Radio Free Genderfuck
[Most Recent Entries]
[Calendar View]
[Friends]
Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
djtiresias' LiveJournal:
[ << Previous 20 ]
| Monday, August 15th, 2005 | | 1:59 pm |
I think that I'm going to go back to using ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) balthial, my old journal. I dumped it because too many people I knew in real life read it, but in retrospect I think that's ok. Anyway, I would love to have you all over there. Edit: I think I added all of you to my Friends list there, if I missed you drop me a line. | | 10:28 am |
Moral Dilemmas First, some random info: A very apt, chilling way of talking about women's issues: ...women in America have many problems, including rape. But the situation women face in Pakistan and other developing countries is an order of magnitude worse. One measure of that is that there are more women than men in America and women have a longer life expectancy. It’s the opposite in most of Asia, because females do not have the same access as males to food and medical care.
-Kristoff Responds
Weirdest Website Ever: Hottest Men of the New York Times . The weirdest part is, no one nominated John Tierny:  For people who love bad news: beawitness.org flash. Thoughts: You hear a lot of "Bush has asked soldiers to make the ultimate sacrifice, while not asking the rest of us for anything at all" and "Why isn't anyone doing anything about Darfur?" (If you play Exalted, you've gotten a lot more between the lines moralizing.) These sentiments strike me as accurate - why arn't we doing anything about the moral crises in the world? But we arn't. I'm not. I occasionally give someone $10 or post a blog entry or cast a vote, but that's it. I'm not doing anything about it. Are any of you? What should I make of this? If those of us who are well educated and (somewhat) sensitive to world issues don't do jack, who will? But what do you do, and how do you do it in such a way that it doesn't just make you crazy? I ask these as serious questions, not grandstanding. I don't know why none of us are doing anything about moral issues, and it troubles me. | | 8:39 am |
John Crawford's book, the Last True Story I'll Ever Tell, is amazing. I looked through it in the Barnes and Noble yesterday and ended up reading 50 pages. Very well written, very fast, but there's a lot to learn there. Heavily reccomended. | | Saturday, August 13th, 2005 | | 3:08 pm |
From [ Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<lj-user="benlehmen">') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.] From <lj-user="benlehmen">
"I had a stupid gag for a Cyberpunk parody novel: After the Japanese have bought all of California, they rename all the cities like this:
Diego-san
Jose-san
Francisco-san
Enselmo-san" | | 2:27 pm |
| | Friday, August 12th, 2005 | | 11:32 am |
Just finished Half-Blood Prince. I'm really curious about the next book. Not the big Voldemort plot, cuz its a little cheesy, more the personal aspects. So far, there's been a big dose of normal life in all of the books - Quidittich, the Dursleys, exams. What will the dose of normal be in book 7? Will Harry move out, and if so, where will he live, and who will he meet?
Anyway, I loved the book. I wonder if its possible to do something similiar, only more sophisticated and adult. hmmmm. | | Tuesday, August 9th, 2005 | | 7:36 pm |
I feel that Furries ought to be funnier than they are. They're still good for a giggle though. ( Read more... ) | | Sunday, August 7th, 2005 | | 11:38 pm |
After reading Neph's commentary, I went out and bought Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. My little sister stole it promptly. She graciously loaned me Order of the Phoenix, which I'm now reading. Its an amazing book for someone who likes to analyze popular literature and fantasy worlds (ie, me.) Her world is incredibly well thought out and thematically consistent. Fantasy authors have a lot to learn from her - and why havn't they, given her immense popularity? From a writing perspective, I can see why the books are so much fun.
Almost every sentence could provide some new and wonderful fact or piece of writing. I think its the literary equivalent of a slot machine: intermittent positive reinforcement. Maybe I'm overthinking it.
Anyway, I love the book and the world. I hope someone will pick up the cooler elements of the book and work them into their own novel. Hopefully, it will have a somewhat more adult and somewhat less British perspective. The frequent food scenes always make me wonder what's going on in the rest of the world. British food totally ruins suspension of disbelief. 3D sports played on broomsticks I can accept, rashers and toast strike me as the work of a nefarious cumin thief.
