Mongoose Schedules Four RuneQuest Publications for July

Mongoose Publishing has scheduled the release of its first four RuneQuest products for July. The RuneQuest core rulebook will be a 100-page full color hardcover priced at $19.95, which will give gamers the core rules they need to begin playing along with enough creatures to make games interesting.

In addition to the core rulebook Mongoose will be releasing Glorantha, a core setting book that is written by Robin Laws, and will be a 160-page full color hardcover. The setting is the classic RuneQuest setting revisited for use with the new system. Glorantha is expected to cost around $29.95.

Also in July Mongoose will release the RuneQuest Game Masters Screen, which will be created by Matthew Sprange and Robin Laws and is expected to be priced at $9.95.

Finally, Mongoose is also launching a line of RuneQuest miniatures. The first set is a Broo Raiders, a boxed set of 30mm metal miniatures, sculpted by Daniel Pacey. Broo are twisted hybrids of men and hoofed animals (deer, antelopes, and goats), who engage in foul practices such as rubbing dung into their fur, worshipping the gods of disease and cross breeding with other species.

Additional supplements planned for 2006 are primarily support titles including the RuneQuest Companion, RuneQuest Monsters, and Legendary Heroes.

Second Life

I keep hearing all sorts of things about Second Life. When I discovered that it was free for basic membership I decided to give it a try. So far it's somewhat interesting - sort of like a giant online chat system with avatars and objects you can create. It is more reminiscent of the older MUDs or MOOs than of the more recent MMORPGs. I really have no interest in making it an active part of my life and mostly I'm just checking out the state of things. It's worth taking a look at least from a conceptual point of view - certainly a lot of interesting stuff takes place there.

Linux Distro?

It's been a while since I had a Linux box running at the house but I need one for some projects I'm about to start working on. It's also been a while since I've work with Linux in any but a cursory administrative manner.

I'll primarily be doing LAMP development on it and I'll also probably be using the MySQL for a Wiki and possible for Word Press. I've been thinking of using Ubuntu mostly because it seems to have a lot of cheerleaders.

So if you're a big Linux user, and you know who you are I'd like your thoughts. I'm sure everyone who uses Linux has a preference but I'd like some suggestions anyway.

Are you a cutthroat or a pussycat? Find out, if you dare.

Machiavellianism is a term used to describe a one's tendency to be charming, confident and glib, but also arrogant, calculating and cynical, prone to manipulate and exploit. So how devious are you? Take this MACH-IV (Test of Machiavellianism) personality test and find out. link

Here are my results:

The Machiavelli personality test has a range of 0-100
Your Machiavelli score is: 62
You are a high Mach, you endorse Machiavelli's opinions.

Most people fall somewhere in the middle, but there's a significant minority at either extreme.

According to this I wouldn't trust me if I were you. It says I'm a high Mach but I'd say just barely so. It's probably my cynicism creeping out.

Dr. Doom: Saving the Earth with Ebola

These articles feature one seriously mad scientist if he believes what he is saying. Eric Pianka an evolutionary ecologist who advocates the extermination of 90% of humanity through the use of airborne Ebola Zaire virus.

Pianka claims that the natural world would be "better off" if there weren't so many humans. To see if that's true, we have to figure out just what constitutes the "natural world"? As an evolutionist, I see human beings as the products of the same natural forces that shaped all other life on earth. Our brains evolved on this planet subject to the same kinds of natural selection pressures as those that shaped peacock feathers. The same can be said of all of our social structures, our religions and every other aspect of what we are that helped us secure resources and propagate our species (the hammer and anvil of natural selection). In short, our institutions and our technology are every bit as much a part of the natural world as elk mating rituals and beaver dams. In fact, by evolving the ability to adapt the world to fit us , human beings have become better at securing resources and procreating than any other vertebrate on the planet. By this measure, we are evolution's most successful creation (amongst vertebrates). If extraterrestrials were asked to select nature's most successful vertebrate on the Earth they would certainly point to us.

During a speech at the 109th meeting of the Texas Academy of Science at Lamar University in Beaumont on 3-5 March 2006 he publicly advocated using airborne Ebola to reduce the human populace to 10% of its current level. He is literally wishing a slow and painful death upon humanity. During the speech he received a standing ovation from the audience comprised of students and scientists. To me this smacks of utter insanity. I think it would be better to go read Critical Path by Buckminster Fuller then you realize that it's not so much overpopulation that is causing the problem but poor management.

Apparently he's being investigated by the FBI over the remarks.

