A sense of scale

Click for larger.


If you know me, you could probably guess how this ends.

Civil War: I'm with Caprica Six

In Neon Genesis Evangelion, the NERV HQ is run by 3 networked MAGI supercomputers: Melchior, Balthasar and Casper. A decision is made by a majority vote between the 3. Each computer is designed to analyze based on a personality trait of the designer, representing her as a scientist, a mother and a woman respectively. In this manner they were able to incorporate humanism into the decision making process*.

The Cylons take this idea further, with each of the 7 basestar human models representing a specific facet of human behaviour. When they vote, together they simulate how a human would make a decision. This is why One is able to predict how others are going to vote and why it becomes such a shock that Boomer votes contrary to the other Eight models. What this means is that the Cylons are becoming more human, against their original programming. Of course, the elegance of the system goes entirely to hell when Three is taken offline (meaning there's no tie-breaking vote) and Six decides to rebel. With guns.

See? I'm making connections. Mr. Panwar would be proud.

*In the end, when they attempted to self-destruct the HQ, it required a unanimous decision from the MAGI. Casper voted against the proposal out of spite. From this we can conclude...women are spiteful?

'Hogs are awesome

The A-10 is like my favourite aircraft. It is slow and lumbering, but it takes a lot of punishment and gives troops the CAS they actually need. It can return safely with literally half of its flight surfaces destroyed, one engine and wrecked landing gear. It survives 20mm cannon fire. Its Avenger cannon has recoil equivalent to the thrust of one engine.

Plus, I bet the Air Force never has to worry about protecting it from falling clams.

Dammit Adobe

When your program leaves an XML preferences file, you would assume that it's for user modification, right?

Then why the hell is the entire document written in one line?

I noticed Google does the same with its scripts, but I suppose that's because they don't want people trying to steal it.

What's Adobe's excuse?

Teal is nice, but it's time for a change

Here's my current theme:


I've wanted to re-theme for a while now. I am just starting to gather the required materials now.

Shell theme: Found
Wallpaper 1: Possible candidates, still looking.
Wallpaper 2: Found.
Winamp: Needs new skin.
Frostwire: Needs new skin.
Firefox: Possibly needs new theme.
Logon Screen: Needs major tweaking.
MSN: Needs minor tweaking.
Dock: Needs minor tweaking.
Icons: No change needed.
Rainlendar: No change needed.
Colibri: No change needed.
Boot screen: No change needed.

Thank god going to black is an easy transition, I dread trying one day to make my desktop coordinate with multiple colours.

Also, to whoever remarked that the Zune theme was awful: fuck, the Zune theme is awful. It's not really the black and white though, because you can in fact make a sexy black and white theme. It's just the Zune.

edit: Shell theme is going to need major tweaking because damned if I can read a thing as it is. God damn it, there's two tests tomorrow; I have no time for this.

So, what happened to the Amazon?

Did everyone just decide to move on? Desertification too, whatever became of that issue?

I can only conclude that the environmentalists moved on to the next fad, AKA global warming.

In great irony, as far as I'm aware, great swaths of the ancient forest are still being clear cut, now to provide room for growing bio-fuels. A scam in itself.

Fuck, this is why I hate environmentalists and find it hard to take anything they say seriously. So many of them can't even stand by their own causes for an extended period of time, and this is hurting people's perceptions of legitimate scientists and informed activists.

Fuck you Bono, and McCartney as well. Writing a hit song is not a qualifier for engaging in intelligent discourse.

Fuck those baby seals too, cuteness does not correlate to ecological value.

Maybe I'll elaborate on my position some other time, but suffice to say I am a seething pot of hatred over how things are being conducted right now.

217 ships

That's how many ships currently in the US Navy.

Well, actually no.

I didn't count the uncommissioned ships, the ships under construction, ships under the MSC, boomers and things like mine sweepers/hospital ships/etc. I did count all the ships related to amphibious warfare including landing docks and command ships.

Why, you may ask?

Out of all those ships, 4 have sunk an enemy ship.

1 of them is the USS Constitution, so it doesn't really count.

2 of them (USS Porter and USS Carter Hall) sunk little pirate skiffs off of Somalia.

That leaves the USS Simpson, which sunk a Iranian missile patrol boat during the Iran-Iraq war. The only active USN warship to have sunk another warship.

...

Maybe all those people who want to modernize the Iowas ought to think about that.

edit: On a similar note, 20 Bradleys were lost during the first Gulf War. 3 were due to enemy fire, 17 were due to friendly fire. Who needs enemies when you have teammates like that?

My last foray into web development

This was awhile back when I had to build a website as part of a media arts project. I was just reminded of it now and thought it'd be interesting. Here are the screenshots:

Rendered with Gecko (Firefox/Netscape engine)

Rendered with Trident (IE engine)

I think I ended up submitting just screenshots of the site.

ITT: We learn about image formats

Ever wonder what you should save an image as? Well now you have a handy guide!

So first, the difference between lossy and lossless formats. Lossy means that in all subsequent modifications of the image, data is lost making for progressively worse quality. So if you save a JPEG three times, it will degrade in quality every time. Lossless just means that in subsequent saves, there is no loss in quality, it does not mean there's no loss in quality from the source image. GIF is considered lossless because whether you save once or fifty times, the image looks the same. However, if you've ever tried to save a photo as a GIF, you know it looks like crap. This is because GIF only supports 256 colours and will force the document into those colours. Of course, no format can support infinite colours so all formats will force colour if needed. That means that not all lossless formats are going to give you the same result.

Secondly, if you're saving a vector, you're going to be saving it as SVG. End of story.

So, the leaves the raster formats:

GIF - 256 colours, compression, lossless, supports animation. If you're using black and white, there's no reason not to use it. If your image is animated, there's no other format as supported. With other images it becomes quite iffy, I'm actually inclined to say a dithered photograph actually looks better than a image with a smaller pallet, but with unsupported colours. Either way, I'd rather use something else, but bear in mind GIF files usually have the smallest size as a combination of their compression and limited colour data.

PNG- Up to 24 bit colour, compression, lossless. It's viewed as a successor to GIF since GIF makes things look so crappy. I like to use it with most things that have a limited pallet. If you're saving something like a photograph, the PNG file would be several times bigger than the JPEG counterpart and not noticeably better (assuming you're saving at a high quality, i.e. not with MS Paint). If I do something in Paint, I'm most inclined to save it as a PNG because GIF looks like crap and it saves JPEG at pretty low quality. Greyscale I think would be better served under JPEG, but I tend to save those as PNG too, because I'm not keen on losing my data.

JPEG- Up to 24 bit colour, compression, lossy. What can I say, it's JPEG. If you have a large colour pallet, that's going to beastly huge under most lossless formats. It has an efficient compression process and if you save it right it will look just fine. Try not to further edit JPEGs though (obviously it's unavoidable, but prevent it where you can), because the loss is going to be noticeable after a few generations.

