ÿþ<HEAD> <title>Eric's Archive</title> <META NAME="description" CONTENT="Eric's Journal, the irregularly updated journal of Eric Lis"> <META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="eric, lis, emperor, aerica, aerican, journal, eric's head"> </HEAD> <left><font face="Times New Roman"> <font face="Monotype Corsiva,Bernhard Modern Roman,Unicorn,BellGothic,News Gothic MT"> <center> <big><big><big><big> Eric's Archive<br> Entries 471-480<P> </big></big></big></big></font> <I> Those who forget the past<Br> Are doomed to reread it.<p></i> </center> <a href="http://www.aericanempire.com/eric/index.html">More recent</a><BR> <a href="http://www.aericanempire.com/eric/401-500/481-490.html">Entries 481-490</a><BR> <a href="#480">Entry 480</a> May 17 2008<br> <a href="#479">Entry 479</a> May 14 2008<br> <a href="#478">Entry 478</a> May 11 2008<br> <a href="#477">Entry 477</a> May 8 2008<br> <a href="#476">Entry 476</a> May 5 2008<br> <a href="#475">Entry 475</a> May 2 2008<br> <a href="#474">Entry 474</a> April 29 2008<br> <a href="#473">Entry 473</a> April 26 2008<br> <a href="#472">Entry 472</a> April 23 2008<br> <a href="#471">Entry 471</a> April 20 2008<br> <a href="http://www.aericanempire.com/eric/401-500/461-470.html">Entries 461-470</a><BR> <a href="http://www.aericanempire.com/eric/archive.html">Archive</a><BR> </blockquote> <HR> <a name="480"></a> <U><B>Marked by Polished Manners</b></u><p> Thought for the day: common courtesy and politeness are a function of chaos, not order.<P> I've always found the phrase 'common courtesy" to be a curious one, since I don't find courtesy to be that overhwlmingly common. I can't honestly say that this is something I only see in others -- I don't always hold doors open for quite as long as I could, for example -- but it's certainly noticable in the people around me. The people close to me, of course, are kind, considerate, caring people who always take others' thoughts into account and are unfailingly careful, but the people who are merely nearby in terms of spatial distance rather than emotional proximity, they're jerks. Rather than blame them, I blame the Universe in general, and I blame it, as I blame so many things, on the fact that the Universe is wrongly swayed towards the side of Order. Let's take a moment to consider what courtesy is, precisely. Let's start simple, without worrying too much about niggling little detais. Suppose we define "courtesy" as "thought and action directed towards the comfort and feelings of others." This definition would encompass everything from holding open a door for the person behind you to sitting down with someone who looks sad and asking how they're feeling. Among other situations, it covers using your turn signals when you drive as well as not sneaking up behind someone, not beating their skull in with a pipe, and not taking their wallet. Why don't we beat up people and take their stuff whenever we feel like it? In my case, it's because I'm too small and puny, but for anybody bigger than me, it's a combination of courtesy for others and, of course, a healthy fear of punishment. Fear of punishment is and pretty much has to be grounded in a system of order (and more specifically, law), but courtesy is, if anything stymied by order.<P> Consider the autobahnen of Europe. These highways are famed the world over for being roads with no speed limit, and tourists every year flock to Germany and Switzerland to, among other touristy activities, drive very very fast without fear of arrest. Contrary to popular belief, the autobahnen aren't truly lacking in speed limits, but rather have long stretches of their length where the speedlimit is replaced by a "recommended speed" which is often thirty kilometers per hour faster than the standard speed limited portions. Much of every autobahn does have speed limits of about the same speed as throughout North America -- one hundred kilometers (or sixty miles) per hour. What's interesting about the autobahnen is that despite the relatively unregulated speed, they have a much better safety records than the roads of most of Europe, and *much* better records than American and Canadian highways. Some mighr argue that there are factors confounding these data, of course. For example, the autobahnen are usually quite wide, so there's enough room for fast-moving vehicles to go around slow-moving ones without weaving through traffic. The unlimited portions of autobahn also tend to be between cities and not in cities, and so don't necessarily have huge traffic loads; empty space makes high speed safer. Part of it, though, is that in a chaotic system, bodies tend to naturally leave each other space. Not restricted to an artificial speed limit, those who wish to drive fast can, while those who wish to go slower have enough sense to get the hell out of the way, and in theory there are enough lanes to permit both of these groups. When there is a speed limit -- by which I mean mostly the highways on which I have the misfortunate of driving, since they're the ones with which I have the most experience -- those who want to drive fast get slowed down, which makes them frustrated and agressive, and when they do break the law, as a significant number eventually do, they do so with far greater anger and impulsivity and they do so while surrounded by slow-moving, tightly packed, and equally frustrated other people. Loss of life results, but tragically, it's far too rarely the people who deserve it. <P> When I blamed lack of courtesy on the overemphasis of Order, I didn't mean in the human heart as much as in human law. At heart, most people are probably balanced or chaotic (or, perhaps more precisely, selfish buggers), but they exist in systems of excess order. I'm forced to admit that if the humans themselves were suffiently oriented towards order, the excess of order in law wouldn't be much of a problem, because people would just obey it. Unfortunately, it don't work like that.<P> Rules themselves are a part of the problem, but there's another factor at play here. In a highly ordered, bureaucratic system, courtesy gets neglected because it's inefficient. Politeness is inefficient, in fact. That two seconds you spend holding the door open for the person behind you is two seconds longer that it takes you to reach your destination. The rules might dictate that people should get out of each others' way or hold doors open for each, and the rules might get obeyed, but is it really politeness? If the action is performed out of obligation or rules, it lacks intention. Webster defines courteous as "marked by respect for and consideration of others" which implies that it's being done because it's right, not because it's the rule. True politeness, true courtesy, and perhaps even true niceness itself requires will in addition to action... intent, meaning, and perhaps even emotion. At its core, true courtesy implies a degree of spontaneity, impulsivity, and inefficiency... the stuff of Chaos, in one of its most sublime applications and forms. To be courteous, to be nice, perhaps even the very depths of menschdom, is to have Chaos, beautiful Chaos, in your heart. Maybe even in your pineal gland.<P> Of course, from the opposite point of view, it's very possible and even likely that if speed limits were entirely abolished, and if we removed the dotted lines from all the roads and told people they could drive however they wanted, the death tolls would rise and, if you extend the logic, most people would only open doors for others' if it was a prelude to beating their skull in with a pipe, and taking their wallet. It seems quite probable that perfect courtesy might actually be an outward manifestation of someone who's really learned the appreciate the Balance. It's not quite as efficient and it isn't quite as beautiful, but it gets the doors held open. <HR> <a name="479"></a> <U><B>No Hidin' Place</b></u><p> So here's one of the toughest things about being in the hospitals: There's a terrible shortage of comfy places to lurk. Many days, I find myself with two hour or longer breaks between lectures or patient visits or what have you, and while, from the hospital I'm currently at, it would be less than a ten-minute walk to go for lunch, I choose to stay at the hospital for the break, in part because I'm too lazy to walk back, in part because I get embarassed if I walk past the doorman of my building too many times per day, and in part because I know that if I go home, I won't study, but if I stay at the hospital I can read a good two, sometimes three chapters of my internal medicine texbook, plus a good chunk of whatever novel I'm reading. Now, reading's all well and good, but it can be tough to find a good place to read.