Jose

Melbourne, Victoria, AUSTRALIA


Joined March 24th 2008

Number of Posts:
73

Number of Comments:
15

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10



"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." - Barry Goldwater, 1964

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Back to the future

October 30th 2009 23:43
It’s an odd time in the Magic world, the gap between the release of the last set and the beginning of previews for the next one. Some people are busy making new competitive decks, or still getting around to sorting the last of their Zendikar cards (guilty as charged). Some people are keeping an eye on new trademarks to see when Wizards of the Coast files new ones.

Yes, really. A few weeks ago a keen-eyed observer noticed two new Magic-related names: Mirrodin Pure and New Phyrexia. Usually when you uncover the name of a Magic set in development, you have to try and guess what it’s going to be about. In this case, though, both Mirrodin and Phyrexia are settings that the game has visited in the past, and people already have sort of an idea of what they involve.

When you add the fact that they have already announced an upcoming installment of the Duel Decks series entitled Phyrexia vs. the Coalition, themed as a throwback to the Invasion block, it seems like we’re heading into another nostalgia year. Is it a good idea to reuse things in this manner? It could well be. The Time Spiral block proved that Magic’s past was a viable source of inspiration. The game’s history may have been different in some ways from its present, but it was in no way less interesting or cool. People still have fun playing with old cards (Vintage, anyone?) and collecting old artwork.

Besides, Mirrodin’s metal world was a very cool concept, and after the fiasco that Standard became during its time, it really deserves something other than a list of broken cards for people to remember it by.

Arcbound Ravager
Believe it or not, there were more cards in the Mirrodin block than just this.



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Down the memory hole

October 23rd 2009 05:02
“We like nonfiction and we live in fictitious times. We live in a time where we have fictitious election results, that elect a fictitious president.”
-- Michael Moore

"He said we must be fair today,
Equal work means equal pay.
Mmm, mmm, mm!
Barack Hussein Obama!"
-- As sung by students at B. Bernice Young Elementary School, Burlington, NJ

I wonder how all those members of Congress who voted for the Lilly Ledbetter Act feel about President Obama getting credit for it now, even in a supposedly silly song taught to schoolkids? Actually, I wonder how Ledbetter herself feels about it? Are some of those kids going to pick up the message that she didn’t need to waste her time and money on lawsuits or defending her rights, since President Obama was on the job?

And what would the people who lobbied for and drafted and voted for the Equal Pay Act of 1963, which Ledbetter is an expansion of, say now? What would Lyndon Johnson, whose signature is on that original bill, say? Did they contribute nothing?

Or maybe none of that effort – the money spent, the lobbying done, the violence endured at Occoquan Workhousemattered until now, because none of the people involved had the, um, individual transformative potential of Barack Obama, as identified by the mainstream media? (A gestalt group which of late has, ironically, given us fewer portrayals of well-adjusted female professionals than porn directors have.) And what is wrong with America right now that you’re not likely to hear these questions asked off the internet?
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Reports of our death

October 13th 2009 05:14
“Mr. Burns was rushed to Springfield Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. He was then transferred to a better hospital, where doctors upgraded his condition to alive.”
-- Kent Brockman

“We will bury you!”
-- Nikita Khrushchev

If you’ve been around the other sections of Orble, you know that I like Magic: the Gathering, a game which has been declared dead almost as many times as the United States of America has. There’s even an article on one of those other Magic sites that aren’t as good as mine (just kidding. Or am I?) called “The Game that Wouldn’t Die.” There are things like that for America, but more often you’ll find comparisons to the author’s favorite fallen empire, usually Rome, and particularly its supposed cultural decadence. Lots of soap operas on TV? That means we’re weak and effete. Lots of contact sports on TV? That means we’re debauched and obsessed with violence. You can't lose.

(Sometimes I think these speculations and comparisons, and their gleeful and anticipatory undertone, might say more about the people making them than the actual situation. Who, I wonder, would rather be part of a dying empire than a thriving one?)

