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We're comfortable stating that we're pretty into that Schoolboy Q record — Scott totally freaked out about the Genesis sample ("Firth Of Fifth"), in case you were wondering — so it was exciting to see that one of its standouts, "Hands On The Wheel" got a video treatment. It features that pretty motherfucker, ASAP Rocky. Watch it below.
Habits & Contradictions is out now on iTunes.
Tags: ASAP Rocky, Schoolboy Q
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They say:
Local five-piece.
We say:
Metal, classic rock, and alternative.
They say:
"Popular cover tunes and do some originals, too."
We say:
Coastal grooves, beach, and rock oldies, from David Hope (vocals, guitar), Chris Tidestrom (vocals, guitar), and Rick Lambert (bass, vocals).
They say:
Four like-minded musicians: a rock n roll band with an R&B twist.
We say:
Classic and modern rock.
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We celebrate all we have received from our clients in wonderful experiences in a Holiday List of our own -"Our Favorite Projects of 2013".
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Miah, Shamim (2009) Book Review: Negotiating boundaries in the city: migration, ethnicity and gender in Britain by Joanna Herbert. Muslim World Book Review, 30 (1). pp. 47-48. ISSN 0260-3063Metadata only available from this repository.
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H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races
|School of Education and Professional Development
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|Sara Taylor
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If you don't already exercise regularly and would like to begin or if you would like to increase the amount of exercise you do, pay a visit to your doctor first. It is important to get a thorough physical examination to make sure that exercising will be safe for you. Your doctor will check for complications, including cardiovascular disease, peripheral arterial disease (the hardening of the arteries in the legs and feet), retinopathy (eye disease), nephropathy (kidney disease), and neuropathy (nerve damage). Having one of these complications doesn't mean you can't exercise, but it does mean that certain exercises may be safer for you than others. For example, if you have proliferative retinopathy, you should avoid high-impact aerobics, heavy weight lifting, and anything that involves straining or jarring movements. If you have neuropathy with loss of sensation in your feet and legs, you should limit weight-bearing exercise and stick to activities such as swimming, bicycling, rowing, and chair exercises. Repetitive activities that place pressure on the feet, such as using a treadmill, walking long distances, jogging, and doing step exercises, may lead to foot ulcers and fractures. If you have nephropathy, it's a good idea to avoid high-intensity or strenuous exercises.
In addition to discussing what types of exercise are appropriate for you, ask your doctor how your blood glucose level may be affected during and after exercise and how to handle any changes you experience.
Manage your medicines
The older you get, the more medicines you're likely to take. In fact, older people spend an estimated $3 billion annually on medicines, and the average older person takes six or seven prescription and over-the-counter medicines a day. That's a lot to keep track of. To help you keep them all straight, make a checklist that includes the names of all the medicines and the times at which you should take them. As you take each dose, check it off the list. Keeping the week's medicines in a pill box that has a separate compartment for each day can also help you remember to take them.
Be sure to follow the directions for taking your medicines. Don't leave the doctor's office or the pharmacy without being sure when and how often you should take your doses and whether to take them with food or on an empty stomach. Also be sure to find out what you should do if you ever forget to take a dose. With some medicines, it's OK to take a missed dose when you remember it — as long as you remember fairly soon after you were supposed to take it. However, if it's nearly time for the next scheduled dose, you may be better off skipping the forgotten dose altogether. Taking two doses of insulin too close together, for example, could cause serious hypoglycemia. If you miss a dose of your medicine and aren't sure what to do, call your doctor or pharmacist.
Many drugs can cause side effects. Some side effects, such as intestinal gas or mild nausea, might be annoying but not medically serious. (In addition, such side effects often subside over time.) Others, however, such as light-headedness or hypoglycemia, can have serious consequences, such as, in this case, falling or having a car accident. Make sure to ask about the possible side effects of the medicines you're taking so you know what to expect and what to do if you experience severe symptoms. Never stop taking a medicine without consulting your doctor first. Stopping some medicines, such as antibiotics and corticosteroids, before you're supposed to can be quite harmful. However, if you think you're having an allergic reaction to your medicine (characterized by hives, itching, swelling, or difficulty breathing), contact your doctor immediately.


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maybe the whales are dying from chronic plastic bits poisoning.
Photograph by Gerard Soury, Getty Images
Surprisingly large numbers of southern right whale calves are dying off the coast of Argentina, sparking concerns among marine scientists and conservation officials.
Overall, southern right whales are doing much better than their endangered brethren to the north. But for one group of southern right whales that gives birth off Peninsula Valdés, Argentina (map), fate has not been so kind.
Hundreds of the Peninsula Valdés whales have died since monitoring of their population size began in 1971, researchers report in a study published this month in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series. From 1971 to 2011, 630 of the right whales died—adults and young ones combined.
But 77 percent of those deaths occurred between 2003 and 2011. And of those recent deaths, 89 percent have occurred in the calves. Scientists are still struggling to understand why.
Changes in monitoring efforts over the years could probably account for some of the increase in recorded deaths, researchers acknowledge in the study. But they can't account for all of it.
Something else is going on that has so far defied the efforts of scientists to get to the bottom of the situation.
It's a real frustration, said Vicky Rowntree, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City and director of the right whale program at Ocean Alliance/Instituto de Conservación de Ballenas in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
No Common Cause
A meeting of marine biologists and veterinarians convened by the International Whaling Commission in 2010 to study the problem settled on three possible explanations: low food abundance, disease, or toxins such as domoic acid or saxitoxin produced by harmful algal blooms.
"A lot of our research has been trying to look at those [explanations]," said lead study author Rowntree. But so far, researchers and veterinarians have been unable to find a common cause of death in the hundreds of samples taken from the dead calves.
A small number of calves show evidence of disease while others contain low levels of toxins. Figuring out whether the calves got enough food is harder to determine, Rowntree explained. (See "New Diseases, Toxins Harming Marine Life.")
Blubber thickness is one way researchers look at whether these calves are getting enough food or not. They also look to other markers of nutritional stress in body tissues or the whales' baleen—located in a whale's mouth which they use to strain food out of seawater.
The timing of the deaths has both confused and helped efforts to understand what's going on. Baby whales in certain years seem to have died shortly after birth, while in other years, they've died later in the May-December calving season. This suggests that more than one cause may be responsible for these "high mortality" events, the study authors write.
"But the timing of the mortality might give us some clue as to why they died," said Rowntree. If a calf died shortly after birth, that could indicate a wide-scale food shortage problem.
If a calf died later in the year, when the whales start to feed on krill and copepods, then perhaps the young ones are ingesting a toxin or pollutant, she explained. (See "Sea Lion Seizures May Result From Toxic Algae.")
Analyses of Northern Atlantic right whale populations indicate they ingest algal toxins produced during harmful algal blooms. Krill and copepods are grazers and take in toxins along with the algae they eat. Those toxins, in turn, are transferred to the whales when they gulp down their prey.
"The adults can deal with it," Rowntree said. "But maybe the toxins are too strong for the babies."
Blame It On Birds?
Another possible explanation—supported by Rowntree and discussed at an April 2013 international meeting of veterinarians in Sausalito, California—is harassment by kelp gulls (Larus domincanus).
"They're large gulls and they've learned to feed on the skin they peck from the backs of the whales," she explained. "They make a hole in the skin and they attack it over and over during the season."
Some enterprising birds started the strategy in the early 1980s, and it has since spread to other gulls all over the peninsula.
Although it seems that the mothers have learned how to avoid such pointed attention from the birds, the calves haven't. "So most calves have a chain of lesions along their backs from being pecked by the gulls," Rowntree explained.
It's quite possible that this harassment could contribute to calf deaths around Peninsula Valdés, the animal ecologist said. That's the only big problem these right whales seem to have in common that sets them apart from other southern right whale populations which aren't experiencing such large numbers of deaths.
Watching What They Eat
For now, Rowntree and her colleagues are looking at tracking where these whales feed. There is some evidence suggesting that low prey abundance, specifically Antarctic krill (Euphasia superba), could lead to increases in whale deaths.
Female southern right whales depend on krill to bulk up their blubber reserves before they give birth. During their calves' first few months of life, the mothers don't eat.
If the mothers aren't storing enough blubber, they may not be able to provide adequate nutrition for their babies.
Whale diets leave specific signatures in their baleen, depending on where in the world the animal fed, Rowntree explained. "If the mothers eat in the Southern Hemisphere, that food [has] a unique signature."
If they can link increases in Peninsula Valdés right whale deaths with low krill abundance, then perhaps they can narrow in on what's causing so many calves to die.
Wait and See
It's still a little too early to tell how all these deaths will affect the population's overall numbers. But it doesn't look good.
Last year, researchers recorded 116 southern right whale strandings in the Peninsula Valdés population. That accounts for nearly three percent of the western South Atlantic stock, the study authors write.
"No other known single-year die-off of baleen whales is as large," the researchers note.
Female southern right whales are sexually mature when they turn nine, Rowntree said. Since the die-off began in 2005, females born that year will be able to start having babies in 2014.
Southern right whale pregnancies last a year. Then it takes a year for the mother to nurse her calf and then another year for her to build up her blubber reserves for the next pregnancy.
So it will be another three years before researchers have a clear picture of how badly the Peninsula Valdés population has been affected.
Follow Jane J. Lee on Twitter.