<P> I got a bit spoiled on that score over the last ten years. When I was in CEGEP I was a member of the Games Club and the student newspaper, so I had two offices to choose from, both with comfy chairs and good company. In University, I had access to the Games Club there for my first year, and in my second and third years, I arranged events such that I effectively had my own personal office where I could go and read. In my first two and a half years of medicine, it was always easy to find a place to read, because we were in huge buildings dedicated to students with lots of nice sitting space, and if nothing else, I could usually just go sit in the auditoriums until the classes began. Being in the hospitals has screwed all that up, though. Hospitals don't have a lot of empty areas, and the empty areas that exist tend to be off-limits, filthy, or stairwells. When I'm a third-year student, I'll have access to the nursing stations and residents' rooms in which to relax, but the second year students, who aren't technically assigned to any particular area, rarely have that luxury. There aren't a lot of lounge spaces in the overcrowded hospitals, and the ones that exist tend to be filled with patients and their guests (who let them in here, anyway?). It can be tough, and in fact, at the Jewish General, I never did find a nice place to spend my off-time, even after seven weeks stationed there.<P> Of course, were I to complain about this to the administration, they wouldn't understand. Look, they'd say... in every hospital, there are cafeterias in which to eat lunch and libraries in which to study. They are, indeed, fine examples of their kind... the cafeterias are wide and spacious and rarely too crowded, and the libraries are big and cozy, with many plush chairs and tall stacks of books all around. The only problem is that I hate cafeterias and libraries. I don't know why I dislike cafeterias so much... I've never felt comfortable in them, mostly because they tend to be filled with people but also in part because, since I always bring my own lunch to the hospital, I'm not technically supposed to spend four hours sitting in them, reading (which has never stopped me from doing so). I hate cafeterias because they're always too quiet or not quiet enough. Libraries are dreadful, opressive places, where noise is impolite at best and harshly punished at worst. I'm always nervous about making too much noise in a library, and in turn, I get extremely aggravated when other people make noise. The worst, though, is when I'm having a bad day with my gut; my stomach is capable of making a great deal of noise, loud enough to be heard fifty or sixty feet away in a quiet library, and if it's one of those days when I can't do much to stop it, sitting in a library is downright mortifying. Finally, I don't mind libraries so much when they have fun books -- I spent many hours over the years, sitting in the Concordia library, hunched up snugly between two shelves, reading Winnie the Pooh stories -- but for some inexplicable reason the hospital libraries are mostly filled with books about medicine and have a distinct shortage of comic strips collections and A.A. Milne books. On top of everything else, I can't study in perfect silence... I actually need a fair bit of background noise to drown out all the distractions in my head. So, the libraries are right out, and while the cafererias aren't much more appealing I have spent a lot of time sitting in them over the last semester.<P> The hospital that I'm at now, the Royal Victoria, is actually the best one for this sort of thing that I've yet to find. The Royal Victoria isn't so much a single building as it is an amalgamation of different buildings, some over a century old, which have merged and fused together to form a sort of non-euclidean maze of horror and inexplicability, where seemingly-straight hallways lead to places far off to the side of where you'd imagine, staircases may end at blank walls and and sometimes you have to go down three floors before you can climb up one. If Abdul Alhazred had gotten a degree in architecture and then done all his work while drunk, he might have designed the ROyal Vic, and that still wouldn't explain some of the decor. While this can make the building hellish to navigate, it means that there are all sorts of little nooks and crannies where people rarely go (perhaps for fear they would never find their way back). The clever individual who finds these spots can be assured of finding a place to relax that has minimal traffic -- not zero traffic, because all hospitals are overcrowded and even the most out of the way place has people who work there -- as well as the elusive and priceless "clean, empty washroom." Unfortunately, even these little hidey-holes aren't good for studying... they're too quiet (see my comment about libraries) and the people who do pass by you give you odd looks. Worst of all, there are no comfy seats, and I hate taking up space in hallways because it isn't safe for someone my size, who's far too easily stepped on.<p> This week, I hit upon a near perfect solution: I've begun to lurk in the windows. Most of the Royal Victoria's windows are set into alcoves, many a foot or more deep. The glass gets cool to the touch, and many of them have metal frames which are very pleasant to lean against when the air is warm. The stairwells tend not to have too much electric lighting, whereas the windows in the stairwells let in lots of nice sunlight, and as long as you avoid windows facing the sun's current location you don't get too much ("burny") sunlight. Finally, you get just enough traffic going by you that you can people watch. If I choose to pick certain windows, then I can guaranhtee that every so often classmates will walk by, which allows me to enjoy the look of confusion when they see me perched on a windowsill, and even affords me the chance to invite them to join me for a bit. This week, I've actually had conversations with classmates that lasted more than five minutes, which is practically unheard of for me. It's the best of everything... except that the comfirest and best-placed windows are just a tiny bit too narrow to sit cross-legged, and with glass on one side my left leg can't fully stretch and and so gets a bit stiff after a while. Nothing's perfect.<P> I love that word, lurk. I have to work that into conversation more often. <HR> <a name="478"></a> <U><B>Twice Thirteen</b></u><p> Back in 2006, I commented that the age of twenty four is a curious one to turn. Twenty four is an incredibl dull and umimporant number. Sure, it's mathetmatically useful because it has all sorts of fun factors, like three, four, six, eight, and twelve, and it's a pretty number, but thematically, culturally, and numerologically, it's a dull number. The only thing that distinguishes twenty four at all is that it sits in the middle of a big group of nothing but significant numbers, and that, if nothing else, makes it conspicuous. You'd almost thing that twenty four was hiding something. That's in complete contrast to twenty six, of course, which is what I turned three days ago. Twenty six is a neat number. Sure, it pales in comparisson a bit to twenty five, which is one of those milestoney kind of numbers, and it's less catchty than twenty seven, which is a multiple of nine, is often mistaken by people as a prime number, and is a sort of psychological threshold for the countdown to thirty. Twenty six is also the double of thirteen, the year of adulthood in Jewish philosophy, meaning that this birthday is thirteen years since I became bar mitzvah (a common misconception among goyyim is that one "has" or "celebrates" a bar mitzvah, when the correct verb is actually that one "becomes"). In Jewish thought, the second thirteenth birthday isn't of any practical importance (there is a traditional "second bar mitzvah" but it's held at the age of eighty three, for reasons we don't need to go into right now) but it seems neat to me. Strictly speaking, the thirteen anniversary of my bar mitzvah is actually the twenty first, but since my birthday was the eighth, it's close enough. It's all a matter of perspective anyway, particularly when one's vision of reality is as fluid as mine.<P> It was actually a rather nice birthday this year. I received the usual long list of well-wishes and kind letters from friends, many of them all the more special because they came from old friends who live as close as Toronto or as far as Moscow who I only talk to two or three times per year but who, none-the-less, never forget my birthday. Given that it's a day I don't celebrate myself, I find it very sweet of people that they make an effort to send a nice thought. In many ways, I'd prefer that they celebrate in September instead of May, or send me a nice Topin Wagglegammon card in October, but a kind wish is never too late or too early, and when someone wants to send me good wishes, it would be crass of me to criticize them. As with everything else, it's the thought that counts.<P> What makes any birthday truly special? Toys, of course. My boardgame collection has grown by three items this year: the wonderful card game Illuminati, the gamer classic Talisman, and one of my very favourites, Clue. It's enough to make me want to throw a boardgaming night; unfortunately, I only have six hours of free time each week, which means I get to write three posts and read some comic books, so boardgaming nights are out, at least for a while. The important thing is that they're sitting on my bookcase looking pretty and contributing to the overall niftyness of my Stuff. Each one's gotta be worth at least two Slack points, after all. Some toys are worth more Slack than others, of course... one of the depressing signs of adulthood is that one of your birthday gifts is a new vacuum cleaner, and you don't mind. Fortunately, I remain unadulty and irresponsible enough that I probably won't get that much use out of it.