Back of the Envelope

This one's been floating around the blogosphere. In an article on Clarence Thomas, Jan Greenburg argues that all the stereotypes of him being Scalia's lackey are wildly off target:

From the beginning, Justice Thomas was an independent voice. His brutal confirmation hearings only enforced his autonomy, making him impervious to criticism from the media and liberal law professors. He'd told his story, and no one listened. From then on, he did not care what they said about him.

Clarence Thomas, for example, is the only justice who rarely asks questions at oral arguments. One reason is that he thinks his colleagues talk too much from the bench, and he prefers to let the lawyers explain their case with fewer interruptions. But his silence is sometimes interpreted as a lack of interest, and friends have begged him to ask a few questions to dispel those suggestions. He refuses to do it. "They have no credibility," he says of critics. "I am free to live up to my oath."

But the forcefulness and clarity of Justice Thomas's views, coupled with wrongheaded depictions of him doing Justice Scalia's bidding, created an internal dynamic that caused the court to make an unexpected turn in his first year. Justice O'Connor -- who sought ideological balance -- moved to the left. With the addition of Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito, the court now is poised to finally fulfill the hopes of the conservative movement. As George W. Bush told his legal advisers early in his presidency, he wanted justices in "the mold of Thomas and Scalia." Interestingly, on President Bush's marquee, Justice Thomas got top billing.

It's an interesting article, and I look forward to seeing where the court goes next.

I promised to do this a while ago, but I never got around to it. I finished up Neverwinter Nights 2 right around Christmas time, so it behooves me to give my opinion of it.

Anyone who's familiar with Neverwinter Nights knows that it's the descendant of Baldur's Gate, a classic Dungeons and Dragons game. It's not the direct sequel. That would have been Baldur's Gate II, a game which used a modified version of Baldur's Gate engine, but which was overall much better designed, with a much more interesting storyline. As the second Baldur's Gate is to the first, so is the second Neverwinter Nights to the first. The original Neverwinter Nights was an opportunity to show off the new 3d engine. Graphically, though, there wasn't much to show off. 3d engines at that time gave you a lot of freedom, but they just didn't look very good. Worse still, the game was lacking. The designers designed the game to be as non-linear as possible, but in practice, that meant that the storyline was weak. Typically, you'd travel to a new area, and be given the command to gather up the four pieces of some artifact or other. You could do so in any order, and then it was on to the next area. A worse fault was the missing party system. You could recruit a single cohort, but you had no control over their actions or their advancement. Nor did they, or any other NPC, have a fully developed personality for you to interact with. The problem was that the game was designed primarily with multiplayer in mind, and as with most such games, the single-player felt tacked-on.

Thankfully, Neverwinter Nights corrects these problems. There's a much stronger storyline, and though this makes the game more linear, you still have some freedom in how you pursue your goals. Rather than a single cohort, as in the original Neverwinter Nights, you can have up to 5 characters in your party (including yourself), and these characters have distinctive personalities and interesting perspectives. The game borrows the influence system from Knights of the Old Republic, where your actions affect what the party characters think of you, and this influences how they behave. It's even possible for characters for whom you haven't built up sufficient influence to betray you. The ability to have a lot of characters in your party also means that there's plenty of interparty interaction, often calling on the player to act as referee, or favor one character over another, thus gaining influence with one while losing it with another. And you ultimately recruit characters representing nearly every base class, most of whom will wait for you at your home base while you're joined by the ones you need. Sometimes I'd go for a well-balanced, dungeon raiding party, while at other times I chose for pure offense. It all depended on what you were facing. Overall, this was one of the most enjoyable aspects of the game. On the downside, while you control your characters' leveling and actions, you can't directly control what classes they take. This means that the prestige classes are only available to the main character.

Prestige classes are character classes which are a little bit more powerful than the regular ones, but which have requirements before you can take them. Some of them combine the most important aspects of two classes (Arcane Trickster, which combines Rogue and Wizard), while others take a character archetype to an extreme (Dwarven Defender, which helps dwarves to stand firm against incredible odds). Most of them are taken from the D&D 3.5 rulebook, but there are some new ones, and some which are strangely missing (there's no mystic thurge, for those who want both arcane and divine spells).

