Read an RPG Book in Public Week Coming Again

 Read an RPG Book in Public Week is back....

• September 26th - October 2nd
• February 28th - March 6th
• July 25th - 31st

A little thought about corn syrup

I thought this summary of corn syrup and diet from Maggie Koerth-Baker (of Boing Boing) was extremely interesting. Her main points are: It's a sweetener, not the devil, and its main impact comes from its cheapness allowing producers to put it in a lot of our food. Hence we need to be reducing our sugar intake, not freaking out about corn syrup. Check it out for a cogent summary and links to more detail.

Puzzle game "Puzzgrid" based on UK game show

This thing looks pretty addictive. Figure out the links between words in the grid.
http://www.puzzgrid.com/

Green Arrow Year One...script by Andy Diggle

I was looking for comic book scripts online, to get an idea of how to write one, and this one caught my eye. It's a good read, and now I want to read the whole series (this is the script for issue 1 of a 6-issue series).

Wedding surprise: To Life

Apparently I really really need to watch Fiddler on the Roof. This video documents a wedding reception surprise from groom to bride....and a pretty dedicated family: everyone involved met secretly and practiced for a month.

_Murder City_ by Charles Bowden

This was the scariest book I've every read, and that's saying something after reading The Corner last year. But I called that one the saddest book I'd read.

This book makes graphic the simply vast number of people who are being murdered in Mexico in general, and in Juarez in particular. There were many striking things about what Bowden says in this book, but here are a few that stuck out for me:

• People like to say that it's just drug cartel people killing each other, but in fact people of every description are being killed.
• Cops are being killed. But then you learn that lots and lots of cops are compromised. Now, imagine trying to be a clean cop in that environment.
• The US gives money to the Mexican army to fight the drug war. The Mexican army goes around shooting and beating cops. And collects drug money.
• Really, the police and army are just another gang fighting for the drug money.
• But people don't just get killed for drugs. There's a thriving and industrialized kidnapping business. A gang will keep maybe a dozen people in a house while they bleed their family of money. No one goes to the cops; the gangs are tightly connected to the cops, or ARE the cops. Nearly all kidnap victims are killed.
• I kept fantasizing about "what if the US legalized drugs, ending the market for Mexican drugs." However, Mexico now has a lucrative local drug market, and lots of people who solve their problems by killing. There'll be no quick answer to this problem, though surely ending the US drug money would help.
• Top cartel folks have state police as bodyguards
• The folks doing the murdering don't really know who it is that is giving them orders.
• The army has always been used to beat down the people, in Mexico. Imagine the US government today sending a few thousand army troops to pacify a US city.
• If you deliver drugs, you make some money...but if it goes bad and you lose the drugs, you are charged retail price of the drugs,.... an impossible amount....so you suddenly owe more than you can pay...so you get killed. This is GOING to happen to you eventually.
  
  

Kickass: Late to the party

Finally got a chance to watch Kickass this weekend. Wow. This movie was a lot of fun. It was odd the way it both pointed out all the problems with costumed crimefighting and also kicked butt.

Think about what the movie would have been like if you dropped the title character out of it and focused on Big Daddy and Hitgirl. It would have been Batman and Robin but with a father-daughter angle (which is awesome) and then there's the way they don't have Batman's reluctance to kill.

But that goes hand in hand with what makes Kickass awesome. Hitgirl's ruthless killing, just mowing people down, makes her awesome and batshit crazy at the same time.

Anyway, I just finished watching the movie a few minutes ago. These are just the first thoughts out of my head. But right now this is my favorite comic-book movie of all time.

Let's play tarot

I didn't know that tarot cards were originally used for a plain old ordinary card game. Makes sense, though, doesn't it? It's a trick-taking game with the major arcana used as trump cards. Apparently the game didn't catch on in the English-speaking world, where the cards were instead mystified and used for divination. The other fun fact I learned by reading the Wikipedia article on the tarot was that tarot divination isn't that old...just since the 18th century.

Best movie finale scene ever

And the award for most creative use of a helicopter goes to...this Bollywood scene.