The summer heat breaks and the rains roll in off the gulf.
And the flowers, molds, or mildews have a sexual frenzy.
And I go on a full course of 12-hour antihistamines and 4-hour decongestants and expectorants. If my sleep isn't disrupted by the stimulant effect of the decongestants, it's disrupted by the asthma.
The most frustrating part of asthma, for me, isn't the struggling to breathe. It's that each breath is such a struggle your body becomes exhausted, and you can't sleep because your autonomous system alone can't put enough effort into breathing.
For me, too, it's only a factor when my circadian rhythms are at their ebb and I'm not upright and active. It takes both conditions. If I were to swap ends of the clock, I might even be OK. I can usually take mid-afternoon naps even during the worst of times.
If I could sleep with my chest elevated at an angle, that would help, but I'm a committed side sleeper, to the point that I simply do not go to sleep unless I have a non-trivial pressure on the side of my face.
I hear other people, non-asthmatics, talk about having bronchitis in generally fearful tones, and it always makes me wonder. Do I not get bronchitis, or am I so used to it that I don't see it as anything special? I think it must be the latter. And since I am really quite aware of the difference between the mild asthma I get on season and the life-threatening asthma that a few million people struggle with every day, I think non-charitable thoughts about the people who just get the occasional upper-respiratory problem. They don't have it worse than me, and I have it pretty easy.
But enough whining and self-martyrdom. At least it's not camel-killing hot any more.
I'd like people to stop pretending that we're having some sort of national security crisis here, and that it justifies anything drastic. We are having a bit of an economic crisis, but that's a wholly different animal.
We're not having a war crisis. We're not rationing goods and supplies. We don't have air raid drills. We don't have a draft. We're not in the process of losing most of a generation of males.
We are a rhino shrugging off biting flies, that's all. Afghanistan and Iraq aren't other rhinos. It diminishes us to act as if they were.
The best question I've heard raised about President Bush's war drums is pretty simple, and I wish I remembered where it came from: Containment worked pretty well against the Soviet Union's weapons of mass destruction for thirty-five years. Why won't it work against Iraq?
Obviously, the difference is that we couldn't have invaded the Soviets and we can Iraq, but that doesn't give us the right. We're the good guys. We have to hit second. A hundred years of western movies should have taught us nothing less.
Friday's Firefly, the third episode, was far and away the best they've shown. The characters showed some measure of personality, the dialog had some crackle, and the story had some clever bits.
Kudos particularly to guest actress Christine Hendricks for executing a well- written part.
Admittedly, this is still only one interesting episode out of three. And the incident at the net needed an SF writer to stick some exposition in; it's probably salvageable, but with no caveats it was just dumb.
Still, maybe the series will merit some patience.
CNN reports that SCOTUS has turned down the Republican appeal in the New Jersey Senate race case.
Not much of a surprise, really. The Republicans, who, like the Democrats, are win-at-all-costs types (the Republicans are bigger pricks, though), are taking another tack:
Meanwhile, attorneys for Forrester were going to federal court in Trenton, New Jersey to argue that the Voting Rights Act was violated by the switch of Democratic candidates.
That hearing involves a lawsuit filed by two voters -- a U.S. Army doctor, Kevin Reilly, in Hawaii and a man living in Paris -- who say they already cast their ballots in the race. They are being represented by Forrester's legal team.
I expect this one to get bounced as well. It's not a due process violation. The SCONJ order appointed a special master to oversee the ballot reprinting and, in particular, to expedite the overseas absentee ballots. That special master will have the job of making sure that there's a procedure for everybody who requested an absentee ballot to automatically get a replacement ballot. After that, the state's requirement for due process is basically met, especially considering NJ's particularly liberal absentee-ballot return policy: You can return your absentee ballot by fax.
According to the brief in opposition, only four absentee ballots had been returned by this point in the contest. The court is going to look closely at claims that those four guys (or the thousand or so absentee ballots sent out before the SCONJ order replacing Torricelli) are in any notable danger of losing their right to vote.
UPDATED: As predicted, the District Court bounced the Voting Rights Act claim, more or less contemporaneously with the SCOTUS order.
