Holidays in the Sun

I had hoped right now to be on my way to Oldenburg to celebrate a friend's birthday and see the sites, but instead I came down with an acute case of bacterial bronchitis and a 103 degree fever. So sadly no Oldenburg.

But here are few pictures of our wonderful son Finn:

Back by popular demands, here are the current adventures of Finn Tecumseh Loroff-Richard.

Finn helping his dad out with some RPG project:


Here he is clearly up to no good:


Looking mighty comfortable:


I particularly dig this sweater:


And here he is sound asleep:

Earlier this month, we went camping with Finn - his first camping trip. We rented an RV for a week and wandered around Saxony-Anhalt and Lower Saxony. It was the whole family: Claudia, me, Finn and Poe the Cat. Finn and Poe got along shockingly well:







One of the really amazing places we saw was the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel. We couldn't take pictures inside the Library, but here is Claudia and Finn outside the library entrance:



Another amazing place was Kalkriese, where we get to see where Arminius and the Cherusci tribe ambushed and destroyed three Roman legiones under Publius Quinctilius Varus (Quintili Vare, legiones redde!). Called the Varusschlacht in Deutsch, the battle was commemorating its 2000th anniversary (September 9th to 11th, 9 AD) when we were there.

Here are the famed Teutoburger Woods where the Varusschlacht took place.



Here's Claudia's dad preparing to spear some Romans from behind the fortifications the Cherusci built for the ambush:



One of the truly cool things at the museum is an entire legion done with lead miniatures. The figures just went on and on and on...




The museum also had the famous iron cavalry mask of Kalfriese and a cool collection of Roman silver coins.


After Kalkriese, we traveled to Hammeln, home to the famed Piped Piper. The town was lovely, but boy they play that Pied Piper story (which is actually tragic and depressing) for all it is worth.


We wandered around Goslar for quite awhile, until Finn demanded that we stop and feed him. Check out my impressive multitasking:


Finally we ended up in the old Imperial City of Goslar and met up with my old friend Max Buckner and his wife Pam. Max brought the all important food ----- STEAKS:



More pictures soon!

Hard to believe Finn is already 7 1/2 weeks old! On Tuesday, Claudia and I take him on his first camping trip. Here he is, smiling and happy:



Finn's grandparents (Al & Judy) came out to Berlin last month to see him:


Finn liked sleeping on his grandfather Al!


He even went on his first picnic and boat trip!


Here he is posing with Grandmother Judy:


More soon!

Nothing sleeps quite so contently as a two-week old baby:


And here is Finn dressed up as some sort of little wizard:


And finally, I present you with Finn Kenobi, Ewan McGregor's stunt double in the Star Wars films:

Not quite six days old and already my son Finn Tecumseh is plotting.


Obviously he is thinking about some masterful plot or plan. Perhaps he is thinking about the volcanic island he plans to convert into his secret base. Or perhaps some currency speculation with which he plans to conquer the world's currency markets.



Never make the mistake of assuming that a baby's thoughts are nothing but sweet! This kid is having deep and dangerous thoughts!



I particularly like the way he rests his head on his hand. A deep thinker indeed. Or at least a good poseur!

I once thought baby pictures were amongst the dullest thing imaginable to blog about, but it appears very different now that it is my baby son I am posting pictures about! As a quick update, Claudia is recovering very quickly from her C-section and is doing great. Finn is doing brilliantly, other than a typical bout of infant jaundice. He looks like he just gotten back from a short trip to Crete or the Bahamas.


Here's my lovely wife (witha goofy tired look) with Finn:


And we even got to take Finn on an expedition outside of the hospital!


The hospital provided us with a little buggy to take him around the hospital grounds (which are out on the furthest western edge of Berlin - the old Wall Line is just about a hundred yards away). Finn appears a little nonplussed by the cold weather and the fresh air:

And here is the proud mother pushing her son in the carriage:


About midway through his little expedition, Finn fell asleep and decided that the hospital grounds really were not worth his attention!

 

Day three of Finn Tecumseh Loroff-Richard brings more pictures. Next week I need to run by the US Embassy to confirm his birth and make it easier for us to get him a US Passport for when we next go back to the States.

Yesterday Finn mastered the difficult art of opening both eyes at the same time! A remarkable task and one worth celebrating (at least when you are two days old and your CV really is pretty thin).

Finn hanging out with his dad. After spending the day working out how to keep both eyes open simultaneously, Finn was justifiably tired.



