Wine at the Grocery

There are a couple of bills before the Tennessee legislature that, if passed, would permit grocery stores in the state to sell wine. Naturally there are lobbyists on both sides of this bill, but some of them are full of hot air.

Chuck Groover is the senior pastor of Victory Baptist Church in Mount Juliet. He argues that making wine available in more places will lead to more alcoholism.

“Convenience for a few should be the last justification for making higher alcohol-content drink, wine, more accessible to the public by allowing sale in grocery stores.”

Fine, Chuck. Why don’t you show us some statistical evidence that alcoholism rates are higher in states where wine is available in grocery stores compared to states where it isn’t?

Statistics from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism show that Tennessee does, in fact, have one of the lowest alcohol consumption rates in the country. Average consumption in the US is 2.27 gallons per person per year, while the average consumption in Tennessee is less than 2.00 g/p/y. Is it because Tennessee doesn't allow wine to be sold in groceries?

Wikipedia conveniently has a comparison of alcohol laws by state, so let’s examine them.

Other states at the bottom of the consumption rate chart with Tennessee include Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, Kentucky, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Utah, and West Virginia. Of these, Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, North Carolina, and West Virginia (five out of nine) allow wine sales in grocery stores; Kentucky and West Virginia even allow distilled alcohol sales in grocery stores.

States that forbid wine sales in groceries include Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Kansas, Minnesota, Mississippi, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Utah, and Wyoming. Of these, Alaska, Colorado, Delaware, North Dakota, Rhode Island, and Wyoming (six out of fifteen) are at the top of the NIAAA charts with consumption rates greater than 2.50 g/p/y.

Where’s the connection, Chuck? I don’t have a big stake in this vote, but your reasoning (that wine sales in grocery stores increase alcoholism) doesn’t hold up to statistical analysis. More than half of the states at the low end of the alcohol consumption scale permit wine sales in groceries, and over a third of the states at the high end of the consumption scale forbid wine sales in groceries.

Perhaps Pastor Chuck should confine himself to Biblical arguments instead of making unsupported claims about the effects of wine availability on alcoholism rates.

Incompetent Design: Am I Refuted?

Randy Stimpson certainly thinks that he has definitely refuted the arguments I made about “specified complexity” way back in 2005.

I pointed out in my original article that two phrases of a given length (in which the same set of characters are available) are equally unlikely. Randy thinks that in my rebuttal of the probability argument against the Theory of Evolution, I somehow missed the point. I don't see how I did; maybe he's trying to introduce a new point.

To save length, I'll use my own character strings. Let's compare, shall we? If you read my previous article, these will be familiar.

WETHEPEOPLEOFTHEUNITEDSTATES
OMECIHUATLACEUCUCYOTICIHUATI

My first trick was to put these phrases side-by-side, noting that the odds of drawing either at random was the same. I would ask, which of these contains “information”, though. Randy has added some criteria for information.

1. It consists of properly spelled English words.
2. It is grammatically correct.
3. It makes sense.

Put that way, the first phrase obviously contains information; it lacks space and punctuation, but there's obviously a sensible phrase of English words in there. Of course, if you read my other article, you know that the second phrase also makes sense, it consists of two obscure (but related) words that I chose from another language. I was attempting to point out, at the time, that patterns and “information” are contextual: the first phrase is much more obviously information to an English-speaking audience than the second, but they both contain information. Now let's look at a really random string.

VJVUFORMHLBFBXIXSBNEUISLAFJHY

This string is not one that I carefully constructed. I set the caps lock and then just randomly pecked around the keyboard, only restricting myself to staying on the letters area and not hitting the same key twice in succession. Even so, I still managed to get a properly spelled English word by accident. Does that mean that this string contains information?

Randy's problem is that he thinks DNA must be constructed exactly like English sentences. Every word must be spelled correctly, the word order must be correct, and the sentence must be coherent when everything comes together the first time. Unfortunately for him, DNA doesn't look anything like that. DNA looks much more like my third string: it's mostly gibberish, but every once in a while there's an actual gene found in the DNA strand. An actual piece of DNA might look more like the following string.

DSSADIINUNITEDSDFIOVOFRNTHEVNMCVUIWECVNJSTATESASEWNMPEOPLEASDF

Sure, it looks like gibberish at a glance, but if you sort through it carefully, you'll find all the words you need to make my first phrase in there (although you may notice that “THE” only appears in it once). This structure is analagous to the human genome. The great majority of the human genome doesn't code for anything, and the portions that do code for actual proteins are scattered all over it, not neatly organized.

