Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Scandal Silver Lining?

Check out The New York Times article via Instapundit for the details.

Quotes that indicate something good may have come out of this fiasco:

The events of the past couple of years, though disheartening to chronic fatigue syndrome patients, may have a silver lining: Research into the disease, much of it privately financed, is ratcheting up.

and

“The disease had languished in the background at N.I.H. and C.D.C., and other scientists had not been paying much attention to it,” said John Coffin, a professor of molecular biology at Tufts University. “This has brought it back into attention.”

Dr. Coffin, who at first supported the mouse retrovirus theory but later disputed it, noted that the illness “does seem to have characteristics that would suggest infectious origins” and that other retroviruses could be involved.

It has been a bleak thing waiting for medical science to come up with anything to deal with the illness and I stopped holding my breath for even a treatment a long time ago. It is one of many things that caused me to lose what little faith I had left in government organizations to solve problems, but only one. My hopes are that the private sector’s ability to innovate will eventually pay off though I doubt it will be in my lifetime. So little is truly understood about the immune system that the science involved can only be considered to be in its infancy.

Bleach Ep. 14: Back to Back, A Fight to the Death

The duel between Ichigo Kurosaki and Uryu Ishida is finally resolved in an episode dominated by combat. However, more questions are raised than answered as events careen from serious to silly at a frenetic pace. While it may be a conclusion to a small arc, the episode feels like a setup to something bigger.

 

Bleach is something of a high wire act, with rapid mood swings the norm and events usually threatening to go out of control. Yes, I do believe the word “manic” applies to the series and this episode in particular. The last Quincy, Uryu brings out the worst in substitute Soul Reaper Ichigo and vice versa with an entertaining mess being the result.

Going Intellectually Bankrupt

One of the more interesting chapters in the Intellectual Property (IP) wars was the takedown attempt of the Pirate Bay website. While Sweden sent the creators of the site to prison, it did not really end the site. Conspiracy theories abounded about the Unites States government being involved and now it has proven to be true. It is interesting material for those fascinated by IP laws getting out of hand, but there was a talkback post by an anonymous person that lays out the real reason this is going on. Read the whole post, but this is the best paragraph:

The drive is to twist the world into accepting intellectual property as if it were something tangible. The US pushes this hard because it is the only thing they have left. The idea is not to own the methods of production, but to own the instructions for the methods of production, and make others pay for using the instructions.

In a nutshell, that is exactly the situation and why Hollywood has disproportionate say in Washington, D.C. When NAFTA was passed back in the 1990’s, it was the beginning of the end for American manufacturing and, in my opinion, nation security/stability. What we are seeing today is the final result of believing in getting money for nothing.

And that is not going to end well.

Shades of Orwell

The FBI has a new flyer out suggesting people watch other Web users at internet cafes. If this isn’t playing Big Brother, I do not know what is. The vague definitions of what you should watch for cover a wide range of legitimate behaviors. For some reason I no longer mock people complaining about a growing police state.

Sigh.

Found at DSL Reports forums.

Reading

Over the past couple of years, my book reading has dropped like an ACME balloon launched by Wile E. Coyote over the precipice of a cliff. Since late December, I have taken steps to rectify the situation. Step one actually predates that and was the result of my realizing just how many books I had started without finishing them. So no more reading multiple books at once!

Step two was lining up the started ones and knocking them off, except I ended up inserting  Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom at the top of the order. So much for that part of the plan. It has turned out to be a compelling read that is also dryly technical, oddly enough. If I did not have so very many books to read I would get the rest of his writings.

Next up will be finishing The Confessions of Saint Augustine. It will be more of a chore, since  I find him to be a rather dull writer. While autobiographies are narcissistic by definition, there is a tendency to be pedantic in this book. But I will persevere.

After that I will be inserting a gift from my paternal aunt and uncle, Founders by Ray Raphael. Little did they know it, but accounts by and of forgotten players and everyday people involved in the Revolutionary War are my favorite parts of history from the period. I am looking forward to it a great deal and it will spur me to finish The Confessions.