Stress, from centuries of harpooning and other violent attacks,causes depression, hopelessness is not just a human trauma, every mammal has neurological stimulation. Being exploited, and treated as a commodity effects the natural ethics of any clan, gang,POD.....the ability to communicate in the Whale societies is just like ours. Elder Whales have passed on for Whale generations of the" madness of some of Humans surrounding, and killing our ancestors is becoming reality "......
I strongly believe that no matter what scientific, ecological or researched explanations we are given for the consistent loss of animal habitat, animal populations and change in animal behavior patterns, WE HUMANS are the UNDERLYING cause for all the problems.
How can we not see or is it that we just don't give a dam that it's our relentless polluting of our air, land, and water, overharvesting and artificial breeding programmes and disregard for the imbalances we create that are the reasons why OUR WORLD, OUR PLANET AND ALL ITS INHABITANTS are constantly under threat.
It is clear to me that WE do NOT LOVE OURSELVES otherwise we would be more vigilant with how we use our LIMITED RESOURCES, more forceful in our treatment of those who violate the laws of nature and be more vigorous in our thoughts, actions and convictions regarding the PROTECTION OF THE FUTURE LIFE OF OUR ANIMALS, PLANTS, RIVERS, SEAS, LAND, AIR AND OURSELVES.
Why no one blaming humans?
someone is gonna blame fukushima even if the data in the graphs mostly predate fukushima
. when this is pointed out they are gonna blame tachyons or something
I assume it's caused by humans until proven otherwise..
Come on people we dont want to face the facts so lets blame the birds,That does not ring true as far as I am concerned,A.Hitchcock would love that explanation.Lets look a little deeper,perhaps the navy could explane what they are doing?just a thought, Merry Christmas my friends
i think it is the birds
Muy prehocupante
Hmmm....Maybe this has something to do with it....just literally copied and pasted it off of NOAA's website. "In Argentina, sewage treatment facilities, fish processing plants, and industrial aluminum factories are all located along Golfo Nuevo, one of the major breeding grounds." (NOAA,2012)
You can help protect these creatures by supporting Ocean Alliance, the partner of Instituto de Conservacion de Ballenas. Credit to Ocean Alliance for their long-term study of southern right whales was inadvertently omitted from the above article.
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How can we protect those lovely creatures?
Just a thought but figure out what sights, smells or tastes those gulls hate and then paint that onto the backs of the whales.
We need the expertise of the scientific community now more than ever, to get to the bottom of problems like this throughout the animal kingdom so that the numbers of these magnificent creatures and others, are preserved and furthermore, given a chance to increase.
If this is shown to be due to a lack of krill then couldn't this be linked to the commercial harvesting of krill to make various food products? Harvesting krill began in the late 60s and has grown ever since. I remember Japan saying many years ago that krill supplies were unlimited. Yeah, right!
@maximilian halim HA! Don't know why but I'm leaning that way as well.
That makes sense. @Shayna Halsey
@Andrew Booth I think the harvesting of krill is in Antarctic waters not off Argentina. If so, it would not be a cause in this case.
@Andrew Booth I think the harvesting of krill is in Antarctic waters not off Argentina. If so, this would not be causing a problem in this case.
@Kenneth Crook @Andrew Booth But whales don't feed in their calving grounds. They migrate to the Antarctic to feed on krill, then travel back to regular calving grounds to give birth. During that time the adults don't feed and the babies suckle milk from the mothers. Krill forms the base of the food chain so reduced krill means reduced food fish leading to less nourishment for mothers and reduced milk.
@Andrew Booth @Kenneth Crook You are correct Andrew, the mothers are primarily fasting on the calving grounds but begin to feed on copepods in early spring plankton blooms at the end of the calving season. They then continue feeding on copepods on the Patagonian Shelf and as spring travels southward some of the whales keep migrating to to feed on swarms of Antarctic Krill (Euphausia superba) south of the Polar Front (south of 50 degrees S. So they really do feed near the bottom of the food chain.
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What do pumpkin, butternut squash and sweet potatoes have in common, besides their sunny orange color? They all love something sweet.
Here we bake butternut covered, sprinkle it with a scrumptious brown sugar-oat streusel, then bake it again until the topping is fragrant and bubbly. You'd better double the recipe on this one!
|1 package
|Earthbound Farm Frozen Organic Butternut Squash
|2 tablespoons
|orange juice
|1 teaspoon
|+ 1 tablespoon golden brown sugar (divided)
|1 teaspoon
|1 1/2 tablespoons
|unsalted butter (melted)
|2 teaspoons
|instant or regular oats
|1/4 teaspoon
|ground cinnamon
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Spray an 8- or 9-inch square or round baking pan with vegetable oil. Add the frozen squash.
In a small bowl, stir together the orange juice, 1 teaspoon of the brown sugar and the cornstarch until blended. Pour the mixture over the squash and toss lightly with a spoon to coat all the pieces.
Cover with foil and bake for 10 to 13 minutes or until the squash is hot.
Meanwhile, make the streusel by stirring together the melted butter, oats, the remaining 1 tablespoon of brown sugar and the cinnamon. Sprinkle over the squash.
Return the squash to the oven and bake, uncovered, for 10 minutes or until the topping is bubbly and the squash is tender.
Fresh Variation: Use 10 oz (2 cups) butternut squash, cut into 1/2- to 3/4-inch cubes, instead of the frozen. In the first baking, bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until the squash is almost tender. Then sprinkle the squash with the streusel and continue with the same instructions.
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Like Berger Classic Hunter bullets, these Elite Hunter bullets combine the best of both tangent and secant ogive features, resulting in high ballistic performance with less sensitivity to seating depth. However, the Elite Hunter bullets are not limited to SAAMI standards, they EXCEED SAAMI Standards. Essentially, they have much longer noses than the Classic Hunter bullets and they provide hunters with the highest ballistic performance possible.
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World briefsPUBLISHED: 20 Nov 2012 00:30:58 | UPDATED: 20 Nov 2012 00:30:58PUBLISHED: 20 Nov 2012 PRINT EDITION: 20 Nov 2012
HSBC said it is in talks to sell its stake in Ping An Insurance. The UK bank "is in discussions which may or may not lead to the sale of the shares," London-based HSBC said, adding that it will make a further announcement when appropriate. HSBC's stake in China's second-biggest insurance company is worth $US9.5 billion.
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Friday, October 31, 2008
Troll Lord Waves Goodbye To The Gygax Properties
Gygax Games has withdrawn all licenses from Troll Lord Games. This includes Gygaxian Fantasy Worlds, Gord the Rogue, King of England King of France, C&C Adventures as well as Castle Zagyg. This is a note from Gail:
"A fond farewell from Gail Gygax:
I want to thank all at Troll Lord Games for the joy, laughter, and support they gave my late husband these past eight years. Many of you are wondering what is in store for various worlds created by Gary. To that end, I have, with TLG's good wishes and blessings, embarked on a new journey.
Gygax Games will now take up the mantle as the vehicle for the continuation of Gary's unfinished works, plus the Lejendary Adventure™, Castle Zagyg™, and Gygaxian™ Fantasy Worlds product lines. There are lots of fun surprises ahead!
This does not preclude Gygax Games from working the Troll Lord Games and I hope to do so in the future. To that end, I look forward to seeing everyone in Lake Geneva in the summer of 2009 for the convention!
This wasn't unexpected, but still isn't exactly a welcome answer. Frankly, I was upset with this upon first read, but since I've taken some time to mull it over, perhaps it ain't all bad. While the idea of a company like Mongoose completing Castle Zagyg with their soulless staff writing fills me with dread, Troll Lord is doing well with the selling of Castles & Crusades, and perhaps this will give them a chance to focus a bit more internally on that and the SIEGE Engine line. And if you think I'm not picking up Jim Ward's Towers of Adventure when it is released, you're crazy.
More discussion here.
I will say I think the idea/suggestions of CZ going GSL doesn't seem like a good fit to me. Nothing against the system, but as Clark Peterson of Necromancer has pointed out on another topic, 4e may not exactly have the proper feel for this sort of thing.
Greyhawk Day #9: Reviving The Greytalk Archives
Some truly great Greyhawk and RPG discussion was thought lost when the Greytalk Archives disappeared from online. Scott Casper, however, is doing his best to restore what he can of those fantastic insight into the world of Greyhawk, and hosts what he's been able to dig up/recover at his blog, also named Greytalk Archives. Many of the old posts were retyped from printouts, and this definitely a labor of love. Thanks, Scott, and keep it up!
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Time Capsule/Predictions: 1 Year From Now...
Here's your chance: comment on your predicitons for the next year in gaming.
Other possible subjects for prediction:
-What are going to be the surprise hits (and flops) of the next year?
-Of the Pathfinder/True20/d20 variant crowd, who will be clipping along, and who will be struggling?
-Where will 4e be in terms of GSL support?
-How will D&D Insider be doing?
-What sort of "industry buzz" will we all be discussing?
-Where the hell is White Wolf headed?
-What will the old school gaming community be working on? What will the titanic controversies and issues of the day be?
-What's hot now that will be forgotten in the next 365 days?
-Will the Ron Edwards/IPR split have worked out well?
-Will 4e sales be holding steady?
-How will WotC's new miniatures strategy be working?
-What company will be poised for a big breakthrough?
-Will I have my Castle Keeper's Guide yet (I have faith)?
-And dear gods, what of Castle Zagyg?