Randy asks “What is the probability that a random character generator would produce a grammatically correct sequence of characters that makes sense?”, but it's not an accurate analogy, because DNA isn't a sequence of characters that make sense. It's a hodgepodge of genes in no particular order.

A more accurate question might be “What is the probability that a random character generator will produce a sequence of characters that forms an English word?” Notice that I accidentally came up with one within eight characters (honest, I did not put “FORM” in there on purpose).

Now, suppose that you have a rather faulty mechanism for reproducing your strings. Letters occasionally get added, removed, or substituted. In fact, whole sections can get moved around, duplicated, or deleted. Through many copies of copies, words will form. Some will get broken again, but some will stick around for a while. Suppose you start throwing out strings that don't have a particular word: you'll stop having strings that lack that word. As more words emerge, they, too, can become necessary in subsequent copies. After many copies of copies, what might you have? Something like my fourth string, perhaps?

To Randy I can only say, I don't think I'm the one getting it wrong.

Food Porn: India, Italy, and the Carribbean

I've had some cooking pictures sitting on the camera for a while, and I've finally gotten around to downloading them, so here's a mass food porn post. First, we made moong dal, a lentil curry, a while back. At least, we made it with red lentils; various recipes on the internet call for split peas and moong beans. The recipe for this one comes from a book, 50 Great Curries of India, by Camellia Panjabi.

I think I'm okay sharing the recipe, since I had to do a bit of substituting. Besides, this is a free plug for the book, right? Anyway, the ingredients include...

• 1 cup of red lentils
• 1 can of diced tomatoes with green chilis
• roughly one cubic inch of ginger root, peeled and chopped
• 3 teaspoons of minced garlic
• 1/4 teaspoon of powdered tumeric
• salt to taste
  
• cilantro to taste (which is a lot, in my case)
• 1 tablespoon of butter

I brought five cups of water to boil in a large pot, then added the lentils, tomatoes, ginger, most of the garlic, some salt, and the tumeric. When it came back to a boil, I lowered the heat, covered it, and let it simmer for half an hour. Then, I tossed in cilantro and let it simmer a bit more while I browned the remaining garlic in butter. The "golden brown and delicious" garlic then goes into the pot, and the curry can be served over rice. Better yet, put the moong dal and rice in a tortilla.

Second, I was scrounging for lunch one day and found we had some packaged gnocchi in the cupboard. A bit of net searching and a further check of on-hand ingredients later, I was able to make this sage-parmesan gnocchi (with a bit of grilled chicken thrown in).


And finally, tonight I really wanted to do something with some black beans that were already cooked, so I found a recipe for Jamaican Curried Rice. In the spirit of "fusion", it too goes well in a tortilla.

And I actually remembered to take some pictures of the process for this one.

D&D: For Lack of a Better Topic

When in doubt, I can always write about D&D games. Last night, the storied picked up exactly where it left off; they had defeated the twigblights, but they were still a long way out in the woods.

Showing that they are, in fact, catching on, the party conducted a thorough search of the darkwood grove and turned up quite a bit of loot left behind by previous victims of the twigblights. This new wealth secured, they set about retracing their steps back to the village of Myre, which Eileen again managed without incident (with her +11 on Survival checks, she only needs to roll a 4 to navigate, even in pretty bad circumstances).

Arriving back in Myre, they found their contact, Alian, who arranged for them to travel back down river with some “lumberjacks” who were floating logs downstream to the lumber yards of the city of Reicha. The lumbermen had a barge loaded with smaller wood that floated in the mass, and there were a couple of canoes on board that they used when they needed to move around the river to break up log jams or keep logs from floating away. The number of logs wasn’t the huge, river-clogging mass that you might see from clear-cutting with modern equipment, but there were still quite a few, and the barge had to stop periodically to keep the whole shipment together. This meant that travel back downstream was considerably slower than their original trip upstream.

(Note: I really know next-to-nothing about how a real log flow would work, but my players don't either, so... yeah.)

Well, one of the stops to break a log jam seemed to be taking forever, and the barge captain sent someone out in the second boat to see what was taking so long. The party decided to help, but the remaining boat wouldn’t hold them all, so they decided to go log-skipping to shore and move up along the bank to where the first boat was trying to clear the log jam. Hilarity ensued as, one by one, the party members failed their Balance checks to stay standing on the floating, bobbing, rolling logs. Everyone ended up swimming at some point, and a couple of rescues were even necessary for people who went under amid the bobbing logs (hooray for strong-swimming half-orcs).