One aspect of the game which I mentioned in another post occurs around the midpoint, where your character is given charge of a ruined keep to repair, restock, and defend. This I considered great fun, as it gave a strategy element to the RPG game. It also gives you a chance to return to places you've visited before and try to recruit people to work at the keep. Trying to come up with the funds to keep it going was a great challenge, but definitely worth it.

Of course, sooner or later, the main plot catches up, and you have to defend your keep against the main enemy. Once that's done, it's time to take your party against the enemy, and the final battle involves just about every party character, for a massive fight.

I enjoyed this game immensely. In fact, I've started playing it again, with a different type of character, since I wanted to play around with some multiclassing, whereas I played straight bard the first time through.

I just found Corner Alley 13, and plugged itf on my blog, only to find that the comic has just ended. It's not the first time I've discovered a comic just as it was ending. It was a good run, though, and it looks like there'll be a sequel. For now, go ahead and read the whole thing, and you'll get a complete story.

The latest carnival is up at Dodgeblogium, hosted by Andrew Ian Dodge. There are eleven stories this time, but five of them are really short, so go have a look.

Sluggy Freelance — This week was a "24" parody, which took two comics, since two are enough to cover a length of 24 hours. But that was followed up by talking about 24's moral gray area, and then Bun-bun's stymied plan to extort $1 from every resident of the US by threatening to sic Gwynn's monkeys on them, or something. I never quite got his plan, or what it had to do with teaching the monkeys to attack anyone carrying 11 items.

Day by Day — The war's the topic this week, and how everyone seems to be running from it. Hmm. It seems to me that everyone should be interested in finding solutions, not simple political sniping.

Scary Go Round — Erin's throwing her newfound weight around, getting back at the bullies who picked on her. I'm worried that she might try to do something to Esther, who wasn't one such bully.

Dominic Deegan — Dominic's class gets interesting, as he tries to give his students some perspective. One of them goes the extra mile and uncovers an interesting truth. Every race and nation claims that the first vision was theirs, when in reality they all happened on the same day. Of course, some bullies decide that's a good reason to pick on him, but bullies don't need much of an excuse.

College Roomies from Hell!!! — Dave finally opens up, as does Margaret. Ah, I so want to see those two get together, but it just won't happen for a very long time. April and Mike, on the other hand, is never going to happen, and I wish she'd stop trying. I'm beginning to suspect April may be possessed. It's not like there's any shortage of that in this comic.

Schlock Mercenary — The mercenaries board the ship to find it abandoned. It looks like a trap, and the mercenaries are trying to determine whether to blow it up, or figure out some way to neutralize it.

So I've been trolling for new fantasy webcomics, and there are two I thought I'd point out.


Corner Alley -- Dwarves, elves, and all sorts of other mystical beings have returned to the human world. This causes problem. This comic is beautiful, with really fun characters, if a bit preachy and unrealistic in its treatment of humans vs. the mystical creatures. But definitely worth a look.

The Order of the Stick -- This is the funniest D&D parody I've ever read. It's brilliant. Art's pure stick figures, so don't expect much there, but the characters are interesting and the story's engaging. Most of all, though, it's funny.

Andrew Ian Dodge will be hosting the next Storyblogging Carnival at Dodgeblogium. If you use your blog to share your fiction, then the Storyblogging Carnival is what your opportunity to share. Here we host any and all forms of storytelling in blog format. If you're curious about what this looks like, have a look at some examples of previous storyblogging carnivals. It will be going up January 22nd.

If you'd like to participate, please e-mail your story submissions to Andrew at lagwolf-at-gmail-dot-com, including the following information:

• Name of your blog
• URL of your blog
• Title of the story
• URL for the blog entry where the story is posted
• (OPTIONAL) Author's name
• (OPTIONAL) A suggested rating for adult content (G, PG, PG-13, R)
• A word count
• A short blurb describing the story

The post may be of any age, from a week old to years old. The submission deadline is 11:59 PM Eastern time on Saturday, January 20th.

