DISASTER

I had intended to talk about the weird weather here (99 degrees yesterday was the day's high) and other such miscellany.

But I awoke, both to the radio and to a answering machine message from Felicia, about the disaster. Columbia is lost.

I was 15 when Challenger blew up, and I saw it on live TV. In those days, in the early ones of the shuttle program, the shuttle launches were a TV event at my house, we always watched their beauty and majesty. When we saw the explosion and the smoke ball, we all knew something horrible had happened.

It is a measure of the changed nature of the world that, back then, no one suspected or worried about foul play or terrorists or anything of that nature, it was considered an accident, a design flaw. For this tragedy, a lot of the talking time has been to downplay the idea that terrorists had anything to do with it. Such is the nature of the world we live in.

No American craft previously has failed on re-entry, all of the previous disasters have been on launch, or on the launchpad. Space Travel is not routine, and despite all of the safeguards put into the systems, it is still dangerous buisness, and today, we have horribly seen that.

May God bless the families of the Columbia Seven. Rest in Peace.

In case you wondered where I got the term "Blogosphere", here is the link.

Silver stars to those who guessed it IS a variation on ecosphere.

The alternative I have seen "out there" among the blogs is Blogistan, using a political metaphor.

-istan is a arab suffix meaning "land of". Afghanistan is the land of the Afghans. Pakistan is the land of the Paks (no, really!). Proponents of a Kurdish state have called the theoretical plan "Kurdistan". Oftentimes, India was referred to, by the Mughals, as "Hindustan".

Thus Blogistan is the Land of the Blogs.

See? If it wasn't for me, where else would you get this relatively useless information?

88 Degrees

That's the current temperature here in Orange, Ca.

The normal temperature for this time of the year is just below 70...so it's hot, even for warm and sunny Orange County. Even in a mild El Nino year, this is only the fourth January on record (in 125 years of measurement) without rainfall. Dry and warm. Paradise to some, Californians south of the mountains love this weather. The ski resorts, however (and there are ones close to the LA Basin) are hurting badly in this weather. Their cold and snow and such are dictated by height, not by latitude. The Tehachapis are pretty darned tall, it took some getting used to when the forecasters would talk about snow "at the 5000 foot level". There ARE no mountains that tall, back in New York.
So when it is dry and warm like this, the ski resorts can't even make snow effectively, like their counterparts elsewhere. The news shows the lifts, empty and stalled, the mountainsides bare.

Anyway, Californians seem to believe as a general rule that snow and cold are things to visit rather than experience. Its kind of sad, really, and they really do complain at temperatures that would make a New Yorker laugh, to say nothing of my friends in Michigan and Minnesota. 50 degrees is NOT cold and yet my co-workers complained the other day as we toured the finally finished physical plant because the plant is open to the outside air and a raw wind came through. From their expressions, you'd think it was below freezing. I found it bracing.

Thankfully, this weekend will be cooler, dropping back down toward the low 70's. Still, I MISS snow. After the last rainstorm in December I could see some snow on the tops of the Tehachapis (I can see them from work, there is a good view). But there is, as I said, none there now.

There is, apparently, a new documentary out on the failure of Terry Gilliam's attempts to film his Don Quixote movie, Man of La Mancha. Salon has an article on the documentary.

It's sad. Having just watched and loved The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, to say nothing of Time Bandits, Brazil and Twelve Monkeys, I would have loved to see what he'd have done with Cervantes' work.

Friday Five

2. What was one thing you always wanted as a child but never got?

Hmm, well its still something I want but I don't think it exists anymore. I had a small set and always wanted a larger one. There used to be a company that put out blocks that were a lot like dominos in the sense that you could line them up and have them fall in rows and patterns. These blocks had notches and the like to make them even better at setting up complex sequences. I had a small set, always wanted one of the larger ones, but never got it.

3. What's the furthest from home you've been?

London, England, to see my older brother who was on leave from his army base in Germany at the time.

4. What's one thing you've always wanted to learn but haven't yet?

I'm not good at languages but I would love to learn Latin. I only know a few phrases and the like.

5. What are your plans for the weekend?

See a movie (undecided as to which one), visit the non-Wizards of the Coast gaming store in Orange County, slow cook some chili and watch a few of the new DVDs that came from Netflix, write some turns for Strange Bedfellows and maybe work on some webpages for my Ambercon games.

Quantum Teleportation

Years ago, when I was much younger, my older brother tried to bribe and coerce me into cleaning the house before our parents got home by the offer of letting me read an article on "the teleport". While I knew it really referred to a place, an industrial park, he tried to say otherwise, that it was about real teleportation.

16 years later, this article from the NY Times on a successful "teleportation" of light particles over the distance of a mile.

