Down among the anime fans

I sat in the back of a tea room named The Living Room, sipping a hot blend of black tea and apple juice, quite delicious actually, and watched on an overhead projection four episodes of Naruto. I've never been particularly fond of the show despites its apparent longevity-- it recently passed 100 episodes-- but it is the hottest thing on the fansub circuit: when episode 100 came out, there were 14 seeds (people with complete copies) and 180 downloaders for Uninhabited Planet, but 500 seeds and over 15,000 downloaders for Naruto. You'd think a show this popular would already be available in the U.S., but it's been the subject of such a fierce bidding war that no U.S. distributor has been able to create a controlling legal interest in the show, and so the fansubbing goes on.

( Is 'anime fan' a valid term anymore? )

News Summary.

We know who you are. We are watching you. To many, these would be chilling words, but to the Transhumanist Community, being mentioned In the Catholic Register is something worth popping the champagne bottles over. A reporter was sent to TransVision 2004 and came away with an interesting perspective on the whole thing. From the outside, Transhumanism might look like "a faith" and when "interfaith dialogue" is the only name you have for confronting ideologies and movements that challenge your own, I guess that's what you call for.

We're on the map. The Pope's organs officially think of us as an ideology worth confronting. Huzzah!

( More News, Some Good, Some Bad, Some SHRILL! )