Okay, so I’ve never actually done improv. But one of the basic principles is that you’re never supposed to deny and offer made by your partner. If your partner says “I just bought a pet zebra”, you don’t say, “No, you didn’t buy a zebra” because that leaves the scene with nowhere to go. Instead, […]
A Critical Review of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
This is a critical review of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky. If you haven’t read it, be warned that this review contains major spoilers. I don’t mean “critical” with overtones of “faultfinder” or “censurer”. I mean “critical” as in “a judgement of the merits and faults”. If you really, really […]
The Metropolitan Man: Post Mortem
About a year ago I wrote a novel-length fanfic about Superman called The Metropolitan Man. This blog post will make absolutely no sense to you unless you’ve read that first, and, as per the title of this blog, is probably something that you will find boring. At any rate, since this is currently my longest (completed) […]
(The Lack of) Methodological Problems in High-Rise Syndrome Cat Studies
There’s a popular fact that gets thrown around a lot: cats can survive falling from great heights, and actually survive more often when dropped from a greater height (above seven stories). There’s also a popular rebuttal to this: the study which came to this conclusion was only looking at cats that came into the emergency […]
Pre-writing for National Novel Writing Month 2014, Part 3
Note: I plan on publishing this as it’s written through fictionpress.com or some other platform, so if you want to be surprised, this is your cue to leave. Characterization I have occasional problems with keeping characterization consistent, especially if I don’t start with a clear idea in my head about who they are. This is an […]
Pre-writing for National Novel Writing Month 2014, Part 2
Note: I plan on publishing this as it’s written through fictionpress.com or some other platform, so if you want to be surprised, this is your cue to leave. Magic I love magic, mostly because I love things that break the universe in various ways. Magic is a fairly difficult thing to get right though. Sanderson’s first […]
Pre-writing for National Novel Writing Month 2014, Part 1
I’ve done National Novel Writing Month for the past few years, which results in a lot of writing but not much that’s usable. I’m totally fine with that, since writing is a muscle that you have to build up over time, and this coming November I plan to take the challenge again. In the hopes […]
Charting Advantage and Disadvantage in D&D 5th Edition
There are a lot of things that I really like about 5th edition, and one of those things is advantage and disadvantage. In D&D, the primary conflict resolution mechanic is the rolling of a twenty-sided die. Roll the d20, and see if you hit some target number. Modifiers to that roll (and to the target […]
Odds of surviving unconsciousness in D&D 5th Edition
So the new edition of D&D came out today, or at least the Basic Rules, which is more than enough to begin actually playing. When you get hit for enough damage to knock you down to 0 hp, you need to make death saving throws. If you roll a 20, you are back to 1hp […]
State of My Various Writing Projects, Pt. 2
That this subject needs a part two is surely proof something – either self-doubt or my inability to stay engaged with something for very long. Here are the other things sitting in my various Google Docs folders: The Time Detectives I love time travel. It’s one of my favorite fictional concepts. The elevator pitch is […]
State of My Various Writing Projects
I like to write, but I have a problem with starting new projects and not finishing them. It’s not that I lose interest, it’s more that I write and write until my head gets all turned around and I have no idea whether what I’ve just written is any good. Sometimes I’ll know just how […]
Just What the Heck is Non-Monotonicity?
I am still working on the remaining analysis of Duluth municipal elections – hold your horses! – but I thought that as a breather I would talk about something that comes up a lot when people are talking about switching over to instant-runoff voting. Normally I would use the term ranked-choice voting, which it the […]
Would Ranked-Choice Voting Make a Difference in Duluth Municipal Elections? Part 2
Last time I looked at single-winner elections, this time I will be looking at the multi-seat elections. Note that what’s actually being proposed is more properly called “single transferable vote”, but I’ll be calling it ranked-choice voting in order to maintain consistency. The multi-winner version does rely on ranking choices, so it’s not a total […]
Would Ranked-Choice Voting Make a Difference in Duluth Municipal Elections? Part 1
There is a fairly good chance that the City Council of Duluth will be putting ranked-choice voting (AKA instant-runoff voting) up for referendum sometime in the next five years. I sat in at one of the City Council meetings last week and listened to a task force Mayor Ness had formed talk about whether or […]
Supreme Court Decision a Day: Roe v Wade
The vast majority of Supreme Court decisions are actually about pretty boring stuff. There’s case set to be heard in a couple of days, Taniguchi v. Kan Pacific which will determine whether the payment for translation services extends to the payments for translating text documents. The case is over a matter of slightly more than […]