Unconfirmed

I spent Saturday morning at a confirmation ceremony, sadly confirming what I'd read here in comments about "contemporary" worship music in Catholic churches.

The word contemporary is in quotes there because, as with the evangelical species of "contemporary Christian music," the word there doesn't quite mean what it usually means. It shouldn't be hard to be contemporary. One would think that writing music that sounds like it comes from another time and place would require additional effort, but that writing music that comes from one's own time and place ought to be completely natural, yet there's nothing natural-sounding about this awkwardly "contemporary" music.

Watching Philadelphia's bishop/cardinal preside over the ceremony I was reminded of something I once heard an Episcopalian bishop say. What happened at Pentecost, he said, was a miracle and a mystery. The disciples didn't quite know how to describe what they had seen so they described it to St. Luke as something like "tongues of fire" above their heads. Luke wrote that description down and, as a result, the bishop said, "2000 years later I have to wear this funny hat."

I was also reminded of this bit from comedian Ted Alexandro:

Q: Do you renounce Satan and all his works?

A: Well, I can't really say I'm familiar with all his works ...

Anyway, I was feeling warmly ecumenical throughout most of the ceremony, until the cardinal got to the part in his homily where he urged the kids being confirmed to consider a religious vocation. We need priests, he told the children, because we need the forgiveness of sins and "without priests there can be no forgiveness of sins."

That's the sort of thing that makes me want to nail some theses to the door of the church.

* * *

This letter to the editor, which was actually published in the paper, criticizes Rep. Mike Castle for mentioning that the world's oil supply is "finite." The letter writer disagrees, writing: "There is no scientific basis for alleging that Earth has a finite supply of oil."

My point here is not (exclusively) to laugh at the crazy person who thinks that our planet is infinite. That's barking mad, of course (see photo), but I'm not so much interested in the writer's delirium as I am in the fact that such a letter was published.

This raises, for me, two questions that I really don't know the answer to:

1. Before going to work in a newsroom, I had vaguely assumed that the opinion pages operated according to the old saying, "Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not to their own facts." Over the past seven years, however, I've seen hundreds of published examples of things that are demonstrably untrue. I'm wondering what, if any, policies or principles guide different newspapers regarding factual errors in letters to the editor and op-ed pieces. I'm not speaking here of matters subject to debate ("Politician X is doing a good job" or "Kids these days!"), but of simple matters of fact. If a letter asserts that Cleveland is the capital of Ohio, or that talc is the hardest mineral according to Moh's scale, do editorial page editors have any rules or even guidelines for dealing with such mistakes and the letters that contain them?

2. I have attended, monitored, reported on and even conducted organizing meetings for activist groups across the political spectrum. All of these groups encourage their members to write letters to the editor and the advice they give for getting such letters published is remarkably similar. That advice always encourages the writers to get their facts straight and to avoid saying anything as full-gonzo nutty as suggesting that the Earth is infinite. Is that advice wrong?

Comments

[Kristy, Devourer of Worlds]

Mage is your favorite? Really? Have you gotten a chance to take a look at Changeling: the Lost yet? If not, go take a look; everyone I've talked to who's played it says it's their hands-down new favorite.

*glances around sheepishly*

And, er... we've just sidetracked, haven't we? So... how about those crazy infinite-oil guys? Ain't they nuts?

[Jeff]

Oh, boffer larp! Ok, ok, I gotcha. Always wanted to get into that, never had the time.

The few times I played, that's what we did. The fellow running the show used somewhat modified D&D rules (GURPS wasn't out yet, or I think he would have used that). He's the same one who ran a "pencil & paper" Norse hockey game (enemy head for the puck). A well-trhown spider-web could stop wayne Gretsky!

The one game I would never want to run as a LARP, but was the Best Game EVAH to run as a p&p game was Toon. One PC was stuck on top of a barn and rolled three sets of consecutive 3s (failure) and 2s (SPECTACULAR Failure) trying to get down. Try LARPing that!

[Lee Ratner]

Personally, I think that the Eastern Orthodox Churches have the best since of style among religions. Jewish religious styles are generally awful. Thousands of years of oppression robbed us of a Jewish style of architecture and the destruction of the Temple ended Jewish high ritual. I find this unfortunate because I find high ritual to be the most moving type of religious service. I think worshipping at the Temple and participating in the pilgrimages and sacrifices would have been a genuinely worthwhile experience.

[Jacob Davies]

On: "There is no scientific basis for alleging that Earth has a finite supply of oil."

I have two problems with the idea that this is obviously nonsense - and don't get me wrong, I think the conventional explanation for the origin of oil is correct. But still: the first is that he seems to be using "finite" to mean (and only mean) that the amount available is somewhere near what we might plausibly use. This is also what environmentalists mean when they say "finite" - they don't use "finite" to describe things not in danger of being used up so I think it's fair game. If I started telling you about the imminent crisis caused by the "finite supply of rock" on this planet ("Peak Rock"?), you might argue that while "finite" is technically true, it's not the most appropriate modifier since stocks are so much larger than any possible consumption. So, he could believe that there were very large stocks of oil in the Earth as yet undiscovered, much larger than our current demand. (Please note, again: I don't believe this is true.) So a definition of the particular meaning of "finite" he's seeking to refute would help - but it's not completely nonsensical.