BMP- Up to 64 bit colour (you just can't do it with Paint), no compression, lossless. That's a huge colour range. That's also going to be a huge file size. You can still compress the file by zipping it though. The nice thing about BMP is that you know it will be compatible with everything. If you need to make sure something is compatible and bandwidth is not going to be a problem, then go for it. That said, if you go and upload some 3000px x 2000px BMP and then post it on a forum, you're an idiot.

TIFF- Up to 48 bit colour, compression, lossless or lossy, very versatile. The inter-application format of choice for professionals in the graphics business. There's a large colour pallet, which is nice, but more importantly is its versatility. For instance, you can define layers in a TIFF document, so you can move something from Painter into Photoshop without skipping a beat. The problem is that often something is marked in a TIFF document that is unrecognizable by a program. Compatibility with TIFF is kind of a developer's nightmare.

RAW- Compression, lossless. This is for photographers mostly, it gives you the raw data captured by the camera's sensors. That means there's a huge variation in RAW files between different cameras. It might not seem like a huge difference from a JPEG copy, but it gives you more control for processing later. Usually I'd just make JPEG copies though, I'm not that hardcore about my photos.

Now you know how to save your images! That gives you a step up over half the internet. Spread the word and maybe one day I can dream of reading my webcomics without JPEG artifacts.

Bonus section: How to waste ink like a pro!

Just making a black square is so passé, what you should do is go into Photoshop (version doesn't matter as long as it's not a consumer level product), start a new document in CMYK mode, make sure you're using rich black, fill the entire document. Then go into Image > Adjustments > Channel Mixer and max out the outputs of all the channels. The result should be a stunningly black document, either that or a really damp piece of paper.

Don't believe in the me that believes in you, don't believe in the you that believes in the me that believes in you!

Believe in the you that believes in yourself!


The two paths between human and beast,
Intertwine to create the path of the Spiral!

Piercing destiny as yesterday's enemies,
Creating a new path towards the future with these hands!

The union of fate!

Gurren Lagann!

WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK WE ARE!?

What the truck?

From here.

At the interplanetary defense seminar, an astronomer named Doc Travis takes the podium and introduces himself as a "high-tech redneck" who has worked for the Defense Department and NASA. To make his case, he explains that one can use the Drake Equation to determine the odds of space aliens coming to our planet and encountering our missile defense shield. In case you want to run your own calculations, here is the formula: N = R* fp ne fl fi fc L

"The probability that there is an alien who could visit Earth," Travis says, "ended up being 0.0000000043 percent at the worst and 0.19 percent in the most perfect case." If aliens attack, he adds, we'd probably use a Directed Energy Weapon against them -- but there are problems. "Our weapons could probably hit them, but I don't think they would do any damage," Travis laments. "So my prediction is that we have to build new weapons and come up with new technology. That's eally the reality."

Facepalm.

Pro-tip: If aliens attack us, we're going to be pretty much fucked no matter what.

Alternative response: Let's build us some battlestars!

What, we have an army? Since when?

The Canadian Land Forces are finally replacing the current fleet of aging Leopard C2s with Leopard 2 A4/A6s. Apparently they're surplus tanks that the Dutch are selling. What, they have an army? Since when?¹

Meanwhile, we got 20 of them on loan from Germany operating in Afghanistan. They were borrowed free of charge (what friendly Germans), but of course being Canada, we don't actually have the planes needed to pick them up. They were shipped (also free of charge) over by Germany.

It's about time, those C2s have been operated by Canada since the 70s. Of course, being Canada, that means the Leopard 1 (the platform those tanks were based off of) has actually been operational since the 60s. Aging might have been an understatement.

What pushed the Department of Defense over the edge?

The C2s weren't air conditioned.

Yep, that's the Canadian Forces for you.

¹ Alternatively, they don't have an army. Hence the surplus tanks.

Facepalm

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is a new "documentary" on intelligent design.

What is the first warning sign? When the entire movie is some kind of twisted invocation of Godwin's Law.

That's right, the movie compares evolution to Hitler.

Fuck.

You can't make this kind of shit up. Ignoring the absolute ridiculousness of the claim, let's assume that Hitler was in fact motivated by evolution. How the does that address the veracity of the theory itself at all? Hitler also enjoyed watercolours, ergo watercolours must be a lie? With a premise that stupid, no wonder ID has such trouble gaining support.

Now I will talk of the host, Ben Stein. Ben Stein, a former professor of law. Hey, professor of law, whatever happened to separation of Church and State? Jackass.

And your game show sucks too.

On a concluding note, here's the obligatory link to PZ getting expelled from Expelled.

So, my wrists are still intact...

...from a day of boarding.

Fuck Lamar; I am dumb.

Actually, I'm okay with the board, bindings and case for now, but the boots are terrible. Then again, I don't remember if the boots are Lamar, they might have been separate from the set.

They loosen so badly, by the end of the day my feet were slipping out. It doesn't make a difference heel-side because there's a backplate on the bindings, but I have to lean so much to apply any pressure on my toe-side.

edit: Appropriately enough, apparently the boots are made by some company called Heelside.

Nice stomp pad though. Thanks, Ness.

Screw you Rob for leading us into the middle of nowhere.

In other news, Transformers seems like some kind of hour long recruiting ad for the US military. I bet if Michael Bay had the choice, he'd spend another half hour showing Scorponok getting pounded by Tomahawks and Paveways. 'Hogs are badass though, I can't see any Raptors flying back after getting hit by 20mm cannon fire.

Tattoos

Tribal tattoos are pretty bad.

Horoscopes are pretty cliché too. I thought Finnie had 69 tattooed to his back until I realized it's a Cancer tattoo.

I hate the random Asian character tattoos¹ even more though.

God.

If I ever worked at a tattoo parlour, I'd just write random things on those people.

For instance,

我爱男人

"But what does it mean?"
"Don't worry about it, it means you have courage."²

The only thing worse would be a Zune tattoo. edit: What's worse than that? This guy.

¹ As an end note, Kaiser is adamant that his tattoo is Japanese. He doesn't realize it's completely indiscriminate when everything is written in Kanji.
² That's a lie.

edit 2: This is how you make a badass tattoo.

The "Union" Jack

It's pretty old actually, but I decided it's worth sharing.

The comments section is particularly enlightening.

On booty

Nope, not a follow up on breasts.

Five pirates have to divide a treasure of 1000 coins. The pirates have a ranking from highest to lowest. This is the system the pirates use to see who will get how much treasure:

1. The lowest ranked pirate proposes a way to divide up the treasure.
2. The pirates vote on the distribution scheme.
3. If more than half of the pirates vote yes, the treasure is divided as planned.
4. Otherwise, the pirate who proposed the scheme is forced to walk the plank, and the next lowest ranked pirate proposes a scheme.

