Top 10 D&D Modules I Found in Storage This Weekend #1 (GeekDad Wayback Machine)

Top 10 D&D Modules I Found in Storage This Weekend #1 (GeekDad Wayback Machine):

We were digging through the storage shed this weekend to find just the right box of Christmas decorations that were needed to make things perfect before the party, when I should chance across the dusty stack of old Dungeons & Dragons modules I’ve had with me for… well, for a very long time. For all the GeekDads who have gamed, as I scan and read through these, I’ll post them for for your enjoyment and comment, if you remember them.

Here’s the first, B1: In Search of the Unknown – the module that came with the boxed Basic Set, and was the first adventure that many new gamers played, setting out to find and explore Quasqueton, the abandoned dungeon complex of famed (but now, sadly, dead) adventurers. It’s a classic dungeon crawl for beginning characters. The key things to remember:

• If you’re quiet, and put out your lights, the bats won’t bug you.


• There’s no treasure in the “Treasure Cave.” There are, however, two magical berserkers.


• If you place a chip from the Magical Stone in you mouth, something really good (like granting a Limited Wish), or something really bad (permanent loss of 1 point of intelligence) will happen.


• Don’t confuse the Magical Stone with the bat guano.

[Editor's Note: this series originally ran in December, 2007.]

The Commodore 64 Turns 30

The Commodore 64 Turns 30:

The Commodore 64 turns 30 this month! In January 1982, a state-of-the-art home computer made its debut at the Consumer Electronics Show – the Commodore 64. The C64 housed less than a megabyte of memory, but boasted color graphics, perfect for little kids making their first journeys into computer gaming.

My twin sister and I were two such budding gamers. My father purchased the C64 to give himself a worthy chess opponent and teacher; after a lot of begging, my sister and I were allowed to have our turn as well.

Read the rest of Kelly Knox’s memories of the 64 and comment over at GeekMom.

The Rebirth of Microsoft Flight Simulator Will be 'Free' on PCs this Spring [UPDATE] [Video]

The Rebirth of Microsoft Flight Simulator Will be 'Free' on PCs this Spring [UPDATE] [Video]:

Microsoft's rebirth of their hallowed Flight Simulator series, Microsoft Flight is finally coming out, over a year since we started seeing videos of it.

It looks quite nice, it's on PC and it's free... kinda sorta.

The official word is:

After downloading "Microsoft Flight" for free, players can jump into hours of exciting gameplay on the Big Island of Hawaii.

In addition, players who sign in to their Games for Windows – LIVE account automatically receive additional free content, including the legendary Boeing Stearman plane, supplementary missions, and access to Achievements and an Online Pilot Profile. Those looking to deepen their experience can purchase and download additional content that adds new aircraft, regions and customization options. The frequently released new content for "Microsoft Flight" includes daily aerocache challenges and updates that make every flight unique and fun.

That's how modern games work, and why not? Free for a taste. Paid for the full meal. The question is simply whether Microsoft will be nickeling and diming or letting folks pay a fair amount to fly through a full game.

Sign up for the beta, if you'd like.

Two questions linger about this:

UPDATE: We've got answers!

1) Microsoft says that people who play via Games for Windows LIVE will get added free content and multiplayer options. We're asking if you have to use that service.

Would that mean Live is the only wat to play multiplayer? A spokesperson for the game says: "In Microsoft Flight players can team up with friends in the LIVE community to share the skies and explore terrain together. We are currently exploring distribution channels for Microsoft Flight and are looking into a number of options."

2) The official Flight site compares the new game to Microsoft Flight Simulator as follows: "The new Microsoft Flight retains the full fidelity simulation longtime fans have come to expect while offering all players a whole new look and feel, a wide range of new game play and challenges, persistent experiences and social connectivity." We're checking about what that means in terms of controls to learn whether you can play with a controller, a flight stick or even with complex sim-style keyboard commands.

On this one, a spokesperson says that you could in fact play with just a mouse: "em>Microsoft Flight is compatible with joysticks, flight pedals, Xbox 360 controllers and additional traditional controllers used for flight simulators. Players only need a mouse to fly and can tailor flight controls to match their skill level, making Microsoft Flight easy for beginners while still challenging for the most accomplished PC pilots."

