text:
Ricin is indicated in letters to Obama
April 17, 2013
WASHINGTON (AP) — In a capital city on edge, letters sent to President Barack Obama and a Mississippi senator tested positive for poisonous ricin in preliminary checks, and authorities chased a stream of reports Wednesday of other suspicious-looking items sent to senators in Washington and beyond.Two of the cases outside Washington, reported on a day when many people were already jittery after the Boston bombings, were declared false alarms. Authorities waited for more definitive results on others.An FBI intelligence bulletin obtained by The Associated Press said the letters to Obama and Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., were postmarked Memphis, Tenn. Both letters said: "To see a wrong and not expose it, is to become a silent partner to its continuance." Both were signed, "I am KC and I approve this message."Those letters were intercepted before reaching the White House or Senate. Obama was briefed on the situation Tuesday night, a White House spokesman said. The FBI said Wednesday that more testing was underway. Preliminary field tests can often show false positives for ricin.
As authorities scurried to investigate three questionable packages discovered in Senate office buildings, reports of suspicious mail or packages also came in from at least three senators' offices in their home states.
Sen. Carl Levin said a staff member at his Saginaw, Mich., office would spend the night in a hospital as a precaution after discovering a suspicious letter. The staff member had no symptoms, Levin said in a statement. He expected to learn preliminary results of tests on the letter by Thursday.Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said suspicious letters at his Phoenix office had been cleared with nothing dangerous found. A package at Sen. John Cornyn's Dallas-area office also was declared harmless, a fire department spokesman said.All the activity came as tensions were high in Washington and across the country following Monday's bombings at the Boston Marathon that killed three people and injured more than 170. The FBI said there was no indication of a connection between the letters and the bombing. The letters to Obama and Wicker were postmarked April 8, before the marathon.Capitol Police swiftly ramped up security, and lawmakers and staff were cautioned away from some parts of the Hill complex. After hours of jangled nerves, officials signaled it was safe to move throughout the area and people settled back to normal, if watchful, activity. There was no immediate information from police about the contents of the suspicious packages.Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said that police had a suspect in mind in the Wicker mailing, someone who "writes a lot of letters to members." She made the comment Tuesday as she emerged from a briefing by law enforcement on the Boston bombing. Authorities declined to comment on a possible suspect.Obama's press secretary, Jay Carney, said mail sent to the White House is screened at a remote site for the safety of the recipients and the general public. He declined to comment on the significance of the preliminary ricin result, referring questions to the FBI.At a House hearing, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe noted there had been ricin alerts since the notorious 2001 anthrax mailings and procedures are in place to protect postal employees and help track down culprits."Over the course of years we've had some situations where there have been ricin scares," Donahoe said. "Until this date, there's never been any actually proved that have gone through the system."After the hearing, Donahoe said he didn't know whether the latest letters had been proven to contain ricin. He also told reporters that people sometimes mail substances that mimic the poison. No postal workers have reported illness connected to the incident, he said. Ricin, derived from the castor plant, is at its deadliest when inhaled.
Even during the flurry of concern, normal business continued across most of the Capitol and its office buildings, with tour groups passing through and visitors streaming in and out of Wicker's office.
Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Terrance Gainer said in an email that suspicious packages were dropped off at the offices of two senators. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., said in a statement his office had received one of them.A third package was found in an atrium on the first floor of a Senate building. A man who delivered at least two of the packages was being questioned, Gainer said.
As the discoveries spread concern, police sealed off a hearing room where Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were testifying. At one point, officers advised Sen. Joe Manchin and aides not to board an elevator because suspicious packages had been found on several floors of the Hart Office Building. "They just told me there's something suspicious and they're looking into it," Manchin said.
Amy Keough of Stow, Mass., and her family were searching for an open entrance to the Russell Senate Office building and walked by a U.S. Capitol Police hazardous materials vehicle. The Keoughs had been visiting Washington for several days, but Monday's marathon bombing was on their minds."We don't know really what it is that's going on," Keough said. "We're from Massachusetts, so right now anything is possible, with all the events in Boston."Associated Press writers Connie Cass, David Espo, Donna Cassata, Henry Jackson, Pauline Jelinek, Richard Lardner, Alan Fram, Ken Thomas, Jim Abrams, Andy Taylor, Seth Borenstein and Eric Tucker contributed to this report.


text:
Current versions of OpenEmbedded are based on OpenEmbedded-Core (OE-Core). OE-Core has evolved from collaboration efforts with the Yocto Project as well as a recognition that the model previously being used in OpenEmbedded was unsustainable.
The original OpenEmbedded repository (also known as "OE-Classic" or "oe-dev") grew organically over the years to more than 7500 recipes, covering approximately 300 machines and 20 distros. Trying to maintain this amount of metadata with machine and distro overrides scattered throughout was very difficult, and near to impossible to support commercially. Like many other OE forks that were created to solve the same kinds of issues, Poky was forked as a cleaner and more supportable version of OE in 2006. Fast forwarding to the present, Poky is now maintained as a reference distribution under the Yocto Project with the support of the Linux Foundation. OE-Core was split out from Poky in 2011 to allow collaboration around a relatively small and easily supportable base, with real machines, distros and other items removed - more on this below.
OE-Classic is no longer maintained. New efforts should be built on top of OE-Core. The new OE layer ecosystem provides full support for building typical embedded Linux systems, support for many target machines and additional software packages. There are still some recipes and machine support that have yet to be ported over from OE classic, however recipes and configuration can be easily brought over, tidied up and placed into the appropriate layer over time.
Differences to OE-classic
The most significant change is that metadata is now split into multiple layers rather than being in one repository. OE-Core sits at the bottom, and machine / application / distro layers are added on top. Users are free to select support for whatever applications or platforms they wish in their configuration simply by including the appropriate layer in their bblayers.conf file.
Machine and distro-specific overrides should no longer be spread over the entire set of recipes - instead they should be concentrated in appropriate machine support layers (often referred to as BSP (Board Support Package) layers) and distro layers respectively. BitBake's .bbappend feature allows overriding almost any element of a recipe without too much duplication across multiple layers.
Additionally, OE-Core moves changes to a pull model rather than the push model of OE-classic - instead of all developers having direct commit access, patches are sent to the mailing list for review and if/when satisfactory they are merged by the maintainer. Other layers may choose to use either the push or pull model for contributions.
OpenEmbedded-Core scope
The scope of OE-Core itself is as follows:
- Support for the major architectures: ARM, x86, PowerPC, MIPS (and 64-bit variants of all of these)
- Only QEMU emulated machines
- Distro-less (DISTRO = "nodistro" and default values are used)
- Only one X-based GUI environment (Sato) intended for testing purposes. (This may be substituted out in future if a suitable replacement testing framework can be created.)
- Only the recipes that are needed by almost everyone, needed for LSB support (optional) or are needed for testing other parts of OE-Core
- Attempt to keep only one version of each recipe
Anything not in OE-Core can easily be provided by additional layers on top; other layers can also be used to e.g. support older recipe versions that have been removed from OE-Core.
For items shared amongst multiple layers that do not fit into OE-Core or any other existing layer, there is the meta-oe layer. This exists in a repository, also called meta-openembedded, which contains a number of other more focused layers (meta-efl, meta-gnome, etc.). This layer will need to be managed carefully over time to avoid it turning into just a newer version of OE-classic.
Getting Started
See Getting started.
Available Layers
OpenEmbedded maintains an list of layers that can be used with OE-Core - see the layer index.
