Category: general

Japan Today: 300 visitors flee Expo pavilion after fire magic show mishap

Why is this hilarious?

Some 300 visitors to the Aichi Expo escaped from the Gas Pavilion on Tuesday morning after smoke erupted there just before a magic show that uses fire, police said.

They were doing fire tricks at a place called the Gas Pavilion…:>

I want to live on the river! But it looks like the new developments aren’t going to be cheap, unfortunately.

(Really, I just want to live in the smallest possible house in Hammond’s Ferry…so I can be near the river, and adjacent to the Greeneway. That would be so nice. But I’m sure it’s just a pipe dream…)

CNN: Nagasaki remembers its atomic fate

Editor & Publisher: Even at 60: Nagasaki Is the ‘Forgotten A-Bomb City’

BBC: On This Day 1945: Atom bomb hits Nagasaki

Japundit: August 9th in Nagasaki

AtomicArchive.com: Atomic Bombing of Nagasaki

I have not visited Nagasaki, but now, after having read the above articles, I would like to.

The Smoking Gun: Crusader Nabbed By Michigan Cops (via Penny Arcade)

The suspect was very agitated and refused to speak to Ofcs, responding only w/ threats to kill Ofcs and begging Ofcs to come downstairs and kill him. While standing at the top of the stairs, I could see that the suspect was armed w/ a long sword and was wearing a “chainmail” armored vest over his torso. He was also wearing leather “gauntlets” to protect his forearms. After trying to make conversation w/ him for several minutes, he eventually approached the stairwell and threw the sword towards Ofcs. The sword hit the stairs and bounced back onto the basement floor. He then armed himself w/ a giant wooden hammer and stated, “I’m gonna crush your fucking skulls, I have a 1000 years of power” among other things. He then slammed the hammer on a table located at the bottom of the stairs.

Police reports are awesome.

How could he do that?

How could he make that offer, knowing what it would mean, without even asking her first?

And then, “I could have a baby!” he says, the insensitive prat.

The above is my initial, visceral reaction. I’m letting my rational side out to evaluate, but so far it’s not changing my opinion. He can’t have a baby with his wife, so he jumps at the chance to have one with someone else. He’s so eager to pass down his own genetic material that it doesn’t matter if it’s with the woman he’s married to, or with an acquaintance.

Do you understand the reason I want to be able to conceive? Yes, it’s so I can have my own baby, a child that is a part of me. This is why I am not interested in egg donation, because what’s the point if it’s a baby that is part Sean, part someone else, and not at all me?

Ruth’s post made me ask myself a difficult question. If it wasn’t my problem…if it was Sean who made it impossible for us to have a baby…would I jump at the chance to conceive another man’s child? Would I look for a sperm donor?

And all I can answer myself is this: What would be the point?

What is a child, but the product of the love of its parents? If I am to be the mother and Sean is to be the father, then I should be the mother genetically and he should be the father genetically…or neither of us should be. Why, why, why go through an artificial process so I can carry a child that only belongs to one of us?

If I am to carry a child someday, I want it to be ours. If we are to be parents otherwise, I want it to be a child that already exists, not a child that I have to concoct in a laboratory with other people’s parts.

In an article about the impending change to Daylight Saving Time (man, I always want to say “Daylight Savings Time”), CNN outlines the general technical issues that may arise, issues that anyone with half a brain has already thought of. (They do not bother to answer Sam’s question about farmers, although to be fair he didn’t ask them directly ;>)

I thought the last few paragraphs were interesting (and funny, in the case of Palestine):

Some European countries changed dates in response to a European Union directive to standardize daylight time beginning in 1996. That led to problems with Finnish dates in at least one version of Windows.

A few countries even change dates every year.

Israel, for instance, bases daylight time on the lunar Jewish calendar, and Palestinians change their clocks at different times as an assertion of independence. Windows doesn’t even provide an auto-adjust option for the time zone covering Jerusalem.

Moti Tzur, a sales manager at Sakal Electronics Ltd. in Jerusalem, says the constant changes do little to confound manufacturers, sales representatives or consumers.

“We get up and change the time on the VCR ourselves,” Tzur said. “These things come with directions.”

But while other countries have coped, Americans have largely become complacent and expect many clocks to change automatically because dates have been set for two decades, said Lauren Weinstein, a veteran technologist.

“Missiles won’t be launching but it’s still going to cause a lot of hassle,” he said. Risks grow when “things advance to the point where you expect things to happen automatically and you expect it to be correct.”

Yup, we Americans are all about being complacent.

I just heard about the 102 miners trapped in a flooding coal mine in southern China. Apparently over 5000 miners die every year due to disasters in mines.

Kentucky has coal mines. I’m pretty sure conditions used to be pretty bad, but I honestly don’t know much at all about them, including how conditions are today.

