More on the Steelhead Landslide, Washington State

I take both a personal and professional interest in this tragic event.  It's close to home, and may become the worst landslide disaster in the state, eclipsing the 1910 Stevens Pass slide that took out two passenger trains.  And as I mentioned, I work for a geotechnical engineering firm - and although I am not an engineer, I support our geotechs in ground water issues, including the monitoring of a number of local landslide sites.

So the analysis from the scientific community is coming in, even as the cleanup and recovery continues.

Girls at the table, or different people play differently

http://dndkids.blogspot.com/2014/02/girls-at-table.html

Reblogging this article by Uri Kurlianchik, a gamer, youth activity director, and former writer for Wizards.  Per his words, this article got him blacklisted at Wizards for being scandalous.

So I read the article and kept waiting for the inflammatory part, or the controversial part, or the knuckledragging mouthbreather part. But couldn't find them.  That's because Uri works and plays with kids, observes kids, and like any good teacher or mentor, 'gets' kids.

This article likely rubbed folks the wrong way because some people have been conditioned to suppress the appreciation of differences. (I don't know the whole story, but knowing trolls and forums, can make some inferences...) There seems to have been an attempt over the last generation or so to downplay the differences between the sexes rather than accept them as being complimentary to one another.

"Recovering Traps with Illusion"

Topic Tuesday: Recovering Traps with Illusion


Snkt the Kobold was furious!  Brrzt had claimed Snkt’s masterpiece trap, the Scorpion Slinger, as his own!

Fortunately, Snkt had his original design drawings on tanned dog-skin, and retained the services of Gnomish barrister Lobik Bizzgear of Bizzgear, Finenozzle, Castfuzz, and Schwartz, LLP. 

With nary a blink, the gnome lawyer, a master of charm and misdirection, played on the jury’s fear and suggested the defendant’s mirage was madness, then in a scintillating burst of confusion, cutting down Brrzt’s false script, leaving the jury dazed and swayed to the evidence of Snkt’s garbled text and sending Brrzt down the lonely road.

Stillaguamish Landslide

source

Well, this slide made national news, heard it as lead story on NPR this am - the current morbid tally is 14 deceased, 176 still unaccounted for:  http://www.seattlepi.com/news/us/article/14-dead-in-Washington-mudslide-search-continues-5343142.php

Geh.

A friend asked me on FB what my impression was - I'm not an engineering geologist or geotech, but I work with them (and am therefore qualified to play one on TV).

"Mor" and More, or why my villain is not likely to be named Mr. Fluffykins.

Happy Monday!

Moriarty

Mordor

Voldemort

Literary names associated with villainy, darkness, evil.  All sharing the syllable 'mor.'  Why does this syllable keep popping up in the baddies' names, and why does it immediately indicate to us "Hey, this is the villain of the story."?

'Mor' is an example of a phonestheme: a part of a word that carries a connotation not because of etymology or formal definition but just by association.

So although the 'mor' syllable buried in the names may sound similar to the latin root 'mor' (death) - root to such dark words as morbid, morgue, and mortgage (literally "death pledge"), it does not specifically reference that root.  However, it references our familiarity and impressions of the root, lending atmosphere and weight to the literary bad-guy names.

Probably not a villain