I believe by this point, Finn has figured out the difference between Light and Not-Light: that Not-Light is not Light. The clarity of thought one has at two days old is pretty remarkable.



And here is Finn sleeping after yesterday's adventures.

At 10:10 am today our son Finn Tecumseh Loroff (soon to be amended with a -Richard, a bureaucratic procedure here in Germany and permitted only because of his dual nationality status) was born in Berlin.


Here is Finn's first photo, shot right after the Kinderartz brought him out of the operating room. His first yelps were mighty, as he emerged cut out from his mother's womb like an ancient hero. But seeing no dragons to slay, Finn calmed down quickly.



Here he is being checked out and weighed - a proper 3.25 kg!


Returned to his mother (my wife, the ever lovely Claudia Loroff), Finn opens one eye to check out the world.



And here is Claudia and FInn. Claudia did great - a Caesarian section is never easy, but she is recovering with Finn. Which reminds me - I better head back to the hospital! More info later!

Jeff

Blogging on this site and on vingkot.livejournal.com is going to be sporadic for a little while. Tomorrow morning Claudia and I go into the hospital and at some point thanks to the miracles of Modern Science our son, Finn, should be born in suitable heroic fashion. Because Finn obstinately refuses to stand on his head, the doctor has decided he requires a Caesarian Section. I will be there with Claudia during the operation and about fifteen minutes after it begins, we should get to hold Finn!

Photos and other such stuff should follow in the next few days!

Jeff

On another Fourth of July I spend far away from the United States, I wanted to give pause and reflect on Abraham Lincon's speech of July 10, 1858:
 

Now, it happens that we meet together once every year, sometime about the 4th of July, for some reason or other. These 4th of July gatherings I suppose have their uses. If you will indulge me, I will state what I suppose to be some of them.

 

( Read more... )

 

One of the exhibits at the Pergamonmuseum was about the cult of Dionysius - the Greek god of wine and divine madness. There were some wonderful sculptures and friezes, but I found these particularly interesting:




I was struck by the image of the lion drawn cart led by satyrs, musicians and dancing priestesses and referenced this in the book I just finished writing. So if anyone wants to know what the "Feast of Beasts" was based on, it is a Dionysian frieze at the Pergamonmuseum.

Among the long list of strange things I am fascinated by must be included depictions of magical guardians in the ancient world. The Pergamonmuseum has dozens of exhibits displaying statues or pictures of magical beings that were supposed to guard kings, priests, families, cities, and so on from the evil forrces of the Otherworld.



This is a pair of Mesopotamian guardian beings sometimes called "genies" by historians or by the Akkadian term aladlammû. Both are winged and both carry a strange little handbag or bucket. The eagle headed guardian on the left has a strange cone in its right hand. The "bucket and cone" iconography is extremely common for Mesopotamian guardian beings.


Here's a bizarre scorpion-man or Girtablullû in Akkadian. In the Babylonian Epic of Creation, the scorpion-man is one of Tiamat's creatures, while in the Epic of Gilgamesh, a pair of terrifying scorpion-men guard the gates to the Underworld.



Here's a strange looking "lion-demon" with a sword or mace in one hand and a deer in the other.



Here's a colossal stone gateway guardian in the form of a human-headed winged bull. This one flanked the entrance into a Mesopotamian palace.


Here's another one.


The Gates of Ishtar in the Pergamon Museum were the sacred processional gates of Babylon used for the New Year entrance of the gods and goddesses into the city. The Germans took the original gates from Iraq and rebuilt them here in Berlin. They are covered by magical guardians: bulls, lions, and strange snake-dragons.



Bulls and Snake-Dragons.



Here's a closeup of one of the snake-dragons. Sometimes Mesopotamian gods (especially Marduk and Ishtar) were depicted standing atop a snake dragon.



The gates are immense and their bright blue bricks stand out in the museum.



On the sides of the gates, grand pronouncements in Akkadian script boast of the might of the city of Babylon.



Here's a closeup of some of that Akkadian script. The ancient Mesopotamians loved to have texts expounding on the power and glory of their cities and their rulers. The actual text is pretty repetitive and none too subtle. But boy it looks cool.

Two of my favorite museums are the British Museum in London and the Pergamonmuseum here in Berlin. Claudia and I went with some friends last weekend to the Gods exhibition and the Dionysius exhibition and I took plenty of pictures.  One of the things I found interesting was the depiction of Thunder Gods in Greek, Roman, Hittite and Sumerian art. Here's a few bits:

So here is the classic Greek depiction of Zeus. As befits a Father-God, Zeus is shown bearded. He carries his thunderbolt in his right hand and is preparing to throw it. Interesting, his thunderbolt is depicted very similarly to the Hindu Vajra, something I had never noticed before.  


