It's where I talk to myself. Gaming, politics, and links I don't want to forget about.
Ah, the Disney experience:
It’s wholesome! The photo is from the Adventurer’s Club, which is a 1930s pulp-themed bar on Pleasure Island. The gimmick is the actors playing parts, who do skits and shows and songs (see picture) throughout the evening. I spent a lot of time there last week.
Excellent second to last episode of The Apprentice tonight. I’m already looking forward to the next season, when competitors will know the format better. There wasn’t a lot of metagaming in this season, and that’s got to be partially due to the lack of information about the full rules. Next year, contestants will know that they’ll see their fired peers again, and they’ll know that they can keep allies on their team safe even when it gets down to three people per team. More important, they’ll be more confident about the twists.
I also enjoyed the interviews, and wouldn’t have minded watching more of them. There’s no question but that this episode demanded a completely different set of skills than previous contests. In particular, Amy’s lack of substance showed up in a big way. Given what Trump’s looking for, it’s going to be very clear who has no chance next year.
I liked Kwame’s tactic of hiring his old team, since they weren’t as ego-ridden as Versacorp. Most of Bill’s people were pretty clearly unhappy about losing. Of course, Omarosa’s screw-ups may have blown that tactic. Albeit… he picked second, so he was going to wind up with Omarosa no matter what. So the real question is whether giving Omarosa a little egoboo was worth not picking Nick. And I think it was; Nick was showing some serious attitude at Bill. So since Kwame was going to get Omarosa no matter what, he was smart to get Heidi over Nick.
Now, why Bill would choose both Nick and Amy is beyond me.
Glenn Reynolds finds the differences between the popular reaction to Senator Chris Dodd’s statements and the popular reaction to Senator Trent Lott’s statements "particularly disturbing." I’m not entirely sure why, as the two cases aren’t all that similar beyond the initial foolhardy statements.
OK, OK, I am sure why. There’s a rapidly spreading meme which makes Lott look a lot better, and it goes like this: “Lott suffered for saying nice things about Strom Thurmond.” There’re also a lot of right-wingers who don’t know why Senator Robert Byrd, former KKK member, gets a free pass for his history. There are times when I’m not sure either, just like I wasn’t sure why Strom Thurmond got a free pass.
Anyhow, the assertion that Lott got in trouble for simply praising Strom Thurmond is blatantly untrue. Lott got into trouble a) for saying nice things about Thurmond’s segregationist past, followed by b) revelations about his association with the Council of Conservative Citizens, c) the discovery of his racially-inflected interview with Southern Partisan; and d) relevations about his efforts to keep blacks out of his college fraternity. Lott turned out to be a long-time associate and friend of white supremacists. That’s why he’s not Senate Majority Leader anymore.
Dodd’s comments were dumb and he should issue an apology immediately. However, you can’t really compare the two situations unless Chris Dodd proves to have fairly recent ties to the KKK or other white supremacist groups. If he does, the two situations are comparable. Otherwise — not quite.
Well, this is an alarming new trend. That’s a total of thirteen foreigners kidnapped in Iraq in the last week or so. Hopefully it’s coincidence rather than a concerted effort, and hopefully everyone kidnapped will make it through the ordeal.
The victims include Christian evangelists, journalists, and human-rights workers. Doesn’t look like any common thread except that they’re foreign.
Ten years ago, the Rwandan genocide began. On April 6th, 1994, Juvenal Habyarimana, President of Rwanda, was killed when his plane was shot down. On April 7th, the Hutu militia began slaughtering Tutsis. Over the course of the next three months, approximately 800,000 Tutsis were killed.
The West, including the United States, did very little to prevent this.
WISH #90 asks:
What do you think about system updates (Paranoia XP, Amber 2.0, DnD 3.0/3.5) and conversions (d20 Silver Age Sentinels, GURPS Traveller)? What about world/setting updates that result in system reboots (the end of the Age of Darkness)? Do you buy them, run them, or use them for resources? Why or why not?
