I didn't know about the dog, but I was always impressed with how characters like Leliana and Morrigan actually had the various stories you would expect a performer and the child of a legend to have. I like to think that's a bit of the Baldur's Gate influence leaking through, since it was also pretty good in that…

I'm not far into the game, but I'm weirdly liking the dialogue system. The writing isn't superb, but it's doing something I've always wanted games to do: Give me interactions which don't matter. So often it feels like RPGs only let me talk to my party members if I'm wooing them, or if I need to help Alistair cope with…

Was it called "Factions"? If so, that was just the multiplayer component.

It means they're making a note, "Huge Success".

There's an entire thesis in Mark Wahlberg's reaction, especially his reassertion of masculinity via "The Touch".

Well, that depends on if a robbery is involved. I mean, it's definitely a reckless driving, but if it's just some rich jerk driving around with his bank safe hanging from his muscle car, then I don't know if the robbery applies. Except, you know, for all the lives.

I'm not sure modern war glorifications are really in the same vein as, say, The Iliad, or even many medieval glorifications of warfare. They, at least, tend to pay lip service to the possibility of nobility on both sides of the battlefield (Hector or Saladin, for example), where I'm not sure that can be said of most…

While there should be more of a discussion about the glorification of reckless driving (and recklessness in general, really), I think there's a matter of intent which is relevant. Praising the ignored endangerment of others in pursuit of a goal is marginally less problematic than praising the intentional killing of…

West Wing gets better as it moves into its second season, arguably as the characters' pasts and personalities finally solidify enough for the show to play around with them. I don't know if the schmaltz factor really decreases, though.

It's amazing what you can accomplish when you can count on someone new to drop in and ask old questions.

If the show was them doing their own thing while someone filmed it, then the only difference between this death and a death on he show itself is the absence of filming, right? So it's less like "televised drunk dies on way to bar" and more like "televised drunk dies being drunk, no one witnesses".

Actually, I'd argue that one could manufacture this shit, but it would have to be persuasive shit. We need to be able to look at the product and say "Oh! This is why I'm supposed to be interested in witches/werewolves/steampunk/mimes!" From there, you can just rip-off that part again and again until people wise up and…

I hope someone writes a fascinating biography of Rhianna Pratchett some day. There are months where she shows up everywhere but people only ever seem to remember her for her last work. It's really weird.

As an under-35-year-old who used an exclamation mark in posting about the death of Margaret Thatcher, I am most excited to read the various obituaries and see how the handle the death of such a figure.

But there's a certain point where the composition of a network becomes more important than the reasoning behind it, right?

Hm, you have a point, but I wonder what you make of reporters who seem to make a living out of covering a specific region, such as Richard Engel for NBC, who I've only ever seen reporting on the Middle East?

There's at least one thing that sentence which isn't on fire.

Awake!

EDIT: Argh, that's what I get for not noticing there was a second page.

I have never seen a news organization use outside sources for a story about its internal workings, but NPR certainly has.