Chapter 4 notes for Midchildan Music

"The Research Facility". It's about time for me to explain what the heck's going on here, I think.

The downside to that is that Miku is not part of this chapter at all. Especially writing this chapter, I realize that this story isn't really much of a Nanoha/Vocaloids crossover. It's a Nanoha story with some Vocaloid elements (mostly the character appearances) taken to appear as characters.

The most egregious example of that is the arrival of Kaito in this chapter. Or rather, a "Kaito" that bears no resemblance to the Kaito of the Vocaloids, acting only as a weapon to be used by Doctor Haynes. He's not a Vocaloid, even if he does have the element (the Musical Ritual System) that defines the Vocaloids in this universe. Perhaps that will change someday, if I ever write a sequel to this story, but for the moment Midchildan Music is and will remain primarily a Nanoha story.

This chapter also introduces the two main antagonists of the story. We've had glimpses at Doctor Haynes before, through his conversations with Chrono and Fate. I went to no effort then to try to add a whole lot of nuance to his character, and honestly there's not a whole lot there now. His only goal is to advance his research, in the truest vein of evil mad scientists everywhere. I'd like to think my description of his physical side breaks the mold a little, but that's not much of a nuance.

Michael, on the other hand, is still a villain despite a reasonable amount of favorable characterization. He is open and honest with the Sergeant, assuming (wrongly) that he will be working together with him in the future. And acting on that assumption throughout, he helps the Sergeant to upgrade Miku, and inadvertently gives him a tool that will become very useful in the next chapter. All the same, Michael has no concept of Miku as anything other than an object. He sees nothing wrong in programming Miku to want to sing, knowing that the Miku he wants to create will never be able just to sing without activating a new magical weapon.

And speaking of new weapons: the Musical Ritual System, the MRS of previous chapters. I will happily join the tradition of creating a new weapon and setting a story around it. The Belkan style from A's, the combat cyborgs and AMF of StrikerS, and now the Eclipse Virus from Force... every new season of Nanoha invents a new and ever more deadly type of weapon, magical or otherwise, and challenges the protagonists to deal with it.

The MRS began as an excuse to factor the Vocaloids' songs into the story, but at this point I would call it a new addition to the Midchildan style. The Nanoha-verse seems to lack what I would call true ritual magic, spells with complicated and lengthy preparations that can only be directed in one fashion. The series has a definite focus on functional magic, so this comes as little surprise. And the Sergeant can try to add in functional upgrades all he likes; Miku's magic will never be as fast or as variable as Nanoha's or Fate's. Whether he can use it in combat all the same... well, that's a question for the next chapter.

Today in Cognitive Dissonance

Here's a particular contrast that I found to be mildly interesting. Take two articles from the same website, back in February. First comes this random note about the state of the American DVD industry. Four days later, we see another article that criticizes a hacker for promoting video game piracy. (And if we look two months forward, there's the doubling down in April, calling out Anonymous this time!)

I'm not really sure what to make of this. I could ask myself how much we actually need the American anime market to exist, but that's a fairly dark line of thought. Condemning the author of those posts is right out; partially because that's a weak contradiction, but mostly because I feel like I have the exact same level of cognitive dissonance here.

I like anime, of course. (Although I post about it less than you might think.) And I like watching new anime just as much as anyone else. The problem is that new anime doesn't exist in the United States. Broadcasts in Japan are so rarely shared with the United States. (Although, streaming is becoming more and more common. That's another interesting essay that will have to go unwritten for now...)

I want new anime. But I don't want to pirate it, which is what fansubs are, in the end. That leaves me with zero palatable choices. I mean, even Japanese fans would have to wait for the DVD releases, and I waited with everyone else for the OreImo Japanese DVDs when I was actually there. (Sadly, I had to leave before all of them were released.) But usually American DVDs are even more delayed than that.

So what do I do? If I download a fansub, I am essentially stealing the anime, much as anyone who simply downloads a game is pirating the game. I can't condemn the latter without damning fansubs with it. If I wait for the DVDs, I end up being a month behind everyone else if I import them from Japan (which is hideously expensive) and several times that long if I wait for American DVD releases.

According to Wikipedia, "cognitive dissonance is a discomfort caused by holding conflicting ideas simultaneously." I want to maintain my personal moral code; I don't want to have to wait to watch new anime... that's an accurate description of my current state of mind, all right.

Why I Dislike Skype

I'm reaching the point where I actively despise Skype. By all rights I should be uninstalling it entirely from my computer right now. (The only reason I'm not is because Skype has some people on there who I don't really talk to any other way.)