<P> What kind of year of spin do I want to put on the year? In the three days since my birthday, I've had some excellent moments and also some extremely painful ones, but at least it hasn't been boring. To set the tone of the next year of my life, I choose to turn my gaze back to May 1st. On the first of May this year, I wore a kippah, the traditional Jewish headcovering, to school. This was meant to be something unusual; to say that I never wear a kippah to class would be a grave understatement, and in fact I actually take pride and joy in the fact that I haven't had to put one on while inside of a classroom for something in the area of nine years now. It's generally known among people in my class that I'm genetically and even sometimes culturally Jewish, but nobody I know would mistake me for a religious Jew, and in fact a certain percentage of my classmates have heard rumours that I worship some sort of odd pagan deity. In any case, I put it on when I left my apartment in the morning around eight thirty, assuming that no one would comment on it until at least nine, when class started. My expectations were exceeded; I'd walked less than halfway to the hospital when I bumped into someone walking to the same lecture, who immediately noticed the kippah and became pleasantly confused. He asked why I was wearing it; I answered that I wore one every day. He saw through it, but it took him one lovely moment when he wasn't sure. I explained that I was wearing it for April Fools Day, and to forestall his next question, because if you pull your April Fools jape on the first of April, everyone sees it coming. No one else commented on it the rest of the day, in part because it was a small kippah and not too noticable, in part because most people seeing it simply assume I had a reason and didn't ask, and in part because most people don't look at me that closely. Or maybe in the minds of my classmates, when someone comes to class every day with a two-inch wide smiley-face amulet, you don't get too curious if he shows up one day and the strangest thing he's wearing is a kippah. True to the holiday, I took it off at the strike of noon.<P> Tommorow, the first day of the rest of my year. I'll be twenty seven before I know it, and before that happens, there's a wide world of chaos that isn't going to spread itself. Hello, world; I'm here to lie to you! <HR> <a name="477"></a> <U><B>Attack of the Return of the Revenge of the City of the Day of the Son of the Gamers' Dictionary</b></u><p> Once again, as some Scrabble games I've been playing near their conclusion, we find ourselves seeking out definitions for words which no one would believe actually come from the English language if not for the fact that the TWL dictionary says it's so. Clearly, the TWL dictionary is either shockingly compendious or else we're all a little credulous.<P> Axe:<BR> 1: A cutting tool that consists of a heavy edged head fixed to a handle with the edge parallel to the handle.<BR> 2: A euphemism for termination of employment, particularly ominous in Dwarven cities.<P> Bay:<BR> 1: A small body of water set off from the main body and usually enclosed by not-water.<BR> 2: The main compartment of a large building or structure or a much smaller segment set aside for a special purpose.<br> 3: A peculiar colour characteristic of dried blood or horses that run faster than the one you bet on.<P> Bud:<BR> 1: A small and immature protuberance on the stem of a plant or other organism.<BR> 2: A form of informal address between friends or friends you haven't met.<P> Camp:<BR> 1: A place away from urban areas where tents or simple buildings are erected for shelter, temporary residence, or attraction of serial killers and monsters.<BR> 2: A behaviour, personal expression, or creative display that is absurdly exaggerated, affected, inappropriate, or out-of-date and often fuses elements of high and popular culture and yet doesn't include sports.<P> Civil:<BR> Any interaction between the state and its citizens wherein the one pretends to have adequate courtesy and politeness for the other.<P> Daze:<BR> The state of being dazzled or stupefied. From the Old Norse, "where'd all the ale go?"<P> Dray:<BR> 1: A vehicle, often without sides, used primarily to haul goods.<BR> 2: Verb: To smuggle protagonists across a border or marker under something.<BR> 3: A vehicle which has never had a naked man crawling along the side at 35,000 feet.<P> Eve:<BR> The evening immediately preceeding a special, significant, or holy day, typically signified by sightings of devils, elves, and other individuals dressed in unusual amounts of red.<P> Fade:<BR> To lose freshness, strength, vitality, or a knife fight with an Atreides. From the Latin, "you moron."<P> Faith:<BR> Allegiance to a duty, person, concept, god, or system of belief, often in the absence of firm proof and with a degree of conviction and certainty normally associated with insanity of stupidty.<P> Fork:<BR> 1: An implement with two or more parallel prongs or blades used especially for lifting, pitching, or digging.<BR> 2: A division or split, particularly of a path or an attack.<BR> 3: An expletive or curse implying the hope that someone is stabbed and split down the middle by silverware, as in the expression, "fork you."<P> Gent:<BR> A man whose conduct conforms to a high standard of propriety or correct behavior or displays the qualities appropriate to a person of socially-high birth, but who none-the-less has a poor vocabulary or lower-class accent.<P> Goban:<BR> 1: A board, consisting of 19 by 19 lines intersecting at right angles, forming the traditional playing surface for the Chinese game, Go.<BR> 2: A board, consisting of rough wood often with a nail or spike in the end, forming the traditional equipment for the Neanderthal game, Bonkyou.<P> Grot:<BR> A cave, artificial recess or structure made to resemble a cave, or the smaller of the goblins and orks living in a cave.<P> He:<BR> Generic pronoun for a male who is not the hearer or speaker of a conversation, or who has the power of Greyskull.<P> Hind:<BR> A "Universal Word," capable of referring to a female deer, various spotted fish, a farm assistant, a rustic citizen, anything which to the rear of something else, or indeed, anything else imaginable.<P> Ivied:<BR> A building, individual, or concept which is inextricably associated with academics and, in particular, a university. Literally, "overgrown in ivy" or "we can't get out, the ivy is too thick."<P> Jo:<BR> A Scottish term of endearment, presumably a shortened form of the word "joy," or perhaps "athletic supporter," "monkey," "ankle-high boot," or "the fleshy part under the lower jaw."<P> Odour:<BR> A sensation resulting from adequate stimulation of the olfactory organ. A pleasant scent in archaic usage or an unpleasant scent in modern usage, perhaps reflecting on society as a whole.<P> Planed:<BR> 1: To have made a surface smooth or even, or to have glided over an even surface.<BR> 2: To have compensated for an opponent's tactical advantage; to have "leveled the playing field."<P> Request:<BR> 1: the act or an instance of asking for something, or the thing which is asked for.<BR> 2: The curious phenomenon by which adventure stories tend to occur in three parts and have certain recurring elements between them.<P> Sere:<BR> 1: A series of ecological communities formed in succession, often by drying or withering of the prceeding communities.<BR> 2: The unpleasant sensation of having mistaken drying agent for chewing gum.<P> Stow:<BR> To stow, house, or lodge for safe-keeping, from the Greek, "great big heavy object which would be very hard to run away with."<P> Swing:<BR> 1: To cause to move vigorously through a wide arc or circle.<BR> 2: to influence decisively<BR> 3: To move freely to and fro in suspension from an overhead support.<BR> 4: A form of dancing wherein one competes with one's partner to see who can first snap the other's wrists.<P> Tee:<BR> 1: The twentieth letter in the English alphabet.<BR> 2: A small mound or peg on which an object is rested prior to hitting it.<BR> 3: Any syllable which is immediately followed by "hee."<P> Vie:<BR> To strive for superiority, compete, or contend. From the Latin, "to invite your friends over for a friendly game only to have ti devolve into bloodshed."<P> Weal:<BR> 1: A ridge or lump raised on the body, as by a blow or allergic reaction.<BR> 2: The catastrophic first attempt by early humans to craft a mode of transportation, of which no more should be said here.<P> Worm:<BR> 1: Any of numerous relatively small elongated usually naked and soft-bodied animals, often of Phylum Annelida.<BR> 2: A self-perpetuating computer-program which specializes in ensuring its own transmission to other linked computers.<BR> 3: A small, dirt-eating animal often lacking a spine or possessing a high-tech indestructible super-suit.