5 - 2007 | ***Dave Does the Blog

RIP, Rev. Jerry Falwell

I will not mourn Rev. Falwell’s passing from the American political scene, where I feel he did tremendous damage to our freedoms and common vision as a united people, nor…

I will not mourn Rev. Falwell’s passing from the American political scene, where I feel he did tremendous damage to our freedoms and common vision as a united people, nor his passage from the religious scene in this country, where I feel he did more harm, long-term, to Christianity through his harsh rhetoric and politicizing of faith than any of the groups he lashed out against. I will not crow over his passing, either, just make note of it, and hope that he finds greater patience, tolerance, open-mindedness, and love with his newest Audience than he showed in his religio-political career.

Lumps of Game Goodness

Doyce points to this collection of little RPG tidbits collected from various Lumpley essays and forum posts, etc., over a couple of years. In some ways, it’s “Indie Game Concepts…

Doyce points to this collection of little RPG tidbits collected from various Lumpley essays and forum posts, etc., over a couple of years. In some ways, it’s “Indie Game Concepts 101.” Some fine bits in there:

Mechanics might model the stuff of the game world, that’s another topic, but they don’t exist to do so. They exist to ease and constrain real-world social negotiation between the players at the table. That’s their sole and crucial function.

In task resolution, what’s at stake is the task itself. “I crack the safe!” “Why?” “Hopefully to get the dirt on the supervillain!” What’s at stake is: do you crack the safe?
In conflict resolution, what’s at stake is why you’re doing the task. “I crack the safe!” “Why?” “Hopefully to get the dirt on the supervillain!” What’s at stake is: do you get the dirt on the supervillain?
Which is important to the resolution rules: opening the safe, or getting the dirt? That’s how you tell whether it’s task resolution or conflict resolution.
Task resolution is succeed/fail. Conflict resolution is win/lose. You can succeed but lose, fail but win.

Suspense doesn’t come from uncertain outcomes.
I have no doubt, not one shread of measly doubt, that Babe the pig is going to wow the sheepdog trial audience. Neither do you. But we’re on the edge of our seats! What’s up with that?
Suspense comes from putting off the inevitable.
What’s up with that is, we know that Babe is going to win, but we don’t know what it will cost.
Everybody with me still? If you’re not, give it a try: watch a movie. Notice how the movie builds suspense: by putting complications between the protagonist and what we all know is coming. The protagonist has to buy victory, it’s as straightforward as that. That’s why the payoff at the end of the suspense is satisfying, after all, too: we’re like ah, finally.
[…] Yes, it can be suspenseful to not know whether your character will succeed or fail. I’m not going to dispute that. But what I absolutely do dispute is that that’s the only or best way to get suspense in your gaming. In fact, and check this out, when GMs fudge die rolls in order to preserve or create suspense, it shows that suspense and uncertain outcomes are, in those circumstances, incompatible.
So here’s a better way to get suspense in gaming: put off the inevitable.
Acknowledge up front that the PCs are going to win, and never sweat it. Then use the dice to escalate, escalate, escalate. We all know the PCs are going to win. What will it cost them?

When a character dies in a novel or a movie, it’s a) to establish what’s at stake, b) to escalate the conflict, or c) to make a final statement. Or perhaps some combination. It’s never by accident or for no good reason, unlike in real life.
[…] PCs, like protagonists in fiction, don’t get to die to show what’s at stake or to escalate conflict. They only get to die to make final statements.
Character death can never be a possible outcome moment-to-moment. Having your character’s survival be uncertain doesn’t contribute to suspense, as above, just like we don’t actually ever believe that Bruce Willis’ character in Die Hard will die. Instead, character death should fit into what it will cost. This thing, is it worth dying for? Obi-wan Kenobi and Leon say yes.
[…] In fiction, You never die for something you haven’t staked your life on.

So: resolution, why?
The answer is: because interesting play depends on good conflicts, and creating good conflicts means hitting characters you like right where they’re weak, and hitting a character you like, whose player is someone you like, right where she’s or he’s weak – it’s not easy.
The right rules will show you how to do it. They’ll make it the only natural thing.

