text:
We all get so caught up in our daily routines, that we just forget how great the simple things in life can be. Everyday we get out of our beds, drag ourselves to the bathroom, jump with fright at the freak staring at us from the mirror. But we still wash that freak, until it resembles the person we once again recognize.
After that it's a dash against time, get the kid (or kids) dressed, make breakfast, eat a quick 10 minute bowl of muesli and guzzle down the pot of coffee that gives you the high to keep you going for most of the morning. Quickly discuss a few appointments with the partner, get into the car, drop off the kid, then hurry to work. Always the eye on the watch. Always against the time.
Sound familiar?
At work it goes on - meetings, appointments, discussions and deadlines. A short lunch break, a few laughs, another pot of coffee then it's back to fighting the ticking clock.
This, like probably most of yours, is how my day is in a nutshell. Although I am a person who is energetic and enjoys the fast pace, it is my son who shows me the lighter side of life. With him I learn to relax and come down - re-charge my batteries.
It has become my daily oasis. After I've picked up Soeren from school we spend part of the afternoon simply coming down from our highly strung day. A short trip in the park, a stroll by the river or an ice-cream in the lovely Weimar inner city, where, surrounded by ancient trees towering high above the boulevard bestowing a cool shade on hot, sunny days, we sit on the wooden bench slurping our ice-creams. A cool breeze sweeps past us, rustling Soeren's hair, who is elated by the music the street brass musicians are playing.
They are from St. Petersburg and come every summer to Weimar. They almost belong here just as Goethe belongs to Weimar. Their music style is everything from famous classical pieces to popular modern pop and both tourists and locals alike circle the 6 man band listening avidly to their repertoire.
We peel off our jackets and our bags, getting comfortable on the benches. The day begins to disintegrate away. I take a deep breath and slowly exhale, allowing the stress of the day to blow away with the breeze. My hand, which casually rests on Soeren's shoulder, takes in an important impulse. His shoulders begin to relax, telling me we have found our oasis for today.
Summer and ice-cream go hand in hand and I cannot even begin to count the gallons we eat during the summer. While I am an all-year-round ice-cream girl, in the summer time it simply tastes more delicious. Making your own ice-cream at home is not only a lot of fun but we can make exactly the flavor we are craving for. The mother in me is also satisfied as I know what goes into my ice-creams.
Summer allows a lot of room for experiments, with the huge selection of fruit and berries at the Farmer's Market, it won't surprise you that much of it makes it's way into our ice-cream maker. This time it was 500g of ripe, sweet organic strawberries. I experimented with crème fraîche for a delicate unique flavor and chopped fresh basil for a fantastic refreshing kick. An unforgettable ice-cream experience.
Printable version of recipe here.
500g fresh strawberries, hulled and sliced
250g crème fraîche
250g heavy cream
150g fine sugar
Handful basil leaves, coarsely chopped
In a bowl toss the sliced strawberries with the sugar. Gently mix until the sugar dissolves. Set aside for about an hour, stirring regularly.
Place the strawberries and all of the accumulated liquid in a blender, along with all the other ingredients, except for the chopped basil, and pulse. Do not purée too long because you want the mixture to be chunky and have strawberry pieces in your ice-cream.
Pour into a bowl and refrigerate overnight, then prepare the ice-cream in your ice-cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions. Add the chopped basil into the ice-cream once the mixture begins to thicken.
Finally transfer into clean plastic boxes and freeze for 15-20 minutes.
Serve with fresh strawberries.
- If you do not have an ice-cream maker, then after the mixture has been in the refrigerator overnight, pour into a deep plastic vessel and place in the freezer. After 30 - 45 minutes take out and whisk with an electric hand mixer. Place back into the freezer. Repeat this process several times - 3 to 4 - then allow to freeze until firm.
- You can use other herbs with this ice-cream. Substitute the basil with mint for example or try some rosemary.
- Other berries work with this too. Raspberries or blackberries make a wonderful tangy ice-cream and also pair very well with the crème fraîche.
- If this ice-cream is only for adults macerate the berries with vodka with the sugar for an hour.
Creamy and delicately tangy. The crème fraîche does the first little wonder with this ice-cream, giving it a super poignant note. The second little wonder comes from the chopped basil adding a wonderful refreshing aroma. Together with the strawberries it was one of our favorite ice-cream flavors this summer.
Dee of Ammalu's Kitchen hosts a monthly event called Herb Mania this month she is featuring Basil. Dee hope you have room for my ice-cream.
You might like these ice-cream ideas from WFLH:
Fresh Ginger and Tangy Lemon Ice Cream | |
Dark Chocolate Raspberry Ice Cream | |
Apricot and Nutty Pistachio Ice Cream |
From around the blogs:
- David Lebovitz's irresistible salted butter caramel ice cream
- The Perfect Pantry's exotic avocado coconut milk ice cream
- Culinary Concoctions by Peabody's fruity raspberry honey ice cream
Daily Tiffin Reading Tip:
Eating better and maybe even saving a buck by Mike
All photographs and written content on What's For Lunch, Honey? © 2006-2008 Meeta Khurana unless otherwise indicated. | All rights reserved | Please Ask First

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Just keeping hitting from long range.
Stauskas made four of Michigan's 14 3-pointers, and the Wolverines beat the Longhorns 79-65 on Saturday to advance to the NCAA tournament's Sweet 16 for the second straight year.
Stauskas finished with 17 points and eight assists as Michigan (27-8) moved on to next week's Midwest Regional semifinals in Indianapolis. The second-seeded Wolverines will face the winner of Sunday's Mercer-Tennessee game.
Michigan lost to Louisville in the national championship game a year ago. But the Wolverines are rolling again, thanks to strong outside shooting and Jordan Morgan's work inside.
Isiah Taylor scored 22 points for Texas on 8-for-22 shooting. The seventh-seeded Longhorns (24-11) outrebounded the Wolverines 41-30, but got off to a slow start and never recovered.
Michigan shot 14 for 28 from 3-point range and 17 for 21 at the free throw line in its ninth win in the last 10 games. Morgan had 15 points and 10 rebounds, and Caris LeVert and Glenn Robinson III had 14 points each.
Texas trailed by 18 points early in the second half, but used its defense and rebounding to get back in the game. Martez Walker hit two free throws and Taylor had a jumper to trim Michigan's lead to 58-52 with 8 minutes left.
That's when Robinson stepped up for the Wolverines, driving inside for a score. After Connor Lammert turned it over for the Longhorns, Robinson hit a 3-pointer to make it 63-52 with 6:43 remaining.
LeVert added a big 3 in the final minutes, helping Michigan overcome its trouble inside in the second half. The Longhorns outrebounded the Wolverines 25-15 after halftime.
Michigan was coming off a 57-40 victory over Wofford, while Texas advanced with a dramatic 87-85 victory over Arizona State in the late game Thursday night. The Longhorns and Sun Devils were tied in the final seconds when Cameron Ridley picked up a loose ball and banked it in as time expired.
It might have been the completely different games in the previous round or just Michigan's advantage in tournament experience, but the Wolverines jumped all over the Longhorns at the start.
Stauskas led the way with his outside shooting and passing skills. He had three of Michigan's eight 3s in the first half. He also threw a perfect alley-oop pass to Robinson for a dunk that made it 36-18 with 3:35 left, and found Morgan for another jam off a perfect pick-and-roll.
Texas trailed 43-30 at halftime, and it would have been a lot worse without Taylor's slashing ability. The speedy freshman had the last four points of the half on a layup and two free throws, giving him a game-high 12 points at the break.
Texas was trying to advance to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2008 and the sixth in the last 13 years.
The previous game between the Longhorns and Wolverines also was in the NCAA tournament at the Bradley Center. Then-No. 10 seed Texas advanced with an 80-76 victory in the first round in 1996.
Take ABC13 with you!
Download our free apps for iPhone, iPad and Android devices


text:
Promotion first, science later, if ever. This pattern is near universal when it comes to autism interventions. In the absence of good quality research, autism interventions are loudly claimed to be effective.
For those promoting ABA-based autism interventions, claims of effectiveness unfounded in good quality research were only the first step. The real triumph has been widespread agreement that fair tests of ABA-based interventions are unethical and bad for autistics. As a result, any experimental design carrying the risk of being informative about the benefits and harms of ABA-based interventions has, for a long time now, been considered unethical.
The practice of claiming effectiveness for an autism intervention which has not been fairly tested, then using these claims of effectiveness to deem fair tests unethical, has clear benefits to service providers. And this practice has received wall-to-wall support from autism advocates, who have in turn imposed it on autistics through lobbying and litigation.
Meanwhile, this practice is not admired outside the realm of autism advocacy. Premature claims of effectiveness in themselves make fair tests of interventions more difficult--particularly, as is the case with many autism interventions, when blinding cannot be fully achieved. But those promoting ABA-based autism interventions go further and demand that autistics be entirely denied the benefit and protection of good experimental design.
In my view, this practice--its longstanding and widespread support by autism advocates, its more recent support by ASAN (example here), and its widespread imposition on autistics--continues to greatly harm autistics. Any group so denied such basic standards of science and ethics would be harmed.
Interestingly, not all autism researchers have stooped to prevailing autism advocacy standards.
Some years ago, a pilot RCT of an early autism intervention was published (Aldred et al., 2004). The intervention was manualized, of relatively low intensity, and targeted solely at the parents of preschool autistic children. Through a true experimental design, the intervention was found to have several significant positive effects, most markedly in increasing the expressive language of very young autistic children.
Successful RCTs of early autism interventions are virtually non-existent. But the researchers involved in Aldred et al. (2004) totally failed to go forth and proclaim the effectiveness of their manualized intervention. After all, they only had a small pilot RCT--the same size as the only published RCT, not a notably successful one (Smith et al., 2000, 2001), in the entire 48-year history of research into ABA-based autism interventions.
Instead of issuing premature claims of effectiveness, the authors of Aldred et al. (2004) and many other collaborating UK researchers went on to conduct a large multi-site RCT, the Preschool Autism Communication Trial. They received MRC funding for this 4-year project in 2005.
Some information about the PACT's design has been reported in a recent paper (Aldred & Green, 2009).
The trial began in early 2006 and will finish late this year. The researchers hoped to recruit 144 preschool autistic children across three sites, but exceeded their expectations and recruited 152. These children were randomized into two arms, one receiving the PACT intervention, while children in both arms continued to receive whatever other interventions their parents chose ("treatment as usual").
So far as I know, the PACT is larger than any existing published RCT in the history of autism research. The PACT's design means that it carries a good risk of being informative about the effectiveness of the studied intervention. There is no good reason for the PACT to be unprecedented, but it is.
In one of the PACT's recent newsletters, the PACT's Chief Investigator, Jonathan Green, notes that there has been a lot of interest in the PACT manual and in "training opportunities" with respect to this intervention. Dr Green responds:
Until we have the results of the trial we are not able to disseminate the intervention manual or to undertake any training; but be assured that after the results are in (and depending of course on the outcome in terms of effectiveness!) we do have potential plans in place for such dissemination.In other words, and keeping in mind there is a successful published pilot RCT, there are no plans to disseminate information about the intervention--not until there is good quality evidence as to its effectiveness. This is the recognized scientific standard in non-autism areas.
Aldred et al. (2004) and the PACT shouldn't in any way be above scrutiny or criticism. For example, I can see problems in how Aldred et al. (2004) was designed (I mention one of them here), which may or may not be carried over to the PACT. But the pilot RCT and the resulting PACT generally demonstrate the only science- and ethics-based sequence when it comes to interventions and treatments: good quality research first, then think about spreading the word.
Aldred, C.R., & Green, J. (2009). Early social communication
interventions for autism British Journal of Hospital Medicine, 70 (3), 143-145
Aldred, C., Green, J., & Adams, C. (2004). A new social communication intervention for children with autism: pilot randomised controlled treatment study suggesting effectiveness Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 45 (8), 1420-1430 DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-7610.2004.00338.x
Smith, T., Groen, A.D., and Wynn, J.W. (2000, 2001). Randomized trial of intensive early intervention for children with pervasive developmental disorder. American Journal on Mental Retardation, 105, 269-85. Erratum in American Journal on Mental Retardation, 105, 508. Erratum in American Journal on Mental Retardation, 106, 208.
Addendum: This post is included in the 116th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle hosted by Beyond the Short Coat.