<P> Zin:<BR> 1: A dry red table wine made from a small black grape that is grown chiefly in California, apparently. <HR> <a name="476"></a> <U><B>Still More Things I've Learned This Year</b></u><p> Having now completed my seven-week block of Family Medicine, which included exposure to dermatology, radiology, oncology, neurology, and (at long last) psychiatry, we continue our series of "stuff I've learned." <P> 1) A significant portion of many doctors' time is taken up by liars and weirdos. As many people reading this probably already know, no less a luminary than Freud can be said to have gotten kick-started on his path to destiny by his observations of "hysterical paralysis," a condition wherein he believed that women with nothing organically or biologically wrong with them found themselves suffering complete and crippling paralysis as a result of the unconcious conflicts in their minds. While pretty much everything Freud said about the condition has been tossed out, there's no question that a certain percentage of cases in doctors' offices, and particularly in neurology, are accounted for by patients who have nothing physcial wrong with them, and as far as we can figure out, it's all in their head. Sure, it's easy to understand how someone who's under stress might be more suceptible to colds or muscle aches, but during my stint in neurology I actually met and observed a woman who is completly incapable of moving one half of her body, and after four years of investigation and every known test her doctors have to conclude that there's nothing medically wrong with her. They don't think she's lying... they simply feel that something in her background has left her like this, and there isn't anything they can do about it because she doesn't really mind. Of course, a fair number of other people *are* assumed to be lying, and even during my two weeks in neurology I followed the cases of several patients who are hospitalized intermittently with vague neurological symptoms that always disapear after a few days. As near as their doctors can figure out, these are lonely people who decide, once every three or four months, to take a short "vacation" and get themselves hospitalized for a few days. Again, there isn't much that can be done to treat these people. As a doctor, it must be extremely frustrating, but as a deceiver, it's really quite fascinating, a dedication to lying that's far beyond anything I've ever accomplished. On a related note, nearly half the patients I saw during my four afternoons of family medicine had an element of either "psychogenic" or "malingering" at the root of their current complaints.<P> 2) I'm at increased risk of getting skin cancer. We're not talking about a small risk, either, but a huge, noteworthy, extreme-cause-of-concern sort of risk, because, after all, I never do anything halfway. The reason why should be obvious: whereas many humans are found to have skin varrying from a healthy pink to sun-resistant melanin-rich, I've always had a lovely ash-grey pallor that makes me the envy of goths everywhere. I'm by no means an albino, nor even shockingly white, but I've never tanned in my life and I've been known to be burned by lightbulbs. When I spent a morning in dermatology, the doctor took a single look at me and then said that I'm the sort of person who really, really, really should be advised to get annual visits with a dermatologist in a perfect world where everyone had perfect access to health care. I've never seen a dematologist before in my life and, let's be honest, I'm not going to start now, and I already take pains to stay out of the sun as much as possible so my cancer risk due to environmental factors is respectably low. Still, it's always good to be aware of things that are capable of going wrong with your body, and skin cancer's easy enough to spot if you know what you're looking for. I can't complain; I'm still functionally immune to several much more common human cancers, so I'm ahead on the deal. On a related note, I continue to go through a package of nitrite-rich sandwich meat every week, so my risk for stomach cancer remains stable.<P> 3) I've spent the last four years or so assuming that I'll end up in psychiatry (assuming I graduate medical school). For the most part, this has been based on the simple fact that it's the only branch of medicine in which I have any interest or, thus far, aptitude. After having spent a night in the psychiatry emergency room, however, I've found another good reason: the hours. Pretty much every field of medicine has its share of on-call nights, some more strenuous than others. When I followed a surgery student on her shift, we spent some seven hours running around non-stop, and when I left her at 11pm she was quite sure she'd be up for another three hours. Similarly, when I watched a radiologist for an evening, she was busily trying to manage a half-dozen emergency cases all on her own, and she was sure she'd be awake all night working on them. When I followed a psychiatry resident, his on-call shift was quiet, relaxed, and ended at 9pm. Psychiatrists may not get paid as much as other doctors, but the hours are nice. On a related note, despite the fact that I've sat here for a while trying to think of something else I can say, I can't think of anything, which lends one to think that I may not have learned very much in the last few weeks... or at least, nothing interesting enough to mention here. More's the pity. <HR> <a name="475"></a> <U><B>Scrabbled Eggs</b></u><p> Once again, as some Scrabble games I've been playing near their conclusion, we find ourselves seeking out definitions for words which no one would believe actually come from the English language if not for the fact that the TWL dictionary says it's so. Clearly, the TWL dictionary is either shockingly compendious or else we're all a little credulous.<P> Aioli:<BR> 1: Flavoured mayonaise.<BR> 2: A common greeting among people named "Lee."<P> Arena:<BR> An enclosed area used for public entertainment, particularly via competition or bloodshed. From the Latin, "He kicked sand in my face."<P> Bowl:<BR> 1: A concave usually nearly hemispherical vessel.<BR> 2: A post-season sports game for a particularly lofty prize.<BR> 3: To strike and object with another object, and particularly a rolled object.<BR> 4: An otherwise superior concave dish which has never read Nietzsche.<P> Cognizer:<BR> One who knows and understands, but can explain only using unecessarily large words.<P> Dictionary: <BR> A reference source containing words, usually alphabetically arranged, along with information about their forms, functions, etymologies, meanings, idiomatic uses, and sometimes giving for words of one language equivalents in one or more other languages. From the Latin <I>dictio</i>, "speaking," as opposed to <i>sagac</i>, "accurate."<P> Er:<BR> An expression of hesitation, analagous to "uh," "um," "eh," and "wait, I can explain."<P> Flump:<BR> 1: To move or fall suddenly and heavily.<BR> 2: The sound of an object moving of falling suddenly and heavily.<BR> 3: A pounce or grapple which causes one or more individuals to fall suddenly and heavily.<P> Fohn:<BR> A warm dry wind blowing down the side of a mountain, particularly as soon as you sit down to dinner, get into the washroom, or have peanut butter on your hands.<P> Fondu:<BR> A preparation of melted sauce or solvent (particularly cheese, cocolate, or broth) into which primary foodstuffs or solute are dipped. Fondu is nearly unique amongst foodstuffs as being both a culinary delight and an incredibly infuriating exercise in patience and dexterity. <P> Hog:<BR> 1: A fat, ugly, land-based mammal, typically in excess of fifty four kilograms (120 pounds) which abuses nearby resources, consumes greater than its metabolic needs, and wallows in its own filth.<BR> 2: A particularly large pig, likely to be much offended by definition number 1, which refers to another species entirely.<P> If:<BR> A function word used to introduce an exclamation expressing a wish, question, or hypothetical situation, or a conjunction indicating a possible circumstance and usually an outcome contingent on that circumstance. Frequently followed only by elipses.<P> Iota:<BR> 1: An infintesimal amount, slightly more than a jot and slightly longer than a twinkling.<BR> 2: A Greek letter with an inferiority complex.<P> Joke:<BR> Something said or done to provoke laughter; a brief oral narrative with a climactic humorous twist; the humorous or ridiculous element in something; an instance of jesting; something not to be taken seriously. Literally: "Please don t beat me up."<P> La:<BR> 1: The Universal Lyric," unique for its ability to be used in any song ever composed and still be the correct word.<BR> 2: A note to follow so, but only when used by people who are incredibly annoying.<P> Lucre:<BR> 1: Monetary gain. From the Greek, "happiness costs this much."<BR> 2: The quality or action of being more Luke.<P> Lump:<BR> 1: A mass of indefinite size and shape, in an uncertain location, and in fact may or may not exist.<BR> 2: To group indiscriminately, particularly into a mass of indefinite size and shape.<BR> 3: A Bureaucracy.<P> Minter:<BR> One who shapes objects out of cold metal, causes others to attain status, or sneaks around the countryside during snowstorms turning letters on signs upside down.<P> Oy:<BR> An interjection, used particularly to express dismay, exasperation, or a desire to be smarter/handsomer/Jewish.<P> Past:<BR> The measurement of fourth-dimensional (temporal) movement which has gone by or elapsed.<P> Pasty:<BR> An appearance of pallour, ill-health, or computer proficiency.<P> Quake:<BR> What the ground does when a fifty-ton duck waddles by.<P> Radio:<BR> A device for the transmission or reception of signals between 3 hertz and 300 gigahertz in electromagnetic spectrum which wide belief suggests will never be replaced by this new-fangled "tely-vision."