What happened?
Twelve years!
You hit me with a cricket bat!
Ha! Twelve years!
Monday, October 31
Curses!
So if you were a guy cursed to turn into a girl (or vise versa) whose curse would you prefer?
Ranma's from Ranma½
Futaba's from Futaba-kun Change
Maze's from Maze: Megaburst Space
Megumi's from Tenshi na Konamaiki
And am I missing any important examples? One-off switchers (Keiichi from OMG), body transfers (Galaxy Angel), technological assists (Dual) and cases of straightforward parental confusion (Ryuunosuke from Urusei Yatsura) need not apply. Just those who are stuck with the problem whether they like it or not.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
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1
I haven't seen
any of those series! Man, am I out of it.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Monday, October 31 2005 01:16 PM (CJBEv)
2
Ranma, no question. Reversibility, easy control, and the world isn't actually filled with convenient old ladies washing their doorsteps, so not so many pratfalls as in the series.
Don't get me wrong - Megumi is definitely my favorite character of that lot - but that curse is not nearly so tractable.
Pixy - as long as you're collecting OPs, the Ranma 1/2 first season OP was a beaut. Actually, the Maze OP was also great, albeit in an unintentionally-funny kind of way.
SDB - well, that's what closeout sales are for!
Posted by: HC at Monday, October 31 2005 03:51 PM (Qw8TL)
3
Ranma's, no question. It's easy to reverse, the female form is a redhead (woo-yay!), and STILL has all the martial arts ability of the original.
...and I can't remember the last time I was accidentally splashed with cold water.
FWIW, Steven, you REALLY need to watch
Ranma 1/2. At least the first couple of seasons (all I've seen) are uniformly great-to-excellent... and if you can't laugh at a giant panda performing 'kung-fu,' you just can't laugh.
(yes, I KNOW it's not really kung-fu... details.)
Posted by: Wonderduck at Monday, October 31 2005 06:09 PM (mAAjO)
Posted by: Evil Pundit at Monday, October 31 2005 07:26 PM (+2/LZ)
5
Huh. I just realised that Megumi Hayashibara did the voices for both girl-type Ranma (back in the late 80's, early 90's) and Megumi from Tenshi na Konamaiki (2002).
Did Megu-chan fall in the Spring of Drowned Typecasting at some point?
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, October 31 2005 09:23 PM (AIaDY)
6
Unfortunately I only have Ranma on VHS, so...
WAIT!
I have, somewhere, in a box, LASERDISCS of the COMPLETE OPENINGS AND ENDINGS of both RANMA and URUSEI YATSURA!
Don't ask why...
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, October 31 2005 09:24 PM (AIaDY)
7
Anyway, for those playing at home:
Ranma is a boy who fell in a cursed spring (haunted by the spirit of a girl who drowned there umpteen-hundred years ago), and as a result turns into a girl if he comes into contact with cold water. Hot water turns him back. And he's the lucky one...
Futaba is a SPOILER who turns into a girl during... uh... periods of emotional stress. As far as I know, this is only a manga, not an anime.
Maze is a girl who turns into a guy at nightfall, and back again at dawn. Unlike the others, she changes personalities too, and doesn't share any memories with her other self.
Megumi was a boy until she was cursed by a demon in a book, and is now stuck as a girl for ten years (unless she can find a cure). The story takes place when she is 15.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, October 31 2005 09:30 PM (AIaDY)
8
Ten years? I don't remember that - or maybe I just hadn't followed it until the point she found out.
As for why Hayashibara? She wasn't typecast - just omnipresent.
Posted by: HC at Tuesday, November 01 2005 12:51 AM (Qw8TL)
9
"As for why Hayashibara? She wasn't typecast - just omnipresent."
Yes, but for good reason: she's pretty durn talented.
Posted by: Wonderduck at Tuesday, November 01 2005 03:28 AM (mAAjO)
10
Well, she has a particular talent for loudmouthed tomboys. :) Her singing voice is quite different, though, and she's done a number of roles where I didn't immediately recognise her.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, November 01 2005 04:19 AM (AIaDY)
11
Having said that, when Megumi was eating takoyaki she sounded
exactly like Lina Inverse. (I'm watching Tenshi na Konamaiki right now, which is why this question came to mind.)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, November 01 2005 08:07 AM (QriEg)
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Pixy, off-topic, but here's a response to your comments on my blog regarding "My Secret (Anime) Shame."