The second objection is that he may believe that oil is being continuously produced in large amounts, underground, from other chemicals, by some natural process. In that case, the amount of oil would not be "finite" in the commonsense interpretation, as long as consumption was less than natural production. For instance, while the amount of wheat presently in existence is finite, it wouldn't be accurate to describe us as using up a "finite amount of wheat", because we're always making more. Again, I don't believe this is true, but someone who did believe it would have a fair case for their use of language.

Of course I get that those things are pretty obvious and the real point is to mock the idea that there's so much oil that we don't need to worry about using it all up. I agree this is a laughable idea, but it's the idea that's laughable, not the particular use of the word "finite" in question - especially as the specific connotations of "finite" he's arguing against are the ones that those concerned about resource depletion mean to emphasize when we use the word. Seems a bit unfair, & all that.

[PurpleGirl]

Richard Hershberger -- yeah, I know the Lutheran thing is way more complex than I made it sound. I was raised RC, joined a Lutheran congregation in my mid 20s and stayed around for about a decade before returning to my more agnostic natural state. I was at work when I wrote that comment and was working solely on memory. During my Lutheran period I took a number of lay courses in church history, theology and liturgy, etc. It was very interesting but ultimately I left. The congregation I was in was LCMS when I joined but we supported Seminex and ended up leaving to help form the fore-runner of ELCA.

(Now to go back and read the rest of the "later" comments.

[Karen]

This article demonstrates my principal objection to the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. It mentions the low divorce rate for NFP couples, without any mention of what would happen if that were the ONLY method of spacing births. The writer, and the Church hierarchy, never consider what the life of a woman who suffers annual pregnancies might be like. They want more priests and nuns, and the lives of the women who give birth to them don't matter in the least.

[practicallyevil]

"contemporary" Christian music,

I miss our pipe organs, I mean switching to the new stuff is just bad form. The Catholic Church is an ancient monolith of an organization, change is slow, they will always be a few years behind the times on everything, at best. They cannot hope to keep up with music, in terms of relative time span of the Catholic Church to modern music, "contemporary" could mean stuff published a century ago.

If you're going to a Catholic service, you shouldn't really be surprised when the sermon includes points of Catholic theology...

Not theology, politics. There is a desperate shortage of priests right now, and some priests fall back on the old tactic of guilting their congregation. Fred as a concerned Catholic I give you full dispensation to give that bishop grief over making a call out during a confirmation. I mean the call for new priests is nothing new, even during a mass, but during a confirmation? That is more than a bit underhanded.

This is a defensible position, but in practice modern Catholics very rarely do private confessions like you see in the movies. They mostly do public collective confessions, very much like you would find in any Lutheran or Episcopalian church (and undoubtedly many others).

The popular image of a traditional Catholic high liturgy is mostly gone nowadays. They gave it up in favor of folk masses. You will recall that Stephen Colbert has apologized for the folk mass: for good reason.

Both are available, confession during a mass is a public collective because doing so privately with each individual member would take too long, but between services you can seek out a priest for a confession, often in the booth, although sometimes just in the rectory if no one else is around.

Have you met the Pope? I'm sure you've at least heard of him. He's the guy with the funny hat who's trying to take the Catholic Church backwards into irrelevance, what with the defending pedophile priests and encouraging the spread of HIV/AIDS by trying to convince people that condoms don't work.

Keith, Pope Benedict recently sanctioned the use of condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS, and on his recent trip to America brought the sex abuse scandal to center stage. While some Popes maybe backwards Benedict to his credit is moving forward. I might actually start to like him if he keeps up the good work.

Re: The Office of the Pope.

The Pope may speak on behalf of all Catholics everywhere, but all Catholics don't have to like what he says. If he says something we disagree with we tell our Priests, who tell the Bishop, and so on, up the chain. It's not as though the lay person has no influence, as a general rule if the congregation isn't happy, they can make the Priest equally unhappy. However these things take time, the Catholic Church is the single largest religious organization, (not religion mind you), with millions of members, things take time. I understand how Protestants feel about the Catholic Church being too slow, about how too much authority is placed in one position, but I kind of see it as the Catholic Church accomplishing a lot very slowly.

[Ryan]

Ravenwolf

Anyone who picks this for a name should be "put down" (and not like babies are "put down" for the night). Adding "Silver" just compounds the crime. S/he prbably listens to far too much New Age crap.

or is a furry

[Reynard]

Posted by Andy: Also worth pointing out that while Verdi was obviously a deeply spiritual man and wrote beautifully for religious characters, citing him as a "Catholic" (though obviously he was) is a bit of a stretch since he was famously wary of the corruptions and abuses of power by the church (...) I don't recall that he wrote a lot of church music, if any, aside from his famous "Requiem(...)"

You might be interested in this CD.