Potpourri for Tuesday

Wearing a bike helmet makes you safer in case of a crash — but may lead to more accidents. Not surprisingly, Katrina has taken a nose-dive as a girl’s…

Wearing a bike helmet makes you safer in case of a crash — but may lead to more accidents.
Not surprisingly, Katrina has taken a nose-dive as a girl’s name.
I had no idea that Firefox had a cute anime logo, Foxkeh.
The best way to protest a law is to enforce it to the hilt and let the public protest. Hence librarians cranking up proposed censorware to 11 to show how goofy it is.
Smoking is now a factor the MPAA will consider in whether to rate a movie “R.” Huh? How about, as Les notes, drinking and unsafe driving, too? Or eating transfats? Or just acting like an idiot? Not that I’m a huge fan of smoking, by any means, but, yeesh.
The real Deadwood, 1888..
Spielberg and Jackson to take on Tintin. Hmmmm. I’ve honestly never been into the Tintin thang — but I know that it’s iconic sort of stuff that will take special handling (and will doubtless run into sensibilities issues between lovers of the original and despisers of the new, not to mention the whole European-vs-American thang).
Remarkably, now that they’re in power, Democratic legislators seem a lot less eager to reform lobbying.
Remember, never use the words “Family Feast” — it’s trademarked, you scoff-law piratical terrorist!
Lileks visits Disneyworld. Fun. He went to the Caribbean Resort, twin to the ones we’ve gone to. “You’d have to have a heart made of coal and an utterly incurious mind not to find this place fascinating.”
Zombie Last Supper. It’s so wrong, yet so good …
I mistrust the romanticization of gangster lore — but this article about Mothers Day and the Mob is, if at all true, interesting as hell.
Because, remember — if you tell your kids about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, they will turn into mass murderers, reject Jesus, and burn in hell forever. You have been warned.

Fuelishness

Huh. I missed word that this was supposed to be National Don’t Buy Gas Day — at least until after I’d filled up this morning. Not that it strikes me…

Huh. I missed word that this was supposed to be National Don’t Buy Gas Day — at least until after I’d filled up this morning.

Not that it strikes me as … well … anything other than a goofy concept anyway. But I wish I’d known i was thumbing my nose at it at the time I was doing so.

Smiling faces, smiling eyes

A recent study indicates that Americans and Japanese read body language and facial expressions differently — in particular, that Americans pay attention to the mouth, while Japanese focus on the eyes…

A recent study indicates that Americans and Japanese read body language and facial expressions differently — in particular, that Americans pay attention to the mouth, while Japanese focus on the eyes (which, in a culture where outward expression of emotion is sometimes frowned upon, are harder to mask).

Which may explain the distinction in American vs Japanese emoticons. Americans tend to do those little sideways things with the mouth being a key point, while Japanese are horizontal and zero in on the, well, eyes, leaving the mouth more as a spaceholder.

Happy Face: 🙂 vs. ^_^

Sad Face: 🙁 vs. ;_;

That makes so much sense …

(via BoingBoing)

Good enough for the homeless — too dangerous to fly with

All those tubs and bins of Evil and Presumably Dangerous Liquids that get confiscated at the airport security checkpoints? A couple weeks ago my family came to New York,…

All those tubs and bins of Evil and Presumably Dangerous Liquids that get confiscated at the airport security checkpoints?

A couple weeks ago my family came to New York, where I live, from my hometown near Salt Lake City. Before leaving, my mother had purchased a small tube of lotion and put it in her purse. When she got to the security checkpoint at the airport, she realized she still had the lotion. She handed it over to the TSA worker who told her that it would be donated to a local homeless shelter.

So here we have lots of potentially explosive liquids (that’s why they’re being taken away, right?) either being dumped in the trash or given to the homeless. If they’re really potentially dangerous, shouldn’t they be treated that way? If not, then why take them?

