WoW: Deadmines Complete

I finally managed to group with some people long enough to go all the way through the Deadmines and assassinate VanCleef, the leader of the Defias Bandits. Not a bad run, and picked up a few nice items out of it. It's nice to have that dungeon behind me, so to speak.

Event Approved

The shire has approved Golden Rule. Now we just have to secure the date on the kingdom calendar, which is the seneschal's job.

Event Proposals

My bid to do the Golden Rule event in April goes up for vote in tonight's shire meeting. There will probably be some issues to resolve with the budget and how many days we reserve facilities at the site, but hopefully we can iron out all of that. The break-even point on my current budget (which may be overblown) is 128 attendance. I don't know if that will be considered high or not. Frankly, I'm not worried so much about making attendance and breaking even (since we're in pretty safe territory financially) as about having a really good event and establishing an event that belongs to Glaedenfeld and has a solid reputation. If that costs the shire a bit more money than it makes the first year or two, so be it (make up the difference with fundraisers or Kingdom-level events).

We shall see what others think.

Find of the Day

In following links from an article on SCAToday.net about a bardic competition at Pennsic, I found myself at Dagonell's Bardic Notebook. Songs both silly and serious abound.

And there was much rejoicing.

A New Drill Thought

I was musing over fencing drills and thought of this one.

1. Attacker thrusts to the head (target 5 in our Capo Ferro sequence); defender uses parry 5.
2. Attacker disengages and thrusts to the lead leg or lower body on the sword side; defender uses parry 2.
3. Attacker disengages and thrusts to the body on the off-hand side; defender voids (using a volta, or "compass step") and counterthrusts, adding a hand-parry for extra safety.

I plan to inflict that on my class next week (or sooner if we do something over the weekend). If I'm particularly diligent, I'll even take pictures and put together a real web page for drills.

Drill, Drill, Drill

When there's a pollution alert on a 90-degree day, people just don't want to put on all of their armor for fencing practice. That includes me. At least we didn't waste the whole evening. We did drills on footwork, basic parries, hand parries, and disarms.

I suspect that such weather may in some ways be a boon. Ysabel has complained that she thinks she has reached a plateau in her fencing skill, and she's probably not alone. We need to do more than just get together and spar with each other every week. That just trains us to beat each other. We need to do the drills; that's what trains us to be better fencers.

Here's to more warm weather...

WoW: Killing Time

I was up early playing World of Warcraft this morning, and I did manage to complete a couple of quests while I was out and about. It being a Tuesday, the servers generally go down at about 7am local time for maintenance, and apparently some Alliance players decided that they would burn about half an hour smiting Horde players before the servers went offline.

That's how I ended up scoring four "Honorable Kills" in Player-versus-Player combat this morning. I don't know what level my opponents were; all I could see was that I was fighting a "L?? Rogue" and a "L?? Paladin", but odds are that they were about 40 levels higher than me. No, I did not beat them single-handedly with my L17 Shaman. I mostly cast healing spells on higher-level Horde players who were doing the hard fighting, taking a whack at the invaders every now and then when opportunity allowed. They mostly ignored my attacks, but every now and then one would get annoyed or bored enough to drop me with one swing. Tedious, but not actually un-fun, especially when you know you have to quit in 30 minutes or less, anyway.

WoW: A Successful Dungeon Run

Over the weekend I managed to successfully complete a run into a dungeon for the first time. I joined a group for a trip into the Stockade to put down an assortment of convicts, inmates, and insurgents. People in the group understood their jobs pretty well, and Grimbor managed to come through without dying once (although some members of the group weren't so lucky).

I hope I can find as good a group to go with me on another Deadmines run soon, as my Deadmines quests have started going green (meaning their getting pretty easy for a character of my level, meaning they won't return as much experience).

Intelligent Design Google Bomb

I'm joining the effort to make sure that Google searches for Intelligent Design return the National Center for Science Education's page on the subject. If you have a web page or blog, and you care about the subject, put a link on your page. Generally speaking, Google rates a site by how many other pages link to it, so the more of us that have links to NCSE, the higher it will be rated on Google searches.

How Can It Be a Mistake?

Rick Santorum, Republican Senator from Pennsylvania, stuck his foot in his mouth during an interview on NPR this morning (August 4, 2005). I don't suppose it's his fault, he's just speaking from his religious indoctrination instead of using independent thought.

The interviewer asked what he thought about President Bush's recent statement that Intelligent Incompetent Design should be taught in schools. Rick started off well enough: he said that Intelligent Design shouldn't be taught in science classes because it isn't scientific. Then he started munching on his big toe: he said that the evidence against the Theory of Evolution should be taught along with the evidence in favor of it.

Sorry, Rick, but there simply isn't any evidence against the Theory of Evolution. Many refutes have been attempted, but every genuine attempt to scientifically show that Evolution doesn't happen has failed. There are still unanswered questions, but there is no contrary evidence.

He reasoned that we need to look at the evidence against Evolution because, according to the Theory of Evolution, mankind has no purpose: we're just a "mistake". It's impossible for the evolution of humanity to be a mistake, Rick. A mistake is doing something wrong; setting out to do one thing and doing something else instead. The process of Evolution has no target, so it can't go to the wrong place. An Intelligent Designer could make mistakes, but an unintelligent process like Evolution can't.

Does humanity have a purpose? From an evolutionary standpoint, successfully reproducing and expanding into new environments makes a species a "success", but species also change in the process. No, if humanity has a purpose, we need to define it for ourselves, but it need not be incompatible with evolution. Creating and maintaining a secure and comfortable living environment for ourselves and our fellow human beings is a realistic goal that I think anyone could agree to pursue.

Hand-Parry Drill

I used to do a simple hand parry drill for both hands that I adapted from my jeet kune do training. That was basically a repeating pattern of three attacks that you parry until the motions become automatic. Essentially the same thing works for fencing hand parries.

"Hopper" was my guinea pig at fencing practice yesterday. After seeing him spar a bit with Jaime, I could see that he needed to work on getting his off hand into play. We've done hand parry drills with completely empty hands before, but I wanted to try to make a slightly more practical drill.

We both went onto the field with a single rapier. He was in full armor, but I wasn't, since I wasn't going to be in any danger. With him on guard, I held onto the tip of his blade with my left hand. This was to simulate a situation in which his rapier was bound or otherwise engaged, leaving him no choice but to defend himself with his off hand. I then began a repeating series of thrusts, two to the head and neck followed by one to the body.The students task is to parry all of the thrusts with the free hand using consistent technique.

Assuming that it's your left hand that's free, you should parry the first thrust away to your left; you should also turn your hand so that you have an opportunity to grab the blade in the process.
Parry the second attack to your right, again turning your hand so you can potentially catch the blade. Make sure that you carry the tip clear of your body; you don't want to push it away from your head into your shoulder.

The for the final parry, you sweep your hand down and out to the left again.

Initially, you should practice the drill at a slow, steady pace and concentrate on developing good hand motions. In later sessions, you can vary the speed and rhythm of the attacks to force the student to actually react instead of just anticipating the thrusts. Finally, you should vary the actual order of the attacks, so the student learns to parry with the correct motion depending on the angle of the thrust.

We'll be doing more of this drill in future classes, and I'll try to remember to write an update on progress.

Illusory Causation

Illusory causation is a term that came up on NPR news this morning, and it caught my ear as something worth discussing in detail. Illusory causation is probably the root of belief in a lot of worthless alternative medicine products that you can find on the market today.

Illusory causation occurs when someone attributes a specific event to the wrong cause. In the story on NPR, for example, they explained how many people credit the herb echinacea with curing their colds. They believe the herb cured their condition because they started taking it when their cold symptoms started, and the symptoms went away soon afterward. However, three separate clinical trials have shown that echinacea doesn't make a cold go away any faster. The echinacea users believe that the cause of their relief is the herb, when the true cause is simply the human immune system, which can usually eliminate cold viruses given a little time. The belief in echinacea is an illusion, but the users want to believe it, and repeated association of echinacea with cold relief simply reinforces the illusion. They build up strong personal, anecdotal evidence for their beliefs.

Illusory causation can be attributed to numerous alternative medicines. Homeopathic remedies like Similisan are obvious candidates. As I noted in my previous article, Similisan makes a remedy for pink eye. Pink eye can have at least three causes, one of which is a virus. The human immune system will defeat viral pink eye after a few weeks, much as it will defeat the common cold. A person who uses Similisan during that time might easily assume that the homeopathic product cured the condition, when it really did nothing at all. Such a person would see Similisan as the illusory cause of his or her relief.

But as I said, pink eye can have more than one cause. There is also a bacterial form of pink eye, and this form doesn't easily go away on its own. Those who contract bacterial pink eye often need antibiotic eyedrops to cure the disease, and Similisan won't do a thing to help it. That's why Similisan has a disclaimer telling users to see a doctor if their symptoms don't improve within a few days (the time it normally takes for viral pink eye to start going away).

