Hermit

I am in AWE of Hong Kong's citizens. I fear for them, but damn if I don't admire the hell out of them.
 
 

I am in AWE of Hong Kong's citizens. I fear for them, but damn if I don't admire the hell out of them.
 
 

New one up!

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1183.html

For me,  I can see why Warren would want to avoid giving the Press that quick Sound bite of "Taxes will go up for the middle class " while the "but you you will SAVE much more than that and here's why..." stuff is cut off. But yes, it did not look good on her. She's got the lead in polls but it's hers to lose. She's still my pick by a narrow margin.
 
Bernie was fantastic, particularly for a guy who underwent surgery. He came across with sincerity, passion, and good humor. The part where he joked with Biden when Biden was talking of talking of Putin while gesturing Bernie's way came off good for both men. Their age is under fire, and maybe despite their differences they feel a common challenge there.
 
Kamala Harris seemed really fixated on shutting Trumps' twitter down and trying to get Warren on board with it. I'm not sure what she was going for there. It's like she was trying to make Warren look bad, but picked a really WEIRD angle to do it with.
 
I rather like Andrew Yang. He's very different in his approaches, but he has some good points... honestly, I don't see him as a president (though I'd be good with it), but after this he needs to be on some sort of position that advises the president. To quote an over used term, he thinks outside the box.
 
I actually like what Steyer was saying, but I have strong concerns he'd not be able to walk the talk.
 
Of all the centrists, Mayor Pete is the one I like the best.  I don't agree with him on some matters but I would trust his intelligence and education to be advantages.
 
I completely agree when you say "All in all, the debate showed several people I'd be happy to see in the Oval Office."
I'd take any of over Trump, and at least four of them I'd consider a win beyond merely 'the lesser of evils'.
I cannot say how tired I am of voting based on the lesser of evils.
 
 
 

For me,  I can see why Warren would want to avoid giving the Press that quick Sound bite of "Taxes will go up for the middle class " while the "but you you will SAVE much more than that and here's why..." stuff is cut off. But yes, it did not look good on her. She's got the lead in polls but it's hers to lose. She's still my pick by a narrow margin.
 
Bernie was fantastic, particularly for a guy who underwent surgery. He came across with sincerity, passion, and good humor. The part where he joked with Biden when Biden was talking of talking of Putin while gesturing Bernie's way came off good for both men. Their age is under fire, and maybe despite their differences they feel a common challenge there.
 
Kamala Harris seemed really fixated on shutting Trumps' twitter down and trying to get Warren on board with it. I'm not sure what she was going for there. It's like she was trying to make Warren look bad, but picked a really WEIRD angle to do it with.
 
I rather like Andrew Yang. He's very different in his approaches, but he has some good points... honestly, I don't see him as a president (though I'd be good with it), but after this he needs to be on some sort of position that advises the president. To quote an over used term, he thinks outside the box.
 
I actually like what Steyer was saying, but I have strong concerns he'd not be able to walk the talk.
 
Of all the centrists, Mayor Pete is the one I like the best.  I don't agree with him on some matters but I would trust his intelligence and education to be advantages.
 
I completely agree when you say "All in all, the debate showed several people I'd be happy to see in the Oval Office."
I'd take any of over Trump, and at least four of them I'd consider a win beyond merely 'the lesser of evils'.
I cannot say how tired I am of voting based on the lesser of evils.
 
 
 

Rathbone vs. Danny Kaye in "The Court Jester".  As mentioned, Rathbone is a trained fencer.  Kaye wasn't -- BUT he was such a quick study and excellent at mimicking others, in any shot where you don't see Basil Rathbone's face, Kaye is actually fighting a fencing master who was hired to be Rathbone's double. Rathbone had been an expert fencer since childhood, but he was twenty years Kaye's senior and couldn't keep up in a couple of the scenes. The fencing master himself, Ralph Faulkner, is said to have told Kaye to take it easy on him!