The pirates have the following traits:

* They are perfectly logical.
* They are greedy and will vote to maximize their own treasure regardless of all other considerations.
* They are bloodthirsty and, all other things being equal, will vote against a proposal.

What should the lowest ranked pirate suggest?


On a different note, my rapcore phase is over, thank god.

I am downloading rapcore

Because I am an idiot.

Also because it makes me feel like a hooligan.

Gangster rap has no such effect; it just makes me facepalm.

About my distaste for IE

When was the last time a real web-developer talked about their love of IE?

That's what I thought.

Opera was actually the first non-IE browser I used, I don't remember the reason I switched to Firefox but dammit I know there was one.

People complain about Fx leaking memory like a sieve. Hey, maybe some of us like shut down our computers once in a while*. I don't think I could switch to anything else at this point, I'm too used to my addons.

Finally, obligatory Telnet to Port 80.

*Although I do concede, once Firefox managed to expand its RAM consumption to ~1gb on my computer before I killed it.

My torrent finally started!

It's just been sitting in Frostwire for like 4 months. The site said there were 6 seeds at the time, that was bullshit.

Anyways, it just started moving now. I knew there was a reason I don't delete my inactive torrents.

I am going to be listening to Cannonball Adderley tonight.

HaHA! Pentacle Scrape!

I was actually looking for this picture yesterday.


Someone ought to make a picture of a girl raping an octopus. That'd be original.

edit:

Peter says: I found it
crobert says: the octopus?
Peter says: the octopus
crobert says: so you say there's no rape?
Peter says: not yet
Peter says: definite sexual harassment

My goal in life

Is to get awesome at art before I'm 20.

939 days left.

Fuck.

(.)(.)

Haha boobies.

Actually, what I really wanted to rant about was how people tend draw such large breasts.

Let's get this straight, if under normal fitting clothing, chest protrusions can be clearly identified to be spherical in nature, that is pretty big.

When they start becoming elongated and oblong, I think that is the limit for maintaining attractiveness.

When are comparable to the size of one's head, it's time to seriously consider trimming those suckers down.

When they hang to the bottom of the ribcage, that is grotesque and unnatural. No woman should endure a burden such as being permanently pregnant with twins.

On a final note: Fuck Rob Liefeld, fuck him so hard.

Brushes are nothing and everything

I've seen people do awesome things with default brushes.

But damn is it frustrating trying to emulate a style when you haven't a clue what kind of brushes or textures are being used.

Also, Painter Essentials is by far more welfare than Photoshop Elements. You can't download more paper textures in Painter Essentials. It is also a resource hog. That said, anyone who blames their failings on not having the latest version of Photoshop is a tool.

Inkscape must have the most non-intuitive interface known to man--ironic for a graphics editor. Every time I try and figure it out I just give up and to this day, I've no clue how to even change the canvas size.

On a different note, I knew there was a reason I hated Flash:

"Flash is, frankly, the most obnoxious piece of software ever. fucking. made. Originally, Shockwave was for displaying vector graphics in a web browser. Then someone hacked on animation. Then someone hacked on input and called it Flash. Then someone hacked on bitmap graphics. Then someone hacked on a GOD DAMNED VIDEO PLAYER. Then someone hacked on a fucking half-fucking-assed programming language. And throughout this hackage, someone decided it should be written in x86 assembler, because nobody is ever going to use any other platform. Ever. And then someone hacked it up to run on PPC to make the mac users shut the fuck up.

And then Adobe bought Macromedia, and fired the assembler guys. Because what the fuck, who needs assembler? And then they went to make a new version of Flash, and discovered - FUCK, half of it is written in fucking assembler!

Reportedly, there's a rewrite-from-scratch effort for Flash in the works at Adobe."

edit: Fuck people who say Photoshop CS is bloatware. It's meant for professionals, obviously some random 13 year old who pirates it off Gnutella isn't going to know how to use curves. Hell, I don't even like to play with curves. When was the last time something like GIMP supported CMYK outputs? Oh that's right, never. If anything, it's 90% of those oh-so-commonly used filters that's going to be useless for professionals. I'm looking at you, Lens-flare.

Haha, Wikipedia

This might be the best article I've read yet.

I lol'd so hard reading it. That's how you write an encyclopedia! If only I could get everything else to be similarly written.

The picture at the side too, everything about that page is genius!

I even took a screenshot, for prosperity.

The former Yugoslavia is messed up

Serbian jokes aside, the whole situation with Kosovo is a hell of a clusterfuck. Like, Israel levels of clusterfuck. I suppose in Canada when people think of a province trying to separate, Quebec comes to mind. Kosovo is a bit more complicated though.

So, once upon a time there was this country called Yugoslavia ruled by a communist leader named Tito. The Serbs were most populous, but he wanted there to be a balance of power so then he got a bunch of Albanians and moved them into Kosovo. Then he gave them an autonomous government. But then Tito died, and then Yugoslavia starts falling apart like a house of cards. So at this point they're left with a whole bunch of Albanians in Serbia.

Then the Albanians started wanting to secede and decided to go all IRA on the Serbs in the region. The Serbs decided that they had enough of that shit so they went and politely disagreed. By which I meant they took their tanks and marched into Kosovo.

Then the Kosovo war happened.

Now we have this mess as it is today.

So there you have it, history in a nutshell. Serbians are stupid lolol.

IRL

Sometimes when I make a mistake sketching in real life, I reach for the ctrl+z key instinctively; especially if there's a keyboard nearby. That's one thing that's better about working digitally.

That and the eyedropper tool.

In other news, more speed painting:

俺を誰 だと思ってやがる!?

Whether it's impossible or laughable,
Great men open up paths of battle!

If there's a wall, we break it down!
If there's no path, we make one with these hands!

The core of the heart burns with flames!

Everlasting combination!

Gurren Lagann!

Me!

US!

WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK WE ARE!?

To hell with gattai!

PNG is not GIF

I've been noticing JPEG artifacts more and more.

People need to use .png more often.

If it's not a photo, highly rendered artwork, or black and white, then it should be in .png.

Also, APNG has potential in replacing GIF for higher quality animation in images with limited colour pallets. Firefox 3 supports it, all the more reason for web designers to hate IE.

Everything seems moves faster late at night

I went to sleep 3 hours ago.

Then I woke up with the strangest desire to dodge glowing bullets.

Then I realized that I really suck at it right now. So here I am, maeking poast.

One thing I've never mentioned before is that you get points for grazing in the game--that is, having bullets pass through your sprite without touching your hit box. In addition, the character theoretically most useful for scoring has attacks that are extremely difficult to control. In other words, the game rewards you for going out of your way to do dangerous things and surviving.

