LOUD!

Moving (New Blog)

2011-08-16T23:21:00.000-04:00

I have probably neglected this space long enough to lose any readers that I did once have, but for posterity/RSS feeds/whatever, here goes

In keeping with my tradition of being 3-5 years late to the blogging party, I've decided to move to Wordpress, and start a new blog there.

I'm not sure whether or not I will import my old archives. On the one hand, I understand the need for continuity and consistency when one is establishing a relationship with readers. On the other hand, I started this blog when I was maybe 16 or 17. I'm not sure I need to carry all of that old baggage anymore.

For now, let this be its own little historical curio: the record of my life from age 16-21. Here's to another glorious five year mission!

Thank you all for reading

Ottawa Fringe - Again

2011-06-22T15:49:00.000-04:00

Live From the Belly of a Whale

No one mentions this show without the words "Countries Shaped Like Stars" popping up at some point in the conversation. And for good reason: in 2009, Nicholas Di Gaetano and Emily Pearlman rocked everybody's world with their charming musical-romantic-comedy-fairytale-epic. It was with great joy, then, that everyone greeted the news of their return this year with Live From the Belly of a Whale. So the question is, of course, was it worth the wait? Does it live up to the hype?

I'm going to take an unintuitive tack, and say that it does not matter nearly as much as you might think.

By this, I do not mean to demean the hard work and planning that are apparent at every turn of Live From the Belly of a Whale. What I do mean to say is, like in a fairytale or a fable, the magic of Countries Shaped Like Stars was inside Pearlman and Di Gaetano all along (say it with me now: awwwwwwwwwwwwww...). It really does transcend the show(s). In fact, because of the way these two interact with each other and the audience, it's hard to tell exactly where reality ends and the show begins. I think that's part of what makes their act so compelling: unlike stand-up comedy, or a memoir like Fucking Stephen Harper..., you're not just you, sitting in a seat and watching someone talk; however, you're not being asked to fade away into omniscient nonexistence either, as is the convention in conventional theater. It's the stage equivalent of magical realism, and I love it.

Also independent of the specific show they're doing are the actors. This is the real treat when you go to see Live From the Belly of a Whale. Di Gaetano and Pearlman are extremely gifted performers both. They can sing, they can dance, they can act...and they do all of these with incredible aplomb. Pearlman is in many ways Canada's answer to Felicia Day, and while I haven't found as compelling a metaphor for Di Gaetano yet, he's winningly handsome, and every bit as charismatic as she. I can't put it better than another Fringe volunteer, who said of the pair: "I'd sleep with them. No, either one - I don't really care which. Both, ideally".

Live From the Belly of a Whale is half-story, half-musical (the songs are wonderful. I think the Citizen said "album-ready" and I really have nothing to add on top of that. It's about a brother and a sister, their childhood together, their eventual separation, and a bittersweet re-union (I'll give you three guesses as to where). Their style hasn't changed much from Countries Shaped Like Stars, but that's a good thing. They go from third-person narrative, to in-character dialogue, back to narrative, they do a song, there's some charming pantomime...the varied storytelling devices are not only a breath of fresh air - they're also used to poignant and humorous effect in a few places (the siblings passive-aggressively narrate details of their own story to each other: "Once, there was a girl whose German accent was not so good as she thought it was...").

But, in the end, you're going to this show as much to see the actors as you are the script, or the direction, or the lighting, or any other element. You're paying your $10 (or fringe pass, or whatever) to be entertained by two beautiful, talented performers. And they deliver.

Ottawa Fringe Triple Header (Part 1/3)

2011-06-21T01:18:00.000-04:00

Retour a Pripyat

I sometimes get sideways looks when I mention the Ukrainian ghost town of Pripyat. For those of you not in the know, it was a city of 50 000 people - all evacuated in the aftermath of the 1986 Chernobyl meltdown. Apparently, I talk about that place "like it's common knowledge". For what it's worth, Pripyat is well-traveled ground for gamers, who have made expeditions in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (the missions "All Ghillied Up" and "One Shot, One Kill"), as well as the STALKER series (Shadow of Chernobyl, Clear Sky, and Call of Pripyat). After all of these virtual outings, I guess you could say I've been left with a kind of morbid fascination with the place. To some extent, I still can't put a finger on what it is that makes Pripyat such a powerful image. I think there's a haunting, apocalyptic quality to a city without any people left in it. Like a car accident on the highway, you just can't avert your eyes.

