I just finished reading this book by Rajiv Chandrakeraran. It was pretty scary. It's about the Coalition Provisional Authority that administered Iraq during the first year of the occupation. It's a pretty damning portrait. The depth of the cronyism and isolation that went on in the Green Zone was absolutely spectacular. The number one criterion for a job administering Iraq: partisan loyalty to the Bush administration. Don't speak Arabic? Never been to Iraq? Have no experience in post war reconstruction or conflict resolution? No problem, as long as you have the correct opinion on Roe v. Wade and have had an internship at a conservative think tank.
The horrors are too many to count: Groups of three people assigned to do the work of thousands. A massive dearth of Arabic speakers. People promulgating flat taxes and free trade and other conservative economic agenda items while basics like electricity and security go neglected. And the complete lack of understanding of the sheer scale of the problem at the top.
Random harlot generation table in AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide
GenCon Indy approaches, and so I'm not posting much. I hear D&D co-creator Gary Gygax will be at the convention this year. If I run into him, I want him to autograph one of the most ridiculous pieces of gaming weirdness ever to make it into a mainstream AD&D publication. I'm speaking, of course, about the infamous random prostitute generation table in the 1st Edition Dungeon Master's Guide . That book included a random encounter table for cities; "Harlot" is one of the entries. Here is the Harlot entry, reproduced in facsimile for your delectation: Sadly, subsequent editions of the Dungeon Master's Guide lack such useful prompts to the imagination. Dungeon Masters are now forced to improvise descriptions of harlots, should such be encountered by an adventuring party. Unless, of course, the Dungeon Master owns a copy of the 1st Edition DMG or is lucky enough to see this blog post. In the interest of fairness and gender equality, this table should
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