Following it I will finish The Histories by Herodotus, which I started years ago. Yes, it is the book that gave the name to accounts of the past and I find Herodotus to be an entertaining author.

On the spiritual side of reading, I am keeping up with at least two pages of scripture a day along with the King James version of The Apocrypha. So far I have not found much of value in the latter, but I have only begun Esdras II. I finished The Old Testament straight read through in January after many years of nibbling at it. It doesn’t get the attention it deserves these days and I think many a Christian would benefit from reading every book contained in it – as would anyone trying to understand Western law.

The more I look at my bookshelves the more I believe a Kindle would not be a good thing for me to get. Maybe when I finish off every book I own, but they will have to come up with a way to extend my lifespan for that to work out!

Tablet or eReader Time?

It is with great reluctance that I have come to the conclusion that my Dell Axim’s days are numbered, simply because it is a very out of date platform. It cannot be upgraded to Windows Mobile 6 and the future is Android and iOS with their associated formats. Being cheap and hostile toward Apple, the iPad is not an option which limits my choices to something Android flavored.

But the big debate I am having with myself is whether to go for something with more functionality or with something that has an eInk display. I would love to be able to read in sunlight, but I also want to be able to keep contacts and appointments with me along with note taking. That would be more along the lines of getting a tablet than a reader.

While the Kindle Fire is pretty much a stripped down tablet, the lack of standard Android apps is an issue. Asus is coming out with a Tegra 3 quad core based tablet for $250 later this year and I wonder if that would be a better solution. I should mention that smaller is better and 6-7” screens are the desired size range.

I think I will bug one of my friends who got the Fire for Christmas and find out more about its capabilities. 

Odds and Ends 1-29-2012

Sitting here at home, I am only slightly annoyed about not being able to go to church today. Mainly that is because  I am so tired I would not remember anything heard there anyway. Last night was worse as the week caught up to me at last.

After Tuesday’s very early expedition to retrieve the car from Madison, I was out of commission that afternoon through Wednesday. To my relief, I was able to handle another early morning expedition up to the St. Paul Temple on Thursday – only because I was not driving either way. It was very good to get to the temple again and get a well needed spiritual recharge.

Once again, I fell apart afterward and spent Friday being completely brain dead. Saturday was not much better though a test run out to see how I was doing and meet with Congressional District 1 candidate Mike Parry in Winona went well. I like his stances and hopefully he will get the GOP nomination. Politics will begin in earnest next month after everyone finds out what districts they will be in.

Unfortunately, that trip out exhausted the last reserves of energy I had. Last night was not fun because I hit that nasty little area of fatigue where I cannot sleep but am unable to do anything else too. Not even watching movies or television is possible when I get there and an attempt to watch Star Wars failed abysmally.

At the moment, I am listening to Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky soundtrack and for some reason it fits the mood I am in. When I am tired, I tend to get very grouchy and that would be how I am feeling. There is no reason to be and no target for my annoyance other than all of existence. At least I am not being discriminatory.

It is time I replaced the ancient cassettes of Der fliegende Holländer with MP3’s. The quality of Amazon’s downloads has gotten quite good and while I still prefer CD (or better), I can afford this version of it a lot more easily. According to serious opera buffs, this is the performance to have. Tomorrow I’ll purchase it, since it is the Sabbath and I do not shop on it.

I may have to do a full review of the Samsung BD-5700 Blu-ray player. I only have two features yet to try out, but it has been a terrific buy. Upscaling has lived up to its good reputation and animated material is my torture test for that. Hard contrast and lots of straight lines will show every flaw when resampled to bigger resolutions.  DVD’s of Studio Ghibli films and Bleach were my choices, since the latter was not optimized for progressive scan widescreen TV’s. Both look fantastic to my surprise since I was prepared for a quality hit with Season 1 of Bleach.

A tiny USB flash drive will be ordered to enable Blu-ray live and see what that is all about. Also, I will enable my Hulu Plus account to see how well that works. Using set top boxes and Blu-ray players to access the Net still seems like a silly way to do things. My media center PC is a much better solution using dated components, but I can see price being an issue for people who have no technical expertise (or spare parts).