So uh, yeah. Hope to finish OP in the next day or two and start on HBP in a week or two. | | Tuesday, August 2nd, 2005 | | 8:01 pm |
One of the most important (or loudest, anyway) occurences in Asia right now is the anger between China and Japan. This New York Times article summarizes it pretty well. ( Read more... )I always judge the Japanese much more harshly for their racism. Partially because they're a wealthy democracy whose had a long time to deal with these issues. Partially cuz I like China so much. Partially because everytime I watch Anime, the blatant sexism make me want to start yelling about how my Grandfather prosecuted those damn Nip war criminals in Taiwan. Partially cuz, I dunno, its just so much fun to beat up on the Japanese. In case you never knew, I'm not always a very nice person. | | 9:53 am |
Iron Heroes First Impressions
Bought Iron Heroes first thing yesterday, spent an hour or two reading through it. Lots of interesting combat tactics in there. If you run crunchy D&D with all the trimmings, you might find a lot to love in the book. The new special abilities give a warrior type a lot more options in combat. The new feats and classes let you distinguish 8+ different types of fighter. He also introduced some things which needed to be in the game since Day 3, such as skill challenges. (power attack for skills, basically.) Generally, the design looks solid if a little rough around the edges.
The writing is horrible, though. His writing is wordy, convoluted, and generally unreadable. Grammatical mistakes jump at you. Some paragraphs I read three times and still didn't understand. The bazillion complicated subsystems didn't help. Do I really need class features, token pools, AND feat mastery? Between the systems and the writing, the game looks unusable.
But again, the systems are great. I'm going to steal as many of his ideas as I can in my own d20ish work. I highly reccomend the book to anyone who has the d20 skills and patience to use. | | 9:25 am |
Thoughts on Abortion Prompted by John Snead's latest commentary: "Abortion is murder" is, to me, an intellectually coherent statement: It's internally consistent, you could defend in a class on logic. (As opposed to, say, the "strict constructionist" view of Judicial Philosophy.) "Abortion is a human right" is not, to me, a coherent statement. Women have the right to not have children. I think a perfectly valid solution is "Don't have sex." Sex without risk is not a human right. We have the right to have and enjoy consensual sex, sure. But risk is in the biology. To me, abortion is a question without an obvious answer. Personally, I am prochoice. If we're not sure if something should be illegal or not, it should probably be legal. If abortion raises the quality of life (I think it does), then it should probably be legal. I think the politics are driven by that "Don't have sex" part. To some people, "Women, be chaste" is awfully appealing. Those people are, I think, sexist and hypocritical. They lobby againist abortion, but they have a closet full of hardcore porn. (how did the porn get made, asshole?) And they arn't prepared to make fathers truly responsible for their children. Those with Christian motivations can be even more hypocritical. Divorce is OK, being rich is ok, but abortion is sinful - which Bible are they reading? The prochoice people have problems with the "Don't have sex" part as well. Prochoicers seem to think "women have the right to not have kids, so abortion needs to be legal." The possibility of not having sex is impossible to consider. Or they don't see any reason why abortion might be wrong because of what abortion is, not because of the condition that necessitated the abortion. Anyway, those are my long winded thoughts. Opinions? | | Wednesday, July 27th, 2005 | | 9:22 am |