It doesn't seem to be a good philosophy for living life in general.

edit: Haha, my graze counter was over 500 at the end of the first stage on Lunatic without even trying. That is the number of bullets that almost killed me but didn't.

People are sane...

...until you put 10 or so of them together in a group. Then things start breaking down. But not in a normal train wreck kind of way. If you ever tried to cut a Möbius strip in half lengthwise, that's the kind of twisting I'm talking about. And it's an unsettling thing, to be nothing more a spectator and watch whatever sinister scenario furtively unfold.

It's a general trend I'm noticing.

Targeted at no one in particular.

Though I think I have more than enough anecdotes by now.





What a splendid opportunity to unveil my new tag though.

Obama may take Texas yet

Evidently the early reports only took into account the primaries in Texas.

But there is also a caucus.

Obama performs a lot stronger at caucuses.

So basically Texas is tied right now with 31 pledged delegates left to distribute.

If Obama takes Texas, Clinton is most assuredly a goner because any reasonable hope of regaining momentum for her is gone.

Totally unrelated, but this makes my 5th post of the day and March now has more posts than all of 2007.

Stupid blog, I can't take math seriously anymore

The first paragraph of my report goes as follows:

"Geometric vectors are known, as free vectors in part because they can be moved at will but also "because of the cutthroat prices that they are offered for at army-surplus stores. Vectors are generally notated as lowercased letter marked in a distinguishing way. The shared commonality between most of the the notation methods being that they were specifically created to thwart users of Microsoft Word."

Then:

"As such, the process remains similar, with the vector components arranged tip to tail with the original vector such that a triangle or parallelogram is formed, and then the shape is solved through application of trigonometry. And courage."

Wait what?

It just occurred to me that everyone tells me that giving new players an affinity deck to play is a bad idea.

What the hell? How do you screw up with affinity? The entire strategy consists of playing everything that can be played, then attacking. It's not even necessary to do anything with most of the cards in play, just smash things with Broodstar.

Besides, it's a hell of a lot less confusing than a control deck. Or any combo deck.

Also, the new lands without the tap mechanic are retarded. There wouldn't be such an issue with new players getting confused between lands and mana if the swamps don't have a giant fucking skull printed in the text box. Besides, under this system there'd still be some newb who taps Llanowar Elves to put a forest into play. Retconning creature types is a huge clusterfuck too, because now you can never be sure if something like Cerulean Wyvern is still a wyvern (hint: it's not).

Food Fight

Double Trouble

Haha!

I've forgotten how awesome the fight scenes are choreographed. Ranks third in missile slinging madness only to Eureka Seven and Macross.

...and it drags on

Clinton needed to win both Ohio and Texas to keep her campaign going.

Well, she's done that.

Now it's going to be another torturous 3 months before the next major state: Pennsylvania.

I really wish she'd just drop out, nothing personal, but it'd be best for everyone if it just came to an end, then the Democrats have months to heal and unite before the general. As opposed to fighting tooth and claw all the way to the convention center, which looks like what is going to happen now.

I can see into infinity

"The problem starts with an empty vase and an infinite supply of balls at a starting time before noon. At each step in the procedure, balls are added and removed from the vase. The question is then posed: How many balls are in the vase at noon?

At each step, balls are inserted into and removed from the vase in a particular order:

* In the first step, ten balls (numbered 1 through 10) are added to the vase, and then the first ball (numbered 1) is removed from the vase.
* At each subsequent step, ten more balls are added to the vase (numbered 10(n−1)+1 through 10(n−1)+10 at step n), and then the lowest numbered ball (n) is removed from the vase.

As part of the problem statement, it is assumed that an infinite number of steps is performed. This is allowed by the following conditions:

* The first step is performed at one minute before noon.
* The second step is performed at 30 seconds before noon.
* The third step is performed at 15 seconds before noon.
* Each subsequent step n is performed at 2−(n−1) minutes before noon.

This guarantees that a countably infinite number of steps is performed by noon."

The answer is zero. For every ball n, it is subsequently removed in step n; thus in the end, there is no ball that can be said to remain in the vase.

If you graph it, there'd be a jump discontinuity where time is 12:00.

My mind is blown.

Part 2:
crobert says: hilbert's grand hotel ftw
Peter says: I heard of that
Peter says: sucks for the first person
crobert says: yeah
Peter says: so uh
Peter says: instead of the previous tenents moving down
Peter says: why don't the newcomers just go to the end?
crobert says: you could do that
crobert says: it'll end up being the same
Peter says: it seems more fair though
Peter says: because the late arrivals are the ones
Peter says: who have to find room lim -> infinity
crobert says: no person i is moved to room (i + 1)
Peter says: but assuming the hotel is full
Peter says: then isn't i lim -> infinity?
crobert says: but by definition you can always find one more room
crobert says: because there are infinite rooms
Peter says: but whole idea
Peter says: was that they had a hotel with infinite rooms
Peter says: that's full
Peter says: how do they accomodate more guests
Peter says: oh shi-
crobert says: gg
Peter says: that's why everyone had to move down

How is this possible?

The sine waves, they move!

Imperishable Night is actually the easiest recent game in the series. Perfect Cherry Blossom is perceived to be harder I think because there's no way to consistently counter-bomb. Mountain of Faith is like the creator decided people were getting too good, so he needed to ramp up the difficulty.

Peter Owen remarked that the game concept is so Asian. I tend to agree with him.

Awfully pretty though.

Patapon

Pata pata pata pon pata pata pata pon pata pata pata pon pata pata pata pon pata pata pata pon pata pata pata pon pata pata pata pon pata pata pata pon pata pata pata pon pata pata pata pon pata pata pata pon pata pata pata pon pata pata pata pon pata pata pata pon pata pata pata pon pon pon pata pon pon pon pata pon pon pon pata pon pon pon pata pon pon pon pata pon pata pata pata pon pata pata pata pon pata pata pata pon pata pata pata pon pata pata pata pon.

Pata pata pata pon.

Am I the only person who hates negative numbers?

It just feels so uncomfortable leading with a negative sign.

Also, I hate even numbers except ones divisible by 10 and numbers that end in 7. A number like 21 just doesn't feel like it has closure, whereas 45 feels nice and complete.

I also hate inexact numbers. I like to keep things as roots and fractions. You can imagine trigonometry driving me crazy, except for right angle triangles with angles divisible by 15, because then an exact answer can be easily found.

Actually that's not true, I'm fine with pi and e because you can express them as exact values.

60 is such a nice number, it's divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6; I think it's my favourite.

Whoever invented gradians is retarded, 400 isn't divisible by anything except products of 2 and 5.

