What's wrong with the right

This primarily applies to right-wing pundits, political leaders, journalist, and bloggers and it's simple really.

They can't stand anyone whose opinions or beliefs differ from theirs because, like someone who's done too much cocaine, they think they are right, and there is no other possible way to be. They often pretend to speak for God, they have feeling of superiority. In fact they are just dumb-ass mob rule followers. Any objective student of history could recognize this happening time and again.

This allows them to win a lot of arguments. No need to think, just stick to their position and denigrate their opponent, and insist their position is the only correct position. No rational thought involved no substantiation for their "talking points", and no reality whatsoever. The talking points allow the creation of some virulent and unhealthy memes which takes some serious mental effort to resist.

They are wrong on most counts and they know it. They just don't care so long as they get their way, can manipulate others and consolidate power. This is being irresponsible as a human being.

So just remember, calm and rational arguments won't work. Take a heavy handed, aggressive, yet rational approach if you get into a debate with the right, use empiricism, skepticism and especially philosophical sophism (e.g. Like Socrates.) You're sure to beat some sense into them.

If all else fails insinuate that if they really believe what their saying then their intellect is on par with that of an 8 year old then drop the subject. At least that way they probably won't talk to you anymore.

This post was made possible by the likes of Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Ruch Limbaugh, Tucker Carlson and all other "conservative" / neo-con self-serving sycophantic pundits, politcians and demagogues.

Where's H.L. Mencken when you need him.

Origin of the name Jagwire

Really. I should post more items on this thing. There's tons of interesting stuff out there but how much time do I really want to spend doing this.

Let's travel back in time...

It's 1988 (or so) and I'm trying to think of a good name to use on the BBSs. BBS stands for Bulletin Board System. For those of you who weren't there BBSs were the World Wide Web of their day. I want something futuristic and cyberpunk sounding yet primal. I'm driving on US 183 heading South into Austin from somewhere north and think about this. I might be tripping, then again if you are one of my parents reading this, I probably wasn't. I see billboard, if you can really call a 30 foot tall photograph and logo a billboard, with a picture of a Jaguar (the car) on it, then it hits me: jaguar (U.S. pronunciation) + hardwire = jagwire.

That's where the name comes from.

Fast forward to now.

If you search Google for the term jagwire you will mostly find a bunch of trademarked corporate businesses. If you look up jagwire at the US Trademark & Patent Office you'll see that the earliet recorded trademark was was in 1996. Frankly this kind of pisses me off - I mean, hell, I have a tattoo on my left arm that represents the name to me. Dig down a little further on Google, using the full name I commonly used in BBS days, Jagwire X, you will find links to my past. I'm tempted to see what it would take to challenge the trademark, especially if I decide to use the name for something. I can pretty much prove (1992|1993) that my use of the name predates any trademarked use of the name and probably any other use of the name either.

With all these mentions of the name Jagwire on this page I'll probably go up in the google rankings. Woot!

Ok enough ranting.

The Artwork of Melanie Sallis

I've finally gotten my wife's website up and running. It's got a fair amount of her artwork posted to it. I've got to get her to give me the titles of some of the pieces still and I need to rework some of the text a little bit. Anyway it's good stuff - and I'm not just saying that because I'm married to her.

Take a look at MelanieSallis.com.

Take a look at this embyrionic example:

Stumble Upon

I've been experimenting with Stumble Upon recently. It's an interesting web tool and social site that allows users to review web sites. It has some advantages over del.icio.us in that it allows a sort fo voting system and blogging. Where del.icio.us is more of a generic bookmarking site Stumble Upon allows for social interaction and better sharing of links.

Anyway if you want to check out my Stumbling feel free.

Bruce Sterling's SXSW keynote MP3

You can listen to Bruce Sterling’s SXSW Keynote here. As usual Bruce gives the audience a number of interesting bits about emerging technologies but mostly he speaks about the future we are creating and what we ought to do about it. He goes on to say that the real challenge to the future is that the worst people in the world are running things and that the United States government is for all intents and purposes a new Soviet Union (inflexible and corrupt, generally looked at as illegitimate by the rest of the world, not mention a lot of many Americans as well.) And in much of the world things are very bad indeed.

"When you actually ignore reality for years on end, the payback is a bitch brother! ... We're seeing just frantic collisions of fundamentalist delusion with objective reality... We're on a kind of slider bar between the unthinkable and the unimaginable now, between the grim meathook future and the bright green future. There are ways out of this situation; there are actual ways to move the slider bar from one side to the other, except that we haven't invented the words for them yet."

