Bronze Age Clockpunk

This is a cool idea. A spell to create a perpetual wheel and then tie that to a bronze age setting.

Continual Wheel
Transmutation
Level: Clr 3, Sor/Wiz 2
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Touch
Target: Wheel touched
Effect: Magical Propulsive force
Duration: Permanent
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: No

The affected wheel begins to rotate at a constant rate, adjusted by friction and other load. The force turning the wheel has an effective STR of 16, equal to a light warhorse, and the wheel can achieve a mximum rotational speed of 240 rpm. The wheel can be made of any material and in any shape, but it must be recognizably a wheel, can be no larger than 4 foot in diameter, no smaller than 6 inches in diameter and must be rimmed with some form of metal. It must also be joined or attached to an axle of some type, also with some type of metal. If the wheel is removed from the axle, the spell is broken.

Material Component
You sprinkle gold dust (worth 50 gp) on the wheel.

Lots of cool things you could do with that, both mechanically and socially. Endlessly spinning water wheels pumping water into tanks for plumbing, armored war chariots with arrow slits, ships that do not require rowers or sails, the ideas are endless.

MnM combat example

I'll be reading this in more detail later, so I can be more effective with Metal Shop.

Grand Theft Auto: Metropolis

Cool idea. Supervillains from the ground up. Start as a lackey and work up to henchman, then to villain.

Robert E. Howard Does JRRT's The Lord of the Rings

Superhero Dilemmas

I love stuff like this. I just started playing in a game of Mutants & Masterminds. This has some great ideas on things to do.
I really love this bit on The West Wing by SteveD:

Scene: the Justice Alert has gone off.

Josh (entering): What's going on?
CJ: The Washington Post is calling us fascists, a fifty foot T-rex is savaging Belize, and a meteor the size of Sheboygan is heading towards earth.
Josh: Do you actually know how big Sheboygan is?
CJ: Not off hand, no.
Josh: Okay then. Maybe we can look that up.
Toby (entering): Somebody paged me. Is it a meteor again?
Josh: Yeah.
Toby: Wow. Okay. What do we know?
Josh: We know it's the size of Sheboygan.
Toby: How big is that?
CJ: This is just what meterology told me, okay?
Josh: Do they know how big Sheboygan is?
Donna (entering): It's about forty-five miles across. (off their reaction) I looked it up when I saw it on the news.
Leo (entering): Alright people, we all heard the Trouble Alert. What do we know?
Josh: Amazingly, we know that Sheboygan is forty-five miles across.
Leo: Okay. I'll be sure to tell Superman that. What do we know that’s important?
Josh: I can talk to the Pentagon, maybe get some missiles...
Leo: Too slow. Sam?
Sam: I've been working on something up where the Flash could vibrate the meteor’s molecules into harmless pieces of dust.
Toby: You're thinking of the old Flash.
Sam: Okay, well I never got that memo.
Toby: I don't understand why we just don't send Superman! This is, strangely enough, exactly what he's supposed to do!
Leo: Toby, the human race is about to become extinct. This is not the time to debate Superhero policy.
Toby: No, this is exactly the time to debate it. We never debate it any other time! You know why? Because except for the meteors, we pretend supers don't exist in this country!
Leo: Toby -
Superman (entering dramatically): No, he's right, Leo. Superheroes are being taken for granted. And it's going to stop, right now.
Leo: I'm sorry, Mr Superman.
Superman: About what? About the meteor? Hate to break it to you, Leo, but I don't think you can take credit for that. Okay people, what have we got?
CJ: I have figures from meterology.
Superman: Hmm. The size of Sheboygan. Did you know Sheboygan is 45 miles across?
Josh: Yes sir.
Superman: Well, did you also know that it's the leading producer of woodcrafts in the northwest?
Josh: No sir.
Superman: Okay then. CJ, call the Pentagon and clear my air space. Toby, I'm going to need -
Toby: Heroic monologue. Yes sir.
Superman: Good man. And Toby?
Toby: Yes sir?
Superman: Don't call me a "super" again. I don't like it. It's demeaning.
Toby: Sorry sir.
Superman: That's all.
Toby: Thank you sir. (the staff leave)
Superman: (to Leo) Is he on decaf again?
Leo: I'll talk to the cafeteria.

I also liked the ideas of how to pull current events into a game and how the government and society would react to superheroes. Many of those ideas would make the game far darker than I want to play in, though.

Voted

I voted yesterday. Stood in line for an hour. Everyone seemed civil. The voting machines worked fine. I think it's a good portent for election day.

Why did the flu vaccine shortage happen?

1. The flu vaccine business is risky: some years you sell out, but other years you make 50 million doses and only sell 20 million. That makes it fairly unattractive, especially since....

2. It's a commodity market, so profit margins are thin to begin with.

3. What's more, the biggest buyer is the government, which buys in bulk at a very low price. So profit margins are even thinner than they might be.

4. FDA regulations have gotten tighter over the years, and vaccine makers have had an increasingly hard time meeting them because it requires expensive plant upgrades.

5. But nobody wants to invest a lot of money to upgrade their flu vaccine plants because there's new technology coming down the road in a few years that will render the current manufacturing technique (which uses chicken eggs) obsolete.

6. Finally, huge awards in liability lawsuits have scared vaccine makers out of the market. About 50-70% of the cost of most vaccines is taken up by the cost of liability insurance.

For starters, it's a pretty small market. The total vaccine market (for all vaccines, that is) is about $6 billion out of a market of $340 billion for drugs of all kinds.

This makes a lot of sense. I think it's a combination of 4 & 6.