Where Worlds Collide

More bad news for the human race.

GIANT squid are taking over the world, well at least the oceans, and they are getting bigger. According to scientists, squid have overtaken humans in terms of total bio-mass. That means they take up more space on the planet than us

Can you say “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!”? I though you could. Apparently it’s all due to global warming. This possibly explains the environmental attitudes of the Cthulhu Cultists of the right. (Link from Boing Boing)

Most of the music fans at work were genuinely shocked at the news of John Peel’s sudden death. The list of bands he was the first to play on the radio reads like a Who’s Who of British rock for the past 40 years, and I’ve read a great many tributes from 40-somethings for whom John Peel was the soundtrack of their teenage years.

I’m afraid I was never a big listener to his show. I spent my formative years listening to the then unfashionable rock played by Tommy Vance (so did the cat, for some strange reason), and Peel was viewed as the one who played the music that was supposed to have made the music I loved obsolete. I even remember in my student years there was a generation of old-school rock fans who bitterly hated Peel, never forgiving him for turning his back on the music he’d championed during the first half of the 70s in favour of punk and new wave.

This letter in today’s Guardian typifies the views of that group of people:

John Peel’s contribution to music journalism is overrated. If a piece of rock or pop music lasted more than three minutes, he had no time for it. And in the late 1970s he introduced an inverted snobbery into rock music criticism by using his position to present any band that ever tried to do something more ambitious than the working-class rants of the Sex Pistols as middle class and pretentious. Class shouldn’t have a place in music, but John Peel helped keep it there for over 30 years.

Rather over the top, even if there’s a little bit of a point. I think the ‘anything complicated is middle class’ meme should be really attributed to repellent oiks like the odious Tony Parsons rather than Peel. It’s true that John Peel didn’t like some genres of great music, and that music got marginalised as a result, especially in the past few years. But surely that wasn’t the fault of Peel himself; rather the lack of anyone else in mainstream British radio who really loved and cared about music to the extent that he did.

A commenter on the Guardian’s message boards with the handle “FlammeEmpor” presents a more balanced view:

Peel … championed most of the now well-known late 1960s/ early 1970s rock legends, including Bowie, Zeppelin, Floyd, Yes, Genesis, Roxy Music, Jethro Tull�.(a very long list), in addition to some who did not make it to super-stardom, like Roy Harper and Peter Hammill. The rest of Radio One at that time was an abomination. (Recall the irony in the voice as John introduced ‘Love Grows where my Rosemary Goes’ on a TOTP retrospective. Also: voiceover to TOTP film of M. Jagger: ‘Let’s spend the night together..actually, on second thoughts..’)

Peel claimed that sometime around the mid-seventies he became disillusioned with the ‘excesses’ of bands like ELP, Yes, etc. In my view said ‘excess’ and the ‘liberation’ of the music scene by punk and the new wave were a bit of a myth. While much of the punk/new wave (and beyond) were magnificent, there was much second division stuff, and some of the old bands were still turning out excellent stuff after punk had burned itself out. Punk happened to come along as some of the older bands like ELP had also burned themselves out or lost direction. Peel bought into the punk/new wave big-time and took a long time to let it go, although I recall him complaining in 1980 specifically that there was a ‘lot of second division stuff’ around. He then spent years getting more hardcore and obscurist, and yet remained the best thing on radio. During the punk era he tended to wind up the old bands, and even some of the softer new bands, like the Boomtown Rats, but stood by The Doors, Pink Floyd � The Wall, Peter Hammill, Ivor Cutler, etc. Even the other year at Glastonbury, during the Roger Waters set, he said (probably about ‘Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun’, etc.): ‘You wouldn’t believe the effect of that when it first came out � could change your life’.

But in the end there was no-one else quite like him, even if Sturgeon’s law applied to the stuff he played. He will be missed, even by those who seldom ever listened to his show.

What’s the live music scene up in Heaven like, John? I’ve heard the power trio of Jimi Hendrix, Phil Lynott and Keith Moon are really hot.

Judging by the hysterical outrage from the hacks and wingnut drama queens of the American right, they don’t seem to be able to distinguish between a satirical piece The Guardian’s weekend listings magazine and an editorial or serious op-ed piece in the paper itself.

