You may not always agree with what he has to say but R. Robot is surely one of the most intelligent and insightful voices in the Blogosphere at the moment. Rising from virtual obscurity after September 11, he quickly achieved recognition and admiration for his amusing, well researched and erudite demolitions of some of the more fluorescent personalities of the antiwar Left.

His famous taking to task of the self-loathing Robert Fisk at the start of this year was so widely linked to and quoted that the verb "fisk" quickly entered the warblogger's lexicon along with other R. Robot coinages such as "pilger", "chomsky", "tariqali", "root-causers", "idiotarian" and "transnational progressivism".

Of course such fearless notoriety often attracts enmity but this lunatic fringe is certainly greatly outweighed by the huge following that's behind the one who honed "fact-checking" (as in "your ass") into a new and especially destructive weapon of war.

Speaking of fact-checking, while I was researching this post I was surprised to discover that in another life R. Robot is also an accomplished writer of rock music reviews and has conducted numerous interviews with rock's most famous celebrities.

But when is Kilgore Trout's b-day?

Happy 80th Birthday to Kurt Vonnegut. This article lists some highlights and lowlights of Mr. Vonnegut's career. What are your favorite Vonnegut novels, scenes, or characters? Don't dig Kurt? Why not?

(initial article via aldaily).

Artist Ted Nasmith, who is particularly notable for his Tolkien-related illustrations, now has an official website. I love Nasmith's work, but the website -- in its initial launch -- is in dire need of some tweaking. The thing extends off the edge of the browser window, with no way to scroll that I can discern. But what can be seen of Nasmith's paintings are beautiful.

Major Matt Mason

In 1967, with the race to the moon in full swing, kids across America dreamed of becoming Gemini astronauts when they grew up. Walking on the moon was no longer a distant fantasy, but a scant two years away. It was then that Mattel Toys, hoping to cash in on the craze, released what was to become one of their most popular and best remembered toy lines of all time: Major Matt Mason, Mattel's very own Man In Space.

Though lasting only about four years, from 1967 until its demise in 1970, Major Matt Mason comprised one of the most inventive and memorable toy lines ever. Standing only 6" tall, the white-suited Matt Mason figure was fully poseable with his wire-reinforced rubber body. His space suit and helmet were supposedly based on real NASA designs, but even if they weren't exactly accurate, they looked right for the part, mixing realism with plenty of futuristic fantasy.

The Toy Encyclopedia: can you find your favourite toy here?

In honor of today's release of the Expanded Edition of The Fellowship of the Ring, I thought it might help to have this Abridged Version, which I filched from another message board. (Author credit wasn't given there, so I can't give it here, either.) Enjoy!

---

THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING
Frodo: Hi, Gandalf!
Gandalf: Bilbo, give him your ring.
Bilbo: Okay. Bye!
Gandalf: See you at the pub, Frodo.

Frodo: Doo-de-do.
Nazgul: Boo!
Frodo: Eeeek!
Merry: (pops up out of nowhere) Eeeek!
Pippin: (ditto) Eeeek!
Sam: Ha ha, can't catch us now!

Tom Bombadil: Hello little friends!
Frodo: No time for you, weirdo.
Tom Bombadil: (disappears)

Saruman: See, all I had to do was cross out "Good" on my business
cards and write "Bad," and I'm all set.
Gandalf: I never saw /that/ coming.
Saruman: Excuse me while I tend to my vast army of evil orcs and
war machinery which were in plain sight.
Gandalf: Alas, if only he had imprisoned me at the top of a high
tower without walls or ceiling so that he could not prevent a giant
eagle from rescuing me, instead of in the canonical dungeon deep
underground. Oh, wait.

Frodo: (whispering) Keep a low profile.
Pippin: (loudly) And don't mention your real name, right?
Merry: (loudly) Or the ring either, right?
Strider: Right. Don't mention the ring. (laughs) It's okay, I'll save
you.

Pippin: (whining) Are we there yet?

