Gabe at Penny Arcade has a great rant on the new LEGO fruit snacks. The Boy hasn’t come across them yet, but since he’s over five now and we’re getting heavily into the LEGO (more on that this weekend), I may try to find some for him this weekend.
Because I’m fast approaching old fart status, I’ve been playing roleplaying games (off and on) for over 25 years. It’s difficult to describe how they’ve affected me growing up. Hell, I have a hard time even figuring it out myself. I DO know, however, that playing RPGs with a close-knit group of friends in junior high and school almost certainly kept me (mostly) away from drugs and other sorts of stupidity that are all most kids had to stave off boredom in small-town America in the 80s. I saw plenty of my other classmates (and a few who peeled off from our gaming group) get wrapped up in drugs (meth, anyone?) or alcohol or crime. Some never recovered. Some died because of those things. So I owe at least a small part of my life to nerdy stuff keeping me off the streets on Saturday nights. Thanks, Gary.
But, today is about good stuff, specifically: the release of Dungeons & Dragons, 4th edition. Thought I tend to play mostly Burning Wheel these days (especially for high octane gritty fantasy) I’m liking 4e so far, and I’m looking forward to playing it with my gaming group when we want to bring the big-action high-fantasy awesome.
Andy Ihnatko, despite his protestations, is the #1 most-beloved industry figure, at least in my book. I’ve been a big fan of his since his days adorning the back page of MacUser ca. 1992.
In a fairly serious and non-writing-about-technology turn, he completely nails what has happened to the Hillary Clinton campaign: she has become a vanity publisher. But pumping $6.4 million of her own money into her campaign, she has become the equivalent of a vanity publisher. There aren’t enough people in the world who are willing to support her book (campaign), so she’s using her own money to publish it (keep it going).
Seriously. If she can muster enough monetary support to keep the campaign going, it means that not enough people want her to be President. I believed it before I read Andy’s article, but I see even more clearly now just how pathetic she’s become.
Senator Clinton, please bow out gracefully now and help us ensure that Senator Obama becomes the next President of the United States. And Senator Obama: Senator Clinton would make a kick-ass Vice President.
This WSJ piece about a clearly insane prof at Dartmouth represents just one of the reasons I left academia 15 years ago. Go read it. I’ll wait.
See? That’s some crazy shit, no? I saw the grad student version of that ALL the time, and I went to podunk little grad schools where they weren’t quite as well-versed in bullshit theories.
I remember an eye-opening conversation with a female grad student who stated that, flat-out, every bad thing ever was invented and perpetrated by men – war, guns, poverty, racism, etc. It was breathtaking in that she sorta tossed it off casually in conversation as if everyone standing around her bought into that. Now, I’m not necessarily arguing that she’s WRONG, mind you, it was the follow-up that men have never produced anything GOOD that sent me over the edge. I’m not sure how women are responsible for all benevolent scientific knowledge, art, and beauty in the world, but she sure believed it.
As a (sometimes) good liberal, I felt pretty guilty about not subscribing wholesale to the “white men are the root of all evil” argument I found quite prevalent in graduate school. But, As an actual white man, I often felt like I was put on the defensive about all sorts of crap. Maybe that’s just my racial, genderal (new word! I should be in academia!)guilt coming out. I dunno.
I would have loved to be in crazy prof’s class at Dartmouth, though. I’ll bet it was entertaining as hell.
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