My friend Bryant found this one-page gag site surrounding the iPhone hubbub. The links on it only go to Google searches, nothing very exciting. The graphic elements are amusing to read once you make the connections in them.
Somara showed me a a pretty funny D&D flow chart courtesy of Boing Boing (a rather hit-or-miss site) but the source link is completely down for reasons I can only guess. I wasn’t completely discouraged. With a bit of mental elbow grease, I did come across a flow chart that exposes the mental workings of the types of players I try to avoid having in my campaign.
I do remember the mantra of my gaming sensei Lester, “if they’re having fun, then they’re playing it correctly.” However, “if they’re playing it the same way Baldur’s Gate works on my PS2, they’re wasting everyone’s time” is the addendum to his wisdom because consoles and computers have closed the gap on what D&D aspired to on the electronic front.
As I look over this again, it does seem applicable to other great role-playing games: Star Wars, Call of Cthulhu and DC Heroes.
The only style of D&D play that translates accurately to video games.
Update Jul. 21, 2007: The elaborate D&D flowchart promoted by Boing Boing finally became available again. The originator was swamped by so many hits due to the referral from Boing Boing his Web host cut it off due to the traffic allowance being exceeded. So I downloaded the PDF, converted it to a JPG for my friends and readers to see it without contributing to the creator’s usage bill. It’s rather large so you’ll have to scroll around to see it.
A landmark birthday for the Cos, one of the most famous and (my personal) favorite celebrities of Philly. His career lately has been waning and the last decade were rather trying on him but while growing up, Cosby was a well-known comedian. The stories about his family growing up and the one he raised were always great because he tapped on universal themes everyone understands. His cartoon of Fat Albert went over my head though, I had no idea he was trying to teach a moral lesson. In his defense, I have to also thank him for never taking the same cheesy career path as Robin Williams by trying to show everyone his dramatic acting chops with lame flicks such as Insomnia or One Hour Photo. He will always be the funny guy from The Electric Company, Picture Pages and the concert movie Bill Cosby, Himself.
A new study states how the Sun has little to nothing to do with Global Warming.
I read way back on Bad Astronomy how the B-list actor was claiming the Sun was cause because the polar caps of Mars are disappearing, the bands on Jupiter are shifting and there are rising temperatures on Pluto and Triton (a moon of Neptune’s). Pretty impressive claim since the New Horizon probe won’t be near Pluto for another 12 years and yet temperatures are the same on the remaining 90+ bodies in the solar system. Never mind Earth being the only known planet around with 6.5 billion people on it and a species that alters its environment to suit it.
This study will still need further follow up and vetting since it won’t be the final word for those who take stock in Science and the Naysayers.
What a bummer. The place I consider my childhood hometown came in second place! I have always felt that Springfield, IL fit the mindset of the show despite it lacking key geographic features: mountains, a desert, a pier and a clearly visible nuclear power plant. When I was living there as a kid (1979-82), it had plenty of Simpsonesque characters, namely the bullies; a rough and dangerous section; a local kid show with a clown host (channel 55). But the local sports team (the Redbirds) tended to be victorious unlike the Isotopes and the significant number of residents were Catholic (45 percent), not an ambiguous Protestant sect. One could also argue for Jebediah being a poor surrogate of Lincoln yet I feel the statue of Everett Dirksen has more in common with “Diamond” Joe Quimby.
I’m puzzled over how a small town in Vermont beat out a small city of 100,000. My immediate guess is all those Northeasterners with vacation homes there and a lack of help from Chicago.
History Lessons is really a collection of excerpts from foreign History textbooks and their take on particular events in US History. Namely, how the event affected their nation, what was their participation, how their textbook writers see it, etc. Besides collecting the pieces, the authors do preface each section or chapter on how much attention American schools currently give the event. For example, the Korean War is just lumped into the larger narrative of the Cold War while both Koreas have much more to say since the fate of their entire peninsula and culture was at stake. Ward and Lindaman also give the best translation they could find yet leave certain words or phrases in bold when it’s shaky or there is no English equivalent.
At first, the book was rather disappointing because it covers 50 events in chronological order starting from the Viking expeditions and doesn’t get interesting until the American Civil War for me. Pre-Civil War America is interesting but the majority of the material the authors use are from the US’s neighbors (Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean) or the UK. Their versions are interesting yet I was hoping to read what Japan, Russia, China or India tell their students about the nation’s founding.
