical order any more, and it's spread across four filesystems. Need to get me a few of these and maybe pack them into one of these (which is rather neat).)

Update: Episode two doesn't disappoint. Interesting thing - it doesn't seem particularly connected to the present century. There's one mobile phone, and one computer, and apart from that it could be set in the sixties. Particularly since at least two of the characters smoke, something that is not common at all in present-day anime. Unfolding...

Offtopic: Just snarfed the final episode of Karin, though I'm a long way behind on that show. Took 8 minutes. I'll let it seed for a while, since I've already uploaded fifty sixty copies of Haruhi episode six.

Thinks: If I had ADSL2 with Annex M, I could have uploaded one hundred and fifty copies of Haruhi ep six. Can't come soon enough.

Update: Okay, modern air conditioners, game consoles, and GPS navigation systems. We are in the 21st century after all. But also rotary-dial phones and bath-houses.

Update: Tl Note: Jenny-chan's are the equivalent of Barbies, but with less va-va voom and more loli. Though that doesn't explain why one of them has a moustache.

Update: What now, a love-directed-acyclic-graph?

Update: Sniffle.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:33 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:47 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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She's never played with Meccano.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:38 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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I don't have my notebook with me today, because I didn't want to carry it all over CeBIT. If I'd realised how close the convention centre was to my office, I could have dropped it off there and just walked down.

So ever since I got back to work, I've been thinking I'll just copy that onto my notebook so I can read it later... Aargh.

Also, I have episode six (that is, episode 9) of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya waiting at home. If I'd brought my notebook, I could have watched it already. Twice, in fact.

Need notebook...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:10 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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