Forbes ranks the top fifteen richest fictional characters here.
It's not a bad list. It's got some flaws and some points worth noting.
#8: Lex Luthor ($4.7B). Well, first off, the real Lex, the Earth-1 version, isn't notably rich unless he wants to be, and then it only lasts until Superman puts an end to his scheme. He's a mad scientist and one of the most productive technologists in comics (along with Reed Richards and Tony Stark). The post-Crisis Lex, unfortunately, is just a corrupt businessman. He is, however, an extremely successful corrupt businessman. $4.7B is, I think, a factor of two or three low for Lex's personal holdings. He controls much more, of course--extensive holdings in real estate, industry and technology sectors. And Lex is not the kind of guy who would settle for control in lieu of ownership; I think he would tend to accumulate wealth under his own name as well as in his company. A guy with his personality in his position is definitely going to be worth more than the Mars family ($10B).
#7: Bruce Wayne ($6.3B). As with Lex, this number probably refers to Bruce's personal holdings, not the holdings he controls. He's inexplicably characterized as a software magnate; Wayne Enterprises is a technology concern. It's also large enough to have a billion+ dollar skunkworks (for the bat-toys) hidden in the accounting cracks. Still, Bruce's ownership of Wayne Enterprises is probably less than Lex's ownership of Lexcorp.
#5: Thurston Howell III ($8B). I'm really not sure where this number is coming from, even inflation-adjusted from 1964. Howell was probably a member of the low-nine figure club in the mid-1960s. He was shackled to a strong board of directors, which probably means his personal stake in Howell Industries was small compared to HI's worth. It seems unlikely that his personal fortune would have swelled so over the years.
#4: Scrooge McDuck ($8.2B). This is probably off by an order of magnitude. Forbes inexplicably claims that his wealth is only in cash form. While he does have 3 cubic acres of money, including anywhere from 10% to 50% in gold and silver coinage, he also has extensive holdings in timber, rubber, mining, real estate, aerospace, robotics, shipping, and other industries, all of which he owns completely. He still only ends up at #3, ahead of Daddy Warbucks, but with a much greater total. (And note that Flintheart Glomgold, his South African nemesis, should be on the world list one notch behind Scrooge.)
#2: Richie Rich ($24.7B). Technically, this should probably be a collective entry for Richie and his parents, but eh. The Rich's may well be trillionnaires in a real world sense (they certainly are within their own universe). It's more difficult to assess the Rich's fortune even than Scrooge McDuck, because the Rich's are even more cartoonish in their displays of wealth-- diamond baseballs instead of baseball diamonds--which simply have no analog in the real world. Still, within their own context, it should be clear that the Rich's are wealthier than Scrooge McDuck.
#1: Santa ($inf). OK, whatever.
The list omits one major American:
Tony Stark: Chairman, CEO, and Chief Technologist of Stark Enterprises. Tony's been up and down the wealth chart a lot, and who can say where he is these days? At his peak, Stark was the top government and SHIELD defense contractor. Tony's about as rich as Daddy Warbucks (Forbes' #3 at $10B).
A couple of others left off the list, because they're not American:
Ozma: Ruler of the Marvelous Land of Oz. Discounting the incalculable value of, for example, the Magic Belt, Ozma's capital city is encrusted with emeralds of a size to rival the Rich's jewels. Ozma's control over Oz is tentative in many regions, but the territory she does control is very prosperous. Ozma's personal wealth probably exceeds Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal al-Saud ($20B), the highest- ranked potentate on Forbes' world list.
Dr. Victor Von Doom: Ruler of Latveria. A mad scientist and pre-eminent technologist comparable to his rival Reed Richards, Doom rules Latveria with an iron fist, and has made his tiny Balkan country prosperous and powerful, if hyper-authoritarian. Doom's personal capital probably exceeds $5B.
I'm not one for writing about gaming, as opposed to writing for gaming, but considered how many campaigns I've run or gamed in for many of the people participating in Ginger's Game WISH discussions, I figure I might be able to say a word or two of some relevance.
List three or more maxims/proverbs/bits of conventional wisdom/etc. that you've learned in your gaming career, and explain what they mean and how you've seen them apply in your gaming experience.
