Category: News

I spent a lot of time in my youth with the worlds Gygax helped create. Some of my fondest memories are related to all night D&D games with my friends. So, it’s sad to hear that Gygax passed away recently.

Roleplaying games and programming are intertwined for me. I experienced both when I was about nine years old. My father encouraged both hobbies. My entire family actually played D&D for a while! Reading through the rules is not unlike reading through a computer manual.

In fact, I’m sure I spent equal time trying to understand the AD&D Dungeon Master’s Guide and that spiralbound Commodore 64 Programmer’s Reference Guide. There were many numbers to memorize,w whether they were RAM addresses to call with POKE, or the armor class numbers for various suits of armor.

Of course, D&D inspired many, many computer games. My friends and I were so excited when the origional Pool of Radiance came out in the late 80s. For the first time, the actual rules of D&D were implemented in computer form. That was a second renaissance of D&D for me during my early college years. I had the money to buy all the 2nd Edition books, no significant other and the time to waste playing all weekend long.

I know a lot of dads look forward to teaching their sons to play baseball or fish (and I do, too), but I also look forward to my sons being old enough to play D&D. It was such a wonderful excuse to imagine great things and argue with my friends. It’s hard to imagine a world where D&D doesn’t exist. I’d like to think Gygax is somewhere chatting with Bahamut and plotting a raid on Orcus.

It’s just about midnight. Henry (18 months now) konked out around 11PM. Tre (4 years) is determined to make it to midnight this year. Vicky seems to have fallen asleep on the couch. Sleep isn’t something ever comes easy to me, so I know I’ll make it.

I have a feeling that 2008 will be a great year for me. I hope it will be for you, too!

A tiger at the San Francisco zoo jumped the moat and killed someone yesterday. As is usual with cases where people screw up, the article in the Contra Costa Times has lots of quotes about how it’s nobody’s fault. Of course, it’s the fault of the people who run the zoo! The version of the story at the site is missing some amazingly stupid parts that I can’t pass up quoting here.

“We won’t know until tomorrow whether this was negligence or intentional or how the tiger got out,” Mannina said.

That’s Sgt. Steve Mannina with the SF police. Apparently eye witnesses told reporters that the tiger jumped the moat and climbed the fence. I hope that it’s only negligence on the part of the people who work at the zoo. Is he suggesting that someone might have let the tiger out on purpose? Anyway, negligence is intentional.

Safety measures can help only so much when dealing with predators such as tigers, said Chris Austria, an animal trainer who has worked with tigers at Marine World in Vallejo and with bears at the San Francisco Zoo.

Much like indoor domesticated cats who escape from their homes, a captive tiger would be very interested in the outside world, Austria said. Tuesday’s attack likely had nothing to do with hunger, he said.

I’m nearly at a loss for words. These comments that don’t appear in the online version of the story make Austria sound like an idiot. The motivations of a wild animal are a non sequitur! And it’s a lie that safety measures can help only so much! The fence can’t be higher? The mote can’t be wider? He’s saying there’s nothing that could have been done. Wild animals will eventually attack and kill us.

The people responsible for the zoo should be fired, minimally. That should include Robert Jenkins, the zoo’s directory of animal care and conservation. It doesn’t seem unreasonable for there to be criminal charges. I would never return to the zoo unless they demonstrated that this kind of thing won’t happen again. I’m not feeling very confident about Marine World, either.

Chris Austria was involved in a tiger attack at Marine World in 1998. That’s probably why the reporters who wrote the story, Barbara Feder Ostrov and Sean Webby, knew to get a quote from him. I wonder why they didn’t mention the 1998 attack in their article.

Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press wrote an article on a study claiming that humans are causing global rises in humidity. The Fark headline for this was “Nonexistent global warming is causing a mythical rise in theoretical humidity levels in imaginary parts of the world“. Beautiful.

To show that this is man-made, Gillett [one of the authors] ran computer models to simulate past climate conditions and studied what would happen to humidity if there were no man-made greenhouse gases. It didn’t match reality.

These guys start with the conclusion that humans are causing catastrophic change, set up the variables to support it and these simulations. It’s an interesting trick because on the surface it’s nothing the unsuspecting person with a health respect for science would question. Yet, the idea of “man-made greenhouse gases” seems to smuggle in the whole idea of global warming in the first place.

The article goes on to claim that that humans are negatively affecting 10 separate aspects of the environment.

Climate scientists have now seen the man-made fingerprint of global warming on 10 different aspects of Earth’s environment: surface temperatures, humidity, water vapor over the oceans, barometric pressure, total precipitation, wildfires, change in species of plants in animals, water run-off, temperatures in the upper atmosphere, and heat content in the world’s oceans.

Regretfully, they have omitted one other factor, proven by a much more solid theory. In his Open Letter to the Kansas School Board, Bobby Henderson clearly shows how global warming is most certainly caused by the dramatic drop in pirate populations. Even if your faith isn’t strong, how can you argue with such a precise chart?