Getting Your Manga Fix

I've been reading a lot of manga online lately. I initially got caught up on Naruto at OneManga after my wife started talking about their iPhone manga app. It's a good site and most of the content seems to be fan translations, which is nice because I have no problem reading something on the internet that I can't get in the US. Spectrum Nexus and Manga Fox are similar but at least some of their content seems to be direct scans of US translations. Not sure if they're fan subs or not. Spectrum Nexus also has some flash vids of unlicensed anime like Blade of the Immortal.

West Pointers Make a Good Impression

Amy and I caught this part of the ACM awards and were impressed:



Thanks to the reminder on Chris Byrne's site, I just picked up the audio and video off of iTunes. Might as well put that gift card to good use and the proceeds go directly to the Wounded Warrior Fund.

Concealed Carry Holder Databases

I suppose I should be really pissed about a Memphis newspaper publishing a list of concealed carry permit holders. It's irresponsible, violates the permit holders privacy, and does nothing to improve public safety. In general it actually reduces it because some of those people have guns for a reason. Like hiding out from abusive ex-husbands.

I say I should be pissed, but I'm actually envious. You see in Delaware you are required to post your name and address in the News Journal before you even submit your application for a concealed carry permit. State law mandates this for us, only in slow motion.

Reepicheep Lives!

After the disappointing performance of Prince Caspian, Disney backed out of the Narnia movies leaving Walden without a distribution partner. Fox just picked it up, meaning that the Voyage of the Dawn Treader will still get made. This is a good thing as Dawn Treader is most people's favorite book. They're also going to be putting the movie in theaters around Christmas instead of during the summer movie season.

I actually liked the Prince Caspain film a fair bit. I like the book, but it a kind of a narrative muddle. A large part of it takes place in flashback and the Pevensie kids only appear at the end of Caspian's story to set things right. They tried to streamline this in the movie by starting the movie with Caspian's flight and then bringing the British kids into the story earlier. It sort of works. They still don't get Peter's character anywhere near right, but the other three kids are better. I really liked Edmund and the mice.

I think the next movie will be very interesting. They won't have to play with the story so much in order to create huge visuals, those are already in the book. We'll see how the work the book's episodic nature into the movie though.

Standing Atop the Entertainment Industry Yelling Stop

Big Hollywood has had two decent articles so far this month. One is a rather bitter screed from television's Dirk Benedict about how the new Battlestar Galactica sucks. And he's right, it does:

It matters not to Suits if it is Starbuck or Stardoe, if the Cylons are robots or lingerie models, if the show is full of optimism and morality or pessimism and amorality. What matters is that it is marketed well, so that all you people out there in TV land know that you must see this show. And after you see it, you are told that you should like it. That it is new and bold and sleek and sexy and best of all … it is Re-imagined!

The other is from comicbook writer Bill Willingham who points out that comicbooks, by surrendering their moral voice, have largely flushed themselves down the drain. He thinks that this period in comics history will be referred to as "The Age of Superhero Decadence" and from here on out he will decline to take part. Instead he will write stories with backbone.

The People's Choice Awards

Amy is unfortunately an awards show junkie, so we're currently watching the People's Choice Awards on CBS. It's both annoying and depressing.

Annoying because they keep throwing word's like "the People's" in front of everything like it was a communist party meeting. I'm waiting for them to call for the Proletariat to rise up and overthrow the Bourgeoisie. Thankfully they're too busy being smug about the results of the presidential election.

Depressing because we already know who is going to win everything. It's simple, the winners are the ones who bothered to show up. Presenters for one thing are also nominees in the other categories. There are all of 20 famous people in the auditorium and everyone else is a seat filler.

Can we start calling it quits with these BS award shows already? How sad is it when you're being shown up by Nickelodeon's Kid Choice Awards?

Hard News or Partisan BS

It seems that the National Geographic Channel's recent program "Guns in America" is the latter, featuring an entirely one-sided presentation coming straight from the script of the Brady Campaign. Stick to filming cute dogs and cats please.

The Palin Interview

Physics Geek is covering part of the Sarah Palin interview with Charlie Gibson that aired on ABC yesterday. I should expect this by now, but the partisanship of the ABC news staff really shocked me. One of the things the Good Morning America anchor desk focused in on was a wishy-washy answer about whether it would acceptable to cross an allied country's border without their permission in order to fight terrorists. Palin's answer was that in some cases (nuance, weasel, prevaricate), yes it would be.

At which point they cut back to the anchor desk who jumped down her throat. Cut to talking heads. The first talking head is a young blond I didn't recognize. She indicates that Palin's definite maybe is effectively the same as every other candidates on either ticket. Anchor desk rants about how that isn't true and Obama would never undermine an allies sovereignty. Cut to the second talking head, who is well known Democrat strategist and Friend-of-Bill James Carville. Carville points out that Obama actually did give that answer before and cited them chapter and verse. He takes the previous head's stance that we haven't seen anything surprising or newsworthy yet.

Now how far the left do you have to drift as a news organization when Democratic analysts are having to defend Republican candidates? It's sad that MSNBC has become the whipping boy for biased journalism, because there is a lot of blame to go around these days.

