The commercial was what really got me interested in the game. It had a cinematic feel to it, full of grittiness and sadness, and superb graphics. "Mad World" really added to the atmosphere.
The game is a letdown compared to the commercial. Not enough backstory, and the gameplay is mediocre. The stupidity of the chain-saw bayonet is beyond words.
I wasn't referring to the Ghost in the Shell AIs, but rather to one of the first few pages in the original manga, which described one of the first interfaces between a silicon chip and neurons.
Re:How will this affect the Studio Ghibli deal?
on
Disney Buys Pixar
·
· Score: 1
>...just wondering how you know Goro Miyazaki is a great director
Solely from his blog. He displays an honesty about himself and his feelings torwards his work that is refreshing. Plus, many of the observations and notes on the blog display a deep understanding about many of the themes within the Earthsea books. If only a bit of this understanding and honesty gets through to the final work, then I'll be happy.
Re:How will this affect the Studio Ghibli deal?
on
Disney Buys Pixar
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Will Disney modify (i.e. cut scenes from) these films?
No. This will not happen. Disney can not cut even one second from the films, according to the contract. Ghibli has officially stated that "With Disney's commitment to maintain the quality of the original titles, there will be no changes to music and sequences in foreign language versions." According to Mr. Suzuki, the producer of Ghibli, other companies such as Fox and Time-Warner contacted Tokuma, but Disney was the only company willing to agree to this condition, and that was the main reason why Tokuma chose Disney as a partner.
The term means that Disney can not touch the films, but that does not prevent Disney from asking Ghibli to cut or change the contents of the film, as Tokuma and Ghibli retains the editing right. In an interview, Mr. Suzuki said that Miramax faxed Ghibli, asking if they could cut several scenes from "Mononoke Hime". But nothing was cut from Mononoke Hime (Princess Mononoke).
--- Patiwat Panurach
How will this affect the Studio Ghibli deal?
on
Disney Buys Pixar
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I personally feel that most of Disney's original animation over the past decade has been mediocre at best, and therefore don't really care about what the Disney/Pixar reverse acquisition will mean for animation quality.
What I am concerned about is how the deal will affect the Studio Ghibli/Disney distribution deal. For many years, Disney has had wide distribution rights over Ghibli works. Sometimes this has worked out for the better (the heavily promoted Spirited Away), and sometimes not so well (Miramax requested, but was denied, many edits in Princess Mononoke).
A closer connection between Pixar and Disney will probably not harm Ghibli. It was noted that John Lasseter (founder of Pixar) had given very strong support to Spirited Away, and was a key driver of what success that movie had in North America. A closer connection between Pixar and Ghibli will probably result in an even stronger benefit.
Now, on notes of pure speculation, how might the Pixar/Disney merger benefit Ghibli going forward? Could we expect Miyazaki-animated short films (currently limited in distribution to the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka City, Tokyo) put on sale on the iTunes Video Store? Or maybe distribution of older classic Ghibli films? Imaging having a copy of Gauche the Cellist on your iPod to perk you up on those cloudy days of life. Or how about strong promotion and wide distribution of the forthcoming Tales from Earthsea? With the combination of a a imaginative and sensitive director like Goro Miyazaki and effective marketing, I can't imagine how Earthsea wouldn't become a major blockbluster.
What else would you like to see come out of the Studio Ghibli/Disney/Pixar deal?
This is really silly. The family wants to force Wikipedia to remove tron's real name from the article?
Here's a couple of thought experiments: if Kevin Mitnick's family tried to get Wikipedia to remove his full name, and replace it with "Kevin M." or just "Kevin", should Wikipedia do so? Or a member of the Kennedy family wanted to ammend the JFK article to use the name "John F.K."? For whatever reason???
- Convicted criminals shouldn't have their full names shown in articles? HELL NO!
- Convicted criminals who claim they are innocent shouldn't have their full names shown in articles? HELL NO!
- Famous people more commonly known by their nicknames shouldn't have their full names shown in articles? HELL NO!
