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Month: February 2003

Land of the ice and snow

February 9, 2003
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Felix Salmon has the only blog I know of coming to us live from the Antarctic, unless you count Big Dead Place, which is a pretty interesting site. But not every interesting site is a blog, even if it posts cool stories. Word to the wise, yo.

Actually, I don’t think it’s Felix Salmon posting the Antarctic stories, now that I look at it again. It’s someone named Rhian. One imagines there’s a story there, but it’s opaque to me… until I spend five seconds with the site and learn that Rhian is Felix’s sister. The Internet: tomorrow’s personal transparency today!

Out of duty, perhaps

February 8, 2003
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I dunno, it’s like I feel some weird obligation or something. Saith Professor Reynolds: “essentially a pro-democracy, anti-dictator — and hence pro-war — student organization…”

It’s kind of hard to tell, since that’s a pretty terse argument, but I think that’s a fallacy of composition — he’s pro-war, as a consequence of his anti-dictator and pro-democracy stance, so everyone who’s anti-dictator and pro-democracy must therefore be pro-war. But since he doesn’t lay out the steps, preferring to just leap to the conclusion, one can’t be sure.

Three and out

February 8, 2003
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Four or five episodes in, and by my reckoning, Mister Sterling has pretty much jumped the shark. Wasn’t much of a shark, at that. There was a lot of promise in the premise of a Senator appointed to fill out a term who turned out to be an independent, but it’s squandered by making him a Democrat in independent clothing. So far, other than a quick list of issues in the first episode, there’s really nothing about him that doesn’t follow the liberal line. Which isn’t a bad thing per se, but don’t tell me he’s an independent thinker. Heck, his true blue Democratic staff anointed him as “the guy we always wanted to work for” last episode.

It’s not as if there aren’t plenty of examples out there. He could have been Ron Paul. Well, OK, there’s no way in hell that show would have gotten picked up, but it would have been entertaining. He could have been Bernie Sanders or Paul Wellstone, and that might have actually worked. It’s a shame.

Tonight’s episode pissed me off enough to remind me that I’d meant to follow up my initial review. The crisis of the week is a nice Guatemalan cleaning lady whose mother is dying, and who wants to go back to say goodbye for a day. Alas, her green card application is still in process so if she leaves the country she can’t come back. Senator Sterling runs roughshod over INS and in the end gets his way.

Which really sucks, because there was a great speech from the Commissioner of the INS about how if they made every decision individually the green card backlog would be ten years long. Really good, came across as really principled, definitely thought-provoking. It was shot down about five seconds later when everyone points out that the guy’s just posturing to get something for himself. Sterling winds up threatening the Commissioner and gets his way.

That strikes me as a total copout, since it doesn’t address the argument against making exceptions and in the end what you have is a Senator who bullies bureaucrats to make sure that the right thing happens. He sure doesn’t address any fundamental problems, like helping the INS streamline procedures. The message is that everything would be OK if the 100 Senators just took a personal interest in every problem case. Great.

Oh, and of course the entire controversy could have been avoided if instead of trying to convince the INS to ignore their own regulations, Senator Sterling just asked someone to expedite the processing of the cleaning lady’s application. Me, I’d have gone that way instead of asking a mid-level INS staffer to go to the airport and sneak the cleaning lady back into the country. But that’s just me.

Oddly, I’m still kind of enjoying the show, but I think it’s because of Audra McDonald (who plays Senator Sterling’s chief of staff) and Stanley Kamel (the former chief of staff). Kamel in particular is really solid as the lifetime staffer who is the best money raiser in the country; it’d have been easy to play him as the bad guy, but Kamel’s portraying someone who just doesn’t know any other way to be. Nice nuances. The rest of the cast is OK, but nobody’s working too hard, if you know what I mean. Oh, and Josh Broslin, Senator Sterling himself, is pretty much just overacting.

So yeah. Some fun performances, and a lot of utterly dorky politics. You could save the whole thing by turning it into a dark story about the rise of a new Huey Long — Sterling’s got that populist flair — but somehow I think they aren’t gonna go that way.

Free as in Mercedes

February 7, 2003
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You gotta love these little self-fulfilling prophecies. The New York Sun tells us, in the course of arguing that anti-war protests should be forbidden, that “His [Thomas Friedman’s] point was that if terrorists strike again at America and kill large numbers of Americans, the pressure to curb civil liberties and civil rights will be ‘enormous and unstoppable.’ What we took from that was that the more successful the protesters are in making their case in New York, the less chance they’ll have the precious constitutional freedom to protest here the next time around.”

