Lexomatic's Field Notes

Dreamspace: Everything Falls to Pieces

2009-11-10T14:07:26Z

I'm in the rustic office of the President of the United States and -- hey, what's he doing in Avatar: The Last Airbender? A young woman stands behind him, dressed in a blue robe. That's a Water Tribe color, but I take a close look at her sleeve cuff -- a sawtooth pattern of alternating green and light blue triangles, bordered in yellow. That's more like Fire Nation fashion.

My D&D-style raiding party leaps and skims across a flat yellow prairie landscape, scattered with widely-spaced red-brick buildings -- huge ones, factories and warehouses. They collapse in terrible, majestic silence: walls topple, narrow chimneys implode, loose bricks avalanche. Agile and fleet-footed, I spring through their interiors, dodging converging sections. The occasional giant robot, like an empty suit of glossy blue armor, lunges at us, its slow-mo motion futile as it, too, shatters into segments against the ground.

We find a couple of black pickup trucks, and pile in. Through a pair of doors and -- oh no, we're trapped! The road ends on a ledge an icy blue chamber (well-lit, though), and the only way out is to climb down (there's a rough-edged pool of turgid black water) and back up, through a claustrophobically narrow staircase; too narrow for my rucksack. We back off. Hey, maybe we can blast our way through the doors. We do so, and the soot reveals footprints around the chamber (not ours, since we RETCON hadn't gone that way, but those of a previous party).

POTUS inspired by the use of real nations in "Gundam 00." Spelunking, and feeling that we must "bring out everything we bring in," inspired by an episode of "Star Trek: Enterprise" that my TiVo found but which I refused to watch in its entirety.

Dreamspace: No Transporting for Vampires

2009-10-27T02:14:05Z

The Muppets are staging an opera which involves several copies of Count Von Count, in ceremonial white robes with long trains. The seats are also Muppets. Meanwhile, down the street, Vincent Ventresca (The Invisible Man (2000); Dollhouse (2009)) leads a gang of Wild West desperadoes. Hey, it's an oversized tabletop model train set. How do we adjust the rain junctions so the train can be pulled to the siding?

I'm on a rounded cliff-top overlooking a city, surrounded by the denuded trunks of trees and standing amid brown leaf-litter. Along with Buffy Summers and Angel, I stand against a second copy of Buffy, this one psychotically agitated. Look, up in the sky, it's the Enterprise-D! We call "four to beam up" but only the Buffy copy vanishes. Is there something wrong with our energy signature?

Or possibly that's the Enterprise-A, as it changes shape while passing behind an obstruction. Now its secondary hull is squarish and equipped with two laterally banks of hexagonally-packed weapons tubes. Look, an extra-blocky Klingon warship! The two leviathans of space trade broadsides. Flaming, falling wreckage! We duck inside a conveniently-placed Federation science station. A section of hull crashes through the ceiling. Quick, find some fire extinguishers in the many supply cabinets lining the orange walls! Or perhaps respirators, for the human survivors spilling from the wreckage. Maybe there's a tricorder? That's make a great souvenir.

The three of us determine that we must come from a universe where Trek-style "life energy" doesn't exist, and that's why the transporter couldn't lock onto us. Buffy gestures to a double-ended metal spaghetti ladle we'd unearthed from a cabinet, and taking it, whacks us over our heads. "If you're unconscious," she explains, pounding away, "maybe the transporter will work."

Housing cleaning 2: Batteries

2009-07-13T00:38:24Z

Yesterday, I tossed several pounds of dead alkaline cells (AAA, AA, C, D, 9V) that had been accumulating for about ten years while I wondered how to do so. (I verify they're dead with a multimeter. And I kill flies with a howitzer.)

Alkaline dry cells manufactured since 1997 can be safely disposed in household garbage; before that, they contained a small amount of mercury. Rechargeables (NiMH, NiCd, lithium ion) can be recycled. Flat "button cells" (as found in watches, laser pointers, color-changing LED pens, and flat Bose® remotes) often contain heavy metals like silver or zinc. EHSO provides a comparison table and some tasty technical details and numbers.

The easiest way to recycle (or at least ensure disposal in the appropriate landfill) is to use an RBRC-approved drop-off point, such as a consumer electronics store. The Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation was established in 1994 to handle this task in the U.S. and Canada.