"Get 'em" always works. This is in reference to the issue of characters planning a caper of one kind or another--how to assault the supervillain stronghold, how to rescue the captured princess again, how to steal the Maguffin Device. Instead of an elaborate caper, it's usually enough to just stage a reasonably simple assault.
GMing capers is hard for me, and so I have probably contributed directly to the development of "Get 'em" as a plan in my gaming circles. Issues: Planning takes a long time, which not all players enjoy. If the characters have access to reasonable intelligence, they will have a well-thought out plan. Saying "It works" is anticlimactic; fucking with the plan makes the GM seem arbitrary and anti-party. (Fucking with a plan when it has an obvious hole, however, is necessary.) If the party doesn't have reasonable intelligence, they're not going to be able to come up with a sophisticated plan.
And, since GMs are usually on the party's side, "Get 'em" usually does work, as the GM manipulates the tactical situation so as not to simply annihilate the characters. On a few occasions, I've specifically told players when "Get 'em" wouldn't work, when relaxing the tactical situation simply wasn't reasonable.
If mood's important, I probably shouldn't be involved. Not much of a generally applicable maxim, but nonetheless, it's an important lesson for my gaming career. Games I'm in don't have much mood. It's not just gothic horror, it's gothic horror plus cynical witticisms. It's not just pirates of the Mediterranean, it's pirates of the Meditterranean with anachronistic pop culture references. It's not sword & sorcery, it's sword & sorcery & sarcasm.
It's not just me, of course; the other GMs and players are just as likely to break mood. But, then, of course, I'm much more likely to want to play with people with a similar style of play. But the consequence is that the GM can read as much flavor text as she likes, and one of the players will pop off a punning reference linking the flavor text to Scooby-Doo.
I game to have fun, and it's fun to game with friends doing exactly what we do, but it does mean that there are lots of games I can't run or play in. It's a specific example of the general principle that GM and players should have shared expectations about the nature of the game.
"That thing, that thing we talked about." Said in response to the GM asking the player "Why doesn't that attack affect you?" or "How are you able to do that?"
Characters accumulate defenses, particularly to attacks the GM has already thrown at them. If a character spends most of a combat blinded by a Flash Attack, the character buys Flash Defense and only secondarily worries about how appropriate it is to the character. If a GM isn't careful, this can rapidly lead to wars of escalation and creeping munchkinism.
Characters also accumulate offenses. It becomes increasingly difficult to limit or dissuade a character; where a locked door once sent them looking for another way around, later a blank stone wall won't necessarily keep them out.
Players also realize that a GM has a lot to keep track of, and find it useful to let the GM forget about their special trinket until they can spring it on her as a surprise nullifier for the GM's latest trick.
I find that this kind of escalation makes high-end campaigns much harder to manage.
The film Spirited Away is now playing in limited release in most large US cities. It's from director Hayao Miyazaki and his Studio Ghibli team, creators of such films as My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, and Princess Mononoke.
You should make plans to see it immediately.
Spirited Away is the story of a young girl named Chihiro whose parents accidentally lead the family into an abandoned theme park. Chihiro explores the spooky park while her parents gorge themselves on food left unattended in one of the park's stalls. When night falls, Chihiro finds herself trapped in the park, her parents turned into pigs. Although she finds an unexpected ally in the boy Haku, Chihiro is forced to work for the witch Yubaba, who runs the park as a bathhouse for spirits.
Chihiro has to work hard and endure a series of tests along the way toward rescuing her parents, helping Haku and other friends in the bathhouse, and escaping back into the real world, doing a lot of growing up along the way.
The film, like everything Studio Ghibli has produced, is in beautiful full- motion, traditional color animation, the equal to Walt Disney's best. Released in Japan last year, it became that country's highest grossing film ever (above Titanic and Princess Mononoke) and was a co-winner of the Golden Bear award for best film at the Berlin Film Festival.
Pixar's John Lasseter supervised the English dubbing, which was directed and produced by old Disney hands. Unsurprisingly, both Pixar and the House of Mouse, the current leaders in American animation, harbor fervent Miyazaki fans at all levels. For all that the dubbing process was rushed, the script is natural and the voice actors were cast well and performed well.