And yes, in case you were curious, we did wind up cleaning the house, and I did read the article about the industrial park.

"Cyclops-like remains found on Crete".
Thanks to Liz
I had read somewhere before about miniature elephants and mammoths probably being stranded on Mediterranean islands as the basin got flooded from the Atlantic. Indeed, any ancient person coming across one of these fossils would think that the trunk socket was a single giant eye, and thus the skull was of a Cyclops.

An unexpected B-5 fan

Now, thanks to Interesting Times, I've discovered that two people you all know very well like it as well, and I would never have guessed or pegged them as SF fans at all, or B-5 fans in particular:

So I was talking to Doug Netter this afternoon, who had in turn spoken with
Bruce Boxleitner earlier in the day about the year 2 DVD. In the course of
that conversation, Bruce mentioned something that Doug in turn mentioned to me.

To wit:

Bruce had been at the White House about a month ago, in the company of wife
Melissa Gilbert, president of the Screen Actors Guild, for a discussion with
some of the functionaries there concerning acting roles moving north of the
Canadian border.

As they're talking, in a long conference room, in the middle of the meeting the
door oens and Karl Rove -- main strategist for the Republican Party and power
behind the White House throne -- comes in. He says (paraphrased from memory)
to Melissa, "I hope you'll forgive me, but I actually here to see Bruce."

He then tells Bruce, "I just wanted to tell you that I'm a big science fiction
fan, and that Babylon 5 is the best science fiction television series *ever*."

Then there's a pause, and he adds....

"And the President thinks so too."

Upon hearing this, I went to lie down for a spell, but I fully expect to be
back on my feet by Spring, latest.

jms

(jmsatb5@aol.com)
(all message content (c) 2002 by synthetic worlds, ltd.,
permission to reprint specifically denied to SFX Magazine
and don't send me story ideas)

interesting article on the Monkey King and how to use him as a PC patron over on Roll the Bones

I do agree that, with "party of adventurers" games, a metagame device to hold the party together is more elegant and
refined than simply having a suspension of disbelief on the party of the players as to why they are hanging together. For an eastern flavored game, Monkey King works very well for the reasons given, but I wonder what other mythological patrons might work in other contexts and milieus.

Meera is posting to her gaming blog again.

Thanks, Ginger, for the heads up.

Virginia Heinlein, wife of the SF writer Robert Heinlein, has died.

Work has been busy as of late, so I've not had a chance to Blog.

Tampa Bay wins!

I was right about the winner, wrong about the margin. I thought that Oakland could only be slowed down, not driven into the ground by Tampa's nickname-less defense. Sure, I saw that the referees were absolute idiots on several calls, but fortunately they did not decide the game, or else Oakland fans would really think the NFL was out to get them (the infamous "tuck" in the New England-Oakland game last year, for example).

Tampa paid a high price in $ and draft picks to steal Gruden, and it has paid off. Even if TB doesn't win another Super Bowl for the next 25 years, they, like the Jets, say, or the Bears, now have one, and it can't be taken away. I do feel bad that Rich Gannon and Tim Brown, to name two of the older Raiders, might have missed their best chance to get that Super Bowl ring.

Anyway, this will be the last sports entry in BJS for likely five or six months, so enjoy it, o football haters. I don't follow Baseball much, or Basketball, or Hockey. I'm a one-sport kind of guy. Monogamous, you might say.

ROTFL

Just before Jimmy Kimmel's show, there was a clip with Ted Koppel that left me laughing like Mutley.

He explained that there was not going to be a special post-Super Bowl edition of Nightline, "So that ABC can bring you the following
piece of garbage."

Yes, I know it was scripted, and self-depreciating and ironic and all that. But to see Ted Koppel light into Jimmy Kimmel like that was damned
funny.

Ay, Perdido!

Well, I've finished China Mieville's breakthrough fantasy novel,
Perdido Street Station. I actually read it after reading the lackluster (and out of print) Factoring Humanity, by Robert Sawyer.

What did I think of Perdido? Well, the denouement was a little bit of a downer and disappointment to me but the world building was absolutely breathtaking. The city comes alive in his words, a quasi Victorian fantasy megaopolis which seems to owe much to London and third world metropolises, with a lot of different species sharing space. Intelligent cacti! Weird half insect-half human bipeds! The depth and breath of the denizens is often suggested, seen in glimpses, intimated. The magic systems tend toward the quasi-scientific, the rigorous, in line with the 19th century sort of steampunk feel that the rest of the city has.

The characters are quirky and interesting, never devolving into stereotypes or one line notes, either, although one major character's storyline feels a bit off, I think, he is so alien that China doesn't quite pull off getting us to understand the universe of the Garuda and their ethos, and how the character violated it. But aside from those quibbles, the universe of Perdido Street Station is dark, huge, complex and very much well worth your time visiting.