<P> Twin:<BR> A molecular or genetic duplicate of another existing objet or individual, accepting minor variations due to atomic motion, genetic penetrance and expression, and lower-calories.<P> Ut:<BR> According to St. John the Baptist, a deer, a female deer.<P> Win:<BR> To "not lose," ideally with the corrolary that all your enemies have also "not won."<P> Xyst:<BR> A roofed and enclosed area specifically set aside for the training of athletes, identified by the presence of specialized training equipment, signs of strenous physical labours, and highly absorbent floors.<P> Zed:<BR> The last letter in the English language, not counting those beginning with "we regret to inform you..." <HR> <a name="474"></a> <U><B>In Brightest Day</b></u><p> This week, for reasons which it isn't really necessary to go into, I find myself writing a deferred exam. This sort of turn of events is always annoying, but it's far moreso in this case, when I'll be writing one exam in a morning at a time when I'd otherwise be writing a *different* exam, and that second exam has to be rescheduled to later that same morning as a result. It's all quite oddly set-up and very cumbersome, but that's the way these things are done at my school, apparently. Since the exam I'm supposed to be writing first thing in the morning will be getting written a few hours later instead, and all of my classmates will be writing will be writing that exam at the time they're supposed to, the school's administration feels that there's a bit of a security risk here. Conceivably, I could get out of my first exam of the day and contact colleagues who will just be walking out of their first (and my second) exam and find out what's on it. I could, gasp and shock, cheat. I can't blame the school for being concerned about this, because, let's be honest, I'm one of the biggest liars and cheaters the've got in their school. And if I'm not, then I certainly aspire to be.<P> Because of this security risk, the school's administration took a step which I found very curious, almost to the point of being absurd. I was asked to come in and sign an Oath of Confidentiality. This Oath states that I swear (on what, it didn't say) that I won't speak or otherwise communicate to anyone about the contents of my second exam that day, and that I won't cheat. This is pretty silly for a number of reasons. The biggest reason is that I'm not the sort of person who ever cheats on exams... never have, and probably never will, and if I was willing to cheat then I'd probably be a year (or two) further ahead in my studies right now. The second reason why it's a bit of an absurd document is obvious: if you're the sort of dishonest person who cheats on exams, why on Earth would you allow yourself to be constrained by having signed a document saying you wouldn't?<P> There's an old saying I've always found very profound: no one is so quick to accuse someone of stealing than a thief. The idea is that whatever our vices are, we tend to assume that because we do it, everyone else must too, a belief which is sometimes valid and sometimes not. I am, of course, a liar in the very best sense of the word, and whether it's related or not, I tend to assume that people around me lie more than they do. I see deception everywhere, in every social interaction and in the most innocent of statements. Even though I know, rationally, that most people don't lie that much (not i9n ways that they're aware of, at least), I still have a hard time taking people at their words when they tell me things I have the slightest reason to doubt. It's a terrible habit which has many times made it harder for me to make friends and grow to trust people, but that's who and what I am. Because of my own biases and beliefs, I've never been able to wrap my head around the idea of, say, swearing someone in during a court hearing, because I can't imagine what it must be like to be so honest that you would actually be unable to lie simply because you'd said you wouldn't. I can't even begin to wrap my head around the concept, perhaps in part because I don't put much stock in the bible they use in most Western courts but largely because, well, it sure wouldn't stop me. When I give my word to someone that I won't lie to them, it's true and I hold to it without fail, because I consider it to be a point of honour, and I take my honour deathly seriously, despite the fact that it's equally ephemeral and equally meaningless unless one chooses to believe in it, but that only binds me when the person with whom I'm interacting is someone who's earned enough of my respect that I care, which most people haven't. Now, I'm the first to admit that my code of honour is unusual and that it certainly has no power to be binding on anyone else, so I have to assume: if someone without my code was going to cheat on an exam, the fact that they'd given their Oath wouldn't matter much to them. Maybe I'm being unfair, and more people have strict codes of honour (or something analgous) than I currently believe, but I doubt it.<P> I actually asked the administrator in question, on the day that I went to sign the oath, why they even bothered with the form. I said to her quite plainly, I don't cheat on exams because I feel it's unethical to do so (in actual fact, it's because I'm far too afraid of being caught, and more importantly have no easy way to contact anybody who'll be writing the exam in the short window between them ending it and me starting it). Since I feel it's unethical, I'm not going to, and this wouldn't be changed by signing anything. Were I dishonest enough to cheat, I wouldn't care about signing anything anyway. She smiled and laughed nervously, because this was obviously something she'd asked herself once or twice, and she acknowledged that it was utterly bizzare but that this is how bureaucracies work... common sense don't enter into it. She then added that it was mostly for the sake of having my oath in writing, just in case, so that if there should be some evidence that I cheated, they'd have proof that I'd said i wouldn't. I responded that if anything, this makes it all the worse for me, because in that case, not only would I be punished by the school for cheating, I'd be doubly punished for having also broken a signed contract. She laughed nervously again and changed the subject, which in her place is exactly what I would have done.<P> In defense of my school, it's also possible that they're thinking far less negatively and machiavellianly than I am. It could be that, since I've signed an oath saying I wouldn't cheat, if there's some reason to *suspect* I'd cheated, then they'll give me the benefit of the doubt, because, after all, I promised. It is conceivable that the document is actually for my protection and is meant as an act of good faith and trust on the school's part. But I doubt it.<P> Either way, I don't plan to cheat on either of my exams this week. The idea of cheating hadn't actually occured to me until they mentioned it, which might just go to show how effective the whole thing is. I have every intention of not *needing* to cheat, because I've been working hard trying to actually learn everything I need to know; a psychiatrist might not need to know anything about hernias, but some of my friends are almost guaranteed to get gallstones at some point and I want to be able to answer their questions when they ask. It's perhaps ironic that a self-confessed deceiver and, yes, cheater like myself is perhaps one of the lowest-risks for cheating in the school. Since official policies rarely change based on the ideals of a single person, they asked me to sign their oath anyway, and I did, and to my credit, it was even signed in good faith (even if also with tongue firmly in cheek). Would their oath stop me if I did plan to cheat? Not for a second, because I consider myself bound by an oath only if I give a damn about the person to whom I made it. Whatever the case, I'll abide by their oath, because it's the right thing to do, because I have no good reason not to, and most importantly, because it gave me a good laugh. <HR> <a name="473"></a> <U><B>From the Files of KP 42: The Case of the Anachronists</b></u><p> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Call me crazy, but I've always been one of those people who always prefered to work alone. I always hated group projects back when I was a student, because I didn't like being dependent on other people doing their parts. It was even worse when I was in the military, because guys like me, who aren't team players, can lead a whole platoon to disaster, even without becoming officers first. When I got into the Imperial Guard, and from there the KP program, my love of working alone became an asset, and I'd say I've always done my best work when I didn't have anybody else shadowing me while I was already in the shadows. Or something. Still, I admit that there are always times when a partner is useful, even indispensible, and there are missions I just couldn't possibly accomplish without backup. A good team, of course, is built on a foundation of absolute and complete trust for each other.<br> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp "This isn't another one of your 'plans' again, is it?" she asks me. "I don't know if I can survive another one of your plans."