This is what Charlie Brooker (who’s been involved in the satirical Brass Eye) had to say about George Bush’s less than stellar performance in the first presidential debate, and the controversy about whether or not he’d been ‘wired’.

Quite frankly, the man’s either wired or mad. If it’s the former, he should be flung out of office: tarred, feathered and kicked in the nuts. And if it’s the latter, his behaviour goes beyond strange, and heads toward terrifying. He looks like he’s listening to something we can’t hear. He blinks, he mumbles, he lets a sentence trail off, starts a new one, then reverts back to whatever he was saying in the first place. Each time he recalls a statistic (either from memory or the voice in his head), he flashes us a dumb little smile, like a toddler proudly showing off its first bowel movement. Forgive me for employing the language of the playground, but the man’s a tool.

So I sit there and I watch this and I start scratching my head, because I’m trying to work out why Bush is afforded any kind of credence or respect whatsoever in his native country. His performance is so transparently bizarre, so feeble and stumbling, it’s a miracle he wasn’t laughed off the stage. And then I start hunting around the internet, looking to see what the US media made of the whole “wire” debate. And they just let it die. They mentioned it in passing, called it a wacko conspiracy theory and moved on.

As for the final line (you’ll have to read the article itself, I’m not going to quote it out of context), exactly how does it differ from the ‘humourous entertainers’ of the right such as Ann Coulter or Rush Limburgh, the heroes of the same freepi who are screeching blue murder at The Guardian?

Update:

The Guardian have now taken the offending article down, replacing it with this apology.

“Charlie Brooker apologises for any offence caused by his comments relating to President Bush in his TV column, Screen Burn. The views expressed in this column are not those of the Guardian. Although flippant and tasteless, his closing comments were intended as an ironic joke, not as a call to action - an intention he believed regular readers of his humorous column would understand. He deplores violence of any kind.”

On balance, it was probably a mistake to have printed it, especially as the website doesn’t really distinguish between the listings magazine and the main paper.

I also understand that the paper’s website was offline for several hours due to denial-of-service attacks. I know wingnuts tend to have a tin ear for satire, but I still think the Freepi are completely overreacting.

Boing Boing reminds us that the New York Subway celebrates it’s 100th birthday this month. Not the oldest underground railway in the world (the London Underground has that honour), but it is the world’s most extensive network.

My only experience of the NYC subway is a fleeting glimpse of a train on the elevated section across the Bronx from a taxi stuck in a traffic jam en-route from Newark airport to Stamford CT on a Sunday afternoon. I think the train, which resembled the old LT “P” stock was one of the now scrapped “Redbirds”.

Harry isn’t impressed with the “off with their heads” comment at the end, but I found one paragraph of Apostate Windbag’s post on Dinner parties worth quoting.

There is no point in discussing music with these people for the most part because they will, from their eleventh birthday to now, have only ever listened to or enjoyed music that they do not have to seek out in order to hear. I’ll not say that they only listen to top-forty, because it’s not as simple as that, and I’m no snob: there are top-forty hits I appreciate. But for me, music is something you work at, something you investigate and explore. And I feel the same way about film and literature and, well, just about everything in life. The division is not some Berlin Wall between popular art and independent art - because the Beatles and Shakespeare were popular as well as being ‘good’, and there’s also a lot of indie music that remains indie for a very good reason. However, these Commerce grads are as identical in their musical/film/fashion/literature/art tastes as their personalities are identical. And, by and large, they know nothing of what exists beyond the corporate culture they are spoon-fed. So there is no point in talking about any of these topics with them, because they will always say: “Who? I’ve never heard of them.”

That’s the reaction I got from just about everyone I’ve spoken to about the amazing Mostly Autumn gig a couple of weeks ago. Just about the only person who seems to have heard of them is one member of the Demodellers mailing list.

One thing I have to disagree with Apostate Windbag, though. The best stuff may get ignored by the corporate media and the fashionable scribblers. But it spreads by word of mouth. And that means that you have to talk about them.

Making Light compares George W Bush with Dilbert’s infamous pointy-haired boss, and finds an awful lot of parallels. A long post covering rejected would-be authors and those awful motivational posters parodied by despair.com, before arriving at this:

George Bush is running national policy on faith - but it�s not faith in God. It’s become something far stranger and more idolatrous.

