May 2005 Archives

I am in awe. Prior to this article, I believed this was only a theoretical position. Yet here it is, straight from the BBC:

Doctors' kitchen knives ban call - The researchers say legislation to ban the sale of long pointed knives would be a key step in the fight against violent crime. "The Home Office is looking for ways to reduce knife crime. We suggest that banning the sale of long pointed knives is a sensible and practical measure that would have this effect."

I'm not overly fond of the last two Star Wars prequels. I don't regard them with the raving, fulminating hatred that some do, but neither do I hold that they are the revealed final truths of life and cinema. They are simply two movies which have a number of excellent scenes but fail to connect them into a truly impressive film. They also suffer from structural flaws which don't make them unwatchable, but do damage their ability to seamlessly mesh with what little is mentioned about the characters in Episode IV. Nothing I had seen or heard had led me to believe that Episode III would be any improvement.

Naturally the wife and I were in line at 9:30pm Wednesday for the first midnight show.

Ground Zero Games has made PDFs of Full Thurst 2nd Edition and all its supplements (More Thrust, Fleet Books 1 & 2) available on their website, www.gzg.com. Just click on the download link and you can try out some of the fastest playing starship combat rules ever written.

If this is so cool, you may ask, why are they giving it away? Full Thrust 3 is in the works, and while a few copies of Full Thrust and Fleet Book 1 are still available, it's not going to be worth it to GZG to reprint the books with a new edition around the corner. There is also the slight chance that people who want to buy starship combat rules might, just might, want to buy starship miniatures, of which they have bunches and bunches.

So check them out (along with Dirtside II, an excellent set of micro-armor rules also available for download) and give them a whirl.

Even if you don't follow horse racing (and I don't), modern_maria's take on the derby is entertaining and worth a read:

Such stories are what the Kentucky Derby is all about. It's a gunfight. You cram 20+ horses on a track built for 10 or 12 and see who can shove through to the front the fastest without breaking any rules (and getting caught). And as for the incredulous "How did it happen," where have you been for the past 130 years?

Check out the entire entry on her LiveJournal

Overheard at the Friendly Local Game Store last night:

"This is nothing like the Corps."

"If the Scabbard was like the Marine Corps, none of our players would make it past the first week of D&D. They'd all wash out back to Toon."

No, I have no idea what the Marines have to do with the day to day operations of the FLGS. Truth be told, I don't think I want to.

It's not that you can't make this kind of stuff up, it's just that I wish they were:

Zimbabwe, the human rights pariah accused of violence, intimidation and suppression of free speech against its people, has been re-elected to the United Nations Human Rights Commission for a three-year term over the strong protests of Australia, the US and Canada. --Sydney Morning Herald (Hat tip to normblog)