Month: January 2009

I wonder if Turtledove & Zabel will ever finish this?

“This” being the alternate history book WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT: The Impeachment & Trial of John F. Kennedy, Written by Harry Turtledove & Bryce Zabel, which postulates as its divergence point the failed assassination of JFK. They’ve got three chapters up at the site, and it looks like a pretty good story – but there hasn’t been any action on this for almost two years, which seems a shame. Harry Turtledove‘s a master at the genre, and we’re about due for some serious reexamining of the Kennedy era.

Hey, aren’t we supposed to have a Secretary of Commerce?

OK, I understand that it was completely unexpected* that Gov Bill Richardson (D-NM) (and author of the book Leading by Example**) might have been caught up in pay-for-play shenanigans, but he dropped out January 4th. That was over two weeks ago: why are they still vetting people? Didn’t they have a backup?

You’d think that they would have had a backup for Commerce, given that we’re in the middle of one thoroughly messed-up economy. What if Richardson had been hit by a bus, or something?

Moe Lane
Continue reading Hey, aren’t we supposed to have a Secretary of Commerce?

OK, folks: place your bets!

As we all know, the President decided to not Executive Order the Mexico City policy out of existence yesterday – can’t imagine why, at all, at all – but today is another day, and the betting is that he’ll get around to it Real Soon Now. So the real question is, when? Does he do it first thing in the morning and get it over with, or does he do it just in time for it to miss the Friday night news?

Hey, this is actually an important question: this is going to be the first thing he does in office that is guaranteed – absolutely, completely, and unquestionably – going to bother a significant hunk of the people who voted for him. How he handles it is going be… ah, diagnostic.

Moe Lane

PS: Notice that I’m doing President Obama the courtesy of assuming that he has at least as much spine as President Bill Clinton did.

PPS: That being said, if I was a betting man I’d be betting for somewhere around 4:45 PM.

Crossposted at RedState.

This week’s project: Drake’s Drum.

This one’s one of those that I almost know – because I’ve only listened to it
about sixteen billion times – but the lyrics are going to be a problem. Yup, poets beside Robbie Burns decided to write phonetically, or would that be dialectically? Either way, it’s probably not something that you should do unless your name is Rudyard Kipling. I am also dubious about the vocal line.

None the less, I’ve grooved on the Drake’s Drum legend ever since I read about it in Katherine Kurtz’s Lammas Night, which is one of those books you should pick up if you’re into that entire “ordinary, decent WWII magicians vs. Nazis” thing – although I always find it odd that there are people who aren’t.

I mean, who reads books to be bored by them?

And here I was about to note Glenn’s Heinlein reference.

That’d be Glenn Reynolds, who made it in the process of noting Robert S McCain’s smacking around of Glenn Greenwald over the latter’s latest bout of hysterics – over, of all things, Megan McArdle’s perfectly normal (ahem) question about the Gitmo trials. Alas, Glenn Reynolds has since updated, and Robert McCain’s updated, and probably Greenwald updated, which I could probably find out about if I cared.

So there’s no excuse to put up this link to The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. Except that it’s a book that you really need to read if you want to talk to digital libertarians above the age of about 25 or so. Besides, there’s my own pride at stake: I’d hate for people to think that I wasn’t picking up on other bloggers’ classical references.

Mini sorta-not really review: Damnation Decade.

It’s a roleplaying supplement, so if you don’t care about playing an RPG that puts you in the middle of every cliche-ridden, impressively bad SF / horror / urban movie of the 1970s… well, actually, I’m sorry to hear that. The suggested film list alone was worth the price.

Anyway, for the nerdcore reading this: Damnation Decade is a very cool supplement for 3rd Edition D&D Modern; it explores the genre of the 1970s disaster flick, and manages to cram everything in there from Satanic conspiracies to end the world to government conspiracies to end the world to giant rabbits (as in, the size of Buicks) attacking Presidential candidates. One of the nice things about this supplement is that it made a conscious effort to take sides in the issues of those days; worked pretty well, too.

OK, we know that I’m bad at reviews. Essentially, this is a gaming supplement that will let you run adventures ranging from The Omen to Three Days of the Condor, with stuff like The Warriors, Mad Max, and Every Which Way but Loose thrown in.  Plus, there is the aforementioned film list, which I spent a good three months chewing through.  Turns out half of these movies are available dirt cheap…

Yeah, go figure.

Reality defeats the Weekly World News.

Give them credit that they went down swinging – but when the title “Chirac Bitten by Depressed Poodle” is literally true, there’s a limit to what you can work with. I’m pretty sure that they went with “history of domestic violence angle on Sumo’s” just to retire from the field with their honor still intact.

Hey, it happens.