One could argue that by this confiscation, anyone who would try to blow things up would know they couldn’t actually get away with it, so the liquids are probably safe. On the other hand, how many of those folks might also consider it amusing to poison the homeless at the hands of the TSA?

Potpourri for Sunday

So I can close some of these browser tabs … “Chistians and Atheists, living together … mass hysteria …” You can find an address for a secondary calendar in…

So I can close some of these browser tabs …

“Chistians and Atheists, living together … mass hysteria …”
You can find an address for a secondary calendar in your Google Calendar — but it’s only accessible from within Google (for invites from another Google calendar), not from outside (e.g., for invites from someone’s Outlook). Lame. On the bright side, you can now get notifications from secondary calendars, which is spiffy.
Bringing back the near-dead. Interestingly, it’s often not oxygen-death that immediately kills you, it’s the resuscitation effort.
Uncertainty, dogs, and Many Worlds.
The Freeways of Tomorrow, according to Yesterday.
Picking unusual baby names so that they’re Googleable. (N.B. There are three folks with Kitten’s first/last name who show up in IMDB, so she’ll never be “unique” in that way … though if you toss in the the middle name, only a couple of things from my site come up.
Two books I loved as a child.

And for Episcopotpourri …

The Diocese of Colorado has formally filed suit to establish its ownership of Grace & St Stephens. The suit includes all sorts of interesting further allegations about the shenanigans down there (including paper shredding … lots and lots of paper shredding …).
Amidst all the angst, remembering to laugh is important.

To the mothers in my life …

To my Mom, who taught me so much about love and compassion and humor and cooking and (believe it or not) cleaning. To my Nona, who taught me dignity and…

To my Mom, who taught me so much about love and compassion and humor and cooking and (believe it or not) cleaning.

To my Nona, who taught me dignity and discipline as well as love.

To my Mother-in-Law, a woman who shatters the cliché so soundly that there’s nothing to it save for some good-natured ribbing.

To Margie, who is doing a great job being a mother to our daughter — she makes it a pleasure to be a parent with her.

Happy Mothers Day, one and all!

Heroic

So I’m reading this week’s Comics Buyer’s Guide, an article on the post-“Civil War” world in the Marvel Universe, and it mentions in passing: Pym is working with various talented…

So I’m reading this week’s Comics Buyer’s Guide, an article on the post-“Civil War” world in the Marvel Universe, and it mentions in passing:

Pym is working with various talented marvel scientists, including Baron Von Blitzschlag (whose surname translates as “thunderbolt”), who used to be a Nazi super-villain in World War II …

Which cause me to read it twice. A “Nazi super-villain“? All right, traditionally, metahumans working for the government of Nazi Germany have been referred to as “super-villains.” But is that a fair labeling? Villain implies (to me) an outlaw, an evil-doer, a criminal. All right, then — during the war, as government agents, they wouldn’t be outlaws (any more than Amercian supers would be). They might be war criminals, but not necessarily; by the same token, they might be evil-doers, but only to the extent that they actually do evil, not per se. (Is a police officer in Germany in 1943 a villain? Is a Wehrmacht soldier?)

Now, true, most Nazi supers portrayed are, in fact, evil and nasty and moustache-twirling (male and female alike) racist lunatic psychopaths. One could argue it would difficult to be a prominent German metahuman and not be. But it’s not something that would necessarily be automatic (the “noble German, struggling as they put patriotism and duty and love of the Fatherland beyond what they personally know is right” is as much an established cliche as the Jew-hating Aryan brute).

“Nazi super-hero,” though, sounds wrong.

It also raises some interesting “Civil War” issues. If there was a right side or a wrong side in the conflict, were the supers that were on the wrong side, in fact, “villains?” Certainly (if they were on the anti-Registration side) they were outlaws and criminals. But … Captain America, a super-villain? Mister Fantastic, a super-villain? Black Pather, a super-villain? Iron Man, a super-villain? Spider-Man, a super-villain (part of the time)? (Okay, yeah, J. Jonah Jaimeson would have no problem calling Spidey a super-villain, but that doesn’t count.)