Sluggy Freelance — Gwynn's monkeys have gone missing. So has Bun-bun. Is that foreboding you smell, or just the monkeys? Anyway, it looks like the psychiatrist is actually helping them realize they really care for one another, including the black sheep, Zoe? The problem is, the moment they're thinking of making up, she goes and starts airing their problems on national radio again.

Day by Day — Well, they can't stop talking about the new Congress. The Democrats would be better off as the Mommy party than the Child party, which is how they seem to be behaving.

Scary Go Round — Erin's back in school, and feeling quite awkward with everyone staring at her. What's worse, Bob, the school principle, is planning to bring about the apocalypse, in contract with the devil and with the help from some goblins and a giant rabbit. He just needs to open a portal and bring the armies of darkness through, and find a bride. I don't know why he needs a bride, but I predict these two plot threads will be intersecting soon.

Dominic Deegan — Dominic's mom comes for a visit, catching Luna in the act of seducing her boyfriend. That's awkward. It turns out Mrs. Deegan is planning to retire. That'll throw things for a loop. Dominic's not at all sorry for swamping his students with homework, though. Nor are any of the bad guys acting up right now.

College Roomies from Hell!!! -- And we're back! Diana's talking up some random guy who looks like Matt Damon, driving Roger crazy jealous. And Paul, but he's into the guy. That inspires Roger to cook up a plan to go into the past, retrieve Diana before she was angry at him, and bring her back to the future. Meanwhile, he's disrobing the mad Diana and sending her to 1888. Mike's all for the disrobing part. Out on the beach, Margaret and Dave are having a serious talk. Will Dave finally be honest with Margaret?

Schlock Mercenary — So the plan goes ahead without a hitch, except when it comes time for the enemy to surrender. He's not so willing to do that, figuring that the mercenaries won't dare incinerate his ship, as that would make it hard to be paid. Unfortunately for him, mercenaries like explosions just as much as they like their paychecks.

With all the talk about the surge in Iraq, you may be wondering how I'm feeling. I've always been cautiously optimistic about Iraq, since the very first stages of the war. Even when things seemed to be going very well right afterwards, and after the first couple of elections, my optimism was still cautious. And when thigns were going bad and violence was surging, I was still optimistic, if more subdued. You have to look at the long-term trends rather than get bogged down in the day-to-day events. It's difficult to make sense of the day-to-day events, with the media calling Iraq a failure no matter what happens, and the military putting its own spin on things.

One thing I've noticed is that a lot of people are wondering why Bush is only doing this now, after the midterm elections, when he should have done it a long time ago. And frankly, I think it's because Bush's attitude is close to mine. Through 2005, things seemed to be going pretty well in Iraq. Granted, there was still violence, but Iraq had its own government, and it looked like soon the Iraqis would be able to take charge. Things only turned nasty in 2006, and while Bush may have wanted to try a different approach, Rumsfeld and the generals on the ground didn't. Bush had put his trust in these folks, and they had been pretty successful so far, and they were there and knew the situation better than anyone, so I can understand his reluctance to get rid of them. An uptick in violence for a few months did not make Iraq a catastrophe any more than the previous upticks had. Only when the long-term trends made it clear that Rumseld's and the generals' methods weren't working, and they showed no sign of being willing to change them, did he make the decision to replace them with people who would get the job done. Unfortunately, midterm elections probably had a role in this, and for numerous reasons, Bush didn't want to be seen as changing tactics right before the election. For one, it would have been seen as a political ploy rather than a serious bid to change the course of events in Iraq. And maybe he did fear it would cost Republicans some votes, although everyone else was arguing the opposite. I still don't know whether it's such a bad thing that the Republicans lost big. I think that, to some degree, having an opposition government has made Bush freer. He doesn't have to worry about getting re-elected, and now he doesn't have to worry about keeping his party in power by not doing anything to offend the "moderates" whose votes they depended on. Granted, the Democrats will try to stop this, but they're pretty limited in what they can do. It's one thing to call for troops to return, but they lack the Constitutional authority to actually force that to happen, and not too many will be willing to actually stop funding the war. It's one thing to oppose sending troops, another thing entirely to abandon those now there.

