Das Tagebuch Murnaus

[Reposted here from my game design blog http://brtrain.wordpress.com with some additions, well cut-and-pasted since I don't think I can automatically repost to LJ from Wordpress. Eh, anyway...]

Earlier this year I was contacted by Marc Guenette who wanted to know if I wanted to be one of the Guests of Honour at Stack Academie, an annual wargaming conference in Montreal. Gee, would I!

I went to Montreal a day or two early, on Tuesday April 30, since I had not been in the city for 24 years and wanted some time to look around. I flew Air Canada and everything went suspiciously smoothly, to the point where I even arrived a few minutes early. I took the 747 bus from Trudeau Airport (what was once called Dorval), it runs about every 7 minutes or less most of the day, very convenient though you have to buy a transit daypass – $9.00 but that’s 24 hours on the whole transit system, other parts of which you will probably need to use to get to your destination. However, I didn’t because the hotel (an otherwise unremarkable Comfort Inn) was right downtown – just around the corner from the 747 bus stop, 1 ½ blocks from the Berri-UQAM Metro stop, and 2 blocks from St. Catherines Street, the main drag for restaurants shops and bars.

Montreal after 24 years seemed much as I remembered it (which is barely, as I was more interested at the time in my then girlfriend, who was doing electrical engineering at McGill). Half of it is being torn down or rebuilt, and the other half is being measured for the same treatment. There was a heatwave, and it was sunny and 22-27 degrees all week long. And me without shorts, in fact at the last minute I decided not to pack my cardigan (however, two guys at the con told me that two years before there had been pouring rain and wet snow on the streets).

Wednesday I did a little bit of shopping, at some Army surplus stores on St.-Laurent and at Le Valet de Coeur (Jack of Hearts), a good wargame store not far up the street. I even found a few old DTP quality titles of mine, from Schutze Games (Pusan Perimeter, Somalia), still in the old comic book bags. I got a couple of back issues of Vae Victis, a French wargaming magazine with interesting games in it, a copy of Battle for Hill 218, a simple card abstract game, and two little finger puppet characters they were selling near the cash register. They were all kinds of historical characters like Edison, Leonardo and some others, but there were also others like Hannah Arendt, Frida Kahlo, Spinoza etc.. The little Michel Foucault puppet was especially funny, but I got a Che Guevara for Lianne and a George Orwell for me, so they can have mild disagreements. Anyway, a neat store. Here is George in my office, looking as happy as he ever did in life.

Wednesday night I went out to Bar Passeport, (http://www.barpasseport.com/) which has not one but two EBM/Industrial/Goth nights! One on Wednesday is more EBM/industrial (e.g. Funker Vogt, And One, Eisenfunk) and less well attended than the one on Saturday. I don't go out to bars much except for Circuit Breaker and when seeking out such nights when I'm in a different city, but one thing I did notice is people being tied into their mobile devices, even saw one guy dancing by himself on the floor with his beer in one hand and his mobile in the other, absorbed in whatever was coming in over it....

Thursday I spent the afternoon and evening at the Interuniversity Consortium for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies (http://www.mcgill.ca/icames/), where Rex Brynen (of Paxsims blog fame) is one of the Directors. He had set up a micro-armour game that he umpired, while six of us directed the forces of Natonia (guy called Tom) and East Norkea (me) in the “Battle of the Namgang River”. A shot of one of the tank battalions heading down the road into the "Cauldron of Death":

A full account with pictures is at http://genericgaminggoodness.wordpress.com/2013/05/07/the-battle-of-namgang-aka-the-battle-of-the-cauldron-of-death/ . It was tremendous fun, even though I lost most of my command in a huge Natonian ambush. Even worse was a missed chance to take out his two tank unit commanders by infiltrating East Norkean commandos, who lofted RPG rounds onto the tops of their tanks, only to see the rounds fizzle and misfire (I rolled two 1s in succession, the only thing that could have saved their collective bacon!). It was very kind of Rex to arrange this, as he and I had first met 30 years ago while he was doing at history degree at the University of Victoria and I was a high school student who would go to the weekly meetings of the Gaming Club there. We would have these massive micro-armour battles, usually with Rex’s models, but as he collected mostly Warsaw Pact stuff we usually played Russian vs. Chinese. (Actually, we were playing with some of the same models and terrain from back then!)