He goes on to say that if you look honestly at the world, you will see a new story emerging. One with smart and dedicated people locked in a great struggle to guide us towards a better future using every tool in their power. "That's a big story!" And then he reminds those who are part of that story of the motto of the old Soviet-era Eastern European dissidents: "Make no decision out of fear."

Latest Theory on Global Warming; NOT the Fault of Modern Human Lifestyle. Ha!

Ha! Those crazy Russians! According to Vladimir Shaidurov of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the apparent rise in average global temperature recorded by scientists over the last hundred years or so could be due to atmospheric changes that are not connected to human emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of natural gas and oil but rather to the Tunguska Event.

One would think that something like that with all the dust thrown into the atmosphere would have a cooling effect instead. Not only that it's evident that CO2 levels have risen to the highest level ever and it's know that CO2 has the "greenhouse effect."

I don't buy it. You know people are always trying to avoid accepting responsibility for their actions and this is just another attempt. This time it just happens to be a Russian "scientist" instead of an Western "scientist". More on my complaint about "scientists" later - and it's a big one.

Full story here.

MetaMythos

Somewhere in there I managed to redo my role-playing game website, MetaMythos. I used a design by the guy, Andreas Viklund, that did the the design this blog is using.

Anyway, if you are into role-playing games, check out MetaMythos. It's bit skimpy right now but I had to get something new up there as my host provider essentially killed the database and broke the site.

I've got a lot work to do on it before it's fully loaded.

More Deluxe Basic Role-Playing

So I haven't been able to actually to any testing of the rules - heck I haven't even had the time to read through all of them. I really need to print them out and well it's like 348 pages so even if I double up the number of page per sheet and print them double sided I'm still looking at a good 87 pages.

The formatting of the playtest rules is, as expected, pretty plain. Which can make for some dense reading - ultimately I'm sure they will look good as Chaosium has historically been quite good with production quality.

As of now the available sections are:

• Introduction and Terms
  
• Characters
  
• Powers
  
• System
  
• Basic Character Sheet

With the following forthcoming:

• The Game World
  
• Campaigns
  
• Gamemastering
  
• Bestiary and NPCs

I think that's pretty inclusive for the base rules. And that's about all I can say about it now - while there is no NDA there is a sense of honor and a 'gentlemen's agreement', and I don't mean in the negative connotations of the term, not to distribute or discuss the contents of the documents. Of the existence of the documents and their subject matter, no mention was made so I don't think this or the previous post violate that agreement - but if I am notified that they do I'll remove them.

Anyway I don't think anyone reads this blog in the first place.

I'm thinking I need to print and bind the rules and then spend some time making characters and see if I can round up a few people for a test character creation and some scenario bits - a mêlée combat, a brawl, a gunfight, a hunting challenge, some characteristic and skill contests with the idea to test out various aspects of the rules.

Deluxe Basic Role-Playing

I just started playtesting Deluxe Basic Role-Playing which is to be published by Chaosium sometime this year. So far it looks very good and very flexible - able to work with a variety of genres and milieus. So far we have received perhaps half of the test and it come's in at a whopping 340+ pages. Of course once formatted for publication it will probably not be so voluminous - the font will be smaller I am sure and laid out in multiple column format.

In any event the rules provide many options for different styles of play and settings. I'm just hoping that we can publish materials for it can be published under some sort of open-license.

On the other hand Mongoose Publishing is putting out a new set of rules for RuneQuest which may be quite similar and will supposedly be open source.

I suppose the only advantage to using one of the two to publish supplements would be that as part of the open-source license you would be able to slap their logo on your product which frankly isn't much of a selling point.

And finally I am thinking about creating a completely open-source or creative commons licensed and compatible version of rules since game publishers generally seem to be very uptight. As far as I know you can copyright a publication of the rules, the words used to describe a system, but the system itself cannot be so controlled. And I seriously doubt you could get a patent for it either.

My idea is to use a Wiki probably MediaWiki (same as used for WikiPedia) to host a collaborative site for the rules and make it a truly interactive effort.

Collectibles and Antiques

Some close personal and long time friends of mine have started a website - Collectible Antiques Etc. They "started it out of a love of history and a desire to understand more about antiques and collectibles." There's some good material there about antiques and collecible items. I think they may be starting a business. In any event if you have even the slightest interest in historically valuable item you should take a look.