I get the strangest information from my feeds

"I can’t find a link, but there was an article I remember reading a few years ago about how some Japanese moms would have sex with their teenaged sons to help them focus on their schoolwork."

...

...



Goddammit Japan, for all the mocking Texas gets, at least they weren't the ones who came up with tentacle rape.

L-O-L Germany

Steak tartare sounds like the most disgusting thing in the world. It's basically raw beef or horse meat, sliced into tiny pieces, then seasoned and served raw. Yes, what I described sounds very similar to hamburger. Raw hamburger.

See, I'm fine with sushi and crudo because those are fish. But steak tartare, that's red meat, raw. I thought it'd be at least cooked through with some kind of acidic sauce, but it looks like I was wrong.

Then again, it seems quite in character for the Germans to come up with something like this.

Don't get me started on Mett, which is raw ground pork. At least no country has dared to experiment with raw chicken yet. Either that or they're all dead.

edit: Incredibly in character for Germany, "In some countries, health concerns have reduced the popularity of this meat dish because of the danger of contamination by bacteria and parasites. In countries with high hygiene standards, this is not a concern and the dish remains popular."

Warships are durable things

This is the USS Cole.

This is the Cole with a 36' hole in her.

She floats just fine.

I bet Iron Man votes Republican

1) He was pro-registration in Civil War.

2) He is a defense contractor.

3) His suit is red.

Great balls of fire!

I love my trippy game.





Hard and even Extra mode is well within realms of human ability.

Lunatic is true to its namesake; I never survived the 3rd level.

Last Word spells are the embodiment of raep.

If you want to ask how it is possible to beat something like that, the answer is I don't know.

I hate how Iraq and Afghanistan are always grouped together

For fuck's sake, the Middle-Eastern countries aren't some Durkadurkastani collective, they're individual countries with different political and cultural environments, just like Europe.*

Iraq was a dictatorship, but at least people could live under Saddam without being slain by street gangs (for the most part) and enjoy their TVs and cellphones. Then, America stomped in, removed the stabilizing force and basically wrecked a lot of shit. In their brilliance the Iraqi Army, possibly the only unified and disciplined body, was disbanded completely and rebuilt from scratch. With random people. Often 'former' militia members.

The new government is a joke, they have no power at all in actuality (not to mention that a large portion of the governing body are 'former' warlords). The police force is just as bad, they're paid like shit and supporting the Americans is like painting a huge target on your head. If that doesn't seem like a recipe for corruption, I don't know what is.

In short, now instead of wrecking shit by themselves, America also has proxies to wreck shit for them. People are, understandably, a little pissed about this turn of events.

Afghanistan was a country run by the oppressive Taliban and they didn't have infrastructure for things like water and electricity. So in the worst case scenario, we fuck it up and the country falls into the hands of warlords that run around killing indiscriminately, all it means is that it's back to where it began!

People are genuine in their wishes for NATO to stay because for once there is someone there to protect them from gunmen and build them facilities that are taken for granted by us.

Well there are some of those in Iraq too, but that's only because America wrecked their shit, then armed and trained 'former' gang members to wreck more shit.

Not to say that there aren't a lot of fuck ups in Afghanistan (I could go on a a whole tirade on the drug trade), but the most important thing is that the country is actually improving as opposed to the Sisyphean task of America piecing together all the shit they wrecked again.

The worst part is that if the US didn't go into Iraq, the 100 000 troops would do wonders in Afghanistan, a place where they could actually do some good. Instead now, NATO is struggling to cover things with the limited resources they have against a wave of negative sentiment on war. With Canada, a major contributor of troops, considering withdrawal in 2009, god knows what's going to happen over there.

tl;dr:
Iraq = America wrecking shit.
Afghanistan = NATO attempting to rebuild while Western opinion has been tainted by images of America wrecking shit.

Bonus game: Spot the recurring theme! Win a prize!†

*I considered putting in a Polish joke there, I opted not to in the end.
†Not really.

So, I downloaded Apprentice

It's been a while; last time there was difficulty connecting to the internet.

If anything, at least I can use it to test decks.

Here, for those interested.

Supports up to 10th edition and comes with T2, Extended, Legacy and T1 decks. There's probably a patch for draft somewhere.

It's pretty spartan, but at least it's free. Also only 2mb! I have images that are more than twice that size!

edit: Also, I don't like the build of Ichorid they've got there. I prefer the version with Sutured Ghoul and Gigapede. In fact, I'll add it now.

Kittan...I've accepted your dying wish!

My companions' feelings have been etched onto this body,
I'll change this eternal darkness into light!

Heaven and Earth!

One who matches the gods!

Transcendent super-spiral dreadnought Ganmen
Inter-galactic Gurren Lagann!

I'll show you the power of mankind!

I always want to make an epic picture of Gurren Lagann, but I can't because every scene is already so fucking epic. It's so intense that sunglasses start appearing on everything from sheer willpower.

L-O-L Japan

No, this isn't a post on "pentacle scrape". Yes, I know you're all disappointed.

So, Japan is buying F-2s (which are analogous to Hornet to Super Hornet upgrades for F-16s). How much do they cost? $110 million USD each. Lolcats! As a reminder, the JSF costs $115 million each, and that's basically the next-gen replacement for the F-16. With financial decisions like this, it's no wonder Japan's economy is running into the ground.

Speaking of which, I was wrong on the Arleigh Burke class previously. It turns out to actually be an Kongo class in the picture. It's all semantics though, seeing as the Kongo class are basically exported Arleigh Burke ships.

On a wholly unrelated note, thank god Boeing lost the JSF, because that aircraft they designed is the ugliest SoB I've ever seen.

Slippery Slope

Here, David Sirlin talks about the concept of "perpetual comeback" in gaming. The gist of it being that in certain games such as Starcraft, a minor disadvantage in the early game can translate into major disadvantages later in the game. For example, losing an SCV in an attack means less resources can be collected, meaning being less able to defend against the next attack, meaning less resources and so on. In fighting games, there is no such slope because a player with half the life would still have the same tools at his disposal as the player at full health. Sirlin then goes on to talk about Puzzle Fighter, the only game he is aware of where the player who is losing may actually be winning (it makes sense if you actually read the article, which you should). In that manner, the game is never over until it's over.

Well, I've another game to add to his list:


In Phantasmagoria of Flower View, you destroy things on your side of the screen (bullets, enemies) to build up a charge meter, which you can then use to send massive patterns of bullets to the opponent's side in a bomb. The power of the bomb is dependent on the amount of charge you use. The perpetual comeback aspect is that by bombing, you also destroy all the objects within range on your own side and when your opponent bombs, you can counter bomb to destroy large amounts of projectiles and build up your charge meter. This continues with progressively larger and larger bombs until one side collapses under the pressure. Of course you can just wait out the bomb and then the opponent doesn't get many objects to reflect back at you, but that's the wussy strategy.