Anyway, that's the political side. Do I think we should be doing this? Ever since we caught Saddam, I've believed we were doing the right thing in Iraq. Before the war started, I wasn't so sure, as I was always a bit iffy on the whole WMD issue. But once Saddam was caught and we'd completed our initial mission, the question was do we just leave and let a society rent apart by a tyrannical dictator further destroy itself, or do we stay and try to help them create a new society. We had what we wanted, and what we had to gain by staying was very idealistic: a civil society in the Middle East that would hopefully be a model for others. That's all. For all the talk of blood for oil, I don't see it. We decided to stay, and it was the right thing to do. A very hard thing, true, but the right thing. And if we're going to do it, we need to do it right, and that means winning. I don't think our former strategy could accomplish that, but I think this one might. It's not guaranteed, but let's just say I'm cautiously optimistic.

This is an interesting argument, and one that strikes me as containing some truth. From Jonah Goldberg, at the Corner:

Did feminism undermine socialism? I'm just thinking out loud, but think about it. When women weren't part of the workforce in large numbers, the idea of organizing society and politics around our jobs was enormously popular. Syndicalism, socialism, trade unionism, corporatism, Veblenism, Swopism, big chunks of social democracy, etc etc, were premised in large parts on the idea that your job was your identity. "Workers of the world unite" and all that jazz. When women who didn't work for a wage claimed that they were citizens — or fully entitled to citizenship — it undermined the view that You Are Your Job. And as women entered the workforce, the willingness of men to identify themselves solely by their work tended to erode. Perhaps sexism drove men to say that they were more than their job if a woman could do their job just as well (or well enough).

There's more, but as Jonah himself notes, you have to be careful. While the old-style "Workers of the world unite!" socialism may have died, the new style nanny-state socialism is clearly alive and well. I think his analysis misses a big point, though, which is that women are less willing than men to be defined by their jobs. While a man can derive much of his identity from work, women tend not to, which means that they are less sympathetic to that old-style socialism. Thus, when the unionization efforts had to recruit women, they needed to take a different tact, which ultimately played a part in changing the tone of the labor movement.

There were other issues as well, although most of the ones I'm thinking of weren't real influences until the mid-20th century, which was after old-style socialism's heyday.

And I'm back on schedule... almost.

Sluggy Freelance — Gwynn has a monkey problem. The odor seems to be sticking with her, and that's a problem at work, which ends up getting her sent to see a psychiatrist. Despite saying that he's understanding, he's not really, 'cause Sluggy's just too crazy to understand. Nevertheless, the psychiatrist does help, so she recommends him to Torg. Torg, however, doesn't seem to get what psychiatrists are all about.

Day by Day — Sam's sister comes for a visit, and Skye is driving Zed batty. Fortunately for him, she's not that hard to get rid of. I guess certain people just have a low tolerance for geekiness.

Scary Go Round — Considering that Erin's gotten freakishly big as a result of the hulk formula, she seems to be pretty sane and relly not bad looking, although she certainly isn't short any longer. Meanwhile, Bob is getting a visit from the devil.

Dominic Deegan — Dominic's teaching a class at the academy. Sounds like fun. He seems to be quite a demanding teacher, however. But it seems like the students could use the discipline. Meanwhile, we're learning a little bit about how visions and second sight work.

Schlock Mercenary — They're ready to launch the attack on the pirate captain's warship. TAG, Ennesby, and Tagon have worked out what looks to be a pretty good plan. I can't wait to see how it all goes wrong.

Welcome to the sixty-first Storyblogging Carnival. We only had four entries this time, possibly due to the fact that we're just getting out of the Holidays. Hopefully we'll do better next time. On the bright side, it was a lot less work to put this carnival together than usual.

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Stranger XI
by Andrew Ian Dodge of Dodgeblogium
A 100 word brief story rated R.

