Jeremy Hermanns dot org -- Alaska Flight #536 - Rapid De-Pressurization and Panic at 30K Feet

Jeremy Hermanns dot org -- Alaska Flight #536 - Rapid De-Pressurization and Panic at 30K Feet
"Nothing can describe the helpless feeling you go through during a time like this, when you are absent any control, you cannot breathe, and everyone around is stunned into fear. "
Amateur pilot blogs about a terrifying experience -- and apparently gets flamed from an Alaska Airlines IP address...

Games as Shared Experience - a photoset on Flickr

Langoroth's Games as Shared Experience photo project continues to grow. Go check it out for some pictures of our recent Twlight Imperium session.

Harry Turtledove

I've been reading some Harry Turtledove lately. I have to admit, I love his beginnings - straight up, no nonsense or faffing around.

I'm two pages into In the Balance. It starts like this: Aliens are getting ready to invade Earth. They will crush us with their superior technology. But all is not as well as the aliens think. We learn their Empire includes 3 worlds. Their weaponry is not all that dissimilar from ours. And as the aliens view images of medeval warriors we learn that these are pictures from a "recent" (to the aliens) probe: only 1600 years ago. The aliens aren't expecting industry or serious resistance of any sort.

Thus the stage is set...

Imaginariums

By the way, Imaginariums is truly stunning.

Piano, piano, piano

Subject matter dictated by the Girl, subject matter drawn by Tony.

Transcendence

Transcendence is a brilliant freely available space exploration and combat game. It's in the tradition of the amazing Mac-only game Escape Velocity but at its heart it really owes more to Nethack. Check it out.

Tony's Yahoo avatar

At the moment, this avatar is an accurate depiction, as Tony is stringing up the Christmas tree lights while the rest of us offer him encouragement and moral support. He's doing a great job! Hurrah, hurrah.

The Seattle Times: Local News: Bookstore's closing "the end of an era"

The Seattle Times: Local News: Bookstore's closing "the end of an era"

"I really like going to people's houses, where people live, and buy their books. There's nothing like that. But now booksellers often buy online. I do that by having someone help me, buying some special books for customers. But I don't like to do it because the thrill of going and seeing the book, and buying the book, and touching it, is gone."

There's no Wikipedia entry for 'moral responsibility' | The Register

There's no Wikipedia entry for 'moral responsibility'

The Register takes a hard swing at Wikipedia. Interestingly, the Guardian takes issue with its implied claim to accuracy rather than with any inaccuracies that arise.

For sure a libel is a libel, but the outrage would have been far more muted if the Wikipedia project didn't make such grand claims for itself. The problem with this vanity exercise is one that it's largely created for itself. The public has a firm idea of what an "encyclopedia" is, and it's a place where information can generally be trusted, or at least slightly more trusted than what a labyrinthine, mysterious bureaucracy can agree upon, and surely more trustworthy than a piece of spontaneous graffiti - and Wikipedia is a king-sized cocktail of the two.

What is Wikipedia's response? I don't know, but true Wiki fashion, they've already got an entry on moral responsibility.

t r u t h o u t - FBI Agents Lament: "Radical Militant Librarians"

FBI Agents Lament: "Radical Militant Librarians": "While radical militant librarians kick us around, true terrorists benefit from Office of Intelligence Policy and Review's failure to let us use the tools given to us"

Medusa by Caravaggio