Lessons picks up steam when you see entries on more current events: the Cold War, the Middle East since WWI and Free Trade. This is when non-Western nations jump into the fray. The North Korean version of the Korean War is amusing because every time Americans are mentioned, the term “bastards” is always present. If the people there weren’t starving to death, it would be funny. I’m also amazed Arabs would still study in the West after what they’re told in high school. If most Americans saw what is in Saudi textbooks, Israel would have carte blanche to do as they see fit in the region. In their defense, I think young people from any nation are cynical and know when they’re being lied to by their government, teachers, parents, clergy, etc. BS detectors aren’t exclusive to the Judeo-Christian cultures. I also sensed a pattern with Canada having this ongoing fear of the US absorbing them by force, economics or in death (nuclear war).
Hard to believe I would find this on the History Channel’s site. It was a very interesting little snippet about David Bowie’s career. I never knew the whole Ziggy Stardust character was supposed to be a prank. Maybe all the cocaine he was doing helped trick the music press into taking him seriously unlike Garth Brooks with the Chris Gaines schtick.
I'm the Wookie about to beat up the corrupt cop.
Twenty years ago this Summer, the first version of the Star Wars roleplaying game appeared at GenCon or maybe it was announced. Either way, it really dampened the 10th anniversary of Traveller (three mentions over the weekend, must be a record). This Summer, my friend and fellow DM invited me over to play a one-shot game of the latest incarnation which would be Wizards of the Coast’s third version (or fifth overall since WOTC is the second publisher of the license).
I tend to ignore the usual grumbling, grousing and griping from the Internet. I had browsed over Flynn’s copy of the new rule set last time we were playing Traveller. On the surface, the core rulebook being the dimensions of a coffee-table book was unusual. I had to admit to some disappointment over noticing how most of the interior art work was recycled from past publications. When a game book carries a $40 price tag, new drawings are expected. As to the core rules, this edition is very, very streamlined with the hopes of attracting new players, especially fans of the movies who have never played D&D. In an age of computer games, console games and a dozen new distractions since RPGs’ salad days in the Eighties, it’s going to take a miracle. This doesn’t mean the game is awful, it’s actually pretty good and I had a great time.
I’m not going to dwell on a ton of details because this was only a one-time adventure and I always have fun because Flynn is a strong GM plus this group is rather informal and irreverant; I think we completely ruined the entire Star Wars episode of Robot Chicken for our host. As a game it’s pretty simple compared to D&D or D20 Modern. The Saga Edition aims to capture more the movies’ essence by giving the PCs and major NPCs clear advantages over “simple” obstacles, namely Stormtroopers incapable of hitting the broadside of a Star Destroyer. The PCs are members of the Heroic Classes in the game, thus everybody can pilot the ship if necessary, just the ones with Pilot as a core skill do it better. That eliminates numerous problems or arguments like explaining why Princess Leia could fly the Falcon with Chewbacca while Luke and Han manned the guns in the first movie…from a game perspective.
Hopefully Flynn will run this a few more times. I had a great time as the Wookie. In the spirit of good roleplaying, I couldn’t speak Basic (English) in character. My communication was always a series of growls but only the Jedi understood the language, just like only Han knows what Chewbacca is saying. The translation was a note passed to the Jedi player. Depending upon what I said determined whether or not he would read it aloud. Supergeeky, I know. But it’s a ROLE-playing game. It works best if you ACT the part to help the GM recreate the look, tone and sounds of the movies. It’s the least I can do as his guest since he goes through the trouble to play the rest of the galaxy.
The book says for ages 12 and up. It may make a great present to give to my friends’ kids that are going through a Star Wars period but they’re well under this recommendation. By the time they are old enough, I don’t know if they’ll have the attention span or will be more interested in sports, girls and video games. Meanwhile, I’m trying to streamline my collection of stuff so I won’t be buying this soon. Flynn runs a great game but the last three movies still left a bad taste in my brain, making me reluctant to give Lucas $40.
Somara said today was the 50th anniversary of this great cartoon’s first public showing, probably as the cartoon that accompanied a feature movie back then. Sadly, more reliable sources (namely imdb.com) contradict wherever she received the claim from. Either way, it’s a great cartoon and I went through all the trouble to get a picture of this awesome action figure of Bugs as Brunhilde. It’s kept with all my hockey dudes at work to make me smile and laugh. I’ll just post this cartoon with the compromise of saying, “What’s Opera Doc?” debuted this weekend 50 years ago.
Update Jul. 9, 2007: There’s a cool essay from the Toronto Star celebrating the cartoon’s anniversary.