Then there's the whole "omfg bullets everywhere" aspect of it.

Re literature

Rant r = new Rant ();
r.start();

I've always held that literature was important, the emotions it can evoke are necessary in a world of coldly calculated mathematics. After all, what would be the point of living if we were to just to toil for all our lives? The way a good book is crafted, it holds beauty.

But to call them timeless teachers? That seems a bit grandiose.

Children can take morals from a story because it transforms a complex concept in a simple analogy that they can understand. Even so, we see many children indoctrinated wrongly in youth and it carries with them for the rest of their life. Literature fails even as such a rudimentary teacher because under many layers hides multiple meanings. I don't even mean that in an "everybody needs to find their own meaning" kind of way, I mean it in a "by an absence of such and such, we can infer the author to actually mean this" kind of way (see: deconstructivism).

Besides that, just because a work is well crafted does not validate it as a legitimate argument. For instance, take the Sistine Chapel, does it inspire in us the majesty of the Lord? Perhaps. Does it make a compelling argument to go out and convert? I would hope not. I don't trust such a person so easily swayed by rhetoric to make good decisions in life. After all, I too, can concoct a hypothetical scenario to support whatever arbitrary claim I wish to make.

The other issue I have with literature is that whoever is analyzing it seems to put on their shoes as a scientist, a philosopher or a psychologist at their convenience. No. You sir, do not have the credentials to discuss psychology at any depth; you sir, took your major in English. Alternatively, you can analyze everything only within the context of the work itself, but then nobody really cares except for other English majors, and at that point it's all just a big incestuous circle jerk anyways.

r.end();

edit: I realize I've made a post before where I claimed English uses fallacy as rhetoric, that's not mutually exclusive with this post, I'm just expanding my view this time instead of just "English sucks lolol".

Whoops, there goes $1.2b!

The USAF just lost its first B-2 in a crash due to unknown causes. The already small fleet of 21 just became smaller.


You know, I never noticed before how much the style of the B-2 resembles the YF-23.

I still hold the view that the YF-23 was the superior aircraft at the time of the ATF competition.

Ever notice that the concept drawings from military developers always look nothing like the end product? From the ATF we have a piece that more closely resembles Su-47 than a YF-23, something that looks reminiscent of the Eurofighter, and I can only assume the artist for this was reading too many trashy 70s sci-fi novels at the time.

If they're not going for accuracy, they might as well strive for awesome instead:



"Yes Sir, our concept can transform into a robot and kick ass."

My entire train of thought is held together by tangents.

We're evolving every passing minute!

With one revolution,
We move forward a bit!

That is a drill!
That is your limit!

In this space full of turmoil,
You act like kings and seal other lifeforms,

And that is your limit!

Remember this well,
As this drill rips holes though the universe,
That hole will become a path for those who follow us,
The wishes of the defeated and the hopes of everyone who follows,
With these thoughts, with twenty spirals weaved in, we will carve the path to tomorrow!

That is heaven shattering...that is...GURREN LAGANN!

MY DRILL IS A DRILL THAT PIERCES THE HEAVENS!

IhateRob.dec

It would have 4x Moat.

Alternatively, is it too late to build a Rebel deck?

Though I suppose Gush is the true star of Mercadian Masques, what with Empty Gush and Grog-A-Tog running rampant in Vintage.

A while back when I had Apprentice, I played Helix-Desire, that was a fun deck to play. Too bad the titular card is restricted now.

Likewise with Tinker, speaking of which, Jon Finkel won another Pro-Tour. That was wholly unexpected, seeing as his last win was what, a decade ago?

Most overpowered deck of all time? Academy.

D=

You won't believe the hits I got searching for a Futura download. Notice how they are all .movs, damn someone put a lot of dedication into this.

The search for Helvetica also yielded some disturbing results. Though I am curious at what something titled "helvetica wet and wild" would be, because what I'm picturing in my head largely involves a bunch of letters splashing themselves under a water hydrant. Then there's the irony in titling something "helvetica uncensored", would a censored version just have missing letters? Or maybe they'd all be bolded?

Part II of my font seeking adventures. At least they are being honest. *sigh*

But damn, I still want Futura.


edit: Actually, I really like Frutiger. I don't really like Helvetica that much, but its complete neutrality lends itself to any application. Arial looks alright in isolation, but as soon as you use it in typography, it looks really ugly; Times New Roman is far better. Verdana as a standard font looks pretty nice, I think the kerning is a bit off though.

double edit: Wow, this may very well be the most pretentious post I've ever made. Here's a reward for sticking around.

Are all the lights in the heavens our enemy?

Even if we were to be enslaved in the galaxy's cycle of rebirth,
the feelings that were left behind will open the door!

Even if the infinite Universe were to go against us,
our burning blood will cut through fate!

We'll break through the heavens and dimensions!

We'll show you our path through force!

HEAVEN SHATTERING GURREN LAGANN!

WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK WE ARE‽

Followup

I had previously made a mini-rant about an inaccurate picture in Time.

Well, my milblogs got it right:


That, is an Arleigh Burke class launching an SM-3.

Like an ex-smoker drawn to the fumes of a lit cigarette

I thought I quit Magic a long time ago.

I didn't care much for Kamigawa (obligatory comment on CoK and SaK), Ravnica or Lorwyn, though I know Kamigawa brought Kaiser back in briefly. Just because it's Japanese. *Roll eyes*

Then I found out about Cold Snap. Oh my god! Snow-covered lands! I never thought I'd see their glorious return!

It gets worse, then I find out about Time Spiral. The entire block is a tribute to the halcyon days of Magic. They brought back Kobolds! Kobolds!

Not to mention the return of old characters like Teferi and Freyalise. Sadly, they return only to be killed off. On a tangential note, Teferi must have had the worst planeswalker activation ever. He was trapped in a Tolarian time stream and set on fire for 40 years before he sparked. It only took Urza a split second during an explosion to do the same.

How can you say no to art like this?


Also, Akroma, Angel of Fury? Yes.

They brought back flanking! If they brought back Banding too, I would have serious difficulty controlling my money expenditure. Just because the idea of a banding deck is marvelous.

The punchline writes itself

Wikipedia is beautiful.

Alternative title: People on the internet have way too much time.

Here's a quasi-related video, because the opening scene is awesome.



edit: Am I the only person to have trouble writing titles for posts? I never know what I'm supposed to do, should I write it like a title for a book? Do I write it as a sentence? If I don't punctuate the end with a period, should I capitalize the beginning? That, and the number one factor stopping me from signing up on forums is that I can't come up with a suitable username.

Goddamn CNN

The more I watch, the more I realize how bad it really is.

