Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons and one of the fathers of tabletop role playing games, died today at the age of 69. He had suffered from heart problems. . . .
I was a D&D geek in my younger days, and my kids play it today. Because of that, I will resist the temptation to make a snarky comment about Mr. Gygax missing his saving throw. Instead, I shall hoist a glass and roll a pair of twenty-sided dice in his honor tonight. Rest in peace, good sir.
Posted by: Mike ||
03/04/2008 13:34 ||
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#1
Amen. Along with Dave Hargrave (author of The Arduin Grimoire) Gygax was one of the great ones.
RIP, Gary. You'll always be remembered in some people's hearts and minds.
#2
...Requiesiat in Pacem, Mr. Gygax. Thank you for giving us such a wonderful universe to play in.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
03/04/2008 14:26 Comments ||
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#3
Ah, hell.
RIP, EGG.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
03/04/2008 14:26 Comments ||
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#4
I met Mr. Gygax about 30 years ago in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin in my early 'electronic engineering' days. Nice guy.
"He made it to the Final Level. He will be greatly missed"
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
03/04/2008 14:46 Comments ||
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#5
D&D was invented?? Mr. Gygax's memory is for a blessing in my household -- only Mr. Wife never played. Yitgadal v'yitkadash sh'mai rabbah. Magnified and sanctified is the name of the Lord.
#7
His little game spawned endless hours of entertainment for millions. It's a shame what happened at TSR and how they maneuvered him out. I don't think the game improved as a result of his ouster.
#8
I'd met Gary also, when he was leaner and had a little more hair on the top. He was concerned about his heart back then also - would order/request glasses of water more than anything else. I AGREE - A VERY NICE MAN.
I had "the keep on the borderlands" and the "palace of the silver princess" at 10 yrs old. Though when I found girls abt 3-4 yrs later those times were past. Fond memories anyways and a love of sci-fi & high fantasy novels to this day because of the D&D. Authors like Robert Jordan (RIP), Dave Eddings, Marge Weiss & Tracy Hickman, Glen Cook, and George RR Martin owe you a tip of the hat as well methinx.
#10
I bought my 1st D&D book (Dungeons Masters Guide) at 15 and thought 'wow'. Soon I was running my own game with friends.
We didn't get too radical in it (with figurines and dressing as characters and stuff) but played it for fun.
Now you can play such games as NeverWinter Nights (I and II) either over the net or alone. It even has 'Keep on the Borderlands', 'Silver Princess', 'Eye of the Beholder', and other D&D conversions.
WTF? ....might wanna take a look at the husband?
ENCINITAS A woman who sheriff's officials say was commemorating the one-year anniversary of her father's death was struck and killed by a freight train in Leucadia Monday night. The 35-year-old woman was with her husband near North Vulcan Avenue and Ashbury Street when she was hit by the Burlington Northern Santa Fe train just after 10 p.m., officials said.
Her husband said the couple had come to the spot to memorialize the death of his wife's father, who died at the same location. She was attempting to place a shirt on the tracks when she fell forward and was hit by the train, the man told authorities.
She couldn't throw flowers?
Investigators do not know if her death was accidental or deliberate. The woman's father committed suicide, an investigator with the county Medical Examiner's Office said.
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/04/2008 12:59 ||
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#1
2nd place idiot is me. i just spent 5 mins hunting a pic of the husband
#6
Muahaha. Us Catholics are taking over the non-baptist parts of the country.
Actually, looking at that map, and knowing the areas, these are what people profess to be, not what they actually practice. No Catholic in full communion wiht the Church can be pro-choice, for instance.
#2
Actually Crease, they know that by analyzing the distribution of craters. The size and quantity of space rocks has been declining in a predictable way for billions of years (as the initial supply gets swept up by planets and is largely not replaced) so a Marscape that has not been disturbed for a long time will have lots of craters and quite a few large ones, while a 'young' Marscape will only have a few small craters.