Perhaps such labels are too simplistic — but that, too, seems to be a simplistic conceit as well (“The world is too complex for heroes”).

Maybe, though, that’s one of the reasons why it’s only in extreme circumstances that we use the word “hero” in real life — in cases of conspicuous, above-and-beyond gallantry and self-sacrifice. If we really did have metahumans around, I doubt we’d use the word “super-hero” (or “super-villain”) very much as a generic label.

Just thinking out loud here …

“I cannae change the laws o’ physics!”

In an odd twist to an odd story, Scotty’s not in trekking toward the stars. James Doohan’s cremated remains were supposed to be launched into space along with about…

In an odd twist to an odd story, Scotty’s not in trekking toward the stars.

James Doohan’s cremated remains were supposed to be launched into space along with about two hundred others. The launch of the private UP Aerospace SpaceLoft XL rocket was successful, and all went well with flight trajectory, for some unknown reason the payload ended up parachuting back down into rough New Mexico landscape, where it’s yet to be found.

Scotty always did get in trouble on landing parties …

(via BoingBoing)

“A shining planet … known as Earth …”

Interview with Edward James Olmos, in which he reveals S4 of Battlestar Galactica will be its last.We’re heading into the final season. This is the final season as we…

Interview with Edward James Olmos, in which he reveals S4 of Battlestar Galactica will be its last.

We’re heading into the final season. This is the final season as we speak. All of us are very saddened by that, but we always knew there was going to be a conclusion and we would find Earth, so we will be finding Earth this season. I wish it would [keep going]. I could do 10 years like this season. I think that this is some of finest usages of television that I have been a part of in my life. Bar none. I’ve been doing this for 42 years. I’ve done some really good work in television and motion pictures but there really is nothing like this show. I can honestly tell you that this is one of the finest dramatic pieces work on humanity I’ve ever seen in my life.

I’m impressed if they actually bring enough closure to the series to find Earth. I’ll be even more impressed if it doesn’t involves flying motorcycles …

(The shortish interview is interesting. The comments section below it is … staggeringly juvenile, between the “Galatica is the greatest show of all time and the original was the greatest show of all time, too” and “Galatica sucks Taun-tauns” factions. I read more intelligent commentary on the CoH boards, fergoshsakes.)

(via Scott)

I blame … well, let’s see …

Well, I went to the Denver Botanic Garden plant sale. And … Wow, look at all those plants on the front porch! Huh … Now, to be sure, I managed…

Well, I went to the Denver Botanic Garden plant sale. And …

Wow, look at all those plants on the front porch! Huh …

Now, to be sure, I managed to fit everything into the Subaru. And, to be sure, I saved a lot of money off of my DBG membership discount. Really! (“I make it up in volume …”)

But I need someone to blame before, ah, Margie gets home and, ah, offers a dissenting opinion about my, uh, vigorous support for the Gardens.

I blame …

… well, the DBG folks, obviously. Waggling their bodacious plant life at me, taunting me with their botanical wiles, the plant-selling hussies. I am, after all, merely mortal.

… Marn. I mean, after all, I bought three or four Hostas for under the deck. I mean, that added inertia into my hurtling toward filling the Giant Wagon I was pulling. And South Park taught us we can always blame Canada. Or, maybe …

… the Federal Reserve, for preserving an environment of high consumer spending, in which I can only follow the irrational exuberance of the crowd.

… Margie, of course. She didn’t come with me to the plant sale, and, let’s face it, that’s like tucking a fifty into my pocket and sending me to Tijuana. Except … well, I’m more likely to buy something at the plant sale, of course.

… Organized Labor. Ah, there’s the real culprit. It was an emergency meeting with a bunch of union folks that Margie had to attend, keeping her from coming to the plant sale with me. An emergency meeting on a Friday afternoon? Yeesh. No respect for working stiffs, I say.