Friday was the beginning of the convention, and we got right down to it – the other guest of honour was Volko Ruhnke, who ran games of Cuba Libre, his COIN system game of the Cuban Revolution, while I ran games of A Distant Plain. I also demonstrated Kandahar (in its present configuration with the District Commander engine under the hood), 1848 (a rarely-seen because rarely-requested game on the European revolutions of that year) and Dios o Federacion (card game on post-Chavez Venezuela). Even got in a few playtest turns of the last one. A Distant Plain was a big hit, a lot of people stopped by to look and we even had one young fellow who had never played before but still managed to pull off a quick win by the Coalition, a difficult thing in this game – he moved in lightly, manufactured a lot of popular consent for the Afghan Government, and pulled out, ending the Western role in the war in 2004!

I met a lot of people who I had only corresponded with online, through Boardgamegeek or Consimworld, so it was great to put names to faces – also to see people again after some time, like Volko, Michel Boucher and Barry Setser. I came away with some excellent ideas for future game projects and extensions or fixes to ones I am testing now. I wish these events were at least a week long, so I could have conversations of appropriate length with everyone I wanted to talk to. Jean-Francois Tremblay, a re-enactor when he is not instructing at UQAM, showed up in period gear to play Volko's game Wilderness War:

Saturday night we went out to Le Pied de Cochon, a very popular (you have to make reservations a month or two ahead) restaurant with most of the menu devoted to pork products (one favourite special is “Pig’s Head For Two”, at market price though I did not think price fluctuations for such a commodity would be extreme) and the remnant devoted to other meats (another great favourite is “Duck in a Can”, and that’s just what it is). Even my French onion soup had most of a small pork chop in it, it seemed. I paid a bit much for what I got, since there were several bottles of wine on the table I did not drink from, but it was still a worthwhile experience… probably never pass that way again.

After dinner I went out to Bar Passeport again, music led off with some good Goth oldies (Siouxsie, Sisters of Mercy) but soon gravitated towards newer stuff (though they also played some Laibach!).

Sunday I had breakfast with Rex, Volko and his wife Jill (it was the weekend of their 22nd wedding anniversary) and got back in time to finish packing and head out to the airport. Again, things went smoothly and we even landed 48 minutes early in Victoria (they asked us over the PA to remember this the next time they were late).

It was a great week and I was honoured to be asked to come by Marc, who was a fantastic and generous host, taking time to talk with me even though he was run off his feet with convention business and real-life business. Merci a tous!

An interesting take on drones, from teh Chronicle of Higher Education:

***
March 11, 2013

In the Shadow of Drones

Geoffrey Moss for The Chronicle Review
By David O'Hara And John Kaag

According to legend, at the battle of Thermopylae, the Persians' king, Xerxes, threatened to fire so many arrows at the Spartan soldiers blocking his invasion of Greece that the shafts would darken the sky. The Spartan Leonidas' famous response? "Then we shall fight in the shade." Today, as a growing number of our drones overshadow militants half a world away, it might be a good time to revisit this exchange between the two leaders at Thermopylae.

Leonidas' reply wasn't just bravado; it was contempt. Xerxes probably had no idea how weak his boast made him look. The Spartans were probably not armed with bows, just spears and short swords. The Spartans liked it that way; to fight at a distance was a sign of cowardice. Having been brought up in a strenuous militarist state, Spartan soldiers gladly risked their lives in battle in a way that most of us would find incomprehensible.

Plutarch's records of what Spartan mothers said to their sons as they sent them off to battle indicate that one of the worst things a Spartan could do was throw a weapon to save his skin. "Come back with your shield—or on it," some mothers would say. A son who dropped his shield or weapon was too cowardly to face his opponent, or so frightened of battle that he jettisoned his armor to lighten his load as he ran away. The mothers were saying, in effect, "If you don't come back with your weapons, I'll kill you myself, because I won't have a living coward for a son."