Creating Layers
See Creating a new Layer.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Exam Code | CIS-APM |
Exam Name | Certified Implementation Specialist - Application Portfolio Management (APM) |
Questions | 30 Questions Answers With Explanation |
Update Date | May 20,2024 |
Price |
Was : |
Prepare Yourself Expertly for CIS-APM Exam:
Our most skilled and experienced professionals are providing updated and accurate study material in PDF form to our customers. The material accumulators make sure that our students successfully secure at least more than 90% marks in the ServiceNow CIS-APM exam. Our team of professionals is always working very keenly to keep the material updated. Hence, they communicate to the students quickly if there is change in the CIS-APM dumps file. You and your money both are very valuable for us so we never take it lightly and have made the attempt to provide you the best work in your hands. In fact, there is not a 1% chance to ruin it.
You can access our agents anytime for your guidance 24/7. Our agent will provide you information you need, you can ask them any questions you have. We are here to provide you with a complete study material file you need to pass your CIS-APM exam with remarkable marks.
Our experts are working hard to provide our customers with accurate material for their ServiceNow CIS-APM exam. If you want to meet a sweeping success in your exam you must sign up for the complete preparation at Pass4surexams and we will provide you with such genuine material that will help you succeed with distinction. Our provided material is as real as you are studying the real exam questions and answers. Our experts are working hard for our customers. So that they can easily pass their exam in their first attempt without any trouble.
Our team updates the ServiceNow CIS-APM questions answers frequently and if there is a change, we instantly contact our customers and provide them updated study material for the exam preparation.
We offer our students real exam questions with 100% passing guarantee, so that they can easily pass their ServiceNow CIS-APM exam in the first attempt. Our CIS-APM dumps PDF have been carved by the experienced experts exactly on the model of real exam question answers in which you are going to appear to get your certification.


text:
The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) publishes the results of a weekly applications survey that covers roughly 50 percent of all residential mortgage originations and tracks the average interest rate for 30 year and 15 year fixed rate mortgages as well as the volume of both purchase and refinance applications.
The purchase application index has been highlighted as a particularly important data series as it very broadly captures the demand side of residential real estate for both new and existing home purchases.
The latest data is showing that the average rate for a 30 year fixed rate mortgage (from FHA and conforming GSE data) declined 3 basis points to 3.62% since last week while the purchase application volume increased 1% and the refinance application volume declined 6% over the same period.
The following chart shows the average interest rate for 30 year and 15 year fixed rate mortgages since 2006 as well as the purchase, refinance and composite loan volumes (click for larger dynamic full-screen version).


text:
There are times in your life when you need to pull out all the stops, set up a special table, make an extraordinary tasty meal and just twirl some caramel strands around pretty mousse cakes. When crap hits the fan outside of my comprehension I just try to deal with it the best way I can: doing the things I know, doing them with dedication and focus. Yes, like twirling caramel strands around Peach and Chamomille Mousse Cakes.
Granted, my normalcy may not be yours but we all deal differently with stress and incredible circumstances. You might set out to clean your closet or reorganize your files. B. takes the house on a vaccum marathon. I usually go to the dock, take a huge breath in and go home to try to find some way to reconnect and it always ends up with the kitchen counter covered in sugar and flour. I also forge ahead in the photography and writing projects I have (portfolio is up!) happy not to have a minute to think too much about the telephone ringing. (I did previously established that I had a weird sense of logic, didn't I?!)
I have been quite open here in the past, sharing painful sentiments and emotions, bringing you to share with me the positive in rather difficult moments. But there are circumstances that only a handful of people (if that many) have been made aware of and I wish to keep for ourselves for now. Sorry to tell you that things are not always as they seem without elaborating but not having to formulate yet again things into words here is such a relief.
All day long we make plans, rationalize, explain, and I find peace knowing that I can come here and just hint at stuff and then tell you in the lightest manner possible to go bake a cake because things are prettier all wrapped up in sugar. Thank you for allowing me to do that. Being here with you and sharing what I am passionate about whether it be pastry, baking, photography, ingredients is one of the best part of the day. Thank you.
One thing I am passionate about when Spring comes around is going down to the farmer's market and get all my produce fresh and at ridiculously low prices. Egss, raw milk, vegetables and fruits galore. Happy, happy! I got so excited the other day when I got the first local peaches of the season. Velvet skin, rich colors and intoxicating scent. Happier, happier!
With peaches this fresh and juicy in my basket, I could only think about making ice creams and mousse. I wanted to create something soft and subtle, something that makes you want to close your eyes and focus on what it is you are eating and not only just eating it. I made a simple lemon and olive oil cake for the base, opting for a grassy flavored oil to play up with the peaches. The two different mousses start with the same base, a pate a bombe for which I flavored the sugar syrup with a good handful of dried chamomille buds (organic, usually by the bulk teas), and added pureed peaches to half of the mousse base. You can simply refrigerate the cakes until set and enjoy them chilled or freeze them and let them soften a bit for 10-15 minutes. We had them both ways and enjoyed them equally.
One year ago: Snickers Macarons
Peach Chamomille Mousse Cakes:
Makes four 3-inch cakes
Notes: I build these cakes in 3-inch wide entremet or mousse cake rings but you could build one single cake in a 8-inch round or 8×8-inch cake pan. Only the look will be different. Instead of using rhodoid to line the rings, (nothing against it, just did not have any on hand), I used a much less expensive medium: plastic proctector sheets (yes the ones used around the office to protect documents) and cut them to fit the inside of the rings.
I did brush the cake base with Limoncello but you can skip this step if you wish.
For the lemon olive oil cakes:
1 1/2 cups (185gr) all purpose flour
1 cup (200gr) sugar
1 tablespoon (14gr) baking powder
1/4 (1.5gr) teaspoon salt
1/2 cup egg whites (about 3-4)
3/4 (175ml) cup milk
1/4 cup (62.5ml) lemon juice
grated zest of one lemon
6 tablespoons (80gr) olive oil
For the chamomille and peach mousses:
1.5 tablespoons powdered gelatin
7 Tablespoons (130gr water), divided
2 cups (500 ml) heavy cream
6 egg yolks
1/2 cup (100 gr) sugar
2 tablespoons dried organic chamomille buds
3/4 to 1 cup peach puree (I process 2-3 cut peaches until finely pureed)
For the caramel decorations, please read here and here. I just twirled the caramel around a large tin can instead of a wooden spoon.
Prepare the cakes:
Preheat oven to 300F and position a rack in the center.
In a bowl, stir together all the dry ingredients for the cake. Set aside.
In a separate medium bowl, whisk the egg whites and the milk. Make a well in the center of the flour mix and slowly add in the egg white mixture while stirring with a whisk. Add lemon juice, zest and the olive oil. Mix with a whisk until smooth. Line a quarter sheet pan with parchment paper, lightly spray with cooking spray and pour in the batter. Bake for 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes back clean. Let cool and cut out four 3-inch rounds to fit your cake rings (extra cakes freeze well for up to 3 months). Line 4 cake rings with rhodoid or plastic sheets cut to fit and place your cake bases at the bottom. Place the rings on a baking tray and set aside.
Prepare the mousses:
In a small bowl, sprinkle the gelatin over 2 tablespoons of water and let stand while you prepare the pate a bombe.
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment (or hand held beaters), beat the cream until it holds soft peaks. Chill it while you prepare the mousse base. Wash your bowl and whisk attachment.
