It took me a while, but I finally figured out where in Fenspace to put http://www.fenspace.net/index.php5?title=Rob_Donaldson]my self-insert.

Now to see whether this guy will show up in a story...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

I'm getting Internal Service Error messages when I try to upload images to the wiki. (I've made sure they're smaller than 2MB, yes.) Is anyone else having problems?
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

Just... Just read these tweets...
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Stand between the Silver Crystal and the Golden Sea.
"Youngsters these days just have no appreciation for the magnificence of the legendary cucumber."  --Krityan Elder, Tales of Vesperia.

Donald Van Loan, recently re-monikered Dr. Drakken ® (Disney Corp.), stumbled out of his newly notched Cavorite sphere ; gripped firmly onto one of the  vertical support stanchions girding the docking berth, a healthy cyan flush slowly returning to his wan physiognomy. The attendant bay technician, a frazzled looking Siamese, ran wide, angled blue eyes over the dent in Drakken’s Alvin cum Cavorite sphere. 

“Ojisan, who taught you flying?”

Still holding on to the strut as if it was as significant to his bearing as was his skeleton, he weakly wagged : “An English billiards master!”

He further confounded  the catgirl’s  nonplussed expression with : “Any carom you can walk away from...” He experimented with relying entirely upon his own inner framework by letting go of his external spine ; found that independent standing was possible ; began to explore the possibilities of mobility ; shambled unsteadily away from the perilous possibilities of space and towards the safer sanctuaries of station interiors. 

By the time he staggered into Crystal Hiroshima’s bridge he almost looked his not-that-old cyan-self. Not enough so that Tanith Curtis didn’t notice : “Another hard landing?”

He flashed a weak variant of his usually enthusiastic grin. “Another soft crash.” 

Tanith smirked; managed to make it pretty. “It’s a good thing that you choose to fly a submersible : I don’t think a Dodge Dart or a Chevy Cavalier could stand up to your...skills.”

He returned the smirk ; crossed back over into the preserve of one hundred percent Dr. Drakken ®. “Maybe a Mazda made of neutron-degenerate matter : got one kicking about?” 

“Made of what?”

“Unobtanium.” 

“That’s not even on the Periodic chart!”

He mimed wrenching a steering wheel around in classic Hollywood exaggerated fake driving motions. “Exactly! There’s nothing tough enough to survive my driving.” 

Tanith gave blue skinned Mad tailor a solicitous stare. “Then you better hire a chauffeur before you really crash and I end up short an decent  tailor,  a passable environmental systems specialist & a fantastic friend.” 

That candid consignment of concern cracked Drakken’s carapace of comedy. He considered his comrade with a seldom seen semblance of seriousness. A tear or two might even have been secreted by ducts located within ocular orbits. 

“For a friend.” He wasn’t choked up...well not beyond the capacity of speech.

Curtis hugged him ; felt the emotional shift  commencing through his body before Drakken’s forebrain was cognizant of it. She decoupled the clutch  just in time to see the facial manifestations of synaptic epiphany.

“That’s the longest that I’m going to see you ever looking serious.”

“Absolutely!” The grin was back ; wider, a smidge,  than before.

She returned the grin. She couldn’t help it : he was infectious. 



“What are we grinning about?”

“There is someone.”



His breathiness sparked off a lambent glimmer in Tanith’s dark eyes. 

“You’ve met someone.”



 “ I’ve almost met her : a freelance courier,  Ramona.”



“Well get out there and finish meeting her, idiot!”

Drakken looked taken aback at such an uncomplicated & plain plan ; then the grin resurfaced. 

“Is that an order, my queen?”

“Think of it as an stipulated  suggestion!” 



“Your Majesty!” Being an essential being of melodrama, Drakken’s bow was somehow gracious & honest whilst still being full-on-Shatner-Stratford-style. 

“From anyone else that would be of have been the single most brazenly insincere flourish ever perpetrated within the bounds of my august presence!” She almost managed to keep her face majestic & composed as she uttered this twaddle. Almost.  

“ Get out of here, fool!” She said, fondly. 

"What about our meeting?"

"This is more important!"



With a livelier step than when he arrived, Dr. Drakken ® withdrew. 

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/02/calvin-and-hobbes-dune

As a few know, I've got this self-insert fic that's been crawling along for a while now.

The last chapter posted involved an Angel that was stuck in orbit where NERV couldn't reach it, so nuclear weapons were used, with the consequence that a good chunk of the fallout got smeared across Europe. The other kind of fallout follows.

I'm trying to put the next part together and a large part of doing that is dealing with the fallout, and the ethics of it, and after three or four attempts I'm starting to put together something that might make sense and I'm wondering what people think. Does it make sense, or is it a little bit overwrought?

Quote:We crossed a moral Rubicon. There was no turning back. The unthinkable was now thinkable again. And every single time another Angel comes, someone, somewhere would point to what we'd done and ask;

Why not again?

It was so much easier to just nuke the bloody things. So much cheaper. Especially if you just set them off in the same place over and over again.

If we fail again. They will do it again. And again. And they'll keep doing it until the Angels adapt to the new threat like they always do and suddenly, they'll be faced with an enemy not even a nuclear weapon can destroy. Or worse, they'll succeed and be left with a stockpile of new super-nuclear weapons to deal with.

And the other nuclear weapon states will look on and start to wonder what will happen to those weapons after the Angels have been defeated. They'll start to feel that little pang of fear that they might be used, that someone might have a first-strike advantage over them and might be crazy enough to use it.

Because there was now precedent for it. Because nuclear war has happened. The doomsday clock struck midnight and the day after wasn't really that bad after all. There were still three billion people left. We weren't bombed back to the Stone Age, just the 1960's.