That may sound harsh or outdated—to send your son into hand-to-hand combat when technology existed that could kill his enemy at a distance—but perhaps the Spartan mothers were concerned not just with winning battles, but also with what kind of people their sons would become.

The fact that throughout history we have found certain killing technologies to be uncivilized is instructive. Pope Innocent II banned crossbows and slings in 1139. And some critics of the U.S. drone program still regard fighting at an anonymous distance as underhanded or illegitimate.

We are reminded of the French pilot Trou­in in Graham Greene's 1955 novel The Quiet American. Trouin didn't mind strafing his enemies when they could fire back, but he despised being commanded to drop napalm bombs from a safe height, where small-arms fire could not reach him. "We are fighting all of your wars, but you leave us the guilt," he complains. Others, far away, give the orders, and he must live with the consequences of having killed men who had no chance to fight back.

Today we take the effectiveness of drone strikes to be their legitimation. In our national mythology, we celebrate the Spartan virtues of our military, but at the same time we are becoming increasingly Persian. The ease of our lives makes it difficult to comprehend coming home on our shields. In John Brennan's testimony during recent hearings to confirm him as director of the Central Intelligence Agency, we hear the echoing threats of Xerxes, suggesting that technological superiority can allow us to win wars without really fighting them.

Brennan suggested that drone strikes were used as "a last resort to save lives," presumably soldiers' lives and the lives of those who might be threatened someday by terrorists. Those lives are undoubtedly worth saving, but we also discern in his remarks a growing sentiment about the future of armed conflict: that we do not need to be invested in direct warfare, because now we have use of "targeted lethal force." We no longer need to risk personal injury in actions of "last resort." All we need are arrows—that is, drones.

Of course, Spartan-style cultures, in which people are willing to fight in the shadow of certain death, have their own problems. The Spartan mentality arises in cultures that are often decidedly undemocratic and anti-intellectual. They emphasize not just physical bravery but also self-abnegation and blind devotion to a cause. Often they are unflinchingly invested in conflict simply because they have to be, lacking or eschewing the technological devices that would shield them from harm.

In other words, these martial values arise in communities that embrace Islamic extremism.

And so we rush to fill the sky with modern-day arrows to destroy the modern-day Spartans.

But it is not that simple.

The Persians hoped that their weapons would bring enemies to their knees, but the promised attack only emboldened them. Xerxes' superior forces eventually won that battle, but the legend of the Spartans' stand at Thermopylae gave their compatriots both time and spirit, and the Persians were eventually defeated. Ironically, the weapons that Xerxes hoped would win the war with a minimum of casualties only served to strengthen his enemy's resolve.

In the Brennan hearings, Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, raised exactly that concern, quoting retired General Stanley McChrystal, who said recently: "The resentment created by American use of unmanned strikes is much greater than the average American appreciates. They are hated on a visceral level, even by people who have never seen one or seen the effects of one."

The use of certain kinds of weapons might just convince our enemies that we lack the courage of our convictions, or that our weapons are both symptom and disease of a culture willing to kill as long as we don't have to see the fighting. Rather than dismiss that allegation, we should work to ensure that our enemies would be wrong to reach that conclusion.

If we are wise, we will be concerned with more than just winning today's battle. Our soldiers' lives are immeasurably precious, and we should not risk them without grave cause. But surely their souls, and the soul of our nation, are precious, too.

What happens to a soldier who is asked to kill more and more anonymously? What happens to a people who condone deadly hellfire from the sky, triggered 10,000 miles away, and then never know it has fallen? To a people unable to imagine that anyone could regard a cloud of incoming arrows as a pleasant shade to fight in? Or to a people for whom the expediency of drones and the avoidance of risk are sufficient to dismiss any ethical concerns they might engender?

David O'Hara is an associate professor of philosophy and classics at Augustana College, in South Dakota, and John Kaag is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell.

Found this in the Chronicle of Higher Ecducation, 7 Jan 2013.

