Blackmoor Vituperative

When you are arguing with someone, try to remember that there is a difference between the person and their ideas. When you’ve made your point as well as you can, agree to disagree. Don’t ever say nasty things about the person. For one thing, it’s irrelevant, and it demonstrates that you have sloppy thinking. For another, particularly on the internet, you only see the other person through a very small window. There is a great deal more to the other person than just that they disagree with you on some political policy that neither of you has any control over, or some game rule that will never matter because you don’t play in each other’s games. The other person has an entire life outside of your insignificant disagreement with them. Basing your judgement of them on such scanty evidence is irrational. Assume that they have family and friends and lovers who respect them, just like you do.

And if they’re wrong, so what? Let them be wrong. You’re wrong sometimes, too.

edit: To clarify a point of confusion: this is not directed at anyone in particular, and I include myself among the target audience.

I am going to post a photo of a coffee mug every day in August, and talk a little bit about where we got it and why I like it.

This gallon-sized travel mug is another of the mugs Susan received while working at Philip Morris doing environmental and recycling stuff. This one is from Weyerhaeuser. “Weyerhaeuser creates sustainable solutions to the world’s challenges through the development of innovative forest products that are essential to everyday lives.” In case you didn’t know.

Look at that mug, man. Man, that sucker’s huuuuge !

It’s a big mug, that’s all.

Thinking about starting a YahooGroup to discuss new homebrewed rule systems, modifications and house rules for existing systems, and so on. A game design workshop, if you will.

On the one hand, I’m not sure there is much interest in that, despite what people are prone to say. On the other hand, I am not sure YahooGroups is best suited for that sort of discussion nowadays. My perception is that most substantive discussions have moved elsewhere, and what remain on YahooGroups are relatively insular islands of thought. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s not the environment I’d be looking for.

If you are aware of a venue for lively but civil discussion of practical game design (as opposed to theoretical navel-gazing, which again, is not necessarily bad, but not what I am looking for), feel free to mention it.

I suppose I should clarify what I mean by “lively but civil”. Here are a couple of benchmarks:

1. Conversation is focused on game design, not on politics or controversies. (There are plenty of other places to discuss evolution or the Tea Party or Justin Bieber.)
2. Critique of ideas is accepted and encouraged: critique of people is not. (It is sad how many people can’t tell the difference.)

Ideally, this is the sort of interaction I would have with my local game group. Sadly, real life has taken its toll, and my local game group is no more.

Hurricane Irene is on the way, but for now, it’s just another beautiful day in Richmond.

Life is good. Don’t let anyone tell you different. 🙂

I am going to post a photo of a coffee mug every day in August, and talk a little bit about where we got it and why I like it.

In the late 1980s, I moved to southern California. City of Orange in Orange County, to be exact. If you start at Los Angeles and drive south until you can see the horizon, you’ll be in Orange County.

Shortly after I moved out there, Susan flew out and visited me there for a week. That’s the first time we went to Disneyland together. We weren’t even really friends yet, at that time, although I’d had a crush on her in high school. By the time she went back to Virginia, all of my friends had a crush on her, too.

A year or so after I’d moved to California, my mother followed. I don’t think it’s because I lived there. She’s always been something of a rolling stone: an artist and an explorer, never satisfied with one place for too long. Very Jack Kerouac, my mother. There was a span of about six months in the late 1980s when neither of us knew the other’s address. We weren’t estranged: we just fell out of touch for a little while.

Anyway, before that, she lived down the road from me in Orange County, just behind an Arby’s on Tustin Ave. That’s where this mug came from. I admired it at the time, and years later, in the mid-1990s, she gave it to me. I don’t recall if it was for my birthday, or Christmas, or if she was just moving and didn’t want to pack it. The important thing to me is that she remembered that I’d liked it.

According to Google Maps, that Arby’s is still there.

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Attached hereto as Exhibit D is a true and correct copy of a still image taken from Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey.” In a clip from that film lasting about one minute, two astronauts are eating and at the same time using personal tablet computers. The clip can be downloaded online at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ8pQVDyaLo. As with the design claimed by the D’889 Patent, the tablet disclosed in the clip has an overall rectangular shape with a dominant display screen, narrow borders, a predominately flat front surface, a flat back surface (which is evident because the tablets are lying flat on the table’s surface), and a thin form factor.

(from Samsung cites Stanley Kubrick’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ movie as prior art against iPad design patent, FOSS Patents)

Let’s hope that the judge tells Apple to stop bullying people and stop pretending they invented everything.

I am going to post a photo of a coffee mug every day in August, and talk a little bit about where we got it and why I like it.

You might think this is just an ordinary plastic travel mug. Au contraire! This mug is special. This mug is made from corn.

Susan works in the environmental field. From lead and asbestos, to recycling and greenhouse gas emissions, to domestic and international carbon trading programs, she’s done it all. She was given this mug while doing her environmental thing at Philip Morris a few years ago. It’s made entirely from corn plastic.

You see, when we run out of oil in a few decades, we’ll run out of plastic, too. The USA uses something like 200,000 barrels of oil a day on plastic packaging alone. That’s right: 200,000 barrels of oil a day, on stuff we throw away after we unwrap it. In theory, corn plastic will be the substance that replaces all that petroleum-based plastic when the petroleum is gone. Of course, corn plastic isn’t perfect. We still throw away an enormous amount of, well, everything. But you have to start somewhere.

P.S. “Degesch America, Inc. is located in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley town of Weyers Cave, Virginia, USA. Degesch is a worldwide leader in the specialized field of stored product pest control.” In case you wondered.

I am going to post a photo of a coffee mug every day in August, and talk a little bit about where we got it and why I like it.

In 2006, I worked at Circuit City for six months. It was my first job in Richmond, and the beginning of our new life up here. Sadly, I immediately saw that the handwriting was on the wall. The company was woefully mismanaged: it was clear that the people making decisions in upper management had no awareness of what anyone working in the company actually did. I was hired during one of the brief upticks in what was obviously a years-long death spiral. Circuit City became the first of a series of companies on my resume which are no longer in business.

I did get this swell Oktoberfest mug, though.

Jon Stewart asks, “When did Ron Paul become the thirteenth floor of a hotel?” The answer is simple: he isn’t part of the play. In the theatre of the absurd that is American politics, every actor has his part. As long as they say the right lines, stand on their mark, and respond on cue, the show goes on, and they get their moment in the spotlight.

For people who haven’t been invited to perform — or worse, who demand to write their own lines — there is no star on the door, no spotlight, and no media coverage.

The thing about the sneetches is that they know they are all the same. The trick is to make us (and by “us”, I mean you) think they are different, and that the conflict on stage has any meaning other than something to distract us and keep us in our seats. While the simpletons in the audience cheer for the star-bellies or revile the plain-bellies, the ticket counter stays open, and the sneetches are all happy.

I’m not sure people are aware of these numbers. Global warming? Maybe I’ll see it; maybe not. Running out of oil? Running out of helium? Unless I die much sooner than I intend, these things will happen in my lifetime. You think maybe we should be doing something about that?