Yeah, that’s the ticket. Blaming the unions is always safe.

Now, the next question is … when the hell am I going to plant the things?

Type A meets Type K

A man goes to a psychiatrist. “Doc, you’ve got to help me,” he says. “Every night, I toss and turn, obsessed by two dreams. In one of them, I’m a…

A man goes to a psychiatrist. “Doc, you’ve got to help me,” he says. “Every night, I toss and turn, obsessed by two dreams. In one of them, I’m a teepee. In the other, I’m a wig-wam. It’s driving me crazy!”
The shrink nods, considers, then says, “Well, your problem is, you’re two tents.”

I mentioned that joke to Sensei after karate this evening, as he’d (very jovially) noted that (a) I was too tense, (b) I was taking things (my errors, in particular) too seriously, and (c) I needed to relax and not consider this all End of the World Important.

My diagnosis? I need to not drink so much caffeine before karate class.

By the bye, my Yellow Belt test is next Thursday. No pressure …

Potpourri for Thursday

NASA promotes its new Moon program like a high budget Hollywood spectacular (but with pretty mediocre CG). How Lord of the Rings should have ended. (More here.) Very cool…

NASA promotes its new Moon program like a high budget Hollywood spectacular (but with pretty mediocre CG).
How Lord of the Rings should have ended. (More here.)
Very cool Disneyworld Magic Kingdom Google Map.
The Comics Curmudgeon’s explanation for “The Family Circus” makes scary sense …
The EU has backed off outlawing pounds, ounces, and other Imperial measurements. The rules would have required metric-only labeling in the EU. Brits rejoice, teachers weep.

“I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with ‘A'”

Saw this a few weeks ago, but seeing it again on BD’s blog reminded me to post about it — the Bayeux Tapestry, enhanced with music, translations, and animation. Very…

Saw this a few weeks ago, but seeing it again on BD’s blog reminded me to post about it — the Bayeux Tapestry, enhanced with music, translations, and animation. Very nice.

(The title is a reference to a t-shirt I bought in the UK a few years back with that inscription and this particular panel from the tapestry, allegedly showing Harold’s death.)

We Read Comics!

Been a while since I last talked about my online comic strip reading habits. I culled a lot from my old list when I changed over to Google Reader…

Been a while since I last talked about my online comic strip reading habits. I culled a lot from my old list when I changed over to Google Reader (I rely on a feed reader for this stuff unless there’s no other choice, see below), but here’s what I currently have. (Note: I am not very diligent about reading most of these, I fear — not that they don’t deserve them, just that I Get Busy; I’ve bolded the ones I am most likely to hop onto regularly):

Print comic strips online:

9 Chickweed Lane*
Bizarro*
Calvin & Hobbes (reruns, of course) (inline feed)
Dilbert
Doonesbury
Dykes to Watch Out For
For Better or For Worse
Foxtrot
Funky Winkerbean*
Get Fuzzy (inline feed)
Pibgorn (off the air but returning)
Zits

Web comic strips online (duh):

*I use ComicAlert to provide an RSS feed/reminder for these strips.

**These strips have no RSS feed. None. And nobody’s scraped one together, either. It’s maddening. So I have a reminder to once a week go to an FF Bookmark Group I’ve set up and look at them. Yeesh. Many thanks if you can point me to feeds for any of these, because it’s enough to make me read them less than I want to.

War is Peace … Freedom is Slavery … DRM is DCE …

DRM is “Digital Rights Management,” the technology that exuberantly (but rarely completely, and never conveniently) restricts folks from doing stuff with media material that they, y’know, own, and pursuit of which is the Holy Grail of Big Media with the idea that if everything is locked down with DRM then we can be made to pay each and every time we want to watch something. Basically, it what keeps you from (when it works as intended) ripping your DVD down to your PC to watch at your convenience, or copying a music track you downloaded to your PC onto your MP3 player. It’s also what (when it doesn’t work well) ends up infecting your PC with a rootkit viruses, keeps your DVD player from playing a DVD you just bought, and leads to companies claiming that they “own” random numbers that they use for decryption.