In a heavy saucepan, stir together 5 tablespoons of water, sugar and chamomille buds. Bring to a boil over medium heat. Since you are not making caramel, it is ok to stir occasionally until the sugar is dissolved. Let it boil and bring the mixture to 238°F on thermometer (soft-ball stage). Strain the syrup to remove the chamomille over a container with a spout (makes it easier to pour over the egg yolks)
In the clean bowl of your mixer, still using the whisk attachment, beat the yolks slightly to break them up. Increase the speed to medium high and slowly pour the hot syrup over the yolks. Go fast enough to prevent the eggs from scrambling but not so fast that you end up with most of the syrup on the wall of the bowl or the whisk. Dissolve the gelatin in the microwave for 10-12 seconds and quickly add it to the pate a bombe. Continue to whip until the mass is completely cold and airy.
Fold about one third of the pate a bombe base into the chilled whipped cream to loosen it up and make it easier to incorporate homogeneously. Fold in the remaining pate a bombe.
Assemble: Divide the mixture in half and carefully fold the peach puree into one part. Spoon or pipe the chamomille mousse over the cake base and do the same with the peach mousse. Refrigerate or freeze until set.


text:
Alamo Heights High School
Class Of 1963
1963 - Echoes Still
1963 at 50: A Year's Tumult Echoes Still
By CHRISTOPHER SULLIVAN Associated Press
A new year was just beginning — an extraordinary year, in which so much would change.
Half a century ago, on Jan. 14, 1963, George Wallace took the podium to give his inaugural address as governor of Alabama. His words framed a fiery rejoinder to a civil rights movement gathering strength.
"I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny," he thundered, "and I say, segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!"
Fifty years later, the words still have the power to shock. In college classes like "The Sixties in History and Memory," today's students recoil.
But turn the pages of their text to a day just seven months later, and there's another riveting oration. At the thronged Lincoln Memorial, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. offered a vision of a "day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: 'Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, we are free at last!'"
The students shiver at the words and cadence of this speech — and at the contradictions and convulsions of 1963.
"We constantly make the point," notes Donald Spivey, who teaches "The Sixties" at the University of Miami, "that you're hit with all of these things at once."
What things?
Under the shadow of the Cold War's threat of "mutually assured destruction," 1963 was the year of dawning arms control between the U.S. and the Soviet Union; they signed a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. In June, the adversaries agreed to set up a "hotline" communications link between the Kremlin and the White House to insure against a catastrophic mistake.
For many women, it was a year of liberation. The 1963 best-seller "The Feminine Mystique" catalyzed the modern women's movement. One author says the book literally saved lives.
Around 1963, the critical mass of the baby boom generation was reaching a critical moment. Its leading edge, teenagers by then, were starting to recognize what they wanted to do, to believe and, significantly, to buy. The music they listened to was beginning to challenge givens of the conformist 1950s. Bob Dylan, who sang in 1963 of all that was "blowin' in the wind." Motown. And soon the shaggy-haired, parent-unsettling Beatles, whose first album came out in Britain that year, leading a new wave of Pied Piper bands who'd produce much of the generation's soundtrack.
At the center of it all was the Kennedy administration, glamorous and youthful, often likened to "Camelot" — the mythical world lasting, as a Broadway lyric lamented, just "one brief, shining moment."
Then suddenly, in November, the greatest jolt of all in a year of tumult, one felt still today: Rifle shots in Dallas that brought that moment to a close.
"So much happened in the '60s that every year is almost its own brand ... and '63 has a rightful place," said Jeremy Varon, a history professor at New York's New School and co-editor of the journal "The Sixties."
The decade's themes resounded, he says. There was "the revolution in race relations," the divisive Vietnam war, widespread experimentation with drugs, the sexual revolution, a societal turn toward youth.
"All of this was experienced as a crisis," Varon said. But he added, the period was "also exuberantly fun."
Ever since, "youth has defined popular taste," and a favored demographic for marketers remains the age group 18-to-35.
"Coming of age in the '60s still is sort of the great archetype of ... what youth is all about," said Varon, and the decade's early years helped define that. "Kennedy gave young people this charge to define American strength ... and virtue."
And today's students appreciate that — even while consigning Kennedy and King to a misty past. Having grown up during the shadowy war on terrorism, many show no sense of "what it's like to live in a culture of optimism."
"The biggest thing I find," Varon added, "is that students are enraptured by the fact that once upon a time young people had a sense of purpose in life."
Cultural historian Thomas Hine calls the young people of the 1960s "the luckiest generation."
Their sense of purpose coincided with an economic upswing that had propelled the nation since the end of World War II, with the promise of progress seen in relentless "Mad men"-style advertising — everything "new and improved" — and with Kennedy's New Frontier.
"The 'New Frontier' was really a very shrewd phrase. Westerns were the most popular thing on TV, and the frontier of space was the future," said Hine, author of "Populuxe," an examination of '50s and '60s ideas.
In a popular cartoon, the Jetsons were part of a community floating above Earth, and yet they relied on updated versions of every terrestrial pushbutton appliance and lived the life of a suburban nuclear family. Media and political messages of the time, Hine said, met in "the idea that the whole world could be managed." Even amid global jitters and social strains at home, there was "the idea that we can take more control of our lives."
In Spivey's '60s classes at Miami, students grasp the sense of purpose in 1963's pivotal chapter in the civil rights movement, with its hundreds of demonstrations that year alone.
With other lecturers — and with music, film and the personal recollections of participants — he tries to bring the ferment of the time alive for students. "We try and make them feel the era," he said.
Ticking off milestones, the professor mentions Birmingham. That city was a bulwark of the resistance to progress toward civil rights begun with prior years' lunch counter sit-ins and "freedom rides." And it was there that King and others went to launch Project C, for "confrontation."
With a series of marches, they wanted to provoke a reaction and draw public attention. Hundreds were arrested, including King, whose galvanizing "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" is course reading for students now.
"Injustice anywhere," its best-known line says, "is a threat to justice everywhere."
TV images and newspaper reports from Birmingham showed peaceful marchers, including children, being attacked by snapping police dogs and blasted by fire hoses.
"Then the water hit them," an AP reporter on the scene wrote. "Cowering first with hands over their heads, then on their knees or clinging together with their arms around each other, they tried to hold their ground." A man's T-shirt was ripped off by the fire hose blast, and afterward a woman was bleeding from the nose and a young girl's eyes were cut, the story said.
Facing howls of outrage, local officials eventually agreed to a list of reforms, which King declared "the most significant victory for justice we've ever seen in the South."
Public pressure also moved the White House, which had taken a cautious stance on civil rights.
"We are confronted primarily with a moral issue," Kennedy said in a June 1963 speech, formally supporting a sweeping Civil Rights Act. "Are we to say to the world — and much more importantly to each other — that this is the land of the free, except for the Negroes...?"
Resistance was far from over, of course. On the very night of Kennedy's speech, Medgar Evers, NAACP field director in Mississippi, was gunned down in his driveway by a klansman.
And Birmingham itself would witness in September an especially heartless attack, the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church, which killed four children preparing for Sunday school. When Spivey's students are shown Spike Lee's film, "Four Little Girls," tears flow again, decades later.
Between these Birmingham chapters came what may be the signature moment of the civil rights movement, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on Aug. 28, 1963.
"By special train, plane, buses by the thousand, private automobiles and even in some cases on foot, the marchers poured into the capital," an AP story reported. An estimated 250,000 people, mostly black but many white, met at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial to hear King pronounce, "I have a dream..."
