For today’s ludicrous Civ lolwut:
But first, a brief message from our sponsors regarding hand-editing XML:
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We now return you to our regularly scheduled program.
So, on the assumption that you, like me, are 1) using Windows Vista; 2) Really tired of popping open Explorer windows only to have them go to your Documents folder, which is slow and obscures things like your C drive you may have wanted to get to, there’s a couple ways to go about this:
1. Create a shortcut to Explorer.exe, and use the command line switches in this MS article to set the start directory you want.
2. But supposing you’re like me, and actually want to mirror the functionality of the Computer button in the Vista Start Menu, which starts you off with a list of all your drives? Slightly different:
- Open the Start Menu.
- Right click Computer. There is an option called Show On Desktop. Click that.
- Go to the desktop, and right click the new Computer icon. Create Shortcut. It does this.
- Copy the shortcut to…wherever. I keep mine in my toolbar* on the left side of the screen, but now that I’m thinking about it, I’ll just go drop it in the Quick Launch toolbar too.
* Speaking of toolbars, if MS wanted to fix that bug where non-Start Bar toolbars lose their always on top property if set to that and autohide, that would be really nice. I’ve only been putting up with that shit since Windows 98 here.
So, in case you haven’t been paying any attention, or have been watching CNN which is apparently now become about the same thing, millions of people in Iran are out in the streets protesting the apparently government rigged election of our old pal Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over his reformist challenger Mir-Hossein Mousavi.
I’ve been pretty much reading Andrew Sullivan and the New York Times Lede blog 24/7 this whole time. It’s crazy stuff. Millions in the streets, brutality by the police and militia, universities raided, you name it. I’m not sure if I have anything to really add, other than to salute a bunch of people who are putting their lives on the line for their own democracy and freedom, but a few unoriginal thoughts anyway:
- My sense here is that there’s a lot of similarities thus far to Eastern Europe in 1989 as opposed to, say, China in 1989. My conjectural sense of the thing is that, while the pro-Ahmadinejad guys (including Ayatollah Khamenei) would like to take the military and squash the hell out of this, they don’t have the support, and indeed support is swinging the other way. If the reports I’m reading are right, you’ve got moves to depose Khamenei, the Revolutionary Guards have split into factions, and the regular Army has said they’re staying out of it. My sense is that one way or another, Khamenei and Ahmedinijad are done for sooner rather than later.
- Even if they’re done for in the later sense, there’s a lot of folks out there, including a whole lot of students. Even if it takes years, they aren’t going to stay silent forever, and eventually they’ll get positions of power. Change will come.
- That said, I’m starting to wonder if we haven’t reached a point where the whole system will eventually get brought down. People are calling for Mousavi to be instated as President, yes, and I wonder if a guy who was in as deep with the original 1979 revolutionary crowd as Mousavi was is as much of a reformer as we think he is, and I wonder if he and the Iranian system as a whole are really compatible with what the people seem to be calling for. I dunno, but I keenly remember that a lot of 1989 started with attempting to reform the system, then breaking it.
- Like 1989, the Iranian protests are deeply inspiring and moving, and if I claim to be a supporter of freedom and democracy around the world, which I do, then I must hope and wish for the protesters to succeed, and I do. The eyes of the world are on Iran, and we’re rooting for you.
- This has been widely remarked on, but it turns out that the revolution will not so much be televised as it will be tweeted and youtubed. With the exception of the New York Times and the BBC and a couple of other European channels, established media seems to have fallen on its ass big time here, and instead you’ve got individual Iranians communicating via Twitter and circumventing government bans and communications shutdowns by taking cell phone pics and video and sending them to YouTube and bloggers, and bloggers are picking them up and running with them. If this thing succeeds, and I think it will, where 1989 had Tank Man and people on the Berlin Wall for iconic images, Iran will have bad quality YouTube videos of peaceful protests and grainy pics of millions of people marching. Makes you start to wonder if there maybe isn’t something to this whole Internet thing.
Anyway. Good luck, people of Iran.
So, recently, Ta-Nehisi Coates, who blogs at the Atlantic and who is somebody you maybe ought to read, picked up James McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom on the history of the Civil War, and was talking about it. And in reaction to him I’ve got a whole bunch of random thoughts percolating about, so I’m just going to throw a few of them out to the rest of you:
1. Pretty much all of what Coates is saying on the subject is at the least interesting, but this one was really interesting, and I quote: “I’m coming to finally, at long last, admire Abraham Lincoln. I am almost ashamed to admit this. It feels cliche and silly. But its true. That sound you hear is the burning of the lost of my black lefty credentials. The end is nigh.”
I think it says something or atother about me and my own historical upbringing that I was sort of taken aback at that one, because from my perspective it seems pretty clearly that what you do is admire Lincoln. There’s some debate about the other figures of the period I suppose, Lee and Grant and them, but Lincoln, no. But I suppose that if you had the upbringing that Coates had, and it was an interesting one from his book, Lincoln may not be so hot. I find that interesting, though for myself, Frederick Douglass:
“Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined. …the judgment of the present hour is, that taking him for all in all, measuring the tremendous magnitude of the work before him, considering the necessary means to ends, and surveying the end from the beginning, infinite wisdom has seldom sent any man into the world better fitted for his mission than Abraham Lincoln.”