It's easy to believe in illusions and false causes, but they won't help you in a real emergency. Evidence-based medicine doesn't offer a cure for everything, but at least you can feel secure in the knowledge that evidence-based medical treatments really will deliver the effects that they claim to have.

A Small Regional Practice

Hawk and Phillip came up from Huntsville/An Dun Theine to join us for a bit of a regional fencing practice on Sunday. Jaime and Nealy (sp?) hopefully learned some new things, and we got in some 3-on-3 melee practice, as well. I've got to start doing drills of some sort at home; I just don't have the point control that I need to make the most of my attack opportunities.

WoW: Aggressive Pets in Dungeons

I haven't discussed my World of Warcraft activities in a while, so I figured it was about time to bring it up again.

I've engaged in some genuine "instance dungeon" activity since my last post. For those not in the know, instance dungeons are special areas where only your group exists; other groups that go through the entrance end up in their own separate versions of the dungeon. You can therefore never have more than five people in an "instance" at a time. Instances are also extremely tough adventuring, with lots of particularly nasty monsters to encounter, but the rewards tend to be better, too.

Grimbor joined groups that ventured into the Deadmines dungeon a couple of times in the the last week or so. As a Hunter, Grimbor has a pet that accompanies him. The prevailing wisdom for hunters in dungeons seems to be that you should keep your pet on "Passive" behavior, so it doesn't fight unless you specifically tell it to: it won't even defend itself if attacked. This keeps your pet from accidentally drawing more monsters into a fight by running off in response to a ranged attack against the hunter or the pet itself.

I'm inclined to challenge that wisdom, though. I can see a situation in which having an "Aggressive" pet -- one that will spontaneously attack any monster that comes too close -- could be useful, although it will take a good bit of management.

In dungeons, there are patrols -- groups of monsters that wander the dungeon looking for intruders. These never go away completely -- even if you kill them, the dungeon will replace them periodically. Consequently, groups in dungeons always run the risk of being ambushed from behind by a patrol while they're already fighting some other nasty monsters.

This, I think, is where the Aggressive Pet comes into its own. As the hunter, I tell my pet to "stay" somewhere well behind the party and set its behavior to Aggressive. If a patrol does come up behind the group, the pet will attack them, hopefully keeping them occupied until the group takes care of its current situation (if any). Lurking behind the party, the pet also becomes a guardian for the group's more vulnerable members, the priests and mages. If a monster breaks through the group's "front" to attack these vulnerable group members, they can retreat toward the Aggressive Pet, who will attack the monsters as soon as they come within range. My pet, at least, has the ability to draw a monster's attention away from others, providing an additional way to get priests and mages out of trouble.

I'm in search of a group that would be interested in testing this plan in a dungeon, as well as general comments on the idea.

Did it do any good?

That little sitemeter at the bottom of the page reveals some interesting things. Apart from the minor ego boost I got from passing 1000 visits over the weekend, I also noted that someone visited the weblog after searching for "homeopathic treatments for pink eye" on MSN.com. Sitemeter captures the URL of the page that you came from if you follow a link to the Saga, so I was able to see the exact result of my visitor's search.

Amusingly, the Saga came up third for this person's search. From the tiny excerpt of my page that MSN returned in response to the search, this visitor wouldn't be able to tell that my page was a strong denouncement of Similisan in particular and homeopathy in general. Given the nature of the search, this person probably hoped to see a testimonial or endorsement for a particular product.

Sitemeter didn't record the length of the visit, so I don't know if this person read the entire article. The visitor didn't leave any comments either, so I have no idea what he or she thought of it. It would be nice to think that someone followed my advice to avoid homeopathic remedies and seek the help of a real doctor, but I expect that's truly wishful thinking.

Facelift

I adjusted the settings in my Blogger template. The content should now expand to the width of your browser window. Complain if you so desire.

Chez Francesca

Just in case you happen to be interested in moving to western Kentucky, you might want to know that Francesca's magnificent estate is for sale. Take the virtual tour.

A Spring Event

So I'm working on a proposal for an event to be held next spring. Fjorleif and I have been bouncing potential titles back and forth, and we've got an assortment of possibilities that we'll pitch to the shire next meeting. We want a good, catchy title for the event that will stick in your mind and be generic enough to use for this event year after year, so we don't want it to pigeon-hole the event's activities.

But it's not the event title that I'm currently writing about. We'll work that out with the shire and all will be well. It's the subtitle that has me in a quandary. Fjorleif came up with a really catchy subtitle for an event: "Dance! Dance! Revolution!" (You saw it here first, don't steal my thunder.) Hey, by now I hope you all realize that I am totally in favor of doing a dance-themed event. The question is whether this event has to be tightly focused on dance or open to a broad range of activities. I rather like the idea of getting out and fencing some as well as dancing, and I know the heavy fighters like to get in their stick-swinging time. Both of those activities are pretty incompatible with a lot of dancing, as people who are on the field are not in a dance class.

So, should I propose that all martial activities take place in the morning and end by lunch? Or should I put the DDR title on hold for an event in more inclement weather, which will discourage fighting and encourage indoor pastimes like dance? I'm putting this question out to my readership to try to get an idea what the general populace will do if presented with an event in which fighting is restricted to half the day, so that dancing and other A&S can have the afternoon. Please use the comments link, my friends (no registration necessary).

Skeptics' Circle 13

Orac has posted the Thirteenth Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle over at Respectful Insolence. Learn to use you mind.

Quote of the Day

"Ignorance is God’s gift to Kansas."
-- Richard Dawkins

RUM Report

The Royal University of Meridies, like most events, had its ups and downs.

Let's get the downs out of the way, since they were minor: the feast hall was really crowded, it was beastly hot outside, and the chicken dish at dinner came out at about room temperature (which is a bit scary from a food safety standpoint).

Now, on to the fun stuff. Having taken Friday off to go to the event, Fjorlief and I arrived way early. We used that time to help the staff rearrange the bunks in the dorms to accomodate people better. That conveniently allowed us to set up our own room to our liking and reserve one for Corbin, Ysabel, and company, who were several hours behind us.

With our sleeping arrangements completed, we were ready to dress and commence with the Friday night amusements. I set up my stereo in the pavilion, and Francesca and I soon managed to draw a pretty good dance crowd.

Saturday morning I learned to juggle (a little) and make Aztec hot chocolate (which isn't bad). I also learned a little about period Middle Eastern games (and kicked Svana's butt at Qirkat, heh heh).

Saturday afternoon I took a class on Norse games which has inspired some activities for events (although some adjustments will be required for safety; the Norse were quite fond of hazardous sports). After that, I taught Intermediate English Country Dance and 16th Century Italian Dance. I had planned on teaching ECD for sets of three couples, but I didn't have three couples in my class (probably due to the heat), so we just improvised (I taught Cuckolds All a Row and Amoroso, which isn't ECD but was requested). 16th Century Italian was a bit better attended, and I taught both Contrapasso and Laccio d'Amore.

After the very crowded feast, we had the "official" dance revel out in the pavilion. Pure improvisation, but fun none-the-less.

A pretty decent event all-in-all. One important thing to remember, though. If I ever go to an event at Camp Riversprings in McKenzie, AL again, I'm going to pre-reserve well in advance to get the deluxe accomodations: those hotel rooms are nice!

Papa on the Mend

For those readers who have expressed concern for my father, he is doing well. He didn't get to go to the rehab center he wanted to, but he will be going to a somewhat less intensive rehab program this week. There have been no major complications from the surgery, and his primary problem now is boredom.

Taking Up Space

One of the nice things about my new computer is that it's hard disk has about ten times as much storage space as my previous computer. I had my doubts that I would ever find a way to use all that storage space, but just as Demand will always rise to exceed Supply, I think I've discovered a way to eat disk space quickly.

Having discovered that one of my Renaissance Dance CDs had gone bad (a spot of oxidation or something in the disk), I decided that I needed to back them up. One dance track can take up several megabytes of storage as an MP3 file. While it doesn't look like much yet, I suspect that MP3 files could quickly become the primary occupiers of my disk space.

WoW: A New Beginning

I'm thoroughly enjoying playing World of Warcraft on my new computer. It's so much easier to get things done that I was running into a problem with Grimbor. In WoW, your character can "rest" in a city or at an inn, and a rested character gains extra experience for a while when he or she goes back into the field. It was so easy to work quests with the new computer that Grimbor was quickly using up all of his "bonus bubbles".

Now, it's certainly not necessary to be "rested" to progress in WoW, but it somehow offended me that I was getting less experience than I could. Besides, I wanted to create a Tauren character, and this was a great excuse.

Hence, the birth of Haokan, a Tauren Shaman. He's already up to level 8, and he has learned Skinning, Leatherworking, and all of the secondary skills (except Fishing, haven't found a trainer for that yet).

So now I can alternate between the two, letting one build up "rest" in an inn while I play the other.