text:
Advanced Search
Search Help
New Search
For more information, contact: Joey Shaw, PhD
© 2023
Tennessee-Kentucky Plant Atlas | Data last modified: 9/28/2023
Web Development: USF Water Institute
A member of the University of South Florida family of PlantAtlas.org sites
Citation Information:
Shaw, J., D. Estes, B. Ruhfel, A.B. Morris, and T.R. Littlefield. 2023 Tennessee-Kentucky Plant Atlas.
[S.M. Landry and K.N. Campbell (original application development), USF Water Institute. University of South Florida].
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Austin Peay State University, University of Michigan, Furman University, and Kentucky State Nature Preserves Commission.


text:
Home » Electronic, Tape, Concrete » LOCKWOOD, ANNEA: Ground of Being
LOCKWOOD, ANNEA: Ground of Being
Close listening compositions with sound, three of them environmentally sourced and one performed. The performance is of a piano piece from 1996 interpreted by Louis Svard using coins, screws, bubble-wrap, wiring insulation, rubber balls, large stones, a bowl-gong, mallets and a water glass to drive preparations and extended techniques into the exploration of pure sound. Buoyant (2013) mixes lake and river recordings with metal gangplank reverberations; Dusk (2012) is constructed from very low frequency deep ocean sounds generated by hydrothermal vents, transposed bat calls and a large tam-tam, while Ground of Being (2000) amplifies resonances of mostly indistinguishable sources, dehydrating trees and a speaking voice rendered incomprehensible in the space of a large, resonating, crypt. Nicely packaged. Specialised�
Code: Recitalseven
Price: £14.50


text:
National Association of Baby Boomer Women
9672 W US Highway 20 • Galena, IL 61036 • firstname.lastname@example.com • 1-877-BOOMERZ
NABBW does not represent or endorse the reliability of any information or offers in connection with advertisements, articles or other information displayed on our site.
Please do your own due diligence when viewing our information.
Privacy Policy • Terms of Use • Disclaimer • Contact


text:
Though I feel ridiculous spending so much time on Resort while having done very few with Fall shows, I have a bunch of scheduled Resort posts to go up this week while I am at IdeaCity in Canada Land. But for now, one mood I especially liked:
Simplicity (Not necessarily minimalism, but that is all for another time.)
Alexander Wang (2, 8, 11.) Though I am normally a socks and sandal person -- almost ALWAYS a socks and sandal person, because feet are ugly -- something felt overly stuffy about the sock usage here. Something was stuffy about the collection overall, but most of it I dug, especially the transparent dresses over sporty underthings. Something is so right!
Calvin Klein (3.) This is another one where I would've guessed it was a Spring collection if I didn't know it was resort. So serene. So serene that I feel too calm and serene and stuff to think of a better description. PS, why does the blogosphere not freak out about Francisco Costa more often? The man creates wonders!
Celine (4, 5, 7, 10, 12.) Phoebe Philo does no wrong. She just doesn't. It is simply not how she rolls. As a consequence of this, I want to become a bank robber. ANGUISH. (Also, I am not a bag person, but the Celine bag is SO GOOD and for Resort they made it this electric liquidy lime color. It totally makes me want to cry.)


text:
Eric Stults (2008 debut) vs. Aaron Harang (3-9, 4.10).
COMMENTS: You want a harang(ue)? How about mlb.com getting its story straight so it's clear who the damn starting pitcher is before game time? The Dodgers also welcome back Eric Stults to the team after he went 1-0 in 2006 and 1-4 in 2007, with a career ERA of 5.75. I was fortunate to have met Eric during last year's cup of coffee, and he's a nice guy (and indeed did kick ass during The Transporter, Crank, and Lock Stock). Let's hope Stults opens a can of whupass on the Reds today and we get a much-needed sweep.