Civil rights advances of 1963 spilled into a broader sense of possibilities.
Many people had long hoped for relief from the specter of atomic war — what Kennedy called the "darkening prospect of mass destruction on earth" as he announced the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in July.
"Yesterday a shaft of light cut into the darkness," he said. "For the first time, an agreement has been reached on bringing the forces of nuclear destruction under control."
For years, people had staged "ban the bomb" street demonstrations — but almost unnoticed in 1963, they were joined by a few early protesters against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war, where Kennedy had been sending American military "advisers."
In the continuum of popular culture, no single year is definitive. Still, by 1963, record buyers, radio stations, even jukebox operators were embracing a broadening range of entertainment. There was the "Motown sound" of black pop songs — singer-songwriter Smokey Robinson has spoken of "the barriers that we broke down with music" — and audiences would soon embrace the "British invasion."
"The '60s revolution in music and style began somewhere, maybe here," say the liner notes for a just-released Beatles collection, "First Recordings: 50th Anniversary Edition," which received a nomination for this year's Grammy awards.
The music never really went away (the Rolling Stones' recent tour was playfully called "Fifty and Counting"). Spivey's '60s class ends with a sing-along, and Varon at the New School marvels at how many of his students know the old lyrics.
A quieter revolution made 1963 "a lever," in the words of historian Stephanie Coontz, who also teaches '60s courses. In February of that year, writer Betty Friedan published "The Feminine Mystique."
At the time, magazines and TV constantly reinforced a view of the American woman and her assigned place: She would marry, raise children, and not work outside the home, which she would maintain with products and appliances designed to make her middle-class life efficient and ideal.
The trouble, Friedan recognized, was that for many this was not ideal, but suffocating, said Coontz, author of the 2011 book "A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s."
When she reviews the sexism of those days with her students today — "head and master" laws in many states making wives legally subject to husbands, help-wanted ads seeking "pretty looking, cheerful gal" for office work, and the like — "jaws literally drop," she said.
For middle-class women who read Friedan's book, it was a revelation. They'd been told "they should not want anything more out of life — and were 'sick' when they did. These people Friedan literally rescued," Coontz said in an interview. "People I interviewed said ... they were considering suicide."
The book told them they were not alone and change might come.
Transformative change is a central theme of '60s courses; some even offer '60s-style civic outreach projects as substitutes for traditional research papers. Students learn how Kennedy pushed variations of this message in 1963.
In June in Berlin, where a communist-built wall showed the Cold War divide most sharply, he envisioned the ultimate triumph of freedom. "All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin," he said, "and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words, 'Ich bin ein Berliner.' "
That same month, promoting peace was his theme in a commencement address. "In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet," he told the graduates. "We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal."
Five months later, he traveled to Texas, for political fence-mending ahead of the 1964 election. He was waving at the cheering crowds that lined his sunny Dallas motorcade route when the rifle shots came at 12:30 p.m. Central time.
Newsreel footage shows cheers turning to shrieks, as TV announcers break into soap operas with bulletins. Soon there would be nonstop coverage, which, though common now, was like nothing seen before on television. Broadcasts brought the nation together in a shared experience of bewilderment and grief.
Just as today's generation remembers the moment of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the memory of Nov. 22, 1963, remains crystalline and, inevitably, becomes a teaching tool.
"All of a sudden, we heard all of these rumors. Then somebody had a transistor radio," recalls Spivey, then a high school student, describing how he brings the moment to life in class today. "And I remember standing by the lockers, just listening. ... Students crying, in this predominantly black school in Chicago, kids saying, 'What's going to happen to us now?'"
Hundreds of miles east, Hine was heading into high school debate team practice, where at first everyone thought a student was joking when he blurted the inconceivable news. He wasn't kidding, though, and the feeling absorbed then has resonated ever since.
"Up until that point," Hine said, "there was this widespread belief in big business, big government, big thinking to lead us into a better future. The assassination didn't completely undo this, but it showed that some things are far more fragile than we ever imagined them to be."


text:
Red Sox - 020 000 000 - 2 6 2Boston took an early lead on a home run by Victor Martinez and back-to-back doubles by Adrian Beltre and Mike Lowell, but Lackey (6-8-5-3-7, 116) gave it right back and then wilted in the middle innings.
Yankees - 020 021 00x - 5 8 1
Handed a 2-0 lead, Lackey walked Lance Berkman and gave up a triple to Curtis Granderson, who later scored on a groundout. After getting two outs in the fifth, Lackey allowed four consecutive singles, and two runs. Two more singles, a stolen base and a throwing error gave New York its fifth run.
Sabathia (8-6-2-1-4, 101) settled down after the second. Over the final seven innings against CC and Mariano Rivera, Boston managed only four baserunners (two singles, one walk, and one ROE) and no one advanced past first base.
The Blue Jays scored in each of the first seven innings and beat the Rays 17-11. All nine hits allowed by FKR starter James Shields were for extra bases: 3 doubles and 6 home runs. Tampa Bay has lost four games in a row and is 1.5 GB New York. Boston is back to 6 GB.John Lackey / CC Sabathia
Jacoby Ellsbury is not in the lineup, but he says his ribs are fine after a diving catch last night: "Somehow [I] managed to keep my face good."Scutaro, SS
Lowrie, 2B
Ortiz, DH
Martinez, C
Beltre, 3B
Lowell, 1B
Drew, RF
Hall, LF
McDonald, CF
Also: Rays/Blue Jays, 1 PM


text:
AP Sources: Dempster, Red Sox Agree At $26.5M
The Boston Red Sox have agreed to terms with right-hander Ryan Dempster on a two-year contract worth $26.5 million, two people familiar with the negotiations said Thursday.
Red Sox general manager Ben Cherington would not comment on Dempster at a news conference to announce the signing of outfielder Shane Victorino. "We're engaged with a pitcher. That's all I can say at this point," Cherington said, without mentioning Dempster by name.
But a few hours later the sides completed the framework of a deal, the two people familiar with the talks said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because the agreement was pending a physical.
Dempster would help a rotation led by Jon Lester and Clay Buchholz, promising young pitchers coming off subpar seasons. At the other end of the staff are Franklin Morales and Felix Doubront; pitchers the Red Sox hope can develop into dependable starters. John Lackey returns after missing last season due to elbow ligament-replacement surgery.
Dempster, 12-8 with a 3.38 ERA this year, gives the Red Sox a reliable pitcher who has thrown more than 200 innings for four of the past five seasons. He was 5-5 with a 2.25 ERA with the Chicago Cubs this year before being traded to Texas. He was 7-3 with a 5.03 ERA for the Rangers.
Boston hopes he will be an improvement over Josh Beckett, who was 5-11 with a 5.23 ERA before he was traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers in a deal that conceded the 2012 season while clearing $250 million in future salaries. Daisuke Matsuzaka, who arrived in Boston to international fanfare, was 1-7 with an 8.28 ERA last season while battling injuries.
Dempster, 35, has a 124-124 record and a 4.33 ERA in a 15-year big league career, most of it with the Marlins and Cubs.
This program aired on December 13, 2012. The audio for this program is not available.


text:
Planning is all-important in business. By planning for the future, a business can focus on how best to boost profit margins, to manage costs and to set achievable, realistic targets for growth.
On-going planning enables a business to identify potential problems before they arrive, to highlight areas where improvement can be made and to detail the level of financial information needed to make coherent, short- and longer-term decisions.
Many businesses chose to produce a development plan once a year.