There’s an obscure piece of flavor text on an old Magic card that says “Never believe they’re dead until you see the body.” Yes, America has social problems, other countries have ambitions, and Obama’s Nobel Prize will be a punchline for many years to come. Nothing unusual about that, though; Roman legions clashed with Carthaginian and Parthian armies, and Caligula’s horse, the senator, is still a joke now after only about 2,000 years. And all that happened well before the height of Rome as defined by classicists. Will our current problems look like that in a hundred years?

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The secret life

October 11th 2009 04:37
Developer interviews are a lot like the director’s commentary on a DVD, and equally variable. Sometimes they actually have something to say, and sometimes they’re the ones for Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s sixth season (“So, in this scene Buffy and Spike are sitting on the steps. This is the second-last scene of the episode”). There is precious little to learn in the one for Zendikar; I for one don’t care about what isn’t in the set, and I simply don’t agree that Time Spiral was “too cutesy-complicated” or whatever other Pittsburgh slang Aaron Forsythe uses to describe it. But I thought it was interesting that their only answer to the question about the old-school cards randomly inserted in Zendikar boosters was, and I quote

“Some combination of ‘I don't know’ and ‘We don't discuss collation


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Analyze this

October 4th 2009 03:35
To every thing there is a season, and for every new Magic expansion, there is the card assessment article series, at an average of 1.5 per website. Depending on your perspective, these are either an opportunity to find out what the game’s sharpest minds think about the new product, or the time when the internet’s biggest know-it-alls decide what you should be playing with.

Clone
No prizes for guessing which one I think it is.

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The end of satire

September 29th 2009 01:09
Early last week, Jon Stewart devoted the entirety of the second segment on one of his shows to sardonic jokes about how one cable news channel sometimes runs a poll where 93% of respondents favor one thing, and another channel’s poll shows 93% of respondents favoring the exact opposite thing. “It’s almost,” he burst, “as though they have completely different audiences!” Thanks for the lesson in TV economics, Jon. I never would have guessed that different news channels have different editorial positions, or that a lot of people decide which one to watch based on which one’s position is most appealing to them.

Dilbert sarcasm

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A Highlander fling

September 23rd 2009 02:47
I’ve often been asked why I hate Highlander or singleton formats so much. A fair question, when you can actually make an argument that they should actually have some aesthetic appeal to anyone. First of all, they have nostalgic value, being close in practice to how almost everyone started playing. Look at the decklists for a preconstructed deck from any set, say Alara Reborn. These are the products that are recommended for players just learning to play the game, and they rarely include more than two copies of any one card. Playing with preconstructed decks is intended to expose new players to a good range of the cards available, and gives you a chance to see cards in action that you would never play in more focused decks. Second of all, Magic incorporates many elements of randomness, from shuffling your deck at the beginning of games to cards that force your opponent to shuffle their deck during a game to cards whose rules text actually uses the card “random.” I myself have been in matches where my opponent played the exact same cards in two consecutive games, so if you like Highlander because this is less likely, I understand completely. Considering that there’s a Fourth Edition starter deck box on my desk that promises on its back “you’ll never play the same game twice,” wanting this puts you in company of the caliber of Richard Garfield himself.

Gamble

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Darkness falls

September 19th 2009 01:40
By now, you’ve probably noticed a particular subtheme in the official Zendikar previews.

Blood Tribute

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The neverending story

September 12th 2009 03:57
“It could go on and on and on, or someone must write the end to it. I have concluded that only I can do that, and if I can, I must.”
-- President Gerald Ford, announcing his decision to pardon President Richard Nixon

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A judgment call

September 7th 2009 02:32
Day of Judgment is better than Wrath of God.

Day of Judgment

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Recent Comments

Comment by Jose
on Halo 3 ODST female character quandary

September 9th 2009 03:04
Good post. Ironically, there's an ad for Evony right in the middle of it, a game which for all its supposed progressiveness is actually part of the problem. "Hey, we're the first free online game to have a large number of female players! We'll celebrate . . . by holding a beauty contest." Fail, facepalm, etc.

Comment by Jose
on On Things That Infuriate Me

August 26th 2009 00:25
Excellent article, Ruby. (Traditional) Islam raises so many red flags for members of any Western society, and many people don't even realize it. Look up the Arabic word dhimmi for another example - this stuff was going on during the alleged "Golden Age" of the Baghdad caliphate, and continues today, especially in the Persian Gulf.