Yes, Please Twins IS a sequel to Onegai Teacher, but you don't need to have seen Teacher before you watch Twins.
I've only seen a couple of episodes of Teacher, actually... and still loved Twins.
Quack quack!
Oh, and thank you for the kind words a few days back! Glad to still be alive!
Posted by: Wonderduck at Wednesday, November 02 2005 02:37 AM (HoSBk)
13
Megu-chan
does have a talent for abrasive tomboys. Lime, Lina, Ranma-chan, Megumi... Who am I forgetting? Hmm. Her other major roles have been Pai, Ai, Nuku Nuki, Momiji, Tira, Rei and Faye.
And...
Minky Momo?!
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, November 02 2005 08:11 AM (QriEg)
14
Oh, she's had more major roles than that - though it's true that a significant fraction of them are loud tomboys. Of course, neither Rei Ayanami or Ai Haibara are anything like that...
Posted by: HC at Wednesday, November 02 2005 01:55 PM (d3NQv)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Wednesday, November 02 2005 02:38 PM (CJBEv)
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What are you talking about? Rei Ayanami is the most rude and brash character in all of anime.
*snigger*
Posted by: Wonderduck at Wednesday, November 02 2005 03:41 PM (+rGmJ)
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Actually, I was thinking of Ai Amano (Video Girl Ai), not Ai Haibara. And the second list was characters who didn't quite fit the mold.
Though Ai Amano was a tomboy type some of the time, the others weren't. Strong-willed, maybe. Not tomboys.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, November 02 2005 05:52 PM (QriEg)
18
I thought you meant her Meitantei Conan role since that franchise has been going since forever - 422 episodes, 9 movies, 5 OAVs... and counting. It's practically a normal-sized career in itself!
Elle Lagu would be another tomboy - really, I can't categorize all her roles - she's had too many! She's even Marcy in the dubbed version of Peanuts, for goodness sakes.
Posted by: HC at Wednesday, November 02 2005 09:13 PM (d3NQv)
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Hey, this is fun! Did you know that the actress for Kyoko Otonashi in Maison Ikkoku was also Big Mama in Sorceror Hunters?
Which has nothing to do with Megu-chan, it's just funny.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, November 02 2005 09:50 PM (AIaDY)
20
My current favorite 'once you know to look, you see her everywhere' seiyuu is Aya Hisakawa. Kero-chan is Yoko is Nyamo-chan is Chloe is Yuki Soma, and so it goes...
Posted by: HC at Wednesday, November 02 2005 11:31 PM (d3NQv)
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I not only have LASERDISCS of the COMPLETE OPENINGS AND ENDINGS of both RANMA and URUSEI YATSURA, I have a BRAND NEW USB VIDEO CAPTURE WIDGET with S-VIDEO INPUT!
I haven't used my Laserdisc player for a year. I hope to hell it still works.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, November 03 2005 12:24 AM (AIaDY)
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Hmm. Now I just need to find CABLES to connect my LASERDISC PLAYER to the VIDEO CAPTURE WIDGET.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, November 03 2005 01:55 AM (AIaDY)
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Now I have CABLES too.
Hooray!
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, November 03 2005 02:34 AM (AIaDY)
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Hooray indeed - I now keep all cables, whether or not they seem likely to be useful. The Czech phone cord, for instance, is not obviously of future use... but
you never know.
Isn't Ranma's a fun OP?
Posted by: HC at Thursday, November 03 2005 03:32 AM (d3NQv)
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Ranma's, NO CONTEST!
Easy to control and it pretty much keeps our stats as close as it can to normal, well, with the exclusion of Ranma-chan's height, of course. My god that girl's short!
Anywho, as for the Voice Actresses, Meg is everywhere, indeed. I disagree about Rei. No one really KNOWS what she'd be like if she hadn't been controlled by Gendo and Ritsuko for her whole life, so who knows. She just MAY be a tomboy in hiding. :D
Have you ever listened to "November rain"? It's spooky,, 'cuz she actually SOUNDS like Ranma chan when she sings it... even though she's a lot less abrasive. Anywho, I'm done nattering.
