Regrettably, other obligations prevented me from attending Congressman Pete Stark’s speech at Harvard last night. Fortunately, however, Joshua did, and he’s written a report for the rest of us.
Recommended reading.
He also links to the TV Tropes Wiki, which looks like a fantastic time-sink for a Friday afternoon. They’ve got extensive documentation on anime, for starters. The entry for Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex was clearly written by fans. “The Major’s clothes are too hot for espionage,” it says, and I agree. I might be indirectly responsible for part of the entry, too, since I recall putting an awful lot of work into the Wikipedia articles on “cyberpunk” and “postcyberpunk” back in 2005.
TvTropes is an astoundingly good timesink, for more than an afternoon. It took me two days just to wind through the videogame tropes, and then I had to hit up Applied Phlebotinium, Anime, Religion, Editorial, and a few others. I spent about a week and a half, total, sinking all my spare time at work into the damned site.
On the plus side, I discovered Sailor Nothing, which is a *wonderful* novella.
Stark was my congressman the year I spent in sunny Hayward, CA, and I never knew he was the first “out” atheist representative. Awesome.
Love the attitude: