You are a low-level minion hired by the Evil Mastermind to perform some important task–kidnap somebody, steal an artifact and deliver it to the Mastermind, or something along those lines. You accomplish your task, return triumphant to the Evil Mastermind, and demand the payment that the Mastermind promised you.
The Evil Mastermind gives you a long, appraising look, smiles oddly, and says: “Why, of course. Don’t worry–I intend to see that you get exactly what is coming to you. Oh, yes, you’re going to get exactly what you deserve.” While the Evil Mastermind goes on chuckling to himself and exchanging Knowing Looks with all the other minions in the room, you:
a) Whoa, exactly what I deserve?!? Wow, what a deal!
b) Sneer at all of those other guys who told you that working for the Evil Mastermind was a poor career choice.
c) Now you have the Evil Mastermind exactly where you want him! You decide to get tricky and demand double payment for your action–that always works.
d) Run.
How do you answer? Solution follows:
(There is no correct answer. And you’re standing on the trapdoor to the Rancor pit.)
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As some of you may have heard, we spent the first two weeks of October in Germany. Michele has begun posting about the trip, so if you want in on all the grisly details, her blog is a good place to start. We’re also determined to get some of our photos up at Flickr for you all to enjoy.
Our trip began in Berlin; from there, we made our way roughly clockwise around the country and back to Berlin. The bulk of our time was spent in the extremely beautiful southern third of the country, with several days spent in the general vicinity of Munich and several more in the Black Forest region. More details to come, I’m sure.
by The controversy over Guantanamo Bay, prisoner abuse, and the torture of captured terrorist suspects makes me angry.
It makes me angry when some conservative writers and websites not only defend the torture of prisoners, but make light of it, as if this is some sort of hilarious joke that we should wink at and laugh about.
It makes me angry when certain people who since 2000 have been regularly referring to evangelical Christians as bigots, idiots, mindless sheep, and Taliban-like zealots wonder disdainfully why evangelicals aren’t standing at their side to criticize our president’s missteps.
It makes me angry that when the question of torture first came up, President Bush could not (and stunningly, unbelievably, still cannot) make a clear, unambiguous, plain-language, strongly-enforced condemnation of any type of torture.
It makes me angry that if President Bush had made that clear, unambiguous statement, that his critics would not praise him for it, but would drop the torture issue and immediately begin the search for another scandal/political vulnerability with which to take down the President they hate so much.
It makes me angry that in our polarized political world, I have to choose between supporting Bush’s general policies and tacitly condoning torture, or refusing to compromise on the torture issue and risking the political collapse of a foreign policy that is, after decades of appeasement and looking the other way, bringing the hope of democracy to a tyrant-infested corner of the world.
It makes me angry that some major conservative bloggers, many of whom I respect greatly, spend post after post focusing on inane political tidbits but manage to somehow never post about the constantly-in-the-news issue of torture.
It makes me angry that some of the people shouting loudest against torture also fought tooth and nail to keep the U.S. from taking down a dictator who liked to feed his enemies through an industrial shredder.
It makes me angry that some people in the military and intelligence agencies–far, far too many people–made the decision to treat prisoners without humanity, then shrugged and hid behind the shield of “vague policies from on high,” as if unclear memos prevented them from recognizing that torture is wrong.
It makes me angry that many people who would tell me I’m a hypocrite for being a Christian and not speaking out loudly against torture, would also tell me that I’m a crazed idiot for wanting to stop what I see as the butchering of thousands and thousands of unwanted, unborn babies each year in this country.
It makes me angry that the government stalls, obstructs, and ignores attempts to expose misbehavior, instead of throwing open the doors and welcoming the public to see exactly what is going on.
It makes me angry that certain Christian spokemen react immediately and forcefully to even the faintest hint of “pro-homosexual” legislation, but look at the current world situation and, impossibly, see nothing in our treatment of prisoners and the torture controversy that contradicts God’s law.
It makes me angry that some torture critics cannot and will never acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, addressing the scandal of prisoner torture is not as critical as ensuring that democracy survives and grows in Iraq.
It makes me angry that the honor and integrity of my country has been stained because of the actions of a few reprehensible individuals and a bureaucracy that can’t seem to fashion basic, binding moral guidelines on important issues like this.
Most of all, it makes me angry that after years of this, I still don’t know what to think, and I don’t know what I, a Christian citizen of the U.S., should be doing about it.
by Saw the movie Serenity late last night, partly to wind down from a very busy week. I’ve not seen the Firefly TV show upon which the movie is based, and so was a bit uncertain what to expect. But it’s sci-fi, and seemed to feature lots of spaceships and explosions–always good things to have in a movie. So we decided to give it a try.
It was extremely good. It’s essentially a space opera with a very entertaining Western motif, complete with cowboy holsters and bank robbers… in spaaaace!
Watching it, I was struck by a question: why aren’t these people making Star Wars movies instead of George Lucas? Serenity captures the feel of the original Star Wars far better than any of the three prequels did. Likeable, everyday heroes who exchange witty banter and struggle to keep their clunky spaceship from falling apart? Check. Tough-talking mercenary characters who act mean and gruff but who, we’re confident, will Do The Right Thing in the end, even if it means they won’t get paid for it? Check. A motley gang of quirky protagonists who bicker amongst themselves and can’t pay their bills, but who will nevertheless find a way to cleverly stick it to The Man in the end and save the galaxy in the process? You guessed it–check.
In short, it’s what made Star Wars so cool. The debt that Serenity owes to Star Wars is substantial… but would that George Lucas had been able to watch and be inspired by this movie before he launched into The Phantom Menace. It’s exactly the sort of pulpy space-action flick that Lucas hasn’t been making recently.
Serenity isn’t perfect, but it’s a fun one. Go see it!
by An interesting, if somewhat depressing, piece on the challenge of being politically conservative in the librarian profession.
by I had one of those weird “it’s-a-small-world” experiences online this morning. I was meeting up with my friend Jon for a Saturday morning game of Star Fleet Battles. While you’re setting up the game, you can chat with other SFB players in the “lobby” area.
So anyway: one of the people in the lobby, who I recognized as an SFB regular, asked where we lived. Over the next 30 seconds, we established that he lives in the same state as me.
In the same town.
In the same part of town.
In the same apartment complex.
In the building next door.
It was a fun coincidence, although just a tiny bit creepy; I half-expected him to burst out of my closet or growl “Turn around–I’m RIGHT BEHIND YOU!” or something cinematic like that.
But fortunately that did not happen. And who knows–maybe we’ll be matching wits over a boardgame sometime in the near future.
by Allow me to plug a really cool program that I’ve been using for several years: Abiword. It’s a very slick, very fast, free open-source word processor.
If you’re looking for something smaller or faster than Word or OpenOffice, I recommend it. I’ve been using it as my primary word processor for a long time and have no real complaints; I only switch over to Word or OO if I need to do something particularly elaborate. For everyday document writing, Abiword does everything I need it to do.
There are a lot of open-source programs out there that make my computing life easier, actually; I should plug more of ’em. Ah well, I’ll start with Abiword. Go give it a look!
by Here’s something you don’t see every day:
That’s some really aggressive marketing. (Or some sort of ugly loop between the popup and the popup blocker.)
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