- People who died from suicide/murder shouldn't have have their full names shown in articles? HELL NO!
- Dead people who's families are mourning shouldn't have their full names shown in articles? HELL NO!
- Dead people who their families don't want to be associated with shouldn't have their full names shown in articles? HELL NO!
- Spies with secret-identies, the compromising of which might harm government agents and endanger national security, shouldn't have their full names shown in articles? Well, maybe....
Wikipedia, stick to your guns and don't back down!
From the shareholder perspective, size (or more accurately, market share) doesn't matter.
Take Toyota, for instance. It is not the world's largest car company in terms of sales. But it is by far the world's most valuable car company in terms of market cap. Why? Even though GM sells more cars, Toyota has been perfecting the world's most efficient production system for the past 3 decades. Shareholders know this, and expect that for every dollar of sales today, Toyota generates more profit than any other company. And they extrapolate this into the future: for every dollar of profit made today, Toyota will make even more profit compared to other companies. That's because the benefits of continuous improvement are cummulative - you can't just decide over night to have a world-class production system. It has to be developed over time.
A similar thinking applies to Apple. Even though Apple sales are miniscule compared to Dell's, the market sees Apple products as giving greater profits per unit of sales, and sees those profits as more sustainable than any other company. Why is this so? Because Apple has a much simpler product range than Dell's (reducing the cost base), because it's average prices tend to be a bit higher (increasing margins), because it has products like the iPod that are truly unique and valuable from the consumers' perspective (increasing margins, both now and in the future), and because Apple products are addictive - after using an iPod or a iBook, it's damn hard to move back to a generic MP3 player or a commodity PC (increasing sales and profits in the future). Few other PC companies have such a magic mix, and that is what makes Apple so much more valuable compared to larger companies.
So Steve is nixing the PowerBook name because they want to have "Mac" in the name of every product. And appending "Pro" to the end of the professional products, ala the MacBook Pro. But, he intends on keeping the "i" in front of the consumer products, ala the iMac.
If this logic is followed, the consumer laptop would stop being called the iBook and would become the iMacBook. And the pro desktop would be called the PowerMac Pro. Or maybe just the Mac Pro. Damn, those are ugly names....
The product mix has stopped making sense, although only temporarily. In the portable line they have iBook G4 and MacBook Pro intel; in the desktop line they have iMac intel and PowerMac G5.
iMac that's as powerful as a PowerMac? Who's gonna wanna buy PowerMacs for the next couple months? Does Apple expect to make so much profit from the iMac intel over the coming months than the forgone profit from lost PowerMac G5 sales? I would think that the PowerMac G5 made a much higher profit than the iMac.
And a MacBook Pro that's 10x more powerful than a iBook?!? There goes the iBook market...
Anybody else see the logic of transitioning the consumer desktop and pro laptop first, rather than starting with the consumer desktop and laptop, or the pro desktop and laptop, or the pro desktop and consumer laptop, or some other combination?
I'm not sure of the wisdom of the site owners in posting a 166MB file onto Slashdot... Why don't people just use bittorrent for distributing content like this? A mirror (a 100MB quicktime movie) is available, though, at http://downloads.oreilly.com/make/howitismade.mov
A fascinating file though, conveniently formated for the ipod with video.
I'm not sure of the wisdom of the site owners in posting a direct link to a 166MB file on Slashdot... Why don't people just use bittorrent for distribution of files like this?
It's a fascinating video though, conveniently formatted for ipods with video.
This is really one of the coolest things I've seen this year. If only all classical downloads had such consistency and quality of ID3 tags. Only problem is that the 'genre' field always seems to be 'other'. It would be cool (but a bit too subjective) to just throw these into itunes and then sort out the classical from the jazz.
Somebody should compile all these MP3s and create a torrent out of it. Having the entire collection in the hands of thousands of people world-wide will effectively make it last forever.
This is a fantastic storehouse that they've put together. Some of these recordings are divine and of enormous historical value.
