PARANOIA

Asteroid 165612 (2001 FP86) has been named "Stackpole" in honor of novelist and game designer Michael A. Stackpole. Congratulations, Mike!

You may know Mike for his many Star Wars and Battletech tie-in novels, his own DragonCrown War fantasy series and other original books, or his many roleplaying games and supplements for FASA, Mayfair, and Flying Buffalo, among others. But the asteroid christening, according to 165612's co-discoverer Jeff Medkeff, honors Mike for his decades of worthy work in the skeptic community. Mike is Executive Director of the Arizona Skeptics; he has firmly fought the armies of ignorance, especially during the 1980s outbreak of anti-RPG hysteria. He is a calm, constant voice of rationality.

NASA has the orbital details of Asteroid Stackpole. Medkeff covers much of the blogosphere's reaction to the recently announced asteroid names, of which Stackpole is only one. Another asteroid was named for Phil Plait, who runs the excellent Bad Astronomy blog.

I thought Mike Stackpole wasn't the first game designer to get an asteroid -- could have sworn the late Gary Gygax had one already -- but I can't find anything about Gygax in the asteroid belt, nor Dave Arneson, nor any others among the usual suspects. So maybe Mike is once again leading the way for the rest of us.

Am I envious? Duh. But you know, by now I've envied Mike for so many years I'm well into Envy Fatigue. You know -- "Yeah okay, Mike, an asteroid, that's great -- a new species of orchid, you say? That's nice -- what? Your face on the thousand-dollar bill? Your own Constitutional amendment? Yeah, congrats, whatever...."

Though I always search for inspirational reference material for PARANOIA, I never expected to get a good lead from my mom. But she recently saw and loved the German film The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen, 2006), directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (about as Germanic a name as I can imagine). The Lives of Others scored a remarkable 94% on Rotten Tomatoes. Having read the IMDB synopsis, now I'm all afire to see it. Thanks, Mom!

Set in (appropriately) 1984, The Lives of Others follows Gerd Weisler, a skilled and zealous captain in East Germany's feared secret police, the Stasi. Weisler begins spying on a playwright named Dreyman. Film critic Roger Ebert's perceptive review in the Chicago Sun-Times tells more:

Wiesler (Ulrich Muehe) first saw Dreyman at the opening of one of his plays, where he was informed by a colleague that Dreyman was a valuable man: 'One of our only writers who is read in the West and is loyal to our government.' How can that be? Wiesler wonders. Dreyman is good-looking, successful, with a beautiful lover; he must be getting away with something. Driven by suspicion, or perhaps by envy or simple curiosity, Wiesler has Dreyman's flat wired and begins an official eavesdropping inquiry.

He doesn't find a shred of evidence that Dreyman is disloyal. Not even in whispers. Not even in guarded allusions. Not even during pillow talk. The man obviously believes in the East German version of socialism, and the implication is that not even the Stasi can believe that. They are looking for dissent and subversion because, in a way, they think a man like Dreyman should be guilty of them. Perhaps they do not believe in East Germany themselves, but have simply chosen to play for the winning team. [...]

Driven by the specter of aggression from without, [East Germany] countered it with aggression from within, as sort of an anti-toxin. Fearing that its citizens were disloyal, it inspired them to be. True, its enemies were real. But the West never dropped the bomb, and East Germany and the other Soviet republics imploded after essentially bombing themselves.

Creepy real-world parallel: The late actor who played Gerd Weisler, Ulrich Muhe, was himself under Stasi surveillance during the Cold War, and later alleged his wife at that time, the actress Jenny Grollmann, was herself a registered Stasi informant. (Grollmann denied it.)

Attention, citizens of Alpha Compl-- I mean, Singapore! Does your recorded Happiness Quotient meet the following qualification levels?

1. Singapore citizens above 18 years of age


2. Happy smiling disposition – others feel good to be around them


3. Ability to be happy no matter what life presents them


4. Has a strong sense of community and belonging – family and friends


5. Stays consistently happy – not up one moment and down the next


6. Contributes to society by bringing happiness to others

If you, Singaporean citizen, are in fact deliriously happy at all times (or at least all times monitored by Internal Security cameras), Global Leadership Academy, a consulting firm in Singapore, wants someone to nominate you for its search to find the authoritarian city-state's Happiest Person 2008.

GLA founder Philip Merry told Channel NewsAsia he was inspired to start the contest after a study found that citizens of Singapore and South Korea, two of Asia's most prosperous economies, rated their countries among the most stressful places to live. "Singaporeans fret about financial security and retirement," Merry said. "Many Singaporeans are concerned they do not have enough money to grow old gracefully, and that seems to make them unhappy."

Global Leadership is accepting nominations of Singapore citizens through the end of March for an award to be announced at its New Science of Happiness and Well-Being Conference on April 4th. Anyone can nominate a Singapore citizen by e-mailing -- not making this up -- happiest@simply-happy.com .

(Via Metroblogging Singapore.)

Labels: authoritarian police states, happyhappyhappy

Boing Boing has the story:

Lamperd, a "firearm training system" company, has patented a bracelet that delivers debilitating shocks when remotely triggered. Their killer app for this is aviation safety: They're proposing that the TSA could force everyone who flies to wear one of these, and then flight-attendants could zap us into a stupor if we turn out to be Al Qaeda.

