Not-politics – Page 1213

You really have to go and not see this:

It’s quite engrossing, really.

Ninja Parade Slips Through Town Unnoticed Once Again

Then there’s this: Ninja AD 1460-1650 (Warrior). I hadn’t realized that Osprey Publishing had a sense of humor.

Looking for someone to read (Peter Hamilton)

I’m currently going through The Temporal Void (second book in his Void Trilogy), so I thought that I should mention his works generally. Peter Hamilton’s one of the more interesting science fiction authors out there: while his work is definitely part of the ‘hard space opera’ tradition, he’s also ready to play with some quite heretical tropes – at least, heretical for hard SF.

Case in point: his Night’s Dawn Trilogy explores the reaction of an interstellar civilization to empirical proof of the existence of an afterlife, particularly when its inhabitants start escaping from it en masse. His Mindstar trilogy (based in a globally-warmed, post-Communist, future Great Britain) is likewise ostensibly one genre (cyberpunk), but one that has been modified heavily in order to make it plausible that anybody would actually live in it voluntarily. And the trilogy that I’m reading now is a sequel to the two-book series Pandora’s Star and Judas Unchained, which rather sneakily inserts elves into a classic alien war scenario without anyone quite noticing until it was over and done with.

They’re big, fat books, and quite fun. Check them all out.

Alive, merely running around.

Here, have a video until I can get around to the free ice cream.

Book of the Week: Bigfoot Observer’s Field Manual

And so we say goodbye to It’s Not News, It’s Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap As News for Book of the Week… and replace it with Bigfoot Observer’s Field Manual: A practical and easy-to-follow step-by-step guide to your very own face-to-face encounter with a legend. Solely because of the book cover:

I couldn’t resist. I didn’t even try.

Moe Lane

PS: Please not that while I do not believe in the existence of Bigfoot, I am not actually mocking the author for doing so. You’ll notice that I don’t have a book for sale on Amazon.com.

I think that they were space aliens, Officer.

Or maybe Bigfoot.

Mothman?

Where the Wild Things Are.

Thanks to Brother Pejman of RedState (and The New Ledger), an excellent piece of news:

Where the Wild Things Are

Out October 16th, and I am so there.

Mass Cane Toad Culling in Australia.

It’s called “Toad Day Out,” and the Australians apparently loathe the targets of this latest holiday with an unholy passion. Do check out some of the quotes in that link, by the way: they’re pretty good.

Personally, I’m still trying to figure out how the Latest Headlines feature on my Firefox toolbar knew that I was the sort of person who would be interested in this story. It’s kind of alarming, really.

Amazing how things can not change over time, huh?

Having seen the Yes, Prime Minister clip found here I went looking for some more. This one here is biting (and still relevant), on a variety of levels:

…and it’s just as well that the embedding is disabled on this one, because the last line is simultaneously perfect and possibly distressing to those of delicate sensibilities.

Crossposted to RedState.

Contagion (a group for the roleplaying game In Nomine)

Contagion This group has its origins in the aftereffects of the death of Prince Makatiel in 1348 AD, and has grimly held on ever since. Its members were Servitors of Disease who traded most of their freedom and dignity to...