Spirited Away is only lightly touched by Japanese culture, having about the same relationship to Japanese myth as Alice in Wonderland does to Western myth. About the only thing you'd need to know is that traditional Japanese myth, Shinto, at its core, is animism: everything has a spirit, and the more important the thing, the more important the spirit. Otherwise, the story is universal in character.
The film is long, especially compared to American animated films, and has a deliberate pace. Miyazaki's films are so beautiful that they take ample pauses to allow you to appreciate their beauty. The production design displays ample imagination and creativity.
I did not find the story particularly compelling on an emotional level, but I also never found that to be to the film's detriment. Chihiro's plight was interesting, and it was fun to watch her manage her troubles. That was enough to keep me happy.
You should see this film if you like animation--Studio Ghibli are the last masters of traditional animation--or if you like fairy tales. Very small children may be frightened or confused by some of the events, and it does require a significant attention span.
On The West Wing, it has become increasingly evident to the point that even my own obliviousness cannot miss it that President Bartlet is running against George W. Bush. The parallels are obvious, of course--governor of Florida, the Dickensian implications of the name "Ritchie", social conservative, non-intellectual with "good advisors". Last night's episode, "Red Mass", was planning exactly the sort of offensive against Ritchie that liberals like me want used against Bush. Sorkin is running Bartlet against Bush. I'd vote for Jed.
I'm also intrigued by the Qumar plot introduced at the end of last season. The escalation in last night's episode is taking Bartlet's administration straight into a very nasty war, forced to fight in the Persian Gulf with Israel as the only ally in the region. Sorkin's got me on the hook again, after last season's fairly lackluster outing.
The premiere of Birds of Prey was OK. There are some mistakes. Oracle's first modern-day scene had, in the opening seconds, two errors: Oracle doesn't need and shouldn't have a job--she should be living off bat-money and concentrating on her intelligence duties; and Barbara Gordon has an eidetic memory and wouldn't forget someone's name.
The episode struggled with exposition throughout, dealing with it tediously and failing to give what I would consider important background. Who was Selina Kyle when she wasn't Catwoman? Why was Barbara Gordon a friend of the family? Is there a public explanation of Bruce Wayne's disappearance? What is the relationship of the Birds to the Wayne Foundation?
Rachel Skarsten was less irritating that I expected, but I'm still very disappointed with what Dinah Lance is compared to the comic original. I like Helena Wayne, if only because of my Earth-2 fetish, but the character in the show is certainly adequate. Oracle, aside from the relatively trivial detail of the eidetic memory, was well-done; I particularly noted that Dina Meyer displayed adroitness with her wheelchair.
Overall, I'll give it at least a couple more episodes. I hope they mine the Bat- mythos deeply.
The 2004 election is the first one in which I'll be eligible to run for President, so I thought I'd start laying down the groundwork for my campaign now, by talking about my platform.
I'm actually well ahead of the game, as it turns out. I asked my good friend and Lager Rhythms tenor Angelo Benedetto if he'd be my Chief of Staff when I was elected, and he immediately responded, "Greg, I'm not even going to vote for you, ever, for any elected office." So, already, I've done a pretty good job getting my views out to the public.
Platform plank #1: Tax the rich. In the past, we've heard complaints that only a flat income tax can be fair. I'm here to tell you taxes ain't about being fair. Taxes are about paying for the government. By any casual inspection--the 1996 Telecommunications Act, the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act, the 2001 Bankruptcy Reform Act, the Vice President's Energy Task Force, the 2001 tax package--big corporations and rich people are getting all the government they could possibly want. It's only fair to make them pay for it.
I'd start by raising the maximum yearly contribution to social security (now reached at around $77K/year) into the six figures. I'd also jack up corporate tax rates and the tax rate on the highest income bracket. Back in the 1950s, the top income bracket tax rate was between 80% and 95%, so I don't want to hear any whining when I bring it back to 50%.
I'd also raise the standard deduction, because the government doesn't need poor people's money; we don't do much for them in the first place.