Nazgul: Bwa ha ha ha. Give us the ring, little worm.
Frodo: Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names-
Sam: Hmm, looks like swords work too.
Strider: Go away, bad men!
Nazgul: The five of us must flee, for we are outnumbered by this one
Ranger!

Frodo: Wow, we're in Rivendell!
Merry: That was easy.
Pippin: Don't knock it.
Sam: Elves are cool!
Elrond: Get the hell out of my place, I don't
need trouble.
Gimli: You can't throw them out while I'm here!
Legolas: Same for me!
Elrond: Right, all of you wankers leave now.
Gandalf: But I just got here.
Boromir: I'll just invite myself along. No real reason. Certainly not
because I have larceny on my mind. Nope.
Strider: Look, they fixed my sword! (swish) Wheeeee!

Frodo: Such beautiful scenery. The green grass and leaves are so-
[THUD]
Pippin: Where the hell did all this snow come from?
Gandalf: Don't blame me. Who knew that mountains could be cold on
top?
Gimli: Told you we should go through the mines.
Strider: Let the dwarf have his way.
Legolas: Fine, whatever, just open the door.
Gimli: Ummm, I have no idea how to get inside.
Boromir: What a bunch of dicks.
Gandalf: Of course! (applies C4 to the problem) [POOF]
Sam: Such magic.

Merry: Ooooo, dead dwarf over here!
Gimli: Boo hoo.
Pippin: HEY MONSTERS, COME AND GET US!!
Gandalf: Twit.
Orcs: Oh good, we were getting hungry. Do you have any idea how
difficult it is to keep an army fed in these abandonded mines?
Boromir: (Slash)
Legolas: (Pfft)
Gimli: (Whack)
Orcs: This is definitely putting a damper on our relationship.
Frodo: Ouch!
Strider: Alas, the Ring-bearer has perished! Our quest has failed!
Frodo: Just kidding. I did the slide-blade-between-arm-and-chest
trick while I was standing in profile to y'all. Pretty funny, eh?
Balrog: Dammit, I was sound asleep. That really ticks me off.
Gandalf: We are so doomed.
Strider: Not if we run away! (does so)
Boromir: First good idea you've had. (follows)
Hobbits: (already in the lead)
Gandalf: (trailing) It matters not! You cannot outrun the demon!
Legolas: We don't have to . . .
Gimli: . . . we just have to outrun *you*.
Balrog: Your ass is mine, wizard. (drags Gandalf down with him)
Strider: Woe is upon our company, that Gandalf has fallen!
Frodo: I'm over it.
Sam: Yeah, let's go, there's no food here.

Legolas: Wondrous are these woods!
Gimli: And full of cutthroat elves.
Celeborn: We were told of your coming. Well, "warned" is more
accurate.
Galadriel: I know you better than you know yourselves.
Sam: You've got nothing better to do with your time?
Galadriel: Wake up, Frodo, and look in the mirror.
Frodo: Geez, can't a guy get some sleep around here? What mirror
are you babbling about, there's just this birdbath full of water.
Galadriel: But it shows magic pictures of things that may or may not
be!
Frodo: I'm guessing you're a day trader. Here, you take the ring.
Galadriel: I will not. (hangs her head) I lost the instructions.
Frodo: Great, I'm still stuck with it.
Celeborn: Check-out time!

Pippin: (singing) Row row row your boat, gently down-
Gimli: Shut the hell up. Seven hours of that is enough.
Strider: All this beautiful scenery is giving me a very bad feeling.