When everyone was finally on shore, they traipsed upstream to where the boats had met at the log jam. There, they found the first boatman dead, apparently stabbed from behind with a rough wooden stake. Suddenly alert to danger, Eileen spotted some kind of creature hidden among the floating logs and took a shot at it with her sling. She missed, and it took off, crawling away among the floating logs, it’s passage only marked by the occasional disturbance among them.

Krag (the half-orc) broke up the log jam, and the party returned to the barge, now watchful for danger. There were no further incidents that day, but Eileen spotted the creature again during her watch that night. She woke Krag and the others, but the creature again fled before they could try to engage it.

The trip downstream continued the next day. One of the boatmen went out to clear another log jam, and Wellby (the halfling ranger) spotted the creature on shore, apparently up to no good. Wellby took a shot with his bow that landed solidly on target, and the thing again fled. Wellby and the others set off for the shore, hoping to track the creature down, and that’s where the night’s session ended…

D&D: A Walk in the Park

We had another D&D session on Monday. Krag the half-orc barbarian had been dominating the arena battles (predictably enough), so I figured it was time to change to an environment that would favor other characters.

Consequently, the group was approached by someone they had met on their previous body-guarding assignment. This individual, Lucius, wanted them to travel to the Hawkwood Forest northwest of the city and determine why some foresters sent to harvest from a darkwood grove had not returned.

The party’s Halfling ranger, Wellby, handled most of the negotiations. Amusing though he can be, it may not be the best idea to have a pathological boaster with a charisma penalty handle your negotiations. He claimed that the party sorcerer, Kechara, could call lightning from the sky, something that Lucius promptly asked to see demonstrated. As Kechara could not, in fact, do any such thing (yet), the negotiated fee for their services suffered somewhat.

The fee settled, the party traveled up river to the village of Myre, situated at the edge of the forest. Their contacts there were Alian, a local “leather merchant” who relied totally on his apprentice to do any actual leather working, and the huntress who had actually spotted the darkwood grove in question. Her directions to grove were not exactly precise: “Travel upstream to the first tributary from the north bank, follow that to the rocky strand with the waterfall and turn west on the game trail until you see a hill with a limestone outcrop. From there you’ll be able to see the grove.”

Those simple directions would require a DC 15 Survival check for every landmark to avoid getting lost, not to mention a DC 15 Knowledge (nature) check to recognize the darkwood grove from a distance when looking for it from the hilltop. I figured this would be a chance for either the druid, Eileen, or Wellby to shine. As it turns out, Eileen has a Survival check of around +11, so navigating to the darkwood grove was a piece of cake for her. I was hoping the party would blow at least one of the Survival checks, as I was going to inflict a random encounter on them every time they failed one, but Eileen never missed a step.

The threat at the grove was a group of Twigblights, small plant creatures from the Monster Manual II that like to fertilize themselves with fresh blood. These are CR 1/3 creatures, and knowing the devastating nature of Krag, I threw ten of them at the party (although they didn’t all enter combat at the same time). According to the encounter calculator, this would be a “very difficult” fight, but it turned out to be only moderately difficult, at most.

So the most interesting part of the evening turned out to be earlier, in Myre, when Wellby got drunk, annoyed pretty much everyone, and was knocked out by a frustrated Krag. To relieve their frustrations, the other party members dumped Wellby into a horse trough to sleep off his drunk. Upon waking, he decided to break into the inn and “tea bag” Krag, but didn’t move quietly enough. Krag flung him across the room, where he was pummeled into submission by irate inn patrons and sent to the village lockup for the rest of the night.

After a Long Absence

Yes, it’s been very nearly a month since I last posted. A rather full month, as it turns out. Early in February, I got laid off. This was particularly annoying, since during the interview process the company had explained at length that they wanted someone who would stay full time rather than run off after other opportunities within a few months. Nonetheless, when the economy started to sour, I rather suddenly became less of a necessity and more of an expensive luxury.

Fortunately, I hadn’t burned any bridges with my previous employer, so I was able to get another job offer within a week. I’m now back with my previous company, earning more than I earned from them before, but not as much as I was getting from the company that laid me off. Still, I’ll be able to pay the bills, so I’m not going to complain overmuch.