#3
[Inserts tongue in check] Of course our opponents simply paint destruction on their runways to fool, often with some success, our image intel specialist into wrong battle damage assessments. Just imagine what a million year old civilization could do :)
#4
Of course our opponents simply paint destruction on their runways to fool, often with some success, our image intel specialist into wrong battle damage assessments.
Most of us aren't fooled, P2k. We laugh at the poor-quality attempt at fooling us. Even the crappy photography available on Google Earth is good enough to see through the attempt.
It's often amazed me that our government has the best imagery analysts in the world, and so severely under-utilizes them. "Commercial" applications abound, and are ignored. NO college professor would dare hire a former military imint specialist, for anything.
Actually, there was some imagery on APOD a few months ago that showed such avalanches after a quick dusting of CO2 snow. There were at least a dozen of the "streaks" left by sliding snow/ice/sand down a crater wall. None of them reached down more than halfway down the slope, indicating the surface tension was pretty high.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
03/04/2008 16:57 Comments ||
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#5
surface tension? Or lower gravity?
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/04/2008 17:30 Comments ||
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#6
I blame Bush the sonic boom of the spacecraft passing overhead. You can't tell me any different!
signed
pathetic lefty man-child living in MeeMaw's basement
Posted by: Almost Anonymous5839 ||
03/04/2008 20:05 Comments ||
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A WOMAN who survived an extraordinary crocodile attack has been killed by a snake. Respected ecologist, feminist and author Val Plumwood - who described her death roll with the giant saltie as "terror, terror, terror" - was found dead on her wilderness property. The species of snake responsible for her death was still unknown last night.
Dr Plumwood, who was 67 when she died, was attacked by a crocodile while birdwatching from a canoe in Kakadu in 1985. A territorial male charged the canoe, probably mistaking it for a rival. Dr Plumwood shouted "go away" at the croc, lent up and clambered on to an overhanging tree branch.
The croc jumped up and wrenched her out of the tree. The university academic said she thought she was going to die as the saltie went into a death roll with her clamped in its jaws. But, for an unknown reason, the crocodile let go and Dr Plumwood found the water was shallow enough for her to stand up in. She pulled herself back into the tree - but the croc again exploded out of the water and grabbed her. And again it let her go.
Dr Plumwood sttaggered out of the water and crawled up a 2m mud bank, blood pouring from hideous wounds to her upper legs and pelvis. She slithered down the bank twice before reaching the top. Dr Plumwood dragged herself through the bush for a couple of hours. It was dark before she was found by a rescue party.
"I was alive," she said. "Against all expectation, I was alive."
Even as Dr Plumwood was being driven to Royal Darwin Hospital, she begged her rescuers not to hunt down and kill the crocodile that nearly killed her. She said the animal was only doing what it was genetically primed to do.
"As I began my 13-hour journey to Darwin, my rescuers discussed going upriver the next day to shoot a crocodile," she said. I spoke strongly against this plan. I was the intruder - and no good purpose could be served by random revenge."
#4
It doesn't sound like she was one of those dim-bulbs who go up to the crocodile/grizzly/jaguar/Burmese tiger/panther/bull elephant/(insert favorite dangerous animal here) and try to hug it because it's cool to be One With Nature and they drive a Prius and their positive karma will protect them, y'know? She got into the croc's defensive zone and it did what crocs do. That's a far cry from Darwin Award territory.
Posted by: Mike ||
03/04/2008 13:09 Comments ||
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Escaped the crocodile, killed by the snake.
A lot of 67 year olds would be happy hanging out at a snake-free, croc-free starbucks.
#6
Could have been worse; she could have been commemorating an aniversary of a loved one's death on train tracks and mowed down by the Orange Blossom Special. (see posted article above).
wonder if she will still vote in November????
#8
I have to agree with CP1618. There are places where people go that are dangerous. I did a lot of hunting, fishing, and hiking growing up in South Alabama where there are lot of poisonous snakes ans alligators. You don't have to be aggravating an animal to get into trouble.
Reminds me of a joke. A man in a restaurant says, "I'd like the Alligator Soup. And make it snappy".
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
03/04/2008 15:37 Comments ||
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#9
wonder if she will still vote in November????