Think about it: some of these cylinder recording made in the 1890's where made by the classical masters of that age. Think people in their 70's. These people started their musical education back in the 1810s-1820's. That's the age of Beethoven (died 1827), Haydn (died 1809), Liszt (died 1886). So what we're hearing with these cylinder is the direct first-hand influence of the Classical/Romantic masters. Not some modern interpretation. And you thought the Rachmaninoff recordings were a 'Window into Time'!
The Remote is a disappointment. It's basically a Shuffle with a menu button. Doesn't have the touch-sensitive wheel that makes navigating through long lists of songs such a pleasure. Of course, I haven't tried it with Front Row yet, but I'm not really looking forward to it due to the clunkiness of the design.
Microsoft's holy grail is a system that cranks out a new, generally bug-free version of basic Windows every few years, with frequent updates in between to add enhancements or match a competitor's offering.
Basically, they're after the system that Apple uses OSX development. Based on a strong "foundation" technologies like the Mach kernal, the Aqua GUI, the Carbon and Cocoa APIs, Apple has been able to crank out almost annually significant upgrades in OSX. It charges money for these upgrades, and most users willingly pay for them, because they're not just security fixes - each generation of OSX 10 has really enhanced the user experience.
The train enters the station. Uniformed police officers appear on the platform and surround me... They handcuff me, hands behind my back, and take my rucksack out of my sight.
Lucky bastard. If he had gotten on the train, they would have had to empty a magazine into his head.
Your comments are valid and interesting. But note, though, that Diana Wynne Jones, the author herself, was reportedly very pleased with the movie.
The following quote comes from http://ansible.co.uk/Ansible/a210.html and refers to a personal screening of Howl's Moving Castle that Miyazaki hosted for Mrs. Jones near her home in Bristol:
`Miyazaki came in person, carrying with him a tape of the film, an interpreter and sundry other shadowy figures (all this was supposed to be secret for fear of the Japanese media, who then descended on me afterwards, so I couldn't mention it beforehand) and we had a private showing at the Watershed cinema. The film is goluptuously splendid with breathtaking animation. I had grown used to young ladies regularly writing to me to say that they wanted to marry Howl. Now, Howl in the film is so plain stunning and sexy that I think I have joined them. And after the showing and the scamper through Bristol I had a long talk with Mr Miyazaki and it began to seem that we were soulmates.'
I personally think that Sofie wasn't merely just any anime chick - she's a Miyazaki anime chick! Like Nausicaa, Fio (Kurenai no Buta/Porco Rosso), Shizuku (Whispers of the Heart/Mimi wo Sumaseba), and the other great Ghibli female leads, Sofie has more spunk, curiosity, complexity, and compassion than the vast majority of heroines of just about any genre.
As for the air raid scenes - this is a war we're talking about. Unfortunately, air raids on civilians are an inevitability of any modern war. But seeing it from the perspective of the victim in such explicit horrible detail really emphasis to the viewer that this war really really sucks.
I personally think that Miyazaki has a pretty good record of book/story adaptations:
- Gauche the Cellist (Miyazawa Kenji) had a wonderful soundtrack, the right "feel", and is a very faithful adaptation.
- Whispers of the Heart (Hiraagi Aoi) unfortunately removed a lot of poetic elements, and made some significant changes to the plot, but retains the overall "feel", while the character development of Shizuku is just wonderful. And the magic of the very last scene with the bicycle is beyond words.
- Ironically, Miyazaki's most disappointing adaptation, in my opinion, is Nausicaa. For me, the manga was an extradordinarily complex landmark work. The movie, although wonderful, just couldn't compare. The entire environmental theme (can man ever live in harmony with nature?) was only scratched at in the movie.
Google Earth's resolution also varies within cities.
Bangkok, Thailand shows high resolution Digital Globe images east of the Victory Monument/Wireless Road (13 degrees 45'.56.53"N, 100 degrees 32'22.12"E)and South of Prachachuen Road/Bangkhen Intersection. High resolution hear means you can see individual cars. The high resolution zone ends roughly before the new airport to the East. Everything else is in much lower resolution EarthSat images. The divider line cuts my office building (13 degrees 43'38.14"N, 100 degrees 32'26.35"E) right in half.
