Squawk Role-Playing Game

The Squawk Role-Playing Game that we have been working since the mid-90's is finally available as a book from CreateSpace and Amazon.com or as a PDF from RPGNow and DriveThruRPG.

See the Game Arts Guild Press Release for details.

Conversation with Spiced Ham

Once in a while I just can't resist the urge to reply to one of these e-mails that grandmas like to circulate around teh internets. There is no point in replying directly to the arguments of a chain letter, but always a surfeit of subliminal content to play with. This time the subject is the US health care reform bill. While I think the critics of the bill might have some good points, they are generating more heat than light - and mostly lulz. The chain letter in question uses the abbreviation HC for health care (because your time is precious!)

Page 22 of the HC Bill: Mandates that the Govt will audit books of all employers that self-insure!!

What do these employers have to hide, that they don't want their books audited?

Page 30 Sec 123 of HC bill: THERE WILL BE A GOVT COMMITTEE that decides what treatments/benefits you get.

I am so enraged about this interference with my right to have my treatments selected by some bean counters at the HMO.

Page 29 lines 4-16 in the HC bill: YOUR HEALTH CARE IS RATIONED!!!

There goes the all-you-can-eat health care I have grown accustomed to.

Page 42 of HC Bill: The Health Choices Commissioner will choose your HC benefits for you. You have no choice!

Wait, so instead of the current system where I "choose" whether to wait in line at the clinic with my day laborer buddies in the alley behind the market in Seattle where I live on weekdays or with the meth heads across the street from Walmart in Bremerton where I live on weekends, the HC Bill will have both a Commissioner and a Committee competing for this privilege?

Page 50 Section 152 in HC bill: HC will be provided to ALL non-US citizens, illegal or otherwise.

It's just not right to treat our guest workers to that kind of abuse.

Read the Rest on Google Docs!

Views of Lagos

This is a presentation I produced for an Urban Studies class at the University of Washington Tacoma. I present Lagos as a megacity of the global periphery and outline the geography of the city, showing conventional development statistics and current issues facing the city. I have embedded a preview for the documentary Nollywood Babylon which shows a different perspective on the development of Lagos, generated by the people who live in the city for their own consumption. This presentation was also influenced by Jonathan Haynes' paper Nollywood in Lagos, Lagos in Nollywood Films Africa Today 54:2 [Winter 2007] p.130-150.