Was she from Chicago? And was she a Democrat? Those are good indicators for LIFETIME membership!
Posted by: Almost Anonymous5839 ||
03/04/2008 20:09 Comments ||
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#10
I hear ya Deacon, more than a few times hog hunting in the Savannah NWR, with gators, snakes, and pissed off hogs makes the old ticker thump. Death is easy life is the scary part.
#1
"An intense beam of gamma rays headed our way" + "eight years ago..." > iff my DREAM/VISION are correct, and often are, methinks he forgot the term "FIERY" INTENSE BEAM OF GAMMA RAYS. Got the SUN on one end, SUPERNOVAE [dead-centered] on the other, and SPACE ROCKS in between.
AL PACINO as LUCIFER/SATAN to son KEANU REEVES [paraph] > "CONSIDER THE SOURCE, SON ... THE MAN UPSTAIRS [God] IS THE GREATEST VOYEUR/
DIALECTICIST/PRAGMATIST, ETC. OF US ALL".
D *** NG IT, WHAT DOES PAULA "KICKING A COCONUT IS NOT A WAR CRIME, DADDY" ABDUL REMEMBER - AGAIN!?
#2
Well, the good news is that the gamma ray burst will strip away the ozone layer and cause global cooling, which should counteract man made global warming. Oh, and the other good news is that it will kill all the people, which should also help with man made global warming. All in all, a win-win, I would say.
/sarcasm
Posted by: Rambler in California ||
03/04/2008 22:15 Comments ||
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KATHMANDU - At least 10 people were killed when a helicopter carrying United Nations officials crashed in bad weather over hilly terrain near Nepals capital on Monday, police and airport officials said. It was not immediately clear if there were any survivors and the United Nations could not confirm the number of people on board.
A police officer in Kathmandu said 10 bodies had been recovered. Police have already reached the site, Ramesh Mahat, an airport official, said. It is raining there.
The helicopter went missing on its way to Kathmandu from Sindhuli, about 65 km (40 miles) from the Nepali capital. The chopper was flying UN officials on an arms monitoring mission at the camps of former Maoist rebels who joined the government after a landmark peace deal in 2006.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/04/2008 00:00 ||
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NEW DELHI: The tsunami that hit south India in 2004 brought with it tons of titanium ore from the depths of the ocean. Titanium, a metal as strong as steel but much lighter, is resistant to extreme temperatures and corrosion. It is of great use in aeronautics, defence and atomic energy. India has 30% of the worlds reserves of titanium, said to be the metal of the future.
Prithviraj Chavan, minister of state in the prime ministers office, said the tsunami enhanced nearly 0.46 million tones of llmenite and 0.03 million tones of rutile in the known deposits of Chavara, Kerala. Both are titanium ores.
Scientific reports say this could have happened due to the churning on the deeper sediments of the onshore region or on the sediments entrapped in the near shelf region of the area, by the 6-metre-high tsunami waves. The coastal segment, where a considerably rich beach placer deposit with 70% ilmenite is concentrated, was investigated to understand the impact of the tsunami.
A placer deposit consists of valuable mineral or gemstone that accumulates in weathered rocks, stream sediments or in beach deposits as a result of natural weathering and erosion. Ores such as llmenite and rutile are known to exist at a depth of 10-15 metres on the seabed and the tsunami waves seem to have picked them up and dumped on the beach.
India is yet to begin exploitation of these reserves. The government has allocated Rs99.50 crore to set up a 500-ton -per-year titanium sponge plant at Kerala Minerals and Metals Limited (KMML), Kollam, based on the technology developed at Defence Metallurgical Research Laboratory (DMRL), Hyderabad. The unit will make India the seventh country to produce titanium sponge. Only Japan, America, Russia, China, Kazakhstan and Ukraine have the technology at present.
At KMML, it will be manufactured through a technology developed by DMRL. The beach sand mineral sector has been liberalised and the private sector is being encouraged to set up titanium extraction plants.