text:
Tom Riker |
In "Second Chances", we find that some years ago Riker was duplicated in a transporter accident on Nervala IV. Nobody knew it had happened, so the duplicate was stranded on the planet for all that time. He was finally rescued by the "real" Riker, and the two went their separate ways. In the DS9 episode "Defiant" we discover that Thomas Riker left Starfleet and joined the Maquis. He steals the Defiant and goes into Cardassian space, but eventually agrees to surrender to the Cardassians as part of a deal brokered by Sisko. Kira faithfully promises Thomas that they won't just let him rot in prison.
I said in the introduction that I wasn't really trying to make a list of "whatever happened to..." episodes, because there would be so many of them. Rather, I'm thinking of episodes where they seemed to promise some sort of future resolution, or at least some degree of follow-up. Defiant was very nearly one of the former cases; with Thom Riker captured, it would have been perfectly reasonable to write him off as spending the rest of his life in a Cardassian prison. What puts it onto this list, though, is Kira. As he surrenders himself, she promises Thomas that they'll get him out of prison somehow. Kira, remember, is a woman who has launched covert raids on the Cardassian homeworld to get people out of prison before now. She seems perfectly serious about her promise. Yet she never so much as mentions rescuing Riker after the end of this episode.
With the Dominion war, there would be plenty of chances to do stuff with Riker. He could have been executed by the Dominion. He could have been freed when the allies began to capture Cardassian territory. As usual in these cases, we wouldn't need to have a whole episode devoted to this - even a single line could have resolved it.
Genesis |
In Star Trek II we are introduced to the Genesis device. It is a terraforming technology which has awesome potential; you program the device with a "recipe" and set it off on a planet. In a matter of days it completely dissolves and re-creates the surface of the planet according to the plan you programmed in. Want an ocean over here, a mountain range full of excitingly challenging climbs over there and a nice river here? No problem. Even more amazingly, when used at the end of the film the device actually creates a planet from scratch out of a nebula!
In Star Trek III we learn that David Marcus, one of the scientists who worked on the device, used unstable "protomatter" in its construction. This renders the planet unstable, and it rips itself apart again after a short time.
After this, we never hear of Genesis again. Now there are various arguments you can make about this. Firstly, it is clearly established in ST III that Genesis doesn't work. We might think that the TNG era would have overcome this difficulty in the next century, but this isn't necessarily the case - maybe Genesis can't work, ever. Maybe the whole basis of it is fundamentally flawed. That's a perfectly reasonable conclusion.
But, if Genesis is useless at making planets then it certainly isn't useless as a weapon. Spock makes clear that if Genesis is used on an already inhabited planet, it would "over-write" all life there in favour of the new design. So at the very least, it's a bomb capable of destroying all life on a planet right down to the last virus; and as an extra added bonus, it then makes the planet fall apart!
And it gets better. As the device counts down to detonation the Enterprise flees the scene. On being told that they are now four thousand kilometres away from the device, Kirk looks to David to see if they are far enough to make it, and David silently shakes his head. There's still a minute or two left to detonation at this point. So the Genesis device can, at the very least, destroy an unshielded ship from well over four thousand kilometres away. That implies that the explosion is truly massive - every nuclear weapon ever built detonated all at once wouldn't so much as muss your hair at that distance.
Now you could argue that the Genesis technology was lost - Khan kills most of the staff at the outpost, he steals the Genesis materials and then destroys them when he detonates the device, and David was killed in ST III after all - but this is absurd. Firstly, David wasn't the creator of the device, his mother was; early in the film David makes clear that she is going to be the one remembered for all this ("Don't have kittens mother, Genesis is going to work. They'll remember you in one breath with Newton, Einstein, Surak..."). Carol survives ST II and III just fine.
More than this, it is made clear that most of the staff are not even on Regula when Kahn attacks it - as David says, "We're all alone here! They waited until everyone was on leave to do this!" So not only is the original creator of the device alive and well, the bulk of the Regula personnel are fine also.
You would also have to assume that the materials Kahn destroyed are the only copies of their kind anywhere in the Federation. That's pretty hard to believe - keeping copies of your data at physically remote sites is standard practice for any scientific research, precisely so that you don't lose it all if your lab burns down or whatever.
So the Genesis data probably continues to exist; the scientist who invented it still lives; the majority of the people who worked on it are alive and well. Why haven't we ever seen this thing used again?
The Warp 5 limitation |
In one of TNG's most annoying episodes, the Enterprise-D encounters a pair of scientists who claim that warp drive is inherently damaging to the fabric of space. Use of warp drive over a long period is destroying the galaxy. To combat this, Starfleet orders all ships to be limited to warp 5 from now on unless otherwise specified.
They actually did follow up on this somewhat; once or twice afterwards, there was mention that the Enterprise-D was authorised to exceed the warp 5 limit for specific missions. But after that, the whole thing was quietly forgotten.
In my humble opinion, the limit was a really, really bad idea. It served no purpose! The only point of introducing something like this is that it gives the characters a limitation to work within - it makes solving the problem of the week that much more difficult, and so increases the tension. All of which is rendered completely moot if you then let the ship violate the limit whenever it's important, and then forget about it altogether!
Imagine if other shows did this. CSI has their characters endlessly preach about how important it is to follow the evidence in order to make a case against the bad guy. Imagine if they started having Grissom get letters saying "because of the importance of this case, normal rules of due process are suspended; make the evidence up as you go along". It would be ridiculous! You don't set up a rule only to then ignore that rule - if the rule is inconvenient enough that you want to ignore it, then you don't establish it in the first place!
When Voyager premiered, the ship was the first ever which features variable geometry nacelles - the nacelles were on pivots and could angle up and down. It was widely rumoured that this was a new development in warp drive which allowed ships to achieve high speeds without damaging space. It was rumoured that the Enterprise-E developed for First Contact would have the same feature. But the idea was dropped for the Enterprise-E (if indeed it was ever really considered in the first place), and nobody has ever once said anything about Voyager's engines not damaging space on screen. In fact, nobody has ever said one word on screen regarding the variable geometry nacelles, period.
Alpha / Gamma |
In the DS9 episode "One Little Ship", the Defiant is captured by Jem'Hadar forces. We learn for the first time that there is a new type of Jem'Hadar, the "Alphas". Alphas are bred specially for combat in the Alpha Quadrant, and are said to be superior to the older type of Jem'Hadar. How they are superior is never really made clear; certainly the ones we see in the episode are not especially intelligent.
The episode seems to be setting up some sort of ongoing story in which the Alpha and Gamma Jem'Hadar are at odds with one another. How far this was going to go I don't know, but there certainly seemed to be something in the offing. Sadly, there is never again any mention of the new breed of Jem'Hadar.
As usual, you wouldn't have needed a whole new episode to go into this. A single line of dialogue about how the Alphas proved incompetent in "One Little Ship" and have been eliminated, or a single line about how most Jem'Hadar are Alphas now, would have done it.
The "Conspiracy" Parasites |
In "Coming of Age", Admiral Quinn subjects the Enterprise-D to an intense investigation at the hands of Commander Dexter Remmick. He reveals that the reason for this ordeal was that Picard is being vetted to assume the position of Commandant of Starfleet Academy. When Picard demurs, Quinn reveals that he wants a man he can trust in the job because he feels that something sinister is going on within the Federation.
This is picked up in "Conspiracy"; some fellow Starship captains warn Picard that there is some sort of plot afoot within the Federation. He uncovers an infiltration effort which has been mounted by small parasitical aliens; these crawl into your mouth and take over your body. Picard and Riker kill Remmick, who is hosting a "mother creature"; this kills the rest, ending the invasion and freeing all the hosts. However, before his death Remmick sends a signal out into the galaxy. The episode concludes with Data informing us that the signal is a homing beacon - the aliens have transmitted the location of Earth back to home base...
The implication of all this was that we would one day see these aliens return, but over the next six years we never saw or heard of them again. In truth, another invasion like the one seen here wouldn't have been much of a threat once Starfleet was looking out for it. The aliens left a clear and easy to spot mark when they infiltrated somebody - a small tail-like organ which stuck out the back of your neck. Those taken over also had problems remembering the things which had happened to their hosts, so it would be fairly straightforward to uncover any future attempts. But so far as we're told, the aliens never even try again.
It might have been interesting to bring the same aliens back but have them use a different strategy. For instance, there could be areas of the galaxy where their invasions did go as planned - how would Starfleet deal with an attack when every enemy ship had a crew who were innocents under alien control? It would be like fighting an enemy that used large numbers of "human shields".
And were these parasites just smart animals, stealing the technology of others, or did they command technology of their own? It might have been interesting to see ships and weapons built directly by the parasites - would they build vast numbers of really small ships? Or would they build ships the size of the Enterprise-D, kind of like having Humans build ships ten miles long?
In the event, the writers decided to go in different directions and gave us the likes of the Romulans, Borg and Cardassians as recurring bad guys instead. Not a bad thing, really, but I kinda liked those little critters and I wouldn't have minded seeing them once or twice more...
The Schisms Aliens |
Geordi builds a new subspace sensor system for a mission. Apparent ally coincidentally, Riker begins to suffer from tiredness and irritability. Troi begins to suspect that something is going on when several of the other crew report similar symptoms. Using the holodeck, they explore half-remembered fragments of their nightmares and manage to recreate an eerie torture chamber setting which feels familiar. An investigation by Beverley reveals that all of them have been subjected to medical experiments. When a subspace effect begins to appear in the cargo bay, Geordi speculates that something from deep within subspace has been attracted by his sensor system. Riker is treated to prevent himself from falling asleep and fitted with a homing beacon; when he is taken that night the Enterprise uses the beacon to locate the alien's realm and so close off the breach between our universe and theirs. However, at the last moment a burst of energy escapes the breach - and flies off into space...
I really liked Schisms, and the alien concept was an interesting one. Not only were these aliens slightly less Humanoid than usual, but their "rapid clicking" method of communication gave them a creepy feel. Their purpose was also left a mystery - were they only trying to understand us, or was there some more sinister motivation? Most importantly, though, there seemed to be little defence against them. The episode put my in mind of Wyndam's novel "The Kraken Wakes" - there aliens who live underwater gradually take control of the world's oceans. The book emphasises just how helpless Humans become even a few feet under the water when faced with a species evolved to live there; similarly, the aliens themselves rarely fare well when they venture onto the land. The subspace aliens could have been developed something like this - we could say that once they knew where to look, they could lock on to any subspace technology and attack from "beneath". As they learned more about us and our universe we might see anything emerging from those breaches... the plot possibilities are endless.
Again, though, these guys turned out to be another one-off. The energy ball / probe / whatever they sent through is never seen or mentioned again, there's no mention of any further attacks and indeed nothing said about establishing any kind of ongoing defence or detection system. Pity...
The Co-axial Warp Core |
In this episode, an alien named Steth appears near Voyager in a ship powered with a "co-axial warp core". This drive system, which Starfleet knows of but never got to work, allows a vessel to jump instantly across large distances. Tom Paris helps Steth to repair his malfunctioning ship, but Steth turns out to have ulterior motives; he is able to switch appearances with others, and has used this ability to leave a trail of swindled people in his wake as he flees across the galaxy. Steth imitates Paris and takes his place on Voyager, having dispatched Paris off in his ship. He builds a new co-axial warp drive for one of Voyager's shuttles. Unfortunately for him, Paris meets up with one of Steth's other victims and they make their way back to Voyager. Steth swaps with Janeway and tries to escape in the co-axial equipped shuttle. Paris is able to disable it, captures Steth, and everybody gets their own face back in the end.
What's remarkable about all this is that the co-axial-equipped shuttle remains with Voyager at the end of the episode. True Paris disables it, but the system he targets is the one he built for Steth in the first place, so there should be no trouble repairing it. Amazingly, though, the co-axial warp drive is never seen, never used, never once so much as mentioned again.
The Voyager crew built the Delta Flyer nine episodes after via-a-vis. In writing terms, the flyer's role is to allow select crewmembers to be separated from the rest of the cast; it's known that the writers considered introducing the Captain's yacht (the large shuttle you can see an outline of on the bottom of the saucer section) to fill the flyer's role. I can't help but wonder if the co-axial shuttle wasn't originally brought in to fill the same function? I can understand that they decided not to go with it - the shuttle is still too small to realistically go off on multi-day missions (where's the loo? Where would people sleep?), or carry more than a couple of people. And on a personal level it was very satisfying to see Voyager's crew building a new ship for themselves; this is something I had long speculated that Starships could and did do, and it gave me a lovely warm feeling to be proven right!
However, it was a mistake to simply stop talking about this drive technology. If they didn't want to let the crew use it, they should have dragged it out one more time and have them find out that it's really unreliable or something. At the very least, have the original shuttle get blown up and say you can't build another without Steth. But don't just leave it dangling!
The Emergent Life Form |
In this episode the Enterprise-D begins to suffer from a bizarre series of malfunctions. The holodecks are malfunctioning (again!), the ship's control systems seem to be doing thing without orders... it soon becomes apparent that the ship itself is responsible. The Enterprise-D's main computer has achieved sentience, and is embarked upon a mission of its own. It is building some kind of strange contraption in one of the cargo bays, something that almost qualifies as a form of life. The crew speculate that the ship is trying to reproduce, and find a way to help it to do so successfully. The emergent life form departs the ship and heads out into space.
I don't tend to mind this dangling thread all that much, partly because it came so near to the end of the series that there was no time to follow up on it - there was only one more episode to go before we reached the final - but also because there doesn't really seem to be anywhere to take the idea. I could see the writers treating the emergent life form rather like the space whale from "Galaxy's Child", a non-sentient animal to be studies. I could maybe see them going the route of the Farpoint shapeshifter aliens, an alien life form which was intelligent but which didn't have much in common with Humans or any real desire to talk to us. But if we've seen those before, why do them again?
Wesley - God or What? |
In "Where No One Has Gone Before", the Traveller told Picard that Wesley Crusher was a great genius, like Mozart but an engineer rather than a musician. They touched on this once or twice again, but it came to flower in "Journey's End"; Wesley is visiting the Enterprise-D whilst the ship prepares to transport a group of Indians from their colony against their will as part of a peace treaty with the Cardassians (presumably this was part of the set-up for the Maquis of Deep Space Nine and Voyager). Wesley, who is feeling somewhat lost and alienated, makes friends with one of the locals. He sympathises with them, to the extent that he resigns from Starfleet to side against Picard and the Enterprise-D crew.
At the climax of the episode Wesley finds that he has developed super-powers, and can freeze time. The native reveals himself to be the Traveller, who has arrived to guide Wesley through this transition. The two leave together at the end of the episode.
All well and good. However, in Star Trek : Nemesis, Wesley Crusher is clearly if briefly visible at Riker and Troi's wedding reception on Earth. Not only that, but he's dressed in a Starfleet uniform! What's going on? Has he decided not to play god any more and rejoined? Or is he just back and playing pretend Starfleet officer, like Q likes to do? It's never explained.
Bajor |
The whole point of Deep Space Nine, at least at first, was to show Bajor being rebuilt after the Cardassian occupation. Over and over again we're told the idea is that Bajor will eventually join the Federation. And in "Rapture", Bajoran membership of the Federation is actually granted - only to have Sisko tell the Bajorans that they mustn't join after all, Bajor must stand alone for now. Their application is withdrawn, and it later appears that Sisko was warning them against the upcoming Dominion war.
However... the war ends at the end of Deep Space Nine. Why doesn't Bajor join up then? Okay they were on a tight timeline since the show finished very shortly after the war did - though personally I'd far rather have seen the fate of Bajor wrapped up than having twenty minutes of faffing about in the Fire Caves. But once again nobody even so much as mentions the possibility!
I find it quite incredible that they left this dangling. It would be like finishing off Voyager without having the ship reach Earth. Okay, okay, so Voyager actually didn't quite reach Earth in the final episode, but hell, they were five minutes away and that's good enough to give closure. I'd have no problem if they'd done the same thing with Deep Space Nine - have Admiral Ross at the "End of the War party" so he can say to Kira "by the way, did you hear? The Bajoran government formally renewed their application for Federation membership this morning. The Council debated it for less than thirty minutes. How does next week on the Promenade sound for the admission ceremony?" That way you may not have shown them becoming members, but at least we'd know it was going to happen.
The Vaadwaur |
In "Dragon's Teeth", Voyager discovers a planet which was devastated by an orbital bombardment nearly a thousand years before. In underground chamber they find and revive a large group of aliens called the Vaadwaur. The Vaadwaur turn out to be bad guys - aggressive, territorial invaders who were beaten back by an alliance of their victims and virtually exterminated. The Vaadwaur attempt to steal Voyager, but fail. At the end of the episode a number of them escape in their old ships, heading for parts unknown.
As I say above, it's not my intention here to list every single situation which was never fully resolved. This one is kind of a grey area. The ending doesn't really leave us with the impression that the Vaadwaur are going to be a problem for Voyager specifically... indeed, the dialogue implies that with their antiquated technology they aren't really going to be much of a problem for anybody. It's perfectly possible to project an ending where they end up rather like the Cataati; a pathetic band of wandering nomads dependant on the charity of others for survival. Not much of a dangling thread there.
And yet... the problems of the Cataati were at least as much mental as material. They were not pathetic because they had poor technology and resources - hell, their technology was still far beyond anything we have on Earth today! No, the Cataati were pathetic victims largely because they believed they were. They saw themselves as weak, as put upon, as unfairly disadvantaged. The Vaadwaur, however, came across as being almost absurdly self assured and confident. I can't see them being happy to spend the rest of their lives sitting around watching their ships fall apart while they beg for charity. Instead, I suspect the Vaadwaur would head for the nearest primitive planet, take it over, and put the locals to work building more ships for them. Once they had that base you could expect them to start conquering everything they could lay their hands on in short order. In that respect, they'd end up rather like the Son'a from Star Trek : Insurrection.
We do actually see the Vaadwaur again after "Dragon's Teeth"; there's a Vaadwaur ship in the subspace region that Voyager and others were trapped in during "The Void". I don't really count this as meaningful, because nothing was made of the Vaadwaur being Vaadwaur - it was as if the writers wanted to use a Delta Quadrant species and simply pulled a Vaadwaur head off the shelf.
I must say though, philosophically speaking that void seemed to be right up the Vaadwaur's street. I bet they loved it there.
Assignment : Earth and Gary Seven |
Whilst visiting Earth's mid twentieth century on a historical research mission, the Enterprise intercepts a very long range transporter beam and brings aboard Gary Seven, a Human who has been raised by aliens. He is an undercover agent whose job is to guide Earth through this difficult period. Although suspicious, Kirk eventually decides to trust Gary and the two work together to resolve a crisis involving a nuclear weapon. Kirk leaves Gary on Earth, promising that according to their historical records he has an interesting future ahead.
This is another borderline case. On the one hand, the episode promises that Gary will be involved in various shenanigans on Earth. However, there is no real hint that any of that will involve the Enterprise directly, so we can't really complain that it never came up again. For those who don't know, the idea of this episode was to provide the basis for a spin-off series charting Gary's missions on Earth. The series never materialised.
The Iotians |
Enterprise visits Sigma Iotia II, a planet whose people had been visited by a Starship in the distant past, before the Prime Directive was in force. Thanks to a book "Chicago Mobs of the 30s" which had been left behind, the highly imitative Iotians have patterned their whole society after this time and place. Kirk engages in various adventures, convincing the various mob bosses to get together and form a planetary government. At the end of the Episode McCoy realises that he has left his communicator behind, giving the Iotians access to Federation technology. Kirk wonders how this new contamination will affect the Iotians.
I'm including this one largely because when Deep Space Nine decided to do an episode involving TOS, the Iotians were the original idea which was considered. The plan was to have the Defiant visit the planet only to find that the whole place had remoulded itself as a copy of Kirk and the original series Starfleet - uniforms, technology and all. Eventually DS9 decided to go with time travel and made "Trials and Tribble-ations", one of my favourite episodes, but I always wondered just what become of the Iotians.
The Klingon Homeworld |
This is more an inconsistency than a dangling plot thread, but I thought it fitted well here. In ST VI, we are told that the explosion of Praxis has damaged the ozone layer of the Klingon homeworld, and that their supplies of oxygen are therefore going to run out over the next fifty years. Quite how one of those follows on from the other I don't know, but that is what is said in the episode. Later on, in the Federation President's speech at Khittomer, he says that the evacuation of the Klingon homeworld has been planned to take place over the fifty year period.
So, what about the Klingon homeworld we see so often in the TNG era? Is this the same planet? The Klingon homeworld in ST IV is called Qo'noS (Kronos) at least a couple of times, just like the TNG one. Did the Klingons evacuate to a new planet and name it after the old one? In which case, shouldn't they really have called it New Qo'noS or Qo'noS Nova or something?
Or alternatively, did some technological advance between ST VI and TNG allow the ozone/oxygen problem to be overcome?
It's interesting to see how Enterprise is treating Qo'noS. We've seen the Klingon ruling Council's building a few times, and it's a completely different structure than the one we see in TNG. This is one of the few times that Enterprise actually could have re-used an element from later Treks reasonably, because not only is it perfectly possible to believe that the Great Hall seen in TNG is 225+ years old, it would be right in line with the Klingon obsession with tradition and ritual. Interestingly enough, the climate aroud the city seen in Enterprise is distinctly colder - snow is often to be seen in these shots, something never observed in the TNG version. Of course on a real planet you expect to find a wide range of climates, but in science fiction many planets tend to have mono-climates - so Risa is always nice and sunny, Vulcan is a desert, it always rains on Ferenginar. Given this, you have to wonder if the writers are hinting that the Enterprise Qo'noS is indeed a different planet than the TNG version, or perhaps they are just suggesting that the Praxis explosion altered the climate on Qo'noS.
I really wish they had made some mention of this in TNG or DS9. They needn't have made a big deal of it, but some mention of "the original Qo'noS", or some reference to "he's the scientist who saved Qo'noS from oxygen depletion a century ago" would have dealt with it nicely in a single line.
Canon source | Backstage source | Novel source | DITL speculation |
© Graham & Ian Kennedy | Page views : 58,455 | Last updated : 15 Apr 2020 |