Boromir: Give me the ring.
Frodo: Notice as I put it on that it not only makes me invisible, it
also apparently teleports me away from your clutches.
Boromir: Arrrrrgghhh! I'm just trying to save my kingdom! Where is a
rake I can step on, that it might strike my head? Ah, this will do
nicely. (whack)
Frodo: Best thing for me to do now is head for the most dangerous
place in the world.
Sam: Works for me. (they leave)

SuperOrcs: Kill kill kill!
Merry: Help, help, Auntie Em! (waves his tiny sword pathetically)
Pippin: Christ, look at the size of these guys, we're dead meat.
Boromir: Fear not, little hobbits, I shall blow my special horn and we
shall be rescued by soldiers . . who are . . hundreds . . of . . miles . .
away . . guess we are pretty stuffed after all. (dies)
SuperOrcs: Kill kill kill!
Legolas: Look at my form. Damn, I'm good.
Gimli: I'm environmentally friendly --- blood makes the grass grow.
Strider: Looks like Frodo got away. Well, there's no chance in hell I'm
going to step one foot closer to Mordor, so let's go the exact
opposite direction.
Legolas: Okay.
Gimli: Sure.
THE END

Remember when we talked about Ayn Rand? Steven eventually posted a critical essay that reads like the National Enquirer of Rationalism.

Collaborative book club?

I (well, Sean, really) think that Jaq came up with the idea of a Collaboratory book reading/discussion. I'd like to ressurect the idea now that we've got our feet a bit on the ground. Is there interest in this still? If so, how would it be done? (my ideas inside).

Once I had landed my [space vehicle description] near the fabled [landscape feature name] on [planet name], I took the [magic potion ingredients] I had previously acquired to brew the potion I would need for the [dark ritual name] that I would perform that night. (Fill in the blanks using the generators linked!!)

And once you're done playing with those, you can generate actual planetary maps with this generator. What fun!!

(links courtesy of Star Lines.)

Man,this site needs help. So, here it is:

What's your ideal dance mix cd?

At least 10 songs.

This is for the masses. This is not songs only you would know. (Though feel free to post that in addition, separately).

Grist for your mill: About.com Top 40/Pop Top 100 Hits (laugh if you will).

Mine:

Vogue - Madonna
Disco Inferno - The Trammps
Shout - The Isley Brothers
It Takes Two - Rob Base
Brick House - The Commodores
Loveshack - B52s
Get Down Tonight - KC and the Sunshine Band
I've Got the Power - Snap
Celebration - Kool and the Gang
Stand - REM
YMCA - The Village People

Laugh if you will. If I'm the DJ, the masses will be lovin' me with this mix. You know it's true (oo, maybe I should add some Mili Vanilli).

Do we need more voters or better voters?

Thomas Sowell weighs in on the better voters side saying:

During election years, people in the media seem to be forever lamenting the fact that millions of Americans who are eligible to vote do not in fact go to the polls. When speculating as to why those people don't vote, the media often assume that there is something wrong with a society in which voter turnout is low, by comparison with the past or by comparison with other countries.
Actually, some of the most strife-torn countries, with seething hatreds between various ethnic or religious groups, have much higher voter turnout than the United States has. Where each group is desperate to seize power from other groups, or to keep others from acquiring power over them, getting high voter turnout is no problem. But it can be a symptom of other serious problems.

Sowell raises the age-old question of "is it better to have an ignorant vote, or no vote at all?". With election day coming up tomorrow, it's probably a good time to discuss this. Assuming that the answer probably lies somewhere in the middle, as it usually does, how do we acheive this middle ground, both on a personal level (those close to us) and a larger, broader, societal level? It's probably too late for this year, but what about next time around?

shamlessly stolen from MeFi.

We had an earlier post here about Ayn Rand. Steven den Beste is asking her minions not to write to him.

Proof that the times keep on marchin' on: last night while taking our daughter trick-or-treating, my wife and I observed only one kid wearing that mask from Scream.

The best costume we saw (besides our own little girl's, of course) was a girl done up as a Japanese geisha. I couldn't tell how old she was -- I'm guessing ten or eleven -- but the makeup job was superb, as was the traditional kimono. (She had Reeboks on, though -- sometimes you have to make a concession to practicality.) I'm not sure about the message being sent in dressing up a pre-teen as a geisha, but the costume itself was very well-done.

So, were there any other good costumes observed last evening? (Accepting that not everyone here has offspring, but may have still observed interested costumes.)