Posted by: weebee at Wednesday, June 07 2006 05:02 PM (4C+x/)
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Saturday, October 29
Vampire Shmampire
Ace is
deconstructing the vampire myth. One thing he says is
Recoil From Crosses?: Yes. Very cool. But I like Fright Night's take on it. You can't just put up a cross and expect a vampire to cower. "You gotta have faith for that to work on me."
Sucks for me (sorry!) - I'm an atheist.
Only... I have these little Tux* case badges** including some that are gold or silver plated.
The next vampire who tries to put the bite on me is in for a surprise!
* The Linux penguin.
** Those little 1" square badges on the front of computers.
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Friday, October 28
Waiting For Eight Figures
It's been stuck on zero the past few days, but today I got a real number:
If that's average for munu (a reasonable assumption, I think) then the whole shebang is worth about $10 million.
Anyone? AOL? Microsoft? Bueller?
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Your blog, wonderduck.mu.nu, is worth $19,758.90
...wow. I mean, wow. MY blog is worth almost $20K? Sheesh... I mean, F1 and anime (and not much anime recently) are popular topics, but THAT POPULAR???
Posted by: Wonderduck at Saturday, October 29 2005 02:42 AM (HoSBk)
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fyi, others on munu have faired higher amounts. unfortunately not I.
Posted by: michele at Saturday, October 29 2005 10:36 AM (H0Ve3)
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Michele, I have no doubt of this fact. Indeed, I'm amazed mine even broke double-digits. Forgive me if it sounded like I was bragging; believe me, I wasn't... I'm realistic.
Posted by: Wonderduck at Saturday, October 29 2005 08:22 PM (HoSBk)
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Hey, wow! Blather Review is worth $114,601.62! Come on AOL, it's chump change to you...!
Posted by: Tuning Spork at Sunday, October 30 2005 11:54 PM (hJUOh)
5
mine is in the $100K range as well. Not sure how the calculator works.
Posted by: caltechgirl at Friday, November 04 2005 02:23 AM (uI/79)
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This Always Happens
I popped for the new servers last week, when they had a special offer to waive the $99.95 setup fee.
I got them, confirmed set up properly, today.
Today they have a special offer to double the memory for free. That would save me $500 in the first year. (I decided to only go with 1GB of memory per server because of the upgrade price. If it turns out we need 2GB, that's how much difference it will make.)
I've sent off an email asking if they're willing to do anything for me. Apple were a bunch of doody-heads, but hosting companies rely on continued business, so maybe...
Bumped to the top: THEY SAID YES!!!
Yay! 2x2GB = Munuden!
Update: Memory installed! All systems go! DedicatedNOW rocks my world!
Now I just have to make the application-type stuff work.
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Posted by: Eric at Saturday, October 29 2005 03:07 AM (Oc3Xt)
2
Yay! I nominate them for the Benevolent Conspiracy Seal of Approval.
Posted by: Ted at Saturday, October 29 2005 08:38 AM (blNMI)
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Outstanding! Just proves the point: you don't ask, you don't get. Might as well be the NY'ers credo.
Posted by: RP at Wednesday, November 02 2005 12:19 PM (LlPKh)
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Who Put Salt In Your Coffee?
Peggy Noonan frets that the world, or at least America, is
handbasketly hellbound:
I think there is an unspoken subtext in our national political culture right now. In fact I think it's a subtext to our society. I think that a lot of people are carrying around in their heads, unarticulated and even in some cases unnoticed, a sense that the wheels are coming off the trolley and the trolley off the tracks. That in some deep and fundamental way things have broken down and can't be fixed, or won't be fixed any time soon. That our pollsters are preoccupied with "right track" and "wrong track" but missing the number of people who think the answer to "How are things going in America?" is "Off the tracks and hurtling forward, toward an unknown destination."
Well, Peggy, America has been hurtling towards an unknown destination for 229 years now. Longer, really, because the same spirit was present even before independence.
Hurtling forwards is no great drama. Hurtling backwards, now that would be a problem.
I'm not talking about "Plamegate." As I write no indictments have come up. I'm not talking about "Miers." I mean . . . the whole ball of wax. Everything. Cloning, nuts with nukes, epidemics; the growing knowledge that there's no such thing as homeland security; the fact that we're leaving our kids with a bill no one can pay.
Cloning shmoning. Sheep that look like their "mothers". Big deal.