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/overrated-general-mattis-zings-trump-n-y-charity-gala-n1068481

For me,  I can see why Warren would want to avoid giving the Press that quick Sound bite of "Taxes will go up for the middle class " while the "but you you will SAVE much more than that and here's why..." stuff is cut off. But yes, it did not look good on her. She's got the lead in polls but it's hers to lose. She's still my pick by a narrow margin.
 
Bernie was fantastic, particularly for a guy who underwent surgery. He came across with sincerity, passion, and good humor. The part where he joked with Biden when Biden was talking of talking of Putin while gesturing Bernie's way came off good for both men. Their age is under fire, and maybe despite their differences they feel a common challenge there.
 
Kamala Harris seemed really fixated on shutting Trumps' twitter down and trying to get Warren on board with it. I'm not sure what she was going for there. It's like she was trying to make Warren look bad, but picked a really WEIRD angle to do it with.
 
I rather like Andrew Yang. He's very different in his approaches, but he has some good points... honestly, I don't see him as a president (though I'd be good with it), but after this he needs to be on some sort of position that advises the president. To quote an over used term, he thinks outside the box.
 
I actually like what Steyer was saying, but I have strong concerns he'd not be able to walk the talk.
 
Of all the centrists, Mayor Pete is the one I like the best.  I don't agree with him on some matters but I would trust his intelligence and education to be advantages.
 
I completely agree when you say "All in all, the debate showed several people I'd be happy to see in the Oval Office."
I'd take any of over Trump, and at least four of them I'd consider a win beyond merely 'the lesser of evils'.
I cannot say how tired I am of voting based on the lesser of evils.
 
 
 

WKRP in Cincinnati (1978-1982)
 
This hilarious sitcom not only had a great cast, but proved to be a showcase for Loni Anderson's talents.
 
and as a reminder of how good this show was
 
"As God is my witness, I thought Turkeys could fly."

I liked seeing Biden show some fire with his "I have actually done this" speech. He is certainly the most experienced candidate, and I think experience counts for a lot.
 
Kudos to Bernie for honesty in forthrightly saying that his Medicare For All system raises taxes on the middle class, and calling out Warren for not being equally forthright. Warren in general did not impress me.
 
Mayor Pete sounded ready for the Oval Office as a person who understands the gravity of the job, and he speaks well too. After Trumpalumpagus' word salad, being able to speak not just in sentences but in paragraphs should count for something.
 
Steyer's vanity candidacy disgusts me and he gave me no reason to change my view.
 
Klobuchar made good points about realism and her Midwest background. Bluntly, only about 16 states are in play in the upcoming election, and many of them are in the Midwest. Candidates shouldn't worry too much about pleasing California or Connecticut or, conversely, Alabama or Mississippi: Those electoral college votes are certain no matter who runs or what policy they espouse. Play to Pennsylvania and Michigan.
 
Kamala Harris never really stood out for me. Neither did, um, I forget. I've heard interesting things elsewhere from Andrew Yang, but he wasn't given much time.
 
Tulsi Gabbard seemed unhinged in her "Regime Change In Syria" rant. The only regime American troops were changing was the Islamic State. Obama tried to get further involved in the Syrian civil war; the Republican Congress blocked him, though I believe it was for the wrong reasons; as far as I can tell, he stuck by that and no American soldiers shot at any Syrian troops. Even if she didn't seem to e living in a parallel universe, I'd still reject her extreme military pullback views.
 
All in all, the debate showed several people I'd be happy to see in the Oval Office.
 
Dean Shomshak
 
 

I Timothy 6:10

I think a sea change happened among journalism schools in the late 1970s.  The role Woodward and Bernstein had in helping to blow open the Watergate affair and pulling down the Nixon administration led a change in the kind of student that chose journalism as a career, and ultimately the way those students were taught; they began to define their successes in terms of how many people they had destroyed, not how well they informed the public about cases, or how they portrayed situations of which the public knew next to nothing.
 
I say this partly as someone who was faculty at a place with a major journalism school in the 1990s (and faculty at a different place again starting in 2005).  Yeah, I was faculty in a science department, but I taught a lot of distribution-type classes and saw a lot of those students, and their emphasis was different from what I had seen among journalism majors I had known as an undergraduate in the 1970s. 
 