text:
From the Hans Christian Andersen biography "The Life of Hans Christian Andersen. Day By Day", written by DPhil Johan de Mylius:
3 January
Returns to Copenhagen.
19 February
Reads fairy-tales and stories aloud at the Students' Association.
Death of Lieutenant Vilhelm Pedersen, an illustrator of HCA's fairy-tales.
24 March
Release of Nye Eventyr og Historier. Tredie Samling (New Tales and Stories. Third Installment) including "Vinden fortæller om Valdemar Daae" (The Wind Tells about Valdemar Daae and His Daughters), "Pigen, der traadte paa Brødet" (The Girl Who Trod on the Loaf), "Taarnvægteren Ole" (Ole, the Tower Keeper), "Anne Lisbeth", "Børnesnak" (Children's Prattle) and "Et Stykke Perlesnor" (A String of Pearls).


text:
Surprised to see a baked goodie here after so much rant about a diet?Worry not,you've come to the right place,lol.Thanks to all of you who sent me mails asking if I was ok,the diet part aside,I am doing great.But blog wise,I've been a bit off since I've been not cooking anything new and the least exciting.So I thought I should give a small treat to all of you and to myself for successfully[almost] going on with the diet and shaking off my weight here and there.
A tea-cake is called so because it is generally served with afternoon tea but can be applied loosely to any kind of cake that is sturdy enough to be picked up with the fingers.[source]
I've always been a tea-cake fan because it is the perfect answer for those cake-cravings sans the frosting.Though I've never actually baked a tea-cake per se,this and this are very similar to these.With the strong taste of butter and vanilla along with the melt in the mouth goodness and the crunch of nuts and chocolate chips in every bite this one's a winner for sure!!
Choco-Nut Tea Cake
Recipe source - Lakshmi Nair
Milk - 1/2 cup
You could also bake this in a square pan and cut the cake into small squares,choice is yours!!
*[I had some leftover batter and I baked it in small tart molds.]