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Posted by Chris KoeberleIf: something which can be shown to be false cannot be referred to as a fact, do you have a better term than "falsifiable statement" to offer to denote that subset of statements which, if facts, could be shown to be false?

If malicious intent on the part of he or she who tells such can be proven, "falsehood/falsity" is acceptable. So is "lie". There is also "Pulled-it-out-of-his/her-ass". If malice cannot be proven, then "uninformed opinion" or "opinion based on out-of-date information" is acceptable. In all cases, one of two suggestions should be made to the person who has told such; either a) "Prove it", or b) "Look it up". (I cannot tell you how many times this has resolved arguments I've had with others. I don't always come out on the winning side, but I *always* learn something new.)

***************

Posted by Froborr: Facts, as the term is generally used, are statements which are true to the best of aggregate human knowledge. The term also has specialized meanings in law and journalism. The last is probably the applicable use in this case; in journalism, facts are statements which can be checked against public records or expert knowledge, as opposed to opinions. It is thus possible for a story to contain false facts (statements which, when checked, prove false); if caught before publication the story must be changed to remove the false facts; if caught after publication a correction must be printed.

While I don't disagree, I've always had trouble wrapping my mind around the term "false fact(s)". It's an oxymoron. It also has an Orwellian quality to it. ("Don't listen to him! He's using false facts! *I'm* the one using *true* facts...")

[Tonio]

Keith, Pope Benedict recently sanctioned the use of condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS,

I did a quick search and found no mention of this in the news. Can you point me to the right source? I suspect if any Pope did this, it would make headlines worldwide.

[Cyllan]

For me, the hardest class to LARP would probably be any sort of fighter-primary. I just don't have the dexterity or strength to stand up well in combat. Rogues don't have it easy either, though: at least in Accelerant, they have to be able to pick actual locks!

With a shield, almost any LARPER can be minimally competent. You might not be the best fighter at there, but you can nibble at the crunchies while the folks who are really blessed at fighting got whack the level-boss.

The LARPs that I play don't have classes; we're a skill based system. That said, I've always avoided the merchant/production based characters like the plague. Too many fiddly bits.

Ryan: The notion of Silver Ravenwolf as a furry has made my day.

I understand how Protestants feel about the Catholic Church being too slow, about how too much authority is placed in one position, but I kind of see it as the Catholic Church accomplishing a lot very slowly.

My (very liberal) Catholic in-laws are fond of saying that they're confident that the pope will catch up to their viewpoint any century now.

[practicallyevil]

I did a quick search and found no mention of this in the news. Can you point me to the right source? I suspect if any Pope did this, it would make headlines worldwide.

Ask and you shall receive.

Source

Source @1:06

Sorry I had to go that way with the second link, but a search of "Catholic Church/Contraceptives" is just articles defending or attacking the position of the Church.

[Tonio]

The L.A. Times article makes no mention of AIDS or condoms. Did I miss something?

a search of "Catholic Church/Contraceptives" is just articles defending or attacking the position of the Church.

The search I tried was "Pope Benedict AIDS condoms."

[MikhailBorg]

I ran a couple of LARPs back in the day. The system I cobbled together was heavy on role-playing; combat was possible, but discouraged by the setting, and we had a hand-waving rationale for getting 'killed' characters back into the game quickly. (Who wants to be out of a weekend game on Friday night?) This was good for handling power disparities; you may be the Destroyer of Worlds, but if your mission is to safely deliver a certain porcelain teacup back to your home dimension, you'll need a little finesse.

The biggest problem with self-contained weekend LARPs is that some people see fit to act wildly out of character, given that there will be no repercussions after Sunday afternoon. On the other hand, this can cause things to quickly get very interesting, which is often fun for the players, if stressful for the GMs.

I don't really mind odd names that much. If a wiccan or furry or anyone wants me to call them Silver Ravenwolf, I'm fine with that, especially if they're an otherwise reasonably functional member of society. If they expect to impress me solely on the basis of an unusual name, that's not going to get them far. I've been hanging around people with funny names for decades; some of them are awesome, and some of them are idjits.

[McJulie]

Jacob: On: "There is no scientific basis for alleging that Earth has a finite supply of oil."

I have two problems with the idea that this is obviously nonsense

There is a difference between arguing that something *could* possibly in any way be true, and arguing that there is sufficient evidence for thinking that it *probably is* true.

You make a good case for the former -- but the quoted letter seems to be claiming the latter.

[Amaryllis]

Google got me this:

"When Pope Benedict expressed his closeness to victims of AIDS in advance of World AIDS Day on December 1 [2007], one thing was conspicuously absent from his comments — either a specific mention or a reference to the use of condoms.
.
When his predecessor John Paul spoke of AIDS, whether he was speaking in the Vatican or during his trips abroad, he often mentioned, either directly or indirectly, that condoms were not the answer.
.
In fact, the Catholic Church’s position on the use of condoms to stop the spread of AIDS has never been made totally clear or definitively pronounced.

Perhaps by not mentioning condoms, Pope Benedict has decided to take a more subtle approach to the problem.

