Category: Weblogs
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The Arkad Machine Rolls On
Marshal Zeringue has a fun 'blog with a neat premise: he asks writers what they're reading. To celebrate the launch of Arkad's World, he asked me to contribute an entry. You can see what I'm reading here. And if you're in Amherst, Massachusetts, tomorrow evening, please stop by Amherst Books for the Arkad's World launch…
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Mr. President, We May Be Looking . . .
. . . at a wargames GAP! Apparently the Pentagon needs to find replacements for the generation of beardy wargame grognards who are starting to fail their final saving rolls. Here's an article about the problem from War on the Rocks.
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What I Saw On Facebook Yesterday
"In its second minute the Hate rose to a frenzy. People were leaping up and down in their places and shouting at the tops of their voices in an effort to drown the maddening bleating voice that came from the screen. The little sandy-haired woman had turned bright pink, and her mouth was opening and…
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“Smart” Cities
First read this article, a summary and critique of some current "smart city" projects. The author unfortunately kind of skates around the main, fundamental problem with most of the projects he describes. They're completely antithetical to the way cities actually grow. Quite simply, you can't build a city. Maybe if your name is Stalin and…
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Emotionless Bad Guys
Yesterday I was reading a James Lileks blog post about the legendary 1956 Roger Corman sci-fi movie It Conquered the World. If you haven't seen it, you probably should — because effects, locations, and extras were expensive, Corman reduced an alien invasion of Earth to a character piece, focusing on Lee Van Cleef (of all…
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Thoughts On The Dreaded Backstory
David McGrogan writes interesting roleplaying games, and he had some interesting thoughts about fictional characters in his most recent 'blog post. You can read it here. If you're lazy and want me to just tell you what it says, his main point is that the urge to bolt a backstory onto archetypical characters (like James…
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Huh?
Can anyone explain why my Thursday post apologizing for missing a week of posting got more than 600 hits? That's about ten times more than anything since my gripe about Marty McFly's dad.
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Still Bunk After All These Years
So here's an article from Quillette about "social constructionism" — in particular how postmodernists have applied the concept to the sciences, and how bad an idea it is. I was amused to see that one of the examples cited in the piece is Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar's book Laboratory Life, because that book was…
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It’s Not Christmas Without NORAD
Every year at this time I link to my favorite Christmas Web site: the Official NORAD Santa Tracker page. If you don't understand why this site is the sweetest, goofiest, and yet also the greatest embodiment of the Christmas spirit, you have the soul of a Krampus. And Krampus is not welcome in this airspace.…
The Cambias Digression 