Here's a later Roman bronze of Jupiter. Again notice the funky lightning bolt. Artistically it is similar to the Greek statute, just a little more ornate.


Here are a pair of Bronze Age Mesopotamian deities (unfortunately I don't know from which site - the Pergamonmuseum is undergoing some reorganization and these steles were not labeled). I really like the Thunder God on the left - he has a strange three-pronged thunderbolt in his left hand, carries an axe with his right, and wears a long sword. His wife (perhaps Inanna - perhaps some other goddess), is admiring herself in a bronze or gold mirror.



OK this isn't exactly a depiction of a Thunder God, but I loved this little painting from a Greek vase depicting Athena beating up a giant with his own arm (which she had apparently torn off him).



Here's an unusual piece depicted Zeus sitting with Athena or Hera (he's sitting with his co-equal, which would normally be Hera, but she is carrying a spear, the symbol of Athena). Check out Zeus' thunderbolt in his left hand. 



Again, this is not a Thunder God, but it is a fantastic Archaic Greek statue of a goddess seated upon a throne. One of my favorite sculptures in the Greek collection of the Pergamonmuseum.

So I just shipped off my 221,000 word book (a very large roleplaying game book set in a fantasy setting and designed for use with Robin Laws's HeroQuest game system) to my publisher, who is doing layout, art and all that swell stuff. A limited prerelease version of this should be available at the Tentacles Convention next month. Actual publication I suspect will be later this summer or fall.

Anyways, the book has all my usual influences hardwired into it: Egil's Saga, Njal's Saga, Volsungs Saga, Beowulf, and all those good Anglo-Scandinavian influences.  But a large section within it is a depiction of a trek through a fantasy Underworld - through the Realm of the Dead. To prep for it, I reread the two main cycles of Underworld stories of our literary tradition.

The first is the cycle that starts with a chapter in the Odyssey, is elaborated and expanded on with the Aeneid, and then elevated to high art in the Divine Comedy: the guided tour of the Underworld. The Odyssey provides the basic framework: the hero goes into the Underworld with a guide and speaks to the various famous Dead who reside there.  The Dead tell him of the past and perhaps the future, and warns him of what awaits him upon death. I said the Odyssey is the first of these, but that's not really true. There's an old Sumerian story, Bilgames and Enkidu, that has many of these elements.  In that story, Bilgames (an alternate name for Gilgamesh) loses his playing ball into the Pit of the Underworld and sends his companion, Enkidu, down to the Underworld to get his ball. Gilgamesh gives him a list of things not to do before going to the Underworld. Naturally Enkidu breaks every rule and gets stuck in the Underworld. Gilgamesh goes to the various gods and finally Enkidu gets released. But not before telling Gilgamesh how bad the Underworld sucks.


Some of the demonic beasties of the Mesopotamian Underworld.

The Odyssey, Aeneid, and Divine Comedy just take Bilgames and Enkidu to another level. The hero gets to see how badly the Underworld sucks and gets to talk to famous celebrities in the process.

The other cycle is best represented by another Sumerian story, Innana Descend into the Underworld. In that story, the goddess Inanna, Queen of the Sky, (a warlike Venus) decides to visit her hated sister who is Queen of the Underworld.  She shows up at the seven doors of the Underworld and is forced to disrobe piece by piece by the porter. Once before her sister, Inanna is judged and condemned to die spiked on a stake. Inanna was clever and anticipated this, so she had one of her companions go to the various gods and get her released.  But the price was she had to find a substitute to stay in the Underworld in her place. She grabbed her lover Dumezil and had the demons of the Underworld take him instead of her.


A few depictions of Inanna from the Pergamon Museum in Berlin.

Anyways, these stories had a big influence on a large section of the book I just finished. Hopefully people will enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Claudia and I went to the Berlin Museum für Vor - und Frühgeschichte (Museum for Pre and Early History) last week. I am on a big Bronze Age art kick, having found my old notebooks from various Mycenaean and Minoan museums and sites I visited nearly twenty years ago. Here's a handful of interesting artifacts from the Museum:



This is a collection of Middle and Late Bronze Age swords found in Germany.  From the left, the third and fourth swords were apparently thrusting only, the next two were thrusting and slashing, the next two were slashing only.