What do you do when you are a former member of one of the most renowned comedy troupes in history? If you're John Cleese, you move on to various writing and acting endeavours, including taking over for Desmond Llewelyn as Q in the Bond films. If you're Terry Gilliam, you direct movies....really offbeat, strange movies. And if you're Michael Palin, you become a world traveler and film your exploits for the BBC and PBS. Check out his site; it's wonderful for the photography alone.

Happy Halloween. Now for something truly creepy.

From MeFi, here's the suicide note left by the guy that shot up the Nursing College in Arizona. The MeFi discussion is quite interesting, and I wanted to know if any of you had any thoughts. The discussion over there has hit upon mainly two things: 1) the nature of the guy, what drove him to do what he did, etc. and 2) the appropriateness of publishing this and giving him the attention (albeit in death) that some claim he desperately wanted. Feel free to expand on both.

Apropos of the discussion on music downloading and such here are the thoughts of comics author and artist Scott McCloud.

McCloud is a pioneer of web-based comics (as well as the author of the brilliant books Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics), and his views and theories on how the Web may release artists from their collective shackles (the RIAA, for instance) are fairly compelling -- although I don't agree with all of what he says (particularly the motivation behind file-sharers, as I noted in that discussion).

McCloud has proposed a system of "micropayments" for Web content. His focus is, of course, on comics -- that's what he does and it's the medium whose success he is clearly most concerned with -- but what he says could apply to online fiction, or online music, or online films, or whatever else we can conceive. Check out his comics essays on the subject -- they're the ones entitled "Coins of the Realm". And then, check out this response to McCloud's work.

Micropayments: can it work? or, having experienced the siren song of free content, are they doomed to failure?

A prominent author has advanced a new theory as to the identity of Jack the Ripper. Well, I guess that rules out Colonel Mustard in the parlor with a candlestick.

Everything I need to know, I learned from D&D (not really, but it is evocative, no?)

Actually D&D alignment really has helped me to understand my own ethics better.

(Take the D and D Online Alignment Test.)

The scales are: Lawful-Neutral-Chaotic and Good-Neutral-Evil. The first scale is alignment relative to law, order, etc. The second scale is relative to individuals and their well being.

I come out between Neutral Good and Chaotic Good. I flex on the law, mostly because I think the law, lots of times, is not good for people. It is a subjective judgment, again. And, obviously, with me, it's a lot more in concept than it is in actuality. Any true nonconformist should not complain too much when the law comes down on her. She has to be willing to take the consequences, though she can argue the justice of it.

But I'm very concerned about individual good. Spiritual life is the highest priority (for me, and it probably includes liberty/freedom), followed closely by physical human life (which includes subsistence living, and, last of all, the right to property and wealth.)

How about you? What's your D&D alignment? And what are your reflections on these issues?

(This post started as a comment on Collaboratory, and is double-posted on interact (because I'm looking for the responses of both audiences.)

I'm certainly no fan of President Bush, but he occasionally gets it right -- such as his nominee to head the National Endowment for the Arts. It seems that this nominee is not a strict ideologue, but rather a competent and at times forceful voice for the arts.

I have never liked one of Don Henley's songs. Now I really have a reason to like him.

Don Henley to fans at a concert about downloading his songs:

Download all you want. The record companies have been ripping artists off for years. Go ahead. I'd rather lose money to you than them. I don't have a contract with you.

(via kottke, via brushstroke)

Where are you on the whole Napster thing?

One of the Weblog pioneers, Anil Dash, has found himself stuck between a rock and a hard place due to some criticisms he made of tech and misc. blog turned warblog Little Green Footballs. When LGF was put on MSNBC's Best of Blog's list and Will Femia at MSNBC drug out Anil's old posts about LGF, chaos ensued. Since, both Femia and Anil have received numerous e-mails from LGF's supporters and some of the supporters have even taken to crapping in Anil's comments on completely unrelated subjects.

This morning, Anil wrote a long, well-prosed screed about his point of view. I would encourage you all to read it and post any thoughts that you have. Any possible solutions? Where do we stand (individually and collectively) with his challenge regarding groupthink and the warblogs?