In recent years, several top Church officials have called for a change in Vatican policy on condoms to allow their use by married couples where one partner is affected by HIV or AIDS. But the Vatican has so far been loath to issue any document that could be interpreted as a green light for the use of condoms to stop the spread of AIDS, fearing it would endorse promiscuity.

Little has been heard about a possible Vatican document recently. In November, 2006, Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, head of the Vatican’s Council for Health Pastoral Care, told reporters a study commissioned by the Pope had effectively passed its first hurdle."

Which may justly be criticized as "too little, too late." But as has been noted once or twice before, Mother Church moves very very slowly.

Those whose lives are at stake, who can't wait for "Rome has spoken," will, in the meantime, go on acting according to their consciences.

[Froborr]

Reynard: I understand your discomfort, but in practice it is unavoidable that some statements believed at one time to be facts will later turn out not to be. This is an inevitable consequence of the advance of knowledge. Plus, some apparent oxymorons are not such within specialized jargons -- "negative reward," for example, is seemingly an oxymoron, but in psychological jargon it has a consistent meaning, "removal of an unpleasant stimulus in response to a desired behavior."

On LARP: I don't remember the specific discussion, so I can't say exactly what I was talking about. At the moment I can't think of any particular reason LARPing a Mage would be harder than any other White Wolf character type. I may have been referencing my intense loathing for Mage, which IMO is a strong contender for Worst Game Ever. (Its primary competition is Rifts, which couples a severe case of kitchen sink syndrome with the unplayably terrible mechanics Palladium is famous for; the only reason Rifts isn't definitely at the bottom of the heap is that it never takes itself remotely seriously.)

[Izzy]

Froborr: Why the hate for Mage?

I mean, if it's Phil Brucato and the Hollow Ones (worst fifties band EVER) I'm totally behind you. But I'm curious.

Kristy: I haven't gotten to see New Changeling yet, so I probably should. Old Changeling...is something I would probably have liked a lot better if I hadn't encountered "otherkin" beforehand. After that, it just hurt my brain. What's the New Changeling premise?

New Mage, for the record, has left me with mixed feelings. On the one hand, the system is less brain-explodey, and they've gotten rid of a lot of stuff that annoyed me (the Hollow Ones, the Technocracy, the general Old-WW "white men and science are EVIL" screed). On the other hand, they've also ditched some concepts I liked, like the Order of Hermes, the Euthanatoi, and the Cultists of Ecstacy. The new orders are less irritating, but also less compelling, if that makes any sense.

[Richard Hershberger]

"My main objection to the traditional music used in my church (Episcopalian) is not so much about the quality of the music as the "ownership" of it. Since a large portion of us didn't grow up in the church (we're the mainline denomination with the largest number of members who didn't start out in our denomination), we spend the hymn portions of our liturgy squinting at tiny text in the dark, trying to sight read the notes and sort-of-kind-of halfways taking in the lyrics. That does not tend to put me, at least, in anything like a worshipful frame of mind. Ghastly though praise music can be, it is also easily learned, and this frees me up for more spontaneity and a more embodied experience of the music (vs. the super-brain-oriented task of scrutinizing my church's traditional hymnal)."

It's a fair point that we who grew up with the music take to it more naturally, but if the choices are music which calls for some effort or music which is pleasingly mindless, I'll take the former. If the problem is poor lighting and small print, the solution is better lighting and larger print.

As a practical matter, I am terrible at memorizing lyrics. So even with hymns I have sung my entire life I still need the hymnal. I may have an advantage knowing the melody, but picking up the melody of unfamiliar hymns isn't particularly difficult.

[JustMe]

(Here I am Lord comes to mind as an example of praise music that is not Awesome God terrible).
No, it's merely the theme to the Brady Bunch. "Awesome God" could never be that catchy.

My church does a fairly good job of mixing traditional hymns and praise songs. Plus, there's a fairly talented composer on staff who produces some nice songs (and the occasional clunker, but most of them are pretty good). The contemporary stuff is often lyrically bad. I find the lyrics to not be theologically sound, or flat out Biblically incorrect, or just stupid and insipid. So I find myself thinking "I'm not going to sing that line. Or that one either. Well, there goes that song." Maybe I don't notice the same problems in older hymns, or maybe the truly troubling ones have already been winnowed out but...
At least I'm Protestant. Catholic contemporary worship songs are way worse.

[Jeff]

Jewish religious styles are generally awful.

Granted, I haven't been in a synagogue in quite some time, but I recall the Saturday morning Orthodox service at the local temple was quite nice. All in Hebrew, of course, so it had the pomp and mystery of a Catholic Mass.

===============================

we spend the hymn portions of our liturgy squinting at tiny text in the dark, trying to sight read the notes and sort-of-kind-of halfways taking in the lyrics.

Have you asked to take the hymnal home so you can read the notes and lyrics in a decent light? You don't have to memorize the words, but having them stuck in your subconscious will make them easier to "read" back at the service.

[Kristy, Devourer of Worlds]

I haven't gotten to see New Changeling yet, so I probably should. Old Changeling...is something I would probably have liked a lot better if I hadn't encountered "otherkin" beforehand. After that, it just hurt my brain. What's the New Changeling premise?