2. As to McPherson, I’ve little yet to say about him as I’ve just started reading myself, somehow having not read it previously. Good thus far, but what was interesting to me was that he starts out in the 1840s, which made no sense to me for a moment, being used as I am to treatments of the subject beginning either in the 1850s or much much earlier, but on thinking makes a fair bit of sense on the idea that A, we don’t really talk much about the Mexican War or the 40s in general, and B, this small bit where McPherson takes 10 or 12 of the people who would become leaders during the Civil War, and talks about the relations of future Union men with future Confederates, all of them at the time serving in the US Army. Interesting stuff.
3. Back to Coates, he and several of his commenters sum up that epic Ken Burns documentary, The Civil War, which you all know was one of the foundations of my childhood so to speak, and dismiss it out of hand as having a “Southern slant.”
I find this somewhat odd. If you were only listening to Shelby Foote, then fine, take that with you (though Foote, a Southerner, thought the film had a Northern bias, so). On the other hand, a film that notes the foundations of the Confederacy upon slavery, notes in literally graphic detail a few of the horrors, and has as one of the central figures of the piece Frederick Douglass seems to me to have its heart in the right place. It also gives the Southerners their voices, and describes the glory of the thing for many of the white people, but I think that’s fair. They’re part of the history of the thing too.
4. Something else Coates did was link to a Yale lecture course by David Blight on the Civil War and Reconstruction, which is a good series and I’m enjoying it immensely, which is strange because by the end of my history undergrad, I was completely done with lectures, believe you me, and in any case I just finished my final courses for graduate school, so shouldn’t I be burnt out or something? Strangely enough, every time I finish a degree, I seem to get straight back to the business of reading a lot of history books, which strikes me as somewhat ass backwards but works anyway.
But I digress. I’m four lectures in, and we’re still talking about mindsets and ideologies and myths, which brings to mind something I’m pretty sure I formulated all by myself and believe in deeply in any event, which is that if you really want to understand anything but especially people, and if you want a really good basis for any sort of subject, you ought to study history. Reason being, I can’t think of any other subject that’s such a useful springboard for all sorts of other topics. Taking the Civil War, thus far in Blight we’ve had some sociology and psychology, we’re starting to pick up technology (understanding the Industrial Revolution is key to understanding the war), economics (same, constrasted with the enormous business of slaves and King Cotton), biology/medicine (some of the first stabs at effective field medicine here), engineering (new weapons and other inventions), politics (duh), and everything else under the sun.
Which is a longwinded way of saying that historical education in this country is a travesty, but let us not go there. I’m ten years out of high school as of this week anyway. All of that is, shall we say, ancient history.
For today’s Important Announcement:
As of about 10 minutes ago, the new URL for this blog is http://dwip.arthmoor.com/ instead of http://dwip.alsherok.net/. For the moment (read: until the end of the month or so), the old Alsherok URL will still work, but you should update your bookmarks appropriately.
One of the great thing about VATS and a little applied weapons fire is that it makes dangerous mutated bear attacks go from this:
To this:
And yes, the full screen of that second one is as completely awesome as might be expected, considering the bear in question is flying over me at about 20 feet.
Dearest America, it’s time we had a chat. Yes, it’s time we had a chat about a subject near and dear to the heart of every gamer. That subject, you ask?
Why, fashion, sweet America. Bright, warm fashions for this cold, cold world.
“But how can I possibly look my best?” You cry. “All I have is this dreary brahmin skin outfit!”
Fear not, sweetest America. You see, thanks to the greatness of American capitalism, all over the Wasteland you can find all manner of pre-war clothing, made from the finest synthetic fabrics. Just clean them up a bit, and look forward, dear America, to a brand new you. With your help, we can brighten up America, one outfit at a time!
Take our model, Alice, here. She’s an experienced Wasteland traveler, and as you’ll see, she knows how to do it in style – American style:
Here she is, sporting that stylish government agent look with some businesswear and a shady hat. The fashionable yet utilitarian design puts her right at home defeating the enemies of America or just walking the beautiful streets of this great nation.
Minus the hat, Alice eases into work with that stylish corporate assassin look. She’s one of those aggressive businesswomen that help make America great.
With some relaxedwear and shotgun, Alice dons the angry housewife look that leaves millions of homes all across America looking spotless – Not a radroach or molerat to be found!
Wearing casualwear and carrying a Chinese assault rifle, Alice has that suburban guerilla look. Those commie bastards won’t know what hit them!
In this beautiful spring outfit, Alice is really pretty in pink!
Add in a fashionable bonnet and combat shotgun, and here’s Alice, enraged Southern belle, ready for the ball.
Or, in this fashionable parkstroller outfit, Alice is truly ready for a walk in one of America’s many beautiful parks.
And in this racy sleepwear, Alice can sleep comfortably after a hard day rebuilding our great nation.
Saved from nuclear holocaust by one of the many Vault-Tec Vaults, but worried that your Vault jumpsuit just isn’t very fashionable on the outside? Don’t be! Just add some stylish pre-war headgear, and you’ll be turning heads all over the new America!
And if pre-war fashion doesn’t do it for you, here’s Alice, sporting the trendiest post-modern fashion – a radiation suit.
Worried about utility? Fear not! Here you see Alice, daintily dispatching a super mutant in her spring outfit and bonnet.
So there you have it, my dear, dear America. There are pre-war fashions for your every need and look. They don’t just make you look brighter, they show your patriotism! They show that you love your country! So remember. Pre-war fashions: Good for you. Good for America.
[/President John Henry Eden]