Though many of us would disagree with a lot of the Dutch politician Geert Wilders political positions, he was once heard to remark "I don't want to fight the battle for women's emancipation all over again." I agree.

Comment by Jose
on BOOKS & Other Literary Works The CRITICS Got WRONG!!!

July 29th 2009 04:45
This reminds me of all the "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers"-type quotes in science, engineering, and technology.

You could do something similar for movies, too. For example, Gone With The Wind winning the Best Picture Oscar in 1939 over The Wizard of Oz sounds and is absolutely outrageous (to be fair, a lot of people at the time were angry about that one).

Comment by Jose
on A solution to the Abortion Issue

May 17th 2009 00:59
Y'know, you in the No Abortion Never crowd should be cautiously optimistic about Obama. During the campaign he said in public that "feeling blue" is not a legitimate reason for having an abortion (and Planned Parenthood didn't see fit to point out everything wrong with that statement, from his gross oversimplification to his resurrection of the ancient women are too emotional and irrational to make decisions trope). His policy on the issue so far has been about "outreach" and "common ground," which seems to require concessions only from the pro-choice movement.

Comment by Jose
on Bad Taste Pastor: Bushfires Punish Abortion State

February 12th 2009 02:26
Danny Nalliah has a history of controversy, some of it less palatable than others. You may recall that he was once charged with hate speech against Muslims. I think he was eventually either acquitted or received a minor sentence, on the order of a fine and a forced apology.

Later, it emerged that his church was also the headquarters of the Coalition Against the Decriminalization of Abortion. So depending on your perspective, he's either a courageous firebrand or a shameless firestarter. There's a bushfire joke in there somewhere, but I don't think I 'm going to make it right now.

Gods the one obsessed with killing.

Hopefully not starting on too much of a tangent, but I agree with Kleonaptra on this one. I once ran across a site where somebody listed all the things that the Old Testament says you should kill people for doing/saying/thinking. If the Bible is really your basis for deciphering what God thinks, it renders the whole "God is love" thing sort of... well... hollow.

EDIT: Found it! evilbible.com

Comment by Jose
on Nintendo To Announce Game "Everyone Is Waiting For"

October 5th 2008 03:33
Please be Legacy of the Wizard, please be Legacy of the Wizard...

Comment by Jose
on Spore is the most pirated game out there

September 20th 2008 00:40
Y'know, I always had a bad feeling about Spore. Here, apparently, is another good reason why. If it wasn't enough that it tried to "improve" on SimEarth by adding educational and RPG aspects that steal focus from what would have been the point, this puts it over the top. Or under it, as the case may be.

Comment by Jose
on the Rule of Nazi Analogies and Reductio Ad Hitlerum

August 23rd 2008 00:56
Hi Morgan,

Interesting post. As someone who's wasted way too much of his time on forums, I was familiar with Godwin's Law in a practical manner but not so much with its history. Sadly, it even appears in places not related to politics or current events or even history. Talking about Magic: the Gathering? Well, then anyone who doesn't like the same cards you do is like Hitler. Talking about Lego? Well, then anyone who doesn't like the Islander models is like Hitler. And you can't predict when someone's going to pull it out, either.

Comment by Jose
on Sellin' The Wife For Votes

August 7th 2008 03:19
Interesting post, Summer Minor! Another thing that's occurred to me is that Sturgis has sort of become associated with the Republican party, even though a lot of the stuff that goes on there is anathema to the party's religious right allies: the alcohol, the tattoos, the leather bikinis. I can't help but feel that people like this are potential opponents of social conservatism who the Democrats and others have overlooked simply because they're "not like us."

Comment by Jose
on TV Kids - Whose Life Would You Want?

July 11th 2008 03:57
But Peter is always doing such crazy fun stuff! Your ilfe would be a never-ending adventure (assuming Stewie didn't assassinate you for not getting his applesauce fast enough).

I always wanted to be one of the kids on Scooby-Doo. They were never in school, and they were always staying out all night solving mysteries.