Platform plank #2: Pay raises for teachers. Big ones. Also cookie bouquets. See, teaching (and nursing) used to be part of the pink collar ghetto. Because of cultural biases, even the most talented and motivated women tended to end up in jobs like teaching. With a guaranteed supply of good workers, we got used to paying them diddly squat. Come the 1970s and Women's Lib, though, women were no longer channeled into the pink collar jobs. Talented and motivated women could pursue any career and rise to any height. The result: a shortage of talented and motivated teachers, and the ones that we did have were demoralized.
One of the important lessons I learned when I graduated and got a real job is that money may not make you happy, but having a little more than enough goes a very long way toward not staying unhappy. If we pump up teachers' salaries, we'll make the ones we've got happier and better motivated, and we'll attract more and better new teachers.
Also, probably, more money for high school ROTC programs. There is ample evidence that a dollar spent on a soldier is a dollar that goes toward making a person a more successful, more productive member of society. As a believer in the foolish ideal that government can contribute to a better society, I'm all over government helping to make more productive members of society.
And massive tax writeoffs for musicians who volunteer at schools, because, frankly, Johnny Rzeznik teaching a semester at Roosevelt Franklin (bop) Elementary School is worth it.
Platform plank #3: Newsprint subsidies for newspapers that print comic strips the size they were in the 1920s. This is self-explanatory.
Platform plank #4: Promotion of democracy worldwide even when it doesn't serve the US's immediate short-term interests. E.g., "Prince Saud, I just wanted to say, we enjoy doing business with your country, we appreciate the opportunity to defend your ass by your allowing us to base our planes and soldiers in your country, and we love your oil. So when are you going to allow free and democratic elections?"
Platform plank #5: White House wedding. I'm a bachelor, so every week, you can tune in and watch me go on "fantasy dates" with a group of beautiful women competing to become First Lady. *Candidacy sponsored by Fox.
More to come as we approach the all-important Iowa caucuses.
From Writ:
Recently Bush announced that U.S. humanitarian aid to Afghanistan--which only amounted to approximately $300 million dollars altogether, or only slightly more than a dollar for each U.S. citizen--would only go to build roads. All money for health, education, and other projects will be cut off starting this month.
A quick search doesn't turn up confirmation of the announcement, but did turn up some indication that this isn't quite as dire as the author indicates; we've basically given what we promised, and we're not going to give any more except roads.
Nonetheless, I'm still appalled. That's not nearly enough. We've been there less than a year and we're abandoning Afghanistan already, again? There's continuing trouble with warlords, the government's not particularly stable, and the country is still the grindingly-poor hovel left after the Soviets withdrew and we abandoned them the first time.
It embarrasses us to conduct a war this way. It embarrasses us to have such a short attention span. We should have planned to have significant numbers of troops there for a couple of years. We should have planned for three to five years of generous reconstruction aid. We are the good guys, dammit.
The problem is the guys in charge think of us as Tony Stark and I want to think of us as Bruce Wayne.
Jason Modisette updates me on the Afghanistan situation:
[Jason] poked around a bunch of government and UN websites. Most of this info is from a 2-week old report, some older.
What we are doing in Afghanistan
The US has committed $527 mil of aid to Afghanistan in fiscal year 2002; this includes what has already been done and what's budgeted. It spent an additional $187 million in 2001. This is up since before the war: the total UN aid since 1988 has been a total of about $1 billion.
I'm elevating this from a comment to the main page, because folks should be sure to see it. My friend Jason Modisette has done some more research:
Here's a comparison between the Marshall Plan from 1948 to 1953 and the Afghan aid from 2001 to 2002. (I know the Marshall Plan technically ended in 1951, but historians seem to treat the end as more 1953.)I think most of us would probably be appalled that we're spending so little on the people of AfghanistanMarshall Plan
aid per year = $2.5 billion (1950 dollars)
US GDP = $40 billion (1950 dollars)
pop of europe = 550 million (1950)
% GDP per 550 million people = 6.0%
Afghan aid
aid per year = $0.5 billion (2000 dollars)
US GDP = $10 trillion (2000 dollars)
pop of afghanistan = 25 million
% GDP per 550 million people = 0.1%
So the Afghan aid is about 1/60 of a Marshall Plan in terms of how much it hurts us per unit population.
