Raithe

Ilona Andrews is the pen name for a writing couple, and I quite like what they did with the Kate Daniels stuff. As Sarex said, the first book can be considered a little weak by some, since it was a little rough around the edges as they establish the world. But it's got some good ideas and fun characters. Also, unlike a lot of urban fantasy stuff, they don't push the romance aspect just because they have a female lead.

The Many Deaths of Joe Buckley An amusing book, that Baen are publishing with all proceeds from this collection will support two charities, both founded, supported, and run by Baen readers: Operation Baen Bulk, which sends books, ereaders, and other supplies to our men and women in uniform, and ReadAssist, which allows disabled readers free access to Baen ebooks. If you don't realise it, but in many, many books that Baen publish there will turn up a "Joe Buckley" who invariably is killed off in so many different ways. He's the Sean Bean of the collected Baen Universes. This book collects many of those deaths, along with the various perspectives of the authors, and how this tradition started. To swipe some from the collections Introduction by John Ringo,

One article on things that makes a few good points.. Sharpening Contradictions - Why al- Qaeda Attacked Satirists in Paris

To me, multiculturalism should be a blending of cultures, with a recognition of where they came from and why they existed. But as gets pointed out, what you seem to be getting is communities of one culture forming, and insisting on their right to keep their culture exact as it is, in whichever new country they've moved to, while also insisting that they shouldn't have to adapt to the cultures around them. This kind of has zones of all the "Indians/poles/insert_cultural group" buying/renting houses in areas where there are family members already living, forming "little russias/chinas" etc, where you can walk into and pretty much only hear the language of their original country/culture spoken. I have no problem with people honouring the culture they come from, or making sure their children can speak the language and have the connection to their past. But I think it does start to become a problem when it becomes ingrained that you are separate from the culture you (or your parents / grandparents) emigrated to. You have that these groups for a variety of reasons (whether economic, political, or religious) decide to leave their country of origin and move to another place for a better chance at a peaceful life where they can prosper, but the moment they arrive it turns into a "but I don't want to join your culture, I just want the benefits it provides." If we look back at the past, it seems that America used to have a situation where people emigrated looking for that "Freedom" to put in hard work, and potentially make a fortune and rise. You had the poor immigrants and refugees staking everything, and while they did respect their own culture you had the parents encouraging their children to learn English, and do well in school, and work within the system. - Okay, that might be somewhat rose tinted but consider the way the Irish and the Italians and the Koreans and Vietnamese went over and merged into the great melting pot. Nowadays (especially in Europe it seems), it's not so much about that. It's moving somewhere, then milking the system for the benefits while refusing to adapt themselves, and complaining that they don't have the opportunities because they're a minority group and the country they've moved to isn't giving them a chance or adapting to them. That isn't "good" multiculturalism. How can I respect that, when they don't want to respect me or where they've decided to move to and raise their children?

http://youtu.be/HPyl2tOaKxM Edit: And just for Hurl.. http://youtu.be/d13gX-1HJg4

But.. Sean Bean dies in the first 10 minutes.. Also, the director/writer went on to do Ultraviolet. He was still experimenting with the Gun-Fu, but decided the Shotokan based style they used in Equilibrium was a bit too stylistic and stiff, so with Ultraviolet I believe he said they based the Gun-Fu on Wing Chun to get it smoother and more circular. Obscure Movie Trivia..

And the Happy Birthday to KaineParker. Take the time to sniff the roses. For some day, the birthday celebrations goes from "One more Year older!" to "I managed to survive another year" before hitting the "Wow, I've managed another year before I've hit the grave.."

I always remember a quote about the settling of Chicago "You have to wonder what these settlers thought. Gee, I like New York but it just isn't cold enough and the crime isn't that bad. Let's go West!"

Alias has its ups and downs. It starts out with some nice (if silly ideas), introduces some neat characters, twists things around a few times, then proceeds to get a touch more sillier as it goes along. It does start wandering into that "almost steampunk renaissance superscience genius" plotline in the last few seasons as I recall, which was both interesting and exceptionally silly for a modern day spy genre. It all depends on how much you can take of lies, deception, twist, turns, betrayals, will they/won't they romance, family issues, and evvvvviiiillll conspiracies.

http://youtu.be/pyuGyq22Ris

I think in some ways DA:I's main storyline seems set to that whole : 1: Introduction (Tutorial) Part of the story 2: Drops you in first "open area" to get a feel 3: Loss of Haven / Find Skyhold 4: General Open World Stuff you don't actually have to do for main storyline 5: Orlais Court 6: Oh look, Grey Wardens are being Manipulated / Follow on Assault 7: Fade Sequence 8: Hidden Elven Temple 9: Finale Which if you focus only on those events, doesn't really feel as fully fleshed out. Or at least, with the several open areas to visit to get to suitable levels and such, the pacing gets thrown out. So it feels like you spend 12 hours on main story, and 90 hours on just doing stuff. Sure, a lot of it can be interesting or fun stuff. But it doesn't completely mesh together on a structural level.

Also, for anyone who started losing track of where the armies were and how they were armed and all in the latest Hobbit..

Or we just keep it simple..

Poker Night. A dark little character piece. A young policeman makes detective, and finds out there's a tradition where the fresh detective get invited to a poker night where the other players are the legendary cops. When they win a hand, they tell a story of their past, all in the hopes of passing on wisdom and experience to the new guy. However, when he leaves at the end of the night, he gets kidnapped by a serial killer and has to use the stories he heard to help match wits with his captor while also rescuing the young girl held along with him. It's told in a mix of flashbacks, since it pretty much starts with him leaving the party, and has its own sting in the tail for an ending. Has a nice cast of Ron Perlman, Giancarlo Esposito, Titus Welliver and Ron Eldard as some of the senior cops at the poker night.

It actually puts me in mind of a lot of British panto. Everyone knowing its all incredibly silly and jokey, but playing it seriously, with moments of over-ham to the audience, interspersed with passable amusing songs.

To be fair, it's only an eight episode run. It's not like they're going to force it into a full blown 20-odd episodes.. http://youtu.be/jKtmIyLXgt0

Eh, I have to admit, I got annoyed with the war table and the timing thing. So I tended to alt-tab out, momentarily re-set my pc clock to the next day. Set it back to the correct time, then find all my war table missions had been dealt with. The War Table is really not ideal for people who like to focus and binge-play, compared to those who might play an hour a day or such like.

Not sure why, but I found Neil deGrasse Tyson's list of 8 books all intelligent people should read somewhat amusing..

To be fair, Voyager picked up in the last few years in general storytelling and character growth. But they also had a habit of making eunuchs of any previously scary alien encounter. "Oh look, it's something that was a big bad and immensely scary last season. Now we can kick its ass and it turns out its really quite wussified.." - Notably both the Borg, and Q. Janeway did tend to follow the more Kirk type of behaviour in some ways - Let's follow the Prime Directive in a hand-wavey kind of manner, well, unless it really gets in the way of keeping my crew alive and getting us home, in which case lets just chuck it out the window.

I have to admit, it's been a bit odd lately. I wouldn't call it seasonal depression or anything, but the combination of holidays that weren't actually a holiday, the blending of days, and visits to mom in the hospital, and the grey and windy weather has me in some skewed frame of mind I can't quite place. I'm having to make effort to remember which day is which, and I find I'm idling into listening to music, and half-heartedly reading or randomly doodling rather than doing anything of note.

I still call Tuvok the worst Security Officer. How many episodes do they string together where the ship isn't hijacked or vast numbers of the crew kidnapped in one form or another?