Squid Girl Episode 8

UPDATE September 4, 2018

More DMCA take downs have hit the blog despite screen captures long being considered fair use. Due to my not being able to afford a lawyer, I have no choice but to remove them or have the blog suspended. Only the words will be left.

TVTokyo is proving to be foolishly draconian in targeting posts meant to get people interested in seeing the Squid Girl anime and perhaps even purchasing it on DVD or Blu-ray. Being anti-piracy myself this is infuriating that they are targeting posts I wrote hoping to encourage people to try out a delightful show.

Squid Girl faces a serious illness, discovers a new ability, and discovers the wonders of umbrellas in an uneven entry in the comedy series. While first two segments are a mixed bag, the third story redeems the episode with one of the more charming stories of the series.

Who’s a Sick Cephalopod?

Having tentacles would be very handy in my opinion, especially if they were as capable as Squid Girl’s. However, I could see them getting hurt in all sorts of accidental ways. But having one get caught in an ice shaving machine was not one I could imagine.

When a dazed and muted Ika Musame starts shaving one of her tentacle tips off and doesn’t notice, Eiko becomes concerned. Looking flushed, everybody’s favorite inkvader appears to have come down with something. Funny, I was expecting her to look green around the gills, not flushed.

Finding all the  suggested ideas from the Aizawa family to be less than helpful, Squid Girl reveals that her illness is something potentially much more serious than thought. Bed ridden, delirious, and desperate her condition spirals downward.

Desperate times require desperate measures as Eiko does her best to help Ika. Help from an unlikely source is forthcoming, but is the cure worse than the illness?

Is That a New Agilllity?

Squid Girl demonstrates a new ability, that of being an art critic when it concerns sand castles. Not impressed with her critique or effort at making a better one, Takeru’s friend mocks her back and points out she has weird things on the sides of her hat. Yep, we have arrived at third grade humor here.

Only just realizing she has fins on her head makes the anthropomorphic squid wonder what they are for – especially once they start twitching. Calling in outside experts to help her figure it out, i.e. her immediate friends, is once again not very helpful.

But there are bigger fish to fry when the dad of Takeru’s friend shows up to do battle over sandcastle building. Inexplicable power ups, cheating, and more art critiques follow.

Shouldn’t You Jet an Umbrella?

Another rainy day and a need for supplies introduces Squid Girl to the wonders of umbrellas. Fascinated like a little kid, Ika marvels over the mechanisms and different kinds she sees. Smitten with the cheap vinyl umbrella given to her by Eiko, the younger girl cannot resist playing with it.

Left to her own devices while Eiko shops, Ika drifts off into a world of fantasy and fun with her umbrella, Squid Unit 01. Yes, she even names it and decides it is her most useful tool for invasion. As she daydreams about their adventures together, Squid Girl keeps adding names to it such as MK II in spoofs of mecha and other animes. Playing around in the rain never looked like so much fun.

But all good things come to an end…

Thoughts

The first two stories are mildly amusing here and there. I suspect children would find them more amusing. Fans of Sannae will be pleased as she gets a lot of time in both and masochistic slapstick abounds. It is hard to peg anything in a slice of life comedy as filler, but both stories have that aura about them – though they are adapted from the manga.

It is the last story that lingers in the memory and salvages a very uneven episode. Perhaps it is because I can remember how amazing the first umbrella I saw was and how much fun the first retractable one encountered was to play with. In this episode, a pure example of childhood innocence and fun can be found.

That awful crushing sadness of breaking something you love is also beautifully presented. Often it is the first encounter with heartbreak for a young soul and I loved how it was handled. It simply rang true, as did Eiko’s older sister method of dealing with the situation. The growing sense of family relationships between Ika and the Aizawa’s adds much to the show, elevating it to more than just a comedy. That last scene of the two was gently sweet in its humor and rang just the right note.