I agree with Friedman 100% here. The US needs to stop squabbling about internal issues and see the big picture: ( Read more... )I hope this guy wins:July 27, 2005 Veteran of Iraq, Running in Ohio, Is Harsh on Bush By JAMES DAO CINCINNATI, July 22 - In the Second Congressional District of Ohio, which Republicans have controlled for the last two decades, the quickest route to political oblivion could be the one chosen by Paul L. Hackett: calling President Bush a "chicken hawk" for not serving in Vietnam and harshly criticizing the decision to invade Iraq. But Mr. Hackett, the Democratic candidate in the Aug. 2 special Congressional election, is not an ordinary politician. Until four months ago, he was serving in the Marines, commanding a civil affairs unit in Iraq. If Mr. Hackett is elected, he will become the first member of Congress to have served in the Iraq war. That alone has helped Mr. Hackett, a 43-year-old lawyer, unexpectedly turn this potential walkover into a sharply contested race. "When you tell people he just got back from Iraq, they stop and listen," said Timothy Burke, the chairman of the Democratic Party in Hamilton County, one of seven southern Ohio counties in the district. "He'd not have nearly as many people paying attention to him if it weren't for that initial grabber." Mr. Hackett's Republican opponent, Jean Schmidt, has poured more than $200,000 of her own money into her campaign and traveled tirelessly across the district. Her campaign has received tens of thousands of dollars from national Republican committees, and Mr. Bush has agreed to record a telephone message that will be delivered the weekend before the special election. "I'm a runner, and when you are overconfident, that's when you see your competition's shadow," said Ms. Schmidt, 53, who has completed 54 marathons. "And I won't see his." The candidates are competing to fill the seat held for 12 years by Rob Portman, who resigned to become Mr. Bush's trade representative. Mr. Portman routinely won the district, which stretches from poverty-stricken communities along the Ohio River to affluent Cincinnati suburbs, with more than 70 percent of the vote. The national Democratic Party initially ignored the race. But Mr. Hackett has changed some minds, and the party has begun dispatching young staff members to the field, hoping to send a message that Mr. Bush is weak in one of his most loyal districts. In addition, the Democratic strategist James Carville was the headliner of an event in Cincinnati on July 19 that raised nearly $100,000 for Mr. Hackett, who trails Ms. Schmidt in fund-raising three to one. On Thursday, Max Cleland, a former Democratic senator from Georgia and a Vietnam veteran, campaigned with Mr. Hackett, calling his decision to volunteer for Iraq "an act of conscience." "Someone who has led on the battlefield, that's the kind of person you want to see in the United States Congress," Mr. Cleland said at a rally in Blue Ash. Mr. Hackett, the son of a traveling salesman, joined the Marine Corps in college and was honorably discharged in 1999. He joined again in 2004, commanding a civil affairs unit in Ramadi and Falluja. A lean 6-foot-4, he is garrulous, profane and quick with a barbed retort or a mischievous joke. He and his wife, Suzi, have three children, ages 8, 4 and 1. If he loses the race, he says, he will probably return to Iraq next year. Ms. Schmidt is the daughter of a well-known local banker who owned Indianapolis race car teams on the side. Small, wiry and intense, she exudes seriousness and is given to long pauses before answering questions. She is married to an investment counselor, Peter, and they have a 27-year-old daughter. Mr. Hackett, who said he had never had political ambitions before, jumped into the race the day he returned from Iraq in March when a friend told him about Mr. Portman's nomination. Ms. Schmidt, a former state representative, said she formed an exploratory committee, studied a straw poll and contemplated the race for a week before joining the crowded Republican primary. The candidates are even more different on most issues. Ms. Schmidt supports making Mr. Bush's tax cuts permanent, but offers no plans for closing the federal deficit other than trimming "unnecessary pork" and bureaucratic inefficiency. Mr. Hackett opposes making those cuts permanent, asserting that troops in Iraq are not receiving adequate supplies or benefits. Ms. Schmidt, a leader of Right to Life of Greater Cincinnati, wants abortion outlawed. Mr. Hackett says he opposes abortion but believes government should not dictate a woman's health care decisions. The two, however, support broad gun rights. His opposition to banning assault weapons has gotten Mr. Hackett, who says he owns military-style rifles and has a permit to carry concealed weapons, into arguments with many Democrats. "The Democratic Party is wrong on this," he said. "We don't want government dictating a woman's right to choose. How do I tell people it's O.K. to dictate their gun ownership?" Mr. Bush has also emerged as an issue. Ms. Schmidt contends people in the district, which voted 64 percent for Mr. Bush