http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/20/showbiz/e ... ?hpt=hp_t2]Elmore Leonard has passed away.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

They see you as small and helplessThey see you as just a childSurprise when they find out that a
Warrior will soon run wildPrepare for your greatest momentsPrepare for your finest hourThe dream that you've always dreamed
Is suddenly about to flower
We are lightningStraying from the thunderMiracles of ancient wonder
This will be the day we've waited forThis will be the day we open up the doorI don't wanna hear your absolutionHope you're ready for a revolutionWelcome to a world of new solutions
Welcome to a world of bloody evolutionIn time your heart will open mindsA story will be told
And victory is in a simple soul
Your world needs a great defenderYour world's in the way of harmYou want a romantic life
A fairytale that's full of charm
Beware that the light is fadingBeware as the dark returnsThis world is unforgiving
Even brilliant lights will cease to burn
Legends scatterDay and night will severHope and peace are lost forever
This will be the day we've waited forThis will be the day we open up the doorI don't wanna hear your absolutionHope you're ready for a revolutionWelcome to a world of new solutions
Welcome to a world of bloody evolutionIn time your heart will open mindsA story will be told
And victory is in a simple soul
-- Jeff Williams featuring Casey Lee Williams, "This Will Be The Day", from RWBY
(And y'know, I would just love to see a piece of fanart with Sailor Moon and Ruby Rose back-to-back, facing a horde of enemies together...)
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

If you're driving a motorcycle (hell, anything really), make sure you pay attention to what's going on in front of the car in front of you (at least!).On the bright side, I got away with only some fairly impressive bruises. On the not so bright side, as least 2-3 thousand in damage between my bike and the car.

I know CSI did an episode on the Fen, but what about NCIS?  With the Stingray launching in 2012, and their history of actually getting naval vessels to shoot on and their habit of at least trying to get it right, they might well do a better job of it than CSI.  Especially if the Ninja proceeded to continually photobomb CSI after their bad episode on the fen.

In fact, it could be a replacement plot for the overall arc of Season 10, with them getting called Up to deal with a crewmember of the Stingray that was murdered via being kicked out an airlock in the main belt; and actually have the cast and crew go Up to shoot it.  Any ideas?

I was going through the Faction page on the wiki (all but one of the Minor Factions now have quickie writeups, BTW) when I remembered that there were still parts of the Senshi page that weren't written. So I took a look at what wasn't there. (I patronize a very good optometrist.) One of those sections is "Religion," which currently has only the template boilerplate text:

Quote:(TO BE DEVELOPED: if there's an official religion, give it a quick description; otherwise, discuss what religions if any are practiced by noticeable groups in the faction)

Once upon a time, there was a collection of fairytales. This was a wise collection, in the way that the everyday person was wise, and it knew things that the more literary collections did not. But it was not as beloved as the literary collections of fairytales, so it went into a deep, deep sleep for over a hundred and fifty years, until it was awakened by a cultural curator...

But this isn't a fairytale; this is real life, http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/m ... ed-germany]according to The Guardian. And that page has a link to a translation of one of the tales.
--
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

 (Because I can't think of anything else to put as the subject.)
 So, last night, I went out with my family to celebrate my middle sister's graduating as an RN.
 (FYI: the party for this consisted of: Me, my parents, the newly graduated RN sister (middle child), and my youngest sister and her husband.)
 So we're all standing there, waiting for a table to open, and since this is a Friday night , that would take a while. I'm standing there, next to my brother in law watching him play a mobile game, when I spot a group of people coming in. Naturally I move to help hold the door open for them, and that would be that, right?
 Something about this group of people sparked something in my family, and in minutes they were all talking about it...except me, who had no clue what was going on.  In fact, that was my very question ("What?") to my brother in law, who finally clued me in on what I had done...
...which was to hold the door open for Muhammad Ali and his family/retinue.
 Holy. Shit.
 (In my defense, the only sports I pay any sort of more than usual attention to are the Super Bowl-for the ads, whatever Olympics are running at the moment, and occasionally gymnastics)
 As you can imagine, that was the talk of the night.
 So..yeah, that happened.
Brian Y.
Seed Chronicles

This article by Donald Sensing doesn't say anything that hasn't been said before. But it says it very well and quite succinctly. 
It’s a gloomy message. But it seems to be the truth, at least as I see it.

