Aaron's News
From AJS.COM
The latest news from and about Aaron Sherman.
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2006-10-01
d20 Modern
is really starting to get me excited. Urban Arcana is a great setting (that might even be made into a TV series), and the system is much better than I thought it was on first-glance about 6 months ago. It turns out that most of my problems with the system were related to d20 Call of Cthulhu, which was incomplete at best, and really wasn't as good a system as d20 Modern, even though it resembled it in many ways.
I'll probably be running a d20 Modern game set in the Urban Arcana world at some point, starting with a one-shot called d7+6.
2006-09-29
Are you good enough for Perl 6?
2006-09-26
Newsbusters.org had a review of the second episode of Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip called Studio 60: Crazy Christians 'Praying for the End of the World'. While the review is amusing, it's pretty much dead wrong on every point it makes, including mis-quoting the episode badly. However, there was one point at the very end that I just had to comment on. Sadly, their feedback form is broken at newsbusters, yielding the error:
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NewsBusters.org
So, here is what I would have said....
I wanted to follow up on your "Studio 60: The Cold Open" review, but sadly it requires moderator approval to post, and I probably won't recall why I registered by the time that happens, so let me just follow up on your closing line real fast and let you get back to work:This comment would be pretty scathing if Sorkin hadn't done just that during his time on The West Wing
- "Here's a proposal for Aaron: grow a pair and feature a skit about those "Mad, Mad Mullahs"."
, where he wrote a scene where the Press Secretary (C.J. Craig) practically yells to the press corps about the horrors of being a woman in a Saudi Arabia-proxy called Qumar for quite a while before ironically calling them, "our partners in peace." The name of the episode is "The Women of Qumar
He also tackled topics of church burnings; the plight of Christians in China (in a really excellent episode called "Shibboleth
If you think that the prayer in Studio 60 is just a sop to Christians, that's also incorrect. Prayer before performances is VERY common in movies and TV. Actors are often quite liberal in their views, but they're also often quite religious. The thing is, Hollywood doesn't talk about that kind of thing much because religion tends to be a very divisive issue, and no one wants fans to think about that kind of issue when they think of a particular show.
Sorkin is not the cowardly Christian-hater you might think. I think he's very much an anti-religious-government sort, but he's never aimed that stick at any particular religion or government more than others. He's gone after the East, the West and the Middle East in pretty even measure, and Islam, Catholisism and Protestantism have all been included right along with the supression of all of the above.
Lastly, I'm just pleased as punch that a TV show can make so many people think about the issues that obviously concern us all so much. If naming an unaired sketch Crazy Christians can do that, then good for Sorkin! Perhaps we'll talk more about the lunatics on ALL of the sharp, pointy ends of the political spectrum (and no matter what your politics, there's someone who is completely insane that you're ashamed to admit agrees with you, and even more ashamed to see TV news networks bring on the air over and over again for "counterpoint"). I grew up in a Fundamentalist Christian home, and I have to say that some of the most decent people in the world were in that church, right along with some of the scariest nutters I'd ever met. I learned then that stereotypes are difficult to make stick to any group that you look at closely enough. This is true of Hollywood "liberals" as much as it is of any other group....
2006-09-03
My mom is selling my Star Trek books on ebay... the true mark of an aging geek ;-)
2006-08-19
She's done!
2006-08-18
FactCheck
Just got this tidbit from FactCheck.org a group that analyzes political rhetoric (from all sources) for accuracy:
- When future dictionaries define the term "taken out of context" they might consider using this RNC Internet ad as an example. We seldom see such an extreme case of editing a person's words to change their meaning. -RNC Ad Mischaracterizes Murtha
Read the article, and see what they mean. Wow. Just wow. As a moderate democrat who thinks that many republicans aren't the brain-eating corporate trolls that some democrats think they are, this makes me cringe. Why would any poltical party look for this kind of bad press?
2006-08-15
Perseids
This weekend, I went up to the White Mountains, New Hampshire to see the Perseids meteor shower. It was fatastic, though the peak wasn't visible from this part of the world. The next one I'm thinking of seeing is the Geminids, which I will likely see from the San Diego area. I've already drawn up a chart of the Geminids radiant and sky for the event.
Next Shackled City this weekend
I can't wait for this weekend. I'm running the final (or at least I think it will be final) part of chapter 4, deep in the heart of the kuo-toan shrine! Woohoo!
2006-07-18
Shackled City
I just ran the Shackled City with the half-lobster Barbie as the evil goddess Blibdoolpoolp, patron of the aquatic kuo-toa. It was a lot of fun, but we only got right up to the point where I got to bring the shrine model out, then we had to call the game for time. Oh well, next time!
Perl 6
I'm breaking out several API documents from Synopsis 29, in order to do better justice to them. It's cool stuff, and I'm especially proud of the new Perl 6 wait function which makes all that silly waitpid stuff go away.
2006-07-11
Perl 6
Perl 6 is going strong, and it's actually a programming language from my point of view now! The recent major developments are v6.pm, the Perl 5-based Perl 6 implementation and my work with Synopsis 29.
Gaming
Next session of Shackled City draws near! I've almost finished the model that I'm going to use for the shrine in the next session, and it's a real looker. Just take a gander at the centerpiece:
2006-06-29
YAPC
Back from YAPC::NA 2006, and recovering slowly. Going to cons for work is not as much fun as it's cracked up to be! Still, Chicago's a nice place, and I got to have some great chats with the core Perl folks.
Perl 6
Speaking of YAPC, Perl 6 seems to be coming along nicely. The current version of Synopsis 6: Subroutines has some nifty things that I think will make Perl 6 programming really fun!