Eric is a great teacher - I took a graduate course with him on Innovation Management (15.356) a few years ago. The course was recently renamed "How to Develop Breakthrough Products and Services" and is available via MIT's OpenCourseWare at http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Sloan-School-of-Manageme nt/15-356Spring2004/CourseHome/index.htm. The course home page also gives a very brief overview of Eric's lead user concept. It's one of his pet ideas, and although it isn't the sole focus on the course, it certainly is one of the foundations.
The actual class was wonderful: a mix of working scientists and R&D executives, Sloanies and other MIT grad students, and a couple of undergrads sitting in. Lots of student interaction and learning from your peers. The individual project was a good experience as well - I wrote a paper analyzing why Lockheed's X-33 space plane project failed, and what could have been done so that the the technologies developed (autonomous navigation and landing, composite materials, linear aerospike engines, metallic thermal protection system) didn't die with the project. Eric gave lots of guidance and advise on the analysis.
Recent reports confirm that, due to the presence of long-lived, latently infected cell populations, eradication of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) from infected patients by using antiretroviral drugs will be exceedingly difficult. An alternative to virus eradication may be to use gene therapy to induce a pseudo-latent state in virus-producing cells, thus transforming HIV-1 into a lifelong, but manageable, virus. Conditionally replicating HIV-1 (crHIV-1) gene therapy vectors provide an avenue for subduing HIV-1 expression in infected cells (by creating a parasite, crHIV-1, of the parasite HIV-1), potentially reducing the HIV-1 set point and delaying AIDS onset. Development of crHIV-1 vectors has proceeded in vitro, but the requirements for a crHIV-1 vector to proliferate and persist in vivo have not been explored. We expand a widely accepted mathematical model of HIV-1 in vivo dynamics to include a crHIV-1 gene therapy virus and derive a simple criterion for designing crHIV-1 viruses that will persist in vivo. The model introduces only two new parameters--HIV-1 inhibition and crHIV-1 production--and both can be experimentally engineered and controlled. Analysis demonstrates that crHIV-1 gene therapy can indefinitely reduce HIV-1 set point to levels comparable to those achieved with highly active antiretroviral therapy, provided crHIV-1 production is more efficient than HIV-1. Paradoxically, highly efficient therapeutic inhibition of HIV-1 was found to be disadvantageous. Thus, the field may benefit by shifting the search for more potent antiviral genes toward engineering optimized therapy viruses that package ultraefficiently while downregulating viral production moderately.
The problem of the 'plurality of worlds' isn't new to the Church. In the introduction to James Blish's "A Case of Conscience" (1958, Winner of the Hugo Award), the author notes:
I was gratified to receive also several letters from theologians who knew the present Church position on the problem of the 'plurality of worlds', as most of my correspondents obviously did not...
I will quote Mr Gerald Heard, who has summarized the position best of all:
If there are many planets inhabited by sentient creatures, as most astronomers (including Jesuits) now suspect, then each one of such planets (solar or non-solar) must fall into one of three categories:
(a) Inhabited by sentient creatures, but without souls; so to be treated with compassion but extra-evangelically.
(b) Inhabited by sentient creatures with fallen souls, through an original but not inevitable ancetral sin; so to be evangelized with urgent missionary charity.
(c) Inhabited by sentient soul-endowed creatures that have not fallen, who therefore
(1) inhabit an unfallen, sinless paradisal world;
(2) who therefore we must contact not to propagandize, but in order that we may learn from them the conditions (about which we can only speculate) of creatures living in perpetual grace, endowed with all the virtues in perfection, and both immortal and in complete happiness for always possessed of and with the knowledge of God.
Of course, the aliens that are the subject of Blish's book fall into none of these scenarios...
Slashdot Mirror
The commercial was what really got me interested in the game. It had a cinematic feel to it, full of grittiness and sadness, and superb graphics. "Mad World" really added to the atmosphere.