It was requested that I write a sporty Cthulhu tale and this my attempt.

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Postcard #5: From the Shape-shifting Dreamplate
by Karen Hunting at Reason-and-Rhyme
An 511 word brief story rated PG.

"Shifting Dreamplate" might seem to be all fluffy words flowing, flowing -- answers to questions not asked nor cared about, but cried out in desperation nonetheless. But isn't it really more like the terror and wonder associated with the sealing in of consciousness when lying there before sleep... in sleep, before death... in death? Just maybe?

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Being Marika
by Mark Rayner of The Skwib
A 2000 word short story rated PG.

A quasi-autobiographical short travel fiction, about how I nearly married a Fijian princess.

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The Transformation of PeeWee Witkin
by Charmaine Frost at Reason-and-Rhyme
An 8,237 word short story rated PG.

Little people face big challenges -- perhaps particularly over the holidays -- and without an ounce of sympathy these challenges may sometimes turn their hearts to stone.

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This concludes the sixty-first Storyblogging Carnival.

If you'd like to take part in a future carnival, please contact me. I am also looking for hosts. Other carnivals can be found here.

The Storyblogging Carnival can be found at The Truth Laid Bear's ÜberCarnival.

I wrote a memo the other day. That in itself isn't something to blog about, but it was an interesting experience, as the purpose of writing the memo was to inform my employer that they had no claim on any of the fiction I've written. You'd think this would be obvious, but I wanted to be careful. Since my company is a Federally Funded Research Lab, they own everything I do with one exception:

IP which a) is outside the professional field for which the employee is hired, b) is outside any sponsored research carried out at [the company] in the broad scope of its technical research and development programs, and c) made no significant use of [company] administered facilities and/or funds in its creation, will be owned by the creating employee(s), with the concurrence of the Director’s Office and the TLO.

My favorite part is that it has to be outside the professional field for which I was hired and outside the scope of the research anyone at my company is doing. My understanding is that this is a federal requirement, since my company is federally funded. Fortunately, my fiction qualifies on all counts (with caveats), but according to the policy, I needed to run it by the Director's Office first, and they suggested I write the memo, which would assert that these stories were 1) written on my own time, 2) in the genre of fantasy and horror, which doesn't seem important but is, 3) without using company equipment or materials, and 4) outside my professional field.

Which is fine for the things I think may be published in the near future, but this does lead me to some questions. First, what if I'm on a business trip and decide to write a story using my company supplied laptop while on the plane or in my hotel room? Do they then own that story? What if I'm at home and I'm using a company pen to mark some changes on a draft I printed out from my own computer and printer? I suppose I really shouldn't be taking company pens home in the first place, but I don't empty my pockets of writing instruments before I go home. Besides, I'm just as likely to bring my pens into work as to take theirs home, so I figure it evens out. Now, I'm pretty sure using a company pen doesn't count as significant use of company resources, but looking through the administrative note on the policy, typing on the laptop might.

And what if I decide to write a science fiction story? I've written those in the past, though not recently. Is that considered in my professional field? What is my professional field? I do radar stuff now, but I was a superconducting quantum computation guy when they hired me. Even if I avoid talking about anything I've ever worked on personally, it's bound to include elements relating to what someone here is doing. Now I don't intend to be technical in my stories, or reveal any proprietary information, but I think I'd need a new memo.

Fortunately, I have a pretty good relationship with my company (at least until they see this blog entry), and I'm hoping they won't be unreasonable, but it's enough to make me a bit nervous.

Since I couldn't keep up with webcomics over Christmas break, I'm covering two weeks this time.

Sluggy Freelance — The twelve days show what happens when Kiki is very bad. There's lots of property damage, some radiation poisoning, and an angry Bun-bun.

Day by Day — So Sam doesn't want kids. Well, 40 is a bit old to try having kids, so I guess I can see that. Then there's some Christmas fun, with some nice moments between the characters, plus New Year's, with some days left over to pit the bloggers versus the MSM.