***
Guns, Violence, and the 'Red Dawn' Films

By Aaron B. O'Connell

On July 19, 1984, the producers of Red Dawn had a problem. In less than a month, they were due to release the director John Milius's pro-gun, survivalist action film depicting a Communist invasion of the United States, and the theatrical trailer and movie posters—both of which featured Soviet troops in or near a McDonald's restaurant—were already completed. But those materials now had to be changed because the previous day, a well-armed paranoid survivalist named James Oliver Huberty had entered a McDonald's in San Ysidro, Calif., and killed 21 people (including five children) with an Uzi submachine gun. The movie's marketing team recalled some of the posters and removed the McDonald's scene from the trailer. (The opening scene, in which the invaders gun down kids in a school, was left intact.) Red Dawn went on to become a cult classic and helped lead a generation of young men—yours truly included—into the military.

This Thanksgiving, Red Dawn emerged again, but without Milius's explicit Second Amendment politics. And like the original, the new Red Dawn is in the awkward position of celebrating gun-toting teens on the screen as America mourns a mass slaughter of children in real life.

In the days ahead, we may finally start a serious conversation about gun violence in America. That conversation should include these films, for they are part of the problem, too. They, and similar films and video games, break down the barriers between violent fantasies and violent action, strengthen the entrenched opposition to common-sense gun laws, and contribute to the continuing militarization of American society and culture.

The conversation about gun violence should include these films, for they are part of the problem, too.
( Read more... )
Aaron B. O'Connell is an assistant professor of history at the U.S. Naval Academy, a member of the Marine Corps Reserve, and author of Underdogs: The Making of the Modern Marine Corps (Harvard University Press, 2012).

Last CB of the year - it was fun.
Coming up on the second anniversary!

My setlist:

Cabaret Voltaire - 24-24
Severed Heads - Oscar's Grind
CTI - Funky
Nash the Slash - Fever Dream
Sleep Chamber - Fetish
Klaus Nomi - Silent Night
Greater Than One - Dubkiller
400 Blows - Fundamental Islam
The Normal - Warm Leatherette (HIV rmx)
Skinny Puppy - Deadlines
Blutengel - Der Spiegel
A Split Second - On Command
Front 242 - Kampfbereit
Legend - Devil in Me (Steed Lord remix)
Aircrash Bureau - Exhibition
Orange Sector - Fuer Immer
Glis - Nightvision
AD:Key - Gruene Augen Luegen
Ayria - Hunger
Front Line Assembly - Oblivion

This is one of those things that I want to post here, otherwise they'll be lost as I go poking around for "that thing I saw that day that was so good..."

But it is that good, it is really starting to disturb me how "we" are sitting back and taking it, when we're not actually on board with what's going on and being done in our name....

1984 in 2012 – The assault on reason
By Allan R. Gregg | Sep 8, 2012 8:35 am |

Allan Gregg is Chairman of Harris/Decima, and is considered a pioneer in the integration of consulting, public-opinion research, public affairs and communications. A frequent commentator on radio, television and in print, he is also an entrepreneur with diverse interests in Canadian culture. He was one of the founding shareholders of Canada’s children’s network, YTV, the Chairman of Toronto Film Festival, past Chair of the Walrus Foundation (publisher of 2007 Magazine of the Year, “The Walrus”) and has executive produced documentary television as well as recordings by Canadian artists such as The Tragically Hip, The Watchmen and Big Wreck. He serves on the General Motors of Canada’s Advisory Board and the Bank of Montreal’s Advisory Council on Retirement.

The following speech was delivered by Allan Gregg on September 5, 2012, at a celebration of Carleton University’s Faculty of Public Affairs and its move to the new River Building.

( Read more... )

Another fun night in the booth!

Chris and Cosey - Synesthesia
Throbbing Gristle - Discipline (Berlin version)
Greater Than One - We Hate America and America Hates Us
Severed Heads - Army
The Normal - Warm Leatherette (version by HIV+)
Nash the Slash - Dance After Curfew
Cabaret Voltaire - Do Right
Skinny Puppy - Testure
Front 242 - Rhythm of Time (anti-G mix)
Click Click - Clang!
Die Krupps - Machineries of Joy
Conetik - Cold Eyes
Aircrash Bureau - Machine
Activehate - Star Struck
Manufacture - Armed Forces
VNV Nation - Chrome
Laibach - Tanz mit Laibach (version by Waks)
Aural Vampire - Economical Animal Superstar
Patenbrigade Wolff - Gefahrstoffe

You may have heard, or not, that the Canadian Museum of Cvilization, once known as the Museum of Man, will be renamed, repurposed and cleaned out and moved into a new building in time for Canada Day 2017.