The game is a letdown compared to the commercial. Not enough backstory, and the gameplay is mediocre. The stupidity of the chain-saw bayonet is beyond words.
That would be Otto Lilienthal
> so forget about ghost in the shell style ai
I wasn't referring to the Ghost in the Shell AIs, but rather to one of the first few pages in the original manga, which described one of the first interfaces between a silicon chip and neurons.
> ...just wondering how you know Goro Miyazaki is a great director
Solely from his blog. He displays an honesty about himself and his feelings torwards his work that is refreshing. Plus, many of the observations and notes on the blog display a deep understanding about many of the themes within the Earthsea books. If only a bit of this understanding and honesty gets through to the final work, then I'll be happy.
From the excellent The Disney-Tokuma Deal page at Nausicaa.net:
Will Disney modify (i.e. cut scenes from) these films?
No. This will not happen. Disney can not cut even one second from the films, according to the contract. Ghibli has officially stated that "With Disney's commitment to maintain the quality of the original titles, there will be no changes to music and sequences in foreign language versions." According to Mr. Suzuki, the producer of Ghibli, other companies such as Fox and Time-Warner contacted Tokuma, but Disney was the only company willing to agree to this condition, and that was the main reason why Tokuma chose Disney as a partner.
The term means that Disney can not touch the films, but that does not prevent Disney from asking Ghibli to cut or change the contents of the film, as Tokuma and Ghibli retains the editing right. In an interview, Mr. Suzuki said that Miramax faxed Ghibli, asking if they could cut several scenes from "Mononoke Hime". But nothing was cut from Mononoke Hime (Princess Mononoke).
---
Patiwat Panurach
What I am concerned about is how the deal will affect the Studio Ghibli/Disney distribution deal. For many years, Disney has had wide distribution rights over Ghibli works. Sometimes this has worked out for the better (the heavily promoted Spirited Away), and sometimes not so well (Miramax requested, but was denied, many edits in Princess Mononoke).
A closer connection between Pixar and Disney will probably not harm Ghibli. It was noted that John Lasseter (founder of Pixar) had given very strong support to Spirited Away, and was a key driver of what success that movie had in North America. A closer connection between Pixar and Ghibli will probably result in an even stronger benefit.
Now, on notes of pure speculation, how might the Pixar/Disney merger benefit Ghibli going forward? Could we expect Miyazaki-animated short films (currently limited in distribution to the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka City, Tokyo) put on sale on the iTunes Video Store? Or maybe distribution of older classic Ghibli films? Imaging having a copy of Gauche the Cellist on your iPod to perk you up on those cloudy days of life. Or how about strong promotion and wide distribution of the forthcoming Tales from Earthsea? With the combination of a a imaginative and sensitive director like Goro Miyazaki and effective marketing, I can't imagine how Earthsea wouldn't become a major blockbluster.
What else would you like to see come out of the Studio Ghibli/Disney/Pixar deal?
---
patiwat
This is really silly. The family wants to force Wikipedia to remove tron's real name from the article?
Here's a couple of thought experiments: if Kevin Mitnick's family tried to get Wikipedia to remove his full name, and replace it with "Kevin M." or just "Kevin", should Wikipedia do so? Or a member of the Kennedy family wanted to ammend the JFK article to use the name "John F.K."? For whatever reason???
- Convicted criminals shouldn't have their full names shown in articles? HELL NO!
- Convicted criminals who claim they are innocent shouldn't have their full names shown in articles? HELL NO!
- Famous people more commonly known by their nicknames shouldn't have their full names shown in articles? HELL NO!
- People who died from suicide/murder shouldn't have have their full names shown in articles? HELL NO!
- Dead people who's families are mourning shouldn't have their full names shown in articles? HELL NO!
- Dead people who their families don't want to be associated with shouldn't have their full names shown in articles? HELL NO!
- Spies with secret-identies, the compromising of which might harm government agents and endanger national security, shouldn't have their full names shown in articles? Well, maybe....