Larry King? Why isn't he dead yet? Hasn't he been broadcasting for the last 50 years or something? I'm not a fan of Lou Dobbs either. What happened to the hosts of Crossfire, are they out of a job now?

The worst is probably Wolf Blitzer, my god the Situation Room is bad. So bad. It's a case of having more money that they can't spend it all. Why is it necessary to have touchscreen TVs and fancy 3D graphics? Why can't they just show the pictures directly on my TV instead of filming a guy pointing at a monitor? Then they have this issue where no matter what they're talking about they must have four picture in pictures just hovering around the border, sometimes not even related to the discussion. The only good thing I can say is that "Wolf Blitzer" would make a great name for a Digimon attack.

At least they have Anderson Cooper, I can't say much about his journalistic integrity, but he's got ruggedly good looks.

Also of note, I'm reading this article from Time Online (in partnership with CNN) on the proposed satellite shoot down. What picture did they use in the article?


That's right, it's a Nimitz class CVN launching a Sea Sparrow. They've got the wrong boat and the wrong missile, in fact the picture has nothing to do with the article at all except for the fact that it takes place in the ocean. I wonder how many other times they're bullshitting and I just don't know about it.

Small World

...the internet that is.

So, for those of you who are familiar with the more notable artists for Magic (AKA probably nobody), there's this guy named Puddnhead. Yes, that is his full name. Puddnhead.

Now, he's illustrated some interesting artwork, and I've always wondered where he would learn to draw such twisted creations.

Well, surfing the intertubes like I always do, I've stumbled upon the source.

Yep, it all makes sense now.

30 minutes...ready, set, GO!

I find that as what I try to paint becomes more and more elaborate, it becomes a greater and greater time sink; eventually my patience runs out and I'm left with a folder full of partially complete works. So I figured that the only way I am ever going to finish anything is to have it done before my interest runs out.

Thus, I decided I'm going to practice my speed painting:


Not a great likeness, but mulling over the details would defeat the purpose wouldn't it?

Alternative title: I'm not obsessed, honest!

edit: I hate blogger's resizing so I'll just link this one. Knock, knock.

Primaries = Tie

So, it's almost certain that the superdelegates are going to play a key role in deciding the democratic nominee, because at this point it's unlikely for either candidate to pull through with entirely pledged delegates.

Obama has a lot of momentum, winning every state since Super Tuesday while Clinton has been forced into a defensive strategy (attempting to entrench herself within Texas and Ohio). Still, unless Obama manages wins by large margins in many of the remaining states (which is possible), he won't have the 2025 delegates needed to win.

That's not to say that winning the popular vote is not important. Many supers have already expressed displeasure at the prospect of turning the nomination against the popular vote. Also, most of the supers are in elected offices and they can expect tremendous backlash from the public if they do go against the public.

On a seperate note, as the primaries draw closer to the end, I'm figure I'm going to need to find something else to analyze. I'm thinking about the weather, I think there's potential in predicting snowstorms.

Are you shitting me?!

"Yahhh!" is what you came up with?

Motherfucking "Yahhh!"?!

"Yahhh" isn't even a fucking word, you douchebag! You're not Lewis Carroll, you don't get to make up shit like this.

What the hell kind of name Soulja Boy Tell'em anyways? 13 year olds on Myspace have better pseudonyms than that.

Jesus fuck, and I thought Crank Dat was bad, Yahhh! gave me malaria. My only solace is that it's so bad that it also gave my malaria cancer.

Fucking hell...

Two

A cuttlefish has two tentacles and eight other arms. Also, its eye looks like King Gainer's face.

Doctor Zoidberg has four tentacles.

The more that you know.

edit: Incidentally, King Gainer has a head full of tentacles too. Dammit Tomino, why can't you just stay depressed?

Pot calling Kettle black...

...or is it the other way around? I can never remember.

Basically what I'm saying is, with regards to the 4chan vs Scientology spectacle (well, spectacle is an overstatement), I honestly can't decide what's worse: a group of people who've turned speculative fiction into a cash-cow religion or a bunch of guys who post loli-rape threads on image boards. Sometimes in high-resolution.

Also of note, this is my first and hopefully last post that's tagged with "loli-rape".

What a beast!

Oh shit, Obama is winning Maine?! A state full of poor, old, uneducated, blue-collar workers? That came out of the left field! He's unstoppable now!

Also, if Wolf Blitzer brings up the topic of an Obama/Clinton or Clinton/Obama ticket one more time, I'm going to cut someone.

edit: Man what, Caucus delegates aren't bound to vote for their district's choice? What the hell? Who came up with this system?

two edits: I have to say, Clinton is such a divisive candidate. She's really breaking up the party unity this season. Which, is not to say that Obama supporters haven't been absolute zealots at times, "Hildog"? "Hitlery"? Come on, that's just uncalled for...okay, I'll admit, I laughed at the last one.

edit the third: So, Hillary Clinton apparently looked good at one point in her life, this naturally leads into a meaningful discussion.

Peter: Oh man new theory
Peter: Hilary Clinton is a tsundere
crobert: <_<
crobert: tsundere for...?
Peter: well presumably her husband
crobert: i was going to suggest
crobert: tsundere for america
Peter: HAHAHA
Peter: tsundere for freedom
Peter: STRIKE FREEDOM

My thoughts are all becoming intertwined!

one more final:
crobert: that should've been hillary's catchphrase
crobert: "i'm tsundere for america"
Peter: but a tsundere would never actually admit they are
crobert: true
crobert: so
crobert: her slogan should be
Peter: I hate america?>
crobert: "i hate america and i'm only doing this because i have to"
Peter: this convo is glorious

Kyou is the most tsundere thing in the world!

Sometimes I get strange urges...

...for instance, I've taken a sudden interest in Audrey Hepburn's films.

Apparently she was ranked 3rd greatest female actress of all time by the American Film Institute. Thanks, wiki.

Holy batman $115 million!

The cost of the F-35 program has really spun out of control.

How did the per unit cost of an F-35A nearly quadruple? Not even considering that the B and C variants probably cost even more. To compare, an F-22 is $148 million and the Raptor isn't exactly the epitome of fiscal responsibility either.

Canada has until 2012 to decide whether to purchase, though $150 million has already been invested. It really would be smarter just to replace the fleet with F/A-18E/Fs or even just upgrade the existing planes to the capabilities of the F-18C/D blocks. Besides what are the fighters going to be used for anyways? In order of likely hood, most to least:

-Strafing a foreign fishing trawler
-Intercepting a hijacked airliner
-Defending against Russians
-Defending against Americans
-Defending against the Zentradi

Note that in 3 of the 5 scenarios AIRCOM is screwed anyways, F-35s or not.

However, I do advocate development of the VF-1; the Zentradi are a looming threat!

