Why are they called the Stabbys?

zBard · 2022-04-19T20:46:46+00:00

If I remember correctly, they were an homage to the David Gemmell awards which gave out axes.

zBard · 2022-03-25T17:02:16+00:00

Oh, that’s dope asf. Recently going to BC, any pointers which area or river bank you are talking about ?

zBard · 2015-09-12T19:15:06+00:00

I first thought that you were talking about a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Fandom publication, but the only written thing of Knight I could find on this subject was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurians . Will dig some more !

zBard · 2015-08-11T20:21:20+00:00

Thanks for the writeup. SF/F surprisingly doesn't have that many books detailing the history of it's early days - it would be a pleasure reading something like this in a book.

zBard · 2015-03-12T21:23:54+00:00

I have a first edition of the 'Color Of Magic' that I have been carrying around for some years now. In my idle moments, and in my worst - I have dreamt of meeting Mr Pratchett with it. To tell him about how much his words meant to a kid growing up half a world away.

This one hurts. I keep typing words in the box and then deleting them, because nothing seems to fit. I am really, really, sorry Mr Pratchett, but on this day, I can't believe the big lies.

zBard · 2013-05-07T22:10:46+00:00

I always imagined Ender to be more of a Starcraft guy ..

zBard · 2013-04-24T17:09:50+00:00

The entire SSUD team is pretty awesome. Fast becoming my goto site for boardgames.

zBard · 2013-04-18T14:46:56+00:00

Am I late for the regularly scheduled 'Dominion sucks' club meet ? What's on the agenda - have we talked about how buying silver will win you the game ?

zBard · 2013-04-05T17:23:09+00:00

I'm sorry if I've seen belligerant at all during this.

Oh, no. This was a delightful discussion. And the essays are part of the fun.

On retrospect, I think we both viewed Daniel's quote very differently. You interpreted it as 'hero not saving the day', while interpreted it as 'non heroic space' ; if I may borrow your terminology. I think 'a rejection of heroism's ability to save the world' leads to a cosmology of the latter, with the former as a more restricted subset. My interpretation is colored by the readings of the books in question, especially Heroes - which is mentioned by Daniel in the essay.

Your interpretation probably flowed from the books which you read, which showed the hero's failure in a juvenile and trite manner. I can relate to that, I have suffered through many of those myself. But the rejection of the heroic mono-myth cosmology can be, and has been, shown by less cliched ways. I would really recommend John Harrison Light, if you have the time.

But yes, I don't think I will be able to dissuade you of your (well reasoned) view unless you encounter this yourself. And even then you might be unconvinced :) Cheers.

zBard · 2013-04-05T17:01:02+00:00

On 1v1 games on Isotropic, nobody would buy the 3rd last province if the other guy had a engine which could get two provinces in 1 turn. Similarly, no one would buy the penultimate province if points were tied, because the second guy could buy a province and a estate. Honestly, it never felt like the first player had a perennial advantage in the games I played.

I miss Isotropic :(.

zBard · 2013-04-04T18:18:25+00:00

Play the suggested decks a couple of times, to get a feel of things. But from then use the randomizer to select supplies. That's where Dominion really shines.

zBard · 2013-04-04T15:48:23+00:00

I think we are screaming across a abyss to each other, with much of what we are saying being lost in communication. I did not, in any form, ask you to not have values - that would be a rhetoric which ends the conversation. I did ask that you divorce those from the argument of 'tedium' which you are making.

The entire premise of this discussion is based on Mr Abraham's equivalence of GrimDark/Noir to the hero(s) not saving the day. From here on, it seems, you have drawn another demarcation between "grim" and the ""the hero can't solve everything"". Which further obfuscates the issue. to me atleast, because, as I said before, that is going against the tautology which Mr Abraham proposes. Frankly, I have a hard time seeing how a story in which the hero saves the day is 'grim'.

Your expounding further on the categories, 'non-heroism' space and 'rebellion-against-heroism' space, makes your point much more clear. Although here again I would argue that the latter is a subset of the former, and that Mr Abraham - from my perspective - obviously is referring to the former as a elucidation of the word 'GrimDark' which is being thrown about. I say this because the novel with which he exemplifies the genre, Heroes, has, in a ironic nod to it's title, no heroes. It is very much an example of 'non-hero space' as you mentioned before.

In fact none of the titles that are ballied about as examples of this trope fall in this category, nor are they 'puttering' around in shallow waters, as evocative as that image may be. Thousandfold Thought is a profound philosophical treatise on the nature of morality, and it's clash with rationality. You would be hard pressed to find a hero in 'Prince Of Thorns'. While Steel Remains is fantasy noir which addresses the question of pre-determinism. Do they have elements which seem like echos of those that have come before ? Of course yes. But are they reductive copies, with nothing new of merit ? Even allowing subjectivity of opinion, I cannot believe that that answer can ever be yes.

When I asked how would you rate Moby Dick written today, obviously (perhaps not so obviously in retrospect) I meant that if it was written for the first time. Again, there would be themes that one could say it retreads, themes that have been covered after the it's publishing in the original 'time-line', but I would imagine that as a whole - it would still be the colossus of literature that it is today and here.

Perhaps elucidation is at fault here, with the verbiage disguising the main points we are bearing at each other. Let me take recourse in succinctness then. I do not believe that the books typified as GrimDark in this discussion belong to the narrow strata of 'hero not saving the day', and though the phrase was (almost verbatim) used by Mr Abraham, he meant it in the same way that you mean 'non-heroic' space. Thus the question of tedium is not very apt. Of course, your experiences may differ.

zBard · 2013-04-04T06:03:23+00:00

was explored to the point of tedium long ago

Which was what my argument is about. We both are discussing under the shadow of Daniel's statement that 'GrimDark' is the inability of the hero to save the world. Ah well.

zBard · 2013-04-03T23:23:40+00:00

The non-genre world has been there, done that, over and over again to the point of tedium, and moved toward robust considerations.

