Haibane.info

Author: fledgling otaku

  • thinking about a new car

    Its definitely a good time to be in the market for a new car. What I want is a good car for winter driving, that gets decent mileage but also has enough capacity to load up bags for the airport, etc. I have an Explorer for the heavy lifting and long distance travel, so this one is really just for about town (wisconsin) driving.

    my main requirements are:

    – at least 20mpg
    – under $25k
    – AWD and ABS
    – high safety ratings for front/side impact

    my preferences are:

    – seat up to 7
    – 30mpg
    – American brand (or at least manufactured here)

    I was looking at the Subaru Outback and Forrester for starters, but that’s just scratching the surface. Any suggestions?

  • Long Limb by Andrew Wyeth

    American artist Andrew Wyeth died last week at the age of 91. His paintings of rural American landscapes and farm life are described by most obsrvers as having a nostalgic tone, but the few of his works I have seen strike me as timeless in a sense, because these same landscapes are the ones I have been seeing in real life after having moved to Wisconsin last year. There’s a serenity and simplicity to such scenes that provokes a kind of introspection. Here’s one that struck me in particular:

    Long Limb, by Andrew Wyeth (1999)
    Long Limb, by Andrew Wyeth (1999)

    Related – posts about Wyeth’s art at Art News Blog and orDover. Also, the Wikipedia entry on Wyeth is worth a read – I didn’t know that Wyeth was often referenced in Peanuts!

  • Star Trek Barbies

    I am almost speechless.

    Star Trek Barbie Dolls
    Star Trek Barbie Dolls

    So, when does the Seven of Nine barbie come out? Just asking.

    (actually, Wil Wheaton should be all over this… and what about Ensign Lefler?)

    UPDATE – close-ups.

  • the WhiteHouse.gov blog: open government

    Among the inaugural festivities, the official web site of the White House underwent a transition of its own. The site is now built around a central blog, which is a presidential first and a definite sign of the times. The first post lays out the purpose of the blog in detail:

    Just like your new government, WhiteHouse.gov and the rest of the Administration’s online programs will put citizens first. Our initial new media efforts will center around three priorities:

    Communication — Americans are eager for information about the state of the economy, national security and a host of other issues. This site will feature timely and in-depth content meant to keep everyone up-to-date and educated. Check out the briefing room, keep tabs on the blog (RSS feed) and take a moment to sign up for e-mail updates from the President and his administration so you can be sure to know about major announcements and decisions.

    Transparency — President Obama has committed to making his administration the most open and transparent in history, and WhiteHouse.gov will play a major role in delivering on that promise. The President’s executive orders and proclamations will be published for everyone to review, and that’s just the beginning of our efforts to provide a window for all Americans into the business of the government. You can also learn about some of the senior leadership in the new administration and about the President’s policy priorities.

    Participation — President Obama started his career as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago, where he saw firsthand what people can do when they come together for a common cause. Citizen participation will be a priority for the Administration, and the internet will play an important role in that. One significant addition to WhiteHouse.gov reflects a campaign promise from the President: we will publish all non-emergency legislation to the website for five days, and allow the public to review and comment before the President signs it.

    We’d also like to hear from you — what sort of things would you find valuable from WhiteHouse.gov? If you have an idea, use this form to let us know.

    I think that the key here is that the WH website remains an irgan of Executive Branch government and is not just another blog in the standard, political/technology sense. The Communication role is of course obvious, but the Transparency and Participation are also key. Posting executive orders to the web site is a great start, and allowing the public to review and comment on legislation before it gets to the President’s desk is going to really open the legislative process to the public in an innovative and rigorous way.

    It’s interesting to see that a lot of technology experts don’t seem to understand the civic context of the purpose of the WH blog. For example, Dave Winer complains,

    The White House should send us to places where our minds will be nourished with new ideas, perspectives, places, points of view, things to do, ways we can make a difference. It must take risks, because that is reality — we’re all at risk now — hugely.

    I don’t advocate a blogging host like the Obama campaign website. There are already plenty of places to host blogs. But I do want the White House to be a public space, where new thinking from all over the world meets other new thinking. A flow distributor. A two-way briefing book for the people and the government.

    We need the minds of industry, education, health care, government, people from all walks of life, to connect. It doesn’t have to be whitehouse.gov, but why not, why wait?

    I think this critique is unfair – partly because by publicizing executive orders and legislation, the public minds Dave talks about will have unprecedented access to the inner workings of the executive branch. By using the blog as a central distribution point, it already is the two-way briefing book he talks about.

    What the WH site should not be, however, is a “public space”. The two-way flow needs to be of absolute highest SNR, which anyone who has spent even ten minutes online can attest is fundamentally incompatible with an open forum. The flow of information in both directions must be structured and controlled for maximum efficiency. If instead WH.gov becomes another home to the constant stream of garbage that spews over most public fora on the web, then one, the public will not be well-served by having to wade through the muck to find the information of genuine civic interest; and two, the very concept of an open and transparent portal into the inner workings of government will be discredited, and that we above all must not allow to happen. WH.gov is a courageous experiment and we must not let it fail.

    It should be noted that the official WhiteHouse YouTube channel does allow comments. Since YouTube is not a government site, there isn’t the same requirement of decorum and civic sensibility, so a free-for-all can be tolerated.