Fuck this superdelegate crap!

I will be pissed if Obama gets the popular vote but loses because of the superdelegates.

So pissed.

Also:


edit: To elaborate, Obama has come out of Super Tuesday only behind by 8 pledged delegates. CNN has an interesting way of doing things in that they're also showing superdelegates, which makes the gap look much bigger than it is. It's important to note that firstly, that the superdelegates are unpledged, they can change their vote at any time and secondly, most of the superdelegates have not declared their decision one way or another. However, by the virtue of the fact that Clinton's lead looks larger than it really is, several things may happen: Obama may lose momentum as he appears unelectable (unlikely because his campaign contributions have tripled Clinton's recently), his supporters may be more inspired to go out while Clinton's may wane as the margin looks comfortable, or maybe nothing because the public is actually informed about this (haHA). Either way, if Obama wins the popular vote, the superdelegates (including ones that currently support Clinton) will feel pressure to conform, because never before have they swung the vote against the popular candidate (mainly because never have they actually mattered as much as they do now). On the other hand, if Obama doesn't take the popular vote, then I give it a slim chance that he'll win because the superdelegates are mostly in Clinton's demographic.

double edit: If the democratic primaries were WWI, then Missouri would be Verdun. That is, not a most strategically important locale but important for morale, because they almost always predict the outcome.

triple edit:

Meh, I'd take it with a grain of salt though. Kucinich got so high because I slightly increased the importance of gay marriage and reduced the importance of global warming. Interestingly enough, I have stated before one of the things I like about Kucinich is that he supports gay marriage unconditionally unlike any of the other candidates.
Link

Oh shi-

200 nautical miles?! It makes my heart flutter to think a DDX in the Mediterranean could possibly lob shells all the way into Iraq.



edit: Interesting enough, their destroyers and cruisers use the 5" Mark 45 but the same Bofors 57mm on USCG Legend class cutters is used on our Halifax class frigates. Difference is the smaller 57mm has a higher rate of fire (220 vs 20 rounds/min) making it suitable for AA point defense. Oh god, the tangents I get on clicking related links on YouTube and Wiki combined.

Untapping teh Pimp since '03

"Chimney Imp is a bad card."
"No it isn't"
"How isn't it? It's a 1/2 for 4B with an useless ability"
"It untaps for free"
"How does it untap for free?"
"At the beginning of your untap step, you untap it"
*rimshot*

That's right, I'm reminiscing about niche forum memes circa 2003. Leave me alone.

You know you've spent too much time on milblogs when...

...you start calling Sea Knights, "phrogs" and B-52s, "buffs".

Someone commented that a future FB-22 needs to be equipped with Lambda drivers. A milblog was the last place I expected a reference to Full Metal Panic.

Looks like the F-15a/b/c/d has reached the end of its shelf life. Also looks like an excuse for buying a gajillion F-22s that aren't really needed.

Su-30s are hueg liek teh Xbox, they're longer than F-14s, and those planes were already pretty big.

CF-18s suck, they're not even up to the level of the F-18c/d.

On the other hand, Super Hornets are still ballin':


Despite this smattering of air force commentary, I am actually more interested in ships. I eagerly await the day warship mounted railguns arrive.

Maek Poasts

http://stupidfilter.org/random.php

It's funny, because I actually can't decipher what 80% of those comments mean at all.

Courtesy of http://stupidfilter.org/main/index.php?n=Main.Status

HaHA! Foreshadowing!

"Your drill is a drill that will pierce the heavens!"

Then, they break the universe.

Boy, Steven Spielberg sure got ripped off!

Primaries

A lot of people don't seem like Clinton (I also disliked her at first), but the more of her I see, the more my opinion of her has warmed. She is a competent woman, and I would feel comfortable with her leading America.

The other forerunner is Obama, and no doubt he is much more charismatic than Clinton. I used to like him much more than Clinton, but every time they go head to head, I see more of his weaknesses. He remains my preferred candidate between the two of them, however the gap has closed by a lot in my mind.

Of course, the Democrats are extremely united this year, so whoever wins can pretty much count on the support of the entire party.

McCain won New Hampshire, which is actually a bit of a shock. I had pretty much written his campaign as dead in the water. God help us all if he gets into office, God help us all.

Huckabee managed to take up 3rd position, and I'm willing to bet that was fueled significantly by the Colbert bump. Which is actually kind of sad.

Ron Paul: "I'm going to get rid of the Federal Reserve!"
Crowd: *Loud cheering*
What the fuck is wrong with these people?

The Republicans are really weak this year, their turnouts have diminished (as opposed to the Democrats, whose turnouts have strengthened). This cannot bide well for them in the elections.

So, I am hastily writing thoughts on the primaries instead of studying for a test. Tommorow. I am so screwed, this is worse than the time I watched Harvey Birdman all night instead of studying.

The Pope has ordered his bishops to set up exorcism squads to tackle the rise of Satanism.

Link.

So I'm sitting here, and I'm thinking, "YES!"




Witch hunters and Exorcist tanks are exactly what we need!

No, seriously fuck him.

"Given the inefficiencies of what D.C. laughingly calls the `criminal justice system,’ I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal."

"If you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be."

Way to drop the ball...

edit: However, I do give him credit for being a true blue conservative as opposed to a neo-con; though one has to wonder how much of an improvement that really is in this case. Scratch that, he's gone far enough out to be libertarian. On the crazy scale, that ranks higher than Communism.

Two screens are distracting...

Further amending my list of things I do instead of homework:

1) Learning Ruby.
2) Researching voting histories of Republican presidential candidates.

I think Canada needs to have a equivalent to Project Vote Smart. Then again, it becomes kind of a moot point when MPs almost always vote along party lines.

Addendum: Man, fuck Ron Paul. Way to drop the ball, internets.

Wikipedia revisited:

Wikipedia has added a few new notices:

On that note, they're condensing all the Pokemon articles into blocks of 20 and shortening the information to about a paragraph each. I know individual articles can get excessively large for popular franchises, but for me truncating articles to that level removes a lot of the usefulness from Wikipedia.

I say that as an avid user of Wikipedia.

I don't mind making the pages more readable (because face it, a lot of pages are written like crap and it's really dumb when people put links to Final Fantasy characters from pages on Greek gods), but I don't like them restricting their content. What makes Wikipedia so great that it's largely written by democracy. Generally speaking, the more people are interested in a subject, the longer it will be. If that happens to be Pokemon, then so be it. They will never be treated seriously as a academic source due to the nature of the system, they might as well pander to the internet community. It's the only one they have.

René Magritte has totally just become one of my favourite artists!

The Treachery of Images

La Grande Famille

What English calls rhetoric, Science calls fallacy.

Yeah, I suck ass with literature.