The plan should cover: an overview of how the market looks likely to evolve and how customer needs are likely to change; aims for the coming year; an identification of opportunities; possible problems; changes to the way the business operates; an assessment of the staff and skill levels; a financial forecast; and areas where investment is needed.
An effective plan will allow the business to compare the performance of the past year – including both its successes and shortcomings – with its ambitions for the year to come.
In doing so the business will be able to allocate resources, control expenditure and to calculate an accurate budget for the next 12 months.
A business budget will set out exactly where a business needs to, or can afford to, spend its money according to its plan.
It will tell a business how its finances can be managed; how projects can be funded; and how its development can be supported.
A budget must be realistic; that is, it must be based on the income that the business will generate and the sums, after meeting costs have been taken into account, available for fulfilling the business plan.
For this reason, it should include the estimated sales for the period covered by the plan; fixed overheads; the actual, variable costs of the product or service (materials, outsourcing); capital costs (investment in new plant or equipment); and, from these, profit margins.
Wherever possible the budget should build on information about income and expenditure from the previous year as this will provide a realistic basis for estimating probable future costs.
Key to an effective yearly budget is its ability to predict cash flow. For this reason it should be reviewed on a regular basis to make sure that short-term targets are being met.
Once the budget has been drawn up, it affords the opportunity to investigate whether any of the costs can be reduced or better managed.
There is no reason why a business should limit itself to one overall budget that covers the running of operations; it may make more sense to draw up a series of separate budgets that cover such individual areas as marketing, product development and personnel.
Any inconsistencies in the budget – between, say, sales income and costs – will highlight possible problem areas that may arise during the coming year.
By updating and reviewing the budget on a monthly basis, a business can compare the figures set out in the budget with actual income and expenditure. Gaps and shortfalls will enable the business more easily to examine the causes of any discrepancies: a downturn in the market, ineffective advertising, a dip in the quality of the product or service, sales targets that were set either to low or too high, or changes in costs.


text:
What You Need To Know About A Cash-in Refinance
For many homeowners, a "cash-in refinance" could be an excellent financial move. In the last decade, an abundance of homeowners have opted for "cash-out refinancing" to take advantage of rising home prices and use their home equity as they see fit.
With today's interest rates on both home mortgage loans and savings accounts, a cash-in refinance might be a strategic move for a homeowner to eliminate Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI) to pay off a higher interest rate second mortgage or simply lower their mortgage payment.
The idea of a "cash-in refinance" is when a homeowner will bring money to the closing in order to lower their loan-to-value ratio. The homeowner will then have a lower interest rate and lower, or zero PMI.
Take the time to figure out if this idea may be right for you, and we can talk over your options and financial goals. This idea will work well if:
- You are paying PMI
- You have a second mortgage
- You have some savings sitting around only earning 1% or less
If you are planning to move in the next few years, it might be best to keep your money liquid. I can show you a total cost analysis to help determine how long it would take you to recoup the closing costs associated with this kind of refinance. If you don't have 3-6 months of living expenses available, begin with building that up. You don't want to save money on a mortgage and then lose it in an emergency, so having savings is key.
I am happy to discuss this idea with you to see if you are better off taking out money from your refinance to pay down debt or put toward a financial goal, or taking that money and putting it toward your loan. Let's talk soon!


text:
Oh, Hai, Person With The Childbirth Horror Videos? DO NOT SHOW ME THEM
I haven't even given birth to this child yet and I've already gotten my first flaming piece of assvice. Which, you know, would be totally poetic - seeing as this weekend is the weekend of a virtual assvicefest of a baby shower that is being held partly in my honor - if the nature of the assvice weren't so freaktastically disturbing.
Yesterday, I wrote a little post that was intended to thank my sweet friends for throwing this shower. I preambled with some babble about how miserable I've been and how badly I want this behemoth infant out of my body and included a few lines about an exchange that I'd had with my doctor that morning that went something along the lines of oh hai doctur pleez get this babee out of mah body and no srsly doctur I can haz C-section? Which - and I didn't think that this needed explaining - were tongue-in-cheek (mostly - more on this below) both in their original statement and in my recounting of them here, on this bad blog.
I did worry a little bit that I might offend someone - I know that some people have strong opinions about c-sections, and that some women who have had them experienced them as disempowering etc, etc, - and so I toyed with the idea of posting a little disclaimer to the effect that AM JOKING (mostly) PLEASE DON'T TAKE OFFENSE. But then I thought, a) if I had to apologize for every instance of black humor on this blog, it would be all apology, no blog, which kinda defeats the purpose, and b) I was also kinda not joking - to the extent that, yes, I am getting that desperate - and shouldn't have to apologize for my awkward attempts at expressing the extent of my current discomfort.
So I left it alone. I had closed comments anyway, so that people would follow the links that I provided rather than feel obligated to leave comments, so I figured that I wouldn't hear much about it. But then I opened my inbox in the middle of the night - have I mentioned? am not sleeping because there is no sleeping position known to womankind that can comfortably accommodate a belly with a 30-something inch girth - and clicked open a comment with a link to a video that seemed expressly designed to give me nightmares: full, unedited video of Anna Nicole Smith's C-section. The next comment, which would have preceded the comment with the link, said something to the effect of you must watch this... get as far away from your OB as you can... they are setting you up for a slaughter! (Those last few words? Not paraphrased.)
Which, you know? Not helpful advice for a woman who is 9 plus months pregnant with a gargantuan baby and who can't sleep even without the Sears-gone-Freddie-Krueger threats of doom and the explicit horror videos.
Look, I know that for some women, C-sections are almost as bad as female circumcision and forced sterilization in terms of disempowerment and violation of the female body, and I can totally see how if one felt that way, one might want to intervene to prevent others from undergoing such a procedure and that this person had all sorts of good intentions, BUT. How different is such intervention from, say, anti-abortion intervention, if imposed upon someone who has not asked for an opinion on the matter? I mean, sending me gory videos and telling me that I'm doomed for slaughter? Terrifying me isn't exactly the right way to engage me on the issue of C-sections, nor does it any way help me in any way to cope with the massive physical and psychological burden that this pregnancy has become (yes, I said it: burden. I am that f*cking miserable from pain and fatigue and the feeling of complete and utter broken-down uselessness). You're welcome to tell me that you disagree with C-sections (although, again, my request for a C-section was tongue-in-cheek, as are any and all statements to the effect that I plan on flushing this child out with castor-oil-and-vodka martinis) (maybe), but please do not tell me that I am 'not thinking' and that I am unappreciative of equal rights v.v. my body and puhleeze do not use scare tactics to make whatever point you're making.
I'm not planning a c-section, nor would my doctor even support giving me one for anything less than pressing medical reasons. Which, again, is not to say that I wouldn't joke that I can't see getting much bigger and incapacitated without being tempted to demand one or perform one on myself, and that it wouldn't be all the funnier for me because it's maybe a little bit true. Joking about it doesn't mean that I don't take this birth - or the means by which I will undergo the birth - very seriously. It does mean that I take choice very seriously - as I wrote at BlogHer just this week - and that I hold in very high value the fact that as a woman living in North America in the 21st century, I can choose whether to give birth at home or in a hospital, with drugs or without, and that if I need a c-section, I can have one.
And it also means that I am very attached the principle that what I do with those choices is nobody's f*cking business but my own. Which is to say, if anyone else out there is thinking of sending me gory childbirth videos starring doomed D-list celebrities, C-section or otherwise, don't.