Well, the Sun writers clearly failed reading comprehension classes. What Friedman meant was that another 9/11 would make more people willing to listen to drivel such as the Sun is pumping out. It’s a warning against people like the Sun. Bah.

Origami of the soul

February 6, 2003
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Weird gaming idea of the day:

You hand out character sheets that are folded up like origami, and instruct the players not to unfold them. They start out with the stats and skills and self-knowledge that are visible on the outside. At various points in play, you instruct them to make certain unfolds. New information is thus revealed, and put into play.

If you wanted to randomize things a little, you could use a cootie catcher, but I’m not sure the associations are right.

I think you’d want to use the concept for an amnesiac game, of course. Looking beyond that, though, there are other possibilities. It’d be an interesting way to simulate bursts of energy, maybe… hm. Actually, in some ways this is just a weird mutation of the click-base concept. The other primary influences are Sandman: The Map of Halal and a con game I played in once where we had a base character sheet for our stats, and an overlay character sheet which changed depending on which personality chip we plugged in.

If I knew origami I could develop this idea. Alas.

Sidekick update

February 6, 2003
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L’il Bolt’s training is coming along nicely, but I fear he lacks the fire necessary to —

Oh, sorry, wrong kind of sidekick.

I’m still pretty happy with this Sidekick, with some caveats. The software bugs which prevent it from ringing when Keyguard is enabled are annoying. The battery life is short enough so that I have to recharge it every night without fail. Also, my thumb wheel broke and I had to get the entire unit replaced. All in all, I’d say it’s about 85% of the way there and I still recommend it for people like me who don’t mind being early adopters. Danger is currently claiming that a software update to address known bugs will show up sometime in March, but that’s not a firm date.

The game of three

February 6, 2003
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OK. This is the movie trilogy game. It’s really simple. Pick three movies that form a trilogy, but weren’t meant to.

My personal favorite is this group: Henry V (the Branagh version), Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, and Henry and June. The Henry Trilogy. See? It’s easy.

You can go thematic, too. Heavenly Creatures, The Young Poisoners Handbook, and The Butcher Boy. The Children of the British Empire Behaving Badly Trilogy.

It’s best if it’s a trilogy with a weird angle, which is why the Henrys beat the Children all hollow, but the Children are an OK entry because who’d ever imagine three movies like that? Also, they don’t share many other elements, although Ireland (where The Butcher Boy is set) is a bit close to England (where Young Poisoners Handbook is set). You want as little in common between the movies as possible other than the linking theme… no, that’s not quite right. Elements have to either be the same (the linking theme, the location, etc.) or different. You can’t have two movies set in swamps and one set in mountains, but if all three are in swamps, that’d be OK.

Anyhow, my previous entry reminded me that the Game Show of Death Trilogy is now a going concern; Battle Royale, Series 7, and The Running Man. Again, a little weak, since two of ‘em are from the US — but Series 7 is so indie it practically doesn’t exist in the same world as Running Man.

I am still looking for a third movie to fill out Gangster No. 1 and Velvet Goldmine. The link between the two is left as a puzzle for the reader, but I will say that Scandal is very close to being perfect.

Kids behaving badly

February 6, 2003
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HKFlix.com has a new edition of Battle Royale in stock, which may be of interest to — well, it’s of interest to me. I’ve wanted to see this for a while. The plot is simple; a few dozen Japanese teenagers, all from the same high school class, are put on an island. Each one gets a weapon. Last one off wins. Refuse to fight and you die.

Yeah, I know. And everyone says “Oh, Lord of the Flies.” But I also hear a subcurrent of Ender’s Game, and I really enjoyed Series 7. So, yeah, I’m interested in this. And I’ve never been one to shy away from the lurid.

Oh, hm, there’s a movie trilogy. OK, next post for that.

Clear as mud

February 5, 2003
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This picture is probably the coolest picture I have seen in years. No kidding. It’s a no kidding high tech not yet perfected invisibility cloak.

Go look. Now. It’s a guy standing in the middle of a park and you can see right through him. It is incredibly science fictional. It’s not Photoshopped.