I also got my first opportunity to participate in "player versus player" or PvP combat over the weekend. A couple of Horde players apparently thought it would be fun to harass the Alliance settlement of Sentinel Hill. Grimbor joined in the fight against them, helping put down a level 23 Tauren Druid a couple of times, but getting smacked himself by an Undead Rogue of such high level that I couldn't even determine it (he could take me out with one swing). I look forward to more productive PvP action in the future.

Homeopathic Similasan

A commercial I heard on the radio got me started on this one.

Similasan is a brand of homeopathic “medication” that comes in various types. Various eye drop products advertised on their website treat Pink Eye, allergies, cataracts, and dryness. I can think of one (and only one) of these conditions that the product may actually help.

For those unfamiliar with homeopathic remedies, the website provides an explanation. “Similasan products stimulate the body to heal itself by utilizing ‘microdilutions’ of the active ingredients.” Homeopathic solutions are generally described with an X-factor that describes the order of magnitude of dilution. For example, a 6X homeopathic solution has been diluted so that it only contains one part per million of active ingredient.

This homeopathic mode of action is similar in theory to a conventional allergy or flu shot, yet the active ingredients in homeopathic products are much more dilute, and are therefore safe for all ages without known side effects.

Well, they’re half right. The homeopathic “mode of action” is in no way similar to a conventional allergy shot. It is, however, safe to administer and side-effect free; not surprising since there’s really nothing there but water.

Supposedly the active ingredient is some substance that would actually cause the symptoms that the medication treats. The concentration is supposedly so low that it won’t cause symptoms, but the mere presence of this undetectable quantity of the material will stimulate your immune system to heal any condition that causes the same symptoms. In their words…

For example, a microdilution of honey bee will trigger the body to fight symptoms such as burning, stinging and swelling. In many cases, the cause of such symptoms is an allergy, therefore the ingredient apis (honey bee) is used to treat allergies.

That’s right. They expect you to believe that a virtually non-existent dose of “honey bee” that your immune system can’t detect in order to produce an allergic reaction (assuming you would have a reaction in the first place) will stimulate your immune system to counter any allergen.

Talk about self-contradictory.

Generally speaking, homeopathic remedies of any type are like the Wine Clip: useless but harmless. The problem is that some people might use a homeopathic remedy to treat a serious ailment instead of seeing a real physician. That’s when homeopathy can become dangerous.

I find the following disclaimer for their Pink Eye remedy somewhat enlightening:

Stop use and ask a doctor if:

• Symptoms worsen or persist for more than 72 hours.


• Changes in vision occur.


• You might have a serious underlying medical cause for the infection.

That’s the escape clause. They know that many minor conditions will clear up on their own without a physician’s assistance, so they send you to a doctor if their “treatment” hasn’t “cured” you within three days or if you already know that you’ve got a “serious underlying medical cause” for you condition.

I call that legalese for “this stuff doesn’t treat real infections.”

It goes without saying that there's no sign of a clinical trial for any of these treatments anywhere on the website.

Don’t waste your money on this stuff people. It’s just water.

A Little Class

Only Brad and Natalie made it to dance class last night, but it turned out okay anyway. Of course, only having two students means they will have to learn lots of Italian dances (since English Country typically requires at least four dancers).

Amoroso, Ly Bens Distony, Petite Riens, and Black Alman were the main activities. Some of them were reviews, others were new (at least to these students). Brad catches on to these things pretty easily, but Natalie struggles a bit. We can't all be naturals of course; she'll get the hang of it if she keeps practicing.

Now I actually get a two-week break before the next class; or not. My next event is the Royal University of Meridies, and I'm supposed to teach a class. Of course, I don't know what needs teaching. Lord Andrew didn't have any suggestions, so I've emailed Lady Peryn about it. She's the one who asked originally asked me to teach "something" at RUM when we spoke at Border Raids. I believe a bit more advanced planning is required, here...

I Have the Power

For those who remember me talking about getting a new computer in the last few weeks, it has arrived. Last night I played WoW in "real time" for the first time. I visited the auction house in Ironforge without a moment's lag. I went into an "instance dungeon" without fear of lag death (and was promptly smacked down by elite monsters, anyway). I've got the graphic detail levels turned up to max, and it hums right along. My geek side is pleased.

Another 30 Seconds of Fame

The latest Skeptic's Circle is up. I guess submitting articles for it is becoming habit-forming.

Tough Week

Sometimes when it rains, it pours. Actually, I'm not sure that isn't the standard.

I spent the holiday weekend in east Tennessee, assisting my parents. My father went to the hospital for hip replacement surgery on Tuesday, and not a moment too soon. The joint had gone so bad he was barely able to get in and out of a wheelchair by Monday.

Of course, that's not the end of it. To add to that stress, my wife's horse chose this weekend to come down with colic. For those unfamiliar with horses, that's a life-threatening blockage of the small intestine. Unfortunately, in this case, it did more than threaten, and poor Rutger didn't make it.

So, no, I can't say I had a particularly pleasant holiday. I hope nothing serious happened in the two days I took off from work, because I couldn't even summon up the energy to remotely connect. I'll just have to get whatever needs doing done tomorrow.

I hope you, my handful of readers, had a better time.

Tomorrow I'll hopefully have something more cheerful to report.

Another Good Night

Dance practice went quite well again this week. I was unsure how many people would attend, given the confusion of the dates. We normally practice on the first and third Thursday of each month, and this was the fifth Thursday of June. Unfortunately, I'd told everyone to come back "in two weeks" at the previous practice, so I didn't want anyone to get to the school and find us absent.

Francesca arrived first (as is often the case) and we started by reviewing Contrapasso, which we hadn't danced in months. About the time we had relearned it to our satisfaction, Iohann arrived, and I took the opportunity to put Francesca on the spot and make her teach it. About the time she got him through it, Gyre and Stephanie arrived, which gave each of us another partner to teach it to.

From there, we moved on to Hearts Ease, Rufty Tufty, Ly Bens Distony, and a review of Amoroso, which I taught at the last class. Now I have to come up with a plan for next week, which will be the first Thursday of the month, and get us back on schedule.

The Royal University of Meridies is coming up in July, and Peryn has asked me to teach a class there, too. A dance geek's work is never done...

The Wine Jip

I initially heard about The Wine Clip through the James Randi Educational Foundation. It is a device that -- according to it's advertising -- "can enhance the taste of wine, making it smoother, less bitter and more refined". Supposedly this occurs because..."When wine passes through a magnetic field, a physical change occurs. The magnetic field has an effect on tannins which are suspended in the wine. The tannins are broken down into smaller tannins. We believe that the taste of many small tannin molecules is smoother than the taste of fewer large tannin molecules." The advertised price on the Wine Clip website is $49.95 per clip.

I wrote a letter to the company to ask for a better explanation, since I saw no reason to think that a magnetic field would have any effect on the flavor of wine. A very nice fellow named Tony, who is an expert on magnets, wrote back to me saying "The way I understand it, there sometimes is very loose coercive bonds between Tannin molecules that get dispersed through the magnetic fields." Tony expressly stated that he was not an expert on chemistry and that he would be referring my question to one of the company's chemists, but I never heard from any chemist working for EA Magnetics, the makers of The Wine Clip.

Let's just say I didn't flunk chemistry in high school or college. None of the company explanations made any scientific sense, but I still figured there was an outside chance that tannins had some peculiar properties that might come into play. I therefore looked up a biochemist, Dr. Ann Hagerman, who specializes in tannins, and asked her about it.

"Tannins are not 'loosely bonded' --whatever that means--but are normal covalent molecules. Tannins are chemically reactive by normal processes including oxidation, conjugation and hydrolysis. During normal wine aging and processing, the tannins found in the original grapes are chemically changed, in some cases degraded and in some cases polymerized with other components of the wine.
"There is no evidence that putting samples in a strong magnetic field will chemically change them--nmr and epr are typical examples of using high magnetic fields to examine the structures of molecules without chemically changing them."

So, in a nutshell, making wine "smoother, less bitter and more refined" requires a chemical reaction in the wine, whereas the makers told me that "There is absolutely no chemical change and nothing is introduced or taken away from the wine. It's the physical change which accounts for the enhanced flavor and bouquet." They just told me that their product does not have the effect that is known to "improve" the flavor of wine as it ages.

Does anyone else see a problem with this?

To put it succinctly, my PhD source said, "I would certainly not buy this device nor recommend that anyone else buy it--it is harmless sounding but also useless sounding."

A quick look at the Wine Clip website will quickly show two dubious characteristics of their advertising: lots of testimonials and lots of pseudoscientific jargon. Testimonials are easy enough to obtain whether a product really works or not; you just need to find people who are reasonably suggestible. Likewise, scientific language is easy to imitate without actually saying anything of substance. There is a video clip of a taste test, but it's not the kind of controlled, double-blind test that would actually produce meaningful scientific results. In short, they present no real evidence that the Wine Clip has any effect on wine at all.

The JREF has already said that they will pay their $1 million prize to the makers of The Wine Clip if they can just show that the use of the wine clip is detectable in a controlled, double-blind taste test conducted before neutral observers. So far, the company has refused to accept the challenge. Personally, I think that being able to claim the JREF prize would be a huge advertising coup with a $1 million bonus, so I can't see any legitimate reason for the company to pass up the opportunity if the product actually works.