That said, the upheaval has upset my life somewhat, and having various cars suddenly need repairs hasn’t helped. The most annoying downside, however, is that I won’t be able to go to Gulf Wars this year. This will be the first Gulf Wars I’ve missed since I started seriously playing in the SCA, so I’m more than a little bummed. Maybe things will settle down enough for me to go to Pennsic, instead.

Saltare came and went during the job crisis, and I did manage to go to that, so I have a few pictures to share.

104th Skeptics’ Circle Posted

The 104th Skeptics' Circle is now online at Space City Skeptics. I made a contribution (been a while), but if you're finding about the Skeptics' Circle here, you've already read my article by now.

Food Porn: Kålrot

So, with a bit of help, I managed to make kålrot this evening. It was an excuse to cook with a rutabaga. I've never had rutabaga... it seemed like a good idea at the time. We doubled the recipe, so it turned out to be...

• 2 teaspoons of dried beef bouillon
• 1-1/2 cups of water
• 6 medium carrots, chopped
• 2 large leeks, including the green, chopped
• 3 cups of rutabaga (worked out to one rutabaga, actually), peeled and cubed
• 1-1/2 lbs. of bratwurst
• Salt and pepper to taste

After dissolving the bouillon in the water, we added the vegetables and simmered them on medium heat for about 15 minutes. Then we cut the bratwurst into bite-sized pieces and let them heat up for about 5 minutes. We put in a bit of salt and pepper in the pot, but mostly just added it as desired at the table.

This turned out to be really good. Rutabaga is vaguely like a cross between a carrot and a potato. It has a very bright yellow color when cooked this way, making kålrot a visually appealing dish, as well as a tasty one. While the sausage is nice if this is your entire meal, I think it would be rather superfluous if you were preparing kålrot as a side-dish.

The Chief Thrusts

A Right Stock, or Stockata, is to be put in upwards with strength and quickness of the body, and the guard for the putting in a stoke is leaning so far back with your face and body as you can, and the hilts of your rapier so near the ground, or so low as you can, but of this guard I have spoken sufficiently already.

A Slope Stock is to be made unto your enemy’s breast or unto his rapier shoulder if he looks over his rapier, but in putting it in, you must wheel about your rapier hand towards your left side, turning your knuckles inward, this thrust being put in slope-wise as aforesaid, will hit your enemy which lies upon the Cross guard or the Careless guard or the Broad ward, when a right stock or plain fore right thrust will not hit.

An Imbrokata is a falsifying thrust, first to proffer it towards the ground so low as your enemy’s knee, and then presently put it home unto your enemy’s dagger shoulder or unto any part of his dagger arm, for he will put down his dagger to defend you feigned thrust, but cannot recover his dagger again before you have hit him in the dagger arm, shoulders, or face, whether you will yourself, for in proffering this thrust, the is no way to defend the upper part, the dagger being once down, but only with the single rapier, and except a man expects it, it cannot be so defended either.

A Reverse is to be made when your enemy, by gathering in upon you, causes you to fall back with your right foot, and then your left foot being foremost, keeping up your dagger to defend and having once broken your enemy’s thrust with your dagger, presently come in again with your right foot and hand together, and so put in your reverse unto what part of his body you please, for it will come with such force that it is hard to be prevented.

The Mountanto is to be put in with a good celerity of the body and in this manner; you must frame your guard when you intend to charge your enemy with this thrust, bear your rapier hard upon or so near the ground as you can, lying very low with your body, bowing you left knee very near the ground also, and either upon your enemy’s thrust or in lying in his guard you may strike his rapier point toward you right side with your dagger so that it may pass clear under your rapier arm, and with the same motion as you strike his rapier, suddenly mount up your rapier hand higher than your head, turning your knuckles upward, but turn the point of your rapier downwards over his rapier arm into his breast or shoulder, and you must be quick in the performances of this thrust, and likewise nimbly must you leap out again. This thrust must be put in by stepping forward of your left leg: now if you use this thrust more than once, your enemy will expect your coming aloft with him as you did before, but then put it in the second or third time underneath, and you shall hit him about the girdle-stead, and so because at this time I will not be over tedious I leave to speak of many other thrusts.

--Joseph Swetnam, The Schoole of Defence, Chapter 12 (1617)

Show Me the Magick

As you may have noticed, I recently sold out and put Google ads on the Saga. I guess it was inevitable that some peculiar advertisers would start showing up there, given the Saga’s content. I mean, it’s a natural consequence of articles about D&D and the like that I get ads for people selling spell-casting services, right?