IP Rights Battles Are Only Beginning

There seems to be a great deal of celebration over having derailed SOPA and PIPA in the U.S.A., but they are not completely dead yet. In the meantime, ACTA has been passed by the majority of the EU nations. It still has not yet been ratified. That is little comfort, for I suspect it will be ratified easily when the time comes. To get an understanding of why this is a big deal, please check out my earlier posts on it here and here.

Another blow to the free travel of information came when the Supreme Court ruled that works in the public domain can be taken out of that status and copyrighted again. So those of you who have downloaded eBooks and movies in the public domain may end up becoming law breakers in the future. This aggravates the erosion of having limited copyrights and sets them well on the way to perpetuity, despite what Justice Ginsburg wrote.

It is ironic that there is such an effort to stifle the flow of knowledge and creativity in a time when we can finally share such things quickly and easily. Innovation is dying out in large part to actions such as these. Sure it sounds warm and fuzzy to talk about helping families of celebrities who were ripped off by their managers/producers/record labels, but resting on the laurels of those who came before is lazy. In the end, only the big media companies and their puppets in government truly benefit as most copyrights will be held by large corporations, not individuals.

So while a battle has been temporarily won, the war continues. If things keep up the way they are going, a long period of cultural stagnation is ahead for us. I firmly believe that humanity needs to keep striving and creating to advance. To my eyes, we have ceased doing so over the past twenty five years and the momentum generated in the past is fading away. We need some intellectual turmoil and the best way to create that is to ideas, concepts, and collaborations bouncing around like mad. Caging those is a huge mistake.

A Not Quite Unexpected Journey

While Bilbo Baggins got to go on an unexpected journey, the one I embarked on yesterday did give me some warning before hand. It involved a trek to Madison to recover the totaled Subaru Outback and get it back home to attempt repairs. Plans for assistance in driving the car fell through due to miscommunications, which meant I would have to drive the car the entire three hours plus it takes to get home.

Just one problem with that – my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome problems cause me to quickly loose awareness and concentration after about an hour and a half of driving. If I am having a good day, I can stretch that to two hours. Equipped with caffeinated soda and a lot of prayers said before and during, I managed to get home without undue incident. For that, I am supremely grateful.

So today I am barely functioning and this post took over twenty minutes to write. I will say it was not much fun driving the final leg home.

Now we have to tear into the car and see what all will need replacing. While the adjustor condemned the radiator, it appears intact and is functioning without leaking. First up for replacement will be the headlight and hood, with both looking to be major endeavors. That car will not be going anywhere soon.

Panic Has Hit the File Sharing Services

So after going through my normal routine of to start the day, I decided to check on some of the tech sites to see what effect the Megaupload arrests were having on the online community. While Anonymous continues to make sporadic and ineffective attacks in retaliation, other file services are beginning to react. Filesonic has stopped allowing file sharing altogether, which means users can only upload and download their own files. Slightly less panicked, FileServe has reportedly ended their affiliate program where users were paid when they got others to join the service. As many have already commented, who needs SOPA or PIPA when the U.S. government can already reach out and have people in New Zealand arrested?

While I do not like the ease with which the international arrests were carried out at the behest of Hollywood, it was painfully obvious what these file services were created for. So I do not mourn their passing in the least. Yet I wonder what affect it will have on the legitimate file locker companies? While I am not terribly enthused about cloud based computing in general, I do use Amazon’s cloud service to back up my purchased iTunes and MP3 files. Oh and then there is Steam, which is a cloud like service that I am fond of.

I am feeling some ironic amusement though. If you went through various technology and multimedia forums in the past couple of years, the pro-pirate forces had declared bit torrenting dead and the entire future to be these file locker services. As anyone familiar with how spy and terrorist organizations operate, the easiest ones to roll up and eliminate are the highly centralized ones. That is one reason why they operate in cells. Painting big old targets on yourself is not particularly smart and that is what these companies did.