Wikipedia, stick to your guns and don't back down!
---
Here's to the crazy ones
Maybe the Xeelee are winning their billion-year war against the dark matter photino birds?
I, for one, bow before our dark matter photino bird overlords from Andromeda...
Unless if the Xeelee get them first.
From the shareholder perspective, size (or more accurately, market share) doesn't matter.
Take Toyota, for instance. It is not the world's largest car company in terms of sales. But it is by far the world's most valuable car company in terms of market cap. Why? Even though GM sells more cars, Toyota has been perfecting the world's most efficient production system for the past 3 decades. Shareholders know this, and expect that for every dollar of sales today, Toyota generates more profit than any other company. And they extrapolate this into the future: for every dollar of profit made today, Toyota will make even more profit compared to other companies. That's because the benefits of continuous improvement are cummulative - you can't just decide over night to have a world-class production system. It has to be developed over time.
A similar thinking applies to Apple. Even though Apple sales are miniscule compared to Dell's, the market sees Apple products as giving greater profits per unit of sales, and sees those profits as more sustainable than any other company. Why is this so? Because Apple has a much simpler product range than Dell's (reducing the cost base), because it's average prices tend to be a bit higher (increasing margins), because it has products like the iPod that are truly unique and valuable from the consumers' perspective (increasing margins, both now and in the future), and because Apple products are addictive - after using an iPod or a iBook, it's damn hard to move back to a generic MP3 player or a commodity PC (increasing sales and profits in the future). Few other PC companies have such a magic mix, and that is what makes Apple so much more valuable compared to larger companies.
So Steve is nixing the PowerBook name because they want to have "Mac" in the name of every product. And appending "Pro" to the end of the professional products, ala the MacBook Pro. But, he intends on keeping the "i" in front of the consumer products, ala the iMac.
If this logic is followed, the consumer laptop would stop being called the iBook and would become the iMacBook. And the pro desktop would be called the PowerMac Pro. Or maybe just the Mac Pro. Damn, those are ugly names....
The product mix has stopped making sense, although only temporarily. In the portable line they have iBook G4 and MacBook Pro intel; in the desktop line they have iMac intel and PowerMac G5.
iMac that's as powerful as a PowerMac? Who's gonna wanna buy PowerMacs for the next couple months? Does Apple expect to make so much profit from the iMac intel over the coming months than the forgone profit from lost PowerMac G5 sales? I would think that the PowerMac G5 made a much higher profit than the iMac.
And a MacBook Pro that's 10x more powerful than a iBook?!? There goes the iBook market...
Anybody else see the logic of transitioning the consumer desktop and pro laptop first, rather than starting with the consumer desktop and laptop, or the pro desktop and laptop, or the pro desktop and consumer laptop, or some other combination?
Apologies for the duplicate post - Internet Explorer froze up and I hadn't realized that the original comment went through.
I'm not sure of the wisdom of the site owners in posting a 166MB file onto Slashdot... Why don't people just use bittorrent for distributing content like this? A mirror (a 100MB quicktime movie) is available, though, at http://downloads.oreilly.com/make/howitismade.mov
A fascinating file though, conveniently formated for the ipod with video.
I'm not sure of the wisdom of the site owners in posting a direct link to a 166MB file on Slashdot... Why don't people just use bittorrent for distribution of files like this?
It's a fascinating video though, conveniently formatted for ipods with video.
This is really one of the coolest things I've seen this year. If only all classical downloads had such consistency and quality of ID3 tags. Only problem is that the 'genre' field always seems to be 'other'. It would be cool (but a bit too subjective) to just throw these into itunes and then sort out the classical from the jazz.
Somebody should compile all these MP3s and create a torrent out of it. Having the entire collection in the hands of thousands of people world-wide will effectively make it last forever.
This is a fantastic storehouse that they've put together. Some of these recordings are divine and of enormous historical value.
