Among my friends, one of the most prevalent reasons for distrusting Obama, even now, is that he’s too charismatic. This argument annoys me to no end, because like any stupid justification, it’s not grounded in fact and ignores information that would have taken about five minutes on Google to find.

Early in the campaign when no one knew who he was, Obama’s charisma was a valid consideration to bring up. Was there any substance to his rhetoric? How would he govern? Did he have the capacity to handle the Presidency? As the campaign went on and he demonstrated that he was competent, this argument became less and less of an issue. And in the months following his electoral victory, he proved that he could act quickly and decisively and act transparently, through his first executive actions and cabinet appointments.

So why is the fact that he’s popular still a strike against him now that we’ve learned that he’s not just an empty suit and he is fully capable of the Presidency? If you’re a conservative and reasonably well-informed, there are so many other points to hit him on. I suspect it’s because most of the people that subscribe to the “popularity makes me suspicious” meme are not well-informed.

It’s an easy argument to make, because most people will consider it reasonable to mistrust something that’s popular. That cynicism appears to most people as intelligence. It’s the same reason people believe in retarded conspiracy theories. It’s the belief that you’re not one of the sheeple and that you’re sticking it to The Man.

During every election cycle, there’s always someone that reminds everyone else that the Antichrist is supposed to charismatic. I guess the implication is that we’re not supposed to vote for that particular candidate, but that conclusion is retarded based on theology. I mean, if a particular candidate is the Antichrist, they’d be in power regardless according to prophecy. So why does that have any bearing on your political views?

The other case study in “popular people are bad” is always Hitler. The fact that this argument even works betrays the lack of informedness among the people having the conversation. Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of history can explain why. Reagan was ridiculously popular, but American conservatives still worship him. Or how about Roosevelt or Kennedy?

This argument is made even more ridiculous when you consider that most of the people that I talk to are in their twenties. They’re always suspicious of super-charismatic politicians? Who was the last politician with charisma that they would’ve been suspicious of? Was it Clinton or Chretien? George H.W. Bush? Brian Mulroney? For the States, it probably would’ve been Reagan, but none of my friends would’ve been born. For Canada, it’s even more hilarious, because it’s probably be Trudeau.

But this matters because this idea harms good candidates while promoting bad ones. Under this hypothesis, getting people to like you and having a firm grasp of English and rhetoric is bad while oversimplifying issues and sounding like an idiot is good. What other reason is there for labeling anyone who can put coherent sentences together an elitist? Why else would McCain be pressed to choose Palin? Why else would George W. Bush win the presidency twice?

Not supporting a particular politician just because they’re charismatic is just a way for someone to avoid being called out for not actually understanding anything and is a convenient way to avoid having fact bear on their political views while not having to justify it.

Always returns true, durr.

Anyway, I realized I hadn’t put up any appraisal of what I took for the last few terms (so 2A coop, 2B, and 2B coop, hence 2B hurr hurr hurr), so instead of studying, I will do that now.

ECON 102: Introduction to Macroeconomics (Smith)

I took this during my 2A coop term. Larry Smith is super-duper entertaining. In addition to that, it was nice that he incorporated economic happenings from the real world as they happened. I regret not being in Waterloo for his commentary in Fall 2008 when the financial crisis became too big to ignore and Obama was elected. An excellent introduction to macroeconomics.

LS 101: Introduction to Legal Studies (DE)

I took this during my 2B coop term through distance education. Nothing special here, just a course that goes through the basics of law in Canada. Pretty easy, what with one paper and one final and no effort put into either netting me a very good mark. I guess if you suck at writing, you shouldn’t take it?

CS 240: Data Structures and Data Management (Chinaei)

Not a terrible prof, but I bought CLRS, so I wasn’t missing too much.

CS 246: Software Abstraction and Specification (Davis)

Again, not terrible, but the course was just C++, obscure UML details, memorizing design patterns, and long tedious assignments.

CS 251: Computer Organization and Design (Cowan)

I’m not a fan of low-level stuff and this was pretty much the lowest-level course that CS has. I already took SE 141, so that saved me for the first half of the course, but the second half seemed like obscure architecture details. It didn’t help that the prof liked to go on long tangents, both in lecture and on assignments.

STAT 230: Probability (Chisholm)

I wasn’t in her section, but I went to one class with the prof that I was supposed to have and never went back. I hate statistics, but she was a really good prof and made it bearable.

PMATH 345: Rings, Polynomials, and Finite Fields (McKinnon)

This was my favourite course of the term. Of course, this was also my hardest course, and I pretty much got destroyed. But I loved the course content. And the prof was awesome too. It might be my favourite course I’ve taken so far. Of course, it’d be my lowest mark too. Go figure.