My suspicions are that we will see the file sharing sites gone or inaccessible from America in the very near future. Torrenting will increase with a move to decentralize magnet links becoming the new standard. All of this reminds me of Spy vs. Spy in Mad Magazine as Hollywood and the recording industry use the U.S. government against the pirates.

Kimi ni Todoke Volume 1 Premium Edition and Ep. 1 Review

Karuho Shiina’s beloved romance manga is adapted into a beautiful anime depicting an outcast girl’s attempts to make friends in high school. When strange feelings stir in her after meeting the most popular boy in class, Sawako finds a whole new world opening before her. But will that world accept a weird looking girl who has little in the way of social skills?

In 2005, a shojo (girl’s) manga (comic book) debuted about a shy girl falling for the most popular boy in school. It is a theme done to death in the genre, but what set Kimi ni Todoke (From Me to You) apart was the execution and attention to detail regarding the characters. Only the second series by author Shiina, it ended up becoming a smash hit and won multiple critics awards. Being a slow moving character piece, it would not have been a surprise if the anime adaptation changed things considerably. Surprisingly faithful, it not only stayed true to the story, but rendered it with such care that it became a thing of beauty.

The Problem with Newt

Articles: The Myth of 'Newt The Great Debater'

John Ziegler lays it out like it is and I imagine he will take a lot of flack for it. One of the many problems with the extended primary debate season is that it has fooled conservatives and libertarians into thinking they are the only audience. The last I checked, 40% of the country consider themselves "independents" and they will decide who gets the Oval Office after 2012. People need to remember how easy it was for people to hate Gingrich the last time he was in the national spotlight. Toxic does not even begin to describe how bad it will get if he gets the nomination. While I have problems with Santorum and Romney, I would take either of them in a heartbeat over the walking and talking train wreck called Newt.

Stop SOPA and PIPA!

Contact your local Senator and Congressman to let them know you support free speech on the Web.   Allowing web sites to be taken down by the government simply based on a complaint from someone else about copyright violations is ridiculous. The whole idea of the world wide Web is to allow linking to other sites to share information and these bills would jeopardize the very structure of the Internet.

The Wrong Box (1966) Review

Featuring an impressive group of actors, this dark farce manages to be both satirical and whimsical at the same time. Set in the Victorian era, it is a classic comedy of errors involving a corpse, a box, and an eccentric family by the name of Finsbury. Expect bizarre situations, innocent romance, scheming relatives,  bird eggs, and the best butler ever in this very amusing movie resurrected through Warner Bros. Archive’s made on demand DVD service.

Every family has at least one film that somehow becomes a tradition to watch. In my family’s case, one of those films is The Wrong Box, an unfairly obscure comedy from the 1960’s. Long before I ever had a chance to see the movie, I had heard all about it and memorized quotes from it. It would not be until the 1980’s before I got to see it on cable TV. Thankfully, it lived up to the hype from the family!

For years I had looked for it on DVD to no avail. But thanks to Warner Bros., I now have the movie and it is worth the premium price I paid for it. It was a pittance to bring back some cherished family memories. Popping the DVD into the Blu-ray player, I wondered what the quality of the picture would be. To my delight, the very 60’s animated opening credits looked great as John Barry’s whimsical score started and so I settled in to watch this deeply, wrongly funny movie.

Wikipedia, Minecraft, Craigslist, and Reddit Go Black Tomorrow

While it is only the English language version of Wikipedia going black to protest SOPA and PIPA, it will not go ignored by millions of users there and at the other sites participating. WARNING: the link will have a video start up automatically, but the text also covers the details.

It will be interesting to see how much this affects things. I have to say that Dick Costolo of Twitter has it very wrong from reading that quote in the article. Of course, Hollywood types live and die by Twitter these days, so I am not surprised by his stance. I do not have a way of blacking out my blog so that will not happening here. Instead I'll let my posts opposing SOPA and other IP "protections" speak for themselves.

Ding Dong, the SOPA Bill Is Dead

Some good news that Eric Cantor has killed the bill in the House after a weekend where the author, Lamar Smith, started backing away from it and the White House came out in opposition. The latter shows what use an election year can be for activists to derail unpopular legislation. I highly doubt this positive outcome would have happened otherwise.