One other thing bugged me though. The interview format. Instead of airing the whole interview, it was aired in pieces. Gibson and Palin talking for a few minutes, followed by anchor desk coverage and "fact checking" about what she had said. Commercial, plug the section of interview to air in the next half hour, rinse, repeat.

I can understand why they aired the interview this way. They're breaking it up into bite-sized pieces for broadcast as part of a morning news program. They're also spacing it out to maximize ratings. But executed poorly, this format always strikes me as rhetorical ambushes. Palin is with the interviewer and on tape. However, because they're breaking the interview up and running commentary on each piece, the studio staff is essentially injecting itself into the interview as a third party. Palin (or whomever the interviewee is) can't rebut the studio comments and won't even know what they say about her until well after the fact. It can be an incredibly dishonest way to conduct an interview.

I remember a Howard Stern show back when he was still on E! and normal radio. He had a staffer interview Steven Curtis Chapman with a video crew outside of a concert, an awards show, or a charity event. I don't know which, but everyone was standing in a hallway. The interviewer would ask a question, Steven would give an answer, and then Howard would skewer him from the safety of his recording studio. It was incredibly cowardly. Not only couldn't Steven respond to Howard because he was on tape, but Howard had already seen the tape, so he could cook up his "on the spot" cutting remarks in advance.

ABC wasn't that bad. But good Lord they weren't that good either. If you're going to call yourself a news organization, you should have ethical standards that are clearly set apart from Howard Stern.

Tony Snow Dies of Cancer

The former White House Press Secretary and Fox News anchor lost his battle with colon cancer, the same disease that took his mother when Snow was 17. Snow was 53 and left behind his wife of 20 years, 2 daughters, and one son.

He Did Make Howard the Duck

From George Lucas via Blue Sky Disney:

"I haven’t even told Steven or Harrison this," he said. "But I have an idea to make Shia [LeBeouf] the lead character next time and have Harrison come back like Sean Connery did in the last movie. I can see it working out."

Better Than the Book?

NRO's Frederica Mathewes-Green discussed film adaptations in light of the recent Narnia film:

Movies that are better than the book they are based on:

1. Gone With the Wind.
2. The Godfather.
3. The Wizard of Oz.
4. The Princess Bride.
5. Jaws.
6. Forrest Gump.
7. Blade Runner.
8. The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
9. The Harry Potter series.
10. Adaptation.

Of the books I have read, yes to 4 and 7. A big no to 8 and 9. I've heard 6 is also inferior to the film and I can believe it.

The Princess Bride isn't that great of a book, it lacks the great style and atmosphere of the movie. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is good book, and in some ways it develops its themes better than the film, but it also lacks the depth and style of Blade Runners techno-noir.

But Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings? No. The Potter movies lack the books depth of setting, pacing, and characterization. Each Harry Potter novel unfolds over an entire school year's time. The movies are badly rushed in comparison. The Lord of the Rings movies completely destroy most of the books' characterizations. Frodo is little more than an emo hobbit tossed by the winds of fate. Aragorn is the reluctant hero. The books are about hobbits braving horrors and the movies are about the great battles of men and elves. Not the same and not as good.

I haven't seen Prince Caspian yet, but it seems like the movie makes the same mistakes as the LotR films. The Pevensie's personalities are wrong. In the LWW movie, the kids are the reluctant heroes. In this latest film, Peter seems to be some sort of domineering bully. Contrast that with the books where the Pevensies are the children of prophecy. They don't become the kings and queens just because they're the first four kids to stumble along. They are also suited for those roles in a mythic sense. I love Prince Caspian the book, because these kids return as the heroes of legend and then they act like it. Even most of the Telmarines don't want to screw with them.

So sure, clean up some of the narrative ugliness by getting rid of the long flashback chapters, but at least get the characters right.

Game Lust

Amy and I watched a fair amount of GTA4 coverage on the G4 network last night. I want it. PS3 and GTA4 please. My brother brought his PS3 over a while back so we could feed the HDTV some high def. It was pretty. With bluray and built in wireless networking so I could websurf on my HDTV, it's useful for more than just games.

The problem? Nobody seems to be selling anything other than the 40GB unit that completely lacks backwards compatibility. Eventually my PS2 is going to die. I want backwards compatibility for those games on the PS3, even if it is just software emulation.

So looks like I'll be saving the $600 Uncle Sam direct deposited into my account yesterday. At least until my options improve.

The Poor Are Hardest Hit

The wealth of the rich is their fortified city, but poverty is the ruin of the poor.

John Scalzi phrases this biblical truth more snarkily in a recent criticism of cliched newspaper writing:

Really? The poor suffering the most? It’s hard to imagine. Because, you know, usually when there’s a major global crisis of any sort, it’s the poor sitting there on the sidelines, going whew, dodged that bullet.

Via Instapundit.

Bobby's Dating Suzie

Mainstream Baptist actually has something useful to say. It turns out Fox News has had the same man show up in several of their "random" post-debate focus groups. Dr. Prescott wonders how this could be. Perhaps the population size the draw from is very small or, more likely, these people are not random at all. Stupid, stupid Fox.