The tech chief of HBO, Bob Zitter, has decided that “DRM” is not euphemistic enough. He wants to call it DCE, “Digital Consumer Enablement”:

Speaking at a panel session at the NCTA show in Consumerist)
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Anglican-Episcopal Literacy Quiz

If you’ve been reading the (excessive) posts on the subject here, I expect you’ll do fine with this. And maybe even get a few chuckles. At the very least,…

If you’ve been reading the (excessive) posts on the subject here, I expect you’ll do fine with this. And maybe even get a few chuckles. At the very least, you can print off your own certificate.

License to speak

A woman in South Dakota got a car license plate “MPEACHW”, which was all fine and good until some pol at the DMV realized what it said and decided that…

A woman in South Dakota got a car license plate “MPEACHW”, which was all fine and good until some pol at the DMV realized what it said and decided that was not politically a nice thing to say, issuing an order to turn the plates in.

The DMV has since given in to the argument that this is a “free speech” issue, after having learned out a Federal Appeals Court supported a Missouri woman who had “ARYAN-1” plates. The SoDak woman can keep the MPEACHW plates.

That’s a … remarkable First Amendment argument

Verizon, fighting a law suit for turning over phone records to the government, is making certainly one of the more audacious legal defenses I’ve heard of late: it’s protected speech,…

Verizon, fighting a law suit for turning over phone records to the government, is making certainly one of the more audacious legal defenses I’ve heard of late: it’s protected speech, a “petition” to the government.

Huh?

The response also alleges that the case should be thrown out because even looking into the issue could violate state secrets, of course, but a much longer section of the response tries to make the case that Verizon has a First Amendment right to “petition” the government. “Based on plaintiffs’ own allegations, defendants’ right to communicate such information to the government is fully protected by the Free Speech and Petition Clauses of the First Amendment,” argue Verizon’s lawyers.
Essentially, the argument is that turning over truthful information to the government is free speech, and the EFF and ACLU can’t do anything about it. In fact, Verizon basically argues that the entire lawsuit is a giant SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) suit, and that the case is an attempt to deter the company from exercising its First Amendment right to turn over customer calling information to government security services.

Wow. Look at the the … big brass balls on those phone poles.

Rather than arguing that it had violated a federal law — the Electronic Communications Protection Act, which prohibits telecoms from hand over customer data without legal processes — Verizon claims the law is unconstitutional.

A longer quote from Verizon (emphasis mine):

The gravamen of plaintiffs records claims is that defendants allegedly communicated information about them to the government namely, that a call was placed from a certain telephone number to another number. Communicating such factual information to the government would be speech that is fully protected by the First Amendment.

One wonders if handing over of Verizon’s trade secrets — factual information — to journalists, or publication of same, would be considered protect speech under the First Amendment, too.

When the country is engaged in an armed conflict with foreign enemies, that right applies to communicating information that may be useful in defending the country from expected attacks. Based on plaintiffs own allegations, defendants right to communicate such information to the government is fully protected by the Free Speech and Petition Clauses of the First Amendment, and is a privilege and immunity that arises directly under the federal Constitution. Any construction of ECPA that purported to prohibit such communications, and to subject defendants to monetary liability for engaging in the communications alleged, would violate these constitutional rights.
A complete prohibition on truthful speech to the government about information lawfully acquired and involving political speech and speech on matters of public concern would violate the First Amendment on numerous grounds, as discussed below. There are two overarching flaws. First, an outright prohibition on truthful speech about information lawfully acquired is anathema to the First Amendment. Second, a ban on such speech is not narrowly tailored to achieve the objective of preventing the governments misuse of customer call records. When such concerns exist, the only proper remedy, consistent with the First Amendment, is to impose restrictions on the government, not on the speakers right to communicate.

In other words, the law should be changed to prevent the government from asking for info, then preventing companies from giving it.

Amazing.