[This entry brought to you via my involvement in 750words.com. I
really enjoy the service - if you aspire to be a writer, you should check it out.]
This past weekend, I watched a beautiful documentary called "Stone Reader". Directed by Mark Moskowitz, it's the story
of a book called "The Stones of Summer", by a man named Dow Morrison. The book itself is described as a "coming of age
novel" set in Iowa, telling a story which "succeeds in conveying the rebellious energies of youth, the essential madness
of adolescent reality."
In 1972, the 18 year old Mark Moskowitz read a book review in the New York Times written by John Seelye, reviewing
Mossman's novel.
Continue reading "Review: Stone Reader"
If you have been using SSL or SSH to access any of your joeysmith.com, hashphp.org, or homestarmy.com services, please
be aware that our previous certificates and keys have expired. I have generated a new one, and your software should
prompt you on connect to approve the certificate/key.
To all authors: Please login to the blog as soon as possible. I have upgraded the software used, and when you login, it
needs to update the encrypted version of your password. It's time-sensitive as, if you wait too long, the software will
automatically lock you out. If you're having any trouble getting in, please let me know ASAP - the longer it goes
without being fixed, the harder it is to fix. Thanks, and sorry for the disruption.
After you rush to the railing to peer down at the mangled bodies of Mina and Myna, you begin to notice a soft glow and a
faint ringing tone coming from somewhere behind you. You turn and see the familiar metallic orb rising from the throne
that lies near the center of the dias. As it gets higher in the air, the tone and the light grow brighter, until you
have to look away.
When the light dims a bit, and the tone fades, you turn to find the sphere, now about 50' in the air, projecting the
now-familiar image of Myrna sitting as though on the throne, his head bowed in sorrow.
"Ah, heroes," the magical projection sighs, looking up at you. "You don't know what you've done here."
He stands, and begins to pace back and forth before the throne. As he draws in the air with his hands magical, glowing
constructs appear to visualize the narrative he tells.
"Thousands of years ago, there were five great adventuring companies that vied against one another to be the greatest
heroes in the land - the Company of the White Panther, the Jade Vipers, the Order of the Falcon, the Crimson Wolf
Brigade, and the Black Sun. Mina and I founded the Company of the White Panther and collected to us many of the
strongest, bravest, and most clever adventurers in the Realms."
"The race to become the greatest adventuring company led each of us into some of the most dangerous keeps, ancient
manses, and terrifying ruins the Realms had to offer. It was the Black Sun that first stumbled upon the thing that would
doom us all - the Portal of Varian."
"I don't know where the portal came from, or really who named it, but I do know this: when Valdryn - the found of the
Black Sun, and perhaps the greatest warrior I ever knew - opened it, the forces of Hell came screaming out of it descend
upon the Realms in a wave of death and destruction that nearly could not be stopped."
He stops pacing, and turns to face you. "The entire company of Black Sun was destroyed in that first wave, and it took
the combined might of the remaining four adventuring groups to turn back the tide and seal the portal again. Realizing
it was our own lust for power and glory that had brought the world to this state, each company agreed to commit
themselves to protecting the portal forever more."
"We set up a sort barrier between the world and the portal, anchored on each of its four sides by one of the companies.
For centuries, I held the High Seat," he gestures at the throne. "I tired of the task, and of the burden of leading the
descdants of those who followed us here, so I turned the task over to my beloved, Mina." He pauses for a long while, a
looks sadly towards the railing where she and Myna had plunged to their deaths. Finally, he looks back to you.
"The Portal is vulnerable now. I no longer know how to directly contact the other companies, but I will seek them out.
YOU will have to accept the burden of protecting the world from this terrible evil. Keep the Orb, and
do not let it fall into the wrong hands - I will use it to contact you when I know how you can proceed to take over
guardianship of the Portal's paths. Good luck, heroes, and may Eha guide your steps."
On the weekly TrekWest5 podcast, Peter and I have, from time
to time, wondered aloud what it might have been like to live during World War II, and have discussed the persecution of
Japanese citizens here in the US during that period. Today, I came across a very interesting account of one man who
lived during that period - and how, although he was a young boy, these events impacted his life in a somewhat amusing
manner.
The person in question is Les Earnest, and you
can read his account (titled "e-t-a-o-n-r-i Spy and the FBI") from the Wikipedia entry.