<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp When I say "partner," of course, I mean more in the sense of heavy weapons platforms to my flank, or close air support. Other KP agents, not so much. I haven't got anything personal against KP 58. I've never worked with her before, but I've heard she's competent. And yes, I admit, unlike some extremely handsome and charming members of the KP I could name, she's never accidentally triggered a vehicle-mounted pulse cannon in a crowded building or set fire to a planetary governor, but the way I see it, that just shows she lacks initiative. Just my luck, the order-givers decided this job would take two KPs and we were the only members in the area.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp "Yes," I reply with as much patient as I can muster. "This is a plan. It's a good plan. It's going to work."<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp "Better than yesterday?"<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp I nod, still watching the building across the street.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp "How about the thing with the fish?"<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp "That wasn't my fault!"<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp "What about-"<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp I raise a hand to shush her, and to her credit, she stops talking immediately and turns to look where I'm looking. Five stories down and thirty feet away, a civilian transport has stopped in front of a bank. In this day and age, there isn't really such a thing as bank robbery, because pretty much all currency is digital and there's is much physical in the banks to steal, but for over a month now, according to reports, a group of ultra-low tech thieves has been hitting targets and stealing what little actual hard currency is present. It's the first time in a century that anyone's tried that sort of schtick, at least on this planet, and up until now, it's actually been working. Local law enforcement's proven unable to do anything about it because even though the thieves are hitting low-tech targets, their own gear is pretty impressive... like the unit that the reports suggest they have on their escape vehicle, which lets them chameleon its appearance during their getaway and makes them too hard for the complacent local security to chase or track. That's why 58 and I are up here, on the roof across the street; when the thieves come running out of the bank, she'll hit it with a rifle-fired tracer and we track them at our leisure. Easy as that... no charging into the bank during the robbery and putting civilians at risk, no risky and expensive high-speed chase through the city, and hopefully not even giving the thieves a clue that they're being followed until we kick in their door. The plan is mine, as is the tracking device, but I wasn''t packing anything that can fire it across a street acurately, which is where 58 -- one of the KP's foremost snipers -- comes in. <BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp "Do you think that's them?" I ask her. 58 stares itently as a group of three males, big fellows, get out of the truck and swagger into the bank. After a moment, she shrugs.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp "We'll know if the alarms go off," she says and hoists her rifle.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp As we wait, I pick up the attache case I brought with me and put my thumbs over the lock. The case reads the microcircuitry and clicks open, and I reach in like a man picking up a priceless vase or a two hundred year old wine. Getting to and setting up on this roof meant we dress up in civies ourselves, and so my body armour -- which isn't really removable, after all -- is covered up in fine clothes that cost me almost as much as this job will pay. My head, I could leave uncovered, since it looks normal enough, unless you look really close at my eyes or up my nose, but that doesn't mean I want to go to work underdressed. From the attache case, I lift up my "face," and I see myself reflected in the smooth mirror finish of the faceplate of my helmet. The helmet settles over me comfortably and locks into place with a click when it touches my neck. The bright noon sunlight is immediately filtered to a more pleasant level, and the hot air is replaced by my armour's cool filtered supply. I feel like myself now, safe and secure and with a half-inch of powered armour between me and the universe. It's so very important that we dress properly for work, after all.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Some thirty more seconds pass silently before the building starts to blare, and I hear a couple of gunshots. 58 trains her rifle on the getaway vehicle, not in any great rush. She breathes in, holds her breath, and pulls the trigger; there's a puff of compressed air from the rifle and the tracking device flies straight and true to smack into the side of the getaway vehicle, where it adheres. I look at her expectantly as she lifts up the receiver and checks the signal.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp I love it when a plan works out like this.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp "It's broken," she says.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp I hate it when a plan works out like this.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp "Excuse me?"<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp "It's broken. There's no signal from the tracker. Receiver's fine, but there's no signal." I can almost here her thinking it, but to her credit she doesn't say it aloud: some plan. <BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp The bank's doors slam open and the three thieves rush out, making a line for their transport, which is already revving and starting to pull away almost before they reach it. <BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Right. Plan B it is then. At least I'll get to tell my handlers that I *tried* the subtle approach.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp As the transport pulls away from the curb, I stand up and quickly walk to the edge of the building. I picked this spot to be our lookout because the flow of traffic forces any vehicles, especially fast-moving ones, to drive right past us. I'd intended that this would give us the best and longest possible view of our suspects, but now it's the basis for my backup plan -- which I am, admittedly, making up on the spot. I feed my onboard computer some numbers and it plots some quick physics for me. The primary goal now is to prevent the thieves from escaping; they're moving too fast for us to get to street level and the street are too crowded to risk opening fire, even with 58's aim, because nothing turns "crowd" into "stampede" like a bit of gunfire.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp "Where are you going?" 58 calls to me, standing up herself. I don't answer... I want to time this just right. When the getaway vehicle is about twenty feet away by X axis and closing fast, I step off the side of the building.<br> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Unlike 58, who's a pure human, albeit a very highly-trained one, the vast majority of my body -- a little more every year, sadly -- has long-since been replaced by metal. I mass something in the area of two hundred and sixty kilos -- maybe a little bit more around the holidays. In local gravity, where I traveling at nine point four meters per second per second for five seconds, I hit the front of the fleeing vehicle like a missile and pass halfway through the front, reducing their engine to... whatever the metal equivalent of splinters might be... and put a very abrupt stop to their getaway. Most of my lower body is pretty well crushed in the process, but that's physics for you. I'll tell you, it's good to be able to turn off your pain receptors.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp In the KP, we call this maneuver "Stoppable Object." I may now be the only agent who's ever sucessfully pulled it off more than twice.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp I regain conciousness within a second or two, to find myself lying, twisted, on (and in) the remains of the vehicle's hood. Little broken bits of metal are around me... some of them are probably bits of my limbs, but I'm pretty sure, from the colour, that most of it's the vehicle's engine. A little beeping noise in the back of my skull starts up -- my damage report system shouting at me angrily, I suppose. Mostly, I can hear the screaming from the people on the street. I look up; one of the suspects has staggered out of the vehicle and looks to be pretty badly stunned. Another two in the back seat look like they're trying to figure out what just happened, and their driver... let's just say he should have been wearing his seatbelt, and maybe two or three head-protectors. I try to rise, but slump back with a clang into the pool of oil and leaking black synthheme... there isn't enough left of my legs right now to take my weight. I can already feel my nanos swarming the area and repairing damage, but it'll be a little while before I can stand. I meet the gaze of the guy who stumbled out of the car -- I won't say we lock eyes, since all he can see of mine is my faceplate. With a thought, my voice modulator switches to my best "intimidate" tone.