They further clarified that you can use keyboard and mouse controls. But what about Microsoft's other favorite control scheme? They have "nothing to announce on Kinect support at the moment."

NASA Wants to Power Robots With Microbes

NASA Wants to Power Robots With Microbes:

By Mark Brown, Wired UK

For NASA’s Martian rovers, it seems that bigger is better. The $2.5 billion (£1.6 billion) Curiosity — which is currently whizzing towards the red planet following its November 2011 launch — is five times bigger than twin predecessors Spirit and Opportunity.

In fact it’s taller than most basketball players at 2.2 meters high, and is about the size of a small SUV with its three-meter length. Add on its humongous robot arm, which can reach out another 2.2 meters, and you’ve got only seriously huge rover.

To power such a beast needs a lot of energy and the robot packs a radioisotope power system that generates electricity from the heat of plutonium’s radioactive decay. It will fuel the enormous rover for at least 687 Earth days (one Martian year).

But at the US Naval Research Laboratory, space roboticists are researching planetary explorers at the other end of the size spectrum. While Curiosity weighs about the same as a giraffe (900kg), these autonomous micro-rovers would be lighter than a bag of sugar, at just one kilogram.

Gregory Scott at NRL’s Spacecraft Engineering Department has been awarded a NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) research grant to investigate the initial phase of tiny planetary robots that are powered by bacteria.

Micro-robotic explorers, powered by microbial fuel cells, could represent an efficient and reliable energy source on a planet without human intervention.

Microbial fuel cells harness the metabolic processes of bacteria, sending harvested electrons through an anode-cathode-resistor circuit to generate electricity. The advantages are that bacteria can be squashed into a battery with high energy density compared to traditional lithium-ion power sources, and the ability of microorganisms to reproduce acts like a natural battery charger.

Scott reckons that a portion of the microbial energy would be used to maintain on-board electronics and control systems, while the rest would be directed toward slowly charging a battery or capacitor. Once enough energy is stored, the autonomous robot would be able to use a more power intensive scientific instrument or to propel itself forward.

His research will focus on a pure culture anaerobic bacterium, such as Geobacter sulfurreducens, and look at ways to increase the energy produced by MFCs, and eliminate the existing bulk associated with the battery infrastructure, such as large, power intensive pump systems.

“As we move forward in the utilization of MFCs as an energy generation method, this research begins to lay the groundwork for low powered electronics with a long-term potential for space and robotic applications,” says Scott in a press release. Microbial fuel cells coupled with extremely low-power electronics and a low energy requirement for mobility addresses gaps in power technology applicable to all robotic systems, especially planetary robotics.”

Image: Electron microscope image of the microbe, Geobacter sulfurreducens, the core of the microbial fuel cell-based system. (US Naval Research Laboratory) [high-resolution]

Source: Wired.co.uk

Old, million-dollar violins don't play better than the new models

Old, million-dollar violins don't play better than the new models:

The old adage tells us not to judge a book by its cover, and now it seems as though we shouldn’t judge a violin by its price. Violins crafted in the so-called "golden age" by expert makers Antonio Stradivari and Guiseppe Guarneri "del Gesu" are worth up to several million dollars each, and they have long been considered the best violins in the world. However, nobody has studied whether or not these instruments are actually superior to other violins in their tonal qualities. New research in PNAS shows that these lofty prices might not actually reflect how musicians actually feel about the instruments themselves.

The research took place at the Eighth International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, a prestigious gathering of violinists, violin experts, and violin makers. Twenty-one subjects were included in the experiment, and all were very experienced violinists. The researchers used six violins in their tests; three were new high-quality violins, ranging from just a few days to a few years old, and three were old violins (two Stradivari and a del Gesu) crafted in the 1700’s. The three old violins were worth a combined total of $10 million, which was about one hundred times the combined value of the new ones. The musicians were unaware of the objective of the experiment, as well as the identities of the six violins used.

Read the comments on this post

Is Libertarianism Fundamentally Racist?

Is Libertarianism Fundamentally Racist?:

Chait says yes:

The most fevered opponents of civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s – and, for that matter, the most fervent defenders of slavery a century before – also usually made their case in in process terms rather than racist ones. They stood for the rights of the individual, or the rights of the states, against the federal Goliath. I am sure Paul’s motives derive from ideological fervor rather than a conscious desire to oppress minorities. But the relationship between the abstract principles of his worldview and the ugly racism with which it has so frequently been expressed is hardly coincidental.