If you're following me on 750words.com, you probably found out that I missed a day. I do have a reason: I was rewriting
the following 750words post to make it a full-fledged article for the blog. The original wasn't nearly as coherent as
this, hopefully this is the first "pay-off" from my 750words.com experiment. Note that this will "spoil" for anyone who
hasn't seen the Lost series finale. Continue reading "Why I Missed a Day"
In spite of being labelled the "guest
host" by Peter and listeners alike (yes, Jim, I'm looking at YOU), it turns out that I am the only one who remembers our
motto: The Podcast, First and Always. Peter got distracted by hosting a Lost TV party for a few members of The Homestarmy, and never got me the last edit for this week's
podcast - so, here I am, doing the edit and writing the paragraph. If this doesn't get me "Co-Host" status, this podcast
is OVER! On the other hand, I'm obviously solely responsible for any errors this week as we discuss episodes 5-8 of The West Wing, Season
3.
Various topics discussed in this podcast include: TrekWest5 Culture Corner:
Daniel Suarez's Daemon and Freedom ™ Laser Induced Plasma Channel - and a video of it in action Flamingo explains why she's a liberal - great,
thought provoking stuff! Principles of an American Life: The 16th
Amendment "Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society."
What constitutes "News"? "Hard" & "Soft" Money
At what age do you become responsible for your own actions? I Fight Dragons
Looking around the Intertron Tuesday night for ways to improve my writing skills, I stumbled across a website called 750words.
Much different from a blog, the core idea of 750words is that everything you write is private, and that WHAT you write
is less important than THAT you write. For me, this was a liberating idea - many of the emails, stories, and blog posts
that are rolling around in my mind never go anywhere because I can't get them up to a level of quality that I am
comfortable sharing with other people. With 750words, the content itself is invisible to others, but it does give you a
way to track how well I'm doing by publishing a very interesting page of statistics - in fact, you should go look at my
stats page for 2010-MAY-20 right now.
They also have many "game theory" kind of things going on - there's a point system, and they have a monthly challenge
that you can opt-in to where you commit to writing the full 750 words every single day for an entire calendar month - if
you make the commitment and you miss even one day, your name goes on the "Wall of Shame", but if you make it every
single day your name goes on the "Wall of Amazingness" - and, if you had previously been on the Wall of Shame, getting
your name on the "Wall of Amazingness" would wipe out the shameful entry entirely. The site's creator also strongly
encourages you to design your own rewards and consequences - it seems a lot of people promise to treat themselves if
they accomplish it - imagine my surprise to discover that one of his suggested "consequences" is "If I miss a day or
more, I will donate $_ to help support 750 Words." He's a very clever man, this Buster Benson fellow.
You can read more about the project on the About page, or you
can just open your own account and start writing!
I can't remember which one of you I was talking to that asserted that we don't know what the island is yet. In a recent
interview given by Damon Lindelof, he said this question had been answered. While Mr. Lindelof didn't actually tell WHEN
it had been answered, I'm quite confident that it came to us in "Ab Aeterno", as Richard and Jacob were talking about
the nature of the Island, Jacob, and The Great Deceiver. Holding a wine bottle, Jacob tells Richard Alpert:
"Think of this wine as what you keep calling hell...there's many other names for it too--malevolence, evil, darkness,
and here it is, swirling around in the bottle unable to get out because if it did, it would spread. The cork is this
island. And it's the only thing keeping the darkness where it belongs."
Bumped to continue discussion. Original post date: 2010-04-11 09:28
[I am posting this here because Radar had mentioned that he would be interested in reading it. It's not complete,
and the writing still needs to be polished, so please have some patience with it -- AoD.]
“You’ll come back,” said Hugh Akston, “because yours is an error of knowledge, not a moral
failure, not an act of surrender to evil, but only the last act of being victim to your own virtue.”
Rand, Ayn. Atlas Shrugged. New York: Penguin Putnam, 1999. Print.
From time to time, I have a conversation where someone asks me to justify how I can claim to be both a Christian and an
Objectivist – the speaker believing these to be views in opposition.
Continue reading "Objectivism and Christianity, Part One"
A few weeks ago, MG linked to a "marching band" version of OK GO's latest video, for the song "This Too Shall Pass". I
wasn't as impressed with it as I have been with past videos, which is why I was glad to find this other video for the
same track, which includes the absolute best "Rube Goldberg"-style machine I've seen yet - I mean, it involves a person
on a zipline, two televisions, 4 paint guns,and a *CAR*. Very cool.
Got this one today. Unforunately, I can't even tell by listening what the guy is trying to say:
Hey Joey, this is carl from fast now. This call about getting screwed. I couldn't find one that that's
exactly but I think. You, hey, there's a way to make a Marge and if you any questions, give us call back.
I am cleaning up our list of categories. Due to under-use, the following categories (each of which has fewer than 10
posts) will be removed unless someone speaks up in the next 48 hours to object.
Because uncategorized posts are unreachable, I will attach the posts to an author-specific category instead, as best as
I can, and file the remainder under "Personal Entry".