A Bronze Age axe-dagger. Looks like it would be a pretty nasty weapon.




This is a good example of the sort of extravagance you see in Late Bronze Age, early Iron Age metalworking. I think this helmet was from the Villanova culture of Northern Italy.



This is the famed "Berlin Gold Hat", which looks like a gold bowler cap with a conical extension rising up nearly a meter. The craftsmanship was remarkable, and some archeologists speculate that the symbols on the cap are arranged to function as a solar and lunar calendar.



Here's the Berlin Gold Hat in all its glory, and a statuette of a figuring wearing either the Gold Hat or something very similar. Apparently, the Gold Hat was designed under the assumption that viewers would see the hat from below - underneath the rim are ornate markings, while above the rim are the inversed pressings of the markings. Presumably, the wearer of the hat would be on a throne or high dais while wearing it.



This a pair of charming funerary urns from the Lusatian Culture near Berlin. Women's remains would be placed in urns with a woman's face, men in an urn with a man's face and depictions of hunting.



Although this isn't technically Bronze Age it is a pretty cool bit of Hallstat art. I love the ears on the figure.

As some of you all know, every year Claudia and I go to the Tentacles Gaming Convention at Castle Stahleck in Bacharach in late spring.  That's where I met Claudia (met her in a game by Sandy Petersen where I played Sir Lancelot and she played some fantasy warrior-priestess from another genre altogether).  The location is fantastic:



A view of the castle from the town of Baccharach.  The picture of is of Bacchus, patron god of the town since Roman days.


The courtyard of the castle.

I've written a fair number of freeforms over the years.  A strange freeform that pitted dragons and gods against Bender the Robot, and a wacky wild west freeform that had English Bob murdering Doc Holliday over a card game.

Bender the Robot attacks a storm god.


A few of the cast of characters from the Western game.

This year I am writing a game I've wanted to write for years.  Here's the brief summary:

DEUS LO VULT!
by Jeff Richard and Lawrence Whitaker

The sacred Kingdom of Jerusalem is in imperil and you have taken up the Cross to save the Holy Land! Nearly four years ago, Saracen hordes seized the County of Edessa from its rightful rulers and now threaten Jerusalem itself. Now, King Baldwin III of Jerusalem and his mother Queen Melisande host an assembly of the noble leaders of this Second Crusade in the city of Acre to determine their course of action. The greatest nobles in Europe, including the great kings Louis VII of France (who has brought his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine) and Conrad III of Germany, along with dukes, counts, bishops and princes are attending this Council.

You shall decide your fate and that of the Crusade! In the meantime, there are scores to settle, alliances to be made, romances to be wooed and principalities to be won or lost!

Data:

DEUS LO VULT! is a 40 player freeform that is set during the Council of Acre in June 1148. The players will be nobles, church leaders, representatives of other nations, or other important people. Most of the characters will be based on historical figures, although obviously much dramatic license will be used. We expect politics, greed, backstabbing, assassination attempts, jousting, romance, excommunication, and lots of freeform goodness.

I'm hoping to indulge both my love of violent soap opera themes (is it any wonder than HBO's Deadwood and Rome are amongst my favorite show of all time) with my fascination with the Crusades.  This should be good, crazy fun and if anyone has even a little interest I recommend checking on the Tentacles Convention website: http://www.tentacles-convention.de/news.html

I thought I'd take a break from economics posting.  In my spare time I'm writing the new "Sartar Book" for Moon Design and Issaries Inc.  For those of you who aren't gamers, this is a background and scenario book for a Roleplaying Game set in the fictional kingdom of Sartar in the mythical game setting of Glorantha. Although most of the book is background and setting material, I am including several scenarios.

One of the opening scenarios plays with the themes of romance and feud.  The characters attend a big feast hosted by a king and attract the attention of a beautiful, wealthy  - and romantically available - young woman who has family ties to some important people in the local community.  The characters know that if one of them can marry her, their own prospects of survival and prosperity will go up substantially - in short, they have a strong in-game incentive to woo the maiden.

However, others desire the maiden as well, including an equally ambitious young man from the traditional rivals of the players' community. Wooing the maiden results in the players coming into direct conflict with their rivals.  If they succeed in marriage, their rivals will try to kill them, starting a feud.  If they fail, their family and friends will urge them to kill their rival, starting a feud.  And of course, the young woman has her own kinship ties and ambitions.  