    Related – see Patrick Ruffini, Ars Technica, and TechCrunch for further comments on the WH.gov blog from a technological perspective. Also see Democracy Arsenal and Open Left for brief commentary from a political perspective. Finally, Read/Write Web has a nice 12-year retrospective on the evolution of the WH.gov website through the past several Presidencies.

  • NASA rover in the Inaugural parade

    This was a cool moment in tonight’s (ongoing) coverage of the Inauguration festivities:

    That’s the prototype of NASA’s new electric moon rover under development. It’s not actually due to be launched to the moon for another 12 years and the design might change and we might not even go to the moon if the economy doesn’t get better – but assuming we do, as a nation, avoid some sort of Shoe Event Horizon scenario, then something like this might end up on the moon someday.

    Obama’s face was shining when the rover came along. I can’t blame him. It’s the coolest thing in the parade by far.

  • Starbuck whines

    Sheesh man, this whining is so emasculating!

    There was a time, I know I was there, when men were men, women were women and sometimes a cigar was just a good smoke. But 40 years of feminism have taken their toll. The war against masculinity has been won. Everything has turned into its opposite, so that what was once flirting and smoking is now sexual harassment and criminal. And everyone is more lonely and miserable as a result.
    …
    “Re-imagining”, they call it. “Un-imagining” is more accurate. To take what once was and twist it into what never was intended. So that a television show based on hope, spiritual faith and family is un-imagined and regurgitated as a show of despair, sexual violence and family dysfunction. To better reflect the times of ambiguous morality in which we live, one would assume. A show in which the aliens (Cylons) are justified in their desire to destroy human civilization, one would assume. Indeed, let us not say who the good guys are and who the bad are. That is being “judgmental,” taking sides, and that kind of (simplistic) thinking went out with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and Kathryn Hepburn and John Wayne and, well, the original “Battlestar Galactica.”

    I kind of pity poor Dirk Benedict. He sounds like Grandpa Simpson. I think, however, that his version of Starbuck would have found a lot to like about the new BSG, because at its core, it’s about strong people who keep going in the face of overwhelming odds, about the importance of principle and honor, and a basic embrace of the essence of being human. What makes BSG special is that it does so in classic science fiction style, by using the strange and unfamiliar as foil to probe the familiar and known. How better to answer the question of, what makes us human, then by having machines ask it?

    One gets the feeling that Dirk never read any (Philip K) Dick. The Matrix, Blade Runner, even good ol’ Spock the Vulcan… all of that goes over his head, and he is left fuming, impotently, about ambiguous moralities. Science fiction is for grown-ups. The old Galactica series was for kids.

    (good as BSG is, though, Firefly still holds the edge. I wonder what sort of conniptions that show would send Dirk into?)

    (via Steven)

  • The Fifth Cylon revealed

    Now we know who the 13th Tribe was, what happened to Starbuck (mostly), closure for the Lee-Dee romance, and of course the identity of the Fifth Cylon. Spoilers ahead!

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  • Asimov’s Foundation – the movie

    Foundation on the big screen? Seems that Roland Emmerich will be directing; that’s cool with me, I loved Stargate, but the real question is who will be writing the screenplay? The Will Smith treatment of I, Robot was a good movie, but was not remotely an Asimovian story. I’ll stick with polite skepticism for now, but I am willing to be pleasantly surprised.

  • the Cycle of Time: cylons and humanity

    Let’s review for a moment the big picture so far.

    In Galactica, Kobol is the ancestral homeworld of humanity. 2000 years prior to the series, 12 tribes left Kobol and founded the 12 Colonies. 2000 years prior to that (ie, 4000 years previous), a 13th tribe left Kobol to find a mythical planet named Earth. Each of the original 12 tribes corresponds to a sign of the Zodiac. 400 years after the 13th tribe left (1600 years prior to the Exodus, 3600 years prior to the events in the series), the oracle of Pythia recorded her famous prophecy about the exile and rebirth of humanity, some of which is written in past tense.

    Kobol was ruled by the Lords of Kobol, which correspond to the Greek and Roman gods of mythology. These Lords were apart from humanity, but not immortal or super-natural, and could also die (for example, Athena committed suicide after the Exodus of the 12 tribes).

    It is also known that there was one Lord of Kobol, known as the “Jealous God” and also as the one whose “Name must not be spoken“, who desired to be elevated above the other gods. This god’s ambition is what precipitated civil war on Kobol and led to the Exodus of the 12 tribes.

    As Galactica retraces the steps of humanity, they discover Kobol, abandoned 2000 years previous. Moving onwards, guided by the Book of Pythia, they discover progressively older artifacts – a beacon in the Lion’s Head nebula dated 3000 years ago, and then the Temple of Five dated 4000 years ago.

    What follows is my theory about the above, and the origins of Cylons and humanity. Since it is ridiculously spoiler-esque, and discussion of it will also be spoiler-laden by necessity, I am putting it below the fold. The key, however, is simply this: The Cycle of Time.

    “If you believe in the gods, then you believe in the cycle of time that we are all playing our parts in a story that is told again, and again, and again throughout eternity” (Kobol’s Last Gleaming, Part I).

    Or, as it is said in the Pythian prophecy, “All this has happened before, and all this will happen again.” In addition, the very first line of the Sacred Scrolls states, “Life here began out there“. These broad concepts are the key to answering downstream questions such as Who are the Final Five and the identity of the Final Cylon.

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  • Global Shinkai Day 2009

    Global Shinkai Day

    February 27-28 is Global Matoko Shinkai Day. Nick has the details (and made the banner)