So they'll build up a new stockpile. Stockpiles breed stockpiles until a whole new Cold War arms race begins and manmade Armageddon looms each time a Middle-Eastern tin-pot decides to kick up a storm in a desert teacup. We'd save the world from the Angels, only to deliver it into the embrace of assured destruction in the process.

That worried me.

The one question no mecha series ever really asks. What happens after the enemy is defeated and the super-weapons built to destroy them still remain? What next?

That was how project E was sold to the world, it was a way out of that trap. I guessed that was the real reason for the five-minute timer on the battery in the meeting with the Americans. An umbilical cable rendered us useless against an army. Powerful enough to defeat the Angels, but powerless to defeat human beings away from this specific city.

But...

When we reach the point where Armageddon has kicked down the front door, and there's no other option left? When another step down the slippery slope is the less-terrifying option?

We face a responsibility unlike no other in the history of mankind, that's what Misato said. We edged a step closer to another potential doomsday again, in ten years time. And because we did, we avoided a certain one tomorrow. We may have given the Angels a shot at neutralising our trump card, but in the process bought ourselves another few weeks to adapt ourselves.

We may have condemned thousands to a lingering death without giving them a chance to have a say in it.

But if we didn't, we'd all be dead. If we'd chosen to take the moral high ground and refused to make that decision, then wouldn't that have been as good as choosing to kill everyone?

The more I think of it, the more I realise that maybe I was wrong to compare Misato's decision with living in Omelas. It's more complicated than that. When those who turn their backs on the city powered by a forsaken child leave, there's no consequence to the city. It's inhabitants will continue as they always have and those few who find it reprehensible can continue to leave.

If we choose to leave our Omelas, then it's destroyed. Along with us. If that's the case, do we have the right to leave? When the stakes are as high as absolute destruction, is it right to condemn the entire world just so we won't die feeling guilty?

Or isn't that a greater sin? How arrogant would that be?

As Eva pilots our duty isn't just to defeat the Angels, I think it's larger than that. It's to defeat Armageddon itself; from whatever source. We are the hope of the world that there will be a future, the belief that humanity is worth saving. NERV - away from SEELE and Instrumentality Committees and Old Men - is the single greatest manifestation of the human determination to survive - to do what it takes and go beyond the impossible, just so someone, somewhere can see a new sunrise.

It's a condensation of our mutual determination to not just slip quietly away into the night, but fight tooth and nail for every breath, for the chance to have a future - any future.

Our duty is to do what we can to prevent the use of nuclear weapons against the Angels because each time that happens, it's one more chance for the Angels to adapt, one more sin on our collective souls, one more tick of the doomsday clock advancing back around to self-destruction once again.

The Nuclear Option should never, ever be the convenient option. And I will do everything in my power to make sure that it's an option that never has to be used again. But, it should never not be an option either. Because the threat of self destruction is - ultimately - nothing but a threat. And I can think of no greater sin than allowing the destruction of the entire world and all who live there just so I can die with a clear conscience.

Maybe I was rationalising it to myself, trying to convince my conscience that what we did was right inspite of my true gut feelings. I don't think I could ever feel comfortable with it, not while they were still pointing chirping geiger-counters at children on the television. Philosophy and ethics were never my strongpoint, but I think I had an answer I could stand over.

"We're still alive. And just rolling over and dying because it's easier than feeling guilty is wrong."

Misato smiled warmly at me. That was the right answer. And I sat there congratulating myself on still being being adult enough to come up with the right answer, like any normal fourteen year old child would.

Something I knocked together earlier today...
I am not a marketing person. I think it shows.



Selling fast motorcycles is a lot like selling lingerie - it pays to be just a little bit illicit.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/02/showbiz/r ... ?hpt=hp_t5]J.K. Rowling admits Harry and Hermione should have ended up with each other.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

http://knowmore.washingtonpost.com/2014 ... y-program/

Ironically enough, it is the republican states that use it the most, with some heavy hit spots in democratic states.
But I think that this map might be skewed, I think they are using the percentage of that district.
Districts in places like new york city are going to have many times more people, and thus many more people using these programs.
Just compare it to what was posted in WTF pics for the day in general chatter:

Quote:Ankhani wrote:

---

"I shall give these in units of Canadas"

Nancy Pelosi's recent interview with Jon Stewart on the Daily Show has a real gem of a politician opening mouth and engaging in verbal gymnastics avoiding facts. The video has quite a few gems of her avoiding dealing with the failings of Obama care  but the real gem is at the end when she make s the whopper of a claim that only the executive branch has a revolving door issue not congress...

http://media.mtvnservices.com/embed/mgi ... com:432681The Daily Show

It's well worth reading the takedown from the Sunlight Foundation.

Quote:Yes Rep. Pelosi, Congress has a revolving door"The revolving door is not so much Congress as the executive branch."

That statement comes from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., during her Thursday night appearance on the Daily Show
with Jon Stewart. The declaration may seem counterintuitive, given that
Pelosi's office is one of the largest incubators of revolving door
talent on Capitol Hill. According to data from Open Secrets at least 28 current and former Pelosi staffers have represented (or currently represent) special interests.

During her appearance, Stewart pressed the congresswoman on the
obstacles facing small IT contractors who wanted to compete for bids
working on the Affordable Care Act's website. Stewart questioned whether
an overly burdensome procurement process was allowed to continue
because it favored big government contractors with the resources to
successfully navigate the regulations.

When Stewart broached the issue that corporations may have too much
influence on members of Congress, Pelosi was apparently unaware that one
of her former staffers now works for Boeing. "I don't know that,
well... who?"