1 year from now (I'll mark it on my calendar), we'll see who was right, who was wrong, and what the jury is still out on. The is your chance to show off those prognostication skills, so have at it! (Fellow bloggers, if you do a post on the topic, let me know, and I'll do a compilation post of predictions).
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Review of Races of the Shroud: The Apelord
First, despite the low price tag, The Apelord is really an aesthetically pleasing product. A clean, professional look, combined with some excellent art by fan favorite Storn Cook, really makes Apelord a pleasure to look over.
The apelords don't have that feel of many animal-human races in games, namely "An ape--that talks!", but instead are nicely (if briefly) fleshed out in terms of community, habit, and behavior. A few new (mostly physical) feats nicely round out this new race overview.
Perhaps the most interesting part of this product for me was the introduction of some of the monsters based on this apelord template. The Corrupted Undead Apelords are absolutely brutal, and there are some nice Brute, Lurker, and Minion variants. Many of the other apelord types seem particularly well-suited to shifting, ranged, and indirect combat, and the abilities and stats seem pretty well-baked, especially for higher-level baddies.
As mentioned, there are also a couple of adventure hooks, which are pretty standard. I won't call them "filler", but this section seems almost an afterthought after the excellent presentation of the race, feats, and monster types.
I'm not by any means huge into 4e, but short, useful products like this could definitely increase the appeal and scope of the game for me. This is the sort of product I'd like to see more of, which showcase some of the additions and bright spots of 4e monster use & design in particular. I've been burnt out in the past on animal-human hybrids, but the apelords here are presented in a thoughtful and fleshed-out manner that really make them stand as a race all their own. Many of the ideas here could (and will) be ported to other settings/systems as well. In short, if you're looking for an interesting addition for your 4e game that hasn't been run into the ground, give The Apelord a shot.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Is The GM A Dying Breed?
So, I decided to conduct a poll: was my list of GMs—some of the most dedicated and excellent gamers I've ever known—really shrinking? Over the past month, I worked at tracking down 34 Game Masters of my acquaintance—many in the military or now retired from service, many others online acquaintances hearkening back to my first forays into gaming discussion online circa 2000. The results were perhaps not unexpected, but were also not heartening. (I will note each GM here has at least 5 years of GMing experience, or has been GMing intermittently at various points over the past 10+).
In Relation To Five Years Ago, Do You Now GM More, Less, About The Same, Or Do You No Longer GM?
More 14.7 % (5)
Less 35.3% (12)
About The Same 26.5% (9)
I No Longer GM 23.5% (8)
Of Those Who GM Less Or No Longer GM, Do You Still Play Tabletop RPGs?
Yes, Frequently 20% (4)
Yes, Sometimes 20% (4)
Yes, Rarely 20% (4)
No 40% (8)
Choose Two Reasons That Are The Largest Pressure On Your GMing or Reasons You GM Less/No Longer GM:
Unable To Find Audience For Games I Enjoy 20.6% (14)
General Unhappiness With The State of Gaming 14.7% (10)
Unable To Find Any/Enough Gamers, Period 14.7% (10)
Family Considerations 14.7% (10)
No Longer Interested/Changed Hobbies 11.8% (8)
Increased Work Responsibility 11.8% (8)
Other Time Constraints 5.9% (4)
Ease/Fun of Electronic Gaming 5.9% (4)
What Is Your Favorite System?
AD&D 1e or Variants 11.8% (4)
Palladium/Megaversal (Rifts/Palladium Fantasy) 11.8% (4)
D&D 4e 11.8% (4)
Basic D&D or Variants 8.8% (3)
Storyteller 5.9% (2)
Star Wars Saga 5.9% (2)
Rolemaster 2e 2.9% (1)
Rolemaster Standard 2.9% (1)
Classic Traveller 2.9% (1)
Warhammer Fantasy 2e 2.9% (1)
AD&D 2e 2.9% (1)
Amber 2.9% (1)
This is not meant to be a doom-and-gloom article, nor do I claim my poll is in any way scientific or definitive. But I will ask: how many of us are the lone or at least primary GM for our gaming group? How often do you get a break? Is your group (as sales would likely suggest) one of those not turned on by a shared-power or GM-less game?
What really shocked me is how many of them still wanted to GM or play—but time constraints, unhappiness with something in the hobby or an experience, or a dearth of face-to-face players was either severely reducing their GMing or eliminating it all together. I imagine a player survey would be much the same. Still, old news, right? Hasn't this sort of stuff been making the rounds for years?
I've always held that being a GM is not for everyone—some players don't want that level of participation, while others don't like or can't handle the involvement that position brings. But in a hobby where it has often become more difficult to find face-to-face players in our towns and cities, we should ask ourselves why we shouldn't expect a similar decline in competent Game Masters.
We have more resources online for Game Masters than ever before! And the internet is doubtless a fantastic tool for this, but how much of it is getting that majority of "lost tribe" tabletop gamers? (I also contend that in my experience [and as the poll shows in this instance], the majority of gamers out there not hot n' heavy online definitely tend to skew more towards grognardism, and it is not uncommon to find them still rocking out the same games they were 25 years ago. If there is an upside to this, it might be that there's a lot of folks out there who could contribute much to the Old School Gaming "Revival"--were they aware of it).
In the end, with the explosion of GM resources online, I have more Game Masters than ever before, from all over the world who I can bounce ideas off. But that doesn't mean I don't miss those who've fallen by the wayside.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
An Ideal Paladin
...except real.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
The Beatles & The RPGA
All our PCs were from Oerth they say,
Now it looks as though they'll Faerun stay,
Oh, how could you, RPGA?
We no longer have the world of Gary,
There's an emo drow that's bothering me,
Oh, RPGA switched suddenly.
Why they
Had to switch I don't know, but I won't play.
I said,
Well so long, now I've left RPGA.
I liked the idea of living play,
Now Elminster just says "ye" all day,
Oh, damn your hide, RPGA.
Why they
Had to switch I don't know, but I won't play.
I said,
Well so long, now I've left RPGA.
My Greyhawk wizards were so Grade-A,
Now I think they have to be from Thay,
Oh we're so done, RPGA.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Greyhawk Day #8: Castle Zagyg & A Deific Map
-Earlier this week, Greyhawk Grognard posted the original release plans for Castle Zagyg. I'm hoping for the best still with this series, despite the disquieting developments, as from the descriptions alone there is no doubt in my mind I would snap up every one of these products as they became available.
-I ran across this Greyhawk Deity Map in my travels across the web this week. If, like me, you have a horrible time keeping them all straight, this could be very handy. I've also thought about doing something similiar for my homebrew...
Most RPG bloggers will tell you Friday is a wasteland when it comes to traffic (and is it ever true!). Which means I appreciate your stopping by all the more!
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Vintage Dragon Magazine Game Advertisements, Part IV
(click to enlarge)
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Uncle Sam Helps Your Party Survive Dungeons
U.S. Army Field Manual Library
Aside from the obvious applications for warfare or modern games many of the manuals hold, you'll really want to check out 21-76, which is the Survival Guide. As Jeff Rients said, Gary Gygax once recommended having a Boy Scouts of America handbook and an Army Survival Guide. Tracking, traps, knots, terrain, survival methods--all things that can come up in a wilderness or dungeon crawl, and all items that can be fleshed out or given a new direction with a quick peek at the manuals now and then. Hope this is as useful to you as it has been for me!
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
WotC To Offer Non-Random D&D Mini Packs!
- Martial Heroes 1
- Martial Heroes 2
- Arcane Heroes 1
- Arcane Heroes 2
- Divine Heroes 1
- Primal Heroes 1
Too Many Space RPGs Spoil The Party
Seriously. We come from divergent gaming backgrounds, and I've been privileged enough to know some of the best sci-fi/space gaming writers out there, and so we really, really cannot make up our mind as to what sci-fi or space RPG to play next. As an illustration of this issue, I submit to you our most recent "short list" of candidates (with links, and in no particular order):
Thousand Suns
D6 Space
Cold Space
Starblazer Adventures
Starcluster 2
HardNova 2
Classic Traveller
Mongoose Traveller
Traveller T20
StarSIEGE: Event Horizon
Rifts: Phase World
No one knows when this horrible deadlock will end, or what the result will be. But there is the sense that so long as the game allows for some form of Far Trader, all will be well.
Any thoughts on what your choice would be?
Monday, October 20, 2008
RPG Blog 2 Emailed To You!
In other site news, via Twitterfeed, RPG Blog 2 is also now fed to Twitter. You can be notified of our latest posts right after they hit the page. Make sure to sign up as a follower if you're on there! I'm continue to tweak the site and work on new ways of making the site interactive and accessible. Chances are, I'll make some missteps, but at least you know I'm trying.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Our Earliest Gaming Sessions: Share Your Story
I asked numerous questions about the Rifts setting. I looked at Blind Warrior Woman boobs. Brandon showed me a pic of the Emperor of the Coalition States, Karl Prosek, and informed me that he was the big badass of the setting. I responded with a well-considered list of followup questions:
1) Can I try to kill him?
Brandon scoffed at such a lofty goal. Kill the Emperor? Who was doubtless numerous levels above me? No, I would earn my stripes fighting vampires along the Rio Grande. And so I made my final equipment addition ("knife"), and set off to where the long, lonely paths on the banks of the Rio Grande would lead my post-apocalyptic anti-hero (or "guy").
Clearly, the two hours of equipment selection and intense questioning had gotten to Brandon, because within 10 minutes, I had the following described to me:
Brandon: As you walk back towards your motorcycle, an asteroid falls from the sky and crushes you completely. Game over.