Just don't.
Labels: bad mother, her bad pregnancy, Rants


text:
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Retrospective: "Glozel est Authentique!"
For and for ill, I suspect that Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu has played a significant role in the popularizing of Lovecraft and the Mythos. Back in 1981, when the game was released, I don't think any of my immediate circle of gaming friends had heard of Lovecraft, let alone read any of his stuff and this wasn't unusual among the younger generation of roleplayers in those days. Even today, I'd hazard a guess that the vast majority of people who read this blog first encountered Lovecraft as a result of Call of Cthulhu rather than being drawn to CoC, because they were fans of HPL first. There's nothing wrong with this, of course, except that, for all my love of Call of Cthulhu, I do think it (necessarily) distorts Lovecraft and his ideas in its presentation of them, so much so that the default assumption is that CoC investigators are Indiana Jones-like globetrotting adventurers rather than sensitive, bookish polymaths for whom merely interacting with other human beings is adventure enough.
I mention this all because it might seem, in retrospect, like Call of Cthulhu always had tons of adventures and other materials to support it; that's not the case at all. Back in the first few years of the game's existence, Chaosium didn't produce a lot for it, which left a void filled by licensees, like Theatre of the Mind Enterprises (TOME). I know very little about TOME, so if anyone has any information about the company I'd be grateful. All I know is that, throughout 1983 and 1984, they produced about a half-dozen different adventure collections for use with Call of Cthulhu. These collections were heavily advertised, including in official Chaosium products as I recall, but I only ever saw one of them, "Glozel est Authentique!," published in 1984. If it's any indication of the quality of TOME's other CoC offerings, I am grateful I didn't acquire them.
"Glozel est Authentique!" is the title of the first of two scenarios included in this book. Written by Stephen Rawling, the adventure concerns a real world town in France, Glozel, which in 1924, became the center of an archeological controversy, when a young farmer discovered a hidden chamber in his field containing a wide variety of seemingly ancient artifacts. The artifacts consisted of pieces of glass and ceramic, human bones, and some clay tablets written in a strange language. The controversy centered on just how these artifacts were and their origins, leading to some outlandish hypotheses, as well as claims of fraud. As you can guess from its title, the first scenario makes the claim that the find is authentic and, of course, connected to the Mythos -- except in a very dull way.
The second scenario, "Secrets of the Kremlin," was written by E.S. Erkes, whose name I recognize from several old issues of Different Worlds magazine. "Secrets of the Kremlin" isn't directly connected to the previous scenario and concerns, as you might expect, a Mythos connection to both the Russian past and present. And by "present," I mean Josef Stalin, who, according to this adventure, possessed a copy of the Necronomicon, as well as a Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath, which he imprisoned within the Kremlin. In many ways, "Secrets of the Kremlin" is the antithesis of its companion. Where "Glozel est Authentique!" is boring, even pedestrian in its revelations, "Secrets of the Kremlin" is laughable, a caricature of the kind of pulp adventure Call of Cthulhu frequently inspires.
"Glozel est Authentique!" may not be the worst adventure collection ever put together for Call of Cthulhu, but it's pretty bad. At the same time, I feel for the authors of these scenarios, since I suspect, like so many gamers, they had a very skewed impression of what the game (and Lovecraft) was about. How could they not, when Chaosium's first adventure collection was Shadows of Yog-Sothoth? I love Shadows and have used it profitably several times, but it does tend to diminish Lovecraft's ideas somewhat. The same is equally true of Masks of Nyarlathotep, which many not unreasonably consider the greatest roleplaying adventure ever written. Still, a bad product is a bad product and "Glozel est Authentique!" is bad.
33 comments:
I came to Lovecraft very early, and CoC very late, mostly because I could not fathom what fun could be had in role-playing, for example, The Colour Out of Space!
When I finally came around to it, I really enjoyed it quite a bit - played The Haunted House as the first adventure, and later Masks. Didn't get the books until 5th edition, so it was impossibly easy for me to think of it as a completely different genre altogether.
I still do. It has so much more in common with Quatermass and movies like Temple of Doom, maybe with a little X-files and Night Stalker thrown in, that I really don't experience the dissonance that most Lovecraft fans experience.
SAN is a beautiful metric. Instead of attracting henchmen and establishing a keep, high level player find themselves in a straitjacket, locked in an insane asylum, contemplating the eschaton. Elegant stuff.
But it sure as shooting isn't Lovecraft!
Frankly, I think the only format where roleplaying Lovecraft would even be possible would be in solo "adventures," which is why some Lovecraftian text adventures strike closer to the ambiance of old Howie.I was just saying to my fellow librarians how much more visible Lovecraft is now. When I was a teenager in the 1980's, not even my English teachers had heard of him. Now I honestly believe he may be the best known of all pulp authors - I mean, does anyone think (say) Raymond Chandler is better known to the general public at this point? Although I think that has less to do with the Call of Cthulhu RPG and a lot more to do with the movies "based" on Lovecraft's stories... people know OF Lovecraft, but they often haven't READ him.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the warning about "Glozel..." Collecting Cthulhu products (even the dread heterodox plush Cthulhu) has been a pastime for me, and I'd considered bidding on this when it appears on eBay. If it's this bad, however, I'll pass.
Regarding CoC and Lovecraft, I'd been reading the stories from long before I'd heard of the game, but I never really saw a conflict between the two, because I saw no need for the game to wholly imitate the literature -- a fruitless task, in my estimation, because the different forms (stories vs. games) have different needs. Also, if CoC is more "adventurish" than most of Lovecraft's tales, which I'll grant, I think that's because it incorporates as much from the spirit of REH's horror tales as it does from Lovecraft. (Having recently read the collected horror stories of REH, I was struck by how many would fit in CoC.) For a game, that's not a bad thing.I've never played CoC, but it may not be fair to blame it for distorting and defanging Lovecraft's work. People have been doing that since Derleth. I'm sure many people got a diminished and distorted impression of Lovecraft long before CoC was released through the writings of the 'Mythos' authors.
ReplyDeleteI have all the TOME adventures, and they generally take the spot that lower-quality Judges Guild adventures did matched up against the better quality TSR releases. None of them are essential purchases for the CoC enthusiast who isn't primarily a collector. "Pursuit to Kadath" is probably the best of the lot, but compared to the well-written and high production value Chaosium offerings, it still suffers in comparison.
ReplyDeleteAnother warped manner of introduction, probably mentioned before: the Cthulhu Mythos section of TSR's Deities & Demigods, including the Erol Otus artwork.
ReplyDeleteRepliesYeah. I know that Gygax was a fan of HPL, but throwing Cthulhu in with a boatload of deities from other mythologies, felt like making a dessert out of chocolate cake and sauerkraut.
One doesn't kill Cthulhu with a +2 dagger of smiting or some such...one uses said dagger to poke out one's own eyes after going irrevocably mad at the sight of Cthulhu.In addition to D&DG, the 1e DMG refers to HPL several times, as did articles in early issues of The Dragon. In my case, the pointers in the DMG and the D&DG lead to my intro to HPL's fictions.
I'm something of a latecomer to CoC (the RPG), if not HPL's fiction. I've picked up some of the early Chaosium stuff via RPGNow and Chaosium's own site in PDF...and it's not an exaggeration to say that even Chaosium didn't know how to write Call of Cthulhu scenarios in the early days.