Check the comments on the Boing Boing thread: "Don't tase me ma'am!" -- "Why not just skip this step and go straight to the Battle Royale-style head-exploding collars?" -- and my favorite: "Stewardess! 500 Quatloos on the tall, sullen-looking one. A fine specimen!"

"Would you like more drugs, citizen?" -- "Yes, Friend Computer!"

In Alpha Complex, life -- if you can call it that -- slides along a rut heavily moistened by medication. The PARANOIA rulebook includes a drug name generation table, but Gamemaster, if you want to show your Troubleshooters the whole label (including indication and side effects), head to Generatorland's New Drug Generator and keep clicking the pill until you feel all mellow inside.

Kriloxx

(for Pankerwhipoid Palsy)

Potential side effects: exaggeration, ankle swelling, and weight gain.

(Via The Generator Blog, one of my favorite places to blow an hour or two.)

Sorry for my American non-driving non-gardening ignorance, but I am unfamiliar with the incredibly popular and long-running BBC automotive series Top Gear, the once-popular and long-running BBC gardening series Ground Force, and the long-established biennial BBC Sport/Comic Relief charity telecast Sport Relief. That said, when the Top Gear hosts staged their version of Ground Force for Sport Relief, I instantly recognized a perfect realization of a typical PARANOIA Troubleshooter mission. Trust me, just watch, and as soon as team leader Jeremy Clarkson demonstrates efficient gardening techniques with a shotgun, you'll say, "Okay, I get it."

(Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4. Thanks to Citizen Max on Paranoia-Live.net for the tip.)

Goodness, already another year has passed, and again upon us is the Time of Paranoia-Live.net Server Support Donations. As vagrant PLN Sector High Programmer Fargmania writes in the forum post "What would you give for Friend Computer?":

Would you give your life? Your internal organs? Your Yum-Yum Xtra Crunchy Funbar (with super-fortified protein chips)? Well of course you would! But Friend Computer does not need these things - does not *want* these things... right now, anyways. What Friend Computer wants today, is for you to donate a few credits to your most revered and superb ULTRAVIOLET citizen, High Programmer Jazzer. [...]

The mighty High Programmer Jazzer is responsible (with the help of Friend Computer) for the creation of Sector PLN, and the yearly task of paying for the upkeep server costs fall to his mighty and impressively loyal shoulders. [...] Even though he is in the midst of Communist regimes in an enemy complex fighting for his very life against the hordes of mutants that would threaten the safety of every member of Alpha Complex... he still cares!

That's why you need to give him whatever you can. For loyalty! For The Computer! For Mandatory Happiness! And heck... for yourself!

Fargmania offers a link to Friend Computer's Donation Fund on PayPal. Give early and often.

Citizen Max has updated his commendable Wheel of Tics, bringing the total to no less than 531 tics (many drawn with permission from the PARANOIA character-creation rules supplement Criminal Histories).

You'll recall the PARANOIA rulebook explicitly defines tics (the entertaining little mannerisms and peccadilloes that let your victims pick you out of an IntSec lineup) as immediately evident, noticeable after (at most) a few minutes of casual acquaintance. On this basis the ever-correct Gamemaster might well disallow some of the Wheel's tics, however amusing they are -- for example, "Follows any death with the words 'Well, that shut him [or her] up!'" or "Stares at laser fire, 'cause it's so pretty."

I chastized Max for these, until he informed me he took them straight from Criminal Histories. Oops.

There is no greater proof of adventure gaming's pervasion of society than the presence on The Wall Street Journal editorial board of a former D&D player. In "Mind Games: Dungeons & Dragons Immersed Players in Another World," a tribute to the late E. Gary Gygax in the March 7, 2008 Journal (page W13), Brian Carney reminisces fondly of his youthful RPG sessions. In passing, Carney mentions the existence of other non-D&D games:

As D&D grew, it spawned a succession of imitators: Gamma World, a role-playing game set in the future; a Cold-War spy game called Top Secret; even an amusing, Kafkaesque parody-game called Paranoia, in which the rules were a secret and all the other players really were out to get you.

There is also no greater proof of the tabletop RPG hobby's decline, its hopeless identification with a graying generation, than Carney's cantankerous old-guy railing against World of Warcraft: "At the risk of sounding like a geek and a curmudgeon at once, in my day we did it the old-fashioned way [...] exploring a world that existed only in our imaginations." Hey, you kids, get off my lawn!

(The online version of "Mind Games" is behind the Journal's detestable paywall.)

[Update March 9: Gloryosky, the Journal has a second reformed gamer, and he's not behind the paywall! "Quest for the Teenage DM," an installment of Jason Fry's column "Real Time," is perhaps overlong, but includes a sidebar with several links to similar reminiscences -- notably Paul LaFarge's standout Believer magazine profile of Gary Gygax, "Destroy All Monsters" from September 2006.]

Farewell to one of the forefathers of the entire RPG hobby, definitely including PARANOIA: Gary Gygax passed away peacefully in his sleep Monday night at age 69, after a long period of ill health and several strokes.

(Announced on the Troll Lord Games forum. Gary is being remembered, fondly though often with mordant humor, on FARK.)

The Toronto Power Company's Tailrace hydroelectric station at Niagara Falls, a century old and abandoned for 30 years, is super-cool inspiration for a pleasant little Power Services mission to the Underplex.

Labels: underplex