Chuck Kuffner et al. ask us to support Ron Kirk for U.S. Senate from Texas.
That would be a woo-howdy, yes, sir. Even putting aside the ever-more-tempting straight Democrat ticket, John Cornyn is clinging so desperately to Bush that I'm vaguely nauseated. The man's platform seems to be "I have no will of my own, and President Bush is my prophet". Votin' against every fool critter in sight is a long and hallowed American tradition.
Ron Kirk certainly seems to be an able politician and I don't vomit on his platform at first glance, which for Texas politics is a pretty hearty endorsement.
It's also critical for me to vote for Ron Kirk to help the Democrats hold control of the Senate...which brings me to a digression.
One of the reasons I favor the independent-executive model (U.S.) of democratic government over the parliamentary model (everybody else) is that in the parliamentary model, the executive is always allied with the legislature. To pull out a hoary old phrase, there are no checks and balances in such a system; the exec and lege can do whatever fool thing they think of.
In contrast, in the U.S. model, it is far more often than not that the party controlling the executive does not control one or more of the houses of the legislature. The result is that new legislation tends to take a middle path. Ideas and approaches have to fight harder to win out, and that seems likely to make them stronger.
It is true, I'll concede, that the parliamentary model can react faster and more extremely to an emergency, when fast and extreme action are warrnated, than the U.S. model. The U.S. has managed to skip most of the worst parts of the downside to its model, fortunately; the biggest emergency of the last century was the Great Depression and WWII, and for much of that time, FDR's Democrats had a 2/3rds majority or better in both houses of Congress.
In short, therefore, I think it is worthwhile for a country to have tension between the legislature and the executive, and so it is particularly worthwhile for the Democrats to retain control of the Senate.
Were it not for 9/11, I have no doubt whatsoever that the Democrats would have solid control of both the House and Senate after the upcoming mid-terms; as it is, I can't tell how it's going to come out.
It is worth pointing out that the statistics Jason put together below are comparing, at least somewhat, apples to oranges.
Our current Afghanistan aid is largely for the immediate amelioration of the refugee problem: food, shelter, refugee camps, etc.
By the time the Marshall Plan was started in Europe (1948), we had already spent three years helping the European DP situation (displaced person, in the jargon of the times). The Marshall Plan had only to concern itself with rebuilding Europe's shattered infrastructure.
However, as the USAID report makes clear, the Afghanistan refugee problem is nearing an end. Now is when we should start implementing an Afghanistan Marshall Plan, when we should start building an infrastructure for Afghanistan.
I'd be much faster to support President Bush if I thought he had a Marshall Plan in him for Afghanistan, Iraq, or any other adventures he decides to take us along on to try and earn re-election. I don't think he does.
How do you use props in your game? Give three examples, and discuss why you use them. What do they bring to the game? Are there any downsides to using them? For those who do convention games, are there differences between the props you use in campaigns and the props you use for con rounds?
On a typical night, I use a large battlemat and a bunch of Cardboard Heroes. I don't have a miniature collection of my own (I rely on borrowing Ginger's and never returning them), and in any case, game far away from my home so that my ability to transport large volumes of props is limited.
However, I am firmly of the opinion that each time you improve your props, you improve your players' experience the same amount. The difference between writing initials in a tactical map on the whiteboard and using Cardboard Heroes on a battlemat is enormous. Using actual miniatures is another huge step forward.
The upper end of my prop-using experience is without a doubt the Master Maze modular dungeon sets from Dwarven Forge. These things are absolutely terrific and fantastically fun to play with. (Mage Knight's Dungeon Artifacts sets are very nice supplements to DF sets.)
As noted above, because I play far away from home, I don't get to use my Master Maze stuff very often. I mostly just run Master Maze sessions at Owlcon and at a gaming minicon, and my audiences uniformly love them. (Again, I'm parasiting off Ginger's miniature collection, as well as the few sets of pre-painted figs available in the marketplace, for use in the Master Maze dungeons I build) I'm prepping a huge dungeon--nine sets, including the traps set--now as a special treat for my weekend game.