Scary Go Round — Ryan discovers that Riley has been sabotaging Tim, but oddly, Tim doesn't seem to mind. Then we get Shelley's year end album review.

Dominic Deegan — Dominic's mostly on hiatus these past couple of weeks, but we do find out that not just Jacob, but also Celesto and the Infernomancer are back. That's not a friendly crew.

Schlock Mercenary — So Kevyn gets to review the beginning of his relationship with Elf, and see what his crew was up to afterwards. After getting stiffed for the contract work that nearly got Kevyn killed, they found the pirate that got away, and now they're looking to capture his ship and make some cash.

Happy New Year's, folks! I hope you've had a fun New Year's Eve and are ready to face 2007. Do you have any New Year's Resolutions? I'll confess, I have a couple. I'm not sure I want to share them all, but I'll talk about a couple:

1. First, I really, really want to publish a book. I'm not sure I should resolve to actually publish it, as that depends a lot on publishers (my resolution last year was to publish a story, so I know how much of that is out of my control), but I do resolve to make inquiries, something I kept meaning to do last year, but I never got my books into good enough shape that I thought they were ready.


2. To maintain discipline with my exercise. I actually have a pretty good exercise routine, with running four times a week and weights three times. I feel like it's reasonable in its time commitment and physical strain. The problem is that occasionally something comes up that breaks the routine--such as Christmas vacation, or a business trip. While I think it's okay to miss a few days because of that, I sometimes let those breaks stretch out into a month or two before I'm back on the routine. You may know how it is... the longer you're off, the harder it is to get back. I intend to avoid letting those unavoidable breaks stretch out this year.


3. I'm making one other that will make my Mom happy, but I won't give her the satisfaction of reading it here.

Okay, that's it. You have any good ones?

I'll be hosting the Storyblogging Carnival LXI, the first carnival of 2007, here at Back of the Envelope. If you use your blog to share your fiction, then the Storyblogging Carnival is what your opportunity to share. Here we host any and all forms of storytelling in blog format. If you're curious about what this looks like, have a look at some examples of previous storyblogging carnivals. It will be going up January 8th.

If you'd like to participate, please e-mail your story submissions to me at dscrank-at-alum-dot-mit-dot-edu (or post in my comments), including the following information:

• Name of your blog
• URL of your blog
• Title of the story
• URL for the blog entry where the story is posted
• (OPTIONAL) Author's name
• (OPTIONAL) A suggested rating for adult content (G, PG, PG-13, R)
• A word count
• A short blurb describing the story

The post may be of any age, from a week old to years old. The submission deadline is 11:59 PM Eastern time on Saturday, January 6th. More detailed information follows (same as always):

1. The story or excerpt submitted must be posted on-line as a blog entry, and while fiction is preferred, non-fiction storytelling is acceptable.
2. The story can be any length, but the Carnival will list them in order of length, from shortest to longest, and include a word count for each one.
3. You may either send a complete story, a story in progress, or a lengthy excerpt. You should indicate the word count for both the excerpt and the complete story in the submission, and you should say how the reader can find more of the story in the post itself.
4. If the story spans multiple posts, each post should contain a link to the beginning of the story, and a link to the next post. You may submit the whole story, the first post, or, if you've previously submitted earlier posts to the Carnival, the next post which you have not submitted. Please indicate the length of the entire story, as well as the portion which you are submitting.
5. The host has sole discretion to decide whether the story will be included or not, or whether to indicate that the story has pornographic or graphically violent content. The ratings for the story will be decided by the host. I expect I'll be pretty lenient on that sort of thing, but I have some limits, and others may draw the line elsewhere. Aside from noting potentially offensive content, while I may say nice things about stories I like, I won't be panning anyone's work. I expect other hosts to be similarly polite.
6. The story may be the blogger's own or posted with permission, but if it is not his own work he should gain permission from the author before submitting to the Carnival.

If you'd like to be added to the e-mail list, please let me know. Finally, I appreciate folks promoting the carnival on their own blogs, and I'm always looking for bloggers willing to host future carnivals.