But non-rechargeable lithium (not -ion, not -polymer) cells, like the CR-V3 models used for digital cameras? RBRC doesn't accept them, and I still haven't discovered what to do with those. They don't take button cells either, but those don't consume much space in a house.

(Most of the power-storage devices in your households are, technically, cells. A battery contains multiple cells, in the same sense a "missile battery" contains missiles, plural; the one under your car's hood is such a device. Whenever an LED device gangs button cells in series to obtain sufficient voltage, I suppose you could call the group a battery, too.)

House cleaning 1: The mysterious foam rubber pen case

2009-07-13T00:08:40Z

Some years ago, I bought a Nextpen™-brand Stylus Twin™ dual-function writing implement (©2000). Twist the heavy metal barrel (matte black) one way to extend a ballpoint pen; the other for a PDA-suitable stylus. In fact, I bought three copies, because they were in the clearance bin, and I could keep one in each of my jackets and bags.

Now here's the mysterious bit: each pen was packaged with a case -- a foam rubber block, 6.5x2x0.75 inches, with snap closure lid (the snaps are by Sun King) and a pen-shaped recess. Why would Nextpen even bother? A dual-function implement of this ilk is meant to be carried, and it's hardly fancy enough to deserve a gift case. (Now, what could an imaginative person do with these? Foam rubber takes acrylic paint well; I could redecorate them.)

From the sales package, it appears the company was located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but there's no URL (odd for 2000) and I can't locate them online. (What's the mean lifetime for a small manufacturer these days? Probably less than nine years.)

Dreamspace: Forbidden Planet Redux

2009-07-05T14:34:50Z

Robbie the Robot is piloting his buggy from spacecraft C-57D to the home of Morbius on planet Altair IV. It's located deep underwater, and the three human passengers (including myself) are protected by an invisible force-dome. A shape becomes visible through the foggy silt: a square, tapered tower. As we approach, other buildings resolve from the blue gloom: an entire city.

Inside, one of the junior officers nearly swoons when he finds a bottomless black shaft to one side of a short connecting passage between two rooms. There's a waist-high parapet, but it doesn't convey much of a sense of safety.

Through the windows of the unfurnished grey concrete room at the far side of the passage, we see what looks suspiciously like a 1950s American city with three-story brick buildings. Then a double-decker bus with a shiny green metal surface and a face on the front drives past.

There's a narrow chamber connecting this room with a similar one in the next corner of the building. I notice a design in the floor, in yellow lines -- it seems to be a map of a laboratory, consisting of several rooms and a hanger. Is this chamber an elevator? Thick blast doors close on both sides of me, sealing the chamber. "I'm in no rush; I can wait," I think, expecting the automation to open them again, or for someone to notice my absence. After a few moments I change my mind and start clawing at the hatch. I force the panels open and squeeze through, where I meet the ship's engineer. We have to repeat the procedure for the next several rooms.

We finally reach Morbius's kitchen nook, where he, his daughter, and the captain are eating breakfast. Robby stands by in the next room. I mention my find, but Morbius denies the presence of a laboratory. "Still," I press on, "Given the wealth of this society, I suppose anybody could have as much space as they needed for any hobby. Imagine the studio of an artist who sculpted full-size dinosaurs."

"Electric torches of 9000 degrees," agreed Morbius.

"Huge vats for mixing clay," I continue. "But enough of that. Here I am, begin a poor guest, ignoring breakfast. Did Robby make these? Wow, these rolls aren't stale, even after sitting for a hour."

Dream inspired after skimming a book that chronicles the history of robots in fact and fiction. The appearance of Robby in this 1956 movie inspired a range of toy imitations.

lexomatic @ 2009-03-23T22:38:00

2009-03-24T02:54:32Z

Can you be morally responsible for what happens in your own dreams?

This is a question that probably doesn't occur to inexperienced dreamers, i.e., people unaccustomed to, or untrained in, remembering their own dreams, or especially inducing a lucid dream-state -- one where you (whatever "you" means during the fractionated mentality of sleep) have some control over the events.

So, let's say you see a pretty girl (a "character," to apply the terms of waking fiction to the mental theater) and you decide to do something that would be socially unacceptable in waking life -- but she looks at you disapprovingly. Is this merely a response by your own censor-subsystem, or is there something more fundamental happening? What if you encounter a room full of disagreeable characters, and you find yourself shouting "You're figments of my imagination, now go away!" Are these characters due any degree of respect? Can this become thoughtcrime? (Crime is a social construct.) Or is "mental hygiene" the right term?