I hope the Senate version dies as well.

Health 1-16-2012

Burned out from the weekend, which means it was a good weekend. It is odd living a life that seems to play out as a reverse of most people’s. Most await the weekend to recover from the week and I await the week to recover from the weekend.

Crossword puzzle was longer than my usual, but within acceptable limits. Audiosurf, however, did not go well. Simply cannot concentrate properly and actually had problems keeping my eyes open. Today is also not a good pain day.

For the past week I have moved to using my left thumb to control the game on my Xbox 360 controller in an effort to strengthen it. Since late summer, the thumb has been stiffening and snapping, not just popping and alternates between a dull ache and sharp pain. So far, so good in strengthening it but have miles to go yet. Pain and discomfort have lessoned after seven days with flexibility starting to return.

Winter Pays a Visit and Blog Renovations

Crystalized water keeps falling from the sky, blown about in the well chilled air. Between that and the cold water to the bathroom repeatedly freezing, I have to surmise Old Man Winter has decided to pay us a visit. Now if I could only find the adapter I need to plug in the space heater fan to aim down the crawlspace! It has been a mild winter so far and it is no surprise that we are not getting off scot free.

I have been tweaking the layout and features of the blog again. Certain gadgets have recently become available that I think will help people navigate and explore the posts. At least, I hope that is the end result. After over five years of blogging here, I only just discovered how to insert breaks in long posts. Yeah, the feeling of being a real genius completely avoids describing how that made me feel.

Check out the top visited posts on the right hand sidebar. Also now there are a list of the most used tags on my posts. If you want to share a post somewhere else, check out the bottom of each one. Linking it to your Facebook, Twitter, or blog account should be easy now.

Meanwhile, things have moved ahead somewhat on the car. We’ve scraped up enough money to buy it back from the insurance company and now have to figure out how to get it back home since it is now over one hundred miles away. Having depleted all our money on this, it will be a long time before we can buy the needed parts for it and it will be many months before it runs again. But it is the only way we can afford a vehicle, I am sorry to say.

An unexpected movie will be the subject of my next review thanks to a make on demand service that will also be part of the essay. It is one near and dear to the immediate family alive and dead. That last sentence sounds awkward, doesn’t it? It happens when you have a very small family.

Regaining Some Momentum

Yesterday the last couple of weeks finally caught up to me with a vengeance. The night before I started shutting down physically and Monday I was not up for doing a thing. This is actually a good thing, because of how much I did before hitting the wall and how long it took to do so. Very encouraging, in fact.

At least I got my first Area 88 review up tonight, though it took multiple days to write. It and hopefully another series will be added to my rotation of filler reviews in-between movies and more serious matters. I’m starting to feel like I am getting my feet back under me for the first time since visiting Indiana between Christmas and New Years. That is more than can be said for the GOP presidential contenders not named Romney.

Finally caught the new Sherlock Holmes film featuring Robert Downey, Jr. Well, it is new to me. It was a pleasant surprise and played like an alternate history version of the characters. Nothing brilliant but very entertaining. One odd issue I had with the Netflix DVD was that it was in 16:9 format, not 1.85:1. Flipping through all the TV picture modes and the Blu-ray player settings verified this. Is there a new version of “pan and scan” aka fullscreen on some DVD’s now?

Before the holidays took over, I had started watching Stargate: Atlantis from the pilot on. Only tonight did I remember that and resumed watching my DVDs. It is like watching it for the first time again due to the new HDTV. I found myself marveling at the sets due to the hugely increased picture size. Hard to believe it debuted in 2004 because it has held up very well.

Things are not going well on the car front. Not well at all. The likelihood of getting the Subaru back and attempting to repair it is dwindling, though my father refuses to give up hope. With it being in a salvage yard in Madison, the odds are against it. Not being able to afford getting a used car is just another complication.

Not exactly an auspicious start to the year. Something has to go right eventually.