I chose to put this recent incident under my relatively new Brushes section because On the Media is aired nationally with numerous NPR affiliates and iTunes offers the podcast.
Last week, they did a piece on SIGMA working with the Dept. of Homeland Security. I don’t consider taking pitches from SIGMA a complete waste of tax dollars, this administration excels at squandering billions on dumber things. But if you listen to the clip or read the transcript, the name Jerry Pournelle comes up. Unlike Heinlein, I have read his books and those of his frequent partner Larry Niven. The details or context of Pournelle being mentioned worried me since his material and Niven’s have usually had undemocratic tendencies with their protagonists. They both like to portray democracies as ineffective in crises, wars or alien invasions. Only swift, brutal action by enlightened hawks can save the day—more violent versions of Plato’s philosopher-kings. I also remember an interview with Niven bragging over his involvement on SDI and how it was a ploy to scare the Soviet Union into foolishly spending on counter measures. Too bad this Reagan-era fraud cost us billions which could’ve been put to better use. I would prefer to get the opinions of authors less inclined to use martial law as the solution to everything. These writers’ concepts contributed to Traveller’s militaristic tone and setting—PCs with military careers get more skills than civilians. GDW founder Loren Wiseman once told me that Pournelle played the game. Made sense to me, GDW’s key members Miller, Chadwick and Wiseman always came off as closet monarchists and shared Niven and Pournelle’s disdain of democracy.
Anyway, I decided to post a comment on OTM‘s site because they mentioned this recent addition. I thought why not, it didn’t seem to receive much traffic and this meant less vitriol, The Nation‘s site is plagued with it. I had no idea my comment would be read aloud by co-host Brooke Gladstone. If I knew this were a possibility, I would’ve given instructions on how to pronounce my name correctly. I figured it would just slip through the cracks and OTM was going to search the comments in the more important stories: the recent Supreme Court decision or the undercover piece on lobbying for dictatorships. Mrs. Gladstone only skipped my last sentence which I didn’t find too important to exclude. The jackass who followed missed my point, especially on how authors don’t have a monopoly on what the future may hold.
First my supportive rebuttal to defend Ann Richards’ bridge is published in the Austin American-Statesman and now my comment is broadcasted on NPR. Could it be my writing is gaining gravitas as I approach 40? Probably not. I chalk it up to practice and persistence even if it was only my second letter to OTM, my first was over South Park conservatives. I found the guest’s claims to be spurious and wishful thinking.
I think my wife is more qualified to speak about his writings. He has been more of an influence on the writers I read during my bigger Sci-Fi period in high school. Heinlein definitely left a mark in the character or tone of the RPG Traveller, for better and for worse.
Most people will always tie his name to the movie version of his novel Starship Troopers. I readily admit to not reading the book (it’s way down my list of things to do) but I know Paul Verhoeven’s film only retained a few elements: names, a war, the Arachnids. Despite the “innaccuracies,” it’s still a great movie which has sadly predicted the parody-mess we live in today. Just insert the Middle East for Klendathu.
As for Heinlein’s politics, life, etc. Who really knows because he’s been dead for 19 years and when he was alive, he seemed to be rather evasive and a series of contradictions. He was a normal person, just more famous and successful in writing novels. He also gave us the word grok that was recently used in an interview with Brad Bird. I did look it up at webster.com (it won’t link) to confirm this, it’s there but not in askoxford.com.
I remember this today but impolitely forgot his dad’s birthday. I don’t have a current picture of him on hand right now, these posts tend to be spontaneous. Owen should be having a great time now that he has his little sister Kylie to celebrate with now.
He’s still too young to enjoy Rad’s vast collection of comics and matching talent. When he is old enough, he’ll be a popular kid in grade school because his daddy can draw Spider-Man and can answer his questions about the Star Wars storyline on the spot.
If you know Rad & Kim, drop a quick line to say Happy Birthday to Owen! I’m sure they’ll “translate” it for him.
I caught this on Marketplace’s little 10-minute newsbreak. Nice to hear about these Dutch guys combining their love of music with sustainability. Now if they could do something about most Europeans’ poor tastes in music and odd love of David Hasselhoff.
The news isn’t official about JR retiring as far as I’m concerned because it hasn’t been announced on his site and NHL.com would mention it. Flyers reporter Tim Panaccio hasn’t been able to completely verify and the rest of the Hockey media prefers to kick him. Since no team has bothered to bring him aboard, I would say it’s pretty likely he is hanging it up and I’m very sad. He only had five goals to go to join the 500 club and be the third American member.