Posted by: john frum ||
03/04/2008 00:00 ||
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#2
Its already started to cause a row between INDIA + former province BANGLADESH as to mining and other collection rights. The Bengalis + Govt. are worried about nation's natural disappearance vv GLOBAL WARMING since their mostly poverty-stricken nation is at sea-level, besides suffering terribly from quakes and floods.
CHANDIGARH: President Pervez Musharraf's belated gesture of pardoning 67-year-old Kashmir Singh, an Indian spy who endured 35 excruciating years on death row in Pakistani prisons, has rekindled anticipation amidst 54 Indian families, whose kin have been missing since being taken prisoner in the wars of 1971 and 1965.
"Hope is the ultimate casualty in any war and we are not yet ready to give up," says Dr Simmi Waraich, whose father, Major S.P.S. Waraich of the 15 Punjab Regiment, went missing in December 1971 during battle at Hussainiwala in the Ferozepur sector. The young psychiatrist, like the dozens of other PoW relatives, has struggled to keep her brave father "alive" through years of Indias political and military establishment telling them it was "futile to expect miracles".
Kashmir Singh, a former Indian Army soldier of Hoshiarpurs Nangal Choran village, was arrested in Lahore and Charged with espionage in 1973. A Pakistani military court sentenced him to death and he has since been kept in continual solitary confinement with only a 30-minute break to stretch his aching limbs each day.
It is the former spys endurance and his will to survive an ordeal beyond description that has renewed hopes. "If a man like Kashmir Singh could live through three decades of torment there would surely be others," says Mr S.S. Gill, whose older brother, Wing Commander Harsern Singh Gill was taken prisoner after his fighter went down in 1971.
The families have until now based their crusade for the location of the missing PoWs around a huge volume of evidence (see box) painstakingly collected through the years. And now Kashmir Singhs incredible story, they say, lends further legitimacy to the notion that many Indian servicemen could still be alive out of sight and memory in the maze of Pakistans prison system.
Just 30 years old when arrested, Kashmir Singh is said to have voluntarily embraced Islam to lessen his torture in jail. The prisoner was introduced to Pakistans caretaker human rights minister, Mr Ansar Burney, who orchestrated his pardon, as "Ibrahim Iqbal" inside Lahore Jail.
"This is exactly what we have been telling the authorities both in India and in Pakistan. Many of our people may be under changed names. Some of them could well have become insane or amnesiacs," Mr Gill said insisting that the search for the missing PoWs will need to begin with a thorough perusal of the war records alongside both district and state prison registers. "The Pakistani officers who took our people prisoner also need to be interviewed."
Dr Simmi Waraich and Mr Gill accompanied 14 missing PoW relatives to Pakistan in what turned out to be a fruitless search for their loved ones last year. Even though the visit had come through on a personal invitation of President Musharraf and this was a first-of-its-kind exercise in the world, they were given very limited access to the records at the ten jails they visited over 13 days in June.
The relatives were denied crucial access to the Attock Fort prison, known to have housed large numbers of Indian PoWs.
In fact, one of the first firm evidences that PoWs were being held beyond the purview of international conventions came from Attock Fort. Mohan Lal Bhaskar, an Indian spy who was repatriated in December 1974, stated in a sworn testimony that two Pakistani Army officers, Major Ayaz Ahmed Sipra and Col. Asif Shafi, who were incarcerated at Attock Fort for their role in an abortive coup against Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1973, later met him inside Lahores Kot Lakhpat Jail and told him that there were more than 45 Indian officers inside the fort. They specifically named Wing Commander H.S. Gill and one Capt. Singh.
"The problem with locating our people is that most of them were initially held inside makeshift PoW camps and possibly later interned to regular prisons," said Mr Gill.
He believes that the more recent instances of Mohammed Arif and Jagsir Singh, two Indian soldiers who were repatriated in April 2004 after capture during the 1999 Kargil War, are illustrative.
"There is no record of Jagsir and Arif from 1999 to 2004 when they suddenly showed as interns at the Rawalpindi Jail. So how and where were they held for four years? Very obviously in some military establishment," he said.
Simmi Waraich is convinced that the passing of three decades since the 1971 war has led to a growing apathy amidst both the Indian and Pakistani establishments.