Quote:No one in America has both the power and the determination to hinder Obama from doing whatever he wants.

...
And so with President Obama and federal courts' rulings: they have no means of enforcing their rulings. As any intemperate two-year old knows, you can do anything you want until someone compels you to stop. And so Obama can order whatever he wishes until he is compelled to stop.

The courts lacks the means of such compulsion. That leaves the Congress to rein in the executive. (Please excuse me while I erupt in peals of derisive laughter.) Congress's only authority to rein in a president consists of two things:

• Withhold funding for departments and agencies under executive authority, or
• Impeach him. 

That's it. (In 1834, the Congress voted to censure President Andrew Jackson. Jackson correctly declared that there was no Constitutional authority for it and basically told the Congress they could either impeach him or get stuffed, although he put it a little more pithily.)

Since those are the only two options available, and since the Congress is controlled by the Democrats (the Republican majority in the House meaning nothing here), neither loss of funding nor impeachment will ever be used to restrain this president.
The goal of the entire Democrat party is to be the permanent, sole political authority in the country. This is the actual transformation that Barack Obama promised to great applause in his 2008 campaign. And we are getting transformed good and hard:

Quote:nstead of the new birth of hope and change, it is the transformation of a constitutional republic operating under laws passed by democratically accountable legislators into a servile nation under the management of an unaccountable administrative state. The real import of Barack Obama’s political career will be felt long after he leaves office, in the form of a permanently expanded state that is more assertive of its own interests and more ruthless in punishing its enemies. At times, he has advanced this project abetted by congressional Democrats, as with the health-care law’s investiture of extraordinary powers in the executive bureaucracy, but he also has advanced it without legislative assistance — and, more troubling still, in plain violation of the law. President Obama and his admirers choose to call this “pragmatism,” but what it is is a mild expression of totalitarianism, under which the interests of the country are conflated with those of the president’s administration and his party. Barack Obama is the first president of the democracy that John Adams warned us about.

Obama can do this not because the Constitution or law authorize it. Most definitely they actually prohibit it. He is getting away with it because [i]there is no one who can stop him and almost no one who wants to stop him. No one, and I mean absolutely no one, in the Democrat party is in the slightest interested in reining in Obama's expansion of executive diktat because they know what few of the rest of us are awakening to: the Democrats are never going to lose that executive authority again. Let me be clear, with a promise to elucidate another day: there is never going to be another Republican president. Ever.
The media will not examine Obama's imperialist manner because they do not want to. They agree with it. The courts are literally unable to enforce their rulings contra this administration; Obama ignores them at will and without consequence. The Republicans are dominated by the Political Class and lack the numbers, influence, collective will and ideological conviction to rein in the administration even if they had the ability to do so, which they don't.
[/i]

I recently found on gizmodo a video that was supposed to do a hearing test tried it out of curiosity and it didn't really seem to work that well for me. So I proceeded to do a quick search and found one at an audiophile site which was more functional...
http://www.noiseaddicts.com/2009/03/can ... ring-test/Using both laptop and a set of external
speakers I can hear every tone up to 21 Khz (barely) with one odd exception. I
can't hear the 16 Khz tone at all. With two different sets of in ear
headphones I hit a limit of 15Khz which I suspect is more of a demonstration of
the limits of the frequency response of the earphones I used than anything else.
If anybody is curious here's a link to the video with the test that gizmodo linked to...(watch at 1080p res) Same results as the noise addicts test other than the 19Khz tone doesn't work due to youtube's audio compression.
A different site which offers mosquito ring tones for download (not joking) has better audio quality. I can barely hear the 16Khz tone on that one...
http://www.freemosquitoringtones.org/
--Werehawk--
My mom's brief take on upcoming Guatemalan Elections "In last throes of preelection activities. Much loudspeaker vote pleading."