Yyyyeah... y'know, I hate to pick on otherkin, because via the very same logic I use to justify my own crazy beliefs, I have no way of knowing that they're not whatever they claim to be... and really, if believing that you're an elf or a dragon or what have you makes you happy, you have fun with that. But I can definitely see why it would turn you off of Dreaming.

Luckily, Lost is completely different. The premise goes back to the idea that fairies are not helpful little elves in the workshop; they're powerful and alien and operate according to rules we don't understand. Think of Holly Black's Tithe, or Pratchett's Lords and Ladies. And they steal people - as lovers, as slaves, as pets, or simply because they look so pretty when you set them on fire that'll burn forever and never kill them, and put them in a gold cage in the corner of the room.

In the game you play someone who was stolen by the Gentry and taken to Arcadia, while a simulacrum (made, usually, of whatever was around at the time) was left in your place. After escaping back to the world, you learn that 1) your time in captivity changed you so that you're no longer entirely human, but not a True Fae either; 2) no one's even noticed you were gone, because the thing they left behind has been living your life; and 3) there's a solid chance that the Fae you escaped from is gonna want you back and come looking.

There's more going on, of course, but that's the basic set-up. IMHO, it corrects for a lot of the problems with Mage by putting up boundaries as to what you can and can't do, while still keeping that "anything is possible - let your imagination run wild" feel. It just channels that imaginative impulse into things like, y'know, roleplay, instead of new and creative ways to break reality.

[hapax]

Think of Holly Black's Tithe

No comment on the gaming system, but just want to second the shout-out to the bestest fairy tale series evah (seriously, if you only know Holly Black from Spiderwick, you're missing something great).

Besides, anything that gets my sister to tell me I'm not allowed to send her daughters books anymore MUST be made of win.

[Amaryllis]

Think of Holly Black's Tithe, or Pratchett's Lords and Ladies.

I have no idea what you're all talking about with your LARPs and Mages and whatnot, but if we're going to talk about books ;) let me also mention Nancy Farmer's Land of the Silver Apples as a truth-about-elves book for the younger (tweenish) age group. Set in 9th-century northeast England, it's also interesting for its speculative portrait of the inhabitants' mix of religious beliefs and practices - Christian, Celtic, Norse - with a little magic thrown in.

[damnedyankee]

If a wiccan or furry or anyone wants me to call them Silver Ravenwolf, I'm fine with that, especially if they're an otherwise reasonably functional member of society. If they expect to impress me solely on the basis of an unusual name, that's not going to get them far.

And anyway, all of the Silver Ravenwolfs (Ravenwolves?) in the world could not match up against the sheer awesomeness ofThurl Arthur Ravenscroft.

[Izzy]

My Thing re: otherkin is sort of the same Thing I have re: pagan chicks who claim to be the reincarnation of Morgan la Fey or similar spritualism-through-wangst beliefs: that there's a difference between religious beliefs and something you make up so you can believe you're a Special Snowflake who Nobody Really Understands. (Admittedly, I'm a little stroppy about most people who are focused on their past life: assuming reincarnation works, either there's a reason why you're who you are now so you should focus on that, or it's totally random and you should just be glad you have opposable thumbs at the moment.) Too much trusting in Allah, not nearly enough tying the camel to the tree, if y'see what I mean.

Changeling sounds awesome, and I'll have to pick it up. Likewise the Black and the Farmer (as I've already read and loved Pratchett). For Nasty Elven Antics, I also have to recommend Pamela Dean's Tam Lin , which takes place at a college in the late seventies. Lots of wit and literary quotes and an awesome, understated plot that involves Shakespeare. I wanted to smack Christina, one of the characters, with a half-brick, but a) she's sort of floating around on the periphery and b) so does the main character, so I don't mind that so much.

[Cyllan]

For Nasty Elven Antics, I also have to recommend Pamela Dean's Tam Lin , which takes place at a college in the late seventies.

Takes place at my alma mater, in point of fact. This was most disconcerting to me as I read it during Frosh Week and did not realize that it was set at my school. I spent most of the book going "Huh. Lyman Lake...that sounds familiar...huh, what?" before I figured it out.

For other elven antic books, might I recommend War for the Oaks by Emma Bull as another Minnesota Elf Tale that's highly worth reading.

[Bugmaster]

Hey ! What's with all the Mage-hate around here ? Don't make me come down there ! *bangs cane on floor*

If you're talking about the new Mage, then yeah, I agree. It sucks. But the old one (2nd Ed) was my favorite RPG by far. The thing I liked best about it was that all of the sourcebooks were written from the biased perspective of the characters themselves. So, it was never as simple as "Wyrm bad, Pentex bad, yar !" or "Everyone's my enemy, but in 300 years I'll control this city, meanwhile I'll attend parties and sulk". You never knew the full score; everyone had an agenda. Mage is a very human game, which is fitting, since Mages are humans, not some shambling monsters that roam the night.

