Month: January 2013

Just got my OGRE Kickstarter PDFs.

The OGRE Book and the OGRE Scenario book and the new PDF version of the OGRE Miniature rules.  Looks pretty nifty; and I should note that iPads are really nice when it comes to reading PDF versions of something.  The slightly smaller screen is (in my opinion) more than made up for by the increased portability; I like laptops and netbooks, but they kind of need flat surfaces.

…Anyway, that’s what I’ve been doing for the last couple of hours.  That, and wishing that it was May so I could get The Big Box Of OGRE.

Senate fight between Cory Booker & Frank Lautenberg’s staff (D, New Jersey) heats up.

Frank Lautenberg’s staff (who are apparently quite peeved that Mayor Booker wishes to throw them out of their comfy Senate gig) even went to the trouble of remotely activating their boss’s rhetoric emulator to get that ‘personal’ touch.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg, who might face a 2014 primary challenge from Newark Mayor Cory Booker, said his fellow Democrat is “entitled” to run if he chooses to but suggested that he had to give a “spanking” to his potential rival for so openly coveting his seat.

[snip]

“I have four children, I love each one of them. I can’t tell (you) that one of them wasn’t occasionally disrespectful, so I gave them a spanking and everything was OK,” Lautenberg said with a smile in his first public comments since Booker announced he was considering a run for Senate.

Continue reading Senate fight between Cory Booker & Frank Lautenberg’s staff (D, New Jersey) heats up.

Our incredibly boring President Obama (language warning).

Well, Robert Tracinski is right. Barack Obama is boring: and one major reason why he’s boring is because Barack Obama is utterly predictable. Take yesterday’s speech.

No, really: please take yesterday’s speech.  I got bored with it four years ago.

This is the president’s favorite false alternative: either we do things “alone,” or government does them for us “collectively.” What this world view leaves out, of course, is the voluntary cooperation of private individuals, particularly their cooperation in the free market. Which is to say that he excludes from his world view the actual majority of human activity.

But this is the basic false alternative of every Obama speech, and it is the flimsy intellectual foundation of his entire presidency. Individualism and the free market always mean doing everything “alone,” and the only alternative, the only way of doing things “together,” is a giant government program.

That is what “this moment” turns out to be all about: “My fellow Americans, we are made for this moment, and we will seize it—so long as we seize it together.” No seizing moments on your own. You can only seize it if you brought enough for everybody.

Continue reading Our incredibly boring President Obama (language warning).

Matthew Yglesias endorses key point of Liberal Fascism.

A little surprising, that. 

Background: in the course of trying to boost what has been generally conceded to be a not-particularly-good Second Inaugural speech made by Barack Obama yesterday, Yglesias wrote:

Summing up the ideological brief, Obama even indulged in American liberalism’s favorite ideological tic—the insistence that it’s not an ideology at all, but simply a pragmatic response to changing circumstances.

 Which, if you’ve read Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism, actually sounds very familiar.  It is, in fact, at the core of the parallel he draws between how modern American liberalism sells itself and how fascist movements have sold themselves:

The unique threat of today’s left-wing political religions is precisely that they claim to be free from dogma. Instead, they profess to be champions of liberty and pragmatism, which in their view are self-evident goods. They eschew “ideological” concerns. Therefore they make it impossible to argue with their most basic ideas and exceedingly difficult to expose the totalitarian temptations residing in their hearts. They have a dogma, but they put it out of bounds.

Continue reading Matthew Yglesias endorses key point of Liberal Fascism.

Today’s exercise in bioethics: Neanderthal babies!

What could possibly go wrong?

Professor George Church of Harvard Medical School believes he can reconstruct Neanderthal DNA and resurrect the species which became extinct 33,000 years ago.

His scheme is reminiscent of Jurassic Park but, while in the film dinosaurs were created in a laboratory, Professor Church’s ambitious plan requires a human volunteer.

He said his analysis of Neanderthal genetic code using samples from bones is complete enough to reconstruct their DNA.

He said: ‘Now I need an adventurous female human.

Continue reading Today’s exercise in bioethics: Neanderthal babies!

Let me be the first to embrace an anti-soot initiative.

Via Via Meadia comes this news:

The Economist also brings us big news on the “settled science” of climate change. A new study has found soot to be twice as bad for climate as was previously thought, making it the second most damaging greenhouse agent after CO2. This is actually good news for two reasons.

First, soot is easier to control than CO2, and targeting that kind of pollution provides lots of benefits that have nothing to do with climate change: it’s a dangerous pollutant and a health threat on its own. Second, controlling soot will seriously slow the speed of climate change. One of the study’s authors told the Economist that fully addressing the soot problem would strip half a degree from potential warming, buying politicians and scientists more time to make informed decisions.

Continue reading Let me be the first to embrace an anti-soot initiative.

So, anybody read “Shadow Ops: Control Point”?

Howard Tayler is raving about Shadow Ops: Control Point – apparently “It’s like if Tom Clancy decided to write urban fantasy,” which is admittedly an argument in its favor.  Then again, so is being liked by Howard Tayler.  Nonetheless, the degree that it is awesome will determine whether I Kindle it*.  Anybody read it yet?

Moe Lane

*I will be happy to describe the procedure determining what ends up on my Kindle, what gets bought new hardcopy, and what gets bought used hardcopy, just as soon as I figure out what it is.