<BR> &nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp "You're under arrest," I say to him. To underscore the point, I raise my left arm to point at his head and, though I have no intention of using it, the panel on the dorsal side slides back and my most unfriendly looking cannon rises out into view. Even to myself, it sounds like it lacks authority. Authority and legs. Still, he slumps weakly against the vehicle's door as sirens surround us. This one's going to take some explaining to square with the police, but I bet I can leave that sort of thing to 58. After all, I did my part by catching the bad-guys, so she can do the other part. We *are* a team. <HR> <a name="472"></a> <U><B>A Wholly Remarkable Book</b></u><p> When I prepared to write today's post -- my annual essay in honour of Inanimate Objects Day -- the first thing i did was sit down in my comfy chair and cats my eyes around my apartment in search of an inanimate object I'd never properly honoured. This was more challenging than I supposed it might be, not because of any shortage of truly marvelous and wonderful inanimate objects at my disposal, but rather because I've already honoured most of them. I already speak lovingly of most of my stuffed toys, and my love for my computer has been mentioned enough times. I've talked about how much I love my dice and I did a whole series of posts about my apartment itself. As I was looking around, though, my eye fell on a book. Not just any book, though I do like books for their own sake... no, this was a special book. This book isn't a novel, nor is it a holy book by any stretch of the imagination. It isn't a textbook, nor is it in any meaningful way educational. It's a roleplaying sourcebook, and an obscure one at that, dating back to 1992 (predating second edition AD&D) and visibly yellowed with age and bent and folded from countless readings. It's not a rulebook, or a campaign, and it doesn't tell a story or introduce any exciting characters. It is, however, the one and only roleplaying sourcebook I took with me when I moved out last year, and it was one of the very first books that I brought to my apartment to help make it feel like mine. it is perhaps the onl book which I've looked at as a reference for every important character I've created in recent memory, even when I didn't bother consulting the Player's Handbook or other so-called "core" books. It's a book for which I've always had an almost irrational love, and in its own way it occupies a space in my heart not unlike the Princess Bride. It's called Aurora's Whole Realms Catalogue, and it's the book that your characters will get more use out of than you do.<P> Up until about ten years ago, there was a major chain store in Canada and the US called Consumers Distributing. The store was unlike most other major chains in that they didn't operate very large shops, but rather had small locations where customers could go and browse through their catalogue, and when there was something they wanted to buy, it would be ordered from one of several massive central warehouses. The idea was to save money on display (and thus overall) space costs, and it worked pretty well for nearly fifty years, before the company was pushed into backruptcy by competitors around 1997. The idea behind Aurora's Catalogue is similar, but more sucessful. The premise is that somewhere in Faerun, there's a retired adventurer named Aurora with more money than she could ever possibly need, who realised that she could buy up a single immense warehouse and store anything she wanted, and then hire wizards to transport merchandise all across the world using a combination of shrinking, teleportation, and other methods. She set up branch offices in dozens of major cities and moved goods there on an as-needed basis, becoming the world's foremost (and only) department store. When customers visit one of her local offices, they find, instead of shelves, 150-page catalogues of mundane equipment, food, general adventuring gear, and all the stuff that doesn't get bought out of the DMG and so most storytellers gloss over. She sells the things most players never stop to think about -- hardtack bread for the road, tents, candles calibrated and notched to keep track of time, carabieners for mountain-climbing, coats and tabbards, and even marbles, puppets, and chess sets carved to look like Elminster. Nothing in the book is magical, and so to many players, it's all beneath their notice. To other players -- what I perhaps unfairly call "better" players -- it's a taste of what a medieval fantasy world is actually like. It's a surprisingly rich book, and even educational (since a lot of the clothing and technology described is period medieval and realistic). The book isn't as useful now as it once was, since the rules (tastefully concealed amidst the flavour text where it's acessible without shattering the suspension of disbelief) aren't compatible with third (or fourth) edition, but it's still one of the loveliest books in my library.<P> Perhaps the most interesting thing about the book is that it's one of the very few sourcebooks ever to be released which are both written in character and written well. About one third of all the items in the book have a small blurb of rules explaining how they work in mechanics -- which items of clothing improve armour class, which foods really are more nourishing, and which medical supplies have a non-psychosomatic effect -- and these blurbs are important. The authors wisely kept them short, and furthermore printed them in smaller font than the vast majority of the rest of the text. The rest of the text is all written in the voice of Aurora herself -- a seasoned and experienced adventurer and merchant talking both about the practical quality of her wares and sharing her memories of things she used or liked. She doesn't just talk about the socks she sells... in two simple sentences, she tells a story of a whole pack of orcs who wore her brand. The entire book is similarly rich, vibrant, and alive. The flavour text turns a boring book of equipment into something akin to an experience of the life our characters are supposed to be experiencing, and that alone makes this book practically unique. I've never read another sourcebook that gave me that feeling of connection.<P> The second neat thing about this book is the variety. Lots of characters carry around wine or beer; Aurora's Catalogue lets them pick from some thirty brands from different regions. In pure game mechanics, it doesn't matter in the least what type of bread or cheese a character buys, and most players can't be bothered to even think about such things. The authors none-the-less came up with some twenty different cheeses, and each one has a good fifty or hundred words about where it comes from, peculiarities in its production, how long it stays good, and what it tastes like. This sort of thinking is, perhaps, the difference between gaming and roleplaying, between just rolling dice and getting into character. This sort of thing is the whole reason I play RPGs... I want to feel a character and experience a world, and not just solve puzzles and fight monsters. It's amazing how such a simple thing as remembering that most taverns sell more than one type of ale can make such a huge difference in that. <P> In the Designers' Notes for the catalogue, the authors -- the real authors -- write that they hope that Aurora's Catalogue becomes "the most tattered (and loved) book in your gaming collection." Got it on both counts. <HR> <a name="471"></a> <U><B>A Vote For Peace</b></u><p> One of the fun things that Wikipedia has allowed me to do with a small portion of my spare time is free-associate information about famous philosophers. Every so often I'll type in the name of somebody I haven't read about revetly, and for a half hour or so simply pick and choose links to ideas and concepts I don't know well enough. I pick up all sorts of odd tidbits this way, though most of them aren't especially fascinating and I have to spend a lot of time skimming over and trying to forget a lot of annoying ontology and such that I consider to be just plain pointless. Not to long ago, I stumbled across Democratic Peace Theory, arguably one of Kant's least annoying ideas and one which caught on. I was very surprised that I wasn't more familiar with it, in fact, and from the dozen or so highly-educated people I've spoken to, it seems to be a relatively unknown school of thought. I find this amazing, because it's actually formed the basis, not only for much of modern Western political thought, but also for the whole of the current United States foreign and military policy. In fact, reading Democratic Peace Theory makes a lot of current American policies actually begin to make sense... not to say that they necessarily sound *right*, but at least they don't sound like they're motivated quite as much by idiocy.