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Month: November 2003

Korean pressure

November 22, 2003
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The North Korean crisis has been pretty quiet lately, at least until KEDO decided to halt the North Korean reactor project.

This is pressure on North Korea to come back to the negotiating table. We’re betting that North Korea won’t escalate as a result. The only levers we have are power, food, and military action. We’re not going to starve people, and even if we were so inclined, the UN is working on food aid. We’re not going to invade a nuclear power. That leaves cutting the nuclear power plant construction, which has the advantage of not making the North Korean situation any worse. It just blocks one method of making things better, so it’s about the most palatable pressure possible.

No telling how North Korea will react. That reaction will determine if applying pressure was in fact the best thing to do.

Crueller intentions

November 21, 2003
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I almost passed on Intolerable Cruelty, but it’s been a long time since I missed a Coen Brothers flick and I figured I might as well watch George Clooney emanating suave for a couple of hours. The Coens didn’t write the movie, which means it’s not the pure hit of creative oddness I wanted, but it was still OK.

As Coen screwball comedies go, it’s no Hudsucker Proxy, and as Coen romantic comedies go, it’s no Raising Arizona. I don’t think it was trying to be a screwball comedy, really; there wasn’t any snappy dialogue in the classic screwball sense. It felt more like a casual exercise than anything else.

The acting was perfectly solid, Catherine Zeta-Jones was luscious, and Clooney was great. I didn’t dislike the movie. It just didn’t have the zing you expect from the Coens — no bite.

Shaking out cats

November 21, 2003
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Jon Udell has a very good article about using Bayesian techniques to categorize blog postings. I think this is rather interesting, because I keep meaning to try Bayesian filtering on (alternately) Usenet and my mailing lists. The difference between me and Udell is that he went out and did it and got paid for writing about it.

Now that he’s pointed me at the right tools, I may try this on Usenet. Bwah hah ha.

Media bias

November 19, 2003
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Glenn Reynolds wants to know if Hollywood is swinging conservative. He quotes one of his readers:

“At the moment it is almost impossible to imagine Hollywood producing a MASH or Catch 22 or Doctor Strangelove (Although I hasten to add Strangelove will always be in my top five movies.) It wouldn’t dare. They may still smile knowingly over their designer water at home but not in their films.”

The terrifying “they.”

In any case, someone’s suffering a severe failure of imagination, I fear. As a corrective measure, I’d recommend that Glenn and his correspondant spend a day with their DVD players. Start out with Three Kings, which is topically applicable and which came out four years ago. Move on to Hulk, for a more current movie with no fondness for the military. And just to make the situation crystal clear, pop in The Quiet American. (Which nearly didn’t get released, admittedly — but which, in the end, did.)

Monday Mashup #17: Psycho

November 18, 2003
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The Monday Mashup returns with Hitchcock’s Psycho. This is another one that almost has to be a one-shot, unless you wanted to make Norman Bates an ongoing master villain — which is an interesting idea, now that I think about it. But I’m going to be thinking one-shot. There’s an insane villain, obsessed by someone who doesn’t exist anymore, and there’s a lonely location.

Now, do you cast the PCs as Marion Crane and helpless prey, or do you cast ‘em as the post-death investigators? I’m inclined to think the latter, although that turns it into a police procedural… which is in and of itself interesting.

My approach follows.

Continue ReadingMonday Mashup #17: Psycho

WISH 72

November 17, 2003
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Happily, Game WISH is back. Today’s question:

Talk about a few characters you had to stop playing before their stories felt finished. Where do you think they would have gone?

It’s kind of a hard question, because I don’t tend to think of characters in those terms — so when I say I’d like to play Paul or Clarice more, it’s not because I think their stories were unfinished per se. It’s because I want to find out what happens next. In Paul’s case, I’d like to see him leading an adult superhero team. I’d like to find out if he can continue to be the force for good he thinks he could be. And I like playing him. In Clarice’s case, well, she’s just fun to play. I guess her story is about done; I like thinking of her hanging out in 1850 training a bunch of little genetically engineered Ascended ninjas.

That said, Cian really deserves more play and he’s the only character who I really feel missed out on a full lifespan. I had to move to Boston in the middle of that campaign, and there was a lot of prophecy around Cian. I’d really like to know what happens to him, and I don’t have any idea, which is perhaps the most irksome part.

Bulletproof

November 17, 2003
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For quite some time, England has lived with the reality of IRA terrorists who would like to see various important Brits dead. London knows a lot more about living under that sort of threat than we do. That’s a simple statement of fact; 9/11 was of much larger magnitude, but England’s been dealing with this sort of thing for decades.

In all those years, they have somehow managed to keep the Prime Minister and the Queen safe without shutting down the London Underground. One wonders what sort of a cowboy is afraid of risks the Queen of England takes on a regular basis.

(Via Charlie Stross.)