text:
Kan't State, Ore-gone: Losses by top two teams vault Notre Dame to No. 1
Published 1:19 am Monday, November 19, 2012
NEW YORK (AP) — Surprise! Surprise!
Two straight weekends of seismic upsets not only sent tremors throughout college football from the Deep South to the Pacific Northwest, they've all but cleared the way for two marquee teams and best-known brands to play for the national title.
Notre Dame was No. 1 in The Associated Press college football poll released Sunday and Alabama was No. 2 after a pair of stunning Saturday night upsets rearranged the rankings. When the BCS standings came out later Sunday, they lined up the same way.
Notre Dame needs only to beat struggling rival Southern California (7-4), with its star quarterback injured, to secure a spot in the BCS title game for the first time. In the 76-year history of the AP poll, Notre Dame has been crowned national champion by the media panel eight times, the last in 1988.
"It's like being selected for the playoffs," Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly said. "Now you know you're in if you take care of business."
The only other school with as many AP championships is Alabama. The Crimson Tide potentially has two more games left. The Tide is at home Saturday against rival Auburn (3-8) and, if it beats the Tigers, advances to the Southeastern Conference championship game against No. 3 Georgia on Dec. 1.
Win that one, too, and it will be Notre Dame and Alabama playing in Miami on Jan. 7 for the championship.
Sounds simple enough. But when it comes to college football, the last two weeks of the season have been a consistent reminder that it's best to expect the unexpected.
Oregon and Kansas State were in the front row of the BCS race as of Saturday. All the Ducks and Wildcats had to do was win the rest of their games and they would have played for the BCS crown. No easy task for sure, but considering they had been walloping opponents, winning their first 10 games by an average of more than three touchdowns per game, it looked like a solid bet that they'd close the deal.
A week earlier, the same was said about Alabama — before it was upset at home by Texas A&M, a loss that cleared the way for Oregon to be No. 1 for the first time this season.
Saturday's first shocker came when then-No. 2 Kansas State lost at Baylor after barely putting up a fight.
The Bears (5-5) ran out to a 28-7 lead behind Nick Florence, the quarterback who replaced last year's Heisman trophy winner Robert Griffin III, and won 52-24. Not only did the Wildcats lose all hopes of playing for a national championship, its much-heralded quarterback, Collin Klein, lost his front-runner status in this year's Heisman chase.
This was all wonderful news for Notre Dame, which was sitting at No. 3, had shut out Wake Forest earlier in the day, and needed only Oregon or Kansas State to lose to have a chance for the national title.
One down, one to go.
While Kansas State was lamenting its lost opportunity in Waco, Texas, over in Eugene, Ore., Stanford was pushing around the top-ranked Ducks as no opponent had this season. The Cardinal (9-2) tied up the score with 1:35 remaining in regulation on a touchdown pass that many Ducks fans likely will be seething over for years.
Tight end Zach Ertz caught Kevin Hogan's pass, juggled it on the way down, landed on an Oregon defender, and rolled out of bounds. Incomplete was the ruling on the field. After video review, the call was overturned. TD Stanford, 14-all.
In overtime, Oregon missed a field goal try, Stanford made one, and the upset was complete: Stanford 17, Oregon 14.
If they listened hard, Stanford players might have heard the Alabama fans yelling and screaming from clear across the country.
Alabama wide receiver Amari Cooper tweeted as the dominoes were falling: "I don't think I've ever been this excited before haha."
The Crimson Tide wasn't the only SEC team lifted by the upset, but Bama benefited most. A week after giving up control of the national championship race, the Tide is back in charge, looking for a third BCS title in four seasons. A win would be seven in a row for the Southeastern Conference.
If Alabama can get past lowly Auburn on Saturday, and Georgia can avoid a K-State-like loss to Georgia Tech (6-5), the Tide and Bulldogs game will essentially be a national semifinal, with the winner advancing to the BCS title game.
No. 6 Florida (10-1), another SEC team, has a chance now, too. The Gators play No. 10 Florida State (10-1) in Tallahassee on Saturday, and the Seminoles think they have a shot to reach the BCS title game as well.
Oregon slipped to No. 5 in the rankings, and probably believes it can still get a second chance, the way Alabama did, but time is running out. Same goes for No. 7 Kansas State.
A Notre Dame-Alabama BCS championship game would mark the first meeting between the storied programs since 1987, and the biggest since the 1973 Sugar Bowl.
That year, coach Bear Bryant's Crimson Tide was No. 1 and Ara Parseghian's Irish were No. 3 when they met in New Orleans. The lead changed hands six times and Notre Dame won it 24-23 and was voted No. 1 in the poll to win the national championship.
Now the question is: With two more weeks to go in college football's regular season, can the Irish and Tide calm the chaos and set up what could be the most-hyped national championship game in history?
Stay tuned.
Follow Ralph D. Russo at www.Twitter.com/ralphDrussoAP


text:
A Lazy Sunday Saying Goodbye
All I can say is that I am sad. My Sunday coffee will never be the same.
Farewell Paul. Finding this blog as a lowly tribe fan in California was a revelation. Reading you has been a favorite part of my Sunday mornings and mid-week work days ever since.
Thank you for the time you put into this. You have made a difference to those of us who logged in to read and discuss our favorite team. You are all of the good things about being a fan.
Wow, Paul, I was not expecting to wake up to this article this beautiful Sunday morning! Your writing will be missed. You have done an amazing job over the years. Thanks for the mention in the article. It was a bitter sweet article to read on my wife's birthday.
You are doing it for all the right reasons, so again thank you and congratulations on the 7+ years of great work. I will continue to read Al's writing, he does do a nice job. Enjoy the family and GO TRIBE! Hope to see you around the neighborhood.
Take care and we'll talk soon.
Scott W.
I was expecting this, and it still hit me like a ton of bricks.
Incredibly sad to read this. Best of luck and health to you and your family as you move forward.
Paul, thank you for the years of service to Indians fans. You gave us so much joy each and every Lazy Sunday for so many years. God Bless!
I said it last year and I'll say it again. Enjoy your family, they are way more important than this blog. But, be sure we will all miss you greatly. I'm glad that you are leaving this in Al's hands, as I'm sure he and others, as you said can carry on the high standards that you have set. I do hope that once in a while, you will weigh in with a "guest" article just so we can have your opinion on what is or should be going on with our beloved tribe.
Thanks for sharing your love of the Tribe. Your words will be missed with my Sunday coffee. Good luck in your future endeavors.
Thanks again for all that you've shared with us over the years. To say you'll be missed is a massive understatement.
Best wishes for you and your family.
'Tis the way of the blog to bubble up and, eventually, burst. One can but admire it while it lasts.
Glad to have been a reader for many of the years you've been hammering out opinions on the Tribe. I hope you'll continue to enjoy discussions on bullpen manufacture, prospect handling and platoon splits as you focus on some other priorities in life.
Paul, you're really going to be missed. I discovered the Diatribe a couple years ago and it has become a part of my Sunday morning ritual. Thank you so much for sharing your writing with us these past few years. Best of luck, and enjoy every minute of time with the family, these kids grow up so very fast.
On one hand, I am really going to miss reading your posts. On the other, I am happy for you as it is clear that you are putting Tribe fandom in its proper place in your life. It's important and a lot of fun, but as families grow and life changes hopefully obsessions with sports diminish.
Thank you for the regular doses of sanity. I know that you're leaving the blog in great hands too, but it won't be quite the same.
Paul, you and I have followed a similar paths. I'm far from Cleveland now and don't make it "home" as much as I'd like, but all the same. We grew up with the same 1980s Indians teams, we were the same age for the 1990s Tribe teams and had kids about the same time (mine are almost 7 and 5). In an effort to find some decent writing on the Indians, I found you near the beginnings of this blog. I have been amazed, given how my life had changed over this time, that you were able to keep putting in 10,000 words each week. I know that my attention span has waned.
Paul, I wish you the best and will miss you horribly over the next years. As someone else mentioned, your articles on Sunday morning were always saved for last. I hope some day we meet in person.
Al, I wish you a lot of luck in continuing this blog and will look forward to your musings when they show up in my RSS feed. If I can help in any way, please say.
Thank you for all of your thoughtful posts over the years. I will greatly miss the chance to learn from your perspective, and my Sunday mornings have had a big hole blown right through them. Best of luck with your family and career, but (selfishly) I hope we see you cannot resist the temptation to sometimes weigh in with a couple thousand well crafted words!
Wonderful news, not for me but for your fantastic family. Best wishes, and enjoy the additional time you'll be able to spend with your children. Many blessings and wishes for continued successes.
its been fun, even if this post's links made me go relive the FALL of 2007 again. although, i'm disappointed we won't have a discussion on the great fall beers of 2012 this year.
cheers bud,
I am pretty sure I know exactly how you feel. Good luck, and maybe we will meet at some Tribe or Ignatius related event in the future.
Thank you for all the information and entertainment you have provided to us through the years. My knowledge of the Tribe will greatly diminish in your absence.
Commitment to family comes above even the things we love to do, so this is more for Al and others that will take the reins...this morning, just before reading this post, I was on another blog that covers my much under-reported college football/basketball (think small B1G) where the two writers were reluctantly asking for donations to keep the site going. I had my credit card out without hesitation. If this site is ever in jeopardy of shutting down, please ask for voluntary donations first. I think you would be surprised at the results. I have always thought you guys should be paid for what you are providing us all.
Hey Paul
I can't say I've ever had the pleasure of meeting you but I always found your writing to be well informed and made me think in different ways about my favorite team. Best of luck in the future.
Thanks, Paul.
Our lose is your family's gain!
I've really enjoyed your blog throughout the years Paul. The internet just got a lot lamer.
Hopefully someday when a charismatic group of winners in Indian's uniforms develop, you'll come back to the keyboard.
I don't comment on articles or blogs ever, but I have been religiously reading your posts for about two years now and wanted to express my thanks for your hard work. The thoughtfulness and passion that you've applied while dissecting my favorite sports team has been much appreciated. Best of luck and thank you.
Thanks! I've enjoyed your work out here, as an off the reservation undocumented alien living in Red Sox nation. Best wishes for the family, day job, and whatever else your future holds.
Best of luck, Paul. It's safe to say we have different perspectives about the Indians organization, but this blog has always been a great read.
I understand and applaud your decision, Paul. Your insights will be missed by Tribe fans everywhere, but one has to answer when real life beckons.
Thank you all of you for all of this.
I'm humbled and amazed by the outpouring of gratitude and encouragement that I've received here and elsewhere.
Thank you...
What a classy way to go out, and knowing you through your writing there could be no other way. My enjoyment of the Indians has only grown as I enter my late twenties, as I've finally realized that baseball (and sports in general) are meant to be fun and not something that leads my life. I just enjoy watching/reading about the Indians, win or lose, and this blog has only added to that enjoyment. Best of luck to you and your family, and thank for adding joy to my love of the Indians, and the city of Cleveland.
Paul, Thanks for all the hard work. You will truly be missed. I would like to dedicate this poem to your memory.
A Fond Farewell
It is in fact truly summer's game,
It crosses boundaries rich and poor, young and old aplenty,
Oh why did Skinner have to stop Kenny?
The Yankees, the Angels, the Red Sox they spend and they spend,
While the Indians value every penny,
Oh why did Skinner have to stop Kenny?
Some years are agonogizing and hard to stomach,
Other years like '95, '97, and 07' bring heartbreak to many,
Oh why did Skinner have to stop Kenny?
As Tribe fans we are conditioned to wait and wait,
Wishing for a championship on the shores of the Lake,
But we soldier into the future,
Waiting for that one special day,
A World Series Championship would be the best of any,
Oh Why did Skinner have to stop Kenny?
Experiences have famous cheap windows 7 key that Blue's intention is always to carry Home windows Telephone 8 and Windows 8 nearer with each other, by which includes companies from every system. A Blue update can window anytime upgrade key be anticipated for Home windows Telephone 8 later this year, with related refinements.
The complicated continues to be hit by vandals before, but to buy cheap adobe photoshop cs6 the lesser degree. Britten recalled an incident the place someone formerly broke in to the elaborate concession location kicked out some windows.
The somewhat isolated community complex wasn't gated "because we utilized to roll it shut and it didn't make any change,"office for mac home business 2011 he said. "There's plenty of unobserved ways to climb a fence and have in there."