Can a single brain actually run/generate alternative personalities? Certain mental disorders would imply so. How about multiple concurrent personalities? Does a transient personality count as a person with rights? We're accustomed to thinking of a single body, and especially the brain and mind, as being unitary and inviolate -- social concerns arise only with physical externalized action. ("My coworker might be having dirty thoughts about me, but I've never even seen him glance my way, so on what grounds can I object?") Is the luxury of an isolated skull as absolute as we thought, if you actually have a society sharing the space?

Are there certain activities that are verboten to even think about, even if they're never externalized?

(In science fiction there's telepathy, where skulls aren't so isolated, and "externalized" doesn't equate with "physical-bodily.")

[METACOG] Overplanning a vacation

2009-03-23T16:42:29Z

I keep thinking "I need to take a long-distance vacation this spring," followed by "why now? why long-distance?" It's causing quite a tempest in my brain as I try to optimize or, conversely, simplify.

* I have three carryover vacation days I must use by the end of April. (Of course I could always stay home, or visit New York by train, but -- it's vacation! You have to go somewhere! Right?)

* After all, it's my patriotic duty as someone with a secure paycheck to Support The Economy. (What, doesn't $2,000 in auto service count?)

* Certain weekends are unavailable for my purposes.

* If I'm ever going to go to these particular places (Disneyworld, Las Vegas, Hawaii), I might as well do so while they're offering deals.

* And since they're in warmer climes, I don't want to travel during the summer.

* But I don't want to go during their busy season, which for Disney includes "spring break" (however that's defined) and Easter.

* And after a few other trips, I'm really tired of trying to optimize air travel for price, time and connections.

* What I really want to do is travel to Japan again (I'm still having the occasional dream that says "You rushed through too quickly"), except that: (a) the best airfare deals are now, (b) I don't want to go when it's hot, (c) the second "Rebuild of Evangelion" movie doesn't premiere until 26 June, when airfares aren't so advantageous and it might be hot.

* And every time I think of Hawaii, I cascade to "I'm halfway to Japan, and there are probably flights to Osaka instead of Tokyo," but then follow with "I have no idea where touristy things are in Hawaii." That's not a problem when I'm in a city and everything's within walking-scouting distance.

* Also, I can't bear the thought of leaving the job for several days at a time, not when I have so many half-finished projects in progress.

[TRAVEL] Passing through MEM

2009-02-28T19:35:02Z

I'm visiting family in one of the Great Plains states this weekend, and my flight passed through Memphis (Tennessee) International, MEM. During a prolonged layover, my party wandered the terminals and observed the following art:

* Three cases of items loaned from the Belz Museum of Asian & Judaic Art, including Jewish celebratory pieces in sterling silver with gold and lapis, a Chinese jadeite cabbage (the name is homophonous with "good luck" -- this may explain the giant eggplant at that Shinto shrine in Suma), and items carved from mammoth ivory (retrieved from the Siberian permafrost -- Chinese culture is old, but not that old).

* An extensive series of large-format paintings by local high school students on the subject of "Memphis, Music Capital." The best were made into postcards.

* Poster-sized photographs of Tennessee's natural wonders (mountains, escarpments, trees on mountains, waterfalls over escarpments, and so forth).

* A set of 32 planks in different woods, supplied by the Lumbermen's Club of Memphis (no website).

When engaging a travel agent to make arrangements, do not ever accept a 45-minute layover. Any of the following may happen: Weather delays. Schedule changes that reduce the layover. Deplaning delays. Members of your party who cannot move quickly, even if you request wheelchair assistance from the airline. Infelicitous placement of the two gates. According to the airline, 30 minutes is a perfectly adequate transfer time, but the gate personnel at MEM agree that it's wildly optimistic.

In scale, MEM's almost the size of MSP, but it was strangely devoid of activity between 9:30 and 12:30 (Central Time). I think I saw more TSA personnel than passengers. Foot traffic rose after lunch; perhaps the weekday schedule is pulsatile.

Earwax: bane of all with ears!

2008-11-21T13:55:30Z

I've been spending the week learning empathy with the deaf. It might be an unconscious protective pre-adaptation against the shrill noise of many small (medium and large) children at Philcon 2008 Children's Program, but earlier this week my chronically-overproduced earwax finally slumped into a position to completely block my ear canals, reducing auditory acuity to near-nil.