Despite this potentially frustrating start to my gaming career, I knew I was hooked. Palladium Fantasy and awkward, horrendously houseruled D&D sessions would continue my initiation into the hobby. And asteroid fatalities became much less common in the weeks and years to follow.
Let's hear it: How was your first gaming session?
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Carcosa: The Controversy
"Summon the Amphibious Ones: This eleven-hour ritual can be completed only on a fog-shrouded night. The sorcerer must obtain the root of potency found only in ruined apothecaries of the Snake-Men. The sacrifice is a virgin White girl eleven years old with long hair. The sorcerer, after partaking of the root, must engage in sexual congress with the sacrifice eleven times, afterwards strangling her with her own hair. As her life leaves her body, 10-100 of the Amphibious Ones will coalesce out of the mists." - Carcosa, page 31
As you can imagine, there's been the standard firestorm on theRPGsite and Dragonsfoot. In response, one of my favorite bloggers (and old-school authors) Jim LotFP, has decried many of those wailing against the product as "cowards".
Look, here's the thing: this is something I'm just not comfortable with. This doesn't make me a coward, or a prude, or naive. It just means I'm uncomfortable with that presentation of that material, and its something I don't want at my gaming table. I don't want mechanics that include child rape or abuse. I understand if people are uncomfortable with some of the common preconceptions towards casual or thoughtless violence in RPGs. We all have "want", "tolerate", and "do not want" categories for our games, and you can likely guess where Carcosa is ending up for me, personally. In my tour overseas in the military, I saw enough horrible things that human beings do to each other that I tend to veer away from anything in gaming that over-the-top.
My love of old-school games isn't built on any loyalty to the Sword & Sorcery genre, any more than it is it built on fidelity to any of the works of fiction that built To me, old school is about making rulings, not slavishly following rules, and a toolkit approach to the game. I've no doubt Mr. McKinney appreciates this, and has clearly taken that toolbox approach to publish a gaming product he found to be interesting and worthwhile. We are not forced to interact with what he had created, any more than he would be forced to accept any product I published with concepts he was not comfortable with.
And this entire tact of "well, you accept X, so why don't you accept Y" or "you need to evoke emotion and reaction and challenge your players". Look, I appreciate that people all have different standards of what they find acceptable. But I like to think that I can work what's supposed to be (for my group) a fun, generation-spanning game and challenge people's conceptions of right and wrong without resorting to raping or slaughtering little kids. I've done it up till now without resorting to that, and I like to think its worked pretty well. Its not what I want in a game, so don't try to say I have to accept it or try it or face being named a coward.
Jim does do a nice job laying out some of what's in the rest of the book (which includes some really cool other concepts, which sadly will likely get lost in the maelstrom over the rest of it), and I suggest folks review it and make up their minds for themselves. (There's a "mature audiences only" warning on there, for the record). I understand this is a sensitive issue, and no doubt emotions are running high for a lot of folks--but that's nothing new, is it? Let the folks who are ok with it get it. The rest of us would do well to get on with discussing gaming topics that would ideally be more rewarding than screaming "pervert" repeatedly. I'd say we've hit the outrage quota. As for me, it sounds like I'll be taking a pass. But that doesn't make me a coward. It just means I don't want it.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Greyhawk Day #7: Hill Giants of the Flanaess
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Swords & Wizardry Released!
"Start with the simple framework of these first rules, and then imagine the hell out of it".
For more, just read the mission statement. I may not agree with everything in there, but I hardly have to. Rock on, and best of luck!
And I want to say as far as old school goes in general: Swords & Wizardry, Microlite '74, Castles & Crusades, Basic Fantasy, Labyrinth Lord, OSRIC, Mazes & Minotaurs, Hackmaster, Mutant Future, or ant of the original boxed sets themselves--hey, if you're having a blast with it, then you're aces in my book. You will never see me denigrate anyone on this site for their choice of old school goodness. That's not what we're about here. If I may, I'd like to just reiterate perhaps the most important life lesson I've had:
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
The Case For Castles & Crusades
I'm a vagabond, a wanderer of tabletop gaming. From my early forays in Palladium Fantasy and hideously houseruled 1st Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons games to my appreciation of Risus, Two-Fisted Tales, Epic Roleplaying, Rolemaster, Traveller, Rifts, and everything in-between, I have played and ran a tremendously large number of roleplaying games.
I've tried Troll Lord Games' Castles & Crusades before, had my Castle Keeper Screen signed by Gary Gygax himself in 2007. And though the sessions and demos I ran were fun, there was always something else to try. And being an ENnies judge for 2008 also ensured my free time to dedicate to any single game was severely lacking.
But in now coming back to it, and in loving both the exciting modern products out there and the original and homages to an earlier time in gaming, I have found Castles & Crusades to be so much of what I've been looking for. Very few times (I can count them on one hand) has a game purely "clicked" for me. As in I got it--I got the feel, the system, the direction. And that's what happened when I took my C&C Players Handbook in hand (and screen) once more. What did it? I don't know--a desired refinement of how I run my games, an re-examination for what I want out of my hobby, whatever. But I did want to share just a little of why I am so absolutely, genuinely, enthusiastically pleased with Castles & Crusades:
Bridging A Gap: I have friends who were weaned on the older editions of D&D, and those who have played nothing but 3rd Edition. Castles & Crusades allows me to sell elements of both those experiences, giving us a common meeting ground and a larger player base from which to draw. Its familiar to veterans, and easily picked up by novices.
Time: Plain and simple. Look, I have a wife, 2 kids and 1 on the way, and a lot more responsibility than Young Zack ever did. C&C's system, the SIEGE Engine, is so simple that it usually takes all of 3-5 minutes for gamers to get the gist of it. I want to be able to use all the resources I've built up over the years, run a game that encourages active, fast, inspiring GM (CK) rulings, not pace-killing rules lookup. I want low prep time, employing notes and material I already have. I'm ready to get back to the basics, and get down to gaming in a faster and leaner fashion.
A Place To Build Upon: Castles & Crusades is a framework. It isn't a toolbox so much as a sturdy workbench. This is seriously one of the most easily-houseruled games I have ever seen. You want skills, feats, some new magic system? Want to use THAC0? Have some insane d20 rule you plug into every game you play? Castles & Crusades not only allows you to plug those items in, its modularity will make it easy to do so. We are talking compatibility not only with the various prior editions and the d20 crowd, but efforts like Basic Fantasy, Labyrinth Lord, Mazes & Minotaurs, Fight On!, True 20, Paizo's and Adventure Games Publishing's docket of releases, and more. Hey, I have something from Iron Gauntlets I might throw in there. Or I can do nothing, and be just fine that way. There's just too much goodness out there that I may wish to look to for inspiration, and Castles & Crusades promises the integration of that goodness, easy-like. It's a baseline for it all.
A Style I Want: I don't want hours spent on hair-splitting character builds. I don't want reams of special powers for each player. I don't want skills and rigid, mutiple modifiers to get in the way of player initiative and creativity. I want me as a GM (CK) and my players to remember when we made rulings, not remained bogged down in rules. This ties into time constraints, but I want a fast-play, unified mechanic. I want the standard tropes and hallmarks of our shared hobby heritage there, unwarped. I want strong character archetypes. I want player backgrounds to matter in the course of play. I want so much of what has made the Old School Renaissance of gaming so inspiring to me and others. Of course, many of these lie at the feet of each Game Master/Castle Keeper, and can happen in any game. But its still good to have an RPG that's on your side about it.
A Company I Can Support: Troll Lord Games has never been anything but fantastic in our business dealings. The books are affordable. Their fan support online has been helpful and inspiring. When I was still in the military, Troll Lord contributed to a care package that was sent to a buddy of mine, and he was absolutely thrilled. It meant a lot to him, and by extension, to me. Their support of my friends and I in a tough, sometimes unpopular, unfashionable conflict will not be easily forgotten.
There is also the fact that Troll Lord Games was the last company Gary Gygax himself chose to be involved with. People can knock me for being overly sentimental and say that shouldn't matter for what game I'm playing, but that does carry some water with me. More importantly, I feel like Troll Lord is run by people who understand the innate and unique appeal of Gygaxian fantasy. They have the enthusiasm and heart I look for in a gaming company.
I've never been a one-game, one-system guy. There are too many great games out there I want to run--Epic, Rifts, Traveller, we aren't through yet. One day, I will again get to run In Harm's Way. And Castles & Crusades is ok with that. I know its there, willing to undertake any sort of tweaks or mods I might find in my travels. But I do know what game I'm coming home to. Castles & Crusades is my choice going forward to take advantage of the Old School Renaissance (heck, its my staging area for it), to keep that link going to a wider pool of players, and to maximize the time I have for quality, generation-spanning fun. That's why I'm on board with Castles & Crusades as my fantasy D&D cousin of choice. And together I see us, my friends, and eventually perhaps our kids having great adventures...
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
An RPG Blogger Anthology?
Anyhow, if this sounds like something you'd be interested in participating in or volunteering for, leave a comment for Jonathan over there letting him know. I'm encouraged to see these sort of ideas for the blogging community--I've been kicking around seeing what interest would be in some sort of combined (holiday?) charity drive, but have no specifics on that yet. And its easy to get unwittingly over-extended in new projects. But we could certainly do more together than we could ever do separately.
