Month: September 2003

Also found at Metafilter is this discussion of White Wolf’s lawsuit against Sony Pictures over alleged copyright infringement in the new film “Underworld”. While my first (and probably even second) impulse is to dismiss the lawsuit as frivolous, my first thought upon seeing the trailer a few weeks ago was that it seemed awfully reminiscent of some of White Wolf’s roleplaying games.

That doesn’t, of course, make it a derivative work. It’s difficult to argue that White Wolf’s vampire and werewolf mythos is not itself a derivative work. As Metafilter user effugas writes: “White Wolf turned Montague and Capulet (public domain characters) into Vampire and Werewolf (public domain myths) and is peeved that others might do the same.”

But I’m curious to know what my readers more familiar with White Wolf’s product line think about this. Do you think they have a case? Have the writers of “Underworld” just cribbed from Vampire: The Masquerade, or simply created created a similar universe based on shared public domain characters and myths?

I haven’t had reason or opportunity to fly anywhere in quite awhile, and while I’ll be flying to and back from Texas in a couple of weeks, if this proposed system goes into effect, I may not want go anywhere I can’t easily drive anytime soon after that:

The new Transportation Security Administration system seeks to probe deeper into each passenger’s identity than is currently possible, comparing personal information against criminal records and intelligence information. Passengers will be assigned a color code — green, yellow or red — based in part on their city of departure, destination, traveling companions and date of ticket purchase.

Maybe I’m being paranoid, and maybe only terrorists and axe murderers have anything to fear, but this doesn’t seem like anything but the illusion of safety procured at the expense of civil liberty. The term “Owellian” really doesn’t do the Department of Homeland Security justice.

Found via Metafilter, where a number of people have done some of the math to explain just how many thousands of people 1-2% of passengers really is.

The thing I dream is this: That some night, a hundred nights, a hundred years from now, there will be a boy on Mars reading late at night with a flashlight under the covers. And he’ll look out on the Martian landscape, which will be bleak and rocky and red and not very romantic. But when he turns out the light and lies with a copy of my book, I hope, The Martian Chronicles, the Martian winds outside will stir, and the ghosts that are in my book will rouse up, and my creatures—even though they never lived—will be on Mars. And that’s the dream I have.” — Ray Bradbury

On the occasion of his 83rd birthday last month.

We begin production on “Girls Night Out”, the campus sketch comedy show in which I’ll be involved this year, in a couple of weeks. Yesterday, I wrote a couple of sketches. I’m still working on the second one, but here’s the first. As always, comments appreciated.