If the connection is "hardly coincidental" then how are Ron Paul's motives not racist? Jon wants to be fair to libertarians and libertarian conservatives, but in his gut he knows we're all bigots. By Chait's reasoning, for example, I am profoundly homophobic. I oppose hate crime laws on the basis of freedom of thought and speech. In Virtually Normal, I even argue in principle against employment discrimination laws for gays. Does that mean I cheer on bigoted employers and gay-bashers?

Yes, says Chait:

[Libertarians] genuinely see racism as a belief system that expresses itself only in the form of coercive government power. In Paul’s world, state-enforced discrimination is the only kind of discrimination. A libertarian by definition opposes discrimination because libertarians oppose the state. He cannot imagine social power exerting itself through any other form.

I can. The social power of homophobia and hetero-sexism in a free culture is crushing. I oppose it; and recognize it. I have spent a great deal of my life pushing back culturally and intellectually and morally against it. But I do not want to compel it into submission. I want to persuade it into toleration. And that is the core difference between power exerted by the state and power exerted by non-state actors: the former is ultimately backed by physical force deployed by the government; the latter by public opinion, economic and social power, and the willingness of minorities to buy into the ideology of their oppressors or haters.

Because I believe in civil equality as guaranteed by the Constitution, I insist on absolute neutrality by the government, which is supposed to represent all citizens, but I would allow for private hostility, bigotry, hatred and even discrimination in civil society. Because our laws are so riddled with identity politics, I find it practically impossible to oppose employment discrimination laws for gays, when every other minority is included in them. But I stick by my principles in Virtually Normal, and I do not believe it makes me a gay-hater or enabler of gay hatred.

Process matters in a liberal society (though not, of course, in a leftist or theocon one). It is not a bad faith argument, even if you differ. And yet the accusation of bad faith creeps in:

[I]n the absence of government protection, white males, acting solely through their exercise of freedom of contract and association, have historically proven quite capable of erecting what any sane observer would recognize as actual impediments to the freedom of minorities and women.

Since I am a privileged white male, is my alleged dedication to the principles of liberty merely a mask for my desire to get and keep mine and screw the rest? That's Corey Robin's core argument about conservatives in general: in the end, all it is is the maintenance of power.

But what when this country is more multi-colored than white? Or when women outnumber men in the workplace? If I change my position then, and start using the government to ensure white male supremacy, Chait and Robin will have a point. But I won't. Since my principles do not make distinctions between citizens as members of variously oppressed groups, they endure through a future far more culturally and morally complex than the one we have now. Libertarianism anticipates this complicated future and understands that the state will have to become lighter not heavier if the social compact is to survive.

Noah Smith counters:

The modern American libertarian ideology does not deal with the issue of local bullies. In the world envisioned by Nozick, Hayek, Rand, and other foundational thinkers of the movement, there are only two levels to society - the government (the "big bully") and the individual. If your freedom is not being taken away by the biggest bully that exists, your freedom is not being taken away at all ... this gigantic loophole has made modern American libertarianism the favorite philosophy of a vast array of local bullies, who want to keep the big bully (government) off their backs so they can bully to their hearts' content.

There is no question that this is the case. Bullies love freedom. But so do rebels and prophets, who would be silenced without it. And the right response to bullying is to stand up to it, while the government diligently ensures that the free market is not dominated by monopolies or rentier classes; and that core political liberties, such as freedom of speech, are protected everywhere.

Freedom means evil, as well as good, will flourish. And a conservative, properly understood, is someone who understands that evil is eternal, but that evil backed by a monopoly of physical force is the only one that can be restrained by a political order, without undermining the freedom it requires to breathe and grow and think for itself.

The Ron Paul Challenge for Progressives

The Ron Paul Challenge for Progressives:

As conservative voters in Iowa get
set to
deliver their verdict on whether the GOP should have at its
head someone with a long and clear philosophy about reducing the
size of government, some liberal commenters around the country are
grappling with a similar conundrum: What to say about a
presidential candidate who wants to end foreign and domestic wars
and protect civil liberties against the imperial presidency?