Ginger's WISH #31

Is there any addiction to the feedback gaming provides in the weaving of stories? Unlike traditional tales, gaming allows the input of the players and GM into going “other places,” depending on the interests and desires of those involved…but can that lead to feeding the audience too much of what it likes and not enough challenge? Where in that scale do you measure?

Ginger found it a rather tricky question, and I concur with that assessment. In the game, do you indulge on what your players want too much, thanks to the feedback between players or GM, or do you manage to put up what makes a good story or experience?

It's hard. It's easy for a GM to over-indulge on the players. Ginger mentions the Monty Haul syndrome in D&D and that is a good example of a GM who wants to hold the players by giving them everything they ever wanted. It's a sign, I think, of loneliness, of the need for attention, the need to be liked. I've been there, I understand those motivations all too well. Indulged too far, the game goes to crap and the players soon grow tired of endless +5 longswords and magic items galore.

A D&D campaign I ran a long long time ago suffered a bit from this, and I realized that I was giving the players too much, being too indulgent. So, I trimmed back, ramped up the challenges and made the PCs work for what they had gotten, throwing in twists and turns and bringing the game back to the challenge level that they had once expected.

In Amber, though, for example, the nature of the game sometimes makes this entire question irrelevant. My good friend Scott on the Amber Mailing List expressed a dislike of plot-driven games. It is in those Amber games where this problem can come to the fore. In games where the players have their own plots, their own plans, the tendency toward over-indulgence is tempered when the players conflict with each other (as they invariably do--and Scott is excellent in such situations). Now, in SB, I do have a plot and a very large universe, and one player at least has expressed concerns that the game universe is much larger than it used to be. SB started off small and intimate, and has grown in scale and scope since. I've tried my best to cut the bloat and keep the players interested and the primacy and immediacy of things on the forefront. I think I've succeeded, since I do throw curveballs at the players to deal with, to react, to enliven them. In fact, one character is about due for one, and I think now is a good time to throw it. In the large plot-arc of SB, with the Omphalos and everything else, I do like to throw in non-story arc related things.

Turbulence, without reference to the Steve Howe album, is a cure for the complacency expressed in the feedback gaming. And I get a thrill, and I think the players get a thrill when I do unleash something unexpected at them. Not the +5 longsword that the kobold had in its lair, but, for example, the fact that the town they have been staying in for weeks really has an underlayer of things going on which, when the PCs get an inkling, suddenly have that intimation that things have been too quiet and now the real trouble begins for them.

Netflix

One of my Christmas gifts, thanks to the inestimable Bridgette, was a three month subscription to the DVD rental-by-mail service Netflix. I'm sure that you have seen their pop-up ads.

The funny thing is, so far, I've had a decent experience with them. The mailing time for some of their DVDs has been very inconsistent (sometimes getting a DVD mailed later before one mailed earlier) but the mail around here is kind of kooky. I've avoided going for new releases on the theory that they will be the hardest to rent due to popularity. The way it works is, you can have up to three (sometimes four I've noticed) DVDs out at any one time...and as they receive them back from you, they send you another. Thus there are no late fees, but if you hold onto those DVDs, you won't ever get new ones.

So what have I seen thus far? Well, the following movies/DVD's:

Existenz
Dangerous Beauty
Shakespeare in Love
The Prisoner (Episode 1)
The Five Doctors (Doctor Who)
Flash Gordon (The 1980 movie)
Three Musketeers (1974 version)
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
Mask of Zorro
Dreamscape
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
The Man who knew too little

I've been stealing ideas from things like ginger's recent WISH on movies for gamers, as well as movies I've wanted to see, see again, etal. Any ideas you have I would greatly appreciate.

From the Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

Treason

Pronunciation: 'trE-z&n

Function: noun

Etymology: Middle English tresoun, from Old French traison, from Latin tradition-, traditio act of handing over, from tradere to hand over, betray

Date: 13th century

1 : the betrayal of a trust : TREACHERY

2 : the offense of attempting by overt acts to overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes allegiance or to kill or personally injure the sovereign or the sovereign's family

Treason is a very serious charge, not to be bandied about lightly. It's one of the things specified in the U.S.Consititution. What does it say? I'm glad you asked.

From Article III of the Constitution:

Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.

The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted.

Basically, what Ann Coulter is implying, insinuating is that liberals are levying war against the United States, or giving aid and comfort to our enemies. Pretty strong stuff, Ann.

Is there dissent against George Bush? Absolutely. But that is the American process. Was I being treasonous when I thought that William Jefferson Clinton was a lying sack of crap who diminished the office of the US with the antics of his personal life? I think not.