Update: It looks like this idea is at least tenatively going forward. Got a post you think deserves to be shared with a larger audience? Check out the submission form, and for now I'm guessing direct all questions over at The Core Mechanic (or in the thread at the RPG Bloggers Google Group, if you're a member).
Monday, October 13, 2008
Vintage Dragon Magazine Game Advertisements, Part III
(click to enlarge)
Sunday, October 12, 2008
2 New Free RPG City Maps Ahoy!
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Improving A RPG Blog (2)
-The first is that I'm trying out RPGNow's Affiliate Program. I didn't really want pure ads on my site, but RPGNow offers a feed both of their 5 hottest products as well as a feed for recently reviewed items, which seems more honestly useful to me. I think I get 5% of all sales following links from this site to RPGNow. So I guess if you'd like to support the site, feel free to follow links in those two sections in the right sidebar. I'll be reporting as to how well it does. I'm curious to see how this goes--right now, I'm a little skeptical.
-I've added links on the top so that the Feedburner link is now accompanied by links for feeds for Google Homepage/Reader, My Yahoo!, and Technorati, where I'm currently stinking it up. I've also included Plusmo, which is a cool site providing phone widgets, and which will allow you to have this blog delivered directly to your phone. I hope the net result for this is a little bit of ease and variety for folks following this site.
-I've separated out my Blogroll (which, as I write this, is having technical difficulties) and other Links on the site. I wanted to highlight (some of) the blogs I've been reading in a more conspicuous style, and I think that change allows for that. Again, please scroll down on the right sidebar.
-One of the (apparently) funny things I did was sign my blog up to be tracked through blogtopsites. If you would like to humble yourself as a blogger, sign up and find yourself ranking well below Malaysian fashion blogs and blogs covering Elvis impersonators (but congrats to The Core Mechanic, which is #37 in Entertainment).
-I've been working on getting a good stream of product reviews going, and I should have several new ones up shortly. I take pride in doing a nice, thorough review, and really look forward to getting back into the practice of doing them. (Publishers can contact me at mail.rpgblog(at)gmail.com if interested).
-Lastly, I've purchased the domain name www.rpgblog2.com. You'll still be able to reach this site through the normal .blogspot address, but it is something that was only $10/yearly and pretty automatic through Blogger, so I went ahead and did it. If nothing else, chalk it up to use for future expansion and in being easy to remember.
Part of being a part of RPG Bloggers is being able to share what works and what doesn't with my fellow gaming bloggers. I'll be happy to post on any increased (or decreased) site traffic, feedback, and experience as it comes my way.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Greyhawk Day # 6: The Darlene Map
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Vintage Dragon Magazine Game Advertisements, Part II
(click to enlarge)
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Vintage Dragon Magazine Game Advertisements
(click to enlarge)
Lastly, don't pass up this exciting opportunity:
Where do I sign up? Or is being 30 years plus 1 month a bit late to the party?
Blog Carnival: Review of ASM's Truth & Justice RPG
In honor of the Blog Carnival's Superhero theme, I've dusted off and tweaked an old review from my old blog a lot of folks may not have seen. Its a look at one of my favorite supers systems of all time--Atomic Sock Monkey's Truth & Justice. If you haven't looked at this game yet, you'll definitely at least want to read up on it. I count it as one of my top pdf purchases, period...
Truth & Justice--A Review
I have a lot--and I mean a lot--of Supers-genre RPGs on my shelf. So when I was given the chance to review Atomic Sock Monkey's newest offering, Truth & Justice, I wasn't sure what to expect. On one hand, I thought Chad Underkoffler's Dead Inside was a fantastic game, and I am rather fond of the utilitarian Prose Descriptive Quality (PDQ) system, but what would this game bring to an arguably crowded Supers market? Turns out, a lot.
T&J uses the PDQ system to great effect here. If you haven't seen PDQ in action in Dead Inside or some other title, it's a vaguely-FUDGEy system that manages to present perfectly serviceable mechanics while not interfering with game play. PDQ also presents three various ways to resolve a situation: one, if the respective skill or action has a higher rating than a difficulty modifier, it immediately works (sort of a pass/fail bit). The second resolution method is a slightly more complex system, wherein a dice roll accompanies the various skill or rating to surpass a target number. Lastly, there is a continual back-and-forth battle, not unlike a duel, until one character calls it quits. All three work, and work without much complication.
My first sigh of relief came when I realized T&J was not a "freeform" Supers game, nor was it a my character can do x+23 squared, whereas yours can do x+23 cubed. That is to say, there's enough meat on the system here that there won't be arguments over accurately portraying the super-strength of The Hulk, versus that of, say, Spiderman. Your average stat or ability in this game is centered on 0. Aunt May, for example, might have a -2 (Poor) Strength, I would likely have an Average, or 0, Strength, whereas Captain
As always, with PDQ, the system consists basically of what I stated above. Everything--be it a trait, a skill, or an attribute, or defined as qualities. Individual games can tailor the quality system to as specific or general as they like. If they want the character quality "Detective" to cover the gamut of all detective abilities, that's fine. A more detailed game, might split it into Forensics, Investigation, and Street Smarts. Like the rest of the PDQ system, it's enjoyably scalable.
In the first few pages, we're also introduced to different styles one might wish to employ for their game. Gritty, Four-Color, Cinematic, Animated, and more are described, and tips are given on how one might to wish to play this type of setting. This part was a great resource, and I actually would have like even a bit more in here.
We've already read about how the PDQ system defines a character, and the fairly quick, yet possibly detailed Character Generation follows this to a T. An interesting point to CharGen is the addition of Hero Points. One garners Hero Points during game play by basically--well, being a hero. This could involve foiling a robbery, taking a bullet for an innocent bystander, sacrificing something to stop a villain, and many other actions that fit that whole "heroic vein". In our playtests, it seemed to make the players a bit more willing to risk their skin while not implicitly forcing them to do so. These Hero Points can be used much like Fate or Luck points in other game--increased attack power, discovering vital information, resistance against attacks, and so on. All in all, they fit nicely with the system.
You've been waiting for me to come to the Superpowers part, haven't you? Well, they're all here, from Adaptation to Transformation. The powers are well-described for immediate use in game play, but there are also parameters for designing your own. Powers like "Bolt of (Something)" are always a good sign, as they leave room for expansion and usually mean the writer isn't going completely crazy trying to itemize every power from the past 4 decades of Marvel. T&J also touches on "stunts", or creative ways for powers to be used. It does get boring using the same old ice beam every time--it's nice to come up with a new, ingenious use for it.
The last third of this book is taken up with NPC creations and several sample campaign settings, as well as examples of play. Nice stuff, and the NPCs are handy for those times when you need a quick villain or lackey to throw against your Super-group.
Production value (PDF vesion)? Well, I don't always need to be a big artwork guy, but I do enjoy a clean-cut design with easy-to-read type and highlighted examples. Truth & Justice does all three, and the artwork looks at least respectable in my eyes.
All in all, Truth & Justice was a very pleasant surprise for me, and has quickly moved towards the top of my Supers RPG list. If I had to say anything, I would say to me it seems to be sort of the spiritual successor to the old Marvel FASERIP game. It's fast, it's fun, and it's got just enough crunch that those wanting to make clear just how fast or strong their character is can do so. I'd feel equally comfortable here creating a well-known DC hero as I would my own creation. I ran both a Saturday Cartoon-esque and a Silver Age-style game with Truth & Justice, and between Chad's continual examples and fun, light writing style, both went quite well. I'm especially appreciative of the fact that T&J can support any of the Supers sub-genres with equal ease.
If you'd like to read a bit more abut Truth & Justice or want to go ahead and pick this game up (which I heartily recommend) visit the Truth & Justice homepage. There's also a great free supplement, Dial S For Superheroes, which gives you 30 illustrated characters to introduce into your game as well as a free T&J preview at the freebies page. As for me, I give it a well-deserved 4d6+3 out of 5d6, or 4 1/2 out of 5, take your pick--just pick it up.
Monday, October 6, 2008
New Gaming Blogs Update
First off, Bat in the Attic is Points of Light author Rob Conley's new blog about sandbox gaming, maps, and other RPG stuff. Rob's posts, maps, and writing are a constant inspiration to me, and I'm sure it will be to many others as well.
Second, Icar's Rob Lang has started a blog (to be updated twice weekly) on free tabletop RPGs, settings, and downloads: The Free RPG Blog. He has plans to feature and review a lot of free products that sorely need solid reviews, so make sure to drop him a line with any suggestions.
Best of luck, guys! I'll be tuning in!
Friday, October 3, 2008
Greyhawk Day #5: The Free City of Greyhawk!
Keeping with the Free City of Greyhawk, you can also find the beautiful maps by Denis Tetreault for the City of Greyhawk, RPGA-style, right here. (Don't forget to check out his city NPC listing as well).
A couple of Wizards of the Coast articles for your consideration as well: The Directing Oligarchs of Greyhawk, and The StoneRing of Greyhawk.
Now that we're in the 5th week of Greyhawk Day here at RPG Blog II, I just wanted to again say thanks to all the contributors and folks who've suggested links for this feature. For the novices out there, I hope that following these links is giving you a taste of a setting many of us dearly love (and that is such a rich part of our hobby's shared history), and for the hoary old vets who check this out, I hope it helps generate excitement, reminisicing, and inspiration to a new group of folks ready to strike out into the Flanaess. May Cold Iron Avail You!
Thursday, October 2, 2008
TSR Fonts Revealed!