And I liked the magic system of Mage, too. It forced the player to be creative. You couldn't just Celeri-Potence your way out of every situations; nor could you solve everything with Crinos. Every situation required careful thought and innovation.

As for Changeling, I never really got into it... probably because they're just too alien. It's hard for me to care about them.

[hapax]

Well, if we're recommending Awesome Tam Lin variations, Diana Wynne Jones' FIRE AND HEMLOCK is even better (marginally) than Ellen Kushner's THOMAS THE RHYMER.

[Froborr]

I'm going entirely by Old-Mage here, because my seething hatred of Old-Mage and scathing contempt for Old-Vampire turned me off to anything White Wolf does ever (though I have to admit, the bits and pieces of Gammaworld I've seen are making me reconsider my stance on non-WoD WW creations).

Anyway, why the hate? Well, first of all, they based the system of magic on belief, which is moronic. Solipsism is the philosophical equivalent of putting your hands over your ears and shouting "LALALALALA" whenever somebody tries to talk to you. Not to mention that it's a terrible basis for a game, because games by their nature require rules, and solipsism by its nature denies rules. Thus, Mages can do anything! -- except that they actually can't.* Then, they take the essentially Disney notion that you can do anything if you just believe, and try to cram it into a universe made of 100% pure uncut weapons-grade petty angst. (I hate the entire WoD. I just hate Mage more.) Not to mention that the entire rest of the universe works according to completely different principles than Mage -- vampires can still bite you whether you believe in them or not. Finally, because they didn't have enough self-contradiction for one book, they decided to lay out the "true" cosmology of the world -- but having a true cosmology is a violation of the solipsism they started with!

Finally, there's the science issue. Mixing modern technology and magic makes me itchy to begin with (I can suspend disbelief more easily in an alien environment); Mage goes much further, by postulating beings which cannot possibly exist in a universe where science works. More precisely, in the Mage setting, no experiment could ever produce unexpected results, and therefore no scientific advance could ever occur. I know, the Technocracy** is supposedly the answer to that question, but the Technocracy could never have arisen! Science won out over superstition (pretend science actually won out, because I'm not sure that it has) because it actually works. Superstition and magic are easier and more natural; if they worked, nobody would ever have bothered with science!

In short, it's a system that makes no sense. Massive, glaring holes in the internal logic start appearing the instant you start thinking about it.

*For example, vulgar magic causes backlash because most of the world doesn't believe in it. But most of the world doesn't believe in backlash either, so it shouldn't happen!

**For the record, the Technocracy are trying to create a stable universe of predictable events and distribute the benefits of their work to everyone, at the price of having to squeeze down the powerful few (other Mages). The powerful few respond with violent opposition, because dammit, they deserve the right to a chaotic universe in which Mages stride like gods and everyone else cowers in terror! Yeah, the Technocracy are definitely the bad guys in this picture.

[Bugmaster]

@Froborr:
Frustrating, isn't it ? It's as though everything you learn about the Mage universe comes from some sort of a biased source, who's got a massive axe to grind ! And no two sources agree on anything, as though they all hated each other ! Oh... wait...

The actual magic system of Mage -- meaning, the system you'd inevitably end up using -- is fairly simple. Think of something you want to do. Roll to see if you've done it. If this something would make people go, "OH CRAP !!!", then you're stretching reality to a breaking point, and you get the backlash. Why that happens is up to interpretation; for example, Virtual Adepts don't believe in any kind of Paradox at all; they just think your buggy reality hacking is crashing the system. Void Engineers will think that your plasma relay has overloaded, with explosive results. The Verbena think that you've angered the earth spirits. But the bottom line is always the same.

And yes, if you read the Technocracy sourcebooks, you'll find out that they indeed think of themselves as The Good Guys, and, in many cases, they are. The aforementioned Void Engineers don't build dreadnoughts for the sole purpose of being cool; they build them so that they can fight off what essentially amounts to Elder Gods, for just a few years more. They are doing an important job that your average Dreamspeaker is completely unaware of.

[Jeff]

The premise goes back to the idea that fairies are not helpful little elves in the workshop; they're powerful and alien and operate according to rules we don't understand.

Ah, the sidhe! Lovely folk to read about (the best known is the Bann Sidhe), but I wouldn't want to meet one. All sorts of fun tales abound about them, with Greg Bear's Songs of Earth & Power uniting sidhe and Xanadu.

[Kristy, Devourer of Worlds]

As for Changeling, I never really got into it... probably because they're just too alien. It's hard for me to care about them.

Well, yeah... but then again, that's why the new Changeling game is so very much better. (Also, while there is the potential for wangst - after all, you're essentially playing an abuse survivor - it's absolutely not a given like in other WOD games. Matter of fact, one of the four major factions categorically refuses to angst as part of their mission statement - I kinda like that!)

I need to be writing down these book recommendations...

Honestly, I can't really disagree with you on the Mage wackiness... I can wrap my brain around the theory, but the holes in it are still pretty big. And yet... shrugs I have a ton of fun playing it. Old AND new, actually. So who am I to complain, I guess?