Skype has this annoying "feature" whereby it doesn't actually ever ask you if you want to upgrade or add anything. No, the first sign I get of an impending Skype update is when my computer's User Access Control window pops up asking if I want to let Skype continue with... well, with whatever it's doing.

That's bad program design, right there. I want to have control over my computer. I can't imagine who doesn't want to have control over their computer. That means that programs on my computer need to ask me before they do anything, not rely on Windows to do that for them. Skype needs to tell me what it wants to do and request permission to proceed. Period.

And then, after every such automatic update? It tells me to close all of my Google Chrome browser windows. No explanation, no nothing. Just "Please close all Chrome windows before continuing" and two buttons. I have hit Cancel every time. The first time I did this, I was surprised to have it tell me... that it had failed to install the Skype toolbar.

Yep, that's a critical upgrade, right there. Um.. not so much. Especially when you don't even ask if I want your toolbar or your "click to call" button, you just assume that I want everything you have to offer. Yeah, that kind of makes me inclined to uninstall all of the little gadgets you foist off on me and leaves me seriously considering uninstalling your program entirely.

So, Skype: I need you to tell me what you're doing and ask if I want you to do it from now on. If you can't do that, I may very well decide in the near future that I don't need you around after all.

Interest and Learning

So I tracked down an article related to teaching, an article that discusses engaging students in the classroom. It was actually quite timely for me, considering that I have a tutoring job this semester here at Brandeis, and one of the challenges I am assuredly going to face is how to get my fellow students to engage with the material and with my efforts to help them understand it. Of course, as a student myself, I have a slightly different perspective on the matter than the article, which is written by a former teacher and directed at teachers.

I found the conclusion especially interesting:

We tell more than we ask; we direct more than we listen; we use our power to pressure or even punish students whose interests don't align with ours. This has any number of unfortunate results, including loss of both self-confidence and interest in learning. But let's not forget to number among the sad consequences the fact that many students quite understandably choose to keep the important parts of themselves hidden from us.  That's a shame in its own right, and it also prevents us from being the best teachers we can be.

Perhaps it is my different perspective. But I had thought that would have been obvious long ago.

I began studying Japanese because I wanted to know Japanese. Nothing more. It had nothing to do with my major (at the time!). It wasn't precisely a required class; although I did need to take a foreign language, it didn't have to be Japanese. It was as close as I could get to a class that literally had no pressure on me. And way back then, my freshman year of college, it was probably the one class that I really, honestly had an interest in taking.

Three years later, it is my major, and probably my most significant marketable skill. That's not an accident.

No matter how many punishments are laid down, you simply cannot force someone to do something that they do not want to do. Punishment and coercion is usually viewed as such, as forcing someone to do something. But that's not actually the case. All that does is change the equation for the person actually making the decision: don't want to learn this? Well, how about now that you'll be expelled if you don't? And the problem with that is that the student can still say "no" even when the punishments grow severe. Can still go through the motions without actually doing anything of value.

Interest has to be central to learning. How to keep students interested, or how to change the system to encourage keeping students interested...? If only I had the answers. All I know is that whatever they are, we need to find them.

An Open Letter to the House Republican Majority

You can't make this kind of crap up.

Hayworth, R-Mount Kisco, said she would only vote to replenish the federal disaster fund if new spending was offset by budget cuts. She said those cuts should come from "non-defense discretionary spending." Hayworth likened her position to a family skipping vacation if it was overwhelmed by bills.

Which isn't to say she's alone in this stand. Led by House Majority Leader Cantor, we've seen several Republicans make similar statements in the wake of Hurricane Irene.

I think this deserves a response a little more pointed than most. While I may be delayed in responding to Cantor himself, I sent the following to Majority Leader Cantor through his online system all the same, and am republishing it here in its entirety. If you happen to agree with my statement, you may feel free to adopt it as your own. I think this is a message that Cantor and his Republican caucus need to hear, and I think we need to get him to hear it.

Contact the House Majority Leader through this online form.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor,
I am writing this to you in regards to your recently publicized stance on disaster relief and your demand for spending cuts to offset any relief that may be requested. This letter applies not only to you, but to all the members of your caucus that have made similar statements.

Let me make this clear. There are people across the east coast of the United States that have been hammered hard by Hurricane Irene. Flooding widespread in the Northeast. Roads destroyed in North Carolina. Power out for entire counties in Maryland. Thanks to careful preparation, we were fortunate enough to have few casualties, but infrastructure has been hit hard along the entire northern half of the East Coast. Repairs are underway, but repairs are going to cost money.