Think about it: some of these cylinder recording made in the 1890's where made by the classical masters of that age. Think people in their 70's. These people started their musical education back in the 1810s-1820's. That's the age of Beethoven (died 1827), Haydn (died 1809), Liszt (died 1886). So what we're hearing with these cylinder is the direct first-hand influence of the Classical/Romantic masters. Not some modern interpretation. And you thought the Rachmaninoff recordings were a 'Window into Time'!
The Remote is a disappointment. It's basically a Shuffle with a menu button. Doesn't have the touch-sensitive wheel that makes navigating through long lists of songs such a pleasure. Of course, I haven't tried it with Front Row yet, but I'm not really looking forward to it due to the clunkiness of the design.
Microsoft's holy grail is a system that cranks out a new, generally bug-free version of basic Windows every few years, with frequent updates in between to add enhancements or match a competitor's offering.
Basically, they're after the system that Apple uses OSX development. Based on a strong "foundation" technologies like the Mach kernal, the Aqua GUI, the Carbon and Cocoa APIs, Apple has been able to crank out almost annually significant upgrades in OSX. It charges money for these upgrades, and most users willingly pay for them, because they're not just security fixes - each generation of OSX 10 has really enhanced the user experience.
The train enters the station. Uniformed police officers appear on the platform and surround me ... They handcuff me, hands behind my back, and take my rucksack out of my sight.
Lucky bastard. If he had gotten on the train, they would have had to empty a magazine into his head.
Your comments are valid and interesting. But note, though, that Diana Wynne Jones, the author herself, was reportedly very pleased with the movie.
The following quote comes from http://ansible.co.uk/Ansible/a210.html and refers to a personal screening of Howl's Moving Castle that Miyazaki hosted for Mrs. Jones near her home in Bristol:
`Miyazaki came in person, carrying with him a tape of the film, an interpreter and sundry other shadowy figures (all this was supposed to be secret for fear of the Japanese media, who then descended on me afterwards, so I couldn't mention it beforehand) and we had a private showing at the Watershed cinema. The film is goluptuously splendid with breathtaking animation. I had grown used to young ladies regularly writing to me to say that they wanted to marry Howl. Now, Howl in the film is so plain stunning and sexy that I think I have joined them. And after the showing and the scamper through Bristol I had a long talk with Mr Miyazaki and it began to seem that we were soulmates.'
I personally think that Sofie wasn't merely just any anime chick - she's a Miyazaki anime chick! Like Nausicaa, Fio (Kurenai no Buta/Porco Rosso), Shizuku (Whispers of the Heart/Mimi wo Sumaseba), and the other great Ghibli female leads, Sofie has more spunk, curiosity, complexity, and compassion than the vast majority of heroines of just about any genre.
As for the air raid scenes - this is a war we're talking about. Unfortunately, air raids on civilians are an inevitability of any modern war. But seeing it from the perspective of the victim in such explicit horrible detail really emphasis to the viewer that this war really really sucks.
I personally think that Miyazaki has a pretty good record of book/story adaptations:
- Gauche the Cellist (Miyazawa Kenji) had a wonderful soundtrack, the right "feel", and is a very faithful adaptation.
- Whispers of the Heart (Hiraagi Aoi) unfortunately removed a lot of poetic elements, and made some significant changes to the plot, but retains the overall "feel", while the character development of Shizuku is just wonderful. And the magic of the very last scene with the bicycle is beyond words.
- Ironically, Miyazaki's most disappointing adaptation, in my opinion, is Nausicaa. For me, the manga was an extradordinarily complex landmark work. The movie, although wonderful, just couldn't compare. The entire environmental theme (can man ever live in harmony with nature?) was only scratched at in the movie.
Google Earth's resolution also varies within cities.
Bangkok, Thailand shows high resolution Digital Globe images east of the Victory Monument/Wireless Road (13 degrees 45'.56.53"N, 100 degrees 32'22.12"E)and South of Prachachuen Road/Bangkhen Intersection. High resolution hear means you can see individual cars. The high resolution zone ends roughly before the new airport to the East. Everything else is in much lower resolution EarthSat images. The divider line cuts my office building (13 degrees 43'38.14"N, 100 degrees 32'26.35"E) right in half.