Ongoing efforts to dislodge the masses (earwax-softening oil, warm water irrigation and aspiration, cotton-tipped swabs) have removed an astonishing amount of wax, but my tympana are still immobilized. (To be quantitative on "astonishing:" one ear yielded, not just a crust or strand, but a clump a full cubic millimeter in size. The next day, the other ear yielded twice as much. I didn't realize my ear canals were that big.)

The season's first snow

2008-11-21T13:49:35Z

Tuesday: snow flurries. Wednesday: nodules of frozen rain on car windshields in the morning. Thursday: heavier snow flurries. Friday: out-and-out snow, with over an inch accumulated by 7:00 a.m., rather more than the "heavy flurries" in the forecast. This bodes badly for Philcon (or maybe not, since it's sixty miles away). It certainly bodes badly for packing the car.

Sleeping ergonomics tip

2008-11-12T00:46:58Z

I recently starting sleeping with a pillow tucked beneath my knees, which is the quick/easy/cheap replacement for an S-shaped mattress.. It has greatly reduced the aches I discover upon waking, now that my feet don't pronate and I don't curl into a zig-zag. I'm still afflicted with dreams that it's 3:00 a.m. and I'm already in the office answering client-support chats, or hypnagogic hallucinations that the ceiling fan is a lurking giant starfish.

Humanitarian mailings: One charity, multiple projects

2008-11-12T00:43:26Z

I joined Charity Navigator today so I could pick which of the many humanitarian and environmental causes chasing my dough would give me the most bang for my buck (and possibly simplify my corporate gift-matching, but that doesn't seem to be a feature), and discovered something interesting: American Indian Relief Council, Council of Indian Nations and Sioux Nation Challenge aren't independent, but rather projects of National Relief Charities. (Native American Heritage Association, however, is separate.) Does this mean my donations go into a single fund, or are the projects rather like choosing "I'd like my alumni donation to go to the library/athletics/student life"?

Something similar happens with publishers, who produce "imprints" to finely slice their branding. For example, Tom Doherty Associates has Forge, Orb, and Tor, although I can't quite figure out what each one specializes in (SF/F, fantasy, backlist, etc.). Also, publishers may be divisions of larger publishers, which is probably due to M&A, but complicates the populating of the "publisher" field in a personal-reading database.

"Fringe" - bad science alert!

2008-11-03T03:11:23Z

In a recent episode of FOX's Fringe, an unwitting woman was used as a microwave emitter to kill a diner full of bystanders. The episode conflated ionizing and microwave radiation. And an earlier ep confused electric, magnetic, and electromagnetic fields. Can't Abrams, Kurtzman and Orci afford a science advisor to avoid these gaffes?

* The "weaponized" people have been injected with micro-capsules of strontium-90 to treat an aggressive cancer, Bellini's lymphoma. First problem: radioisotopes do not emit microwaves. Second problem: microwaves do not treat cancer.

* There were residual radiation levels in the corpses, three times higher in the woman's body than the other victims. Except that microwave radiation doesn't persist. Radioisotopes in splattered blood do, but that's not what the characters said.

* Why did her head explode? It wouldn't have contained a higher concentration of blood-borne radiocapsules, but maybe her skull acted as a pressure vessel. Why couldn't Dr. Bishop have said so?

* When the woman started emitting microwaves at lethal levels, all the other fluids in the room (soup, soft drinks) should've been visibly boiling too.

* The episode neglected to give us any reason, even a hint, for why drug company INtREPUS would want to weaponize people, or why those with Bellini's lymphoma were prime subjects.

A knock-on effect of bibliophilic affluence

2008-10-29T00:57:26Z

For an interval, I had a recurring dream wherein I'd look at my bookshelf and be pleasantly surprised by a Star Trek or Doctor Who novel I hadn't known existed and didn't know I owned. Now, I have a book-backlog that's 30 volumes and six years deep, and I don't have that dream anymore.

Esurance's spokesperson has a following

2008-10-29T00:43:39Z

The animated secret-agent spokesperson for Esurance, Erin (who may or may not be Kim Possible a few years later), has her own subsite. Because she has fans. Fans who create fan-art and (saints of the Planiverse protect us) fanfic. The Geico Gecko and Cavemen (who may or may not have wandered in from the parallel universe of Robert J. Sawyer's Hominids trilogy) get their commercials online, but that's it.