When Decca saw an ad pop up for “Magicks of the World”, she couldn’t resist checking it out. Honest, Google guys – I did not click on that link myself.


That said, I wouldn’t feel particularly guilty if I had clicked on that link: “Magicks of the World” doesn’t look like the gold standard of business ethics. For starters, they claim to have a 100% money-back guarantee, but there’s no link to the terms of that guarantee anywhere on the home page, and I’ve yet to find them anywhere else, either.

This site sells spell castings with prices ranging from about $40 to nearly $660 (and I daresay you could make a special request for something even more expensive). They also point out that multiple castings are likely to get better results.

WE RECOMMEND MULTIPLE PURCHASES IN ORDER TO TACKLE A PROBLEM FROM MULTIPLE ANGLES! PLEASE INQUIRE IF YOU NEED HELP SELECTED WHAT MIGHT WORK TOGETHER BEST, AS SOME SPELLS DO BETTER THAN OTHERS WHEN PURCHASED TOGETHER!

SOMETIMES IT IS BEST TO PURCHASE MULTIPLE COPIES OF THE SAME SPELL. THIS WILL UPGRADE THE POTENCY OF THE WORK, WITHOUT THE HASSLE OF TRYING TO SELECT A NEW ANGLE. WE WOULD ALSO BE HAPPY TO HELP SELECT THE ANGLES FOR YOU, IF YOU FEEL COMFORTABLE WITH US.

Wait a minute, aren’t these things 100% guaranteed? Why would you need multiple castings if a spell is guaranteed to work? Curious, that.

And if that’s not ethically dubious enough for you, let’s look at some of their spell offerings (I know I’m emphasizing the worst the site has to offer, but still).

SECRET AFFAIR SEDUCTION SPELL
If you have your eyes set on someone specific, and really want to have an affair (or a random affair/one night stand) This is DEFINITELY for you! This work will bring you your affair naturally, whether you know the desired sexual friend, or wish to have a random stranger.

SEDUCE A PROFESSIONAL OF CHOICE SEX SPELL
Do you have a student you really wish you could have an affair with? Is there a teacher or boss of yours out there, who REALLY would make a good here and there lover? Do you REALLY want to jump the bones of a co-worker, nurse, or doctor? This work is definitely for you and your fantasy!

BREAK THEM UP LOVE SPELL
Are there two people together who you KNOW are not right for one another? Do you feel that a couple is doing no good together and just meant to be apart? This spell will help right these universal errors of certain flings!

MAKE LOVE DIVORCE LOVE SPELL
Is your lover in a bad marriage? Do you want to be their one and only without the interference of their toxic relationship? Break it up!!

MARRIAGE ON MONEY LOVE SPELL
Do you often wish that you had a rich spouse that would take care of everything for you? Do you envy women with husbands that make a lot of money? Get your own now!

VEGAS VICTORY MONEY SPELL
Do you ALWAYS feel down on your luck? Do you gamble all the time, but NEVER seem to win ANYTHING? In fact, you lose FAR MORE than you can afford? Do you wish you could be the person to win win win? This spell can definitely change your luck!

Even if I thought these spells would actually do anything, I’d consider them unethical. Since I don’t think they’ll have any effect whatsoever, it’s more a matter of the site taking people’s money for nothing. I mean, the site owner may go through the motions of a spell casting for each purchase, but why bother? It’s not like they’re going to have any real effect. Heck, someone who would buy a spell to break up someone's marriage probably deserves to be ripped off.

The site has a heap of testimonials, of course, but we all know how little that means. Given all the promises being made, it shouldn’t take much effort to produce some genuine statistical evidence of how effective these spells really are. Here’s an easy idea; take 100 people who are going gambling in Las Vegas, randomly use the “Vegas Victory” spell on half of them (without telling which ones get the spell, of course), and see if the “spelled” ones statistically win more money than the “un-spelled” gamblers. Of course, running a test like that (under neutral observation) would actually require confidence that these spells really work.

Oh, and “Madaam Glass” has the gall to run her own “scamblog” to help you tell the real psychics from the fakers.

By the way, I took the liberty of doing a domain lookup on Magicks of the World. It's address is a post office box, and the email addresses are random strings: wlm7Xi@privacypost.com and 9tlR1e@privacypost.com. Why not "admin@magicksoftheworld.com" and "tech@magicksoftheworld.com". For a psychic with a 100% guarantee of her powers, she sure likes her anonymity.

EDIT: A little further Googling has discovered a number of articles that suggest that Magicks of the World is just the latest in a series of scam websites run by the same con artist(s).