text:
Levinson, Alexander
Status: Located
Echobank (Newington) Jewish Cemetery, Edinburgh, 2. Scotland, UK
Notes: Echobank Jewish Cemetery: For further details please go to Alan Wilson's site http://www.newingtoncmy.fsnet.co.uk/default.htm Further information can be found under Cemetery Histories With Alan's kind permission we have added photos and details of some of the individuals buried there. If you have any photos you would like to donate to the GenPals Cemetery Project please Contact Us THANK YOU!!


text:
Save Search
Save Search
Showing 79 out of 118 results meeting your filter criteria
Days on the Market
No results found
Please remove some of the selected filters or zoom out the map.
© 2022 Oregon Datashare (KCAR | MLSCO | SOMLS). All rights reserved. The data relating to real estate for sale on this web site comes in part from the Internet Data Exchange Program of the Oregon Datashare. Real estate listings held by IDX Brokerage firms other than Hybrid Real Estate are marked with the Internet Data Exchange logo or the Internet Data Exchange thumbnail logo and detailed information about them includes the name of the listing Brokers. Information provided is for consumers' personal, non-commercial use and may not be used for any purpose other than to identify prospective properties the viewer may be interested in purchasing. The consumer will not copy, retransmit nor redistribute any of the content from this website. Information provided is deemed reliable, but not guaranteed. Updated: 25th April, 2024 5:28 AM (UTC)
All information is deemed reliable but is not guaranteed and should be independently verified. The content relating to real estate for sale on this web site comes in part from the IDX program of the RMLS™ of Portland, Oregon. Real estate listings held by brokerage firms other than Hybrid Real Estate are marked with the RMLS™ logo, and detailed information about these properties includes the names of the listing brokers. Some properties which appear for sale on this website may subsequently have sold or may no longer be available. Listing content is copyright © 2022 RMLS™, Portland, Oregon. Updated: 25th April, 2024 4:55 AM (UTC)


text:
Are you ready for your next travel adventure? Thankfully, WishMyTrip is here to help you satisfy your wanderlust cravings with great deals on flights to London. Browse through our extensive range of cheap flights to London to satisfy your travel urges. Whether you are traveling on a business trip or exploring a place you have never been before, we have the perfect travel deal waiting for you. Stop daydreaming and make your trip to London a reality. Let WishMyTrip help you find the best flight deal and help you experience all the amazing local food and culture London has to offer.
When you are ready to embark on your next big adventure, WishMyTrip will be here waiting for you to travel smart. When you decide to book, just click or call. Don't wait too long because we have some of the best deals available on the web and they won't last long. Take time to go through our wide selection of cheap flights to London to find the best deals that fit into your budget. If browsing on your phone is more convenient for you, consider checking out www.WishMyTrip.com So why are you waiting around? There is no better time than now to start booking that next trip. Start your search now to book one of our flights to London today!


text:
These days, I think of winter in Chicago as being more like Madonna. It returns, year after year, shrieking and wailing and trying desperately to impress. Fact is, honey, we've seen it all. Blow all you want, but you done used up all the tricks in your bag.
Now when October comes I just sigh and do my best to ignore it.* And please don't give me any hippie New Age crap about how one ought to "live in harmony" with the seasons and enjoy what each of them has to offer. People who say such things do not live in Chicago. Trying to live in harmony with a Chicago winter is like trying to do buddy yoga with a wet cat.
Winter 2006 was relatively mild, meaning that:
- There was a day in mid-February when I walked three blocks with my face uncovered.
- The wind off the lake slammed me into the side of my apartment building only twice.
- It's May and I'm not still wearing a wool overcoat and earmuffs.
It takes the zing right out of the daffodils.
This year, not so bad. Small repairs to the trim, rather than major renovations to the infrastructure. And I'm not looking at anything I wore and wincing, as I did in the Year of the Capri Pants. (All pictures have been burned, as have the pants, so don't even ask.)
Of course, other gay men tend to look at my wardrobe and wince. If I lived in New York City and walked through Chelsea in my usual summer ensemble I'd get shot. When I used to have to hang out for hours every Sunday with Mr. Ex at one of our big local bars, the only guys who ever hit on me were the ones with a straight guy fantasy. They assumed from my sub-par attire that I had ventured to the Other Side of the Tracks for an afternoon.**
I can make it halfway to gay–maybe get the shirt right, for example. But then I put on shorts with a belt instead of without, or whatever the regulation is that week, and Greg Louganis starts pounding on my door demanding the surrender of my membership card.
Spring is supposed to be a time of renewal and rebirth. Maybe I need a gay makeover. Any of you Chelsea boys make house calls?
*Also my approach to Madonna.
** Apologies to the metrosexuals. I hope I didn't hurt your feelings. Go get a pedicure, you'll feel better.


text: Today TU is a national organization with about 300,000 members and supporters organized into over 400 chapters and councils from Maine to Montana to Alaska. This dedicated grassroots army is matched by a respected staff of lawyers, policy experts and scientists, who work out of more than 30 offices nationwide. These conservation professionals ensure that TU is at the forefront of fisheries restoration work at the local, state and national levels. The organization remains committed to applying "the very best information and thinking available" in its conservation work and has developed cutting-edge tools such as the Conservation Success Index (CSI), a sophisticated framework for assessing the health of coldwater fish species throughout their native range. Whether this range encompasses a few hundred miles or multiple states, the CSI helps the organization target its efforts toward those populations most in need of protection or restoration. The CSI also enables TU to measure its progress in achieving the bold goals laid out in its mission and vision. These goals require the organization to work at increasingly larger scales, and to collaborate with other conservation interests, local communities and state and federal partners to begin to rebuild the natural resiliency of watersheds. Such efforts are crucial if North America's trout and salmon are to survive climate change and the host of threats facing them at the start of the 21st century. Nearly 50 years after its founding, no other conservation organization is as well placed as TU to make a difference for the nation's coldwater fisheries. To learn more about TU's ambitious conservation agenda, please visit the conservation section of our website. Our Mission To conserve, protect and restore North America's coldwater fisheries and their watersheds. Our Vision By the next generation, Trout Unlimited will ensure that robust populations of native and wild coldwater fish once again thrive within their North American range, so that our children can enjoy healthy fisheries in their home waters. Who We Are Founded in Michigan in 1959, Trout Unlimited today is a national non-profit organization with about 300,000 members and supporters dedicated to conserving, protecting and restoring North America's coldwater fisheries and their watersheds. Our staff and volunteers work from coast to coast to protect, reconnect, restore and sustain trout and salmon habitat on behalf of today's anglers and coming generations of sportsmen and women who value the connection between healthy, intact habitat and angling opportunity. From forested rivers like the Farmington in Connecticut to the pristine waters of Alaska's Bristol Bay and all points in between, TU's work spans nearly a million miles of cold water all across North America. TU is the most effective coldwater fisheries conservation organization in the country. Donors invest in TU because we get things done on the ground, in statehouses and on Capitol Hill. TU has a basic approach to its conservation strategy. First, we use the best available science to protect headwater spawning habitat for trout and salmon. We reconnect tributaries with their rivers to ensure resilience, and we restore waters where development has impacted trout and salmon and the opportunity to fish for them. Second, we sustain our work on the ground by: Using the best science to drive conservation priorities Promoting and maintaining a strong legal and regulatory framework to protect fish and fishing opportunity Connecting with passionate anglers who want to give back to the resource they value so much Increasing our ability to engage TU members in conservation by training, educating and building a strong community of angler advocates Connecting with generous donors and helping them give to the fish they cherish and the places they love Helping members connect and communicate with one another via our website, TROUT Magazine and the TU Blog From the Penobscot in Maine to the South Fork of the Snake in Idaho and west to the Klamath in Oregon and California, TU and its staff and volunteers work on the ground in hundreds of places, protecting, reconnecting and restoring trout and salmon habitat for the benefit of today's anglers and generations to come. If you're interested in becoming a part of TU and giving back to the fish and the places you value, become a member and help us 'save the world, one trout at a time.' Visit the TU Staff Directory Visit our staff directory to see a list of our conservation professionals.