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Blog Carnival: Superheroes!
If you haven't been active in the past Blog Carnivals, now's a great time to get on board! Get your best blog post on Superhero gaming ready, and post it in the comments over at Chatty's!
Quick 6: Games I Never To Get Play
1)In Harms' Way: I love this game, and consider it Flying Mice's best work. Charting the adventure and career of naval officers in the Age of Napoleon? Move over, C.S. Forester! The competitive yet collaborative (and troupe) play, the accumulation of Notice by your brave (and likely foolhardy) acts, to the amazing use of Voluntary Wounds to progress play--this game is a masterpiece. Alas, though its been tried, my current group isn't much into Alan Lewrie, Horatio Hornblower, or Jack Aubrey. And so I have to get by on stolen convention games, a snippet here and there. I need to start a game at the Naval Institute, apparently.
2)d6 Space/Fantasy: My gaming group has several WEG Star Wars RPG vets in it, and so we were looking not long ago at returning to at least an iteration of a system we really knew and enjoyed. But the entire West End Games sell-off brouhaha started right around then, and between the analysis, argument, and endless discussion, we got burnt out. Without actually playing the game. We'll come back to it, but not right now.
3)GURPS: Period. The line seems to be "love Steve Jackson Games, love Munchkin, love GURPS sourcebooks, don't want to play GURPS". That includes GURPS 3e, 4e, any of the "Lite" versions, and likely the foreign versions as well. And the weird thing is--no one really dislikes it. Some of us even like it individually. But as a group, there's just no particular interest in it. In this context, if GURPS were an actor, it would be Bill Pullman.
4)Run Robot Red: I pitch this game about once every few months, and the pitch still goes flat. Annie Rush made a quirky little indie game about different types of robots trying to escape a huge worldship. Its easy to run, fun, and different. And apparently everyone else I game with walked in on this RPG doing their mom, because they will not go for it. So it just sits on a thumbdrive, awaiting to be thrown into my backpack for the next convention.
5)Splicers: Admittedly not Palladium's best work, this game still has some interesting ideas I've wanted to parlay into a couple of short linked adventures. But an early bad experience with the game in the hands of a different GM has scared off a goodly portion of my player pool, fairly or no. Players can be like a skittish stray cat--you might be able to get them close enough once for contact, but if you mess with them, they're awfully leery about coming back around.
6)Icar: Icar deserves better than this. Rob Lang has put several metric tons of work into creating one of the most impressive Sci-Fi RPG compilations I've seen--and its amazingly free. But with a backlog of roughly 17 other space/sci-fi RPGs pushing for playing time simultaneously, I feel like Rob's baby doesn't get the attention it richly deserves. We've got to work out some sort of rotation system for space and sci-fi campaign ideas/system proposals in our group. Custody every other weekend, perhaps?
Question Time: What are some of the RPGs you never seem to get to run or play?


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2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003
The Great OxyContin Correction Controversy
Did Slate correct its way into error?
April 27, 2004
Trevor Butterworth
On March 25, Slate published a story by STATS fellow Maia Szalavitz on the myths surrounding an apparent epidemic of OxyContin abuse. (OxyContin is a sustained release opioid for treating moderate to severe pain.) Szalavitz's story focused on the errors in the Orlando Sentinel's coverage of OxyContin and argued that it was part of a wider misrepresentation of prescription pain medication in the media. Her criticism of the Orlando Sentinel was uncontroversial; but she also mentioned the work of New York Times reporter Barry Meier in the course of her discussion.
Meier's early work for the New York Times detailing the surge in OxyContin abuse has been vigorously disputed. Relying mainly on police and law enforcement as sources (26 out of 29 attributions), Meier and co-writer Francis X. Clines reported (Feb 9, 2001) on figures for OxyContin abuse that were either unreliable or demonstrably false.
For instance, Sandeep Kaushik, then writing for the Cleveland Free Times, won a Cleveland Press Club Award for his article .OxyCon Job: The Media-Made OxyContin Drug Scare (May 2-8, 2001),. Which demolished figures cited by law enforcement in the media. For instance, in Kentucky, one of the states that the Times depicted as being in the throes of widespread OxyContin abuse, the executive director of the Kentucky State Medical Examiner's Office told Kaushik, .I have no idea where these people are getting their facts and figures.. Only two people in the entire state could reliably be said to have died from oxycodone abuse, the active ingredient in OxyContin and other painkillers. The other deaths all resulted from a cocktail of illegal drugs, painkillers and stimulants, including cocaine and heroin.
Even more controversial was Meier's scoop for the New York Times (October 28, 2001) on the Drug Enforcement Administration's (DEA) investigation into the links between overdose deaths and OxyContin. The DEA study, the first of its kind the agency had ever undertaken, showed that far more people were apparently dying from OxyContin than had been estimated, and led to the agency aggressively pursuing and prosecuting doctors it suspected of running .pill mills. But when the DEA presented its findings to officials from Purdue Pharma and the Food and Drug Administration, they, as Meier would later recount in chapter 10 of his 2003 book .Pain Killer, dismissed the findings as unscientific.
In a subsequent investigation by the General Accounting Office (OxyContin Abuse and Diversion and Efforts to Address the Problem,. Dec. 2003), the DEA agreed that its data on abuse and diversion were not .reliable, comprehensive, or timely. And then, finally, a major study of drug abuse deaths in the March 2003 edition of the peer-reviewed Journal of Analytical Toxicology (JAT) showed that just 1.3 percent resulted solely from OxyContin. (It's worth noting that the New York Times did not report the JAT study. And in covering the GAO report (Jan. 23, 2004), the Times did not mention that the DEA conceded that its data on abuse and diversion were unreliable, or indeed report any of the GAO.s conclusions that presented the FDA and Purdue Pharma in a favorable light. The Times focused solely on Purdue.s failure to gain prior approval for a marketing video from the FDA, and action taken on two marketing violations.)
Szalavitz's article was 1,493 words long, of which about ten percent applied to Meier.s reporting for the New York Times. Szalavitz addressed what she argued was the misleading nature of a Nov. 25, 2003 article by Meier on accidental addiction in pain patients, and how the New York Times public editor believed Meier should not have been allowed to write the piece due to bias. On April 5, Slate posted a 294-word correction after Meier complained to the online publication in a three-page letter about inaccuracies in Szalavitz.s column that pertained to him and to one other piece of data.
Szalavitz has been a freelance writer for 15 years, and has written about medical and drug issues for many leading news organizations. She is co-author of .Recovery Options: The Complete Guide: How You and Your Loved Ones Can Understand And Treat Alcohol and Other Drug Problems(with Joseph Volpicelli). She also went through a period of addiction in the late 1980s.
A year ago, STATS named Szalavitz a fellow, with responsibility to write about media coverage of health and drug issues. As her editor, I have been highly satisfied with her work for STATS and have received no complaints about it. The assignment for Slate was between Szalavitz and Slate, and received no editorial or other input from STATS. We linked to it on our web site when it was published.
However, since the size of the correction provoked discussion on Jim Romenesko's site at the Poynter Institute, and since a dispute over the accuracy of the correction was covered by the Washington Post's media reporter Howard Kurtz, STATS decided to conduct its own investigation into the seriousness of error claimed by Slate. Szalavitz had no input into STATS analysis other than to respond to requests for drafts and sources.
Correction Number One
What Szalavitz wrote:
If the Orlando Sentinel were the only news organization to run massively misleading stories on OxyContin, the misinformation could be chalked up to error. But the first substantive column by the New York Times. Ombudsman Daniel Okrent also dealt with OxyContin bias, albeit of a different sort. Okrent wrote that the paper shouldn't have allowed Times writer Barry Meier, author of the anti-OxyContin book Pain Killer, to cover the drug in an article in its Science section.
Slate's correction:
This article incorrectly states that the Dec. 21, 2003, column by New York Times Public Editor Daniel Okrent "dealt with Oxycontin bias" in the journalism of Times reporter Barry Meier. Instead, Okrent's column asked whether allowing Meier to write on narcotic painkillers soon after the publication of his book (Pain Killer) on the same topic posed "a .conflict of interest" Okrent concluded there was no conflict of interest.
Szalavitz makes it sound as if Okrent wrote that Meier should not have been allowed to write about OxyContin because he was biased. That is not what Okrent wrote in his column. Okrent wrote that, after investigating complaints from Purdue Pharma about Meier's coverage, he believed:
Meier.s reporting was generally accurate and fair, even if the way some of the pieces were played –placement, headline, frequency, etc – sometimes seemed the work of an especially ferocious terrier that had gotten its teeth into someone.s ankle…
In other words, Okrent concluded that there was no bias. But he also concluded that in the interest of the paper, Meier should not have written about OxyContin due to the appearance of a conflict of interest:
Even if Barry Meier was not going to see dollars pouring in from writing about OxyContin, and even if he was the Times reporter who knew the most about oxycodone-based painkilling medication, and even if Udell's demand was perceived as a disingenuous effort to intimidate the paper into altering its coverage.
Despite all this, there did exist the appearance of a conflict.
A newspaper shouldn't take a reporter off a running story because of complaints from subjects if it doesn't find the complaints valid. But neither should a newspaper automatically defend this principle when it is neither material nor mission-critical. Meier had not been covering Purdue Pharma or OxyContin for 18 months, and the paper and its readers could have been well served on the Limbaugh piece by one of the reporters currently on the beat. Certainly the paper's reputation could have been served by removing even the slightest hint of conflict. Assistant managing editor Siegal acknowledges that giving Meier the go-ahead – which Meier properly sought under The Times's own rules and procedures – was "probably a mistake."