(Anonymous in the comments has recommended Night Comes to the Cumberlands by Harry M. Caudill.)

Bad news for Koizumi…will he dissolve the lower house as he threatened?

Man, it was a pretty close vote, too.

Update 2:04 pm: …yup. Koizumi is a man with balls.

“I see the rejection of the postal privatization bills as a rejection of the Koizumi Cabinet and the Koizumi reforms,” the prime minister told a news conference.

“I want to ask the Japanese people whether they say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to my reform agenda,” he said.

Koizumi said he would resign if his Liberal Democratic Party fails to win a majority with coalition partner the New Komeito Party.

Kyodo and NHK reported 22 members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party joined with the opposition to vote against the bills. Another eight LDP members either abstained or were absent.

His postal reform bills were voted down, 125 to 108, Monday afternoon in the upper House of Councilors. They had narrowly passed the lower house last month.

The LDP leadership had said that lawmakers voting against the bill would not be allowed to run on the LDP ticket, according to the Kyodo news agency.

There are Harry Potter spoilers in this post, but really, if you haven’t read it by now, you must not care a whole lot about spoilers. (Those of you who are working through the entire series in order to catch up are obviously an exception and should stop reading now!)

I was hoping I’d notice more details this time around while reading Half-Blood Prince, something that would either confirm my theories about Snape and Dumbledore or refute them, but it seems that I didn’t miss anything the first time around, and my opinions are still the same. It was interesting to read how everything went down knowing what was going to happen later, but I didn’t learn anything new from this experience. All rereading Snape’s Unbreakable Vow–and his actions at the Astronomy Tower and near the gates–did for me was reinforce the reaction I’d had during my previous reading.

I did wonder whether or not Snape actually knew what “the plan” was; it had occurred to me during my first reading that he might be pretending so he could trick Narcissa or Bellatrix into revealing it to him. However, both readings served to refute this speculation for me: the discussion was vague on all sides, too vague really for Snape to have discovered what Draco’d been ordered to do. I think it was vague purely so the reader wouldn’t know–that Snape knew already. Either way, he knew when he made the Vow, and that’s why he paused, why his hand shook.

(He did not want to kill Dumbledore, period, the end! That’s why he had such a horrible look on his face when he did it, that’s why Dumbledore begged him. I mean, come on…Dumbledore doesn’t beg, certainly not for his own life. He was keeping up the act…if anything, he was begging Snape to do it, so Snape wouldn’t die, so he could remain a Death Eater and work for the Order from the inside. Remember, when Harry asked Dumbledore the last time why he trusted Snape, Dumbledore almost told him something, and didn’t. The reason Dumbledore trusts Snape is still unknown, and apparently if it becomes known to any in the Order, there’s a chance that Snape’s cover will be blown. Snape’s position as double agent is–obviously–vital. And that is why it is so infuriating for Snape to be told by Harry Potter, a boy who has been protected like crazy all his life, that he is a coward. Snape’s resentment of Harry is, of course, very real.)

Harry’s little Peter Parker moment at the end didn’t bother me as much this time as it did the first time, I suppose because I was ready for it. It makes sense, really; it’s just been done better. I still don’t like the last paragraph; I don’t like the appearance of the word “wonderful”, it’s too soon for anything to be wonderful, and I found the last sentence to be too simple, too conclusory.

This book in general suffers from Rowling’s apparent attempts to lighten the blow of the horror. Most of the book, to me, is funny. I have no sense of impending doom; the comments about people dying or disappearing are few and far between and quickly hurried past, such that, as I remarked before, they feel as if they are happening far away and aren’t really relevant. I spend the majority of the book with a smile on my face, grinning at everyone’s antics, enjoying the wry humor–Rowling really is clever, and some of her stuff is just hysterical. It’s not until the Sectumsempra incident that things start to feel a little off, and even after that I wind up following Harry and Dumbledore to the cave with an odd sort of detachment, as though the serious tone of the prose doesn’t quite fit what I’ve been used to. (Maybe I read too fast?)

In any case, I still enjoyed it quite a bit, and I still think it’s a good book. As I mentioned over on Kelly’s blog, Goblet of Fire is still my favorite, though…and I’d probably rank Azkaban right after that (I mean, it’s so darc and mistrious). I’m not really sure yet where Prince falls in the ranking. It might tie with Chamber of Secrets for last place–not that that means the two books are bad, by any means, it’s just that they aren’t quite as brilliant as the others–and of course, this is only my opinion :> (Plot-wise, I’d say Prince is better than Chamber, but the execution falters enough that the effect on me is the same.)