While there is plenty of
material in the don't be fooled, he's really a moral
monster
category, here's a roundup of progressives defending the Texas
congressmen from their ideological fellow travelers.

Glenn Greenwald, Salon:

Whatever else one wants to say, it is indisputably true that Ron
Paul is the only political figure with any sort of a national
platform — certainly the only major presidential candidate in
either party — who advocates policy views on issues that
liberals and progressives have long flamboyantly claimed
are both compelling and crucial. The converse is equally
true: the candidate supported by liberals and progressives and for
whom most will vote — [...]

Ron Paul's candidacy is a mirror held up in front of the face of
America's Democratic Party and its progressive wing, and the image
that is reflected is an ugly one; more to the point, it's one they
do not want to see because it so violently conflicts with their
desired self-perception.

Matt Stoller, Naked Capitalism:

Modern liberalism is a mixture of two elements. One is a support
of Federal power – what came out of the late 1930s, World War II,
and the civil rights era where a social safety net and warfare were
financed by Wall Street, the Federal Reserve and the RFC, and human
rights were enforced by a Federal government, unions, and a cadre
of corporate, journalistic and technocratic experts (and cheap oil
made the whole system run.) America mobilized militarily for
national priorities, be they war-like or social in nature. And two,
it originates from the anti-war sentiment of the Vietnam era, with
its distrust of centralized authority mobilizing national resources
for what were perceived to be immoral priorities. When you throw in
the recent financial crisis, the corruption of big finance, the
increasing militarization of society, Iraq and Afghanistan, and the
collapse of the moral authority of the technocrats, you have a big
problem. Liberalism doesn't really exist much within the Democratic
Party so much anymore, but it also has a profound challenge insofar
as the rudiments of liberalism going back to the 1930s don't
work.

This is why Ron Paul can critique the Federal Reserve and
American empire, and why liberals have essentially no answer to his
ideas, arguing instead over Paul having character defects. Ron
Paul's stance should be seen as a challenge to better create a
coherent structural critique of the American political order. It's
quite obvious that there isn't one coming from the left, otherwise
the figure challenging the war on drugs and American empire
wouldn't be in the Republican primary as the libertarian
candidate.

Robert Scheer, Truthdig:

It is official now. The Ron Paul campaign, despite surging in
the Iowa polls, is not worthy of serious consideration, according
to a New York Times editorial; "Ron Paul long ago disqualified
himself for the presidency by peddling claptrap proposals like
abolishing the Federal Reserve, returning to the gold standard,
cutting a third of the federal budget and all foreign aid and
opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964."

That last item, along with the decade-old racist comments in the
newsletters Paul published, is certainly worthy of criticism. But
not as an alternative to seriously engaging the substance of Paul's
current campaign—his devastating critique of crony capitalism and
his equally trenchant challenge to imperial wars and the assault on
our civil liberties that they engender.

Paul is being denigrated as a presidential contender even though
on the vital issues of the economy, war and peace, and civil
liberties, he has made the most sense of the Republican candidates.
And by what standard of logic is it "claptrap" for Paul to attempt
to hold the Fed accountable for its destructive policies? That's
the giveaway reference to the raw nerve that his favorable
prospects in the Iowa caucuses have exposed. Too much anti-Wall
Street populism in the heartland can be a truly scary thing to the
intellectual parasites residing in the belly of the beast that
controls American capitalism.

Coleen Rowley and John Walsh, Des Moines Register:

There is today only one anti-war, anti-corruption,
pro-Constitution, pro-civil liberties candidate for president in
either party who stands squarely against expanding military empire
and for democracy. That candidate is Ron Paul. Like prairie
anti-interventionists Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern and Harold
Hughes in an earlier era, Paul is a maverick in his own party. He
believes in an adequate force to defend America but not 1 cent for
wars of aggression.

Tactically it makes sense for anti-war activists to vote in the
Republican caucuses/primaries for Paul. If he wins or does well in
Iowa and New Hampshire, then the questions of war and peace will
appear on the national scene. If Paul goes on to win his party’s
nomination, these questions will finally make their appearance in
the general election.

And if Paul wins the presidency, hundreds of wasteful overseas
military bases will be dismantled. Our costly, counterproductive
military empire could hopefully be reigned in before the blowback
worsens.

Reason on Ron Paul here.