Short post today since I’m on vacation, but I can recommend the pies at Random Order. Hope your weekend was a good one!

The aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings made clear just how much the media—and apparently a substantial portion of the population—want to promote the notion that the “War on Terror” is a real war, that there’s a real and highly dangerous enemy, and that the US is engaged in a struggle where the nation itself is under threat.

Prior to the identification of the suspects, it seemed like many media figures were thinking, “please let it be Al Qaeda”—and that if if it had turned out to be some disgruntled middle-aged guy protesting IRS policies, they and a chunk of their audience would lose a lot of interest.
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As I’ve written previously, I tend to get frustrated when companies stop making products I like. On the other hand, presumably this turnover of products has a part to play when I find things that I like; perhaps my complaint is more that production should be halted on things that other people like, not things that I like.
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The third season of my D&D campaign starts Monday, and I’m going to discuss some of what I’m trying to do in it—without, naturally, giving anything away to my players.

Season One and Season Two were good, and I really liked doing them, but the environment for the third season is where I had intended the whole thing to be set when I first came up with the idea for the world: a continent that had been cut off to everyone for a very long time, a place where I could do a kind of cross between Joe Abercrombie and Deadwood[1].
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