Burrowowl

Commercial Applications Research for Extraterrestrial Technology, or CARET, is the name of the program that “Isaac” worked with during the mid-80′s. As the name indicates, they were looking into some very interesting technology that works on a significantly different set of design principles than those generally associated with Terran engineering. The kind folks at the Jimbo Propulsion Laboratories sent me a link to this interesting material which I now in turn share with you.

The photographs accompanying Isaac’s story are striking in their visual design, incorporating stark contrasts and hard angles with graceful curves at once reminiscent of a Nonokrian rune, katakana, a bat’leth, and sperm. If our military-industrial complex has been working on extraterrestrial tech, I’d like to think that it’s something as cool looking as this stuff.

More information on this matter, including a rebuttal by Isaac to a few of his critics, is available at ufo.whipnet.org.

Arthur C. Clarke passed away earlier today. Sir Arthur is most widely known as the science fiction author behind the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. The ideas he put to paper found their way into the fertile minds of generations of scientists and explorers, eventually leading to geostationary satellites and, one can only hope, one day will yield space elevators and such.

Link: BBC Obituary

Yesterday was L. Ron Hubbard’s birthday, so Anonymous threw a party in his honor at Scientology centers around the world. T52 posted some great photos of the gathering in London along with some insightful commentary. Looks like they had a great time. The birthday revelry near Atlanta, Georgia turned out a bit differently, with some police officers deciding to arrest demonstrators and ticket passers-by out of what I can only assume was sheer boredom; nobody puts on the badge so they can stand across the street from an unimpressive handful of unenthusiastic protesters.

Supposedly more people showed up for events at the larger cities (per Partyvan), but a bunch of Internet pranksters are hardly to be trusted when it comes to proper numbers. Some say that Anonymous is looking to take the Scientologists down. Some say it’s just for the lulz. I’d say they lack the capacity to have a motivation at all.

While studiously researching the proper capitalization of Taekwondo (a matter fraught with peril, as it’s a romanization of a Korean term as transmogrified by the Japanese and can rightly be regarded as three separate words), I ran across something that made me smile: the World Taekwondo Federation, aka WTF.

Another amusing pair of acronyms I ran into recently include Better Approach to Mobile Ad-hoc Networking (BATMAN) and its closely-related protocol Routing BATMAN Inside (RO.B.IN). This pair goes from doubly funny for the individual super-hero references to triple funny for the dynamic-duo pairing to quadruple-funny for having Batman inside Robin. Hoo, boy. Gary and Ace would be proud.

I don’t care for the whole Khador == Soviet Russia oversimplification, but with the release of the Kayazy Underboss unit attachment and Yuri the Axe, there’s a rather solid cold-blooded-killer army available now for the Motherland:

Faction: Khador
Army Points: 750/750
Victory Points: 26

Kommander Sorscha Kratikoff
- Destroyer
Yuri the Axe
- Manhunter
- Manhunter
Doom Reavers
Kayazy Assassins (8)
- Kayazy Assassins Underboss
Kossite Woodsmen (6)
Widowmakers
Eiryss, Mage Hunter of Ios
Gorman Di Wulfe, Rogue Alchemist
Kell Bailoch
Croe’s Cutthroats (6)

Each model is directly associated with assassination, Kommander Sorscha being renown in WARMACHINE for her “woosh” tactic, leading to the quick demise of many enemy Warcasters over the years. The Destroyer has traditionally played the role of Sorscha’s assassination-partner for the Wind Rush to Icy Gaze combination along with Eiryss. Each of the other mercenaries is explicitly a professional assassin, as are the Kayazy ally unit. The Widowmakers are snipers, not assassins, but this is a rather fine semantic point from the perspective of Khador’s enemies. The only models that are a bit of a stretch thematically are the Doom Reavers (a penal unit of berserkers driven mad by their enchanted weapons). I included them due to the criminality of their background. The Kossite Woodsmen are treated as mercenary near-criminals in the background information, and add to the “hired gun” flavor of much of this list.

It’s also almost entirely Advanced Deployment, which is big fun. Line your little gaggle of murderers up against precisely the assets you mean to. A variation is also possible for 500pt games, but doesn’t quite have the punch and lacks the thematic overkill.