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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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Why I Have Four New Holes
"Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres . . . " — Caesar A week ago, at about four o'clock in the afternoon, my stomach hurt. The sensation was very precise: a single point, directly under my sternum. I had been out to lunch with my son, so I cleverly deduced the cause. Obviously I had…
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Comic Timing
My talented wife was leaving early this morning on a trip, and I was getting ready to drive her to meet her ride. She glanced outside and said, "Ugh. It's raining." But then she brightened up and added, "At least it isn't snowing." Five minutes later, as we were about to leave, I opened the…
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Aristocracy in Space!
Why are there so many aristocrats in science fiction? They're all over the place. In books you've got David Weber's Honor Harrington (who works for a Royal space navy and eventually becomes a Countess), Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan (a Count who works for an Emperor), Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's Rod Blaine (the son…
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Search For The Old Ones
One of the great revolutions in human thought was the concept of "Deep Time" — the notion that the Earth and the Universe are vastly older than recorded human history, and even the origins of the human species lie long before the invention of writing. Charles Lyell, the Victorian geologist, was probably the first person…
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There’s No Pleasing Some People
I do most of the grocery shopping for my family. Yesterday I went on my usual big monthly run to the discount club, to stock up on stuff that comes in large packages. One of the items my talented wife asked me to pick up was cereal. So I bought cereal. Was my return with…
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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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We Apologize For The Interruption
Apologies for my absence. I was traveling and didn't have the time (or reliable Internet access) for 'blog posts. But because I was traveling on my own, I wound up having a lot of time to think about various things, and one of them was this 'blog. Up to now I have focused on "long…
The Cambias Digression
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