What he’s put his faith in is George W. Bush, which is not the same thing as saying he believes in himself. He can’t believe in himself; he knows he doesn’t know anything. But instead of seeking more information and better counsel, he�s abandoned the frustrations of dealing with the factual, external universe. He�s now basing everything on the instincts of George W. Bush. That�s where the smirk comes from.

He’s certain he’s right. So was every dotcom investor. So is every blackjack player in Las Vegas.

Several years ago, Peco advertised they’d be making a N gauge model of a HAA coal hopper, perhaps the definitive freight wagon of the diesel era. Just when everyone assumed it was vapourware, and would never see the light of day, it appeared in the shops without warning! Electric Nose is impressed. At any rate, it didn’t produce a reaction appropriate for the Martians that once advertised mashed potato…

On the real railway, the endless franchising musical chairs gives is another round of new liveries. Yes, Barbie comes to Scotland. I think it looks rather better than the garish livery from the previous franchise holder.

Game Dream 18 asks us to:

Do a mock review of a game that doesn’t exist, but you think really ought to. Readers are encouraged to let the author of the review know if this game exists in another form somewhere.

GURPS Trains

GURPS Trains is a new book for the Generic Universal Roleplaying System, covering a subject very close to my heart. It promises to be the definitive guide for games set in, around or involving trains. And it shows every sign of living up to that promise.

Chapter one gives a brief history of trains and railways, from the primitive mine tramways to the experimental maglevs. It contains a very useful timeline, giving the construction dates of famous routes across America, Europe, Asia and Africa.

Chapter two railway operations and technology in gameable terms, explaining what all the jargon means, and how safety equipment works, and how things differ across eras and continents. It also notes that Hollywood takes enormous liberties with the latter, and a cinematic GM should also do so to remain in genre. To this end it uses the unintentionally hilarious “Cassandra Crossing” as an example. It also includes a section on the physics of train crashes, which allows the GM to calculate the odds of a character’s survival or of escaping injury based on TL, speed, and their position in the train.

Chapter three covers characters, with GURPS templates covering everything from train drivers and conductors though transport cops, and of course hobos.

Chapter four puts it all together with advice about using trains in games, covering adventures set on board or centring around trains in genres ranging from Old West to Horror to Espionage to Special Ops. It gives recommendations for running everything from train robberies, zombie infestations, or terrorist hijackings. There’s plenty of advice for running fight scenes on board moving trains, and recommends that in cinematic genres, the fight must always end up on the roof.

Chapter five describes in detail a dozen iconic trains from different eras and continents, complete with floorplans of carriages, details of significant landmarks en-route, and of the terminals and major intermediate stations, as well as some typical passengers and a couple of plot hooks for each one. It covers not just classic long-distance expresses such as the Orient Express, the Trans-Siberian express and the Twentieth Century limited, but more mundane examples such as a New York Subway train, and typical north American freight train. The last two are fictitious; a massive steampunk monster running on 12′ gauge tracks, and a future maglev crossing the inhospitable surface of Mars.

Next come four sample adventures, ranging from middling to good; we have a fairly straightforward Victorian horror adventure set on board the overnight London to Inverness express, a rather more involved GURPS In Nomine adventure set on board the San Fransisco-LA “Starlight Express”, a very tough World War Two adventure centring on Yugoslavian partisans, and finally a terrorist plot aboard the Martian maglev.

The bibliography lists an enormous number of reference books, and a great list of classic train movies, from British comedy classics such as “Oh Mr Porter” to action movies like “Runaway Train” and “Von Ryan’s Express”.

All in all, a very good book, and very much not just for train anoraks. Like many of the best GURPS supplements, relatively little space is taken up with GURPS-specific rules, making GURPS Trains usable with systems other than GURPS

GURPS Trains is not actual GURPS book: GURPS is © Steve Jackson Games, and this piece of wishful thinking is not intended as a challenge to SJG’s intellectual property. But if SJG ever did publish a book called GURPS Trains, I would certainly buy it! Unless I get a playtest credit for it first, that is.

Patrick Crozier linked to a site called Transport Watch, describing it as “Lots of facts, lots of comparisons”.