(I was a grad student at another school with a major journalism program, but in grad school most people -- explicitly including myself -- go heads-down concentrating on their studies to a much greater extent than as an undergrad, and I can't say I had more than a couple of conversations with journalism people during those years.  But I was involved in our public outreach efforts with Star Date for six years or so, and gained some insights about science journalism which are different from general political news.  I can say this: In literally every situation where I've had first-hand knowledge as a scientist abotu the science that had made a major story in the popular media, at least one major aspect of the as-published treatment was wrong.  I have come to blame this not on malice -- usually -- but usually on the ignorance of editors, who change words and phrasing to grab more readers/viewers, without recognizing that word choice is catastrophically important in conveying scientific content.  Sometimes the ignorance is deeper, publishing something that isn't actually news ... it's just something the head editor hadn't heard before.  My bailiwick is astronomy, which has approximately zero direct political or economic impact: aside from the idiot UFO conspiracy fanboys, and the not-even-of-vegetable-intelligence young-Earth creationists, there's no "fake news" intentionally promulgated in this field.  )
 
The increase in the general cynicism level that began with the realizations of just how thoroughly the Executive Branch (all of them: Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon) manipulated news of the Vietnam mess through the 1960s and 1970s, emerged in the 1980s went hand in hand with the new goals of young journalists who came on board at that time.  The cynicism, the reveling in the power of the Fourth Estate, and the anger with the duplicity of the White House over more than a decade ... they weren't the same thing, but combined to devalue the emphasis on "complete", "fair", and "impartial" that had been the professed ideal of the generation of journalists who came of age with radio and migrated into television.
 
With more or less everything with ".com" address, and way too much from any other domain, feeding on clickbait, socioeconomic agendas, and herd mentality, I select my news sources with a combination of great care and as much randomness as possible.
 
You pays your money and you takes your chances. 

Hero Games will be launching a fan-driven community content program on DriveThruRPG in about a month, similar to Dungeon Masters Guild and Storytellers Vault. It’s going to be called Hall of Champions, and it will allow you to publish your own work on DriveThru for profit under the banner of being a Hero Games product. (Though solely for commercial purposes on DriveThruRPG.) You’ll be allowed to publish using any version of the Hero System you like from 1st to 6th, including Champions Now. You will also be allowed to use both intellectual property that belongs to Hero Games, as well as the Champions Universe, which belongs to Cryptic Studios. The program will supply artwork and templates to work from to make the entire process as easy as possible.
 
To being with, what I’m looking for are some initial fan contributions from you guys so that we have a certain number of products ready to go at launch. I’ve already received commitments from two of our third party publishers, but could use a bunch more from fans. There are (of course) significant rules governing the community content program, which I will share with you should you contact me. If you have work you would like to contribute, it needs only be in PDF form and have a JPEG cover image available. (This can simply be a copy of the front page.)
 
Thank you as always for playing the Hero System, and I look forward to hearing from you.
 
Jason Walters, Publisher
jason@herogames.com

New one up!
 
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1182.html

The Magnificent Seven (1960)
 
Based on the Japanese film The Seven Samurai and set in Mexico where Calvera (Eli Wallach) leads a group of bandits prey on a Mexican village. The villagers send a group North to get weapons but instead they get men. Yul Brynner recruits and leads an all star cast with Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Charles Bronson, Brad Dexter, Robert Vaughan and Horst Buckholz who journey South of the border. It has a great music score and is poignant as the gunmen get involved in the lives of the poor Mexican farmers and die for them. 

Batman The Animated Series (1992-1995)
 
The Batman Legend is brought to live in the best cartoon series that led to Superman and Justice League animated series, and numerous animated movies.  The best stories from the past are retold with present day elements.  Kevin Conroy has become the voice of Batman for nearly three decades, and Mark Hamil will be remembered as the voice of the Joker, rather then just a cautionary tale about one's career choices.