Some of the early Chaosium efforts read like glorified dungeon crawls, which clearly is not getting the point. I've always believed that in the very beginning, Chaosium saw dollar signs in attaching the Lovecraft/C of C name to their game, and didn't really think it through. Still, things changed. While Masks doesn't really get at the heart of the Mythos (I've likened it to Indiana Jones meets H P Lovecraft), it's a step in the right direction away from some of the early Call of Cthulhu stuff.
As for problems with the literature vs. the game, these are inherent in the differences in the form.
First of all, if you want to capture the essence of HPL, your game should contain at most, one player and one Keeper. That's it. Lovecraft's stories were almost always about one person confronting weirdness he/she was in no position to cope with, and then either dying, or far more frequently, going mad.
There also would be no campaign in Call of Cthulhu, nor character improvement. All games would be one shots (and in fact, I think C of C works best as a one-shot game, for the most part). Lovecraft wrote short stories and a couple of novellas. The concept of a character in a Lovecraft story lasting long enough to live while maintaining a shred of sanity through a second story, or in some way a character in a Lovecraft story becoming a better person after exposure to the Mythos is too ridiculous to do anything but laugh.
Still, I've run and played in, some amazingly great horror games using C of C that even had a touch of a Mythos feel to them. In fact, I ran a Delta Green game just last weekend and the players and I had a blast doing it. It is possible to distill some of the essence of Lovecraft, even if one can't recreate the exact feel of his stories.RepliesThe Dunwich Horror had an "investigator party" very fitting of a CoC game afaic. Yeah, in general the stories focus on individual protagonists, but thats true of pretty much all the genre fiction rpgs are based on. The games are different from literature.
DeleteDunwich Horror is one I haven't picked up, I'm afraid. Sounds like I may have to change that.
Wracking my brain to recall how exactly I bumped across HPL, but it certainly via a reading route rather than a gaming route. Probably either via REH, who I read voraciously, or Brian Lumley.
CoC always seemed to work best when it was the cultists and conspiracists, and even the skeptics and law enforcement that most commonly engaged the players and kept them from actually glimpsing a minion, let alone the mind-shattering Old Ones. But withholding Christmas is always a precarious task, if you want to keep players playing (they're there to see Cthulhu, damn it!). And that expectation always led to "encounter inflation" that nearly always inserted a pedestrian commonness into the game.
One of my best runs on CoC was taking the characters back to Innsmouth in the modern era, after it had been sealed off and occupied by naval intelligence. That led to a whole unfolded campaign where the U.S. military had it in its head that the Old Ones were some kind of super weapon of deterrence, and of course Cold War Soviet agents were well on to this, too. All that played in the background, but it did seem to ameliorate the common understanding these creatures did exist, and it injected a particular kind of horror that officials with their hands on the levers of power were little better than extremely well equipped cultists. Gave new meaning to the term MAD.
On a similar note, the best Lovecraft scenario I ever ran was using the AFTERMATH gun rules with a heavily armed Band of Brothers trapped behind enemy lines after the Battle of the Bulge. When Cyäegha raised its hoary head, I think the players really did think they were losing their marbles, it came out of nowhere and was entirely unexpected from a game system of Bradley tanks and high explosives.
A pulp magazine story on hand gave them the clues to survive, to put the Old One back in his well, not one of these brave boys having the slightest Mythos knowledge.
I think there's something to that, that CoC play only really works when it goes completely off the rails and into unexpected areas the players can't prepare for. That's why, when you break out CoC—glorious a game as it is, I love it—you have instantly telegraphed an expectation and a familiarity of game play.My friends and I adored CoC and played it frequently from the moment it appeared on the market, but we also firmly believed (and I still do) that it succeeded in spite of itself. BRP is not an especially good set of rules to begin with, and it was a very poor choice to be the foundation for a game like CoC. Whether any particular CoC "adventure" flies or crashes depends almost entirely on the GM's talent at making silk purses out of sows' ears. I find Trail of Cthulhu to be a much better choice for purist-style games, and Realms of Cthulhu (Savage Worlds) for pulp-style games. Yet my group and I still rely on CoC. As much as we kvetch over its shortcomings (and we do, at each and every get-together), it's a comfortable old pair of slippers that we can't bear to throw away.
ReplyDeleteRepliesI'm going to have to disagree with you re. BRP. Yes, it's showing it's age at this point (so is Old School D&D), but when one considers its been in basically the same form since 1981, it's done pretty well. I like the rather logical progression of skill improvement. It's also a very simple game to teach to new players. Far easier than most modern games.
I have no experience with Realms of Cthulhu, but the thought of trying to play Lovecraftian-style horror with Exploding Dice leaves me a bit cold. I know they changed the mechanics quite a bit (getting rid of the wild dice being a needed first step), but if a Cthulhu game becomes an action-adventure romp, you're kind of doing it wrong. :)
Trail of Cthulhu looks interesting, and I admire Robin Laws as a designer. The concept of characters never having to miss that Spot Hidden roll to avoid picking up the one crucial clue is certainly enticing, but as a GM, I've always used Masks of Nyarlathotep as a guide when running a horror game. If your mystery game is utterly dependent on the heroes/investigators locating one specific clue (and goes off the rails if they don't), it was probably doomed from the start. I'll almost certainly pick it up one of these days.it succeeded in spite of itself. BRP is not an especially good set of rules to begin with, and it was a very poor choice..."
BRP is a terrific system, was a great alternative to early dependance on D20's, and the way I most heard it described for Call of Cthulhu in the 80's was "elegant," a word I still use for it. Sure, I would not want to use it for Superhero stuff or even standard Sci Fi, but for fantasy and early century stuff I think it is the bees knees! The excellent Glorantha setting was not the only reason Runequest gave "800 lb gorilla" D&D a run for it's money when no other fantasy system ever came close.I do think that BRP has its obvious weaknesses. It deals with firearms in a rather quirky manner (no coherent rules for cover or concealment beyond a GM basically pulling them out of their butts), and it really breaks down in handling autofire (the notion that one gets more hits the more bullets one fires in a burst is ridiculous).
Still, there's more to like than dislike to the system as a whole.I wouldn't call BRP "elegant," but it does have strong internal consistency. It's probably the first RPG entitled to make that claim. It works well for Runequest and plays a big part in establishing the gritty feel of Glorantha as a setting. But BRP is too fiddly (IMO) for a game like CoC; it emphasizes all the wrong things. YMMV, as always. That's where ToC shines; not because you can't fail a Spot Hidden roll but because the whole package is geared toward the pacing and dramatic needs of a mystery/horror game.
DeleteIn terms of weaponry (and bare fist/kick attacks), yeah I have houseruled just a touch. I for sure will look at the auto burst. Things I don't like the second I see them I tend to change in any system I use.
But I don't think combat stuff affects anybody running a game btb as much as it does mine, which I want to be a bit more pulpy (without being a full-on pulp daredevils type game). Fiddling, but not on a large scale.Well, in standard 1920's C of C, the oddities of autofire don't crop up much, as the only AF capable weapon in the core rulebook is the Thompson SMG. When you play or run a lot of Delta Green though, as I do...this flaw suddenly becomes a lot more noticeable.
An additional comment, I don't think Lovecraft, per se, represents the best source for CoC roleplaying, primarily because of both the passivity of his protagonists and the haphazard way in which they passively collide with the Mythos. "Call of Cthulhu" is, without a doubt, one of the most passive narratives in the history of fiction, with almost all of it playing out through dusty old newspaper clippings.
