Slang for the Galaxy

It’s no news to any serious strategy gamer that Race For The Galaxy has rapidly become one of the most popular and frequently played designs of recent years. My gaming group plays it often enough that we’ve developed our own slang terms for certain frequently-occurring tactics and situations. In the hope that other players may… Continue reading Slang for the Galaxy

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Patriotism And Its Pathologies

Once upon a time, patriotism was a fairly simple thing. It was tribal identification writ large, an emotional attachment to a people and their land. In most of the world, where patriotism exists at all it’s still like this — tribal patriotism, blood-and-soil emotionalism. A different kind of patriotism emerged from the American and French… Continue reading Patriotism And Its Pathologies

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Author of “The Genocides” commits suicide

Thomas Disch committed suicide on July 4th. I wouldn’t bother writing about this, except that offing himself was a perfect correspondence to what he tried to do to science fiction (the art form with which he was most associated).

SPAT: How to Save the Music Industry

I think I know how to save the music business. There’s a dead-simple business model that will funnel money to talent, work with the Internet’s capability for zero-cost distribution rather than fighting it, and allow the record companies a role without “intellectual property” protection or DRM. I call it SPAT for short. This can have… Continue reading SPAT: How to Save the Music Industry

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Inconvenient facts

Comes word from Iraq that the Maliki government has just shipped to Canada 550 tons of yellowcake uranium that Saddam Hussein had stockpiled. One wonders what the anti-war left thinks Hussein had been planning to do with it. Make cupcakes, perhaps?

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Dangerous Sons

Some time back I blogged on Hotness in Hollywood. In it I gave Angeline Jolie props for making a game effort at acting in a a movie with a script so execrable that her best effort was doomed, the original Tomb Raider movie. I also praised Liv Tyler playing Arwen, who became my personal all-time… Continue reading Dangerous Sons

Apologies to recent commenters

Due to a fat-finger error on my part, the comments for several posts back were deleted a few minutes ago. Apologies to all commenters; those threads were of rather high quality and I’m sorry to lose them.

Five Myths of New Media, Revisited

A reader suggested that I should take a look at an article I wrote back in 1997, Five Myths of New Media, and consider how those predictions panned out. Good idea, here goes…

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Converging curves

The newspaper industry’s death spiral is accelerating. The “increasingly rapid and broad decline in the newspaper business in recent months has surprised even the most pessimistic financial analysts.” In related news, the average age of TV viewers has reached 50 and is still rising. The networks are losing their audience.

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From a small town in Pennsylvania

A reader asks asks: “Just what about Obama is so damned elitist?” I realize I’m a bit late to the party, but a bit of unpacking of the now-infamous “bitter and clinging” quote should serve to explain this nicely.

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Why Barack Obama sets off my “Never Again!” alarms

OK, I’ll admit it: six months ago I was very near buying into the whole Obama thing. That was when he was in his post-racial phase — before Jeremiah Wright, back when voting for Obama seemed like a way of putting an end to the unhealthy obsessiveness about race that disfigures liberal politics.

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Male-bashing kills children

Listen. This news story (which I meant to blog about two years ago) is the sound of cultural suicide happening… A bricklayer who passed a toddler walking alone in a village shortly before her fatal fall into a pond said yesterday he did not stop to help in case people thought he was trying to… Continue reading Male-bashing kills children

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The Heller ruling and the 2008 elections

I’ve had time to think about the impact of the Heller ruling on the 2008 elections now, and I’m concluding that a pro-gun-rights ruling with a 5-4 split was absolutely the worst possible outcome for Barack Obama’s campaign.

Civil Disobedience

This morning I read the entire majority opinion from the Supreme Court striking down the D.C. gun ban. Then I walked over to the Malvern Police station and asked for a few minutes with my town’s Chief of Police.

A victory for civil rights

I’ve just read the Supreme Court’s opinion in the Heller handgun-ban case, issued this morning. It’s a somewhat better result than I was expecting.

I’m unstealthing

Yes,. there is a good reason that I disappeared for two years. As soon as a certain lawsuit now in court wraps up, I’ll even be able to explain it in detail. But I’m back to blogging. Starting now.

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Oderint, dum metuant

In Nablus, a young man is kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists — who then set him free on learning he is an American because they don’t want to end up like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi so recently did. I am irresistibly reminded of a piece of cynical wisdom from the mouth of the mad Roman emperor Caligula,… Continue reading Oderint, dum metuant