last year, adore the president. Her only difference with the administration, she said, is on Mr. Bush's proposal to create private accounts in Social Security, which she says could be risky. Mr. Hackett has been bluntly dismissive of Mr. Bush, saying the United States should have focused on capturing Osama bin Laden instead of invading Iraq so quickly. In a public forum, he called Mr. Bush the biggest threat facing the United States, a remark that has infuriated voters, Republicans say. Yet Mr. Hackett has also tried to exploit Mr. Bush's popularity here, opening his lone television commercial with Mr. Bush saying, "There is no higher calling than service in our armed forces." Republicans have derided the spot as hypocritical. "I want to win," Mr. Hackett replied. Democrats are also hoping that disgust with a scandal involving the administration of the Republican governor, Bob Taft, and a Republican coin dealer who is accused of misappropriating $13 million from a state workers compensation fund will hold down Republican turnout. Mr. Hackett has tried to tarnish Ms. Schmidt's integrity as well, criticizing her for not disclosing free tickets to a Cincinnati Bengals football game she received from a lobbyist last year. Ms. Schmidt blamed the lobbyist for the oversight, and has repaid him $644. But Ms. Schmidt is a proven battler, having bested several better-known candidates, including Pat DeWine, the son of Senator Mike DeWine, in the primary. She contends that although voters respect Mr. Hackett's military service, it will not be the deciding factor. At the Warren County fair, where Ms. Schmidt bought a 230-pound pig from a 9-year-old girl and watched a demolition derby, Charles Hartman, a Democrat turned Republican, agreed. "It's a positive thing for him," Mr. Hartman, a substance-abuse specialist with a nonprofit group, said after meeting Ms. Schmidt. "But we're not at war here." But Todd Schulte, a Republican, said Mr. Hackett's service had caused him to consider voting Democratic on Aug. 2. Mr. Schulte, a 40-year-old business owner, happened on Mr. Hackett's event in Blue Ash and was impressed with the candidate's decision to volunteer for Iraq. "He's got a wife, kids and a good job but he's not sitting in the back row," Mr. Schulte said. "That gives me something to think about." | | Monday, July 25th, 2005 | | 7:08 am |
"Mr. Lehrer is not restrained by such inhibiting factors as taste." Neither, apparently, is Rapping Hitler | | Thursday, July 21st, 2005 | | 9:51 pm |
Still in China, back on Friday.
I visited Yunnan. Lijiang is the happiest place on earth.
Why is Harry Potter so much fun? I read the first book, I don't understand the appeal.
Why is there so little good d20 design? Or have I not seen it? On a related note, good d20 design often isn't all that exciting. | | Thursday, July 14th, 2005 | | 1:51 pm |
Writing from a Beijing internet cafe. More info on the trip later, just wanted to say hi. | | Thursday, July 7th, 2005 | | 5:16 pm |
Here's hoping for White Wolf's new pay-to-play LARP announcement. I think it makes perfect sense. New revenue for White Wolf has to be a good thing for gamers.
Of course, I guess it could turn out to be legal manuveuring or a desperation move of some nature, but I'm inclined to give WW the benefit of the doubt. | | 10:41 am |
I leave for China tommorow morning. I will return on the 22nd. I can best be reached at my gmail account or my uchicago.edu email. (the part before the at symbol is "lampros") Anyone with reccomendations, feel free to leave 'em. We have a week in Beijing, we're still trying to figure out the second week. We'll probably try to fly down to Yunnan to escape the heat, but we don't have that much time to play with. | | Monday, July 4th, 2005 | | 10:39 pm |
Very relevant piece on marriage from the nytimes. Homosexuals arn't changing marriage, hetrosexuals did back in the 70s. July 5, 2005 The Heterosexual Revolution By STEPHANIE COONTZ Olympia, Wash. THE last week has been tough for opponents of same-sex marriage. First Canadian and then Spanish legislators voted to legalize the practice, prompting American social conservatives to renew their call for a constitutional amendment banning such marriages here. James Dobson of the evangelical group Focus on the Family has warned that without that ban, marriage as we have known it for 5,000 years will be overturned. ( Read more... ) | | Sunday, July 3rd, 2005 | | 3:38 pm |
I got four RPGs in the mail yesterday.