A question has occurred to me. It occurred to me before, but I forgot ;P

How come house-elves can Apparate and Disapparate within Hogwarts? And to and from Hogwarts, too, I’d expect; that’s probably how Kreacher got there. Is this ability part of the reason why they’re endentured servants/slaves? In the distant past, did wizards think their unfettered Apparition access was too dangerous?

Did I miss an explanation of this somewhere?

“Augusta: We Feel Good”

This slogan is not intended to replace the Convention and Visitors Bureau’s slogan, which is “I Played Augusta”. (If you’ve walked down Reynolds Street past Fort Discovery, you’ve seen signs with that slogan on them.) Instead, says City Administrator Fred Russell, the two slogans are complementary.

The “Feel Good” slogan plays up the James Brown angle, which has recently been highlighted with the dedication of a James Brown statue downtown.

I personally feel that the Augusta Canal should be a major focus of any push for tourism. There should be guided tours (hiking and bicycle) along the Augusta Canal trail/tow path/New Bartram trail, perhaps including tours of Sibley Mill. The boat tours are great, but the trails are fantastic and I think more active tourists would really appreciate them. According to AugustaCanal.com’s FAQ, guided walking tours can be arranged through the Canal’s park ranger, but these apparently aren’t regularly organized, and they certainly aren’t played up the way the Petersburg boat tours are, and I’m not sure what parts of the trail the walking tours cover. (I may look into this further, because it might be fun to take a walking tour!)

You know what else would be cool? A helicopter tour of the Canal. This would be disturbing to residents, so I would only have them once a week at most, but it would really be a unique way to see the Canal. There’s a historical 10 minute video shown at the Augusta Canal Interpretive Center before you take the boat tour, and at the end there’s a beautiful aerial shot swooping up over the headgates…imagine taking that flight in person!

The construction of The Village at Riverwatch may also open new opportunities for Canal tourism, as I noted here.

And finally, while I’m on this “promote the Augusta Canal” kick, I’d like to say that I don’t like their logo. I mean, look at it:

“Who made that logo?” I asked the lady at the Interpretive Center.

“I don’t know,” she responded.

“It’s weird.”

“It’s a water wheel!”

“…oh.”

Sure, okay, a water wheel. Where exactly are the water wheels on the Augusta Canal? A steamboat wouldn’t fit there, not that we even have one in Augusta anymore. I presume water wheels (or some modern apparatus) are used to capture water power for the mills (one of them still gets 60% of its electricity from the Canal), but I didn’t actually see any water wheels on the tour.

Visually, I don’t find the squiggly lines going into a circle appealing. They put me in mind of a spider, not a beautiful nature preserve. And what are they supposed to represent? Little streams dumping into the canal? The circular nature of the design makes this ambiguous. I don’t know, I just don’t like it.

The crew of that Russian sub is safe. I was really worried about them. I mean…what a horrible way to die: slowly, by asphyxiation, at the bottom of the sea.

During the boat tour on Friday, Brooke and I learned that efforts are being made to clean up the Canal at the so-called “third level”, deep in downtown Augusta. The idea is to attract tourists to the area. In related news, the Harrisburg neighborhood, near Chafee Park on Broad Street and adjacent to the third level of the Canal, is set to see its own revitalization effort, thanks to money bequeathed by McDonald’s heiress Joan Kroc to the Salvation Army. If $5 million can be raised locally, $15 million will then hopefully be awarded to Augusta for the construction of a new “campus-like community center” in the Chafee Park area.

Interim mayor Willie Mays has indicated that this is a move to fight homelessness. Downtown Augusta has quite a few people living on the street; once, when I was taking a picture of a neglected garden on Broad Street (supposedly the responsibility of the tenants of the Lamar building), an apparently homeless man lying on a bench nearby yelled at me not to take his picture. Homelessness is definitely a problem. I don’t know what the solution is, but I wish city officials luck with this plan. I’m a fan of any downtown/community revitalization effort.

In response to this horribly rude post, Carson Fire wrote a polite and very friendly letter apologizing for the disarray of the Elf Life store and explaining some of the thinking and other reasoning behind many of his decisions concerning the promotion of the comic. As he didn’t post this in a comment, I’m assuming he meant the content of his email to be private, and will respect that privacy. I did, however, want to state for the record that I am very impressed that he responded to a post calling him–literally–“stupid” with such tact and grace and amicability. I can’t say that I agree with all his reasoning, but I know that he’s doing his best, and that is worthy of mention and praise.

I’d also like to point out that there are some cool designs in the store now–most notably this (yes, I cobbled that image together, and yes, we are all still wondering why I have an art internship):

I am so buying that as soon as I, like, get a job. (Too bad the good/evil thing isn’t available as a babydoll…)

The sound effects used with Paramount’s DVD logo are so bad I’m embarrassed every time I start to watch one of my MacGyver DVDs.