Thoughts on "He-Man and the Masters of the Universe" (2002)

2008-10-27T02:45:57Z

1. The 1983 TV series never explained what a "Master of the Universe" was. This 2002 remake/prequel makes it clear: They're He-Man's crew, sworn to defend Eternia.

2. ...And to politely ignore their own names. Buzz-Off, Man-E-Faces, Mekanek, Ram-Man, Roboto. Maybe they sound less hackneyed in the original Eternian. (Some of them get proper names, not just bad puns: Adam, Duncan, Marlena, Randor, Stratos, Teela, Sorceress Zoar, Zodak.)

3. Sometimes the Masters have radios, and sometimes they resort to foot-carried messages.

4.-5. He-Man's redesign gives him an obviously different physique than 16-year-old Prince Adam (unlike the 1983 series, which suffered from severe Clark Kent problems), and also a sporran to go with his fur briefs.

6.-7. Most of the Masters seem to be permanently welded into their armor. Where would Man-E-Faces, former actor, keep his beast and robot heads if not wearing his helmet? Mekanek has a cybernetic replacement neck, and apparently a skull too. This has really got to crimp their romantic prospects. Now, Teela is actually been depicted in a nightshirt when she falls ill, and civvies while playing 3D antigravity soccer against Adam.

8.-9. Distances are plot-flexible. Whether they're on foot or flying (by machine; Orko's always flying, of course) they can always rush from Snake Mountain to the Mystic Mountains to Castle Eternia to Castle Grayskull while the sun's still up. Maybe Eternia has very long days. (Despite having a "dark hemisphere," it's not tide-locked to its star; we've seen both day and night at the palace.)

10. TV SF/F always needs at least two moons, but Eternia's sky is far too crowded. And these worlds are always the same place, which defies orbital dynamics and is probably just a consequence of the background paintings, but how hard would it have been to use a multi-layer composition and swapped in different skies? Even in analog-animation days, it would be simple.

11.-13.. By turns, "Eternia" seems to refer just to Randor's kingdom, or to the entire planet. Maybe it fractured after the abdication of the Elders. There's Avion (Stratos's winged people), the nation of Buzz-Off's bee-people, cat-people, yeti, and "Subternians." This is all very Flash Gordon Mongo-ish. Some of the characters seem to be the sole representatives of additional races.

14-15. Now, Stinkor is a unique creature because he was accidentally mutated by a device meant to remove Beastman's odor, and the lousy name is his own idea. Upon his creation, he boldly enters Skeletor's throne room and declares, "I am Otophus, and I have the power of stink!" Even Skeletor holds his nose, which is odd because a bony skull doesn't usually contain scent receptors, but this supports my hypothesis that he's not a bone-head, but merely has invisible head-flesh.

The Eternian Bureau of Prisons has the same incompetent designers as every other cartoon, possibly since the invention of the Wild West. Granted, restraint of superpowered prisoners is always a problem (see: DC Comics, W.I.T.C.H. -- Transformers can just have their personality components removed and tossed in a drawer, unless you're a bleeding-pump Autobot and insist upon incarcerating a fully functional bot), but there are certain obvious mistakes to avoid.

16. In the ep "The Snake Pit," Kobra Kahn is imprisoned in a cell block watched by two guards who have the keys with them. Bad idea, because a lizard-creature is able to abscond with them.

17.-18. A few eps later, in "The Council of Evil," there have been improvements. All of Skeletor's minions are imprisoned in a specially-built prison block, with a control console in the center. From behind bars, Whiplash is almost able to reach it with his tail ("Why didn't I think of that?" he asks, and Evil-Lyn replies, "Because you're stupid" -- subtlety is wasted on him), but there are retractable ceiling-mounted gun turrets to discourage such forays. The retractable turrets are a bad idea, because when Kobra Kahn and General Rattlor arrive, K.K. is able to disable them with his corrosive venom before they all deploy and overpower him.

19. Sure, the cells have bars made of special high-strength eternium, but this is a classic example of unbalanced and myopic security design; attack will be against the weakest link.

20. Also, the block is guarded by two robots (not even humans), and there's no video feed to an off-site guard station.

21.-22. There are no humans because, having captured all of Skeletor's minions, King Randor (in a fit of insufficient paranoia) calls off "the state of high alert" and the palace guards return to their towns and villages. Absolutely all of them, because the only ones left in the palace dispatch room are Teela and Adam. Admittedly, there's no need for palace guards at the palace, because they accompanied the King and Queen on vacation.

