I should be using copious free time to better myself and improve the human condition, but instead I play video games. In reverse order of time played (most recent to least) since this summer:

• Black Mesa: For those who don't know, this is the original Half Life (1998) updated to modern graphics and given away for free. It's wonderful and infuriating ( Read more... )

Last year I wrote about divine "portfolios" and how they're a lousy starting-off point when you're designing a divine pantheon. I made the point that "gods can have overlapping portfolios, and the more important ones can have a grab-bag of domains with only obscure connections between them ( Read more... )

It's been about a month since my last entry, and there are lots of things I'd love to write about, but the crisis in Washington keeps sucking me in. Like many folks, I haven't been directly affected by the shutdown, but as the debt ceiling approaches the chance of absolute catastrophe grows ever larger.

No one knows what will happen, exactly, but ( Read more... )

I love pets, but the idea of pets always makes me uncomfortable. We take them from their parents, sterilize them, lock them in a house until they're old and sick, and euthanize them. During that time we keep them comfortable and well-fed and ask nothing in return. They love us and we love them, even but we do things to them we've never tolerate on ( Read more... )

I highly recommend Sarah Stillman's New Yorker article "The Use and Abuse of Civil Forfeiture." She describes how police departments use a kind of legalized piracy, seizing people's cars, money and even their homes, often on little more than suspicion of drug trafficking. Most of the victims, naturally, are poor blacks and Hispanics; the police are ( Read more... )

io9's Charlie Jane Anders posts an essay today claiming that Star Wars: A New Hope had "better world building" than The Phantom Menace. I thought I'd talk about it a bit while waiting for a UPS delivery.

Personally, I agree with the commenter who said Anders was confusing "world-building" with exposition. A New Hope had an infinitely better story ( Read more... )

Thanks to those of you who commented on my next-to-last entry and recommended the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, which filled me in on the scientific consensuses on the terrestrial planets. I was disappointed by the lack of info on the Jovian Moons, but that was hardly the Britannica's fault as astronomers hadn't made out many surface details ( Read more... )

I'm impressed by folks who can write on a consistent schedule and plow through, regardless of mood, inspiration, illness, work conditions ... I've never been able to do so, even when I'm writing as a labor of love; and when I'm forced to write for school or job it ends up being dreadful shit I can't bear to reread. (It's one reason why my first ( Read more... )

To repeat what I've said elsewhere: I can accept the acquittal. Maybe the prosecution couldn’t disprove a self-defense claim. I’m not a lawyer and I wasn’t in the jury room ( Read more... )

I stopped playing paper & pencil RPGs in the late 80s and early 90s. What brought me back, oddly enough, was graduate school: As I learned more about government and social science I thought about updating world-generation tables in games like Traveller. (I eventually wrote them up and published them in The Journal of the Traveller's Aid Society.) ( Read more... )