I'm currently reading Electronic Computers and Management Control, and I'm not sure which makes me feel it a blast from the past more: either that they feel the need to carefully explain why one's business will be improved by using a properly chosen computer, or the fact that the book cost $2.95. ;_;

( biographical addenda )

I've been reading rather a large number of debates recently, in which a great many points were made, and it seems to me that the question of whether a fetus, quickened or not, is or is not a human being or ensouled is largely peripheral to the actual matter under discussion.

( Instead, it's more like this. )

Now, at some point in the future, somebody may invent the uterine replicator, and we can trade our issues in for a new and different set of issues (probably centering around "should we use government funds to keep maintaining replicators containing unwanted embryos/fetuses?"), but until then, it seems that the above is what it would work out to even if people were to unilaterally say "yes, human life begins at conception."

(Which I don't, but as mentioned above, that's not particularly germane to why I'd still pick choice number three.)

I've been reading some of the peripheral matter to the RaceFail debate recently.

I haven't wanted to get into it too much, since, by the time it became known to me, it seemed to have gone downhill to:
Side A: No, seriously, you're DOING IT WRONG. Here is how and why, with examples and a lot of confrontative language aimed at trying to AT LAST GET THE SIMPLE POINT INTO YOUR HEADS, NEVER MIND THROUGH.
Side B: There's no need for that kind of language and anyway we're not actually doing it wrong and besides, you SUCK (and what's more, you're not noticing our points, probably because you suck).

Seriously, I have better things to do with my life than read a great number of people on Side B opening their figurative mouths and proving themselves, if not idiots, either wilfully blind or too stubborn to admit that they took an ultimately untenable position in the first place. ( Instead, I have other things to do and say. )

Also, I finally finished Gakuen Senki Muryou. Everyone should see Gakuen Senki Muryou. It is released here under the title Shingu: Secret of the Stellar Wars.

( why? )

( Soukyuu no Fafner: final thoughts )

( Simoun (the not quite as good as SnF) )

( Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex )

( Someday's Dreamers )

( Loveless vol. 2 )

( The Iron Giant )

( Hero )

When poking around in a Latin dictionary trying to discover what "sora" (Japanese for "sky," let it be known, when with a short o) could be said to mean in that language, I found an actual case of a city Sora (with a long o) that was a Volscian city. (Since I wanted to use the Volscians, this was perfect.) A little more poking around discovered that it was probably related to "serenus" and more distantly to "sol," and therefore a cousin with similar meaning of Sanskrit "svar," meaning --

-- "sky."

Go figure.


As to DVDs, I have finally begun watching again.

( Julius Caesar )


( Patlabor Original OVA: Volume One )


( Loveless: Volume One )


( Dungeons and Dragons, Vol. 1 )

Last week we went to see Prince Caspian. I knew pretty quickly that I didn't like it as much as The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, although I wasn't sure whether it was because they did a worse job of adapting it or a consequence of my liking the book Prince Caspian better than its predecessor. Come to think of it, I'm still not sure, although I think they did make more (or at least more noticeable) changes in this movie.

( Videlicet (spoiler-heavy) )


I've also been doing more Netflixing.

( Fullmetal Alchemist, v.1 )




( The Thief of Bagdad - 1940 )


( Anna Bolena )

Today we went to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I don't know what the reviewers who complain it lacks energy are thinking; as far as I was concerned, it had plenty of energy, plenty of everything, at least two moments that had me wishing for a sofa to hide behind (although the first was sort of delayed behind "oh holy shit they are not actually going there" and "holy shit, refrigerator"), and in short was very nearly everything I could possibly have hoped for out of a fourth Indiana Jones movie. ( spoilerish )


( The Snow Queen )

The other day, someone was reading a Rurouni Kenshin story of mine and wanted to know "Was it usual in the Meiji era to refer to a husband by the wife's family name?"

I suppose it's not as well known that it was, if not usual, not outlandish -- not in Meiji, not in the Tokugawa Era and before, not even these days.

From medieval times up through modern times, husbands have on occasion been taken into the bride's family, although the reverse was always more common. Often a family with no sons would either adopt one or take one of their sons-in-law into the household to carry on the family name. In many cases not involving the question of carrying on a name, the couple took on the family name of the party who brought more to the marriage.

As Kenshin is bringing in one somewhat shopworn rurouni and a new sakabatou, and Kaoru is bringing in a rundown doujou in good standing, a name as an instructor, an inherited name and style, one apprentice and the occasional student, several kimono, a few bokken, probably her dad's sword around somewhere, and some actual money, I have always assumed that he would take HER name. ^_^

Yesterday I went to a baseball game as part of my church group. I'd never been to one before.

I enjoyed it. It was fun. I will have to go again sometime. Preferably with more layers -- I only had my t-shirt and a jacket lined with polar fleece, and I wound up lending the latter to the lady from Nicaragua who was freezing the whole time, poor thing.

Also, I watched the second disc of "Advent Children."

( thoughts )

So, given that gas prices have gone past disgusting and soared all the way into obscenity, my sister convinced me that it would be cheaper to just get a Netflix account.

So I did. Day before yesterday.

Today, my first three discs arrived.

( yattering about discs )

What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish.

( books )

I was reading through a movie review page, trying to determine how closely the reviewer's taste paralleled mine, and noticed that his (2.5 star) review of Labyrinth began by stating that there appears to be such a thing as "male" and "female" movies.

Which I would agree with -- for whatever reason, very possibly cultural, men and women tend to have different buttons and look on things with somewhat different worldviews, and one can definitely make a movie intending it to appeal to a certain worldview. (Whether it does or not depends largely on the movie-making process. Whether or not the movie also/instead looks good to people who look at the world differently depends on a whole host of things, in which luck plays a large part.)

( And Labyrinth is, as he said, a 'female movie.' )

Today I checked a CD called The All-Time Greatest Movie Songs out of the library.

This CD was a rampant case of false advertising.

( track list )

Seriously, if they'd wanted to call it The Greatest Recent Movie Songs, or The Greatest Movie Songs of the '90s (plus one by Billy Joel), I wouldn't be quibbling: taste is individual. No matter how individual it is, though, any compilation claiming to be the all-time (English-language) movie songs ought to at least find room somewhere for "High Noon," "Somewhere Over The Rainbow," and "As Time Goes By." For the influence, if nothing else.

How else could you find from the comfort of your own home that the Palace in The Prisoner of Zenda was very probably called Tetschen Castle?

The Monsters of Sesame Street, parts one, two, three.

I think I may need to propose marriage.

The recent bitter arguments in Stargate: Atlantis fandom have convinced me of the following simple dictum.

You can divide the world's people into two parts: those who feel that there is always room to discuss valid exceptions to any given rule, and those who feel that in n>0 cases it will be inappropriate for at least one reason.

I want to kiss it and hug it and squeeze it and make it into a syndicated television show.

Where have these books been all my life?