"So many, including my father, are still missing, yet there has been no independent or mutual attempt to establish an official mechanism to find these men," she points out.
Indias ministry of defence has been toying with the prospect of setting up a "missing in action cell" on the lines of then in western nations like the USA, but nothing has moved on the ground. And reflecting a clearly callous attitude to the problem, while parliamentary records continue to show 54 missing PoWs, both the Army and Air Force insist they are missing no one.
"There appears to be a strange embarrassment about acknowledging even the possibility of old PoWs on both sides of the border," says Dr Simmi.
This shows each time the missing mens relatives approach the authorities. When a delegation of relatives met defence minister Pranab Mukherjee some years ago, he heard them out patiently only to respond with: "Do you really think they (the PoWs) are still alive?" Ms Damayanti Tambay, the wife of Flt. Lt. V.V. Tambay who failed to return despite the Pakistani press widely reporting his capture in 1971, quietly responded: "But minister, you are still alive, no?"
Pakistans former high commissioner in Delhi, Mr Riaz Khokhar, too publicly admitted to the possibility of PoWs being held on both sides. He told an Indian TV channel that his country had given up on the 300-odd Pakistani PoWs believed to be in India.
"Wo hamare liye shaheed ho chuke hain (they have become martyrs for us)," he said obliquely suggesting that India must do the same.
But for the 54 families it is no longer a question of their own kin. "We should be able to get back a handful, even one," says Mr Gill. Simmi Waraich adds, "It is not about closure. If they are alive they must be brought home. And till that happens our lives will continue to be on hold."
Posted by: john frum ||
03/04/2008 00:00 ||
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The Pakistani government has released from jail an Indian man who had spent 35 years on death row. Kashmir Singh was sentenced to death for spying in 1973 and is set to be reunited with his family. Mr Singh was discovered by Ansar Burney, a social worker who tracks people lost in Pakistan's jail system.
Hundreds of servicemen and civilians were imprisoned by India and Pakistan during hostilities between the two sides in 1965 and 1971. Mr Burney discovered Kashmir Singh on a recent trip to a jail in Lahore and persuaded President Musharraf to revoke his death sentence and order his release. The elderly Indian was a former policeman who had become a trader in electronic goods. "I feel better. I am happy," Mr Singh told reporters. He was arrested in the city of Rawalpindi in 1973 and convicted of spying.
Pakistan and India frequently arrest each other's citizens, often accusing them of straying across the border - some are treated as spies. Mr Burney is currently the government's caretaker minister for human rights. He first heard of Mr Singh during a radio call-in show some years ago. He recently won a presidential pardon for the prisoner. The BBC's Barbara Plett says that Mr Singh is expected to be reunited with his wife and three children on Tuesday morning.
Mr Singh told Mr Burney that he had a love marriage rather than an arranged marriage. His wife confirmed this to the minister when he called her. "Why else would I have waited 35 years for him?" she asked.
Local media reports say that she has been waiting at the border since she first heard news that her husband would be pardoned. Mr Burney said last week that Mr Singh was held in a condemned prisoners cell for most of the time since his conviction and had become mentally ill. He said that he was first informed about Kashmir Singh several years ago by members of the Indian community in London. But he was unable to locate Mr Singh, despite visiting over 20 prisons across the country in relation to his campaign for prison reforms and prisoners' rights.
The minister said that Mr Singh had not received a single visitor or seen the open sky and like other condemned prisoners, was locked in an overcrowded death cell for more than 23 hours a day in conditions which the minister described as "hell on earth." Mr Burney said he will travel to India on Tuesday to see Mr Singh re-unite with his wife as well as their two sons and a daughter. "My real purpose in going with him to India is that when this pair of swans meet after 35 years, I want to capture it with my own eyes," he said.
Posted by: john frum ||
03/04/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
Ok, I'll bite: what is the difference between living in Pakistan and being on death row?
#2
Mr Burney seems to be doing excellent work. Mind you if I was India, I would send the whole frickin army over the border just to stop this kind of vindictive crap.
