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Episode 22: Her Agile, Ventriloquistic Foot

January 18th, 2013 | Robin

In a special Cartography Hut / Ask Ken and Robin crossover, Troy Holoday invites us to contemplate the vanished D&D roles of mapper and caller.

On a serious note we go to the History Hut for a sense of perspective, if not solace, on America’s relationship with the gun.

In the Cinema Hut Robin finally uncorks his long-simmering rant on the fundamentally unBondian nature of Skyfall. Ken gamely and briefly attempts a role as devil’s advocate before reverting to true and inevitable doctrine.

We wrap with an ironic tale for the Consulting Occultist—the sad story of Margaret Fox, who accidentally founded 19th century spiritualism through a teenage prank.

20 Responses to “Episode 22: Her Agile, Ventriloquistic Foot”

  1. GB Steve says:

    Concerning the reliability or otherwise of the denizens of the other world, Hilary Mantel’s Beyond Black is a great read.

  2. Terry says:

    Having recently read the original novel of Casino Royale, I have to say that the remake was very faithful to the book in overall plot (although not certain details). He was not, at least in the novels, a purely iconic hero.

  3. Dave says:

    English and British were interchangeable up until recent history.

    • Tom Clare says:

      On the contrary, the native British and the invading English (Anglish) were two separate peoples until the late first Millennium. And even then, they probably had pretty strong views on the subject themselves (“I am English, like my lord; those peasants toiling over there are British. And I wish they’d stop all that singing!”)

      From my point of view the issue is pretty simple these days: all the English are British. But not all British are English – some are Scottish, Welsh, Manx, or even (at a stretch) Cornish or Irish. Saying that the two terms are synonymous is a little irritating to those of us that are one but not the other.

      However, if the crowd Ken and Robin addressed were in London chances are the majority of them were English AND British. So no foul!

    • Tom Clare says:

      Or are you talking about devolution?

  4. Thomas Bagley says:

    Heck I’m AUSTRALIAN and don’t care when people call me British…..I suppose we are asking for it by putting the queens head on our money 😉

  5. The current interpretation of the 2nd Amendment is, as far as I know, unique among constitutional exegesis: that the first half of the amendment is an throat-clearing introduction with no statutory effect. There’s not a lot of wasted verbiage in the US Constitution except, apparently, here.

    It is possible (as Garry Wills says) to believe that there is a fundamental human right to individually own and carry firearms, but there’s no basis for it in the 2nd Amendment, which is solely and explicitly about the ability of individual states to form militias. (The writers of the Constitution were certainly able to differentiate between people, the nation, and the States.) So, yes, there was a shift in concern from militia ownership of firearms to individual ownership.

    Anyway, there’s a lot of good scholarship on the meaning of, and politics behind, the 2nd Amendment. I’d recommend Wills’s magisterial classic “To Keep and Bear Arms” and the recent Thomas Hartman article “The Second Amendment was Ratified to Protect Slavery”, which finds another narrative in well-known but mostly ignored contemporary sources.

    • Stant says:

      It seems the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the Second Amendment is in fact an individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense. (See District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago)

      Also Britain’s violent crime record is worse than any other country in Europe with a rate 2,034 per 100,000 people. Canada only has a rate of 935 per 100,000.

      In fact the UK also has a worse rate for all types of violence than the South Africa does. (see what I did there)

      Oh by the way the U.S. rate for all types of violence is 386.3 per 100,000 about a third of Canada’s.

  6. Cambias says:

    From what I’ve read the whole battle in Scotland was originally a pretext to have Sean Connery guest-star as the crusty old gamekeeper, but apparently at some point one of the producers had an attack of sanity and got Albert Finney instead.

  7. taffyfinger says:

    Alternative history question for Ken. What if Albert Einstein had done nothing with his life? What would be the effect on history? Additionally, would we, as a species be better off? Keep up the good work. Side note, Robin was jocking himself a bit too much at the live podcast. I was drawn to this podcast because of my admiration and awe of Ken. Then Robin unleashed his break down the shit by the numbers and facts kung fu-magic . Right there it was totally assured, I have two uber kick-ass cool uncles. You guys are the most. Together you guys crack skulls and eat brains then poop them back in our collective unconscious and we reap the benefits of your acrid secretions.

  8. taffyfinger says:

    Please strike the word acrid from my last post.

  9. Donny says:

    What’s the preferred contact channel for “Ask Ken and Robin”?

  10. Terry says:

    I reiterate Donny’s question, especially since I have a question that won’t fit into a tweet: Would Robin please expound upon his concept of the “iconic character”? What is an iconic character? How do we recognize one? Examples? If writing fiction, how to write one effectively? Is this a good question to use to plug the “New Hero” anthology, or are Ken and Robin above such crass commercial concerns?

  11. Alan says:

    A bit of feedback: I humbly request that spoiler-filled visits to the Cinema Hut take place as the last segment of an episode. Not that I cared enough to worry about having Skyfall spoiled, but one of these episodes you’ll probably end up talking about a movie that I will care about having spoiled. Having the Cinema Hut as the last segment would make it easier to avoid stumbling into spoilers when trying to find the start of the next segment…
    (The film festival recaps are fine wherever they end up, since specific plot details in there will get blurred together in my mind. It’s when the in-depth analysis of a particular film veers into spoiler-filled territory that I’m thinking of here.)

  12. John Corey says:

    I wanted to thank both of you for having a reasonable conversation about a topic that causes most people to simply froth at the mouth. You two are an island reason in a see of knee jerk reactions.

  13. Tom Clare says:

    I’m still thinking about North Americans using ‘English’ and ‘British’ as synonyms. Your Canadians/Americans (I assume you meant U.S. American here) analogy doesn’t really fit; we do mistake you for each other, but that is because of your accents (like Scots and the Northern Irish).

    A better analogy would be if the rest of the world used ‘American’ and ‘Californian’ interchangeably.

    And here I am, dropping the subject!

  14. Derek says:

    In regards to cracking toe joints, my mother is able to crack the big toes of her feet on demand, so feel free to consider that aspect of the story to be well within the bounds of reason.

  15. […] AudioSo much rage, and some other stuff.Hosts: NeoSam, Jeff and ScottSh’notes:skyfallk&r talk about stuffcrysis 3night’s black agentsAssassin’s Creed 3Splinter Cell BlacklistIntro: Kevin […]

  16. Realizing that I may be a bit late to the party, I just wanted to share some thoughts on this episode.

    1) I am not a big Bond fan and have not seen Skyfall. However, I do know my Star Trek movies rather well. In Star Trek 3, the main cast steals the Enterprise without its crew aboard. Scotty rigs the ship’s automatic systems so that only the established characters are needed to run the ship, but warns that the automation can’t handle combat situations. So Kirk doesn’t blast the Klingons in that case because he pretty much can’t. He just does the best he can with the things he can do.

    2) The role of the Mapper in old school D&D. I think the role of Mapper and the idea of keeping a map gives the players an investment in and a way to engage with something that isn’t fighting monsters and dealing with traps. It also plays into a theme of exploration that has perhaps fallen away from the core of the D&D experience.

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