The scenario simply sets up the action, allowing players and narrators to let this conflict develop in whatever direction they want.  Maybe the communities are torn apart in violent feud that claims the lives of many of the characters and beloved NPCs.  Maybe peace is ultimately made between the rivals as they find someone or something that they hate more than each other.  Who knows?

Romance and feud are themes I am endlessly fascinated by, which probably stems from my love of medieval Icelandic sagas. One of my favorite, the Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-Tongue is centered on the tragic love of Gunnlaug for Helga the Fair.  Gunnlaug travels from Iceland to Sweden to make his fortune and becomes the friend and later the rival of Hrafn. Hrafn travels to Iceland and - while Gunnlaug is still gone overseas - marries Helga.  The rivalry between the two men grows and eventually they kill each other in a duel in Sweden.  Helga never forgets her love for Gunnlaug and thinks of him as she herself dies many years later in the arms of her second husband.



In the Icelandic sagas, the usual plot device is that the hero loses the woman while going viking for two long.  In the Sartar Book I have to use a different device, but to the same purpose: the create an opportunity for the hero to lose the woman to his rival, or for the hero to win his love but at the price of enraging his rivals to violence.  We'll see what people think of my foray into Soap Opera gaming.

For those of you who are news junkies regarding the proposed stimulus package, here's a news story to keep in the back of your mind while you ponder the question of whether the package is a good idea (I've emphasized a few key concerns of mine highlighted in the story):

FT.com / Markets - US Treasury in plans for record debt sale

The "multiplier" effect is often invoked to justify public spending - the idea that a dollar spent on a particular program increases the GDP by more than one dollar. Quoting Harvard economics professor Robert Barro:


Some might remember invokations of the "multiplier" effect during the sports stadium debates in Seattle.  Local economists were hired to argue that the "multiplier" effect of a new sports stadium was somewhere between 1.3 and 1.8 (although many academic economists were savagely critical of such claims) . Economist and political pundit Paul Krugman has been using a multiplier effect of 1.5 in his recent columns. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/09/opinion/09krugman.html

The problem with the "multiplier" effect justification for public spending programs is that there is a large body of recent academic literature concluding that it is much smaller than 1.5 and rarely if ever reaches even 1.0.  According to Barro's calculations, the multiplier effect for public spending ranges from 0.8 for wartime military spending to "insignificantly different from zero" in the case of of peacetime governmental purchases:

I have estimated that World War II raised U.S. defense expenditures by $540 billion (1996 dollars) per year at the peak in 1943-44, amounting to 44% of real GDP. I also estimated that the war raised real GDP by $430 billion per year in 1943-44. Thus, the multiplier was 0.8 (430/540). The other way to put this is that the war lowered components of GDP aside from military purchases. The main declines were in private investment, nonmilitary parts of government purchases, and net exports -- personal consumer expenditure changed little. Wartime production siphoned off resources from other economic uses -- there was a dampener, rather than a multiplier.

We can consider similarly three other U.S. wartime experiences -- World War I, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War -- although the magnitudes of the added defense expenditures were much smaller in comparison to GDP. Combining the evidence with that of World War II (which gets a lot of the weight because the added government spending is so large in that case) yields an overall estimate of the multiplier of 0.8 -- the same value as before. (These estimates were published last year in my book, "Macroeconomics, a Modern Approach.")

There are reasons to believe that the war-based multiplier of 0.8 substantially overstates the multiplier that applies to peacetime government purchases. For one thing, people would expect the added wartime outlays to be partly temporary (so that consumer demand would not fall a lot). Second, the use of the military draft in wartime has a direct, coercive effect on total employment. Finally, the U.S. economy was already growing rapidly after 1933 (aside from the 1938 recession), and it is probably unfair to ascribe all of the rapid GDP growth from 1941 to 1945 to the added military outlays. In any event, when I attempted to estimate directly the multiplier associated with peacetime government purchases, I got a number insignificantly different from zero.

See, online.wsj.com/article/SB123258618204604599.html. Barro argues that a much more plausible assumption for public spending is a multiplier of zero. In this case, the GDP is given, and a rise in government purchases requires an equal fall in the total of other parts of GDP -- consumption, investment and net exports. In other words, the social cost of one unit of additional government purchases is one.

This is not to suggest that public spending infrastructure improvements is not beneficial or even necessary for long-term economic growth. Much of this infrastructure is needed now, regardless of the current economy (for example, Seattle is in drastic need of long delayed transportation infrastructure improvements and the US is in dire need of new energy production facilities that are not dependent on fossil fuels).  However, such spending is unlikely to generate the stimulus needed to stop the current economic tailspin.