The Wine Clip certainly isn't the only company to use tactics like these. These days you can buy "energized" water, Kabbalah capsules, homeopathic remedies, and a host of other products and services that cost money but don't deliver any results. The Wine Clip is probably one of the least offensive such products on the market; what it fails to deliver is something you didn't really need, anyway. The tactics are what you need to learn from this example, before you spend precious resources on a really important product, like a disease treatment, that has no basis in reality.

A Moment of Hysteria

I found this comment while browsing Yahoo News:

"It's easy to think of fish as swimming vegetables but of all the places in the country where fish should get a fair shake it's an aquarium," said Karin Robertson, manager of the Fish Empathy Project for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

Let me go on record as saying that the first place I want to go after visiting a big aquarium is a good sushi bar. The fish are nice to look at, but I don't feel any "empathy" for them, and seeing them in an aquarium environment does nothing to diminish my desire to eat them. The radicals at PETA are completely out of touch with the natural order, in which animals eating other animals is completely normal.

I have eyes in the front of my head. I can also observe that our closest primate relatives, chimps, are hunters as well as gatherers. We're obviously predators, omnivorous though we may be. Fish are food; deal with it PETA.

Border Raids Aftermath

I spent most of the day at Border Raids fencing, and my muscles won't let me forget it. Most of the day I sucked pretty bad, too. This is what I get for letting practice slip so often recently.

I had a pretty good time during the flag battle, though. Someone stabbed me in the toe, leaving me in a perfect position to observe the battle lines around the flag. I just stayed put and directed traffic, sending our reserves to appropriate places and watching for enemy flank attempts. It was kind of a pity that the battle got cut short because of the heat.

I also got to fight beside the Queen of the Midrealm during the interkingdom rapier practice in the afternoon. I was pretty much "on" during that practice, and we had a good record of success. I always like to see royals on the fencing field; it's unfortunate that so few of my own kingdom's royalty take any interest in rapier.

Dance was a bit difficult, since we were outside the hall with very little light, but we did have at least twelve people dancing at one point, so I call it a decent revel.

Hopefully Cumberland Centre will have made enough on this event to pour a concrete floor in their main hall. The new showers house is very nice, but it's going to need hot water before they use it in any season but high summer.

WoW: Smackdown

I had a fairly amusing encounter playing World of Warcraft last night. As I was walking out of the inn, I met a mage who -- without preamble of any sort -- challenged me to a duel. I saw no reason not to accept, and I sicced my wolf on him as soon as he went hostile. A second later he had turned me into a sheep, which kept me out of the action for a few moments. When I became myself again, I couldn't see my adversary anywhere. Shortly after, I discovered that my overeager opponent had fled out of the duel area. Evidently he was no match for my wolf alone, let alone me and the wolf together.

Some other fellow invited me to group with him. I accepted to close the popup window while we discussed it, but he promptly ran off. He evidently expected me to follow him around without even a discussion of what quest he was trying to complete. Rude... very rude, so I dropped out of the group without further adieu.

Point of etiquette, folks. If you're going to invite someone into a group, explain the mission, determine everyone's role in the group, and don't just run off expecting someone five levels higher than you to do whatever you want.

11th Skeptics' Circle

Anne's Anti-quackery & Science Blog is now hosting the 11th Skeptics' Circle. I've got two articles in it, and there's plenty of other good bloggery there, too, so check it out.

This is just Too F'ing Stupid!

But quite frankly, it's the sort of behavior I've come to expect of Creationists.

Pressure from ultraconservative religious groups has prompted some theaters equipped with the high quality panoramic IMAX screens to cancel showings of several movies which refer to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
-- Yahoo News

Please note that most of these theaters are in science museums. Yet again, the Creationists not only want to bury their heads and hide from the evidence, they want to heap dirt on everyone else as well.

Related bloggery:

• Orac
• The Commissar

Insanely Indulgent

I spent the weekend in the Shire of Nant-Y-Derwyddon helping my parents (who have nothing to do with the SCA, I just wanted to give the shire a free link) empty out a condo that sells at the end of the month. I conveniently also got to be home for Father's Day, too. We got all the big stuff out of the condo; what's left will be going to auction. Some things went to my parents house, but quite a bit of nice furniture also came home with us.

You'd think that providing all this home furnishing goodness would be enough for my parents, but no. My father decided -- on Father's Day, no less -- to buy me a new computer. For the briefest instant, I considered declining, but far be it from me to refuse my father a chance to display his generosity. I therefore altruistically accepted his kind offer (really, the fact that I desperately want a new, state-of-the-art computer had nothing to do with it).

So, by the end of the month I expect to have a gaming behemoth of a computer (which should handle the installation of a MySQL database pretty well, too). I should be able to play in prime time, engage in PVP, and go to major cities whenever I want. I should even be able to manage the Zepplin crossing without any trouble.

I would therefore like to take this opportunity to loudly and publicly thank my father and mother for all they have done for me over the years and continue to do. I love you both!

A Full Night of Dance

We had dance class last night (for a change), and I was surprised to find that I had four new students. These are people with no SCA affilication (yet) who learned about the class through the newsletter published by Cohn Adult Education Center, where we have our classes. If that doesn’t make sense to you, you need to know that, technically, the SCA activities at Cohn (both the dance classes and our fighter practices) are Cohn Community Education classes.

So, last night I taught Ballo del Fiore, Black Nag, Black Alman, and Official Bransle. All are rather common dances in the Kingdom, there’s a good spread among English, Italian, and French. I rather like that format, so I shall endeavor to come up with a lesson plan by next class (which should actually be July 7th; I need to update everyone on that).

Politics: Conservative Republican Sense

I love it when a conservative Republican says something intelligent...

Intelligent Design/Creationism is not "Conservative," it is a religious agenda, dressed up as pseudo-science, trying to push a religious belief in public schools. You got a religion you want to promote? Fine. Do like the Jehovah's Witnesses do, and go sell your magazines door-to-door. You have a new scientific theory? Fine. Get out and do some field work, lab work, and publish some papers; there is NO "evilutionist" cabal that will silence you. No scientific advances have ever been made by state education boards changing standards; that's politics, not science.

You'll scroll down the original blog to read the rest. The article title is "Creationists on the March."

WoW: To Build a Better Boomstick

I find that I'm enjoying my hunter character more than my older characters lately. Maybe it's because I had a better idea of what I was doing when I started him. Maybe it's the active and supportive guild that recruited him early in his career. Maybe it's the joy of taming and training pets. Maybe its the accomplishments in his professions. I don't know for sure, but Grimbor has been taking up more and more of my WoW time.

He has completed every quest I can find for him in Dun Morogh; it's time to go to Loch Modan. He has a pet wolf named Freki and a pet leopard named Brindlefaxi. I love Norse names. I think I'm going to let the cat go, though, and try to tame one of the big bears in Loch Modan. The cat doesn't seem to have any special abilities to learn and pass on to other pets.

With regard to the title of this article, Grimbor has learned the designs required to construct a Rough Boomstick, which is an improvement over the gun he currently wields. He just needs to smelt some copper ore to get started. That will be his first priority when he arrives in Thelsamar.

Appreciation for the Ancestors

I’ve had some time to think about the scientific method in recent days, and not just because of the ID flap in Kansas that set the blogging world all aflutter. Strangely enough, I find that I can tie some of my SCA experience to this subject.

I recently did a very simple Arts & Sciences project on making charcoal, and in the course of my research and work I was struck by just how scientifically minded some of our ancestors must have been. Someone in the ancient world was a razor-sharp observer who noticed that the coals left behind by a fire would actually burn again and burn hotter than the original wood fire. This person realized that a hotter fire could be useful, set out to make charcoal on purpose, and figured out how to do it.

There was no book of knowledge available to the first charcoal-maker; that inventor had to discover the secret. I can see that this person had a scientific mind; he or she figured out that wood left burning in open air would leave nothing but ash, while wood kept from air would leave charcoal. In all likelihood, this person used the scientific method: take a guess at what’s happening, then test to see if the guess is right. As history has shown time-after-time, this method gets results.

The inventor of charcoal passed the knowledge on to others, and they found uses for it. Charcoal burns hot enough to melt copper, tin, and iron. At some point, our observant ancestors noticed that such a hot fire could extract metal from rock, and they set out to do it on purpose. They must have tried different kinds of rock and different methods of keeping it in the fire until they knew which rocks to heat and how to extract metal efficiently. They built on the knowledge of their predecessors and passed their discoveries on to their descendants.

Make no mistake, modern civilization runs on the innovations of our ancestors. To quote a phrase, “We stand on the shoulders of giants.”

So I have to wonder why we want to kick the legs out from under some of our giants today. That’s what the Creationist/ID movement is trying to do. They don’t respect the success record of the scientific method. They don’t try to discover how life works; they don’t make observations and test guesses; they’re not attempting to do any real research. Someone told them what to believe, and they like what they were told, so they’re just attacking anything that contradicts that belief.