D&D: Total Party Kill

I didn't really mean to kill them... honest.

On day two at the gladiatorial arena, everyone in the group again awoke fully healed. After their bread-and-water breakfast, the guards came to get them one-by-one, as before. This time, they were taken to an armory, where they could help themselves to a fitting suit of leather armor and their choice of shields and weapons (although no bows, crossbows, or other projectiles). As they were being secured to the lifts that would take them up to the arena, they could see another group of similarly armed prisoners being gathered on the other platform.

Now, just so you know, I'm going to explain how I planned this session and what I expected the group to do as the situation developed. The prisoners on the other platform were commoners (an NPC class that is incredibly incompetent at fighting) ranging in level from one to three (and even the highest-level among them only had six hit points). These guys were meant to be cannon fodder, but not necessarily for the party. After all, the party is composed mostly of good-aligned characters, including a paladin. I figured they would probably try to negotiate a truce with the other prisoners, defying the arena staff and refusing to fight for their entertainment. It wouldn't take much role-playing effort for that to work. Even if they horrifically failed their diplomacy check and ended up fighting, three of the four commoners would probably be dropped by one sleep spell from the party's sorcerer.

In either of those scenarios, the crowd would boo, and the arena staff would reveal that they had been prepared for just such a situation. The gates at the end of the arena would open, and a giant scorpion would come barrelling into the arena. With the scorpion appearing behind the commoners, it would naturally direct its attacks against them first. The scorpion would be the real fight; it's got just enough hit dice (five) to be immune to a sleep spell, and it's not affected by charm person. Still, with all of the party pounding on it -- enchanted club, sneak attacks, magic missile spells, and good old warhammer smiting, I figured they'd be able to manage it before it shredded more than one of them, and that person would survive in the infirmary.

Alas, things did not go according to plan. When the locks on the platforms were released, the party went on the attack, and the sorcerer didn't just end it quickly with a sleep spell; he started tossing magic missiles. Being the pathetic commoners they were, the other "gladiators" dropped fast, but the sorcerer still managed to deplete all of his good spells, leaving him with nothing but level-zero "cantrips".

Naturally the audience wasn't satisfied with this one-sided slaughter, so the staff released the scorpion. Unfortunately, there was no cannon fodder to absorb it's first charge, and the closest target was the party's rogue. Lucky for her, it missed, but it was a short reprieve. In the next round, it dropped the paladin with one clip of a pincer (Important safety tip: If you're the party's tank, Constitution should not be your dump stat!). A round after that, the rogue was down and the druid was terribly, terribly hurt.

Still, the party had actually managed to hurt it; the sorcerer was using puny level-zero attacks, but they were adding up; the paladin and rogue had each gotten in a shot, and the druid gave it a good one. With one hit point left, she lucked out on her next round and the scorpion missed with every attack. If she nailed it with her next swing, it just might die. It was not to be, though; she missed with her next attack, and it struck her down. That left just the sorcerer and the scorpion. The only thing he had going for him was the mage armor spell he had cast at the start of the whole scenario. When the scorpion charged, the spell deflected its attack. The spell did not deflect its next full attack, though, and he didn't really have a chance of knocking it out before that attack came.

Well, the city had put them into the arena to get them killed, anyway, so there was really no reason to expect the staff to try to revive them all: it was a TPK. Plans for new characters are already under way, and a new campaign will begin soon, hopefully with a few lessons taken to heart.

Nigerian Email Conference

One of my LiveJournal friends shares a funny.

D&D: Welcome to Your New Home

So, the party woke up in the dungeons beneath the city’s gladiatorial arena last night. They got a few minutes to familiarize themselves with their surroundings before the guards came round to gather them up for their first fight.

Naturally someone had to try something foolish. The sorcerer, Jerrik, thought he could get them out of this mess with just a first level spell. He cast charm person at the first staff member he could see, hoping to get himself released that way.

There is not a huge magic-dampening field in this prison; that would be far too expensive. There is, however, an alarm that sounds if a spell gets cast in the dungeon. The spell target’s buddies grabbed him and ushered him out before he could go talk to his new friend, and the arena’s chief of security came down to check out the spell caster in cell twelve. Jerrik ended up being knocked out by a color spray spell and waking up with some extra restraints to keep him from speaking or using his fingers for gestures. I guess intelligence was his dump stat.