text:
Learn how to lead your team to success
So, what can you do to improve your performance and be a better manager, mentor, and motivator?
As a sales manager (or business owner who must assume a sales management role) you have to establish a management framework built on productive behaviour, cooperation, collaboration, and accountability. Do you know how to do that?
It all starts with having the right people in the right places... How do you select and hire the best salespeople, and once hired, how do you effectively onboard them to maximise performance? Recruiting and hiring the best-fit candidate takes more than hiring the applicant with the best resume or interviewing skills.
Then, when you have the right people, your job is to direct, motivate and coach them to do the selling for you. But what is the most effective way to do that—how do you motivate and lead your sales team to perform?
Once you've built a good baseline team, how do you maximise everyone's performance to increase sales? Do you know how to realistically forecast your team's sales funnel? How do you know that your sales funnel projections are achievable?
Insight and tips on current sales, sales management, leadership and management topics. We invite you to comment on our posts and to pass them on to your colleagues.
Accountability The Sandler Way, written by author and Sandler trainer Hamish Knox, shares how sales managers can create an accountability-driven work culture for their teams and themselves… by investing just 20 minutes a week in Sandler sales and management principles.
Accountability can be a way of life for your sales team, creating clarity for yourself and your team around goals (yours and theirs), the path to achieve those goals (yours and theirs) and the consequences triggered by failing to stick to the path. And it's easier than you think to accomplish.


text:
Krepin Diatta Face PES 2017
Krepin Diatta Face Club Brugge PES 2017
Download PES 2017 Krepin Diatta Face (Club Brugge)
How to Install?
- Download file & Extract them using WinRAR.
- Copy the CPK file to the download folder where your PES 2017 game is installed.
- Generally found in > "C:\Program Files (x86)\User\XxX\PRO EVOLUTION SOCCER 2017\download".
- Then generate the DpFileList.bin file with DpFileList Generator by Baris (Put this CPK into the Last Checked).
- Play & Enjoy the Game!
Credit & Thanks to : Dewatupai pes


text:
Articles in law reviews have certainly become more obscure in recent decades. Many law professors seem to think they are under no obligation to say anything useful or to say anything well. They take pride in the theoretical and in working in disciplines other than their own. They seem to think the analysis of actual statutes and court decisions — which is to say the practice of law — is beneath them.Many law professors seem to think they are under no obligation to say anything useful or to say anything well. That's my favorite Adam Liptak quote of all time -- though it still can't beat the Jacobs quote for post title. Now, there's a quote!
But the big question is do the judges read lawprof blogs?
The assembled judges pleaded with the law professors to write about actual cases and doctrines, in quick, plain and accessible articles.(Hi, judge!) I'll have to make a note to comment on more cases in a "quick, plain and accessible" way.
"If the academy does want to change the world," Judge Reena Raggi said, "it does need to be part of the world."
To an extent, her plea has been answered by the Internet. On blogs like the Volokh Conspiracy and Balkinization, law professors analyze legal developments with skill and flair almost immediately after they happen.
And on the theory that I've got some judge and law clerk readers, let me put in my request that they write their damned opinions in a quick, plain and accessible style. Because I'm getting pretty weary of their obfuscatory, evasive, rambling scribblings myself. Unfortunately, I don't have the option of just not reading. Their work is imposed on us. Talk about an obligation to say something useful and well!
As for those professors, how much should we worry about their disinclination to stoop to the level of quick, plain accessibility for the purpose of talking to judges? Do you really think these characters who opted out of the practice of law should have more influence over the law that affects real life? Maybe you should be glad they've cocooned themselves within an academic discussion that harms no one.
Do you feel sorry for the law review editors who work so hard on what the professors write? The editors still get their editing experience. They get their lustrous credential to put on that résumé that will land them the judicial clerkships where they will get more experience working on judicial opinions -- those lengthy, obfuscatory judicial opinions that fail to cite law review articles.
If the very persons who just spent two years working closely on law review articles don't find a way to work law review citations into the opinions they draft and edit, that says a lot about the value of what they chose to publish.
Hey, law review editors, why don't you start choosing "quick, plain and accessible" articles that judges will read and be influenced by? I think we know very well that the prestigious journals reject such things instantly. It's not what their lofty lawprofs write and respect.
It's a vicious dynamic, no?
But judges could change the whole dynamic if they started rejecting law clerk applicants whose law journals published the kind of articles they don't read. So quit complaining and use your power to change things. Or are you so beholden to the law professors whose work you don't read that you have to hire their darlings, those law students who publish the articles you don't read?


text:
Mike McQueary, the Penn State graduate assistant who said he witnessed Jerry Sandusky sexually abusing a young boy in a shower on campus, has filed a whistle-blower against the school, claiming his treatment by the university since Sandusky was arrested in November has caused him distress, anxiety, humiliation and embarrassment.
The complaint, filed in county court near State College, where the university is based, seeks millions of dollars in damages.
Penn State spokesman Dave La Torre declined to comment.
The lawsuit discloses that shortly after Sandusky was charged, the university's then-president, Graham Spanier, met with athletic department staff inside the university's football stadium and expressed his support for athletic director Tim Curley and vice president Gary Schultz, who had been charged with perjury and failure to properly report suspected child abuse in the Sandusky case. Spanier also issued a public statement with the same message.
Curley, now on leave, and Schultz, who has retired, have repeatedly denied the charges against them and await trial.
McQueary said Spanier's support of the two administrators was designed to preserve the university's reputation and make McQueary a scapegoat.
McQueary, whose contract with Penn State was not renewed, testified this summer that he came upon Sandusky and the boy in a sexually suggestive position in a team shower in early 2001.
He told jurors at Sandusky's trial he saw that the boy's hands were against a wall and Sandusky was behind him, with his midsection moving subtly, and he heard a "skin-on-skin smacking sound."
McQueary reported the episode to then-head football coach Joe Paterno, who in turn alerted Curley and Schultz. Paterno was fired after the three men were charged, and he died of complications from lung cancer in January.
McQueary claims that the November meeting with Spanier "clearly suggest(ed) that (McQueary) was lying in his reports and testimonies that he had reported the sexual misconduct."
"Spanier's statements have irreparably harmed (McQueary's) reputation for honesty and integrity, and have irreparably harmed (his) ability to earn a living, especially in his chosen profession of coaching football," the lawsuit said.
Messages left for Spanier and his lawyer on Tuesday were not immediately returned.
The lawsuit said McQueary, placed on administrative leave Nov. 11, learned his contract was not being renewed, meaning he was no longer a university employee, from a news conference held in July by the university's new president, Rodney Erickson. He said his salary last year was $140,000 and his future earnings as a coach would amount to at least $4 million.
He alleges he was let go because he cooperated with investigators, testified at the preliminary hearing for Curley and Schultz and is expected to be a prime witness against them at trial. He wants reinstatement, a bowl bonus he lost while on leave, legal fees, back pay and benefits through the Sandusky trial, among other things.
Sandusky, a former defensive coordinator, was convicted in June on charges he sexually abused 10 boys, some on campus. He remains jailed awaiting sentencing next week.
Eight young men testified against Sandusky, describing a range of abuse they said went from grooming and manipulation to fondling, oral sex and anal rape when they were boys.
The 68-year-old Sandusky maintains his innocence, acknowledging he showered with boys but insisting he never molested them. He's likely to receive a sentence that will keep him in prison for life.


