Clarity, man. Clarity.

While reading at Forbes about the recent Walmart class action decision, this passage caught my eye:

A decade ago, when Wal-Mart v. Dukes was first filed, 86% of Wal-Mart store managers were male. (The number is over 40% today)

I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what the problem was; obviously, Walmart has gone from 86% male management to sub 50% male management.

Only the parenthetical phrase “The number is over 40% today” was a hyperlink, and the piece linked to claims that:

Wal-Mart says the percentage of entry and midlevel women managers has increased over the past five years from 38.8 percent to 41.2 percent.

Which is the exact opposite of what the piece at Forbes says.

Must be all those layers of editorial oversight I keep hearing about, I guess.

Gunbuster March

Ah, the 80s. When men were men, women were women, robots were super, and Gainax was just getting started.

Gunbuster wasn’t the studio’s first production, but it’s the one that put them on the map; this six-episode OVA series (later edited into a 90 minute movie) has it all: super robots, invading alien monsters, action, romance, sacrifice, heartache, and (surprisingly) a decent hard SF basis.

The series is set in the far-off future of 2023 (well, it probably seemed far-off in 1988); mankind has spread out into the solar system, and discovered that we’re not the only inhabitants. A race of giant space monsters (literally; they’re called 宇宙怪獣 (uchuu kaijuu)) are discovered headed towards earth, and it takes specially designed space battleships and giant mecha to fight against them.

And when you have giant aliens that must be fought with super robots, you must (of course) have teenagers to pilot these robots; that’s where our main characters come in. Noriko Takaya, the orphaned daughter of an admiral in the fleet who went missing at the start of the war is the viewpoint character, and her goal is to go into space with upperclassman Kazumi Amano, the top student at the Okinawa Space High School for Girls.

After one-on-one work with the coach, she succeeds in being chosen as the school’s number two candidate, and Noriko and Kazumi are sent into space for further training. On their first mission, they encounter the relativistic hulk of Admiral Takaya’s flagship; while exploring the wreckage, Noriko notices that the ship-time is merely a few hours after the ship went missing.

Time dilation is a major plot point, and provides much of the tension between characters. Basically, the show ends up being The Forever War, only with high school girls and super robots instead of powered armor and universal conscription.

It’s worth watching the whole show; if you don’t cry at the end, you’ve got no heart.

And right on cue, the NYT is clamoring for gun control in the wake of Fast and Furious revelations

You stay classy, New York Times Editorial Board (H/T Uncle).

Calderon’s complained about the lapsed assault weapons ban before; I’m sure he’s still in favor of our reinstating the ban.

Mexico has extremely strict gun laws, but that doesn’t seem to stop the cartels. Over 40,000 killings in Mexico since their drug war started in 2006.

The NYT also repeats the false claim that most guns in Mexico are from the United States. To be fair, they’re not alone; the government is pushing this out and out lie as well.

Acting Director Melson is leaving the ATF after the Gunwalker hearings (and rightly so), and slain Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s family hopes that all those involved in the ATF’s criminal misconduct will be held accountable. I’d hope so too, but given the government’s penchant for looking out for its own, I’m not going to hold my breath.

And finally, Uncle saw this on facebook, and I thought it was an excellent analogy:

Imagine the DEA telling pharmacists to illegally sell oxycontin to known drug dealers or they would be shut down. Then imagine the DEA using the fact that more oxycontin was on the street (and hundreds of overdose deaths) as a pretext for making it harder for patients to get prescribed narcotics. This is essentially what happened with the ATF and Project Gunwalker.

Even the occasional gem sifted from the detritus of facebook isn’t enough to get me to use that vile social networking site. I can’t stand it.