Category Archives: Writing

Writing

Awesome Nutterdom

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If you had never been convinced that Steve Jackson Games knew about the forthcoming 9/11 tragedy in 1995 and decided to warn the world by embedding the information in their highly successful Illuminati: New World Order (INWO) card game (rather than issue a press release or something equally as boring) then read this absolutely fabulous page (warning: Geocities quality web design)!

Subtitle: In nine pertinent playing cards of the “Illuminati New World Order” Game, how did the inventor know — in 1995 — the three events comprising the 9/11 attacks? How did he know also the correct plan in the near future? Why do his cards predict the appearance of Antichrist and the Rapture as the last two events of the Illuminati Plan?

They argue that the real cause of the Secret Service raid on SJG in 1990 (5 years before INWO) was not over GURPS Cyberpunk and Phrack but instead to put them out of business before they could think about producing INWO! You have to read the whole thing, I still can’t work out if it’s a clever spoof or if the author really means it.. πŸ˜‰

Hat tip to Chris Borthwick for the tip off of another loony page on the same site that led me to this..

I can see the fnords!

Magnitude 8 Quake in Pacific, Tsunami Generated

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ABC news is reporting:

Deaths have been reported in Samoa and American Samoa after a powerful 8.3-magnitude quake sparked a tsunami and sent residents fleeing to higher ground across the region this morning.

USGS reports (all times local time) an 8.0 near Samoa Islands at 06:48am, 5.6 near Samoa Islands at 07:08am, 5.6 near northern Cook Islands at 07:20am, 5.8 near Tonga at 07:21am, 5.0 near Tonga at 07:29am.

ABC says:

The tsunami warning was also in effect for American Samoa, Samoa, Niue Island, the Wallis and Futuna Islands, the Tokelau atolls, the Cook Islands, Tuvalu, Kiribati, the Kermadec Islands, the Baker and Howland Islands, Jarvis Island, French Polynesia and the Palmyra Islands.A tsunami watch was issued for Vanuatu, Nauru, the Marshall Islands, the Solomon Islands, New Caledonia, Kosrae Island, Papua New Guinea, Hawaii, Pohnpei in Micronesia, the Wake Islands, Pitcairn and the Midway Islands.

10 23 foot wave reported in Samoa.

Anglo-Saxon Hoard Discovered in Mercia

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A metal detectorist has discovered a hoard of precious items (now declared treasure under the Treasure Act 1996) in land that was once part of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia in England. Archaeologists were called in and recorded around 1500 items altogether, with around half being precious metals and gems.

It looks phenomenal, and is far larger than the hoard found at the Sutton Hoo ship burials which itself was impressive enough. What is really interesting to me is that these are often fragments of larger items and even the whole items haven’t been treated with care by whoever assembled the hoard – crosses are folded up for example – indicating that it was the previous metals and gems rather than items themselves that were valued. One of the experts who examined the hoard wrote:

The material is predominantly associated with war – swords, sword fittings, bits of helmets and the like – but all the precious metalwork has been stripped. That means they’re not treasuring the objects as wholes, they’re taking the precious metals off and keeping them.

Basically it looks like the collector of this was an Anglo-Saxon magpie, on a massive scale! πŸ™‚

I’m glad to see that this is a case where the Treasure Act and the Portable Antiquities Scheme worked out really well; the find was reported immediately allowing archaeologists to excavate the items in situ and record all the vital information that lets us put these items into the wider context which is otherwise lost if these things are just ripped out of the ground and disappear into a private collection or onto the black market. All too often we are losing that valuable information about our past forever when that happens. So big props to the finder and the landowner for doing the right thing (not to mention they’re up for a massive reward, which is also the right thing to do).