23.-26. In the prison block, Evil-Lyn is restrained with her hands in cuffs chained to the floor, probably to prevent use of whatever magic she has that isn't focused through her staff. But so restrained, how is supposed to, err, attend to bodily needs? "Robots" is the obvious answer, but maybe that's why she's housed with dim-bulb Whiplash (ewww), which is otherwise odd because all the other minions get single-cells. And she's not in a prison uniform. (But would you want to try forcing her to change her clothes, even after being disarmed?)

A peril of hymn revisions

2008-10-26T18:38:59Z

In my church's hymn book, Gather (©1994 GIA Publications), song #602 is "Though the Mountains May Fall" (©1975 Dan Schutte). Somewhere between the 4th and 12th printings of the book, the song's pronouns were all changed, possibly to make it more gender-inclusive -- yes, I had to check the front, since there's no revision number on the song itself. Aside from offending my sense of version-tracking, this resulted in a muddled performance by the congregation, since both versions are scattered among the pews. (More muddled than this bunch of amateur voices are normally, anyway.)

Also, when (and why) did ecclesiastical publications stop capitalizing pronouns that refer to the deity?

Dune: Was melange a new discovery?

2008-10-24T01:14:24Z

I'm re-reading Frank Herbert's Dune and it occurs to me that he didn't have the future history of the Imperium fully worked out. Or that the history vis-a-vis melange is much different than is assumed in later novels and adaptations.

Consider: At the time planetary fief is transferred from House Harkonnen to House Atriedes, the nature of Dune, the Fremen, and melange is still mysterious. Discussions between Paul and Jessica indicate that the Harkonnens weren't much interested in anthropology, but there's no mention of any previous fief-holder that was more inquisitive. But they also speak of the Harkonnens "sealing" many sources of information -- maybe all the prior knowledge was kept under wraps?

"[Paul] thought of the filmbook Yueh had shown him -- 'Arrakis: His Imperial Majesty's Botanical Testing Station.' It was an old filmbook from before discovery of the spice."

There's the Bene Gesserit agent who implanted Missionaria Protectiva myths among the Fremen -- I haven't gotten to that point, but don't Jessica and Paul meet her in Sietch Tabr? It's not something that happened millenia ago.

So, was melange a recent discovery? If so, what have Spacing Guild Navigators been using? Since computers are verboten, humans need to plot FTL courses, and Navigators expand their awareness into minor prescience to do so. Is there some other, inferior drug with that psychic effect? But then the loss of the spice would not be such a threat to the Guild. Were they limited to STL travel? Was there an Imperium during an STL era?

Shaddam IV is the 57th Padishah Emperor, and the story is set around Year 10,000 Standard, which seems to be 10,000 years after the Butlerian Jihad. This is an implausibly long time for any human social structure to persist, but a lengthy period of collapse and interstellar isolation in the post-AI era would explain a lot. It also seems unnecessarily long (400 generations?) for the Bene Gesserit Kwisatz Haderach breeding program.

Challenges of fractal literature

2008-10-24T00:47:31Z

I've considered the possibility of a fractal stateless novel, in which every level of organization (volume, chapter, passage, paragraph, sentence) reintroduces the characters you need to understand it, assuming you've forgotten who they are. How would this read? Damn boring, I expect, judging from the attempts by Kevin J. Anderson and Brian Herbert in the Dune prequels. But they probably didn't realize they were doing it, which means they couldn't apply the technique with discretion.

The need to reintroduce arises when you have a great many characters, or introduce a large number rapidly, or they have few distinguishing features, or you're reading the book intermittently. As I recall, the ancient Greek oral tradition addressed this problem by appending epithets to each character: "Odysseus the crafty," "Stentor the bellowing loudmouth," and so forth.

Anime and 14 years of delta-perception

2008-10-22T02:11:13Z

Silent Mobius: The Motion Picture (1991, 54 minutes)[Anime Encyclopedia][Netflix] was one of the first fansubbed anime I saw, during the era when a college anime club would crowd around a small television. (Or did we have one of the rooms with a projector?) The review on Sci Fi Weekly is right -- the script's not very good. There are some decidedly creepy moments, but the plot beats are unbalanced.