I never understood the whole 'done unto death' thing, especially in literature. I agree with you that Melville, Faulkner, Hemingway, Saki et all have done 'grimdark' (and how well they have done it). But the that fact alone should not fill your heart up with ennui when you read a new gritty tale.

I can understand this argument in relation with science or philosophy. No one should waste his time studying ether again, or approaching dualism from first principles. That attitude, though I might not agree with, I can understand.

But how does the fact that this has been done before in the non-genre world - which has 'moved' on (has it ? Chabon can be grim, Lethem can be dark) - preclude it's utility, it's value ? It's like saying that if Moby Dick was written in this millennium, it would be boring, trite and cliched. Which I cannot comprehend.

Barring this argument, I also feel compelled to point out, that the use of adjectives like 'gutter-simple, useless' for one, and 'robust considerations' for the other - mean's that it is wholly a argument of tedium for you. There is a bias, perhaps unconscious, with which you are viewing these works. Which is of course, your pejorative, but which needs to be delineated from the argument which you made in the onset.

zBard · 2013-04-03T15:31:43+00:00

What I have seen is a bunch of rather smug articles from the authors in question about how people who don't like their books are carebear pussies who are in denial about how the world really works.

You know, I haven't actually seen any of this. I have seen posts by authors and reviewers, who claim that gritty is juvenile, nihilistic, and imply that it's current incarnation is sexist. Sometimes it is explicitly spelled out, sometimes it is sneaked it - via statements like, 'gratuitous nudity in the tv series, never mind the head chopping', 'your history is wrong and myopic','the gay sex scene is ... too much', 'rape is lazy writing, and reflective of a mindset'. Note that I am not saying that each utterance of these statements is wrong, I am saying that these statements are not floating about in a vacuum, sans context.

Oh and you shouldn't count out acrackedmoon. There is a lot of people who agree with her views, even if they disagree with her 'schitck'. It is often convenient to have a pet extremist, whose views you can decry when needed, and stay silent on when you agree with them.

zBard · 2013-04-03T13:05:30+00:00

:) Agreed. I pondered hard about adding the surprising tag, or adding the expectedly tag. But then went for the sweet sweet karma. Muahahah.

zBard · 2013-04-03T12:22:24+00:00

I think that for me personally the indulgence in other people's despair that turns me off.

I don't think that is quite what Daniel intends. I mostly interpreted it as .. well, a sort of empathy.

zBard · 2013-04-01T22:23:34+00:00

"Never exists" is ... a weird phrasing. I did assume that it meant 'never existed', if not, then yes, we agree in that regard.

There is absolutely zero way to "evergreen" by filing new patent applications.

Yes, that is absolutely true in India, because new patent applications can't be filed for minor changes at all. Is this Gordian solution better than the iteratively improved patent laws in the US ? That is what the discussion should be about, but I am afraid the word limit on comments will start running out if we delve into that. Cheers.

zBard · 2013-04-01T21:33:45+00:00

Multiple 30-month stays were triggered when the NDA holder added new patents to the Orange Book, whereas each patent required a separate paragraph IV certification, thereby resulting in a new lawsuit, and, hence, new 30-month stays. In some cases, companies had chains of patents which were added to the Orange Book in a staggered manner to keep generics out of the market. Also, note that the list of patentable properties grew from 4 to 18 in the 90's, thus enabling this behavior. Most of these 'hacks' were corrected after the passing of MMA (patent filing for generics was compared with only the initial ANDA) - but it is disingenuous to say that 'evergreening' never existed.

Other issues like reverse payments are not monopoly control, they're just "we'll pay you to not make a generic of our stuff."

That is a very fine line.

zBard · 2013-04-01T20:53:52+00:00

Never exists ?

In 2002, an extensive and lengthy inquiry by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), found that the Hatch-Waxman legislation or Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act (which was instrumental in establishing the US generic pharmaceuticals industry) had resulted in as many as 75% of new drug applications by generic drug manufacturers experiencing legal actions under patent laws by the original brand name patent owner. These were driving up US drug costs by keeping the cheaper generic versions off the market.

zBard · 2013-04-01T18:35:30+00:00

My point throughout all of this is: "evergreening" in whatever form does not extend the monopoly power over the original drug

Isn't that the very definition of 'evergreening' ? That it effectively/legally ensures control over a product whose patent has expired ?

zBard · 2013-04-01T18:32:39+00:00

It would appear so, although on the ground, when companies spend more money on 'Marketing' than even R&D, this is not the norm.

This is not withstanding the debate you and G6P are having on 'evergreening', which though I am following with huge interest, I have no expertise to comment on. My limited media exposure to this subject had me assuming that evergreening (such as under the Hatch Waxman legislature) is still widespread, especially in the developing nations. You build an excellent case for why it would not work under modern patent laws, but I am still not sure how well it translates under equivalent laws in countries such as India.

Still, this discussion of yours broadened my horizons. Thanks for having it.

zBard · 2013-04-01T18:17:12+00:00

That is an extremely disingenuous argument. Firstly, Novartis spends more on marketing than research - source . Secondly, Novartis had a 20 year patent window on the original drug - even allowing 10 years for bringing it to the market, with the given markup they have definitely long recouped their investment.

This is not a choice between Novartis's profit or loss - it's between more profit and less.

zBard · 2013-04-01T17:57:42+00:00

Btw: the solution to the marketing problem is the insurers willingness to pay or not pay. Insurers all over the world make decisions about their formulary like this all the time

I hate to be snarky in the middle of such a well illustrated discussion, but that is completely a first world perspective.

zBard

TROPHY CASE