Nuts with nukes? We've had that since the fifties.
Epidemics? You mean like SARS, which killed hundreds of people, nearly as many as died recently in a panicked crowd in Iraq?
No such thing as security? And this is news?
As for leaving our kids with a bill they can't pay, this is possible for a number of European countries; far less likely for America which isn't suffering the same demographic implosion.
A sense of unreality in our courts so deep that they think they can seize grandma's house to build a strip mall; our media institutions imploding--the spectacle of a great American newspaper, the New York Times, hurtling off its own tracks, as did CBS.
Not the first time the courts have got something wrong. As for the great American newspaper - does the name Walter Duranty ring any bells?
The fear of parents that their children will wind up disturbed, and their souls actually imperiled, by the popular culture in which we are raising them.
By that devilish jazz music!
Senators who seem owned by someone, actually owned, by an interest group or a financial entity.
Uh, Peggy...
Let me focus for a minute on the presidency, another institution in trouble. In the past I have been impatient with the idea that it's impossible now to be president, that it is impossible to run the government of the United States successfully or even competently. I always thought that was an excuse of losers. I'd seen a successful presidency up close. It can be done.
But since 9/11, in the four years after that catastrophe, I have wondered if it hasn't all gotten too big, too complicated, too crucial, too many-fronted, too . . . impossible.
I'll give Ms. Noonan this one. Isaac Asimov wrote a story on exactly this subject some years ago. In the story, presidential candidates must pass a series of test on various subjects, and as time goes by and the job grows, the requirements become more and more stringent until, one election year,
none of the candidates manages a passing grade. The problem is resolved by having a team of experts answer the tests in their individual fields, with one man acting in the presidential role, taking advice from his cabinet.
Oh.
The special prosecutors, the scandals, the spin for the scandals, nuclear proliferation, wars and natural disasters, Iraq, stem cells, earthquakes, the background of the Supreme Court backup pick, how best to handle the security problems at the port of Newark, how to increase production of vaccines, tort reform, did Justice bungle the anthrax case, how is Cipro production going, did you see this morning's Raw Threat File? Our public schools don't work, and there's little refuge to be had in private schools, however pricey, in part because teachers there are embarrassed not to be working in the slums and make up for it by putting pictures of Frida Kalho where Abe Lincoln used to be. Where is Osama? What's up with trademark infringement and intellectual capital? We need an answer on an amendment on homosexual marriage! We face a revolt on immigration.
The range, depth, and complexity of these problems, the crucial nature of each of them, the speed with which they bombard the Oval Office, and the psychic and practical impossibility of meeting and answering even the most urgent of them, is overwhelming. And that doesn't even get us to Korea. And Russia. And China, and the Mideast. You say we don't understand Africa? We don't even understand Canada!
Canada? Beer. Snow. A determination to be recognised as Not America. And a nasty case of France.
Africa? Corruption.
The port of Newark? Isn't there a Harbour Master, a Mayor, a Governor, a Director of Homeland Security, a whole bunch of people working on that? It's not like playing Age of Empires where you have to click on the little people to get them to do anything.
When I was young we didn't wear earrings, but if we had, everyone would have had a pair or two. I know a 12-year-old with dozens of pairs. They're thrown all over her desk and bureau. She's not rich, and they're inexpensive, but her parents buy her more when she wants them. Someone said, "It's affluence," and someone else nodded, but I said, "Yeah, but it's also the fear parents have that we're at the end of something, and they want their kids to have good memories. They're buying them good memories, in this case the joy a kid feels right down to her stomach when the earrings are taken out of the case."
You said that, Peggy. No-one else said that.
This, as you can imagine, stopped the flow of conversation for a moment.
Yes indeed. One of those moments.
Then it resumed, as delightful and free flowing as ever. Human beings are resilient. Or at least my friends are, and have to be.
Well.
Do people fear the wheels are coming off the trolley?
Some do, I'm sure. But
some of us are busy trying to upgrade the trolley's turbojets to ion drives.
Our elites, our educated and successful professionals, are the ones who are supposed to dig us out and lead us. I refer specifically to the elites of journalism and politics, the elites of the Hill and at Foggy Bottom and the agencies, the elites of our state capitals, the rich and accomplished and successful of Washington, and elsewhere. I have a nagging sense, and think I have accurately observed, that many of these people have made a separate peace. That they're living their lives and taking their pleasures and pursuing their agendas; that they're going forward each day with the knowledge, which they hold more securely and with greater reason than nonelites, that the wheels are off the trolley and the trolley's off the tracks, and with a conviction, a certainty, that there is nothing they can do about it.