The remaining party members were escorted one by one to a platform in a machine room, where they were locked to mechanisms in the floor. A little ways away, on another platform, they could see the bugbear they were going to get to fight. As the platforms were lifted to the arena floor, the party could see a nice bloodthirsty crowd and a few simple weapons that would be within easy reach. The locks at their ankles popped open, and it was on.

The party spent their first actions in a mad scramble for weapons while the bugbear charged, getting in one good smack to the paladin (how the heck do you spell that name, William?). Aislinge maneuvered to flank Xobas (the bugbear) while Nafrit put a spell on the club she picked up.

The paladin got in one good whack to Xobas before being knocked out by another solid clubbing. With a slight adjustment of their positions, Aislinge and Nafrit kept Xobas flanked, which allowed a combination of enchanted club strikes and rogue sneak attacks to put him down.

So, the group now knows the consequences of their little flub at the gates. Now I just have to work out what other options they have for attempting to escape. At least they’ve got convenient healing resources (the staff don’t necessarily want them to kick off too quickly) and plenty of opportunities to score experience.

D&D: Party Fail

Technically, I could call it a Total Party Kill, since no one was left conscious at the end, and the opposition could summarily execute them on the spot, but I’d hate to have to start from scratch again, so it looks like the party is going to be captured, instead.

But that’s the end of the story. Let’s jump back to the beginning. In our previous session, the party had come upon the aftermath of an attack on a charcoal burners' camp on the road through the forest. The charcoal kilns were broken, most of the buildings were burning, and the human workers were apparently all dead. The only significant life was a small band of kobolds pillaging the camp. The kobolds spotted the party and a fight ensued with the party victorious (if rather badly hurt). They stayed that night in one of the relatively undamaged buildings of the camp. Last night’s session began with the party waking up the next morning.

After sorting themselves out, preparing new spells, and applying a bit of healing magic, they continued on their way back to town. That’s right: they left without conducting a search of the camp or looting the bodies of the kobolds or even wondering how nine kobolds managed to defeat dozens of humans, no matter how poorly they were armed. This would be big fail number one for the night. (Edit: Apparently they never got my impression of the number of people in the camp, so the small number of kobolds did not seem strange to them.)

They head back to town, passing a troop of cavalry on their way out toward the camp to see what the big column of smoke is all about; no big deal here. As they near town, however, they find a huge crowd of people lined up to get through the city gate: the city guards are on alert and checking everyone trying to enter. For those who don’t know, the government of this city is pretty xenophobic, anyone who isn’t a member of the Italian-looking majority is a second class citizen. The party includes two dark-skinned southerners, a half-elf, and a just-acquired pale blond northern boy. Needless to say, odds are good they’ll be turned away at the gate.

But all is not lost, a teenage boy approaches the group and offers to show them a secret way into town if they’ll take a package to his uncle for him. Credit where credit is due, the party is pretty suspicious and manages a line of questions that trips him up. He sprints away, but the druid sends her horse after him and he’s kicked unconscious (Edit: in the "my bad" department, he was originally subdued by a sleep spell, but he was technically immune to that spell; I concluded that there was no way he was going to outrun the horse, so that became his retconned undoing). A quick detect magic determines that there’s something magical about the package he wanted them to deliver. The teenage boy turns out to be an elf in disguise (the city government and the forest elves don’t get along at all, if you didn’t know).

Figuring that turning in this troublemaker would give them an excuse to proceed to the front of the line and ingratiate them with the guards, they head around the crowd to talk to some gate guards. Wanting to examine it for themselves, the party’s new sorcerer tucks the package under his cloak: big fail number two. The guards are not fooled, unfortunately, and insist on seeing what he has. One of the guards opens the package, and it explodes. Everyone in the group attempts a reflex save. One of them even passes it. Unfortunately, even with one of them taking half damage, none of them has enough hit points to remain conscious after the blast.

And with that, we have what amounts to a TPK. It would be a pain to make everyone roll new characters, so I’m assuming the guards will make sure they survive and then deliver them to some sort of prison. Now I have to decide where they’ll wake up and what sort of unpleasantness awaits them when they do.

Religious Judgement

I guess this is what fundamentalists consider fair...

Under Iran's Islamic law, adultery is punishable by stoning, but such sentences are rare. International human rights groups have long criticized stoning in Iran as a cruel form of punishment.

Jamshidi did not describe how the stonings were carried out. But typically under Islamic rulings, a man is buried up to his waist, while a woman is buried up to her neck. Those carrying out the verdict then throw stones until the person dies. If the person manages to escape from the hole, he or she will remain free under Islamic law.