Back in 1994 this may not have been apparent since I was straining to extract the worldbuilding's mystic elements and multiple characters from the dubiously-translated subtitles while peering around a bunch of heads.

ADDENDUM, 4 NOVEMBER:

... and the first movie seems incomplete because it is: the other half of Kasumi Liqueur's origin is in the second movie. There's a "to be continued" in the credits, but I'm unaware of a third.

The scenes I recall are from the second movie (1992)[Anime Encyclopedia][Netflix] -- in particular, AMP officer Kiddy Phenil getting her cybernetic left arm torn off (aha, it's her right arm, and it's sliced off), and an asymmetric Lucifer Hawk that merges with a side of beef (well, another Lucifer Hawk) after noshing on it. (What I'd forgotten is the existence of two conspirators, and after the triangular one is killed, the tall skinny one nibble-merges with it.)

In the first movie, these otherworldly creatures are either piles of squirming muddy tentacles, or relatively symmetric. In this one they're asymmetric, but have more conventional bodily textures. This design aesthetic seems to be the one carried into the TV show.

The second movie's artwork seems a bit cheaper than the firsts, and the cyborgs thronging Tokyo-2023's streets have vanished.

(Netflix must've just added the second movie -- it wasn't available a month ago when I enqueued the first.)

[Charity] Why are you sending me money?

2008-10-20T00:14:52Z

I've gotten lots of charity-group entreaty-mailings with nominal monetary inducements enclosed -- a nickel, a penny, a near-worthless aluminum coin from some African country. This week I got one with a dollar bill. Is this a sign of inflation? (Right weight, textured printing, red and blue threads in the paper -- it passes cursory inspection.)

Sticky songs from "Aquarion"

2008-10-15T02:17:15Z

I had a song stuck in my head. It was the theme song "Sousei no Aquarion" from the first half of the mecha anime TV series of the same name. I managed to displace it, but only with the theme song to the second half. It's a fun tune and, by demonstration, catchy; but as James T. Kirk once observed, too much of anything is not necessarily a good thing. And dozens of repetitions of "Go Tight!" are definitely too much.

Learned during this anime:

Vocabulary: Sousei (genesis), mugen (infinity), gattai (merge), tsubasa (wing).

The kanji for "person" (hito) plus "big" (ookii) can be combined into the digraph for "adult" (otona). The Japanese pronunciations obviously don't add, but maybe in the original Chinese they do.

Kawamori SHOJI's three-part combining mecha Aquarion was inspired by Go NAGAI's Getter Robo (1970), but to make this one physically plausible, prototyped it with LEGO bricks.

Plethora of passwords, avalanche of authentication

2008-10-15T02:06:34Z

I was performing a periodic update of my online passwords today and found that -- gosh, over the past ten years I've accumulated literally hundreds of accounts connected to hosting services, discussion web-boards, job searches, merchants, software registration, polls, and sweepstakes. (Admittedly, most of the latter three categories are single-use; that still leaves dozens.) No wonder password-management software exists as a category.

[Packaging] Marcal paper napkins - Draw and Store

2008-10-13T02:34:58Z

Paper-goods maker Marcal® has introduced a new plastic-bag package for its 250-count paper napkins. The bag is called Draw and Store®, and features a draw-string system for closing (but not, strictly speaking, sealing) the bag. Manufacturing must be significantly more complicated -- there's an endcap with a perforated slot for initial access, and around that is a lip containing a pair of annular tunnels conveying the two drawstrings used for post-access closure. I suppose you need to cut away this section before recycling the bag.

[Packaging] Nestlé Smarties

2008-10-13T02:30:13Z

One of my co-workers, returning from a trip to England, brought home a bag of Nestlé Smarties, a candy similar to "M&M Minis" -- small oblate ellipsoids, chocolate in a candy shell. The bag contains multiple single-serving boxes, printed to encourage mix-and-match graphical games, as follows:

One large panel identifies the candy, ingredients are listed on another (in eleven European languages), and pictures are on the other four. The endcaps have people-parts, so you can stack the boxes, recombinating into a young girl, pink-haired punker, grey-haired senior, clown or dog. The long narrow sides have rail cars, so you can concatenate a train. The remaining large panel contains portions of a landscape scene, with small circular spaces marked -- you can place the candies to be hubcaps, lights, fruit on trees, the sun, and so forth.