Boeing Advanced Systems has started System F6, "DARPA's Future, Fast, Flexible, Fractionated, Free-Flying Spacecraft United by Information Exchange space technology program." In other words: multiple, networked specialized spacecraft swarms that are intelligent enough to perform a single coordinated task together, like analyzing the crops or deciding to destroy humanity, Skynet-style. Actually, it could completely change satellites for the better, according to some experts:
The Weather Channel has lost its way, according to John Coleman, who founded the channel in 1982.
Coleman told an audience at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change on March 3 in New York that he is highly critical of global warming alarmism.
The Weather Channel had great promise, and thats all gone now because theyve made every mistake in the book on what theyve done and how theyve done it and its very sad, Coleman said. Its now for sale and theres a new owner of The Weather Channel will be announced several billion dollars having changed hands in the near future. Lets hope the new owners can recapture the vision and stop reporting the traffic, telling us what to think and start giving us useful weather information.
The Weather Channel has been an outlet for global warming alarmism. In December 2006, The Weather Channels Heidi Cullen argued on her blog that weathercasters who had doubts about human influence on global warming should be punished with decertification by the American Meteorological Society.
Coleman also told the audience his strategy for exposing what he called the fraud of global warming. He advocated suing those who sell carbon credits, which would force global warming alarmists to give a more honest account of the policies they propose.
[I] have a feeling this is the opening, Coleman said. If the lawyers will take the case sue the people who sell carbon credits. That includes Al Gore. That lawsuit would get so much publicity, so much media attention. And as the experts went to the media stand to testify, I feel like that could become the vehicle to finally put some light on the fraud of global warming.
#1
is it me or does the whole liberal left movement seem to be falling apart at the seams? I'm not saying they can't win this next election because McCain is really weak and unpopular among conservatives. But it seems to me that the whole liberal agenda has been exposed as just a power-grab for selfish and sociopathic individuals and has seen its day.
#2
I loved the weather channel in the days when they reported the weather. I'll take John Hope over Heidi Cullen any day.
Now it's a multiculti-AGW-feelgood mishmash of mostly entertainment with a tiny amount of meteorology thrown in.
Hopefully the new owners will broom out the crap and rebuild the format into something more informative and stop trying to politic or entertain.
Heidi Cullen needs to go back to academia where she belongs.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
03/04/2008 6:24 Comments ||
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#3
IIRC the WC brought in a new personnel manager from of all places CNN [which makes it all so clear] who decided to 'spice' up the channel with mini cults of personality. That's when the promos started with 'featured' names. They went from information to entertainment selling out their core. Another fine moment in the never ending de-evolution of institutions under 'you know who' management.
#4
Like so many people Dr. Cullen's world view is clouded (pun intended) by her academic work. Her PhD thesis posited that the collapse of the Akkadian empire (circa 4 millenia ago) was related to a severe and long lasting drought.
So she imagines herself as working to prevent a civilizational collapse due to climate change. Its touching but simpleminded.
#8
Although he's on teh mark here, John HAS decided to take it easy in his golden years - he's a weatherman for KUSI here in San Diego. It doesn't get much easier :-)
"late night/early morning low clouds and fog, clearing inland early and by mid morning on the coast - sunny, warm, and clear afternoon" just about covers 98% of the days
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/04/2008 11:22 Comments ||
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#9
Actually, Frank, as I understand it, John actually retired from KUSI, and they've been running the same nightly forecast over and over. Since the weather's always the same (i.e., perfect), nobody is any the wiser.
In San Diego, they put out a severe weather alert whenever the temperature drops to 68F or rises to 80F, since people there are not prepared for it.
/just kidding
Posted by: Rambler in California ||
03/04/2008 15:03 Comments ||
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#10
hey Frank, don't rub the good weather in too much lol. Yeah I get the point nice easy job.
I just got another foot and a half of snow here in Colorado. The wind blew the drifts pretty high too. Must be all of this global warming, this has been another worst year for cold and snow levels. I like the change of seasons, but am really looking forward to the warmer weather.
Posted by: Jan ||
03/04/2008 16:14 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
