Google Reads Someone's Mind

This morning, following a link in which one right-wing whacko makes the very whacko argument that conservatives are destined to win because liberals believe in abortion and are therefore deliberately thinning their own ranks, leaving the conservatives in the majority (an argument summarily torn apart by another conservative who points out that women seeking abortions are more likely than not to identify as "conservative", which is why the procedure needs to be outlawed-- I love watching infighting like that), my eyes wandered over to the right hand sidebar where Ads By Google sat.

Now, the Ads By Google theory is that Google has a good idea what kind of people would want to view this page and what they would want to buy and tries to put up advertisements accordingly. So, it's no suprise that the first three ads were RepublicanShop.com ("Annoy the Liberals"), RepublicanPeopleMeet.com ("1000's of Beautiful Republican Women"), and GregoireLost.com ("She's Not My Governor"-- amazing that they're beating on that on a national scale), came the pleasant surprise: SchoolUniforms.com ("Plaid Skirts & Jumpers in Stock School uniforms, Scouts & Team wear").

It's a legitimate site. Not porn at all, a plain old school uniform mass production company. I have all sorts of theories as to why Google would associate school uniforms with conservative writers, but most of them are fit only for the fiction page.

I'm Published!

One of the forums in I regularly participate is talk.origins, mostly because I want to monitor the progress of creationists in my home state of Washington. Blissfully, they're not making much progress. But since it's a debate forum, I've tossed in my two cents' worth once in a while.

My two cents have been collected as a contribution to The Counter-Creationism Handbook. I gave the editor permission to use something I'd written a few years ago to respond to the question, "Doesn't natural selection mean there would be no homosexuals, since homosexuals don't pass their genes on to the next generation?" I pointed out that there are many other conditions that persist despite their apparent impedence to reproduction, and that homosexual exclusivity, if genetic in origin, was statistically insignificant compared to those other conditions.

It's an expensive book, about $65.00 all told, and I don't see a penny of that; most of the contributors don't, and that's commonplace in a FAQ assemblage like this. So don't run out an buy it unless you feel you need a book like this on your shelves. (I do, and it goes right next to my collection of Scientists Confront Creationism, a much more scholarly example of the genre.) But it's nice to see my name in print. "Professor Sternberg" indeed.

Honey & Clover, through Episode 7

One of the things I especially treasure about most anime is that it lacks the cynicism of American media. Here, we're all oh-so-cool and oh-so-ironic that even kids' shows can't help but be snarky, winking co-conspiratorially through the fourth wall with an "we all know this good versus evil stuff is bullshit, don't we?" attitude that really drives me up the wall.

It is for this reason that I have absolutely been ga-ga over Honey & Clover, beyond any doubt the best anime of the season. Having watched the episodes in order up through seven now, I'm totally committed to watching to the end. (Confessionally, I'm also committing to watching the campy Sousei no Aquarion to the end as well, but I don't think I could recommend that one in good faith.)

Honey & Clover is a slice-of-life series about three students in art college: Takemoto, Mayama, and Morita, when a small, fragile first-year girl enters their lives. Hagu is one of the school's shining lights, a student who's already showing in galleries and receiving commissions for public works, but she has rarely seen "the outside world" and does not know how to relate to other students. Take immediately falls for her, Morita sees her as an art resource, and Mayama just tries to keep their apartment from falling apart-- even as his own love life keeps falling apart, with a girl who adores him, another who can't accept his affection, and a boss who keeps trying to set him up with one or the other.

In Episode 7, Mayama immediately screws up his love life again, first by insulting Yamada and then by telling Reiko goodbye. Both of them refer to him as "that idiot," apparently because he's so thick that on the one hand he does understand that they both love him and on the other that he can't understand why and so can't accept it. We learn that Hagu's professor (and protector, to some degree, and Mayama's boss) is leaving school to do research for a year. Hagu decides to throw a party for him and in one scene is trying to find a four-leaf-clover for good luck. Somehow, the entire troop is soon suckered into spending the afternoon on hands and knees, looking for it. It's one of those beautiful, moving "still" scenes that no American director could pull off without a desperate and soul-killing bout of self-consciousness.

Through it all, Morita continues to be madcap, Takemoto introspective, the art is lush and magnificent with watercolor backgrounds unlike anything I've ever seen in anime. Emotionally satisfying and artistically valid, it's my pick of the season.

It's King Of The Hill time!

So, Omaha's off doing her political thing and Kouryou-chan wants hot dogs, so after an hour of weeding and mowing the front lawn I get to sit on my (admittedly somewhat tatty) deck and sip a tall glass of half 7-Up, half Hogue Late Harvest Reisling over ice and watch as the grill heats up, my laptop in lap and wireless to the downstairs feeding me a really bad Pokemon clone with a really cute catboy in it.

This is life. Kouryou-chan's out front, playing with the neighbor kids. The neighbor to the west, that is, the ones we've known for many years.

While I was weeding, I was distressed to note that the neighbors to the east, as if trying to cement their stereotype, had a pair of dead refrigerators on their lawn on the lee side of the house where it is mostly quiet and shady. Their children are in the yard but seem to be avoiding the kids from the neighbors to the west. I'm not sure what to make of that.

On the other hand I was heartened, if briefly, by the noise coming from the yard: a weed-whacker. I stopped and looked up the man doing the lawncare.

"Hi!" I said. "Same thing I'm doing, huh?"

"Yeah. Gotta do it." He wore a beer-related t-shirt. Scrawny guy with a mustache that is usually described as, well, pardon the expression, "a shitty little mustache."

I nodded. "You the new neighbor?" I pointed at the house.

"Nah. My wife, her and her boyfriend. And my kids. I just came over to see 'em and offered to do her lawn for her. Y'know, just to make a couple of bucks for gas."

Damn. Damn, damn, damn. I really should lower my expectations.