It will be renamed the Museum of Canadian History (NTS: check name later, the Net is acting up and I can't have mopre than one fershlugginer window open at a time) and will shift its focus to, well let's say more national topics, including highlighting Canada's military history and our relation with the British monarchy.

LAWRENCE MARTIN (yes, that's how he writes it) weighs in on this in today's Globe and Mail:

***

Don’t curate the peacemaking out of Canadian history
LAWRENCE MARTIN

Special to The Globe and Mail

Published Tuesday, Oct. 16 2012, 2:00 AM EDT

In keeping with their wish to refashion the national consciousness, our arch-conservatives have an eye on museums.

As reported in this newspaper, changes will see the Canadian Museum of Civilization, the largest museum in the land, become a history museum with an emphasis on showcasing our great deeds.

Other museums, according to the report, will be asked to do more to reflect past glories. It’s expected there will be an emphasis on the military and conflicts, such as the War of 1812. In keeping with this, the government has announced it is renaming buildings in Ottawa in honour of 1812 veterans. The monarchy will be given a greater place in museums, as will our sporting heritage, particularly hockey. At hockey games, we’re now expected to stand and cheer thunderously when military personnel are introduced, as though it’s the 1940s.

The retooling of museums – the Museum of Civilization, anthropologically dreary, does need a facelift – may well be a commendable exercise. There’s nothing wrong with making our past as storied as possible, especially given the historical vacuum in which large segments of the population reside.

But given the Conservatives’ proclivities, as reflected in their confrontational foreign policy and their affinity for old wars, there’s concern that they won’t get it right, that a lot of our history will go missing.

As fine an idea as it is to celebrate our armed forces and wartime contributions, what about our opposite inclinations? Our postwar history, before the arrival of the Harper government, is predominantly a story about Canada as peacemaker, bridger of differences, conciliator. We were never a bellicose, aggressor nation, not before this period either, and we should never be portrayed as one.

In Ottawa, we already have a big spanking new war museum. To go along with it, far be it from anyone to suggest we have something like a museum of peace. But if we did, we could fill it with some praiseworthy stuff.

For the half-century in question, we could start with the exemplary work of Lester Pearson, who, having urged restraint in Korea, was the key player in bringing about a close to the perilous Suez crisis. We could showcase his government’s opposition to the Vietnam War, particularly the Temple University speech calling on Lyndon Johnson to halt the bombing.

It’s curious that the Tories are naming an icebreaker after John Diefenbaker. Far from being a militarist, Mr. Diefenbaker, who had a peacenik foreign minister in Howard Green, went about opposing (though in a foolhardy manner) the stationing of nuclear warheads on Canadian soil and challenging John Kennedy’s adventurism at every turn.

Then came Pierre Trudeau. He pushed to slow the arms race, made an opening to China, got far too cozy with Fidel Castro and staged a world peace mission in the early 1980s. His efforts to get the superpowers to the bargaining table were ridiculed by some. But Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev eventually got around to the kind of consultation and co-operation Mr. Trudeau had advocated.

Under Brian Mulroney and his effective foreign minister, Joe Clark, came a strong stand against apartheid and American intervention in Nicaragua. Through these decades, Ottawa pressed for multilateralism and disarmament, the prominent role played by the Chrétien government in the international treaty banning land mines being just one example.

Our current Prime Minister, given his initial enthusiasm for a coalition of the willing, won’t wish to see much museum space devoted to Jean Chrétien’s opposition to the invasion of Iraq. But we were on the right side of history there, as was the case with Vietnam.

We did fight in some conflicts, and admirably. Not all our efforts at peace-brokering can be said to have been well-advised. But there’s a lot of proud history in that half-century of restraint. Our museums and other accountings of the Canadian record should reflect it.

***

The thing that really upsets me about all this is the continual editiing, revising, and altering of our history, really rather blatantly when you think about it, in the service of a very particular mindset.