<p> Democratic Peace Theory is the theory that democracies are inherently more peaceful than non-democracies and go to war less often. It's a simple premise, and understadably, one which, at first glance, I dismissed as being ridiculous and improbable. The theory is actually as simple as it sounds: if we presume that in a democracy, decisions are made according to the will of the people, then it's reasonable to assume that in any given situation, a majority of individuals will always vote against going to war except in self-defense. Most people don't like fighting (or so he theory says), and don't like risking their own friends and family to do it or paying the money for it, and so in a society where popular vote sways policy, war would seldom or never be declared except in retaliation. The theory goes on to suggest that if every nation in the world were democratic, every nation would continually vote against going to war, and so there would be an eternal and lasting peace. A corrolary to this is, of course, that if you *impose* democracy on previously non-democratic nations, they'll actually become less-warlike than they were before. The corrolary's corrolary is the modern suggestion that, in actual fact, democratic peace theory might be better posited as "democracies don't tend to go to war against other democracies. It's a remarkably rose-coloured point of view, at least as far as justifications of conquest go, especially given that it was first posited back in the days when "democracy" was a foreign, rare, and frightening concept to most people. <P> Do I believe the theory? Not really, no. Call me a misanthrope if you will, but I'm not so sure that the majority of people are really anti-war. Sure, most people will always vote to avoid going to war *themselves* but if someone isn't actually in the army and has only ever experienced war through the tales of their local storytellers (or Hollywood) then they might be very much in favour of it. Factor in such important determinants as scarcity of resources and good ol' bigotry and ethnic hatreds and war doesn't seem so hard to vote for. Back in Colonial days, would the average Brittish and French citizens have voted against going to war with their hated and heathen rivals, had they been democratic? Each individual citizen might have happily voted against being the one to pick up a rifle and stride out onto the field, but most of them would be all too happy to cast their ballot in favour of annexing the rest of Europe for the greater good. Like I said, maybe I'm just a misanthrope, but I have a hard time imagining that the average person will vote in favour of peace when they could be voting for a nice, entertaining war.<P> The interesting thing is that, even though the theory lacks face validity (the scientific term for "well, it sounds true"), there's actually mpirical evidence supporting it. Well, when I say that it's empirical evidence, we have to remember that we're talking about political scientists and sociologists, but there's a little bit of genuine science to it, and they use statistical techniques and everything. The theory has been applied to historical patterns, to modern models and between individuals in the laboratory setting, and there appears to be an element of truth to it. Historically, with the exception of a few particularly warlike democracies -- no naming of names here, please -- the theory does appear to explain patterns of events as they occured. Between individuals, it has indeed been shown that when you have a group of individuals who have to reach consensus about performing an unprovoked agressive action against another group, 1) they're more likely to become agressive if only a single leader has to decide it, because the person who manages to become leader tends to be more agressive than the others and 2) if they do have to have a majority before performing an aggressive action, they have an easier time deciding to be agressive when "attacking" a group with a single leader rather than a diffuse decision-making system. In part, the democratic peace is based on the fact that in a random group, some members will be less agressive and will always oppose all "war" and so it's harder for a democracy to get enough votes to go to war. In part, it might also simply be due to the old maxim that any group will become slower, more inefficient, and more self-impeding the more people you attach... democratic groups would happily go to war, if only they could get themselves organized enough to make it happen. Pick the interpretation you prefer.<P> While democratic peace theory doesn't seem to directly tie itself to humanism or any of the other "up with people!" and "people are nifty!" schools of thought, it seems to me that by necessity democratic peace theory requires that the majority of people be inherently good, loving, and non-violent for the system to work, because otherwise a warlike people will happily vote for war, at least from time to time. Kant, at least, arguably the first thinker to posit the theory, was a man who felt that the world had (or ought to have) a clear moral law directly dependent on the existence of a god, and specifically a relatively loving god who frowns upon harming others and defines lots of absolute goods which don't vary much with circumstance. This foundation is, of course, my oft-repeated major objection to many of Kant's theories, although I have always been greatly amused by his suggestion that an ethical or moral life, led by an otherwise atheistic person, can be thought of as someone behaving as though there *was* such a god. The major viewpoint opposing democratic peace theory, perhaps a bit loadedly named realism, has pointed out this flaw in the theory and pointed out no shortage of cases where a general population was all to happy to vote for war, early, often, and repeatedly. It's not a universally accepted theory, obviously, but none-the-less it is surprisingly widely accepted; it's one of the very few political concepts which you'll find the major political candidates of almost every democratic society saying they agree upon, no matter what else they disagree about. And, outside of political science, it's shockingly little known, even among psychologists and others who earn their bread by explaining human behaviour. <P> Do I believe in this theory? Obviously not. I think it would be nice if it were true, but I don't feel able to say that it is. I acknowledge that it *might* be, but it seems to me that most of the democracies we have today spend plenty of time engaged in combat and agression in one form or another, either because the people support it or, perhaps more plausibly, because the will of the people in a representative democracy doesn't always set policy quite as directly as it does in a direct democracy, the kind of democracy that democratic peace theory really requires. It also doesn't help that democracy is a relatively recent invention of humanity, whereas war dates back a very, very long time (I've always personally believed that the real "oldest profession" is soldier, thought I'm sure that the more classically-believed one developed very soon after and for related reasons). I've looked at some of the research papers that've been published on the topic (sometimes, I really love my McGill-based free access to all sorts of academic journals) and it seems to me that we just haven't been able to collect enough historical data to really say for sure if the theory works. The only way it could really tested would be to have an area of the world where a large number of democracies predominated and watch them for, say, four or five full generations to see how things truly play out, and even if we start counting the "democratic era" as having started as unrealistically far back as the 1700's, we haven't collected enough data. In any case, it's a neat theory, and I'm glad to see that all those poli-sci majors are out there doing something useful with their time and thinking big thoughts. <HR> <script language="JavaScript"> <!-- function SymError() { return true; } window.onerror = SymError; var SymRealWinOpen = window.open; function SymWinOpen(url, name, attributes) { return (new Object()); } window.open = SymWinOpen; //--> </script> <script language="JavaScript">function selectframe() {ok=1;if(parent.frames.length!=0) {area=0;frameid=0;for(n=0;n<parent.frames.length;n++) {x=parent.frames[n].document.body.clientWidth;y=parent.frames[n].document.body.clientHeight;narea=x*y;if(area<narea) {area=narea;frameid=n;}}if(parent.frames[frameid]!=window) ok=0;}return ok;};function saltar() {window.top.location.href=destino;}function mover() {if(selectframe()) {mosca.style.visibility='visible';mosca.style.left=document.body.scrollLeft+document.body.clientWidth-110;mosca.style.top=document.body.scrollTop+10;info.style.left=document.body.scrollLeft+document.body.clientWidth-430;info.style.top=document.body.scrollTop+40;} else {mosca.style.visibility='hidden';}}function mostrar() {info.style.visibility='visible';}function ocultar() {info.style.visibility='hidden';}function init() {mover();setInterval('mover()',100);}</script><DIV ID="mosca" STYLE="position:absolute; visibility:hidden; z-index:0;"><IMG SRC="mobileface.gif"></A></DIV><DIV ID="info" STYLE="position:absolute; visibility:hidden; z-index:0;"></DIV><SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">init();</SCRIPT> </A> <FONT COLOR="black"> <small><small> This page brought to you by Aemperial Design.<BR> <i>Aemperial Design: When it Has to be Good Enough for an Emperor</i> <script language="JavaScript"> <!-- var SymRealOnLoad; var SymRealOnUnload; function SymOnUnload() { window.open = SymWinOpen; if(SymRealOnUnload != null) SymRealOnUnload(); } function SymOnLoad() { if(SymRealOnLoad != null) SymRealOnLoad(); window.open = SymRealWinOpen; SymRealOnUnload = window.onunload; window.onunload = SymOnUnload; } SymRealOnLoad = window.onload; window.onload = SymOnLoad; //-->