It’s not a new phenomenon, but it’s a frightening one. Thanks to modern communication technology, virtually anyone can shout claims across the world, regardless of whether they contain a grain of truth, and the number of voices spreading the truth is unfortunately small compared to the number of voices spreading comforting lies. Welcome to the disinformation super-highway.

Think hard about what you what you want to teach your children. Your descendants will be standing on your shoulders someday. Those who have learned the scientific method will be giants. What will your descendants be?

Ask for a Prediction

That's what I think should be the standard response to "Intelligent Design" advocates. In order to call "Intelligent Design" a theory, in the scientific sense, its advocates need to start telling us what the theory predicts. The Theory of Evolution, for example, predicts that any feature you find on a modern animal will be a variation on a similar feature of the animal's ancestors. The important point about the prediction is that it gives you a way to test the theory.

In our previous example, you can test the Theory of Evolution whenever you discover a new species. You just try to place the species in the evolutionary "family tree" by comparing its features to those of other species (both modern and extinct) to identify its "relatives". Evolution predicts that every species will have its place in the tree, so discovering a species that has no "ancestors" on the tree would be evidence that something else is going on.

One of my internet acquaintances, who is an engineer, has written an essay on "Intelligent Design theory", which he has taken to calling "Incompetent Design theory". He argues that an intelligent designer would fix obvious problems with living organisms. For instance, in all land mammals, the trachea (your "wind pipe") and esophagus (the tube you swallow food down) meet at the back of the mouth. Why is that a problem? Have you ever choked on something? Have you ever heard of someone choking to death on something? Having those two tubes connected is a potentially lethal design flaw, and it's a flaw that exists in every vertebrate land animal.

Why bring that up? It goes back to predictions. What is the predictable response of an intelligent designer who discovers a flaw in one of his designs? What does it say about "Intelligent Design theory" that such a flaw is so widespread among modern species?

Strange Ways to Get Visitors

I have a hit counter at the bottom of the weblog, and it can tell me how my visitors found me by back-tracking the link they used to get here. It seems that several people have been trying to get a list of the jokes that WoW characters tell when you use the "/silly" command. Because of my "Silly Discoveries" article, Google has been returning my weblog as it's top result. Apparently there is no listing of the jokes...

WoW: This is my BOOMSTICK!

In fact, it's a "Hunter's Boomstick" that I purchased in Thunder Bluff right after learning how to use firearms from the weapon master. Yes, at last, Gondul is proficient with firearms. She how has what I would consider a perfect "pulling" tool (until she learns to make a better one), as well as a handy way to finish cowardly monsters that run away.

An undead mage who happened to also be in town enchanted some of my equipment for me, but then he started to get a little creepy. Maybe he doesn't realize that the gender of a character is not necessarily the same as the gender of the player, but he got more than a little "fresh" with Gondul (yes, I realize the irony of that, since Gondul is a walking corpse). I got sufficiently weirded out to use my hearthstone, which carried me many leagues away. Gondul is now working quests in orcish territory, which should keep her occupied for a while.

Meanwhile, on another server, Grimbor completed his pet-taming quests. Now he has to go visit someone in Ironforge to get his pet-training quests. That will have to wait until morning, as Ironforge is lag hell (unlike Thunder Bluff, which I was able to move about in prime time).

Central Cohort War Practice Report

This was an event that I would have to call... under attended. In fact, there were only two fencers present, and maybe a little over a dozen heavy fighters. Maybe people are resting up for Border Raids. Maybe they were afraid of the hurricane. Whatever the reason, there weren't a whole lot of people present. Mores the pity.

Well, I can't pity them too much. Or the people who daytripped and didn't stay for feast. They lost out big time. That feast rocked! Venison pies, honey-orange chicken, mushroom tarts, carrot tarts, salad, rice pudding... all good! What's more, due to the low attendance, we got to fill our coolers with extra food. I will dine well for a week or more. I'm looking forward to Loch Cairn's next event.

Central Cohort War Practice

I'm off to Royal, AL for the Central Cohort War Practice this weekend, where I shall be the marshal in charge (note to self, print out the necessary paperwork). The Border Raids schedule doesn't actually show anything in the way of melees for fencing, so I guess an emphasis on tournament dueling would be a good idea for the practice.

In unrelated new, I've got some kind of internet connectivity problem, so I'm gping through WoW withdrawal.

WoW: The Long March

Gondul woke up in Orgrimmar this morning with low enough lag to actually accomplish something, so she created a few auctions, picked up all the secondary professions, and started the long journey on foot to Thunder Bluff. An assortment of Fleeting Striders and related beasts lie dead in her wake. Somewhere I've got to pick up a recipe for Strider Meat.

Anyway, Gondul made it all the way to Camp Taurajo before my play time was up. She's resting in a hammock at the inn there.

You always forget something, though. In this case, she forgot to check in with the Wyvern master in Orgrimmar, so she'll have to take another long walk to get back there. At least I reset my hearthstone to Crossroads.

I guess the downside is that I'll have to give up all the quests I took on in Lordaeron. There's no way I'm attempting another zepplin ride until I get a better computer.

WoW: The Curse is Broken

Wee logged in to my account and walked Gondul off the zepplin today. I think she'll be staying on the Kalimdor continent for a while, given the difficulties inherent in making the sea crossing. Didn't get much done with her, unfortunately. Walked into Orgrimmar and was in lag hell again, I shall endeavor to accomplish some things there in the morning.

I did get some good hunting done with Grimbor. I teamed with a couple of other hunters, and we blazed through about four quests. Grimbor reached Level 10, so he's ready to start working the Pet Training quests.

And there was much rejoicing...

Do you hear that, Mr. Anderson?

"That is the sound of inevitability."

Or irony, in my case, since it seems inevitable that on the day I get my act together to be at fencing practice on time with all of my equipment, no one else shows up to play. Corbin was there, mind you, but he wasn't particularly enthused, so we just waited until the official start time and then gave up.

Time to Melt the Pewter

My lovely lady got me a dedicated pot and ladle for pewter casting yesterday. As soon as I can set up a workstation, it will be time to cast some test runs.

Back to the Fighting Field

I'm getting off my duff and getting back out to fencing practice today. Given what I've seen in weather reports, I daresay we'll be playing inside Cohn's small gym this evening, which means it will be very hot and stuffy. Oh well, so will Border Raids. I would say it's time to practice for melees, but the Border Raids website doesn't actually list any fencing melees on its schedule, which I find quite strange.

WoW: Dull Morning

Nothing happening in the World of Warcraft this morning due to some rather extensive server work that's underway.

WoW: Whacked on the Head

Darzun spent a little time in southern Loch Modan trying to score his count of Splinterskull Seers and Splinterskull Skullthumpers. I made the Seer quota, but there seems to be a shortage of Skullthumpers willing to lurk on the outskirts of their camps, which makes it hard to get a one-on-one fight going. Darzun's not yet tough enough to easily handle more than one of these rather nasty troggs, but there didn't seem to be anyone else around to back him up. He's therefore haunting the cemetery at Thelsamar until I get back to him.

Grimbor took up Mining and Engineering after arriving in Kharanos. He also received and invitation to join the Sons of the Maple Leaf, which I accepted. Maybe he'll have an easier time finding help on his assorted quests in Dun Morogh, now.

Kingdom A&S Aftermath

Final score for the Laccio d'Amore entry was 18/20. Based on the score of 4/5 that it received on the difficulty portion of the judging sheet, this particular dance will never score a full 20/20 in competition, so it's time to start researching something harder. We had a good time with it, though, and Fjorleif made a short video of the dance during the competition which I hope to have available through the shire website shortly.

Final score for the charcoal project was 11/20. This was not really a disappointment: I knew up front that the documentation was thin and that it was really a very simple example of charcoal burning; I just entered it for fun. I got some very good feedback on how to develop a more robust project for future A&S entries.

Also, at the event, Sebastiana received a well-deserved induction into the Order of the Argent Comet.

Kingdom Arts & Sciences

I'll be heading out to Montgomery Bell Park for the Kingdom A&S event this afternoon. I think I'll be there early enough to find a good place to practice dancing Laccio until I'm sick of it, which I need to do to get back into shape for a performance.

According to the event website, all entries needed to be submitted three weeks in advance, so I may be wasting time taking my charcoal, but its not a huge exhibit, so I'm taking it anyway just in case (Fjorleif figured that they just might be short on entries, since the three-week deadline is a fairly new thing).

Leon is going to be at the event doing some pick-up fencing. My equipment is going, but I'm not sure I'll have time to actually play. Fjorleif probably will, though.

This of course means I won't be doing any more WoW-ing until at least Sunday.

WoW: Not So Fun

I had a somewhat -- disappointing experience a night or so ago. I was playing Escovar, who's running quests against the Defias Brotherhood around Westfalls these days. I needed to go to the village of Moonbrook to rack up a body count of Highwaymen, Knuckledusters, and some other Defias type. Escovar was level 15 at the time, and these Defias rogues tend to be level 16, so I requested some help on the "Looking for Group" channel and soon had a dwarf hunter grouped with me.