Link to editorial on The Citizen Scientist
Link to story about the 109th meeting of Texas Academy of Sciences by Forrest M. Mims III
And two articles from the Austin American-Statesman, here and here

PostSecret

In the event you haven't seen or heard of it, PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard. It is by turns touching and sad to read the hidden thoughts and feelings of the people who have sent in their secrets. Some of the secrets are absolutely heartbreaking whereas others shock you with the meanness of human nature. Link

The true nature of blogs?

Sometimes I wonder...

The Sublime Nature of Friendship

I've been missing many of my friends whom I haven't seen or heard from in a many year. I'm very happy to have gotten in a touch with some of them over the past couple years. And more recently through the power of the internet I have come back into contact with even more friends. I'm not talking about high-school chums but some of the most interesting people I have known. And somehow, through life, you go your separate ways and lose track of each other and wonder, "What the hell happened?" Sometimes it feels like a Talking Heads song (your choice of song but you probably know the one I mean.) But I'm glad to see that these friends are still alive and vital. And all these people who I have come back into contact with, well, it's quite amazing, the changes that have occurred, how different they are from ten or fifteen years ago. Yet, when talking to them it's as if no time has passed, expect there are new topics of conversation that were quite impossible years ago, children in some case, or the internet or even blogging.

There have been times when I thought my desire to still know these prodigal friends was a sign of an impending midlife crisis but the more I think of it the more I realize that is not the case. It's sublimely human to love our friends, wish them well and know they are there to talk to (or email), exchange ideas and thoughts with and to know that the bonds of friendship last. So I cannot quite express what a joy it is for me to know my friends and I hope to know them for a very long time.

Lack of thinking clearly

I've come to the conclusion that either I don't care enough about a lot stuff to write about it or I can't think clearly enough to write more than a few sentences about something or maybe I'm just lazy. Ok, so that's not much of a conclusion.

Or perhaps the problem lies in me having too much to say about just about anything - whether entirely accurate or not is irrelevant - but I just can't seem to get it all written in a reasonable amount of time plus my need to edit and clarify after the initial pass - maybe I should just go stream of consciousness and editing be damned though I will spell check to spare the misery probably since I tend to type fast and with a lot of typos in the process which leads to things like saying you instead of your because I can't seem to hit the "R" hard enough.

I am very tired today. A sick child who, even when sick, has far more energy than me can really wear you out after 12 continuous hours of care. That plus after he went to sleep I had more work to do in getting data transferred from an old computer to a new computer. That took my whole day up to the 16 hours of non-stop work. I think my big mistake was not going to bed immediately and only getting about 5 hours of sleep. All said and done I feel more rested after a day in the office.

Some information concerning this blog, the title (and subtitle) of this blog

Me

I'm anti-entropic, radically-skeptic, and generally optimistic.
I dislike stupidity - mine and others. I dislike hypocrisy even more so.
I do not believe anything.

The Map Is Not the Territory

The term was originated by Alfred Korzybski and is the premise of General Semantics

The high level philosophical concept the phrase lies in object/action and symbol relationships. The "Map Is Not the Territory" is an expression that means an abstract construct (word, thought, belief, idea, symbol, icon) or someone's reaction to something is not in fact the thing itself. The pain from the hot kiss at the end of a wet fist is not the wet fist. One person's opinion of a pizza is not the pizza.

In the case of this blog "The Map Is Not the Territory" also refers to a term used in the underlying principles of neuro-linguistic programming. There it is used to mean that individuals do not have direct access to reality, but only have access to a set of beliefs they have built up about reality.

While not associated with neuro-linguistic programming the phrase used in the same general sense expresses what I think about how people substitute their beliefs for reality. In general people see and hear what they want to see and hear.

Watching the Eschaton Immanentize

While not entirely proper in terms of meaning it's derived from the phrase "immanentize the eschaton" which means "to try and bring about the end of the world" or "end of days." So the action of this blog is in effect my watching of others trying to bring about the "end of days."

That said it should be noted that there are a lot of theories (mostly conspiracy) that those in power are trying to immanentize the eschaton. Whether it's true that there are those who are actively trying to attain such a goal or not it seems sufficient that human stupidity is more than capable on its own.

The Blog

Those being the two parts of this blog (at least as a general concept) I'm likely to post about nearly anything. I am often interested in semantics, belief systems, memes, ontology and skepticism. I am also very interested in games and game theory as games are often manifestations of active reversal to the two terms describing this blog. Politics and philosophy along with cyber-culture and randomness will rear their hydra like heads as well.