It's where I talk to myself. Gaming, politics, and links I don't want to forget about.
The Massachusetts Supreme Court just ruled that bans on same-sex marriages are unconstitutional. That’s the Massachusetts Constitution, not the US Constitution. There’s some pro-same-sex marriage background about the case here, and some fairly frothing anti-same-sex marriage background here. Or just get the fairly unbiased coverage from Howard Bashman, who knows his stuff.
The actual ruling has been mirrored here.
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.
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.
There’ve been a lot of DoD press releases about deaths recently. They’re fairly abstracted, which I think is appropriate. This one reports the death of Robert A. Wise of Florida.
His friend Trueman, who is currently recuperating in a hospital in Germany, gives us his account of the attack which killed Specialist Wise.
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.)
I have a strict quota on links to Flash animations. This year, the coveted slot goes to The Elements, by Tom Lehrer. (Via Rick Jones.)
Because I know I’m going to want to refer to this later.
Let’s be clear on this. The reports discussed in the memo are simply the reports Doug Feith used to make the case for an imminent threat from Iraq. Doug Feith is guilty of politicizing intelligence in the worst way. He has been, in the past, cozened by Ahmed Chalabi. He was in charge of post-war planning — the same planning that has been faulty to the degree that Bush is adopting the French plan.
Feith spent his time picking and choosing the intelligence reports he wanted in order to prove his thesis, ignoring those reports which didn’t support him. Is it any surprise that a list of raw intelligence reports he compiled would “prove” him right?
Juan Cole has the scoop on the new plan for transferring power to an Iraqi government. I could meander on but I think he nails the implications, pros, and cons.
Others have made this point, but it’s a good excuse to link to a funny comic, so I’m gonna make it again. Tom Tomorrow isn’t saying you don’t have the right to comment on war unless you’re enlisted or a veteran. He’s saying — well, read the second panel. “I’m waging war on the Islamofascists — on my blog!” He’s saying that’s a really stupid thing to say.
Now, that might seem like hyperbole. Who says stuff like that? Perhaps the irate blogger is really meant to represent some other class of bloggers. Warbloggers in general, maybe. Maybe he’s saying all warbloggers are stupid.
But, no, not really. It’s not terribly hard to find quotes similar to Tom’s. Here’s the Imperial Kitten pretending his blog is a service to the country :
“Maybe I HAVE found a way of serving my country already and I didn’t even realize it, even though it was staring me right in the face.”
And don’t get me started on the Freepers.
When you think about it, this attitude is closely linked to the idea that anti-war activists are treasonous. If I’m hurting America by saying the war is a bad idea, then someone who defends the war must be helping America. Even waging the war himself, in his own way. Once you get there, you’ve got yourself a nice little positive feedback loop. “I’m doing good, and you’re doing bad.”
What more have we ever needed to validate ourselves than that?
1&1 is offering free Web hosting for three years, which certainly seems too good to be true. But hey — Metafilter confirms that it’s a valid offer. Apparently these guys are a huge European hosting company, and they want to make a splash in the US. So it seems safe to go wild.