First Impressions:
X-Crawl: There were a few cool ideas here, but not nearly enough to fill the pages. Poor production values and mediocre crunch don't help the game to make an impression. And it ddn't.
Blue Planet: A great example of how to use and not to use ideas already in the culturesphere. The game's vision of bioengineered apocalypse and designer babies seem relevant and plausible; although they probably arn't. But its all sort of trite. Knock off Polynesians with loose sexual morals vs. U.N. sponsored Western exploitivie corporate scumbags? The ideas arn't original, and they don't seem to add up to anything. The system seems needlessly crunchy and antique, but I havn't looked into it too carefully.
I also tink the GM's Guide/Player's Manual dichotomy is a poor distribution model. The first book needs to sell the consumer on the product. Probably, that means including your most interesting background material and the most important pieces of crunch. Lists of powers and hardware can wait for a later supplement. I think I'll adopt that method if I ever publish a game. Anyway, I found the background material in Blue Planet unsatisfying. The mediocre writingmight have had something to do with that, though.
Fading Suns: Good stuff, lots of potential. The setting has a lot going on: ultratech, magic, alien "races", pseudomiedival society, weird science, a glorious past - what else does a game need? (Exalts). The ideas arn't superoriginal, but they all fit together plausibly thanks to solid writing and a strong theme. The theme, of course, is struggle, mystery, and the sins of the past. But I'm not quite sure what the PCs do and why their actions are cool. I assume "Dig up mysteries of the past", but I'm not quite sure what to dig up, what sort of opposition the PCs should face to do it, how what they dig up should effect the setting, and so forth. Still, I enjoyed reading through the game and would like to run a series at some point. A lot of that has to do with the system, which is simple and elegant but also fairly crunchy.
I also dislike some of the genre conventions of "Sci Fi RPG". Each planet and alien species is presented with as much depth as one would give to, say, a small kingdom of elves. Why are the alien socities always mononlithic? For that matter, why does one culture seem to dominate all of human society? One Earth has room for thousands of cultures and ideas, but one universe doesn't? The shallow portrayal of the aliens is particulalry irritating. Sci Fi can pose some pretty serious questions, and Fading Suns certainly aspires to do so. From a gaming perspective, it looks like the PCs are expected to be fairly low powered, and to go along with the rest of the society. The sample quest puts the players in the role of helping a nobleman, a classic and tiresome plot. Fading Suns's setting is begging to be shaken up - I want PCs that are set up to shake up the setting, and GM advice on how to do so.
But I definitily want to spend some time with the game. Its quality.
Godsend Agenda: As an amateur game, Godsend Agenda is intimidatingly good. The layout is nice, the text is well written and fills 300+ pages of small print, the art is fun but a little jarring in places. Jarring is to be expected though, given the violent genrefuck of the setting. Characters are at once mythological figures, superheroes, sci-fi creations from the distant past, and agents of international conspiracies. I'm a big fan of genrefuck, so I enjoyed it quite a bit. But like a lot of games set in a pseudomodern world, the potential of the setting feels somewhat constrained. Modern America is a pretty nice place, so why am I killling shit? Also, I can't tell if the various factions represent anything deep or just wear cool costumes. I havn't spent too much time reading the game yet though, so maybe I'll figure it out later.
I don't like point based systemms. Between the points and the power and the restrictions and the archtypes and the dice and the pips and average roll beingg 3.5xdice the system seems fairly confused. Inconsistent style and the sheer quantity of text don't help the authors communicate their system either. I think the system is probably quite good, but I couldn't tell you for sure because I havn't figured it out yet.
Anyway. Creativity cures a lot of ills, as do good art and layout. I reccomend buying this game. | | Saturday, July 2nd, 2005 | | 3:14 pm |
On rpg.net, someone asked for suggestions about how to portray fictional Amazon cultures. Naturally, an argument about women warriors ensued. I felt like archiving my response, comments welcome. ( Read more... ) |
[ << Previous 20 ]
|