Meanwhile, I decided to give this topic a rest after Saturday and not voice my concerns over the signing of Daniel Briere from Buffalo. I think he’s a great player and definitely had a huge comeback with the Sabres after being waived by the Coyotes. He’s what the Flyers need now, however, I question the wisdom of GM Holmgren signing him to an eight-year deal. Sure he rejected Buffalo’s $25 million for five years but $52 million over eight has the stench of another John LeClair debacle. Five or less would’ve been wiser, three if it could be done. As always, only time will tell. The new Flyers are coming together nicely, the goal is a playoff appearance, a Cup next year.
Pitkanen’s issues are now Edmonton’s problem! Plus they sent Sanderson packing with him. I think the Flyers got the better deal in veteran D-man Jason Smith, forward Lupul is nice too. Now my team has three experienced, potential replacment captains or alternates. I’m still cheering for Sami Kapanen to take the spot from Forsberg; a mistake at so many levels.
With the rest of the NHL, I was really shocked to see the Rangers land Chris Drury AND Scott Gomez. There probably won’t be any money left over for Shanahan. I envy the Red Wings getting Rafalski to replace Schneider going to the Ducks and rid of problematic Bertuzzi. The LA Kings scored two Slovakians I wish Philly had, Nagy and Handzus. Their acquisition is cancelled out by taking Kyle Calder too (he was worthless with the Flyers). Phoenix is definitely a big fat question mark right now. Nolan left for the Flames, JR and CuJo aren’t likely to return, Jovanovski remains injured…the list goes on. It might be best for Gretzky to bail on coaching what remains of the killer team he assembled last season.
Quick disclosure on this review. Pixar’s head guy is Steve Jobs who is also the CEO of Apple, my employer.
Hiring director Brad Bird was one of the smartest moves Pixar ever made. For years he worked on The Simpsons and then left to oversee The Iron Giant for Warner Brothers. On his first outing with Pixar, he gave them The Incredibles which is one of their best movies. Now he helmed Ratatouille and thankfully he delivered because Cars was a disappointment, but still superior to the trash from PDI and other imitators. I also felt Finding Nemo was just the Toy Story plots set in the ocean so Pixar’s teflon was starting wear down.
The story is about Remy, a rat with an above-average sense of smell. This also gives him human tastes and opinions on food unlike the other rats in the colony, they’re fine with eating garbage. Through his foolish actions, he ends up in Paris and underneath the restaurant of his deceased hero, Chef Gusteau. Recently a cruel critic (the ever awesome Peter O’Toole) made Gusteau’s place a shadow of its former glory and the current boss Chef Skinner spends more energy licensing frozen foods with Gusteau’s image on them. Enter Linguini, a bumbling garbage boy Remy catches trying to alter the evening soup. Through an exciting frenetic action sequence of Remy “fixing” the soup, Linguini and Remy form a partnership. What follows from there is predictable yet Bird and Pixar successfully execute the story through their past strengths: great voice acting, solid pacing and the proper amount of attention to detail.
Right away the thought of a rat wanting to cook gourmet food for humans is disgusting, not humorous. According to NPR’s Fresh Air, Bird stated he was brought in midway to work on this and one of the key elements he immediately changed was making the rats appear as rats. He said when the movie started production the rats walked upright, had shorter tails and human-like hands. Thankfully he got his way, the “ick” factor is critical to the story and it is present through the animation of rat swarms; how they scurry and what they look like when wet. Now this doesn’t mean I had trouble eating my pizza while watching this, then again I had no difficulty eating during Grindhouse neither. The film needs this to remind the audience why humans freak out when they see Remy and his colony. The equally important animation of the human characters is on par with The Incredibles even if they’re not performing as superheroes. In Ratatouille Linguini and Skinner are more involved in cartoon violence a la Homer: falling, tripping, sliding and other unfortunate, painful “stunts.” How the critic Ego walks is particularly funny when it is contrasted to his assistant. Ratatouille secures Pixar’s rightful place as the number one producer of animated features today. The computer-generated novelty wore off years ago. Content is king, not the technical means and the success of the hand-drawn show Spongebob Squarepantsproves that.
Like all their movies, it begins with a short called Lifted. My friends who love the X-Files will enjoy it the most. A couple children at our showing were terrified and demanded to be taken home due to its loud and bright nature so if one takes small children (under six_, it might be best to sit down after this concludes.
Worth Seeing? An emphatic YES. Definitely in a theater for the sound and size of the picture. The visual details might appear on a fancier TV but Pixar tends to wait a while longer before releasing the DVD.
