Happy birthday, dad!
Started in on a new game last night with Steve, David, Brian and Lucy. The game is going to use Clinton R Nixon’s Paladin, which is essentially a game of moral testing and the temptations of the wrong road. The group creates the moral code in question, and we’ve ended up devising a quite sophisticated mythological schema, which should make for interesting times in the coming story. Especially because Steve demonstrated in his Sorceror game ‘Lose Yourself’ that he’s good at giving us all the rope we need to hang ourselves. Should be a blast.
Tonight I intend to get to grips with all the half-finished and/or long-delayed tasks on my personal to-do list. (Including about four months of unanswered blog comments, which wouldn’t be a hassle if the blog comments weren’t so damn fascinating.)
Month: March 2005
Stress Positions
Just watched the documentary on Channel 4 about torture techniques in Guantanamo. Seven volunteers endured sub-Guantanamo techniques; only four lasted 48 hours to the end of the experiment.
The human mind is a very frail thing, in the end. There’s a kind of blindness in those who downplay what is happening at Guantanamo as to what it really means. We have misconceptions about how strong our mind is, how strict our moral code, how fiercely we can hold to our sense of self. Even when we know, rationally, that we are fragile, we still in our heart of hearts overrate ourselves. I know I do, despite four and a half years of psychology attacking all my assumptions.
It’s all very sad, and it demands change. The West has fallen so far; our failures are on display and those in power seem not to care.
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From the serious to the ridiculous: I bombed out completely in my Oscar predictions, scoring a measly 11 of 20. I suspect it hurt Marty more than me that Aviator didn’t score the top two. At least I got the four acting awards right; supporting is always a tough pick.
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Thanks for the kind words, everyone.