They wanted a female McCoy to bounce off Data in a Spock stand in. Problem there? Spock gave as good as he got and banter aside both men clearly respected each other and even kinda sort of were friends.
Pulaski going after Data was more like some stranger coming in and kicking a puppy that couldn't fight back. Data could claim he didn't have feelings to hurt, but we were insulted on his behalf. Add that and her moments of disregard for Picard and it was clear the writers and director had missed the mark.
 
As a fan of the character of Riker, the growing the beard trope tickles me greatly. 
 
For examples..
I liked farscape, but I think the introduction of Scorpius really got it going.
 
Hardly modern I guess, but MASH for me really picked up with Potter and WInchester joined on
 
Season two of the Justice League cartoon really revved things up for me.  I liked Season one, but season two improved it dramatically... I guess we could give credit to Darkseid- he'd assume credit for greatness was his anyway
 
 
 

They wanted a female McCoy to bounce off Data in a Spock stand in. Problem there? Spock gave as good as he got and banter aside both men clearly respected each other and even kinda sort of were friends.
Pulaski going after Data was more like some stranger coming in and kicking a puppy that couldn't fight back. Data could claim he didn't have feelings to hurt, but we were insulted on his behalf. Add that and her moments of disregard for Picard and it was clear the writers and director had missed the mark.
 
As a fan of the character of Riker, the growing the beard trope tickles me greatly. 
 
For examples..
I liked farscape, but I think the introduction of Scorpius really got it going.
 
Hardly modern I guess, but MASH for me really picked up with Potter and WInchester joined on
 
Season two of the Justice League cartoon really revved things up for me.  I liked Season one, but season two improved it dramatically... I guess we could give credit to Darkseid- he'd assume credit for greatness was his anyway
 
 
 

Exactly my thought. Journalism is more visibly "Lazy and sensationalist" (To use the words of Jon Stewart) than ever it seems and this plays right into an assault on the Freedom of the Press. And despite what the media giants might hope, not all Americans instantly forget once the story fades about errors born of said laziness, sensationalism, or yes, even apparent bias of ideology or who owns them. A lot of it seems to be the sheer excess of youtube goodies they and other social media they can report on but they're so eager to get the news FIRST they seem to neglect getting it RIGHT. The whole situation with the Covington Kids comes to mind. What? it was actually a group calling themselves the  Black Hebrew ­Israelites who were doing the racist stuff and it snowballed wildly from there? WHOOPS
No harm done..riiight? .
 
Bull.
If I were one of those kids, I'd trust a magic 8 ball before I trusted mainstream media after this. And you can bet a lot of other folks in their area and beyond now feel the same, all because the press didn't want to do the WORK before jumping in with a Social media mob and calling it news.
 
Now you got this, thank goodness no death threats to innocent (if smirky) teenagers, but once again, it undermines the Mainstream Media and People will use that as a way to attack Freedom of Press period.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

They wanted a female McCoy to bounce off Data in a Spock stand in. Problem there? Spock gave as good as he got and banter aside both men clearly respected each other and even kinda sort of were friends.
Pulaski going after Data was more like some stranger coming in and kicking a puppy that couldn't fight back. Data could claim he didn't have feelings to hurt, but we were insulted on his behalf. Add that and her moments of disregard for Picard and it was clear the writers and director had missed the mark.
 
As a fan of the character of Riker, the growing the beard trope tickles me greatly. 
 
For examples..
I liked farscape, but I think the introduction of Scorpius really got it going.
 
Hardly modern I guess, but MASH for me really picked up with Potter and WInchester joined on
 
Season two of the Justice League cartoon really revved things up for me.  I liked Season one, but season two improved it dramatically... I guess we could give credit to Darkseid- he'd assume credit for greatness was his anyway
 
 
 

Good lord, I bet Hugh COULD pull off a pretty good stand in for old Vincent

"Theatre of Blood" -- with Hugh Jackman in the Vincent Price role.  Bonus points if you can have Patrick Stewart & Ian McKellan as two of the theatre critics.
 
And, of course, Diana Rigg in there as well.

The return of Gates McFadden was most welcome. Dr. Pulaski was...suboptimal.

How's this for a Princess Bride remake?