Well, duh, Peggy.
You're talking about journalists, who never really did anything about anything in the first place - excepting a few accidents of history - and now are being shunted off the public stage entirely. The Trolley of Journalism is not just off the tracks but upside down in a ditch. Hopefully a passing blogger will call for an ambulance.
You're a lobbyist or a senator or a cabinet chief, you're an editor at a paper or a green-room schmoozer, you're a doctor or lawyer or Indian chief, and you're making your life a little fortress. That's what I think a lot of the elites are up to.
Let's see:
Politics, politics, politics, journalism, politics, actual useful human being, potentially useful human being, politics.
You don't think there might be a reason why these "elites" act this way? (And in the case of politicians, always have?)
That's what I think is going on with our elites. There are two groups. One has made a separate peace, and one is trying to keep the boat afloat. I suspect those in the latter group privately, in a place so private they don't even express it to themselves, wonder if they'll go down with the ship. Or into bad territory with the trolley.
The latter group, Peggy, is known as
engineers, and they have kept the human race afloat for 8000 years, since we first grew beyond the tribe. They do not wonder if they'll go down with the ship, because they are too busy fitting the ship with wings. But they do wish from time to time that the passengers would stop trying to knock holes in things.
(via the Llamas)
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What planet is she from again?
Posted by: Susie at Friday, October 28 2005 11:55 AM (a0oF7)
2
I meant to add, it sounds like she's bemoaning the fact that the 60's is dead and gone. Somebody needs to give her a copy of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" for a short history lesson of 20th century crises....
Posted by: Susie at Friday, October 28 2005 11:59 AM (a0oF7)
3
Nah, she's a conservative. She's bemoaning the lost
50's. ;)
I hadn't realised that "We Didn't Start the Fire" was such a detailed history lesson. I don't think that's going to compel me to listen to it again though.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, October 28 2005 12:06 PM (eta8N)
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I don't know if it's that great a summary of recent history, but teachers have used the song as
a way to get students interested.
And yeah, people in power in politics may be circling the wagons, because if all the non-elites know everything that's going on, they're screwed. Darn, and it couldn't happen to a nicer guy than Ted Kennedy.
Posted by: owlish at Friday, October 28 2005 12:51 PM (rzugH)
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Nah, this is just yet another boomer hitting the wall of late middle age and freaking out. I have a lefty boomer friend (he calls himself a moonbat on his blog, for the love of tiny green aliens) and he's constantly popping off with this sort of hysterical hyper-pessimism.
Usually, it's someone figuring out that they're really, honestly, truly gonna die, and I mean rotting in the ground dead. It doesn't so much focus the mind, as trigger a species of crankishness. The philosophical equivalent of Old Man Burns polishing his shotgun on the porch, eyeing Those Damned Kids down the block.
Posted by: Mitch H. at Friday, October 28 2005 03:21 PM (iTVQj)
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Uhhhhhhh......what's a trolley?
Posted by: Steve the LLamabutcher at Friday, October 28 2005 03:55 PM (7vRzQ)
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It's sort of like a brolly, only bigger.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Friday, October 28 2005 05:38 PM (CJBEv)
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"Our elites, our educated and successful professionals, are the ones who are supposed to dig us out and lead us."
I thought that this was the most revealing part of the whole Noonan, um, "dump" for lack of a better term. To put it another way: "Why doesn't someone tell me what to do?"
The idea that we, as individuals, will be the ones to deal with these problems obviously doesn't register on her at all...
Posted by: John D. Ballentine III at Saturday, October 29 2005 09:28 AM (lQRkC)
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Hey, some of
like hurtling.
Posted by: TallDave at Saturday, October 29 2005 04:35 PM (giBEj)
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Not all of us are so sanguine about the future. When the normally chipper and perky Peggy Noonan sees fit to write about a dark future, it makes me wonder how many of us there really are.
But "A nasty case of France"? Now THERE's a quotable if I ever read one!