Szalavitz errs in suggesting that Okrent concluded that Meier was biased. In the early drafts of the article, she gave a more accurate account:
In the first substantive column by the New York Times' ombudsman also dealt with Oxycontin bias: admitting that, at least for appearances's sake, the paper shouldn't have allowed reporter Barry Meier, who wrote an anti-Oxycontin book, to cover the drug in its science pages.
The phrase was removed during editing, and Szalavitz was responsible for accepting the final edit. Slate's conclusion that Okrent found no conflict of interest is incomplete without noting that he found the appearance of a conflict of interest that warranted Meier's removal from the story.
Correction Number Two
What Szalavitz wrote:
Meier's article claimed that researchers now believe that "accidental" addiction is more common than previously thought, never mind the fact that there has been no new research suggesting this since OxyContin was introduced in 1995, only increased pressure from law-enforcement agents.
Slate's correction:
The column also mischaracterized Meier.s reporting on the prevalence of "accidental" addiction among patients receiving OxyContin prescriptions for pain. Meier's Nov. 25, 2003, article did not claim that "accidental addiction is more common than previously thought" His article states only that "much remains unknown" about the risk of iatrogenic (or "accidental") addiction.
What Meier wrote:
The reassessment of narcotic risk [of drugs such as Oxycontin] comes at a time of skyrocketing rates of misuse and abuse of such drugs. Medical experts agree that most pain patients can successfully use narcotics without consequences. But the same experts also say that much remains unknown about the number or types of chronic pain sufferers who will become addicted as a result of medical care, or "iatrogenically" addicted.
Meier covered a lot of ground in his Feb 5, 2003 piece. But for Slate to leave readers with the impression that he concluded only that "much remains unknown" about accidental addiction is misleading. A large section of Meier's article argued that pain management advocates and drug companies "inaccurately portrayed science" to show that there was minimal risk from using opiates to treat medium-term and chronic pain. As a result they underestimated the likelihood of abuse and addiction.
For example, Meier writes that "advocates of increased narcotics" misstated the results of a study at the Diamond Headache Clinic in a way that, according to Dr. Diamond, "clearly underplays the risks." And he cites a published letter from a pain management expert, Dr. Steven D. Passik, admitting, "In our zeal to improve access to opioids and relieve patient pain suffering, pain specialists have under stated the problem."
The thrust of Meier's argument is not simply that the risks of accidental addiction are unknown, but that they have been represented in a manner that understates their extent. One may debate whether Meier's argument that the risks are understated is equivalent to arguing that accidental addiction is more common than believed. But it is hardly a factual error demanding correction.
Correction Number 3
What Szalavitz wrote:
If the Orlando Sentinel were the only news organization to run massively misleading stories on OxyContin, the misinformation could be chalked up to error. But the first substantive column by the New York Times' Ombudsman Daniel Okrent also dealt with OxyContin bias, albeit of a different sort. Okrent wrote that the paper shouldn't have allowed Times writer Barry Meier, author of the anti-OxyContin book Pain Killer, to cover the drug in an article in its "Science" section. Meier's article claimed that researchers now believe that "accidental" addiction is more common than previously thought – never mind the fact that there has been no new research suggesting this since OxyContin was introduced in 1995, only increased pressure from law-enforcement agents.
Slate correction:
The column inaccurately and unfairly compares Meier's article .The Delicate Balance of Pain and Addiction. (Nov. 25, 2003), and a five-part series on the dangers of OxyContin published in the Orlando Sentinel (Oct. 19-23, 2003), for which the Sentinel ran a lengthy correction on Feb. 5, 2004. The Slate column should not have compared the two as Meier's article contained no factual errors.
Doris Bloodsworth's series for the Orlando Sentinel claimed, among other things, that a clueless doctor had destroyed a pain victim's life as a result of accidental addiction to OxyContin, and that accidental addiction was a widespread phenomenon.
Meier's Nov. 25, 2003 story deals with the underestimated narcotic risk for pain patients within the context of "skyrocketing" rates of abuse and misuse of opioids.
Thematically, both writers are in the same ballpark, so it cannot be "inaccurate" to compare them simply because Bloodsworth made factual errors and Meier didn't. The act of comparison is one of evaluation, not one of fact. Szalavitz did not write that Meier made the same factual errors as the Orlando Sentinel series made, nor did she say that Meier's piece was misleading in the same way as the Sentinel's series. She said only that both were "massively misleading."
If there is an error at issue here, it concerns the question of whether it was unfair to say that Meier's piece was massively misleading. As noted in correction two, Meier argued that pain management advocates and drug companies systematically underestimated the risk of accidental addiction among pain patients. Given the implication is that there is more accidental addiction among pain patients than commonly thought, then the claim is misleading.
Virtually every medical authority to consider the problem of iatrogenic addiction from opioids, concludes that it is very small, or very rare, or minimal. Such authorities include the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine, the National Institute of Drug Abuse, the World Health Organization, and the American Medical Association.
But what about Meier's quotation from a letter to a medical journal by Dr. Steven D. Passik, one of the nation's top experts on pain treatment, which appears to show that the medical community has "understated the problem." The passage comes from the May 2001 issue of the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management:
In our zeal to improve access to opioids and relieve patient suffering, pain specialists have understated the problem, drawing faulty conclusions from very limited data. In effect, we have told primary care doctors and other prescribers that the risk was so low that they could essentially ignore the possibility of addiction.
But Passik writes in the same letter that the key issue was that doctors should look out for indications that patients may be disposed towards addiction when treating for pain:
The problem is not a specific drug, but rather the base rate of addiction in the United States and the increasing availability of this medication. With 6 to 15% of the US population having a drug problem, any highly available opioid will be sought by this proportionately small fraction of the population, which actually represents millions of substance abusers. Because 6- 15% of the US population abuses drugs, the history of pain management is marked by the undertreatment of the other 84 to 94% of the population, and we do not want to go back to the bad old days.
The problem is neither OxyContin nor the growing use of opioids in pain management. The problem is poor assessment and monitoring, and a shortage of settings that can treat pain and bring the needed amount of structure to bear when appropriate. This issue defies the oversimplification that has been ever present in the historical dialogue about opioids. In the end, members of the pain management community are going to have to lead the way of making sure that stories of abuse and diversion of OxyContin do not get caught up in a firestorm of histrionic rumor mongering. Rumors about prescription opioid abuse make for lurid and unfounded tales that have all the appeal of tabloid television and will ultimately do pain experts and their patients much harm.
Dr. Passik told STATS that Meier's selective quotation had "misportrayed" his position in the letter, which he said was meant only for professionals in the pain management field. He said he was merely trying "to tone down the rhetoric" on both sides of the OxyContin abuse debate, pointing out that the risk from abuse was neither zero nor huge. But Passik stressed that toning down the rhetoric didn't mean stopping pain treatment.
Dr. Passik also said that in an interview with Meier, he had tried to "set him straight" on the problem of pain treatment and abuse, but that Meier appeared to be only interested in one side of the story. Where there is "a lot of gray," said Passik, Meier "sees only black and white." Dr. Passik said that the same letter was also mischaracterized as a "mea culpa" in Meier's book, "Pain Killer, A Wonder Drug's Trail of Addiction and Death. Passik said he was not issuing a "mea culpa" in writing the letter.
Meier's Nov. 25 article was framed around the "threat posed to patients by narcotics," and stressed how drug companies and pain management professionals underestimated this threat. Dr. Passik argued that the problem really lies with the failure to assess patients (and the failure to match opioid therapy to the relative level of risk in the patient) rather than qualities inherent in the narcotic itself.
Does Dr. Passik's claim about being "misportrayed" mean that Meier is "factually incorrect?" Slate claims that it was unfair to compare Meier's article with the Orlando Sentinel because Meier made no "factual errors." Yet, as the physicist and historian of science, Spencer R. Weart points out in his new book, The Discovery of Global Warming, "Scientists rarely label a proposed answer to a scientific question "true" or "false," but rather consider how likely it is to be true. Normally a new body of data will shift opinion only in part, making the idea seem a bit more likely or less likely."
In considering the balance of scientific opinion and reliable evidence, it is clear that Meier has mischaracterized the problem of accidental addiction by emphasizing unquantified and unknown risks over what we reliably know. And as such, his selective quotation from Dr. Passik's letter was deeply misleading.
In view of Passik's cautions about OxyContin abuse and diversion, it is important to note the following: The only reliable scientific evidence we have on OxyContin abuse shows that drug addicts are the main abusers of the drug, and that they typically consume multiple drugs at the same time. The most compelling scientific data explicating this pattern of abuse comes from the Journal of Analytical Toxicology, which in March 2003 published a paper that found that the overwhelming majority of drug abuse deaths (96.7 percent) involving Oxycodone (the active ingredient in OxyContin) were related to the ingestion of multiple drugs. The study, though funded by the manufacturer of OxyContin, Purdue Pharma, was conducted by outside consultants, was subjected to peer review, and was accompanied by a commentary from a former president of the National Association of Medical Examiners praising its methodology.
In addition, a 2003 position paper of the .College on Problems of Drug Dependence task force on prescription opioid non-medical use and abuse,. which includes DEA representation as well as medical experts from Johns Hopkins, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center etc, noted the following:
The overall consensus in the pain management community is that the majority of chronic pain patients on long-term opioid therapy are not abusing these drugs.