Things weren't going to well in the early stages because I was experiencing a lot of lag; I got ambushed and killed twice while lagging. Nonetheless, we persevered and whacked some Defias rogues.

Then some of his guild buddies joined the group. These were a level 40+ paladin and druid. You can imagine how things went from there; Defias dropped so fast that Escovar couldn't even complete a fireball, and his shares of experience and loot were minimal. Yeah, I got a quest finished a lot faster than I would have otherwise, but it lacked any feeling of accomplishment.

Me and My Plaster Cast

No, I'm no injured. Last night I spent a couple of hours carving an Argent Comet design into a chunk of plaster. Given that tonight is gaming night (and the party will ALL DIE! HAHAHAH... whoops, did I say that out loud?), I doubt that I'll get around to melting and pouring pewter until at least Thursday (upon which it looks like I won't be having dance class... again).

WoW: New Digs

Since Gondul is at least temporarily out of commission, I took a little time to start a new character over on the Earthen Ring server. Grimbor is a Dwarf Hunter, which gives me an entirely new style of play to tinker with.

WoW: The Flying Dutchman

Gondul has run into trouble. After tidying up a couple of quests in Tirisfal, I decided it was time to take her to Thunder Bluff to learn to use a firearm (stopping by the auction house in Orgrimmar to put some copper for sale en route). I therefore climbed the tower west of Lordaeron and south of Brill to catch a zepplin across the sea.

That turns out to be a big mistake, at least with my computer issues. I boarded the blimp without any difficulty (I even have a screen shot of Gondul standing in the bow), but there's apparently a rather large information exchange that has to take place during the crossing, and that caused me a vast amount of lag. So much lag, in fact, that I never even saw the dismbarkation point at Orgrimmar: the boat stopped and left again before the screen rendered. Gondul never got a chance to move. Nor did she get a chance to disembark back at Lordaeron. She's cursed to an endless cycle of ocean blimp crossings.

I'm not quite sure how to get her out of this fix. I don't think I can do it with my computer. I may have to login from someone else's computer or reveal my login information to someone with a faster machine to break her out of the cycle.

Dancing it Cold

The Kingdom Arts & Sciences event is coming up in a little over a week (June 4th). I've pre-submitted Laccio d'Amore as an entry, but quite frankly Francesca and I haven't had a chance to practice in weeks. Looks like we'll be "cramming" on Friday night to get back into shape.

I also need to take a few more pictures of my charcoal, convert the documentation from html to something more printable, and come up with a nice way to display it.

WoW: Explore Your World

Escovar has now taken the train ride to Ironforge and is now in Loch Modan looking for Stormpike (who wasn't standing out in the street where I thought Darzun found him). I found a surprising amount of herbs during that little walk.

Next time I'm on (which may not be until next week, since I'll be gone for Memorial Day weekend), I'll have to get Gondul on the blip to Orgrimmar, then take the hike to Thunder Bluff.

Thank the Light/Shadow for Hearthstones.

Early Riser

I may have to become a morning person. It has nothing to do with ambition or industriousness; it's just the radical change in my morning commute. Normally I leave the house at 7:00am and get two the office at about 8:15am, but for the last couple of days I've been leaving at 6:00am to score some extra hours so I can leave early for Memorial Day weekend.

Leaving at 6:00, I arrive at 6:45. That's half an hour I don't spend stuck in traffic. While I often slow to a crawl (with frequent complete stops) on the way into town on the interstate at around 7:45, I never slowed below 55 mph in the last two days. It's surprising how much of a difference that one hour of start time makes.

Skeptic's Circle

St. Nate has posted the new Skeptic's Circle on his blog. You'll have to scroll a while for my entry (which you could probably find faster here), but there's a lot of other good skeptical commentary in this edition, so head on over and check it out.

WoW: Neither Here Nor There

I have a couple of interesting quests to workout somehow. Darzun has a quest to pick up some piece of armor or other from a craftsman in Stormwind (the Human capital) for delivery to a dwarf in Loch Modan (Dwarf territory). Escovar, on the other hand, is supposed to go transact some business in Ironforge (the Dwarf capital). The problem for me is that I have no idea how to get from either capital to the other. The route isn't mapped, and such major cities are not known Griffon destinations by default (Griffons being the equivalent of Delta or United in WoW).

The problem goes beyond mere quest fulfillment; there are things you can do in some towns that you can't do in others. Ironforge, for example, has an auction house, but Stormwind does not. This means that when Escovar has some loot or potion products that he'd like to sell at auction, he has to send it to Darzun through the mail system so Darzun can get it to the auction house for him. Tedious.

Gondul is arguably in a worse position. She's affiliated with the Horde (undead, orcs, trolls, and minotaurs), but the closest Horde city is the Undercity, which is on the wrong continent from the rest of the Horde. I've found a zepplin station that could get me to Orgrimmar on the other continent, but that doesn't completely solve the problem. She's an engineer by trade: she can make bombs, ammunition, and eventually firearms. Unfortunately, she doesn't know how to use a firearm, and the only instructor is in Tauren (minotaur) territory.

Excuse me, but isn't that just a wee bit ridiculous? There's only one person in the entire Horde capable of teaching Gondul how to shoot a gun? The mind boggles. There's not even a goblin (the Horde's gadgetry-heavy race) who will teach it. Why did Blizzard decide to make such a basic skill (some characters are proficient with guns from Level 1) so damned difficult to acquire.

I suppose I shall have to get energetic, take the blimp to Orgrimmar, and seek a guide to help me find the Tauren weapons master.

Beware of Your Email

I received a suspicious email at home yesterday. It claimed to be from eBay, saying that they’d detected some suspicious transactions on my account, so I should check the account and possibly update my password. The message included eBay logos and links to eBay’s home page and fraud pages. It also included a direct link to the page where I could update my account info.

The dead giveaway for me, of course, was that I don’t have an eBay account. A closer look at the header showed that the message wasn’t even addressed to me; it went to a private mailing list I’m on and got forwarded to me. There was definitely someone trying to get access to my (non-existent) eBay account, and it was the sender of this "warning". The sender was "phishing" for information they could use to steal money from me, and this message was the bait. You can get the gorey details of phishing online if you want to get technical, but the moral of the story is never trust email from a corporate entity, even if you do business with them; the email may be a counterfeit from someone else.

As I said, the trick message was full of links to pages on eBay’s site, but there’s no way to be sure how many were genuine. I certainly wasn’t going to click any of them to find out the hard way. The direct link to the "account maintenance" page was undoubtedly a trap that went somewhere other than eBay, but some of the others might have been genuine links to eBay pages, just to keep innocent victims like me guessing.

As I said, I wasn’t going to click any of those links to test them. Any or all of them might have lead to a programmed "exploit page" designed to quietly install evil programs on my computer. Those programs might generate more evil email or host evil web pages on my own computer designed to steal information from others, quietly sending the stolen information to some criminal in a distant land.

eBay does take this kind of thing seriously (as does PayPal and assorted banks that have internet banking facilities), so a quick visit to eBay’s website (by directly typing www.ebay.com in my browser rather than following any of those evil links) quickly turned up an abuse address to which I forwarded the message. I don’t know if it will be possible to track down the scumbags who sent it to me, but hopefully they’ll be able to use the information to break up at least part of the criminal network sending them.

It’s possible to do business online safely, but vigilance is definitely needed. Criminals impersonate reputable corporations to rob you, so you need to view any unsolicited message that lands in your mailbox with skepticism. It can save your money, your credit rating, and possibly your reputation.

This post will appear in the Skeptic's Circle of Thursday, May 26th, hosted by Saint Nate.

Politics: Judicial Filibuster Craziness

Here I go again, deviating from my usual themes of swordsmanship, dance, medieval industry, and computer gaming craziness to delve into the sordid depths of American politics.

My US Senator is in the middle of it. I live in Tennessee, so Frist is supposedly looking out for my interests. Unfortunately, he only seems to be looking after his own Presidential ambitions. He’s embracing the Religious Right with every thing he’s got, thinking that they will put him in the White House in 2008.

Which brings us to the controversy over President Bush’s nominees for federal appeals court vacancies. As I recall, he nominated a couple of hundred judges during his last term, and about ten of them were blocked by filibusters in the Senate. Unwilling to be denied, Dubya has started nominating those same candidates again, and the Democrats are promising to block them again. This situation brings us to Frist, who’s promising to change the Senates rules to make it impossible to filibuster a judicial nominee.

I don’t suppose he’s considered what the courts would look like today if the rule he’s proposing had been in place during the Clinton Presidency. The Republicans used the filibuster more than once themselves when Clinton nominated someone that they considered "too far left" to get a lifetime appointment to a federal appeals court, but apparently it becomes "un-American" when the Democrats use it to block someone they think is "too far right".

