It's where I talk to myself. Gaming, politics, and links I don't want to forget about.
Remember what Warren Ellis said about Mark Waid, spiky metal things, and Marvel? Read that, then read this.
“Joe’s done a lot to make right what has been an unfortunate situation,” Waid said. “Not only is there no bad blood, but the door is open for me at Marvel and in some form or another, there is more Fantastic Four in my future.”
10 of 10 for Mr. Ellis. Well done, sir!
Bravo started airing reruns of West Wing today with a six show marathon, so of course I watched the whole thing. Now I really recognize the vibe Mr. Sterling failed to achieve. Yep, that’s Sorkin, all right.
I liked it OK. Snappy dialogue, noble and honest politicians and staffers. My new theory is that Democratic resentment of Bush arises from his failure to live up to the example set by President Bartlet. (Sure, I’m joking.) But it’s a good show, and I like the impossibly witty characters.
So here’s my million dollar TV show idea. It’s a one hour drama, set in, say, Chicago. It focuses on a few families which are linked in some unlikely fashion; some are rich, some are poor, but all of them are doing something that matters. Oh, I know: it’s a newspaper drama! So you can have the spunky young hungry reporter and her husband and the editor and the owner and so on.
Half an hour of each show is written by Joss Whedon. Half an hour is written by Aaron Sorkin. Whedon owns the teenage kids. Sorkin owns the grownups. They can always throw plot twists at each other; Sorkin has to have the owner react when his daughter is caught smoking pot with the son of the hungry reporter, for example.
Ratings gold. The only problem with it is that David Kelley will be very miffed at being left out.
Boston’s doing pretty well in the community wireless sphere, although perhaps not as well as Portland. Now Somerville is talking about business-based free community wireless networks.
Not only is this fun times for me, it’s got cool potential as a prototype that could easily catch on elsewhere. Michael Oh is thinking of each network he builds as an instance of a larger concept, rather than building one-offs, which is the kind of thinking that makes a difference in the long term.
Meanwhile, there’s a Starbucks opening next to my laundromat of choice, so I can get online while doing laundry.
The new — the last — Warren Zevon album comes out on August 26th. The buzz is good.
Short form of the controversy:
Dave Winer and Harvard are throwing a one-day blogging convention at Harvard. The entry fee is $500; $250 if you’re a Harvard affiliate. This strikes some people as too high.
Today, Dave explained why the fee was $500, as follows:
1. It’s absolutely non-profit.
OK, good. Irrelevant to why the cost is so high, though.
bq. 2. We will use the money to pay expenses for speakers and students who will get in for free, some of whom will have their expenses paid.
This is the bit that actually irked me enough to get me writing. Students aren’t getting in free; it’s costing them $250. Speakers will presumably get in free. But that doesn’t really speak to the question of where the $500 goes; you need to explain that before you claim that it’s meaningful to give anyone a discount. When you reduce this down to its actual components, what it says is that the money is going to pay for plane tickets and lodging.
3. We’re going to have parties and dinners, all of which cost a lot of money.
You know, I’d be totally OK paying for my own dinner, because I’m pretty sure I could swing it for less than $500. Even two dinners. I also don’t believe that $500 a head is a reasonable cost for a party — and let’s be real, this is a single party, because most of the attendees will have to clear out before Sunday night.
Maybe he’s planning on putting on lunch both days for the attendees? If so, perhaps he should consider not doing that to make it possible for more people to come.
I don’t know how many attendees he expects, but he has 12 presenters and moderators listed. At least two of them live in Boston. Many of them live on the East Coast. I’m having trouble believing that the numbers balance out.
Not getting so very much press, but there’s a little war brewing between Ashcroft’s Justice Department and the American jucidiary. The proximate trigger was a recent Ashcroft’s directive to federal prosecutors: he wanted ‘em to research judges who give light sentences.
Ashcroft has kind of been under the radar recently, what with the war and all. Seems as good a time as any to link once again to his interview with the neo-confederate magazine Southern Partisan. (They called him “a jealous defender of national sovereignty against the New World Order.”)
Amazing how much he defended state’s rights at the time, compared to how he seems to feel about them now.
First, watch this (Quicktime, 1.7 megs). Then, read the rest of the Web site. Especially make sure you read the thesis, even though it’s long. You never knew about Disney dissecting fawns before, did you?
Every now and then someone writes a really good document on interacting with non-techies for techies. Here’s one about giving status reports. As I changed from a techie into a manager with delusions of techieness, I could feel myself beginning to want the strange things Richard Threadgill talks about therein.
WISH 59 asks:
Name three games you might use to get someone who has never roleplayed before into roleplaying.
Well, it depends on the someone, of course. The games I’d use for my 12 year old nephew might not be the games I’d use for my mom. But, hey, here’s a shot at it.
Feng Shui is a strong first choice. Character creation is really simple, especially if you stay away from the martial artists. The genre is one that’s perfect for cutting straight to the action, and PCs are likely to succeed. The chances of a negative experience right out of the gate are pretty slim. Of course, it’s also a fairly violent game, so maybe not the best for Mom, which leads us to…
Trollbabe. Incredibly simple system that puts a lot of power in the hands of the players. A lot of more experienced players are weirded out by this, so I’m curious to see how total newbies would respond. I think it would tend to provide a sense of ownership. Also, Trollbabes only have one stat, so there’s not much to remember. But the babe factor might be a bit much for Mom, so…
Screw it, I’ll go with Everway. (Thanks to Dorathea for the reminder. I swear I thought of Trollbabe independently!) It’s visually-oriented, which would be good for Mom, and not too complicated. Despite WotC’s terrible marketing, it is nonetheless an excellent game for New Age-inclined types as well as people who just like spiritualism. In fact, I’m now really tempted to make Mom play a bit next time I go visit.
As we all know, many suspected terrorists in the United States are enemy combatants. This designation is used for those whose detention is a matter of national security. They don’t get the same rights as you and I, because giving them an open trial — or even access to their lawyer — is a risk. Can’t take risks with American lives.
Meanwhile, in that bastion of civil rights that is Indonesia, the Indonesian government somehow managed to give Bali bomber Amrozi bin Nurhasyim a relatively normal trial. This, despite the active network of terrorists inside Indonesia. You’d think that if the United States is at risk when letting suspects talk to lawyers, Indonesia would be more so.