The task force also found that the press was promoting a misleading view of opioid abuse and diversion
by placing ."an overriding emphasis on the drug, and a de-emphasis on the opioid addict. The reasons for an addict's abuse of opioids are markedly different than the legitimate reasons for patients to use opioids."
Whether you think Meier was slightly or "massively" misleading will probably depend on how much pain you are in. But for Slate to say that comparison of Meier's work with the Orlando Sentinel is "naccurate" doesn't make sense. Similarly, to say that Szalavitz unfairly compared Meier's article with the Orlando Sentinel because Meier's "contained no factual errors" mischaracterizes Meier.s article. Meier's reporting is sufficiently misleading on the issue of opioid abuse and diversion to warrant mention in a similar context.
Correction Number 4
What Szalavitz wrote:
(Barry Meier's article, for example, described what he called a South Carolina .pill mill. that sold prescriptions to addicts; the doctors in that clinic, however, claimed they were just treating patients. pain. One pleaded guilty to avoid decades in prison after being lambasted in the press; another committed suicide rather than testify against his colleagues.)
Slate's correction:
The column incorrectly states that Meier's Nov. 25, 2003, article referred to a South Carolina pain-management clinic. The Times article in which Meier mentioned the South Carolina clinic was published on Dec. 10, 2001. Also, Meier did not call the pain-management clinic a "pill mill," as the quotation marks in the Slate article implied.
Earlier drafts of the article for Slate noted that the South Carolina episode was covered in a different story for the Times; once again, Szalavitz's failure to scrutinize Slate's final edited version allowed the error into print.
Slate is also correct in noting that Szalavitz misattributed the term "pill mill." Descriptively, the term is correct; but Meier used it in articles on January 19 and 20, 2002 to describe similar cases brought by the DEA against pain management doctors in Florida and California. He also used the term when discussing such cases generally on radio.
Slate's correction is valid. Szalavitz should have read the edited copy more carefully. She should have double-checked the articles in which Meier used the term "pill mill" rather than rely on memory.
Correction Number 5
What Szalavitz wrote:
(Barry Meier's article, for example, described what he called a South Carolina .pill mill. that sold prescriptions to addicts; the doctors in that clinic, however, claimed they were just treating patients. pain. One pleaded guilty to avoid decades in prison after being lambasted in the press; another committed suicide rather than testify against his colleagues.)
Slate's correction:
The column incompletely describes the status of prosecutions of the doctors at the South Carolina pain clinic, discussing only two of eight cases. The column should have reported that six other doctors either pleaded guilty or were convicted at trial. (The column's claim that one doctor committed suicide rather than testify against his colleagues is still being investigated by Slate).
It is true that Szalavitz incompletely described the status of prosecutions of the doctors from Comprehensive Care in South Carolina. But in the interest of completeness, it would probably have helped readers to give some sense of why this case is so significant. The appeal by Eli Stutsman (of Oregon v Ashcroft fame) and the Pain Relief Network, a non profit advocacy group, on behalf of one of the convicted doctors, Deborah Bordeaux, will be a test case against the Drug Enforcement Agency's entire campaign against alleged pill mills. As for the claim that one doctor committed suicide rather than testify against his colleagues, STATS has read a letter addressing this issue from the doctor's brother, Allen Moore (a copy of which was sent by Moore to Slate).
Moore claims that his brother told him repeatedly before his death (and left notes on his computer to the same effect) that he believed that none of the doctors at the clinic had done anything outside the bounds of normal medical practice, and that he was under pressure from the federal prosecutors to plead guilty and testify against his colleagues or face 20 to 100 years in prison. He pled guilty, but he hung himself from a tree in his mother's garden before he could testify against his co-workers. Szalavitz's point is supported by a preponderance of evidence. At the same time, it is impossible to prove or disprove a person's state of mind or intentions. In other words, Slate appears to be opening a line of correction that cannot yield a material fact.
Szalavitz's account of the South Carolina prosecutions was incomplete. But if it is important to include the fate of the other doctors, it is just as important to note that the circumstances around their trial and conviction – notably the federal prosecutor's use of civil law in a criminal trial – have led to an appeal that could overturn the DEA's campaign against prescription abuse.
Moore 's intentions at the time of his suicide cannot be definitively proven; however, since the circumstantial evidence lends strong support to Szalavitz's characterization, the claim should have been handled in an uncontroversial fashion by attributing it to the doctor's brother.
Correction Number 6
From Slate:
The column incorrectly states that .abuse accounts. involving OxyContin began to rise in 2001 only after media reports and prosecutor disclosures instructed potential users on how to work around the drug's time-release mechanism. An earlier increase in OxyContin use was recorded by DAWN (Drug Abuse Warning Network) in 1998.
Technically this is true; but Slate has framed the correction in a way that sounds misleading. Yes, the recently disaggregated figures from DAWN show that the number of OxyContin .mentions. (i.e., the number of times OxyContin was recorded in an emergency department visit due to drug abuse or suicide attempts) went from 0 in 1996 to 4 in 1997 to 527 in 1998. But the most dramatic increase occurred between 2000 and 2002, when the number of mentions went from 2,772 to 9,998 (2001) and then to 14,087. There is a clear correlation between the media coverage of OxyContin, which began during the February sweeps in 2001 and the sharp increase in emergency room mentions of OxyContin abuse during and after this time period. As the Washington Post television critic Tom Shales wrote in Electronic Media (March 26, 2001):
A national epidemic? No. Not even close. But TV newscasts have tried to portray it that way in stories filled with hype and half-truths. And in the course of "reporting" on abuse of the drug, they've all aired how-to pieces that include handy, easy-to-follow instructions on the correct abuse procedure. They tell you how to get high. Then the correspondents do follow-up reports expressing shock and dismay that the abuse is becoming more popular. Yeah, more kids are using the drug to get high because they heard about it and even saw how to use it on the evening news.
Szalavitz should have written "began to rise sharply" instead of "began to rise." Slate should not have implied that the increase in 1998 invalidated the claim that media coverage in 2001 had an impact on OxyContin abuse. And, strictly speaking, Slate should have said there was an earlier increase in 1997.
When making claims about media inaccuracy, factual accuracy, clear attribution and argument from evidence are crucial. Most of the mistakes Szalavitz made were trivial and did not undermine the argument she made in her column for Slate; but as they were trivial, they were also easy to check out and get right.
Understandably, some readers will wonder whether she was wrong on the big picture, too. Similarly, she should have read her column more carefully after it had been edited by Slate. Her failure to do so, which produced two errors, is her failure alone.
In broader terms, as Barry Meier and the New York Times played such a central role in the media's coverage of the apparent widespread abuse of OxyContin, neither should have been relegated to a digression or parenthetical aside. Even within the loose boundaries of an opinion column, claims of malfeasance need to be balanced by a proportionate amount of evidence and argument. Szalavitz condensed too many ideas about Meier and his work into too short a space – namely, that Meier's reporting was massively misleading, biased (and biased in way different from the biases in the Orlando Sentinel coverage), that he shouldn't have been allowed to cover OxyContin, and that he claimed, erroneously, that accidental addiction has been underestimated.
Having said that, Slate's editors are also responsible for the material they publish. Slate is not a notice board or a blog or a vanity publishing enterprise; its articles are edited; and editing must clarify what is unclear in the story.
Given that such an extensive correction could end a freelancer's career (the stipend Szalavitz receives from STATS is modest), Slate's editors have a duty to treat their writers fairly and to ensure that any correction to their work is scrupulously accurate.
To summarize, on matters of fact and attribution, Slate is correct to point out that Szalavitz conflated two of Meier.s articles, misattributed the term pill mill and incompletely described the status of prosecutions at Comprehensive Care in South Carolina.
But two of Slate's substantive charges against Szalavitz are wrong. The first – that she should not have compared Meier's Nov 25 article with the Orlando Sentinel series – is not a factual error. The second – that she mischaracterized the nature of Meier.s article on iatrogenic addiction – is not supported by a full reading of Meier's story.
The third substantive charge, that she should not have described Okrent's column as dealing with bias, is correct. But Slate phrases the correction in a manner that is incomplete and misleading. Okrent did not conclude that there was no conflict of interest: he found that the appearance of a conflict of interest warranted Meier.s removal from the story.
In the case of the Comprehensive Care doctor who committed suicide, his family possesses sufficient evidence to claim that he committed suicide rather than testify against his colleagues. Given the impossibility of proving the doctor's state of mind, the claim is easily handled by attributing it to the family.
Finally, while Slate is right to say that DAWN mentions for OxyContin rose in 1998, the rise was tiny
compared to the rise in 2001 cited by Szalavitz as being a result of increased media exposure.
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The Garden
Inspiring Places
Thursday, August 30, 2012
A Little Groggy
I had no idea my break would last so long. My life was turned upside down for awhile, but now I'm ready to revisit the things I enjoy. Things have changed quite a bit since I was last on Brambly and I am still trying to remember how to work Blogger. Around the time I last posted I had just started working at a historic hotel (watercolor above) as the event coordinator. It was a wonderful opportunity and I met some fabulous people; however, the hotel sold and the new owner is deciding what she intends to do with it.That experience has set me on a new course which I hope to share in the coming weeks.I'm looking forward to getting back to Brambly and seeing what my fellow bloggers have been up to.
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Ann-Marie ~ Brambly
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