I suppose more people would be upset about this if they knew what was being changed, de-emphasized or just cut out, but they don't.

And now, like as not, they won't.

- from bruiseblue who got it from.

Bold the ones you have and use at least once a year, italicize the ones you have and don't use, strike through the ones you have had but got rid of:

I wonder how many pasta machines, breadmakers, juicers, blenders, deep fat fryers, egg boilers, melon ballers,sandwich makers, pastry brushes, cheese knives, electric woks, [miniature] salad spinners, griddle pans, jam funnels, meat thermometers, filleting knives, egg poachers, cake stands, garlic crushers, martini glasses, tea strainers, bamboo steamers, pizza stones, coffee grinders, milk frothers, piping bags, banana stands, fluted pastry wheels, tagine dishes, conical strainers, rice cookers, steam cookers, pressure cookers, slow cookers, spaetzle makers, cookie presses, gravy strainers, double boilers (bains marie), sukiyaki stoves, ice cream makers, and fondue sets languish dustily at the back of the nation's cupboards.

I use my coffee grinder once a year, but to make tea fixin's.
I use my rice cooker at least twice a week.
I ought to use my slow cooker more, but usually only make comfort food in it and am trying to eat better.

Tories plan War of 1812 monument on Parliament Hill
STEVEN CHASE

OTTAWA — The Globe and Mail
Published Tuesday, Sep. 11 2012, 3:53 PM EDT
Last updated Wednesday, Sep. 12 2012, 11:03 AM EDT

The Liberal prime minister who famously declared the 20th century would belong to Canada will soon be sharing a corner of Parliament Hill with a new Conservative government monument to the 19th century.

As part of a nearly $30-million spending binge to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812, the Tories are erecting a memorial to the long-ago conflict that pitted the United States against what would later become Canada.

In a call for bids to design the monument released Tuesday, Ottawa unveiled plans to situate it just metres from a statue of Wilfrid Laurier, the seventh prime minister.

The 1812 edifice should dwarf the Liberal politician’s likeness, judging from sketches unveiled by the federal government. The selected site measures about 50 square metres.
( Read more... )
This is amazing.
Over 3/4 of a million dollars for a monument, as part of a $30 million bill to commemorate a half-hearted clusterf**k of a border skirmish that achieved pretty much nothing?
The historical revisionism and skewed priorities on display here are breathtaking.

I wouldn't be surprised if at least one of the designs the committee will entertain will be in the form of a triumphal arch.
Large, in-your-face and kitschy: Fascist aesthetics.

I learned yesterday that a friend had died, at age 85. He was one of my oldest friends, in that I first knew him 26 years ago, when he was a spry 59. He lived in Bellingham and our connection was mail art.

I had just gotten started in that strange timewaster, an Internet of art and crazy letters that had been functioning for years before the "real" Internet got underway. I corresponded with dozens of people all over the world, but mostly the USA and Europe. The mailman never knew what he would drop off at the house on any given day - I think he got a kick out of the day he delivered an Australia Post baseball cap, with an address label and stamps stuck right on the bill and then put in the letter box.

I stuck with it for five or six years, until I moved to Japan. Life there was too much like living inside one of my own postcard collages, so I retreated from a lot of my visual art and started to write. And once I got back, I had wife, kid and job so there was little time to carry on with visual art - when Aki was old enough I tried to get him interested in Artist Trading Cards, small works of art that dodge the big postage bill because you trade them in more economical bundles, but that didn't last. Nowadays I write the occasional letter and still do metal casting - I have different printing machines and all my old hand-carved rubber stamps but just no time.

I had become a very bad correspondent with Rudi, as with all my old mail-art pals, but I was still surprised when a very long letter I had him sent a month or two ago went unanswered. Normally he was a much better writer than I, even if it was just a short scribble and a cutout newspaper bit - his health had been failing for years. But instead I got a card from his widow, telling me she got the letter when she went into town to close down the PO box that I had sent so many things to over the years.

He was a good man, friendly and funny, sympathetic and ever-inventive. And he died with me owing him a letter.

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/bellinghamherald/obituary.aspx?page=lifestory&pid=155569944#fbLoggedOut