--source

So how come this process makes it so much easier for the men to escape?

Not that I'm necessarily trying to bust on Muslims, mind you. The Bible prescribes stoning for several offenses, and some of them are just as unfair.

Food Porn: Beer-Pickled Salmon

Recently, we made Beer Pickled Salmon, pictured below.


We tweaked the recipe just a bit, so here's how it actually went.

Ingredients:

• 1 sea salmon, or the appropriate amount of filet
• Marinade consisting of:
• 1/2 cup of water
• 1/2 cup of white vinegar (5%)
• 1 bottle of strong, dark beer (Guiness, in this case)
• 2 tablespoons salt
• 5 tablespoons sugar
• 1 tablespoon mustard seed
• 1 tablespoon whole black pepper
• 4 bay leaves
• 1 onion, sliced into thin rings
• 5 clove tacks

Process:

• Mix the marinade and bring it to boil.
• Cool down and pour over bite-sized dice of salmon fillets until covered.
• Refrigerate for at least 12 hours before serving.

The dish will reportedly stay fresh for two to three weeks in the refrigerator, but that's never been tested, because there's never been any left after the first day.

Another Party Win

So the party finished scouring the old wizard's keep for the clues they were seeking, coming away with a few minor items that had been hidden away and a map. And then Juliana had a stroke of brilliance.

They'd been hired to find some ancient magic secrets (which hadn't actually been at the keep -- was anyone surprised?), and she figured that the map was a clue in that direction, so they would go back to town and give it to their employer to collect their fee. She, however, proposed making their own copy first, so even if their employer did not hire them to follow the map, they could do so on their own.

They're getting so much more devious! I'm proud.

More PETA Insanity

We all know that the membership of PETA is composed of the delusional and stupid, but for some reason, it looks like they've also been infiltrated by the Deep Ones: they think they can discourage children from eating fish by convincing them that fish are really cute, cuddly sea kittens. I kid you not.


The website looks like Rainbow Brite, the Care Bears, and My Little Pony threw up into the ocean onto the mutant spawn of a catfish and Cthulu.

I've got news for you PETA guys: I know a 1-year-old who won't mistake a fish for a kitten. Kittens are cute, warm, furry incarnations of evil (yeah, I'm a dog person). Fish are cold, slimy, scaly denizens of the watery deep that taste great with malt vinegar. She can tell the difference.

But you can still have fun with their "make your own sea kitten" webtoy.

Tuna: It's what's for dinner!!

Morons

BEIJING (Reuters) – A panda with a record of aggressive behavior attacked a man who jumped into its enclosure at a Beijing zoo to pick up a toy, local media said on Thursday.

Sounds like the biting was well deserved, and the panda went easy on the guy (who had only minor injuries and required little more treatment than a mandatory rabies shot). This same panda has apparently bitten two other idiots who jumped into its enclosure on prior occasions.

Is it not self-evident that you should not jump into a cage with a live, undomesticated bear? I suppose a warning sign of some sort may be in order: "Warning - Observers of this animal occasionally demonstrate astonishing stupidity! Please leave the area if you are prone to stupidity!"

Yes, I'm a Slacker

I know. I haven't updated in nearly a month. In my defense, I have to set up a weblog for the Saltare Guild. I've got a few events coming up in the next couple of months, including this year's Saltare event, which will be on the weekend of February 14th. I'm finding that I have a few other Saltare related projects to do this year, as well, like get an accurate roster of members who can teach.

I've transcribed roughly half of chapter 12 of The Schoole of Defence, having gotten past Swetnam's descriptions of the basic guards for rapier and dagger and started on his descriptions of the basic attacks. Once it's all transcribed, I'll have to format it for the internet and find a place to host it.

I also have a preliminary list of dances for the Beginners' Ball at Gulf Wars. In no particular order, I've picked...

• Ballo del Fiore
• Black Nag
• Heart’s Ease
• Half Hannikin
• Sellingers’ Round
• Amoroso
• Gathering Peascods
• Official Bransle
• Hole in the Wall
• Horses Bransle
• Petite Riens
• Grimstock
• Jenny Pluck Pears
• Rufty Tufty
• Montarde Bransle
• Anello

Obviously, I've avoided the one's that will require heavy teaching at the ball. In general, an experienced dancer should be able to drag a set of beginners though most of these without too much trouble. I'll also be working on a cheat sheet for the ball, just to make things even easier.