text:
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Retrospective: Powers & Perils
There's probably no better Exhibit A of Avalon Hill's misunderstanding of the state of RPGs than their release, in 1984, of Powers & Perils. Designed by Richard Snider, who'd been a player in Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign, Powers & Perils reads very much like an expanded version of his earlier Adventures in Fantasy. Whereas Adventures in Fantasy feels (to me anyway) like an idiosyncratic house rules document to OD&D, Powers & Perils feels far more sterile, as if it were an exercise in "Ivory Tower" game design divorced from actual play. I don't know that that was the case with P&P, but, as presented, the game is complex, poorly organized, and largely lacking in charm. I can forgive the first two flaws, as they're commonplace in the hobby, but it's hard to become enthusiastic about a game when its designer's writing conveys as little enthusiasm as this one does.
P&P came in a large bookcase box, like those of many Avalon Hill games, and included five rulebooks of between 24 and 60 pages each. The first book dealt with character generation, which was largely determined by random rolls and modified by both race and gender. Characters could be humans, elves, dwarves, or "faerries." There are a large number of derived scores as well, which contribute greatly to both the complexity of the overall game system and the length of time it takes to create a character. P&P has a skill system that covers both non-combat and combat skills. Of course, calling it a "system" is a bit of a misnomer, since there are few common mechanics to these skills, most of which have individual resolution and experience systems. And when I say "individualized," I mean it: some skills, for example, have a simple rating/level, while others have a percentile score.
The second book covers combat and magic. Surprisingly, it's not as complex or convoluted as one might expect. Combatants have an offensive and a defensive combat value based on their skills, abilities, and weapon. Comparing the two results in either a positive or negative number that's then cross-referenced on a combat chart. Percentile dice are rolled to determine if the attacker hit and, if so, how hard. Armor decreases damage taken. There are a number of other wrinkles to the system that are confusingly presented in the text, but, overall, the system is strangely straightforward if "heavier" than I like. Magic is powered by mana and the system for using it seems to have been modeled on that of melee and missile combat. Spells are divided into several categories (law, chaos, sidhe, etc.) and cover most of the usual effects one expects in a fantasy RPG.
The third book presents over seventy creatures, divided according to the plane of existence from which they hail, as Powers & Perils has an interesting cosmology that divides reality into an Upper World, a Middle World, and Lower World. Many of the monsters are mundane or fantasy staples, but others are either wholly original or intriguing variations on old standbys. The third book also provides lots of random encounter tables for different terrain types. The fourth book treats human encounters, which is intended to help the referee in creating NPCs. The fourth book also presents treasure and magic items. What's interesting is that P&P places a greater emphasis on the variety of non-magical treasures than does, say, D&D, with plenty of options for works of art, furnishings, etc. Equally interesting are the large number of "natural" magic items, such as herbs and minerals that have magic effects. The fifth book presents a sample setting, the County Mordara, including a sample adventure set within it.
Looking at Powers & Perils now, I am struck by the same feeling that I had when I first read it back in the mid-80s: it's a poorly organized and unnecessarily complex design given that it contains so little that's genuinely new or imaginative. Had the game come out in 1977 or thereabouts, it might have made some sense, when it could have appealed to the growing legion of gamers disappointed with some aspects of hobby leader Dungeons & Dragons. But in 1984, that wasn't enough. Despite flashes of brilliance here and there, Powers & Perils is no RuneQuest or Chivalry & Sorcery. It has neither a compelling setting nor a complex rules system that pays dividends in terms of (pseudo-)historical realism.
I find myself wondering if the game was ever played even by its designer or whether it was purely an intellectual enterprise, because it certainly feels more like the latter than the fruit of design informed by actual play. Powers & Perils isn't a bad game so much as a needless one. There's very little to recommend it over almost any other significant fantasy RPG of its era (or before), because it brings almost nothing unique to the table. Given that it didn't get much support, I suspect I wasn't the only one who felt that way.
26 comments:
This is one of those games I bought based on the box art alone, and as soon as I opened the box (immediately upon leaving the shop), I felt as if I had been the victim of a practical joke. It took mere seconds to leaf through the books and realize that the game was a ridiculous waste of paper. I attempted to return it, but I had removed the shrinkwrap, so I was stuck with it. Disgusted, I left it on the shelf for a time, but one day I decided to open it up again and share the folly of my purchase with my gaming comrades. The game, it turns out, had one value: it was not merely bad, it was hilariously bad. Your retrospective is much more forgiving than mine would be, but I must confess that reading portions of it aloud to my friends provoked sidesplitting fits of laughter. To think I could have bought Swashbuckler by Yaquinto Publications instead still gives me pangs of regret, but the laughs provided by random readings of Powers & Perils are almost worth the price.
ReplyDeleteP&P retains a soft spot in my heart for several reasons:
The P&P spin on Law vs. Chaos is my favorite. As written it's pretty thin, but it has great possibilities for world building. Especially so if we keep in mind that Law doesn't necessarily mean good, Law probably conflates Elder/Faerie/Kotothi with Chaos, and Elder is just plain tribal in its outlook(s).
I really like the fact that P&P encourages the GM to create unique magical (and non-magical) treasures. I despise +1 swords with no history.
There OV vs. DV combat system is too complex, but I like the idea of opposed roles in combat.
But otherwise, I agree. It just takes up space on my game shelf. And I say that even more as a collector than I do as a player.I've never played (or even seen this game) but on of the players in my current campaign brought it up just the other day. Apparently back in his high school days (mid-to-late 1980s), he played Powers & Perils a lot because his mom forbade him to play D&D because that game was for "Satan worshippers." However, she had no problem letting him play Rolemaster, MERP, and Powers & Perils.
He was telling us about his experiences with the game but I basically got the sense that he was just happy to have been able to play something versus happy that he was using the P&P rules.PnP was actually the first RPG that I bought. I had been introduced to Red Box not long before and played one or two sessions and then found PnP in Big Lots for $5 and snagged it. Yes, it was already in Big Lots not long after being published, in KY anyway. I had forgotten all about in until this popped up: http://www.powersandperils.org/
ReplyDeleteI bought this game from a discount Big Lots in the 80's for something around $5. Oddly enough that was also in Kentucky. They also had a bunch of the mini-game James Bond boxes, a Battlestar Galatica tactical fighter game, He-Man the RPG, and other odds and ends.
Coming from a background in TSR box sets this game intrigued me with its surface complexity. I also liked how it tried to capture sword and sorcery genre that reminded me of Conan and Elric books I had read at that time. The many tables and ethnic backgrounds were all there as well for backgrounds, occupations, and cultures of the world.
We labored through all the complex math formulas for creating a character and ran a few adventures. It didn't have classes and we liked that element of it. Overall we were hungry for any role playing game and would try anything for at least a few sessions. The deadly marsh adventure we ran for the group sticks in my memory as a very fun adventure. And I remember it vividly. And for that reason the game still has a soft spot in my heart.
A few years ago I looked up the game online and found a whole web site dedicated to it and reprinting all the rules and expansions. So a small community must still exist for it. I heard that the adventures created for it were pretty good but never have read them. I think they were all released as box sets. It was supported through Avalon Hill's house organ The General from time to time. My uncle had a ton of those since he was wargamer but I don't recall ever seeing any articles for it.
Looking back on it I wouldn't play it again. But, I seem to remember it had some great or at least interesting random charts and it has some cool concepts buried in its cryptic background text. I do have a warm spot for a couple of 80's games that folks don't look back on with relish. Such as 3rd Edition Gamma World, which I loved but most detest. And I freely admit this game is flawed and at times painful, but I have played a lot worst.
I also remember it came with a pale flower purple ten-sided die and a white creamy one that were so soft in hue. But I recall them being very sharp on the corners.I played this game with a fairly large game group when I was about 14 years old. I was already an old veteran at playing D&D, but the P&P rule set was a real brain-burner. Three types of experience (combat experience, magic experience, and "expertise" points to keep track of for every skill)? The game was complex to the level of inscrutability, even when you didn't add the variant rules found on every other page.
Fortunately, the rest of my gaming group helped me understand the system. Character generation always gave interesting results (I had a dwarf who had been raised by elves!). As stated before, there were cool ideas in the alignment system and some of the creatures.
The game had personality, but it was tough see through the forest of mathematical formulas.Though I never had P&P, I did grab the companion setting boxed set, Perilous Lands, from a comic shop discount rack. Turned out to be yet another slightly fantasized version of ancient Earth, with almost-Romans making trouble with almost-Arabs and so on. Even the map was an only slightly moved-around version of Eurasia with a vestigial Africa slung underneath. That itself wasn't objectionable, but it went into mind-numbing detail about every mundane thing about the societies and nations, all of it derived directly (and I suspect proudly) from historical sources. Reading what amounted to Brittanica articles with the names changed didn't feel like much fantasy world-building to me. Perilous Lands is one of the few things dumped from my old game collection without even a hint of later regret.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first bought Powers & Perils I was less than enthused with it. But when I went back to it (to test it by running The Tower of the Dead adventure), I discovered it wasn't really as bad as it had first appeared. Needlessly complicated in some respects, and suffering from poor layout (although it actually had a very readable structure if you took each point in order), it actually worked quite well in practice (assuming you used the character sheets, where it was easy to see if you had missed something).
But it really was too complicated, especially when it came to the creation of NPCs and monsters (although there were shortcuts for that).
One must admit to having stolen a number of ideas from it at times, particularly from the Book of Human Encounters and Treasure.
[The rules are available from http://www.powersandperils.org/ if you want to look for yourself.]I have all the Powers and Perils releases, purchased off eBay a few years ago for less than $25 total. While I'd say the game is near incomprehensible at first glance, there are a bunch of good ideas contained within. Unfortunately, I've never been able to read enough in one sitting to actually pull out those ideas; the writing is boring and hard to follow at times. The production values are wretched, pretty much like RQ3.
Someone already mentioned the P&P website, but honestly, I think your time would be better spent trying to figure out how to make a C&S mage.I bought P&P (plus the 2 boxed supplements & the boxed adventure) at my main 1980s games store. At the time I thought the game looked very interesting but my group really didn't want to switch from AD&D to a more complicated fantasy game. The store staff/owners claimed it was very popular with their own gaming group, and recommended it highly - which is partly why I bought P&P rather than AH Runequest or Lords of Creation at the time.
My local Toys'R'Us also carried the game. Years after it came out (early '90s maybe) I noticed that the Toys'R'Us still had a stack of 20+ copies sitting high up in the storage shelves. I inquired about the price, hoping they had dropped it to get rid of them (heck, they weren't even offering it on the regular shelves) but no, they still wanted $50 for the box!
I'll have to take another look at the rules: I'm interested in checking out the alignment system that Russ mentions, and I forgot just how useful their treasure system was.- AnonymousMarch 17, 2011 at 5:16 PM
Let me just add my voice to the chorus suggesting that while the system was, well, charitably I'll just say "not good," the setting actually had some interesting, even unique, bits. I actually really liked the County Mordara setting and adventure, and Tower of the Dead was a fun "killer dungeon" with a new take on the lich. Some good stuff in there.
ReplyDelete Here, let me spam the comments...an Avalon Hill game of the same timeframe that is quite wonderful: Magic Realm. Not really an rpg, but without a doubt the finest fantasy boardgame experience I've ever had. You can download the rules and RealmSpeak and play it electronically, so no need to even spend a dime.
ReplyDeleteI played this game from 1989 until 1995 in a campaign that began when my DM was stationed in Panama in 86 or 87.
It is way too complex for me to consider playing these days, but it was fun@ the time.
http://replay.waybackmachine.org/19991012084125/http://geocities.com/SoHo/2355/chronicles.html- AnonymousMarch 21, 2011 at 4:23 AM
P&P had a strong (if small) following on the interweb and may still be there. The fans said 'yes we know it's complex and clunky but we love it.' More power to them I say!
ReplyDelete - AnonymousJuly 6, 2011 at 1:16 PM
Powers & Perils is one of my favourite fantasy RPG of all time. It is really underestimated, i'm afraid i cannot agree with your review.
cheers I've played a lot of role-playing games in my life. Like many others, I teethed on AD&D. I took a gamble on Powers and Perils and was glad I did. It is'nt a game that you can merely flick through. You have to read it and then play it. The game is complex tis true, but for good reason... It has a versitile system where generating a character makes it nigh impossible to come up with identical characters, an extremely diverse and solid magic system and a game where the players can feel their character developing as they play.


text:
I don't post much yet, but I have found great wisdom and support here, and I'd like to ask the sangha for help.
I have a major life decision before me. One choice would lead me close to my family, but would be riskier career-wise (and I have a slight question about right livelihood). The other choice is far from home, but a much more stable career path.
Is there any sort of zen meditation I can do that might help me arrive at the right decision? Is there anyone who might give me some Buddhist advice about all this?
Thank you everyone for your support.