I look to Colin Wilson's "Return of the Lloigor" as a much more active example of how to play out the Mythos. Almost all the action comes as a result of nefarious riffraff, common folk with bad teeth and nothing to lose, and the main character's growing horror that a simple punch to his stomach from one of these lurking thugs might be enough to kill him. His rising awareness of the terrible cost for low gain in trucking with these blowsy barflies only adds to the sense of dread. All that, then, is laid over the backdrop of his growing horror with the Mythos.
Good stuff.
The old TV show, "The Invaders" was probably as good as anything to illustrate how Lovecraft should be played in an active, engaged setting.RepliesThere's something to this, Pat. You've kind of hit the nail on the head. Most of Lovecraft's protagonists are passive to the extreme, and would make terrible PCs.
I've not read Colin Wilson's fiction, but what you describe is generally the way I run C of C. The players have far more to fear from the cultists and possibly each other than the Elder God du jour, because let's face it, when the Elder God is summoned, your players have pretty much already lost. :)
Got the second game of my first Cthulhu campaign in over a decade tonight (I think it's going to pan out into a good 'un, so I'll be posting now and again about it), and it sure feels fine. Like an old friend. Been chomping at the bit for around two years at least, and here it is. I think the players are liking it (only my one player from the 90's is in the current group, and she has extensive CoC experience. The other guys are minimal in their Lovecraft knowledge. I'm happy to be turning another passel of players into HP fans!).
I'd say the characters in my games are "semi-pulp." They ain't Indy Jones, and the characters are not always badasses, but I do prefer characters that can get all action (in a realistic way) when called for. And the human level of violence is swift and brutal, with lots of running around and car chases, so there is a for sure pulp flavor. I'd rather there be that, than the typical Lovecraft "hero" who gets feint when he smells a fart, or meets a black man.
I Love H.P. and the stories, but to me they are a set up for something a little more. I like campaigns with CoC so I can play more. A campaign with constant character death of shivering academics every game turns into a joke. Guns against Cthulhu, sez I!
From lots of previous campaign experience going back to the 80's, I never much liked the big adventure modules for CoC. I did mine for some ideas, but I much prefer to start a campaing with a few hooks and ways to go, add into the mix the character backgrounds, and let a campaign grow and evolve naturally. If find CoC to be very good for that. I'm lovin' it!I had one TOME adventure called 'The Arkham Evil'. It had some interesting settings, but it was pretty bad, mostly because it was a railroad adventure of preordained events which didn't really require the participation of PCs.
My first exposure to H.P. Lovecraft was a computer program from 1983 by Gary Musgrave: The Eye of Kadath. It was just typed computer code in a language I didn't know and couldn't use, so I had to work out how to play it from that, like a solo adventure. It was a solo adventure, very text-heavy and atmospheric. The Elder Things (called the Old Ones in this game) have always been my favourite Lovecraftian aliens as a result. It is now public domain, available at: http://gb64.com/game.php?id=10817&d=15
I found CoC later, and still later read the books.I first read Lovecraft when my High School literature teacher recommended him to me because of my enjoyment of Poe.
I should track him down and thank him.
I was already vaguely aware of Lovecraft though, through stories in Heavy Metal and various 'underground' comics... also episodes on Night Gallery and some mentions in horror magazines that mentioned movies base on his writing.
There was also 'psychedelic' band named after him.
So, at least in my neck of time & space HPL wasn't particularly obscure.
It seems to me that part of the reason Cthulhu has become a plush toy is that, like all great monsters... it really is a frightening concept... that has to quickly be made into a joke... nervous laughter in the darkness to stop from screaming.Perhaps I'm showing my advanced Grogdom, but I actually got into Lovecraft way before CoC. Lovecraft's use of the English language amazed me and was a major factor inspiring me to become a writer. I only played CoC a couple of times. Luckily I had a GM who had read Lovecraft and wrote his adventures accordingly.
ReplyDeleteI experienced Lovecraft first by way of an SF illustration book that had painted pictures of creatures from across the history of SF and fantasy - I wish I could remember who the artist was.
It wasn't until several years later that I first picked up a Lovecraft book, though, and it didn't take long to hook me.
I've actually never played Call of Cthulhu, but I have played some of the derivative board games like Elder Sign and Mansions of Madness. Games like that can never match the terror of a good Lovecraft story, mainly because standing on their own, his creatures aren't really that scary. They're just weird. It's the atmosphere that wins the frights.RepliesProbably Wayne Barlow's Guides to Extraterrestrials and Fantasy. Two fun, beautifully illustrated books.
DeleteRe. Lovecraftian board games, if you haven't already played it, Fantasy Flight's Arkham Horror is fun. Very pulpy, and the characters in the game look and play like just about every 1920's Call of Cthulhu team of investigators I've ever played in or run.
I've still never laid eyes on the interior of a CoC rulebook (though I would like to one of these days).
I came to HPL in high school via an interest in dark fantasy literature. I have to say, I didn't "get" Lovecraft at all then. At the time I didn't find his stories either particularly engaging or scary.
My perspective is different now, after having reread much of his work as a (somewhat) older adult.I have one TOME book in my collection, "Whisperers in Darkness (and other tales)." I'd seen their ads in Dragon magazine many times in the 80s, but never saw any of their products in any gaming store except this one time. And it happened to be the book that contained an adventure about the Lost Colony of Roanoke, which had sparked my imagination as a kid totally independently.
ReplyDeleteAs a renegade Lovecraft's fanboy, I look down on his mythos as a crass imposture. It's hard to take seriously a series of horror tales starring the Evil Seafood of Doom. If I sound like Edmund Wilson raised from the tomb with a revenge (Edmund who?), so be it.
The genuine article is Algernon Blackwood. Everything that makes HPL cosmos great was taken from 'The Wendigo' and from 'The Willows'. The rest is purple prose and guys in green rubber suits.
Cthulhu, as depicted by Lovecraft, is a fairy-tale giant which barely poses a bigger threat than a plush toy. If the big C was about to destroy the world-as-we-know-it, why procastinate? I can't stand that, at the end of 'The Call of Cthulhu' tale, there's still people left around. And the number of casualties is disappointingly low. Stupid Squidhead! if only it had eaten New Zealand... ¡what the heck! in the real world, if such a hulk as R'lyeh had emerged from the ocean, the tidal wave alone would have sufficed to wipe out every island and shore around the Pacific Ocean. Farewell Tokio, goodbye Los Angeles.
Lovecraft says truth and nails it when he claims that mankind is an accident which won't last. He screws it when makes a point of babbling about functional magic or worldwide occult conspirations. These are superstitions which undermine the core premise. Magic is the delusion that puny humans can tame cosmic forces. Which contradicts the premise that mankind is irrelevant on the cosmic scale. Ditto about secret societies and doomsday plots. They give the false hope that there's somebody pulling the strings, that the end can be indefinitely delayed or that not every human effort is worthless.
Lets figure that you are a lazy pig who hasn't bleached his bathroom in ages. To the point that the bacteria have become sapient and entire civilizations have risen and fallen in your bathtube. Would you care a dime about it? would you mind if bacteria are worshipping you? would you ever notice? Can them do something to stop you from awakening and bleaching the bathroom? Earth is the Old Ones' bathroom, and we are the microbes infesting it.
The chances for puny mankind to awake/hinder Chtulhu, summon/dispell Yog-Sothoth or whatever, are null. It would be easier summoning a hurricane or a volcano. You could pray the moon to stop as well. If someday you met an Elder One and still want a chance to live, you'd rather get off its way as fast as you can. Nothing else works.