The d20 Modern System Reference Document is live and online as of — now. That’s concurrent with the official release date. Nice speedy work on WotC’s part.
Population: One
Summerland rules.
It absolutely, completely sings. I could sling around quotes all day, but suffice it to say that Chabon’s prose is elegantly clear, without unnecessary flourish or artifice. He’s got the knack of writing about the mythic without seeming pretentious or overwrought. People sound like people, even when they’re saying important things. “A baseball game is nothing but a great contraption to get you to pay attention to the cadence of a summer afternoon.” Yeah. I love the way he takes the sting out of the eloquence by deliberately dropping back into the vernacular with “get you to pay attention.” A lesser writer would have said “to force you to pay attention,” or used some other more grammatical construction.
On top of that, the structure of the book is beautiful. He’s said he was trying to do Susan Cooper for America, and I think he’s come pretty close. Baseball is the central metaphor, but it is not a book about baseball; I fell into the assumption that I was reading a book that would follow the usual sports tropes and was thus pleasantly flabbergasted at the climax.
I must also give Chabon credit for writing about the real American gods. Sorry, Neil. Gaiman’s characters claim that “This is a bad land for Gods,” but Chabon defuses such criticism and writes of The Tall Man with the Knife in His Boot and reminds us that yes. We do have our own myths. It is not necessary to paper the walls of America with faded gods of other lands.
Even his Coyote is pretty solid. He occupies the most malevolent corner of the Trickster continuum, but that’s OK. It’s good to be reminded that Coyote isn’t a benevolent god, just a god who mostly has good intentions.
I was probably fated to love this book from the moment Chabon casually mentioned a Hellboy T-shirt, catching the attention of my geek side, but everything else about Summerland was perfect too.
While it is probably true that France opposes war with Iraq due to oil, it is also true that the US has a financial motivation for invading Iraq. If the fact that France profits from the current situation leads us to speculate that such profit is their primary motivation, we ought to take equal note of the equivalent situation over on the US side.
Particularly if the division of wealth is already taking place.
Politicans can be so gutless.
“If we try to make defense, foreign policy the overriding issue we will lose, because the country is with the president on this issue,” [Representative Martin] Frost said. I’m gonna go out on a limb here: perhaps you should not be making policy decisions based on what will win elections, but rather on what you believe? Or what you said when you ran for office?
ESPN reports that the Red Sox are about to hire Bill James as an advisor. This is not exactly a first, but it’s certainly significant that the most famous sabermetrician has signed on with a major league club.
I’d say that Billy Beane’s success with the As opened the door for this — but if James succeeds, that’ll mean the position of sabermetrician will become standard for MLB teams.
I’m going to miss Dick Armey. Best voice for privacy in Congress this year.
This is deeply irrelevant, but I woke up at 4 AM to do server maintenance this morning and posting on irrelevant matters beats a sleep deprived anarchist rant any day. This is sort of where I used to live; you can make out the Food Town where I used to shop at the top of the picture. Lousy supermarket but excellent roast beef. There’s a hill right behind it, which you can see at the left of the Food Town. I lived up there.
The site this comes from is an exhaustive photographic record of the coast of California. A rich guy with too much time on his hands and a helicopter has taken a lot of photos. Amazing world.
As an English major, I’ve heard the story about Alan Sokal, physics professor, who got a paper published in a postmodern literature journal. In fact, I’ve heard it one too many times. Consequently, this report fills me with utter glee.
It might be worth rereading some of Mr. Sokal’s discussions about his hoax, by the by. He never meant it to demonstrate that the study of English literature is inherently flawed; rather, he was making some fairly interesting points as a leftist regarding the dangers of whole-scale adoption of structuralist dogma by the American radical left wing. This is a point too often missed when discussing his hoax. I hope he has something to say about this one — I think it’d be an interesting read.
Just a quick Turkish update — the leader of the Justice and Development Party, Recep Tyyip Erodgan, says he’s opposed to a US strike on Iraq unless approved by the UN. Thanks to Carneggy for the heads up.
The Justice and Development Party has won the Turkish elections, kicking out the ruling coalition in a landslide. This seems likely to be more a reflection of discontent with the Turkish economy and a corrupt government than it is a return to Islamic fundamentalism, although the Justice and Development Party was formed from the remains of an Islamic fundamentalist party.
However, they ran on a pro-Western platform and have disavowed their Islamic roots. This isn’t the Taliban, and the victory does not represent a repudiation of Turkish assistance in the US war on Iraq. I expect some will claim it does, but this one isn’t Bush’s fault. It may not even be a crisis.
Either way, this does not change the status of the Kurds. The US still needs to arm Kurds in Iraq to fight a war there; Turkey still hates the idea, because it would encourage Kurd separatists in Turkey. Messy.
Also note that the Turkish army is perfectly willing to engage in a coup should the government become overly Islamic. They did it in 1997, and several times previously. It’s not really that democratic a country.