I don’t know if the "nuclear option" of eliminating the filibuster on judicial nominees will actually happen. Several Senators, including John McCain (one of the few members of Congress that I like almost without reservation) are working on a compromise coalition to keep it from happening. Nonetheless, if the Republicans do make the change, they’ll come to regret it some day. The pendulum swings both ways, and sooner or later the Democrats will be in the majority again, and the Republicans will wish they had some way of blocking a "left-wing activist" nominee from some socially liberal President.

Look before you leap, Frist, or the beast on the end of the party line will come around and bite you.

WoW: Silly Discoveries

I was knocking about Tirisfal Glades and the Undercity this morning, completing some minor quests, visiting the bank, and smelting some copper, when I made a startling (to me) discovery. It seems that an engineer (like Gondul) can turn "rough stone" into "rough blasting powder". Odd though that may seem, I wasted no time turning all the rough stone in my back pack into blasting powder and then turning that blasting powder into sticks of "rough dynamite".

To quote a good old dwarvish saying (from Warcraft II in fact): "I like blowin' things up!"

Heh, heh.

And then, the technology failed...

I wrote three webpages related to my charcoaling project and uploaded them to the Glaedenfeld site. I'm sure I moved the pictures, too, but for unknown reasons, I see nothing but broken links instead of pictures. The alternative text isn't even displayed. This vexes me... I'm very vexed.

Homeward Tomorrow

Attended the funeral today. No reason to bore everyone with the details, but anyone interested can read the obituary.

Bad News

My grandmother never recovered from her surgery. She died at about 5pm EST today without ever waking up. I'll be driving home tomorrow for the funeral, which will be on Monday.

The Darth Side

If you haven't been following Darth Vader's Weblog, you need to get your browser over there and catch up right away. The diary is fast approaching its inevitable conclusion.

Excavation Accomplished

I finished digging out the charcoal kiln yesterday evening, and Fjorleif helped me sort the actual charcoal from the dirt. There was a surprising amount of actual charcoal in that kiln, maybe a cubic foot or so. Not bad from such a small original stack, so I call it a win.

Documentation, with pictures, in the form of a web page is in progress.

More Supplies

My good lady Fjorleif picked me up some gloves and plaster yesterday. I now have just about everything I need to start the casting project.

No, I didn't dig out the charcoal kiln yesterday. It was fencing practice, and it was getting dark by the time I got home.

It's Still Hot

Since I built a rather small stack of wood into my charcoal kiln, I figured it might have finished cooking by yesterday afternoon. So, I got out a rake and shovel and started uncovering it. I got out some nice looking charcoal, but it was still hot and I saw some glowing embers, so I covered it back up again to expire from asphyxiation.

I Have a Bar of Tin

And it has nothing to do with World of Warcraft. The pewter that I ordered has arrived. That means I need to get the rest of my act together and do some pewter casting. I have the face shield and carving tools, but I need some plaster to make preliminary molds (I'll graduate to soapstone when I know what I'm doing.

With my keen hindsight, I realize I should probably have paid the extra to have the pewter cut into smaller pieces. Chopping up that bar (about 8 inches long, 1.5 inches wide, and 1 inch thick) will be problematic.

Website Slowly Recovering

The server seems to be all updated and I've copied the site content files back up. The forums, unfortunately, aren't operational yet, and I still need to re-do all the shire emails. Still, it's progress.

Collier Blues

I have a new appreciation for just how tough life was in the middle ages; I hurt. I spent much of my Sunday digging out a pit, stacking wood in it, recovering said wood with earth, and then dumping burning coals into the stack through a hole at the top. This is my first attempt to create a charcoal kiln; how effective it will be remains to be seen.

Yesterday evening, my good lady Fjorleif noticed a bright orange glow coming from holes around the top of the kiln, which makes me think it was getting too much air. A few extra shovels of dirt eliminated that, but I won't know until I dig it out whether it will contain charcoal or ash. I suspect that the whole thing was rather smaller than it needed to be to make a good kiln, but I didn't want to go overboard on my first try, and the tiny kiln that I made took a lot out of me.

Well, this may be a mistake, but...

I have changed the settings so you don't have to be a Blogger member to post comments. I now tremble in fear of being swamped with spam.

Family Health Issues

I was hoping to be able to do something arts & craftsy this weekend, as well as go shopping for a hot tub with my lovely lady, but I may be heading back to Johnson City, instead. My grandmother is in the hospital with some abdominal issues. From phone conversations it sounds like they're under control, but it would probably help my mother to have someone to vent to.

Assuming I don't leave town, I'll try to be energetic enough to dig a charcoal kiln and cut up some of the trees that are lying about the yard under the pretense of being firewood. That would make two projects I could conceivably submit to kingdom A&S (assuming the charcoal burning finishes quickly).

WoW: Socializing

I decided to retreat from Loch Modan for a little while last night; the monsters there were just too tough, so I headed back into Dun Morogh for a while to finish off a lingering quest. While heading that way I met Lorrax, a nice gnome warlock who helped me whack the oversized Wendigo on the ridge above the ram farm. That is a very nasty beast.

After the Wendigo, we started heading back toward Loch Modan; I figured that having a warlock at my back would make some of those monsters easier to handle. Lorrax had to handle some real-world issues for a bit, so I wandered around just east and south of the ram farm and discovered a quarry with two more quests! I was cheerfully mining and whacking troggs when Lorrax returned, and joined the questing. While we were in the quarry, we met Thazorin, a dwarf priest who joined the fun. Many troggs were smitten by our combined might, and some good loot came out of our cooperation. Those two are now on my friends list for future gaming.

Back by myself in Loch Modan this morning, I found that I'm now able to handle the bears and spiders on my own as long as I don't get mobbed. Checking my mail, I discovered that the leather pattern I put up for auction sold for almost 50 silver... SWEET! There are some castles or something on high cliffs around here that I really want to investigate, but I haven't found a path to them yet. There also seem to be plenty of mining spots, but they tend to be near Splinterskull Trogg camps, and I can't handle more than one of those beasties at a time; I'll have to group with somebody to get those.

BTW: Thelsarma is officially not so lame. There is a forge there, it's just in a weird location where you don't look for it and don't spot it immediately.

Dance Languishes On

Well, it still seems that no one can get away from mundania long enough for a dance class for one reason or another. School, work, and high-fuel prices seem to have everyone thoroughly tied up on Thursday nights. Well, I've reached the point where I don't get uptight about it anymore. I'm still wanting to go up to Murray to teach them some more dances; they're a good group, and I was sorry to miss their event a couple of weeks back. When is always the question. I need to check my calendar. Memorial Day weekend I'll be in Mobile; I wonder if the Barony of Osprey has anything interesting going on that weekend.

WoW: Ouchies galore...

Darzun took a griffon to Ironforge to conduct business this morning. I put a leather pattern he had in his bank box up for auction, then did some smelting and forging at the Great Forge. I have a quest to make some copper axes and copper chain belts; gotta get that belt pattern from a smith trainer. Darzun's not skilled enough to use the cooking recipe in his deposit box, so that stays for a while. Guess it's fire-building to build skill for a while.

Back in Thelsarma, Darzun decided to try some more mining and maybe hack down some of the local beasties with his new, self-made copper axe to build skill with it. Not such a good idea. The roaming beasties of Loch Modan are harsh on a Level 10 Paladin. Maybe he'll just go back to Dun Morogh for a little while before working those Loch Modan quests...

WoW: What's wrong with this picture?

So, after a bit of wandering, Darzun managed to find the road to Loch Modan and eventually ended up in the the village of Thelsarna (Is that spelled right? Whatever!). Along the way, he filled his spare bag with copper ore and stone, figuring to use the forge in the village to smelt out some copper bars.

BZZZZZT! Bad plan. It appears that this dwarven village doesn't have a forge! That is just wrong on many levels. Fortunately I have some business to conduct in Ironforge, and there's a griffon station in this otherwise under-equipped village, so I'll find a forge in the city to do my smelting.

Arts & Sciences

The pewter has not yet arrived. Just as well, I need to get plaster for cheap, practice molds and a face shield, still. Hopefully this weekend will be the weekend of my first pewter-casting efforts.

I still need to dig a charcoal kiln and cut up some wood for it. That project has been languishing for a while. Of course, finding a place where I can dig a sufficiently deep pit without hitting rock will be an interesting challenge in my yard...

Maybe Next Spring?

Well, it appears that Henry Horton is booked for November 19th, so if I were to bid for Iris Fair, it would probably have to be at Cumberland Centre. Not a bad site, but not one of my favorites for November weather. I could check with some other parks, I suppose, but frankly I'd prefer to have this event at a warmer time anyway. I guess I'll plan it for next spring sometime.

Iris Fair, Border Raids, and A&S

Well, the next weekend on the Kingdom calendar that I consider open enough to attempt is November 19th. That could be a very cold event. On the other hand, it might be perfectly comfortable. You never know in middle Tennessee. I've seen at inquiry to see if Henry Horton State Park is available that weekend; it would at least give people the option of retreating indoors (big hall, conference rooms, motel rooms, and/or cabins) if the weather was bad, and it's not really a bad site for an event (although the restaurant leaves a bit to be desired). Failing November, I'd say the next real opportunity is next April.