Posted by: Kevin Baker at Tuesday, November 08 2005 10:04 PM (vaQLz)
11
"They do not wonder if they'll go down with the ship, because they are too busy fitting the ship with wings. But they do wish from time to time that the passengers would stop trying to knock holes in things."
Well, speaking as a guy who has worked in ships' engine rooms for near twenty years, I'd be happy if they'd just stop flushing cigarette butts and feminine hygiene products down the toilet.
PLEASE don't do that, we HATE that...you have NO idea.
Regards;
Posted by: Bilgeman at Tuesday, November 08 2005 11:00 PM (KnWO3)
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Canada - you forgot hockey. I'm surprised Canada didn't implode without hockey. Actually I'm surprised it didn't implode when they found they couldn't beat teams from Florida and Southern California.
Posted by: Zendo Deb at Wednesday, November 09 2005 01:52 AM (S417T)
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Hockey, yes. There's also hockey. :)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, November 09 2005 03:45 AM (AIaDY)
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Oh, Pixy. so 'zactly true. Cloning???? why is cloning depressing?
Peggy should cut out the pissing and moaning and read some tech news-- i so excited about it all!
nanotech!! the singularity!! bioengineering!! autonomous land vehicles!! gerontology research!!
and all the time we're getting access to more and better anime!!!
i hate that postmodernist entropic ennui.
she should just move to france.
Posted by: matoko-chan at Thursday, November 10 2005 10:52 PM (cxYaY)
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Through The Looking Glass
Every day the loony part of the left blogosphere complains about the tightly controlled, always-on-message nature of the center/right blogosphere. In fact, the only thing we have in common is that we think that the loony left is indeed loony.
But why do they think that we all get our talking points faxed directly from Lord Rove's office every morning?* Because that's what they'd do:
Movers and shakers in Washington, especially their younger staff, pay attention to blogs and, increasingly, seek to engage them. At the Democratic National Committee (DNC), chairman
Howard Dean, who pioneered the use of the Internet to raise funds for his 2004 presidential campaign, has set up an Internet Department to get his message out to the blogs.
"Sometimes there are stories that don't fit with our larger, overall national media strategy that we send out to encourage and motivate and engage people in the blogosphere," says DNC spokesman Josh Earnest. "It's hard to imagine how we could communicate with them so effectively without this new technology," he adds.
Quickly, now: Who's the chairman of the
RNC?
Bzzt. Time's up. No, I don't know either. It wasn't on the fax.
* When of course he converted to email years ago.
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Ken Mehlman, actually. Fucker wanted me to help pimp Miers. The RNC sends out emails. It's just that nobody worth his salt pays attention to them.
Posted by: Mitch H. at Friday, October 28 2005 09:44 AM (iTVQj)
2
Ssssssh!
Yeah, I'd heard the name, just couldn't remember.
The only center/right blogger I can think of who's been pro-Miers is Hugh Hewitt, and he hasn't exactly been glowing, more accepting.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, October 28 2005 10:28 AM (QriEg)
3
And it appears that the Miers point has just become moot anyway.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, October 28 2005 10:44 AM (QriEg)
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Unclear On The Concept
Eric asks:
Why aren't the headlines reading "Barely 2000 American soldiers lost in 30 months, Iraqi's ratify Constitution enabled by overthrow of Ba'athist fascism"?
The answer is, because the people writing the headlines learned the wrong lessons from the 20th century. Or the 18th & 19th centuries, for that matter.
Basically, the opponents of the liberation of Iraq in the West* are Transnational Progressives, Tranzis for short. The Tranzis believe that everything that was bad about the 20th century - that is, WWI, WWII and Vietnam, tranzis having a very poor grasp of history - was due to the conflict of nation-states. It was to eliminate this conflict, and ultimately to eliminate the nation-state itself, that the League of Nations, and its successor the United Nations, were formed.
Now, if you are an adherent of this belief, it logically follows that nation-states are bad, and America, the richest and most powerful nation-state of all, is the very worst. And that since the fundamental nature of the nation-state is bad, only bad can arise from the actions thereof.**
So everything America does is bad. But Saddam Hussein was a fascist, and the Tranzis are intrinsically opposed to fascism, because fascism exalts the nation-state above all else. This opposition is fundamental to their ideology.
Of course, the Tranzis have had no success whatsoever in achieving their goals. So naturally America (which is evil) cannot ever achieve those goals, because those goals are good and America (as the premier nation state) cannot do good things.