[Froborr]

Bug: See, that's swell and all, but there's a subtle distinction between a game designer figuring out how a setting works and then presenting several different factions' views, and actually having no idea how the setting works. Mage is very, very clearly the latter; there is no "how the setting works", and therefore none of the factions' views are partially right and partially wrong -- they're all completely wrong. The entire point of a setting description is to tell players and GMs how things work so that they can fit characters and games into it; if your setting is "whatever you want it to be", just leave it out and charge less for the damn book. Taking a hundred hardbound, full-color, glossy pages to tell me that you have no idea how the setting you created works is a waste of my time and money.*

And yes, the mechanic is simple enough, but the very fact that there is a mechanic means that every explanation offered for the system is wrong! Not to mention that if players can do anything they can dream up, there's no point to having a mechanic at all -- just freeform the damn thing and save your money!

Mostly, though, it's just that I hate the setting with a seething passion. It's difficult for me to express how perfectly Mage manages to hit every idea I find stupid: conspiracies, wanting it makes it so, elitism, science is evil, and so on. Given a choice of places to spend my time, the WoD is pretty much bottom of the list, and the inclusion of Mage's rampant stupidity just drags it lower.

*Well, actually, I torrent everything from successful companies and only buy the book if the company needs it, because RPG sourcebooks are WAY too expensive.** But let's pretend.

**This is entirely White Wolf's fault, by the way. Before them, RPG books were stapled or glued plain paper, black-and-white, with few or no illustrations. They introduced hardbacked, glossy, color books crammed with illustrations, none of which enhanced the actual gameplay in any way but which allowed them to get away with charging a LOT more for the books. TSR followed suit, and everybody else followed them. Except for Guardians of Order, who published the core BESM book in both a hardbacked glossy edition and a vastly cheaper black-and-white paperback with shrunken illustrations. They're out of business now.

[Froborr]

Kristy: I can accept that you enjoy it. I have no problem with you enjoying it. I don't enjoy it, and I was asked to explain why, so I did. I may have gotten a little carried away in doing so, but that's because I *really* don't like it. Apologies if I did get carried away.

Ultimately the reasons I give are a rationale; it comes down to an intense, visceral disgust at the WoD in general and Mage in particular that I can't really explain.

[pat greene]

Sarah Dylan Breuer, that arrangement you spoke of -- where musicians use the sanctuary for practice in exchange for providing music for services -- sounds great. The music minister of our parish, in fact, made such an offer to my son -- who plays drums at one of the "contemporary" services, and who has been having trouble with some of the neighbors because of practicing -- but it fell through, mainly because in the end the powers that be felt uncomfortable leaving a teenager on his own in the church. Even so, he was able to use the drum equipment in the sanctuary to record sound effects for a school project.

I'm weird: I only like a subset of traditional music, and I only like a subset of "contemporary" music. And some things I thought were contemporary, it turns out are not -- I simply heard contemporary arrangements (for example, "Be Thou my Vision").

[Reynard]

Posted by Froborr: Reynard: I understand your discomfort, but in practice it is unavoidable that some statements believed at one time to be facts will later turn out not to be. This is an inevitable consequence of the advance of knowledge.

I'm not talking about History Book-style facts (perhaps I should have clarified this earlier), I'm talking about people who use facts (i.e. actual, provable knowledge of an event, person or concept) when it's to their advantage to do so and "facts" (i.e. making-shit-up-and-calling-it-fact-type "facts") when they think (or know) they can get away with it -- kind of like the current Administration, Rush, Billo, Talib-Ann, etc. do when they open their mouths.

Plus, some apparent oxymorons are not such within specialized jargons -- "negative reward," for example, is seemingly an oxymoron, but in psychological jargon it has a consistent meaning, "removal of an unpleasant stimulus in response to a desired behavior."

Hmmm. In my day, "negative reward" meant a spanking.

[Iorwerth Thomas]

My problem with the new Mage is that there are no Etherites (or wacky faction jumping Euthantos spin-offs who join the Order of Reason as their angel-wielding enforcers, then defect to a Hermetic House... -- at least in the rule book as written). The distinct lack of dragons and gatling pistols during the Wars of the Roses is also a disappointment...

New Changeling and Werewolf are made of win and shiny, though, and I'm warming to the new Vampire (Vampire was the game that had the least wrong with it -- discounting the sillier bits of the metaplot -- so I was uncertain as to what the new version offered that was different [1]).

[1] Turns out it's a lot more bleak. Which is no bad thing, considering.

[Jeff]

This is entirely White Wolf's fault, by the way. Before them, RPG books were stapled or glued plain paper, black-and-white, with few or no illustrations. They introduced hardbacked, glossy, color books crammed with illustrations, none of which enhanced the actual gameplay in any way but which allowed them to get away with charging a LOT more for the books. TSR followed suit, and everybody else followed them. Except for Guardians of Order, who published the core BESM book in both a hardbacked glossy edition and a vastly cheaper black-and-white paperback with shrunken illustrations. They're out of business now.

Not exactly. As I recall, the earliest D&D books (before they became "advanced") had a ton of illustrations. B&W, but they were there. I think the first hard-back AD&D book came out before any of ones from White Wolf.

