Over at National Review’s The Corner blog there have been some comments about the film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Mainly the comments are about how women today seem to be falling for Jimmy Stewart’s character, Ransom Stoddard, more than John Wayne’s character Tom Doniphon. Many of the people at NRO seem to feel that this is a shame and are more sympathetic to Doniphon as a heroic character.

A number of email reposes from ladies supporting their love for Doniphon were posted and I just had to say something. I emailed one of the writers to let her know my thoughts of the characters and I thought it would make an interesting post here as well.

There are spoilers so do not follow the link unless you’ve seen the film or do not care about spoilers. Continue reading →

Right now in America we are debating health care which changes, if any, to make to our current system. (I believe that change is required, but that is not the focus of this post.) What I think is very difficult to see is how much things are going to change and change soon.
I think we are currently in a phase of history where health care will be the most expensive, but soon that is going to change. I think the transformation in health and biology by the year 2050 is going to be as massive and world altering as when physics changed the world from 1900 to 1950. We are going to get a great deal of control over the biological processes and be able to mold them to our purposes.

This can be the greatest boon to mankind since fire, or it can be a greater threat than nuclear weapons ever presented.

Take a look at the following article. In mice scientist have completely reversed MS. This is big and it’s big for more than just MS. This is about learning to control the immune system. (I’m personally interested in this. I have arthritis and I have friends with MS, arthritis, and other auto-immune diseases.) Clearly controlling the immune system can be a benefit to those like me with an autoimmune disorder, but it could also be a terrifying weapon.

God, I hope we use this power wisely.

So last night I was doing the dishes after dinner and inspiration “struck like sudden lightening out of a clear sky.”

This time it was about D&D, the d20 combat system and a new way to deal with damage and death in combat. (I have always been unhappy with ever increasing hit points as a system. This creates the situation where high level characters simply ignore the guy with the bow ’cause 1d8 even tripled for a crit simply isn’t going to slow them down.)

I am not going to go into my new system here. It is simple and it can be overlaid on the existing D&D 3.5 rules with a minimum of fuse and alteration. Perhaps in a notehr post I get into the whys and hows of the combat system. (I hope to test it soon.)

What I find interesting is how often I get my spark of creation while doing something utterly mindless. Brushing my teeth – fixed Space MacBeth; washing Dishes, fixed D&D; cleaning a floor – solved the ending of a tough story. It happens again and again. Clearly having the body engaged but the mind wandering the paths of a mental Fangorn Forrest is good for creativity.

So should I seek out mindless physical activity in hopes of more creativity? Would exercising two or three times a week in the complexes gym make me a better writer?

The neutering and castration of the Star Trek franchise started with Star Trek: The Next Generation. In the series the people and officers of the Federation became boring in the homogenous perfection. I didn’t watch all seven season of that series, and watched less and less of the following series until when it finally degenerated into Enterprise I could only stomach the pilot and no more.

I pine for the days when real men captained starship and had the grit to issue general order 24. I’d enamored that the Federation had such a bloody gun-boat history that the destruction of all life on a planet surface was a General Order. This is something that used to be part of every captain’s tool-kit. Check with HQ? Heh, that’s for weak fools without the stomach for command. Shout the order and just sit back and wait for your crew to eliminate a pesky and annoying civilization from the spin of the galaxy.

A lot this post is tongue in cheek, but Star Trek did become a very cautious environment. We went from Kirk ordering the destruction of Eiminiar Vii to Janeway and Picard surrendering.

This was not progress.

Sorry my friends I have a terrible near migraine headache so I will not be pontificating on anything at all tonight.

See you tomorrow.

So tonight my sweetie-wife and I went to the World Famous San Diego zoo for a night time bird show. We walked around the zoo for about thirty minutes before show time looking at other animals then went to the show.
One of the more amusing sights before the show was a mountain lion. It was just at dusk and the cats were active. Pacing back and forth in their enclosure. a small scrum of people were up close to the fencing only a couple of feet away from the lions including a couple of families. The lion at one point spotted a baby, maybe a year old at most and the lion froze, its gaze intent on the child. Oh every knew exactly what was in that predator’s little mind.

The show was fun. To raise money that had a trained African Raven that would accept bills from people and stuff it into the big collection box the conservation charity. I tried desperately to get a photo of the raven with a wad of bills in its beak, but I failed.

Damn it.

This was taken from a Yahoo news article about stars and their unusual phobias.

I know people who do have a phobia of graveyards and who get creeped out just passing near or through one. (One of our trolley lines in San Diego passes through a graveyard.)
Me? I’ve l always liked graveyard ever since I was a teenager.I spent the summer of ’77 with my sister in the mountains and I used to climb up the hills into this tiny almost forgotten graveyard. I’d sit and read there. It was quite peaceful.

Here’s an article on a company that is looking at doing orbital solar power satellites for earth base powers.

Will The Star Align For Space-base Solar Power?

A h/t to Instapundit for the link. (Not that he needs any traffic help.)

Of they can do it I am all for it. We need power solutions like this and more nuclear based power. Of course all this is by the way side if Polywell works out.