Border Raids is coming up down in Delvingrim, and I think we're going to set up a House Optimus camp. It should be interesting to see how well Cumberland Center handles such a large event. I will also be interesting to see how many Midrealmers make the trip. I don't see that it's a lot farther south of their border than Fort Knox is north of ours, but rumor has it they'll have poor numbers this year. Next year, of course, is the Midrealm's year to host, and the shire is considering bidding for it the year after (2007). I think we should, but whether the rest of the shire will go for it remains to be seen.

I put in my order for a bar of pewter last Friday; I expect it will probably arrive sometime this week. Then I have to get off my buttocks and start being crafty. First project is an Argent Comet medallion which I can hopefully turn out in bulk and donate to the Kingdom (less one for myself, of course).

Rough Stone is Good for Something (WoW)

I was wondering if the Rough Stone I was obtaining in the course of my copper mining had any value. Turns out it's used to make sharpening stones and mace weights. I've now got a bunch of those. Oddly, it seems I'll be using a fair amount of linen in the construction of weapons... go figure. I've so got to get Darzun another bag of some kind; there's just not enough room in his one bag and backpack for all of his professional tools and materials.

No Rush on Iris Fair

Well, the Shire consensus is that Iris Fair is an event we would like to do, but August 20th isn't a good date. I'll be looking into alternatives and see if I can come up with a better date, but my first glance at the extended Kingdom Calendar shows almost nothing open in the fall, November 19th being the only possible exception. It may just not happen this year.

Never Visit a City at Rush Hour (WoW)

I attempted to take care of a little business with Darzun last night before leaving Ironforge. Big mistake. Lag Hell. My system literally couldn't get caught up enough for me to type "/quit" in real time. Fortunately the keyboard cash worked and I was able to signout.

Playing in the morning definitely works better for me. I woke up at 5:30 this morning and figured I might as well get in a little WoW time. It's MUCH easier in the wee hours of the morning. Darzun picked up his mail (a bag and an axe from Escovar), learned to use the axe, completed a couple of quest, and stocked up on copper ore. I'll probably try to do some refining and forging tonight.

I also learned the cooking profession; I figured I might as well, since you can have some non-trade professions, and it gives me something to do with all the boar meat I'm finding (I even have the Boar Ribs recipe in my bank box; oh joy, I have to go back to a city again).

Iris Fair Bid to be Voted

Tonight is meeting night for the Shire of Glaedenfeld, and my bid to do Iris Fair on August 20th will come up for a vote. Based on last week's comments, I daresay it will have no problems, but I really would like to nail down a couple of open items on cost, like the cost of renting portajohns for the weekend. Nobody seems to keep rates for such things online. I guess I'll just have to call this afternoon if I haven't heard back from Cumberland Centre (who I was hoping could tell me the service the usually use and their rates).

It's so wrong, but still so cool.

Aaron Williams, the writer and artist of Nodwick, posted a link to a Honda Del Sol dressed up as an X-Wing on his blog this morning. I'm not sure I would do it with mine, but it's still really, really cool.

Nothing of great consequence...

There's nothing of great consequence occurring today, although I did submit my entry for Kingdom Arts & Sciences via the online entry form. Francesca and I will be dancing Laccio d'Amore again. Hopefully we can get in enough practice between now and then to make it worth the effort.

The real update for the day is the expansion to my link list, which you can see in the right column. Have fun browsing.

And so the weekend ends...

The "Mile Long Yard Sale" was decidedly un-thrilling; we brought entirely to much stuff back with us (and no, we didn't buy anything). My good lady Fjorleif is currently working on getting rid of it through Freecycle so we don't have to put it back in storage. The day was cold, intermittently rainy, and pretty darn dull. I do have to compliment Denise, our hostess (our tent was set up in her yard) for making the day far less miserable by providing lunch and generally being very gracious.

All things considered, I would much rather have gone to Shadow of the Wolf (the Shire of Redewolfe's first event) on Saturday. I hear it was actually a rather good event, if small.

The panelling in the cabin is almost all finished up stairs. I also managed to squander a few hours playing World of Warcraft over the weekend. Escovar (mage) hit L10 and Darzun (paladin) reached L8. I've found it can be surprisingly difficult to give away equipment that I'm not going to use. I've still got a "green" axe that I'd like to give to a L5+ warrior somewhere, but I haven't been able to find one.

No Dance This Week Either

I sent a message to my mailing list asking if anyone was going to attend dance practice, and as of yet nobody has said yes, but several people have said no. I'm therefore saving myself a couple of hours of boredom by calling off the whole thing. I'm beginning to wonder when, if ever, we'll get back to having practices.

On a different note, there's an event down at Cumberland Centre this weekend that I unfortunately will miss. Redewolfe is holding "Shadow of the Wolf" down there, and I wouldn't mind day-tripping, but that's the same day that we have a space reserved at the "mile-long yard sale" in Watertown, so I'll be busy. Grumble, grumble.

We started having fighter practice outside this week. I don't know why I was so totally inept Tuesday night, but I felt really out of it. I need to set myself up a pell or something. At least the yard sale should clear some space around the house.

Cabin Progress

Oh, the joys of a weekend of yard work. Once again, muscles I forgot I had are reminding me of their existence in a painful manner.

However, we have the yard pretty-well mowed, a garden started, panelling up in the cabin, and electricity run to the cabin. Not a bad weekend of work: many thanks to all those who came out and pitched in. Rich and I still need to finish that game of Star Wars Trivial Pursuit to see who is truly the more serious Star Wars geek.

Next weekend will be the mile-long yard sale in Watertown, where we shall hopefully divest ourselves of large quantities of space-claiming junk and make a little cash on the side.

Dance practice this week; here's hoping that I will actually have students.

As if I didn't already have enough to do...

I must say that I've been mildly annoyed that the last two awards I received didn't come with "regalia". Usually you get a painted-leather medallion with the Order of the Argent Comet, and a belt token with the Order of the Argent Rapier. I guess the King wasn't kidding at Gulf Wars when he said that the regalia stockpile is really low.

So, I figured I'd have to make my own regalia, and if I'm going to do that, I might as well make lots of regalia. To that end, I'm researching how to cast pewter in soapstone molds. I'll be doing my early experiments in plaster, since I don't want to go through a lot of soapstone on mistakes (I can always melt down the pewter mistakes). Plaster molds won't be as durable, but they'll do during the learning process. I've already got a cheap set of carving tools (I won't buy expensive ones until I'm good enough to warrant them). Basically, all I need to do is order metal...

And then he gave me crack...

Rich set me up with one of his old PCs, which is substantially better than the dinosaurs I've been running, and a copy of World of Warcraft last week. I managed to get the computer together Sunday afternoon and install WoW, then I spent four hours downloading and installing patches. He assures me that it's worth the effort. I killed thirty minutes this morning creating a human mage and getting him up to level two. There are legitimate concerns within my household about how much of my life this game is going to consume; we shall see.

I've cobbled together an event proposal for August 20th. I guess I'll be bringing it up at the next shire meeting. We shall see if they act on it in a timely fashion.

Gripe, Gripe, Gripe

I'm feeling rather unappreciated today. I had near-zero attendance at dance class last night (again), which makes it pretty darned difficult to teach anything. Only one person made a good-faith effort to let me know she wouldn't be there, so I basically wasted an hour and a half. Grumble, grumble...

More Swetnam Tricks

I worked with several of Swetnam's techniques for single sword last night, and they turn out to be pretty interesting. Of particular interest is what I've been calling the "two handed beat". Basically, you put your off hand on your own blade and use the extra force and leverage to beat your opponent's blade aside. With the extra strength you get from the off hand, you can smack someone off-line easily, but you can also control your own point so that you don't go off line with the momentum. You therefore create a beautiful window of opportunity for a thrust to your opponent's body.

I need to get off my duff and convert my Swetnam paper into a web page...

Insulation Monkey

Over the weekend, we managed to finish sticking insulation into the upper floor of the cabin; I spent most of the afternoon hours in a silly jump suit and filter mask. I think I looked like one of the evil scientists from ET. We also carried the panelling up there, but haven't nailed it in place, yet. Since we're planning to visit my parents over the coming weekend, I don't expect there'll be much progress this week.

Jodi may come out to her first fencing practice tonight, but I'm not sure. She disappeared from work fairly early without me getting a chance to confirm. It'll be nice if she makes it, though. More drills for my little students. They must submit to my will! Or not... I haven't actually received my replacement Authorization Card, yet, so technically Corbin has to be in charge. Heh, heh... he'll love that. "Do paperwork, foo!"

We'll also be having dance practice this week, after several weeks off. I really should come up with a lesson plan, but such things are always so dependent on attendance that it's rather impractical. I guess I'll just wing it as usual.

My congratulations go out to Llewelyn and Ursus for joining the Order of the Meridian Blade.