You left off Steve Jackson Games, which publishes cheap games (full games under $20, mini games under $10).

Our best-known games include GURPS, the "Generic Universal RolePlaying System"; Munchkin, the irreverent game of dungeon crawling; Chez Geek, the game of apartment life; INWO, the trading card game of world domination; the original Illuminati game on which INWO was based; Car Wars, about battle on the highways; and OGRE, the classic simulation of future war.

Not included was Toon, which I love.

[MikhailBorg]

Something interesting, and vaguely on-topic, is the fact that the 'magic' systems of most of these games, actually reflect applied sciences in those universes. People have researched, experimented, and formulated rules and procedures, so that they know that the sequence of actions that cast a fireball yesterday will produce basically the same fireball today. They have formulated hypotheses, tested them, found some incorrect and some accurate, and formed further hypothesis from the results. That's science.

Much of our modern science comes from the study of magic. Chemistry from alchemy, astronomy from astrology, computer programming from voodoo. (Wait. Strike that last.)

A game world where magical effects occur truly randomly, unpredictably, and with no rules or sense, is more frustrating than entertaining.

[Kristy, Devourer of Worlds]

Froborr: I can accept that you enjoy it. I have no problem with you enjoying it. I don't enjoy it, and I was asked to explain why, so I did. I may have gotten a little carried away in doing so, but that's because I *really* don't like it. Apologies if I did get carried away.

Lol, no apologies needed, I didn't mean to give the impression that I was fussed! I was just remarking on it b/c I'm amused that I do enjoy it so much even though there's some pretty glaring flaws with the setting and mechanics.

Iowerth: really? I kinda think it's less bleak, meself. I felt like the biggest change was in the addition of the covenants - a more complicated dynamic than clan alone.

[practicallyevil]

The L.A. Times article makes no mention of AIDS or condoms. Did I miss something?
-Tonio

Second source, skip to 1:06, do they go to the same place for you? I may have made a mistake.

[Jeff]

Hello? Hello? Is this thing on?

[Tonio]

Second source, skip to 1:06, do they go to the same place for you? I may have made a mistake.

Sorry, I should have said that I wasn't able to view the clip until this evening. I searched Parade's site and could not find the article mentioned. If I understood correctly, what was stated on the program was that the Church was considering changing its condom policy for married couples if one partner had AIDS.

[Amaryllis]

Tonio: that's pretty much right.
As I understand it, when Benedict first took office, he made some statements about condoms and AIDS that echoed those of his predecessor. He was met with howls of anguish from Catholics, including priests and bishops, who were dealing with the real-world consequences: "Holy Father, people are dying here! Maybe it's time, with a new pontificate, to re-think this?" So, about two years ago, the Vatican announced the formation of a committee to study the issue. That study was widely expected to defend the use of condoms where one partner is infected. However, since then, there's been only an interesting silence from the Vatican. (I might even call it a loud silence.)
At his press conference on World AIDS Day last December, for the first time, the Pope didn't mention condoms at all: not approvingly, but not negatively either. This was hopefully interpreted, at the time, as the first sign of softening attitudes, but since then, more silence.

[Amaryllis]

Anyway, back on the "letters to the editor" thread:
This morning I read a letter to our local community paper in which the writer agreed with last week's editorial by saying that it had expressed "his sediments exactly."

Now, I've heard that said as a joke, but this seemed to be in all seriousness.
Was it merely a typo? (Because nobody needs to proofread their own or anybody else's typing now that we have SpellChecker, right? And this particular Gazette is particularly egregious about that.)

Or is this creeping into the language? (Sometimes my sentiments are rather muddy, it's true.) Anybody else been hearing this usage?

[Chris]

[i]I just have to say that I sprayed water on my keyboard with the "see photo" comment.[/i]

Should've used Holy Water.

[Tonio]

(Sometimes my sentiments are rather muddy, it's true.)

That's the first groan-worthy pun I've heard in years.

[Iorwerth Thomas]

I kinda think it's less bleak, meself. I felt like the biggest change was in the addition of the covenants - a more complicated dynamic than clan alone.

It's mainly the impression I got from Requiem for Rome and Fall of the Camarilla; mainly the latter, where the only likeable characters are Justinian and Theodora, and they're not even part of the main campaign! The local rather than global emphasis (with no metaplot as such -- metaplot always lightened things up because it often had some hilariously wacky bits relating to bad or strange decisions way back in 1st or 2nd Ed), the de-emphasising of mystical escape routes [1] and the fact that at least three of the Covenants indulge in seriously Humanity draining behaviour without Paths of Enlightenment as safety net kind of add to it. I don't think it's a bad thing, though, on the whole.

I miss Mithras [2] and Archbishop Moncada of Madrid, though.

[1] Such as Golconda or regaining one's humanity -- though to be fair, those have been downplayed ever since V:tM Revised.

[2] Mainly because one can't hang elements of the fictional UK city one has created off of obscure facts relating to his rather strained relationship with the Camarilla in Requiem, for obvious reasons...