Eric is a great teacher - I took a graduate course with him on Innovation Management (15.356) a few years ago. The course was recently renamed "How to Develop Breakthrough Products and Services" and is available via MIT's OpenCourseWare at http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Sloan-School-of-Manageme nt/15-356Spring2004/CourseHome/index.htm. The course home page also gives a very brief overview of Eric's lead user concept. It's one of his pet ideas, and although it isn't the sole focus on the course, it certainly is one of the foundations.
The actual class was wonderful: a mix of working scientists and R&D executives, Sloanies and other MIT grad students, and a couple of undergrads sitting in. Lots of student interaction and learning from your peers. The individual project was a good experience as well - I wrote a paper analyzing why Lockheed's X-33 space plane project failed, and what could have been done so that the the technologies developed (autonomous navigation and landing, composite materials, linear aerospike engines, metallic thermal protection system) didn't die with the project. Eric gave lots of guidance and advise on the analysis.
This work was published in the Journal of Virology, Sept 2003. Somewhat old news. Abstract follows. Full article in the following link http://jvi.asm.org/cgi/content/full/77/18/10028
Recent reports confirm that, due to the presence of long-lived, latently infected cell populations, eradication of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) from infected patients by using antiretroviral drugs will be exceedingly difficult. An alternative to virus eradication may be to use gene therapy to induce a pseudo-latent state in virus-producing cells, thus transforming HIV-1 into a lifelong, but manageable, virus. Conditionally replicating HIV-1 (crHIV-1) gene therapy vectors provide an avenue for subduing HIV-1 expression in infected cells (by creating a parasite, crHIV-1, of the parasite HIV-1), potentially reducing the HIV-1 set point and delaying AIDS onset. Development of crHIV-1 vectors has proceeded in vitro, but the requirements for a crHIV-1 vector to proliferate and persist in vivo have not been explored. We expand a widely accepted mathematical model of HIV-1 in vivo dynamics to include a crHIV-1 gene therapy virus and derive a simple criterion for designing crHIV-1 viruses that will persist in vivo. The model introduces only two new parameters--HIV-1 inhibition and crHIV-1 production--and both can be experimentally engineered and controlled. Analysis demonstrates that crHIV-1 gene therapy can indefinitely reduce HIV-1 set point to levels comparable to those achieved with highly active antiretroviral therapy, provided crHIV-1 production is more efficient than HIV-1. Paradoxically, highly efficient therapeutic inhibition of HIV-1 was found to be disadvantageous. Thus, the field may benefit by shifting the search for more potent antiviral genes toward engineering optimized therapy viruses that package ultraefficiently while downregulating viral production moderately.
The problem of the 'plurality of worlds' isn't new to the Church. In the introduction to James Blish's "A Case of Conscience" (1958, Winner of the Hugo Award), the author notes:
...
I was gratified to receive also several letters from theologians who knew the present Church position on the problem of the 'plurality of worlds', as most of my correspondents obviously did not
I will quote Mr Gerald Heard, who has summarized the position best of all:
If there are many planets inhabited by sentient creatures, as most astronomers (including Jesuits) now suspect, then each one of such planets (solar or non-solar) must fall into one of three categories:
(a) Inhabited by sentient creatures, but without souls; so to be treated with compassion but extra-evangelically.
(b) Inhabited by sentient creatures with fallen souls, through an original but not inevitable ancetral sin; so to be evangelized with urgent missionary charity.
(c) Inhabited by sentient soul-endowed creatures that have not fallen, who therefore
(1) inhabit an unfallen, sinless paradisal world;
(2) who therefore we must contact not to propagandize, but in order that we may learn from them the conditions (about which we can only speculate) of creatures living in perpetual grace, endowed with all the virtues in perfection, and both immortal and in complete happiness for always possessed of and with the knowledge of God.
Of course, the aliens that are the subject of Blish's book fall into none of these scenarios...