Right.
This means:
1. America is not in Iraq to liberate the Iraqi people. (Because America is evil, and doesn't do such things.)
2. If America says that it is in Iraq to liberate the Iraqi people, it is a lie. (See above.)
3. If America follows a course of action clearly designed to liberate the Iraqi people, it is (a) only from some hidden motive and (b) doomed to failure.
4. If the Iraqis actually become free, for example, voting in huge numbers in clearly free and fair elections, then that is necessarily bad, because democracy is unfair to the people.
5. If Iraq, with America's assistance, becomes a prosperous, safe and generally healthy nation, then prosperity, safety, and health are ipso facto also evil.
So, the underlying source of all the wailing and fury of the left is that the liberation of Iraq has proved them to be wrong. And unless America fails, and fails horribly, they may be forced to admit it. Remember, when the left tried to free the world they ended up killing a hundred million people. So America has to, has to, has to fail.
Because the alternative would be unthinkable.
Steven Den Beste has written on this at length, and explains it better than I do here, but I don't have a link handy.
Update: Steven Den Beste provides a link (though I'm not sure if that was the one I was thinking of) and a handy search URL.
* Ignoring for the moment the Ba'athists and the Islamists, who oppose it for the very sensible reason that they want to be in control.
** Well, the idea that only bad ends can arise from bad means is another logical fallacy, but we'll leave that one alone for now.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
05:20 AM
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1
So, if America ultimately succeeds at its goal will that deal a deathblow to this meme, or does someone have to go on a killing rampage at the UN?
Posted by: owlish at Friday, October 28 2005 10:38 AM (rzugH)
2
Transnational Progressivism is a subject I wrote about
many times, but you may be thinking
of this post in particular.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Friday, October 28 2005 11:37 AM (CJBEv)
3
The better things get in the real world, the greater the disconnect from reality, and the nuttier the Tranzis will become. That's what we're seeing today. And that's what's driving the red-green-brown coalition - sidelined by history, the Communists and Fascists and Eco-crazies and associated Nihilists and Anarchists are coming together in one unified, useless force, because they'd rather band together with their bitterest enemies than admit they might have been wrong. (I think that's Blair's Law, as in Tim Blair, but someone else might have proposed it first.)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, October 28 2005 11:40 AM (QriEg)
4
Heinlein once proposed putting all the book critics in a room with no way out, with typewriters with no ribbons, and food dishes with no food. Maybe a larger version of the same for the Tranzi's?
Of course I know that's the deal. But I just couldn't help myself, I had to ask the question. Even if it was mostly rhetorical.
Okay, back to that room the Tranzi's can't get out of ....
Posted by: Eric at Saturday, October 29 2005 03:16 AM (Oc3Xt)
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Well, That Should Help
Just doing a spot of benchmarking.
Mew is the current server. Comparing it with Kei. The Lovely Angels are equivalent in brainpower* so it doesn't matter which one I test.
| Mew | Kei | % Improvement |
Compress MySQL Backup | 25m15.65s | 13m9.937s | 91.8% |
Uncompress MySQL Backup | 4m27.88s | 2m41.47s | 65.7% |
Compress Trackback Log** | 53.87s | 26.15s | 106% |
Uncompress Trackback Log** | 3.65s | 2.62s | 39.3% |
Python Loop Test** | 5.9s | 4.72s 3.092s | 25.5% 90.8%*** |
The problem with this is hyperthreading. Hyperthreading splits each CPU in half, but Linux doesn't know about this, so just how reflective of reality these results are is somewhat up in the air. The best approach is to run the test many times and pick the lowest number. Or to shut down every other application... Which the Munuvians may not appreciate.
* In this incarnation. Management makes no representations, etc, etc.
** Best of ten trials.
*** Note to self: RPM distributions tend not to be well-optimised. For anything you'll be using a lot - particularly languages - compile your own. It's just a ./configure; make; make install anyway.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
01:46 AM
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1
Hyperthreading doesn't quite split the CPU in half, though that's something of the idea of what's going on.
The problem is that when hyperthreading is enabled, each of the two parts of the CPU don't have quite the abilities of a full single CPU. So to really use hyperthreading correctly in multi-processor systems the kernel really needs to know. That's how it is with my workstation, which has two Xeons in it. Win2K would treat them as if they were 4 processors, and would schedule them without paying attention to what they were. So if it had two CPU-bound jobs it might toss both of them onto the same CPU.