One long 10 minute sequence of "HOLY CRAP!"

Now that I have that out of the way...

Trying to figure out a few things here.

From the copious mentions of at least ONE technical term from Yamato I'm VERY familiar with from the Japanese and the tone of the conversation
between Starsha and Desslok, I presume that Leader Desslok just stepped
over a line (Using Wave Motion Energy tech as a weapon) that the
Iscandarians - and especially Starsha - did not approve of.

(In fact, Yurisha didn't exactly like the fact the -Terrans- had
developed it!)

I have the feeling that part of the reason Desslok has gone that far,
and feels secure enough in doing so - is in part due to the
political/propaganda coup of having "Yurisha" to "approve" of a
political union.

Did that weapon fired at the Yamato COMPLETELY vaporize the planet they
were near? Or just strip all the atmosphere off? It looks like there
might be a core left there, but that's it. From Melda's horrified
reaction (and that of a couple of other Gamilon Officers) I think the
difference may be moot. What once was the equivalent of SATURN (and
probably just as beautiful to Gamilons as Iscandarians through their
history) is GONE.

Yamato is indeed up against the Blue Fleet. But... I get the distinct
impression so far (which might be wrong, given we haven't seen the rest
of the episode) that they're not really -that- elite of a force - or are
just WAY out of practice in fighting somebody who FIGHTS BACK. So far I
don't see any real damage to the Yamato and no Black Tigers have been
killed.

Not to say that's going to stay that way. This battle is already going
places the original never did. I can't predict based on any previous
notions WHAT is going to happen. We're OFF THE MAP here, folks. Hell -
we've BEEN "off the map" for at least 10 episodes or more by now.

(That's something I want to note - through about the first half of the
series, I could -generally- in broad strokes see where things were
going. The makers of this series were hitting most of the original beats
of the original 1974 show. Though there were still surprises in almost
every episode (usually good ones).

About the second half of the series onward, they've been charting
largely new territory. And I find myself becoming less involved as a
veteran fan critiquing in comparison to the original and more and more
on the edge of my seat wondering what the hell is going to happen next?)

Back to analysis - and here's where I'm getting confused - I thought
they wanted to AVOID Gamilon? In the original series they were -dragged-
there against their will. This time the Yamato and crew are diving in
willingly?

My guess is that they figure that Desslok won't fire his "Desslok
Cannon" on his own planet. But... wouldn't that also hold true for
Iscandar? (Melda seems to be directing them straight to the capitol city.)

Also - the Sulfuric Acid Seas and volcanic nature of the original
Gamilon don't seem to exist here in this version. So there's not likely
going to be any underwater firing of the WMG at volcanos.

Is Gamilon even a "dying" planet as in the original?

Perhaps Gamilon itself (and the innocent civilians in the cities) will
fare better at the end of all of this?

Do we YET have a complete explanation as to what started the war in the
first place and what the Gamilons hoped to accomplish with Earth?

Because that whole "we need a new world to migrate to" in the original 74 series seems a moot point in this version. Both because Gamilon is NOT dying
(at least not that's been seen or talked about) and because I'm guessing
that one of Desslok's goals might be with the "unification" to colonize
Iscandar? 
One thing for sure - the blue fleet ships are pretty damn indiscriminate
about firing on the Yamato IN THE CAPITAL CITY.

So - they've rammed into Desslok's palace... what was the plan from
here? Are they switching to the "rescue Yuki" option?

Desslok appears to be abandoning his generals in the palace, along with
poor Celestella, who seems devastated that he would do that.

(And there's the "Desslok Cruiser" as part of the palace, as in the
original - sort of. It's more that it was housed in the palace rather
than BEING a palace/ship.)

Is Yuki in that ship? Or in the palace?

And I have NO idea what's up with that pyramidal flying fortress of
theirs, or why a piece of it separated off.