XBOX Stream of Consciousness

My XBOX 360 displayed the three blinking red lights of doom on Dec 25th. Hardware failure.

The silver lining to this sad story of failed holiday bliss is that Microsoft has extended a 3 year warranty for all devices that exhibit this particular failure. So I'm covered. This is the second time a 360 has failed me.

I guess I'll have to do something constructive with the time I had set aside to practice my battle rifle skills in Halo 3. Like, work on a 2nd draft and exercise, maybe. I've been eating too many molasses chips and pieces of peppermint bark. I've fallen off the fitness/good-eating wagon, and now I need to climb back on. The sugar really nails me, but when I get a bite, I can't stop. I know, as soon as I finish off all the goodies in the house, I won't have anything left to tempt me . . .

Yeah, that's good thinking, Bruce! It's when I wrestle with food that I become particularly convinced that consciousness is a synthesis of personality fragments. To ourselves, it feels like we're whole people with a unified mind, but nope. We're a collection of competing ideas and needs, and getting a handle on those rooted in the deepest part of the brain is a battle that is never won.

I Wish My Chemistry Teacher Was This Cool

When my friends and I reminisce back to high school, some of our biggest laughs come when we recall how insanely poorly equipped our chemistry teacher was for teaching. I wish this guy had been our teacher.



(hat tip to Steven Sullivan for this heads-up)

Tis the Season

Hektor wants to wish you all health, happiness, and hope for the season and the new year. He's philosophical that way. (click the photo to enlarge)

Gleemax Blogging and Forgotten Realms

It's been awhile, but I updated my gleemax game blog here about my progress on the new Forgotten Realms Campaign setting.

Although I didn't want it to become so, I find myself reluctant to write anything in that blog unless it bears directly on what I'm doing at Wizards. Once Gleemax leaves Alpha and becomes more wieldy, that may change.

Or, I'll keep this blog as my 'central clearing house' for all things Bruce whether gaming, writing, health, environment, or political cautionary tales, and only do game posts there. That way if you're interested in Bruce Cordell AND D&D only, you'll know that's the place to go. I don't know yet.

In any event, I'll continue to point there from here, as this entry does.

Ah what the heck, here's the whole text of the Gleemax blog post; you already had to click once to get here, and Gleemax isn't yet RSS capable:

We've been working away at the Forgotten Realms(R) Campaign for a few years now, off and on. Over the last three months especially, I personally have been doing little else. (Well, the 4E character sheet, but that's only an hour a day tops--in fact, I just did an update before the holiday break, and I'll do another when I get back.)

So, after this last bit of work, what do we have to show? We have the nearly complete first draft of a campaign setting that looks pretty sweet. As one of my co-authors Chris Sims said to me on Friday, "I can't wait for this to come out because it going to be so good." I agree. I had been thinking the same thing.

I'm really excited for the debut of the setting for many reasons. Here are just a few:

One, the art is going to be sick. As in, really good. I just finished compiling the art and map order Friday, and we’ve got some epic pieces planned.

Two, realms forgotten will be forgotten no more, and Ed Greenwood is personally behind that vision; who better? It is awesome.

Three, a lot of lesser-known and well-known regions have seen exciting updates, advancing stories to leave room for new heroes to take up sword and spell and defend the Realms and have fabulous adventures while doing so.

Four, the format for the release is going to be the most useful we've ever utilized for a campaign setting (I may be biased). The campaign book design is both approachable and bursting with directly useful information about Abeir-Toril. What’s more, you can begin running a campaign with the book about ten minutes after you pick it up. Bang, welcome to the Forgotten Realms!

A Legal Rebellion

Looks like David Brin's blog is being flagged as containing 'inappropriate material' on many government computers. Why? Because he:

[...] called upon the professionals of the civil service, the intelligence services, the many agencies of law and accountability, the scientific community and the U.S. military officer corps, to remember their oaths -- to protect the people from all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Apparently, that's too dangerous a message for our professional elite to hear.

However, as Brin notes, whether Democrats do anything else constructive when they win the White House in '08, the one thing they could do that would turn this country around would be to:

[...] fire 5,000 Bushite political appointees and take their boot heels off of the pros’ necks. He or she will then replace the petty hacks, to a large extent, by promoting from within the services. (While rooting out the neocon shills who “burrow in” by transferring to the Civil Service.) And that one action -- just enforcing the laws we already have -- may restore America.