WinXP's scheduler is hyperthreading-aware and handles it properly. And I thought that there was a version of the Linux kernel which handled it properly. I remember reading about it more than two years ago when I got my workstation.
However, it may be something that has to be enabled, and which might require a recompile of the kernel. I'm afraid I can't give you any pointers or help on where you might need to look to find out more.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Friday, October 28 2005 03:32 AM (CJBEv)
2
Yep. I was simplifying like mad.
The issue arises when you're benchmarking programs on a busy system. On a straightforward multi-processor or multi-core system, the cores are all the same no matter what is running. So the report of the amount of CPU time taken is reasonably accurate (unless your application is bound on memory bandwidth).
With hyperthreading, though, the performance of a given "CPU" varies dramatically depending on whether the second thread is busy. So a report of the number of CPU seconds taken to run a given program can likewise vary dramatically.
In 10 runs the variance was in fact only on the order of 10%, and there was a fair amount of idle time, so I don't think my results were too badly screwed up.
Which means that between the new hardware and the new compilers, the new servers are each significantly faster than the current one. And there are two of them.
And we are getting CPU-bound. With the rise of dynamic web sites and the ever-present crappy code, you need a lot of CPU power to run a large set of web sites. Fortunately, CPU power is readily available and cheap.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, October 28 2005 03:45 AM (RbYVY)
3
So if I run two copies of the Python script at the same time, Linux is smart enough (i.e. hyperthreading-aware) to assign them to different physical CPUs, and it executes in about 6 seconds. If I run four at the same time, it can't do that, and it they take 11 seconds to run. (I just verified this.)
The problem is that the system reports that it took 6 seconds of
CPU time in one instance and 11 seconds in the other, making standard benchmarking tools unreliable.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, October 28 2005 04:19 AM (RbYVY)
4
OK; I wasn't meaning to nitpick. The reason I posted was to say that the Linux kernel actually is hyper-threading aware. Apparently you already knew that, so "never mind!"
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Friday, October 28 2005 11:41 AM (CJBEv)
5
No, you made a perfectly valid point, I just hadn't the time to explain it sufficiently in my original post.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, October 28 2005 12:32 PM (QriEg)
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Thursday, October 27
Somewhat Better
I got rather annoyed last night when I received an email informing me that the new servers
were configured with 64-bit Linux when this was plainly not true.
It turns out that although they offer 64-bit Linux, you won't get it if you ask for CPanel as well becase there are known problems with that combination (which doesn't surprise me - even though CPanel list it as supported). What they do instead is install a 32-bit kernel specifically optimised for 64-bit processors, which is what they meant when they told me it was 64-bit.
Okay.
That means that the new servers are ready... For me to start working on.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
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1
Which one gets the rocket launcher?
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Thursday, October 27 2005 11:40 PM (CJBEv)
2
"Atomic Batteries to power! Turbines to speed!"
Kei
should get the rocket launcher... she enjoys them more.
Posted by: Wonderduck at Friday, October 28 2005 12:39 AM (HoSBk)
3
Kei gets the rocket launcher.
Yuri gets the gamma-ray laser.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, October 28 2005 12:59 AM (RbYVY)
4
And the mind control transmitters?
Posted by: owlish at Friday, October 28 2005 02:20 AM (rzugH)
5
That's obvious... PIXY gets the mind-control transmitters!
Posted by: Wonderduck at Saturday, October 29 2005 02:30 AM (HoSBk)
6
I'll need them to keep the Dirty Pair in line.
ohshit
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, October 29 2005 02:53 AM (AIaDY)
7
LOVELY ANGELS! LOVELY ANGELS! LOVELY ANGELS! LOVELY ANGELS! LOVELY ANGELS! LOVELY ANGELS!LOVELY ANGELS! LOVELY ANGELS! LOVELY ANGELS!LOVELY ANGELS! LOVELY ANGELS! LOVELY ANGELS!LOVELY ANGELS! LOVELY ANGELS! LOVELY ANGELS!
Don't kill him!
Posted by: Wonderduck at Saturday, October 29 2005 08:24 PM (HoSBk)
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