Experiment IIIb: Posting From The Library

In this experiment, I will look at posting to my blog from the Wrexham public library - a venue whose servers have, in a fit of authoritarian nanny state pique, have cut off all access to blogs on the grounds that "it encourages paedophiles."

Flimsy, pitiful excuse, of course. They actually seek to discourage free speech, on the ground that "it encourages the development of intelligence and individuality, because we are afraid of people who can rise above the mass of mediocrity to be their own person and make their own lifestyle choices, rather than the ones we are trying to foist on everyone."

So here I go, defying the ban by bypassing it with email. I cannot immediately comment on results since these idiots also block Facebook.

Secrets Of The Ancients Part 6

I just downloaded Chapter 6 of Mongoose Publishing's epic multi-part Traveller adventure Secrets Of The Ancients to read.

In play, it runs similar to the Barony abstract system from White Wolf's Vampire: the Requiem sourcebook Damnation City, in that characters play a higher-level game as movers and shakers, their usual characteristics abstracted into generalised attributes such as Analysis, or Influence, rather than Intelligence or Social Standing.

I won't say much else about the plot of Part 6 - if you want to download and read it, go here to download it - but I found something amusing already.

The episode uses a term I have not seen for years. It introduces a "prototype ansible" - a means of FTL communication. Subspace radio from Star Trek, if you will.

This sort of communications device is a game breaker for Traveller since, of course, the game is predicated on a lack of reliable FTL communications other than physical transportation of the data from point to point on board a Jump-equipped ship; nonetheless, this is not the amusing thing.

What amuses me is the story I once heard, from David Langford's Ansible site (or was it from Interzone?) that Ursula K LeGuin coined the term.

But that she deliberately chose the nonsense word because it is an anagram of lesbian.