Tiefling and the Gnome

This is quite funny. Really. Check out this link and watch the animation featuring a D&D 4th Edition tiefling and gnome. One of the best lines, "I'm a spokes-gnome for fey rights!"

Apple-lanche in Stardeep

In the novel Stardeep, a chase scene through a market bazaar disturbs a stacked display of red fruit. One might think the result would be an avalanche of apples. But, thanks to the quick wit of my sister-in-law Wendy Wilcoxon*, the result is actually described as noted below.

From the pages of Stardeep:

"Behind Raidon, a call went up. Chun’s voice, bleary but loud, followed. “You’re dead! Dead! You’ve crossed the Nine Golden Swords, whelp! You can’t hide from us! Nowhere in Thesk is safe for you!” The man’s half-hysterical threat faded behind Raidon as he ran. But Chun's words rang with truth. The yakuza made examples of those who crossed them. Raidon was a marked man.

Raidon Kane dashed through the market throng, swatting a fat man from his path. The man fell, his arms windmilling, into a fruit seller’s cart. One hand knocked out the bottom row of a perfectly stacked display of red fruit, causing an apple-lanche."

*Wendy is still on the lam owing to her involvement in the legendary Apple-lanche Incident of 1995.

Black Hole Energized Matter-Energy Beam

When supermassive black holes tear apart suns as they feed, they can release beams of energy and particles that slam through space near the speed of light. Prospects for any planet, solar-system, or galaxy in the way of that beam are dim. If our solar system fell into line with such a black hole energized beam, it'd be history for us. (Much less likely is what happened in the book by A. A. Attanasio, Radix, where psionic creatures that ride the line of such beams manifested on earth to form god minds...).

I've included a picture of recently taken of such a beam. Go here to Bad Astronomy to read an in-depth account of what the various stunning colors in this picture represent).

Google Seems Great!

I use google all the time, for all my searches, for my directions, for my reviews, for my email, and now, for my blog! It works, and I love it! Plus, we all know the famous Google catch phrase, "Do No Evil." Sort of a nice security blanket. And why not, Google has so far been awesome. Not only have they initiated the Google Lunar X-Prize, they've also thrown their hat into the alternative energy field. Go Google!

But what if some future incarnation of Google departed from that philosophy?

Perhaps you'd get something like this Cory Doctorow story, Scroogled. Take a read, it's a quick 4 pager, and brr, slightly chilling.

Monied Interests Vs. Humanity

Monied corporate interests are demanding their puppet politicians sabotage the EPA's authority to regulate CO2 as a pollutant. This hasn't yet happened, but some are trying to give DOT authority over fuel economy – which would also strip EPA of authority to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions that the Supreme Court recently declared was within the EPA's purview.

"It is a poison pill that, in the dark of night, would reverse the landmark decision by the US Supreme Court affirming EPA's power to regulate global-warming pollution," says Ms. Patton of Environmental Defense.

Read all about the unfolding battle here in this excellent Christian Science Monitor article.

Improve Your Life By Reading

This sounds good at first blush:

The National Endowment for the Arts finds in a current report, To Read or Not To Read, that frequent readers are more likely to vote, participate in sports, visit museums and get high-paying jobs [...]

The problem is, the quote goes on to say:

[...]-- but that with cable TV and internet competition, the rate of "literary reading" (i.e., reading books out of interest and for personal pleasure, rather than because one must read them for school or work) is falling in all American age-groups.

Turns out that reading rates in America have dropped 10% in a little over two decades. Read the rather depressing report here. Let's hope that we've found a new bottom, and that it's not a trend that'll continue too much further.

Unless of course this report fails to take into account all the reading people do online. I wonder what the statics for voting, high paying jobs, and museum visits are for folks who spend an hour or so a day reading blogs, news sites, and writing there own?

Presidential Science Debate

Would you like to see all the presidential candidates in a whole new light? Would you like to see them talk specifically about issues with a little more depth than the various wedge issues that show up in debates year after year? Would you like to see a

[...] debate devoted to policy surrounding what may be the most important social issue of our time: Science and Technology?

Yeah, me too: I'd like to see them debate science and technology. And so would

[...] Nobel laureates and other leading scientists, presidents of universities, congresspersons of both major political parties, business leaders, religious leaders, former presidential science advisors, the editors of America's major science journals, writers, and the current and several past presidents of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, among many others.

Yep, there's a group working to make this happen, appropriately titled ScienceDebate 2008. Check them out here and join the cause!