Now I'm eating it. And it occurred to me: "Dude, you're eating a face. Doesn't that bother you?"
Oh well. On to the news!
Maryland school board has interesting notions of what "sex education" should be. Heck, it's gotten to the point that schools no longer even pretend that all they're doing is teaching kids about safe sex and reproductive health.
For years sex ed has been defended thus: "You know they're just going to do it anyway, so don't you want them to know about STDs and birth control so they can protect themselves from disease and unwanted pregnancy?" But sex ed programs which get into "erotic techniques" and things other than "this is how it all works" and "this is how you prevent pregnancy" and "this is an STD, and this is how you keep yourself from getting it"--these kinds of programs are pernicious.
It's a bait-and-switch. Parents think their kids are learning how not to get knocked up or infected with HIV, but in fact they're learning "Kama Sutra 101".
Obama cites Reagan; MoveOn Demokrats have a hissy fit. This is the fun part of the election cycle.
Public outcry halts California's "big brother thermostat" plan. At least for the moment.
We are not running out of oil.
The problem with such forecasts is that they do not take into account future oil finds. They can't, because no one can predict the future. During 2007 Brazil found an enormous deposit of oil just off its shores, one that would give it one of the largest reserves in the world, rivalling the Middle East.
We haven't found all the oil in the world yet. All the supply and price issues we're facing right now are political and economic; they're not happening because the oil is running out.
By 2010 oil will be trading around $30 per barrel again as more production comes on line--people want in on the $90-$100 per barrel oil, and the ones that get there first will make the most money. OPEC might as well just open the valves all the way and let it come out, because in about two years the prices will drop anyway.
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Anime!
Today's list:
Pretty Cure Max Heart 1
Magical Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS 1
ef-A Tale of Memories
Minami-ke 6
Ninomiya-kun 7
Ikkitousen: Dragon Destiny 8
...not necessarily in that order.
MK6 was pretty funny, for once. Chiaki's classmate Makoto ended up in drag. The poor kid is going to get to dress up again in ep 7 if the omatase is any guide. Chiaki is still an annoying little brat, though.
Nanoha gave me some serious deja vu, for reasons I have trouble defining. Nanoha herself, in un-transformed form, looks remarkably like Asa Saitou from American Dawn, my own little doujin...except the ponytail is wrong. But that's not it; there's something about the series which is just too damned familiar.
PCMH--they modified the OP from PC but it's otherwise unchanged. They came up with new animation and a new ED with new animation, so why couldn't they do a new song? Look, I like the PC OP, but enough is enough. PCMH picks up a while after PC ended. I keep thinking that they skipped an entire year, but I'm not sure. Anyway, the story begins on their first day of school as sannensei--third-year--junior high students, the grade we call "freshman in high school", so they've got to be 14 going on 15 now.
I:DD 8 was more fan service in a loose wrapper of story. I didn't expect to find any more episodes of it anywhere but someone uploaded fansubs of 8 and 9, so I grabbed them--like hell am I going to pay money for that nonsense.
Ninomiya-kun--the plot crept forward a bit more. I could have done with a bit more of the larger plot and less of the priapism jokes.
Finally, ef--A Tale of Memories.
WTF.
They're telling two loosely-connected stories and I spent too much time out of the first ep wondering WTF was going on. Not enough exposition, too much artsy animation, too little of any coherence for me to find this engaging or entertaining.
I'm going to watch more of it; this attitude may change. But IMHO it's not a good way to start a series, confusing the hell out of your viewers.
It sucks, because I wanted to enjoy what I was seeing; they put a lot of effort into the production--but I just couldn't enjoy it because they were trying to be too damned clever with everything.
It's not a sin to tell a straightforward story, damn it!