Pilot's Log

This is the badge for the Baojun marque, which is a joint venture between General Motors and two Chinese automakers, Liuzhou Wuling and SAIC/Shanghai. SAIC owns the UK marque MG (of which we still have high regard in our family). The current Baojun product, the 630, is an economy four-door sedan in roughly the same class as my current Chevy Prizm Moonshine.

I'd already thought of re-badging Moonshine as a Holden, or a Vauxhall, or an Opel, or even a Shacman. Suddenly the Baojun looks to be the way to go, as the name starts with B and it's got that horse logo that's kind of like the one Ford used on their Stallion version of the Mustang II.

( The Sino-American War Is Here--In First-Person Shooter Form )

GLORIOUS MISSION, the official video wargame from the People's Liberation Army.

"Red Division Of Justice" and "World Peacekeepers" are one and the same.

PS: The Video On YouTube.

For the last few days, my Windows 7 Pro has lost its East Asian Language Support. Which means, among a few things, I can't translate the titles of dozens of anime soundtrack songs I have loaded onto WinAmp. The foreign characters display fine on Internet Explorer and other programs, but not on internal Win7 functions like directories and filenames. They don't display in Notepad either.

Windows Update isn't as functional in Win7 as it was in previous versions of Windows. I don't know what I should do about this. I'm not sure I still have the master disks for the OS--Computer King has the nasty habit of just installing the OS and keeping the disks.

Not only is the title "Sky Fighters" the official English translation for the title of the Chinese fighter jet movie I mentioned previously this week, it is the popular translation (official too!) for the title of the French fighter jet film Les Chevaliers Du Ciel from a few years ago.

( EMBED AND LINK Here...Because You Are Just Too Cool )

How long before a sneaky video editor puts the two films in combat with each other?

Sagittarius Horoscope for week of December 23, 2010

The United Nations has declared that 2011 will be the International Year of Chemistry -- a time to honor the role chemistry plays in our lives. Meanwhile, you Sagittarians will be celebrating your own personal Year of Chemistry, although in a different sense of the word -- the sense that means natural attraction, spontaneous connection, intuitive allure, and uncanny synchronicity. Don't let this abundance of grace make you overconfident, and don't just sit back and let it run wild. Be a master chemist intent on rigorously cultivating the very best experiments.

Ah yes, Chemistry--one of the Science subjects I couldn't master and thus a reason why I flunked High School. Funny thing...I'm in the middle of an experiment. I'm trying to see if Maruchan ramen and La Choy Chicken Teriyaki Gravy go together.

If I'm in the hospital tomorrow you will know why.

On the English-language news from Japan that we get from PBS World channel overday, there was a story about a Singapore department store that was a major influence on Asian fashion culture for years, celebrating a grand opening of a showcase store in its hometown. Since the narrator's English was not particularly easy to listen to, I muted the sound on the TV. Mum took that as a hint to start the conversation, telling about how "Western" the styles are now...

And my reply was that "no, their styles aren't Western...their styles are GLOBAL". Fashion isn't decided in Milan or Paris or Brussels or New York--it's decided EVERYWHERE now. The world's culture is now a melting pot and fashion is one way that it's emerging into its next phase. I mentioned that American culture--in particular, pop culture--is persisting in what has been termed "magical Orientalism"--in which the East (and the Middle-East) is presented as more exotic and mystical than not only it is but more than it possibly could be. Meanwhile, the real Orient has the same smartphones, the same Buick cars, the same social networks and the same television programs that WE do. And life is just as mundane, complicated, and tediously desperate as we have it here. Magic Orientalism could be excused in previous centuries, but not now. (Being the otaku that I am, I've never really put creedence in magical Orientalism--tho' what do you call the NewType phenomenon in comparison?)

As irony would have it, at the same time we watched that TV program, we were sitting down to dinner: our version of Chow Mein, which isn't exactly real Chow Mein but as close as we can manage here in the Tennessee country.

Meanwhile, the area I live in is probably looked at by outsiders through the lenses of Uncle Remus, KFC, Mayberry, The Dukes of Hazzard and old country music records. Do those other cultures see this one as possibly possessing something that may not be here? I guess if they didn't, Sevier County's economy would have never gotten going, eh?

The People's Liberation Army Air Force aerobatic demonstration team "August 1st" (*breath*) is re-equipping with J-10s this year, finally retiring the J-7s they've used for decades. Partly because of the embrace of new ideas, and partly because of the poor public reaction to the initial paint scheme shown on scale models at the first press release of the news, the PLAAF is holding a popularity contest to choose the new paint scheme from four candidates.




The scheme that was rejected (called the "White Rabbit Candy Wrapper" by wags):


PS: Also this month, the PLAAF retired the last unit of J-6s (MiG-19 "Farmer") they had in service. They'd been flying them for fifty years--and the planes had allegedly been obsolete for forty of them depending on who you asked.

( From China )

Documentary On The Development of the J-7.