Paying those bills is not an option. Restoring the infrastructure that has been destroyed and ensuring the flow of critical supplies into those affected areas is not an option. It is something that must be done. By threatening not to allow disaster spending unless you get budget cuts, you have chosen to hold the health and well-being of thousands of people (some in your district) hostage to your desire for a smaller government.

Should you actually follow through on that threat - fail to get spending cuts and vote against disaster relief - you will have chosen to preserve the harm that Irene has dealt out to thousands of American citizens. And that merely to prevent the "harms" that come from big government... harms that do not even come close to destroyed roads, widespread flooding, and mass power outages, if they truly exist at all.

This choice is one that I simply cannot understand. Your role as a representative is to stand for your constituents and for the people of the United States. With this, you threaten those same people with continued hardship if your demands are not adequately met. I submit that this is not appropriate behavior for a representative of the people of the United States.

What I Can and Cannot Do

Want to get on my bad side quickly? Tell me I can't do something.

This is, of course, an exaggeration, and requires some careful explanation. I will not be offended if you tell me that I cannot fly by flapping my arms. Nor will I be offended if you were to tell me that I could not run a marathon tomorrow, although I would probably be a little irritated for a few minutes. And at the end of a long period of training and preparation when I actually did run a marathon, I would most likely be mildly insufferable, assuming I remembered the earlier incident at all. (Which I probably wouldn't.)

"Should" is a different word than "can", of course. Questions as to whether I should believe in God or how I should treat others are usually questions that deserve discussion, and I will not be offended if someone comes to me with a legitimate interest in having that kind of discussion. Without that legitimate interest, you likely will offend me, and telling me what I should or should not do without so much as an explanation will provoke a similar response.

So now that I've explained the exceptions, what was I getting at in the first place? Given that I am a college student, and classes start tomorrow, I might as well draw on those experiences for my examples.

Back in my freshman year, I signed up for what was billed as a lecture class in the politics department. This was back when I thought I wanted to be a politics major, and the class offerings that semester were very slim, thus leading me to sign up for this class that I had little interest in merely to preserve my "politics" credit, so to speak. When I got there on the first day and realized that limited sign-ups had turned the class into a seminar (requiring much more active participation from all students, usually aimed at upper-class students) with an extended research paper, I knew I was in for it.

The problem was that from the beginning, the professor knew that too. Could I have gone to her and said "I want to give this a shot"...? Well, we can't know now. All I can say is that it was alternatively disheartening and irritating for me to talk to her saying "I don't know about this" and to have her reply, effectively, "you're absolutely right to be worried because you shouldn't be in my class at all." Needless to say, pretty much the first thing I did was go and drop the class.

That was with a class that I didn't want to take. I agreed with the professor and still found it incredibly disheartening. When it comes to a class that I do want to take, a task I want to complete successfully, a field in which I want to be skilled? Well then, we'll find out what I can and cannot do when I do it, or when I fail.

And if I want to do something, I don't usually plan to fail.

Hurricane Irene and Moving Onward

*Sigh* I am tired.

Among the consequences of Hurricane Irene was the power that usually runs not only my computer but my wireless router. I feel like there's been a lot of "this wasn't as bad as the hype predicted" running around in the wake of the storm (like on The Oatmeal), but it's a little hard to take that seriously when you can go outside and see the pair of power lines flanking your driveway that have been sheared off a few feet down from the top.

There's no doubt that this was a weak Category 1. This wasn't another Katrina. But even a Cat 1 verging on a tropical storm can flood rivers and knock down power for entire regions. Which Irene did, and did with a vengeance. Power is still not back at my house, I am told.

I have to be told this because I essentially followed the storm back up the coast. I am back at school now, waiting for classes to begin. Which is nice because now I have power. Packing up in the wake of the storm and having to drive up the coast about a day behind it was tiring all in itself, but certainly survivable.

The other half of "not much damage" is that everyone was warned. The earthquake was sudden, as was the stronger one in Japan back in March that created a tsunami and devastated the Touhoku region. Irene gave everyone plenty of time to prepare... and perhaps because of the hype, people did.

Just a thought. The biggest danger moving forward is actually fairly simple; the next time the Weather Channel hypes up a storm, I could see a lot of people saying, "well, the last time you all said this, it really wasn't that bad". I would hope that we don't allow that kind of complacency, no matter how much hype there was.