I've probably aired this particular bit of criticism before, but I want to like Fox News a lot more than I actually do. In theory, having a conservative news source to balance out the others is nice. I wouldn't call Fox balanced in and of itself, but it is more balanced than the major media and when taken with other sources its effect is at least balancing.

The problem is that Fox wanted to be be just like the rest only right-wing and it has done just that. Whenever I turn it on, it just seems like the televised equivalent of the New York Post. This is not a good thing. You see I don't want to watch garbage with a right-wing slant instead of a left-wing slant. Either way, I'm still watching garbage. No thank you.

At what point did the content of our major media outlets become indistinguishable from Junior High lunch tables? I don't care about Laci Peterson, Britney, or Britney's little sister. Can't we keep this stuff in the supermarket tabloids where it belongs?

Counter-Spin

QandO is discussing a CNN piece on steroid use in professional wrestling. Dale Franks examines two versions of a statement by John Cena.

The first youtube feed is as aired by CNN and essentially says, "You can't prove it and I'll pass every test you give me." The second is raw footage taped independently by the WWE. In it Cena essentially states, "No, I have never taken performance enhancing drugs. I hate that people allege that I have or others have, simply because we excel. You can't prove it and I'll pass every test you give me. But the allegation will still remain and stain my achievements."

Big difference no? Makes you wonder what other stories they've doctored, doesn't it? Or to use Cena's own words in his WWE.com interview:

This is a one-hour documentary on wrestling and as much as I like to think the world revolves around WWE because I’m so proud of what I do, there are bigger fish to fry out there like the war in Iraq, the presidential race, et cetera, et cetera. And if they’re messing with my quote for an hour documentary just to get the point across that they want the viewing public to think that we’re all on drugs, I can only imagine what [else] they’ve done.

CNN.com was my homepage. I’d get pretty much what’s going on with the world on a daily update. I changed it immediately because now I just get the inkling that they may be telling me what they want me to hear.

Soldier Suicides

If you haven't been paying attention to the latest batch of yellow journalism, they're up from last year. If you have been paying good attention, like Tamara, you'll notice they're actually lower than comparable civilian suicide rates by a fair margin.

Crappy Columnists

Were I running the Boston Globe, I might stand by a columnist who uses newspaper money to commit a felony straw purchase of a handgun. Might. But why would I stand by such a man when his column is almost 700 words of pure unadulterated ad hominem? To me that seems to be another thing entirely.

Michael Yon

He's been doing really good work lately. His series "Death or Glory" (Parts I, II, III, IV) with the Queen's Royal Lancers on the Iranian border is good to excellent. Now he says that a major battle is brewing. I'll keep my eyes and ears open.

QandO's Latest

Some good stuff going on over there. Article the First:

McQ discusses the recent spate of retired generals lining up to criticize Rumsfeld. His take?

That's my gripe with these generals. Instead of literally putting their stars on the desk, they chose to wait until they were safely retired to take a stand. It's too late then. When they gripe from retirement, many people are going to take that criticism less seriously. How many times in the past have we seen "sour grapes" cloaked as serious critcism from the safety of retirement?

Yeah. I think a lot of this recent criticism is more about the military venting about Rumsfeld's management style, than having valid concerns over his results. Rumsfeld has kicked a fair bit of ass in the military heirarchy and it is coming back to bite him.

Article the Second:

McQ's take on government-run science isn't quite so good in my opinion:

While science is science, how it is funded (and why) may drive the findings of various studies more than we'd like to admit. ...
It's all about securing funding. And you have a better chance of securing public funding by appealing to the particular agenda of those likely to provide the funding:

I think he, and John Stossel whom he quotes, are right in that there are a lot of programs getting funding by confirming what the government wants to hear. That said I think a lot of this problem stems from how poorly science and technology is reported. Unfortunately the comments go off on a huge global warming tangent and never come back. They need threaded comments over there something fierce.

I think a lot of the bad popular science that makes headline happens for two reasons: few reporters have any meaningful scientific background and the newest-research-is-the-best mentality.

I know blaming the Mainstream Media is very popular, but it is also very true in this case. Unlike politics which a lot of newsies love and obsess over, science is mostly unknown to them. Science is on the side of their brains they don't often use. Now in the advertising game they have a saying: "you don't sell the steak, you sell the sizzle." This carries over very well into the news media. Newsies can't tell if the science is any damn good. But they can sell the sizzle. Oh boy can they. McQ uses the example of "crack baby" stories which were based on shoddy research but made for great coverage on 20/20.

The other problem is far more endemic to the entire population. Our modernist mentalities assume that the latest research is the best. But that may not be so. People used to say that potatoes and starch made you fat. Remember that? Then researchers said no, potatoes are starch and good for you as long as you don't cover them with unhealthy stuff like sour cream and cheese. They were wrong. Now we realize that your body will metabolize all those carbohydrates into fats unless you burn them off with regular exercise. In truth, if an idea has a body of supporting research behind it, then discarding it after the latest far research may not be such a good idea.