While it is a professional-looking site, it doesn’t take more that a quick glance to realise that this site has an ideological axe to grind. The name, including the word “Watch” ought to be a dead giveaway. The bland introduction deliberately avoids telling us what that ideological axe is; you have to read behind the lines to recognise their real barking moonbat beliefs.

Transport Watch is an independent organisation not connected with any business, organisation or political party initially funded by a private trust and dedicated to making the best use of land already committed to transport in the interests of the community as a whole.

It all seems to be the work of one man, Paul F Withrington. I did a bit of Googling on the name, and came up with this ridiculous troll posting on the uk.railway newsgroup, posted four years ago.

Contrary to pupular belief, passenger rail is three to five times as expensive, has one-third the capacity to move people, uses up to three times the fuel and probably kills as many people per passenger-mile as would an equivalent express bus service.

If rail is such a good idea, why not pave the M! with railway lines?

Of course, if they did that the system would be brought to a near standstill tomorrow - just like the 10000 miles of right of way currently sterilised by railway lines - they carry an average flow equivalent to only 250 buses plus lorries per day per track.

The railway modernisation programme is to cost UKP60 billion. It is equivalent to building six domes per year every year for 10 years. The effect on the share price is nil. That price is so low the whole system could be bought for a mere UKP5 billion at a time when the replacement cost is between six and 100 times that value.

Those who wish to see the Northampton loop “modernised” should bear in mind that when they have spent the UKP5.8 billion on the WCML they will have increased capacity at Euston by the equivalent of about one bus per minute per track. How pathetic can you get?

The alternative is to remove the tracks and to use the rights of way for buses and lorries. We could then get to London in about one hour for one-third the cost and have a much more frequent service to boot.

If any person wishes to challenge the above, I will pay them UKP1000 for every point they can overturn in a discussion devoted to finding the truth, provided they will pay me UKP500 upon losing the case. I cannot wait to be rich.

It spawned a 100 message thread, which contained no further comment or contribution by Mr Withrington. There is no record of anyone attempting to claim the throusand pounds. I doubt Mr Withrington even read the replies,

The idea of converting railways into roads seems to a common meme in wingnut-libertoid circles, the rightwing equivalent of moonbat-left ideas to ban the private car (although I have never heard any leftie of green seriously advocate the latter). These idiotarians attempt to justify their case with reams of totally bogus statistics, full of hopelessly flawed assumptions and outright falsehoods. There is no point trying to reason with them. They up there with the people who want to privatise the pavements, or think PRT is feasible.

I can’t think of any other time I’ve been to a gig and found myself unable to listen to the music of any other band for several days afterwards. But since Wednesday night’s performance in Manchester by Mostly Autumn, nothing other than “The Last Bright Light” and “Passengers” has been anywhere near my CD player.

For the uninitiated, Mostly Autumn hail from York (That’s old York, not the new one), and their sound mixes progressive rock and folk elements to produce a rich multi-layered sound. The show a strong influence from Pink Floyd, with occasional moments of heavier bands such as Deep Purple or Uriah Heep. But the whole is definitely greater than the sum of the parts. And live, they create a very special atmosphere.

The band have two lead vocalists; the ethereal voice of Heather Findlay contrasts with the gruffer style of Bryan Josh, who bears more than a passing resemblance to Viggo Mortensen’s Aragorn. Josh also plays some superb lead guitar, reminiscent of Richie Blackmore. MA have toured extensively with Blackmore’s Night, and some the Man In Black’s magic must have worn off.

In a small club it’s hard to fit all seven of the band on stage, especially with Iain Jennings’ 70s-style mountain of keyboards filling the right hand side. This resulted in second guitarist Liam Davidson and flautist/backing vocalist Angela Goldthorpe being half-hidden at the back of the stage.

The set drew heavily from the both the harder-edged “Passengers” and it’s mellower and atmospheric predecessor “The Last Bright Light”. Some of the songs from the latter were among the high point of the set, especially the haunting ballad “Half The Mountain”, dedicated to the recently split Karnataka, and the epic final encore, “Mother Nature”.

Mostly Autumn deserve to be far bigger than they are; not playing a currently fashionable style of music means the mainsteam music press completely ignores them. They’re doing a short British tour of larger venues in late November/early December; go and see them, you won’t be disappointed.