Negima is one of those series that has some crazy continuity issues. It starts with a manga, Negima!: Magister Negi Magi, which apparently starts off as a harem/fanservicey sort of thing and turns into some sort of shounen battle manga later on. The manga received an anime adaptation some time ago produced by Xebec. Later on, there are some OVAs that came out, but these were produced by SHAFT and directed by that Akiyuki Shinbo guy.

What I watched, Negima!?, doesn’t fall into the original Negima! continuity. It was produced by SHAFT and directed by Shinbo and is apparently a spinoff set in an alternate universe. It turns out that there’s now a manga, Negima!? Neo, that is set in this new continuity.

Technically, I haven’t finished it since the group that’s subbing it still hasn’t finished the last episode, even though it’s been months since their last release and it’s been almost two year since the show finished airing. But, the main story line’s been resolved, so I guess I can talk about it.

To me, the difference between Xebec and SHAFT’s anime is that SHAFT’s looks much better. Just comparing screenshots, Xebec’s looks really bad. That and my fondness for SHAFT’s crazy style means that SHAFT’s version blows Xebec’s out of the water. I’m sure it was animated much prettier too.

I can’t really say much about the story. I liked plot in Negima!? but it never felt like it was very engrossing. Actually, it felt sort of contrived. But, the different characters and the humour was what kept me watching. I thought the characters were pretty funny, just because there were so many of them that they could throw every archetype and stereotype in that they could come up with. Some of the fighting was pretty cool too. It’s certainly got me interested in the original manga storyline.

So fairly recently, I decided to press on with Kara no Kyoukai. I’d watched the first two movies and my impressions were, wow this is pretty cool, but it’s confusing as hell. Apparently, this web of confusion is the norm for Nasu and TYPE-MOON stuff. Anyhow, I finally had time to spend, so I decided to take a look at the third movie.

In addition to being confusing, the first two movies were a bit lacking in the action department. So I’ve learned since then that there’s pretty much only one large action sequence per movie, except for the fifth one. But not knowing that while watching the first two, the action scenes we got were Shiki killing a bunch of ghosts that weren’t doing anything and murdering normal people. Not exactly the most suspense filled scenes, although the fight with the ghosts was very pretty.

The third movie remedies this. We get to see learn a bit more about the characters and the setting. We get weird supernatural stuff. But best of all, we get Shiki being awesome, fighting against someone who can wreck stuff. This was the movie that got me.

The fourth movie helps to alleviate the confusion a bit. We get a lot of background information and character development. But this one was better than the second movie, because, again, we get to see Shiki being awesome and destroying a zombie. I also liked that we got to see Touko doing some magic.

But the fifth movie is just spectacular. We get some amazing fights, a lot of information, and plenty of progression in plot and characters. Not only that, but we get some crazily structured narrative and direction that’s confusing as hell. And as a bonus, it has the most awesome ED song out of all of the movies.

So, where am I at now? I am angry because now I have to wait half a year for the sixth movie to come out. I am looking forward to the rest of Kara no Kyoukai though. I have been reinforced in my belief that Maaya Sakamoto is awesome. I am also intrigued by what else TYPE-MOON has to offer. Maybe ufotable can be the TYPE-MOON studio like KyoAni has become the Key studio? I would love to see a Tsukihime or Fate/stay night anime that doesn’t suck. And I’m looking forward to those currently ethereal Blu-ray releases.

I had astronomical expectations for Xam’d. Here was an original BONES production heavily borrowing themes and motifs from Eureka Seven, but starting out with characters that I actually like. It had Eureka Seven’s art style, except now, it was in glorious 720p. But in the end, were those expectations met? For the most part, yes.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t expected the plot to remain as cryptic as it had been since the beginning of the series. The assumption was that it would operate like Eureka Seven, where everything would be explained eventually. In Eureka Seven, it took almost half the series to get to this point. Xam’d has a similar amount of material and is paced similarly. As a result, the last few episodes are kind of cryptic.

The reason for this might be how the characters fit in to the world. In Xam’d, the characters and their stories are much smaller than the larger picture conflict that’s been going on around them. We’re aware that the North and South are fighting a war, but we don’t see much of it. We only see the smaller operations on Sentan Island and later on in Tessik. Everything that happens throughout the series feels like a sidestory until the final confrontation. The various story threads are all juggled pretty well.

Something that struck me about Xam’d was how low-key many of the pivotal points were. Many of the deaths came and went by without much fanfare. A lot of the reveals and resolutions to arcs simply flowed into the next part of the story. Characters were introduced that seemed like they would only stick around for one or two episodes and turn out to play a huge role later on.

It is a very solid show and even though it didn’t blow me away because of how cryptic everything remained at the end, it’s still one of the best I’ve watched over the past year.