I don’t have a generic answer. I really liked the D&D 3.0 update. I didn’t much care about the D&D 3.5 update. Many of the Traveller updates sucked. The Hero 5th Edition update was great. The Vampire Revised update was quite good, for entirely different reasons. Etc.
I like it when an update is a chance to fix real rules problems or to tighten up the setting. Otherwise I don’t like them. Vampire Revised did a brilliant job at making the setting better without invalidating a lot of old play. Hero Fifth fixed several rules problems and vastly improved the presentation of the rules.
I look forward to World of Darkness 2.0, or whatever it’s officially called, because I think they will do a good rules revamp with the example of the Aeon Trinity system and because I think the new setting may rock. If the new setting doesn’t rock, I will probably not so much care about the rules revamps, though — my interest in WoD is primarily setting-driven.
I will be discussion leader for a session at BloggerCon that we are tentatively calling “What is Journalism? And What Can Weblogs Do About it?”
If you plan to attend, (see Dave Winer’s invitation) or follow along by webcast, or if you just have an interest in the subject, here are background notes, some distinctions that might usefully be drawn before discussion starts, and an initial list of questions for the group. There will be no lecture, no speeches, no panel. Dave’s philosophy at BloggerCon (and I agree with it) is that the people in the room are the panel. Keep that in mind as you read this. If you show up, you are a participant. It helps to be on the same page as others, and that’s the purpose of this post.
This post is expanded from a comment I posted in response. I don’t usually do that, but given my earlier curt dismissal of the question I felt like I ought to make amends.
The question that comes to my mind is “What tools do traditional journalists have available to them that bloggers do not, and how can bloggers get those tools?”
Phil Wolfe asks, in the comment section of Jay’s thread, “When should the press director replace a camera man, photographer, or a print, TV or radio reporter with a blogger?”
I think that implies one answer: “traditional journalists have access.” Joshua Marshall has access because significant public figures will answer his questions. Kevin Drum had some pretty decent access during the Bush AWOL debate; did he just call Bill Burkett and ask questions? Did Burkett talk to Kevin because of Kevin’s reputation?
How do you decide which blogger gets on the bus? Does the answer to that question scale? If you make your decisions based on the most popular bloggers, doesn’t that just shift the paradigm? I.e., where it was once bloggers vs. Big Media, it might easily become the A-list vs. the B-list (vs. the C-list).
What else do trad journalists have? Lexis/Nexis access helps; I can get that but it costs me money. I think it’s fair to say that the traditional journalist has better access to research tools.
What else?
Our mashup subject today comes to us care of Ginger, whose own gaming meme I have shamefully neglected. She put forth the divine M — not Bette Midler, but Madonna. You can use any incarnation, or you can use her ever-changing nature to concoct a rich gaming stew.
Don’t think too hard about that last metaphor.
Yeah, so Hellboy. The more I think about it, the more I think it’s a great adaptation of the comics. It’s by no means a great action movie — it’s a good one, but not great. But the comics aren’t great comics, either; they’re just (just?) very very entertaining pulp. Hellboy is exactly that.
Also, del Toro infuses the movie with some of the best Lovecraftian feel since Dagon. The monster design is great, the villain design is great, it’s all great. I loved the tentacles. The movie looks just about perfect. Likewise, Ron Perlman is ideal for his role.
Flaws: the pacing of the ending is really odd. There are a couple of places where the transitions make absolutely no sense (weren’t those demons in New York five minutes ago?). But really, that’s about it.
And Hellboy’s stone right hand is excellent. It moves right, it feels like it can swat a tank through a wall, and someone was smart enough to use Nick Cave’s “Red Right Hand” in the soundtrack. Ironic musical gracenotes make my day.
Dave Winer on journalists:
Journalists do all that they think bloggers do, with an extra added bonus of arrogance. There’s no accountability. No equivalent of the ABA or AMA. No malpractice suits to worry about.
Well, no equivalent except the SPJ. And while it’s true that journalists don’t have to worry about malpractice suits, I hear libel suits are still in vogue.
It’s such a silly question anyhow. Blogs are a medium, like television and newspapers. Journalists can blog; blogs are not inherently journalism.