Retour a Pripyat is, of course, in French. I didn't actually expect to understand it, but the premise drew me in. I ended up understanding about 90% of it - a pleasant surprise - so this review may not be complete. What I will try to do is give you an impression of what the show is like for someone with a high-school level French education.

In Chernobyl, a man sickened and burned by radiation rummages and scrounges amongst the wreckage. He makes his home in an abandoned house, and there he constructs for himself an imaginary family life, speaking to the discarded portraits on the dresser as though they are family. He eats potatoes every day and makes vodka from the peels; he believes it will stave off the effects of the radiation. He has arguments with his imagined wife (portrayed on-stage as a sort of ghost), who wishes that he wouldn't stay out so late (there are wolves in Pripyat).

Midway through, the original owner of the house - a shoe repairman - returns, shambling like a zombie into his former home. While he and the looter initially distrust each other, they eventually come to an understanding. He relates the story of how he came to Pripyat, only to have his life fall apart after the accident forced him to leave. The imaginary wife, conjured from the abandoned pictures, is revealed to be his. Flashbacks ensue, showing us a time of brief happiness and contentment, before the meltdown. Then, it's back to tragedy: we learn that the "child on the way" that the intruder imagined in the opening minutes of the show also belonged to the shoe repairman. The child died before it was even a year old.

It's a bleak show, and the wife/ghost punctuates the moments between scenes with real-life quotes from "Liquidateurs", the term used to apply to those people who received extreme doses of radiation during the accident and subsequent cleanup. A number, the program reminds us, that remains inexact to this very day. The set design is perfect: not too much, not too little. The bits of disused furniture are festooned with the plants that have begun to retake the city in the humanity's absence. Candles are always burning - of course there's no electricity to run the lights!

And there you have it. Retour a Pripyat: watching broken lives through the broken window that is my broken French.

Fringe Review 3

2011-06-20T03:10:00.003-04:00

Fucking Stephen Harper: How I Sexually Assaulted the 22nd Prime Minister of Canada And Saved Democracy

In response to some obvious initial questions: 1) No, he didn't actually fuck Stephen Harper; 2) The Sexual Assault wasn't intentional (and, indeed, that charge was dropped); 3) Yes, that is really the title of the show (and the accompanying book, only $15!)

"Civility", or at least some semblance thereof, is all the rage in the House of Commons these days. With that in mind, perhaps Rob Salerno should consider a career in federal politics. At this point, you may be glancing back at the title of the show, thinking "what the fuck?", but bear with me - I promise I will make myself clear in due course. The title of Fucking Stephen Harper... is about as vulgar as the show ever gets. Therein lies what I believe to be the show's greatest strength, but also a potential weakness. Left-leaning partisans looking to exorcise their post-election ya-yas will quite likely find the show bereft of hoped-for vitriol, and I fear that similar expectations may lead the Harper faithful to give the show a pass altogether. Put another way, the people who will want to see this show may not need to, and the people who need to see this show may not want to. It's a shame because I really, really like the title; it's provocative in the way that a political-comedy Fringe show ought to be. Unfortunately, I wonder if it does not suggest more partisanship than is really at work.

Before the show proper even begins, there is a powerpoint presentation cycling through anti-gay quotes from Conservative Members of Parliament, including Mr. Harper himself. It's blunt, but I enjoy that Salerno is not putting words in anyone's mouth. In fact, that's something I don't recall him doing once during the show. Even after he appears on stage, the powerpoint presentation continues as a visual aid to the show, with relevant articles popping up to underscore important points. Again, he's generally letting the content speak for itself. When he wants to illustrate that the Harper government has done something harmful to GLBT communities in Canada, he brings evidence. He does not rant and rave about any "hidden agenda" - in fact, the anti-gay policies of the Harper Conservatives prove to be anything but hidden.

Now, when I say this, I may be putting words in Salerno's mouth. I enjoy a subtle message he conveys about openly (and not-so-openly) gay members of the Conservative party. It isn't that these candidates are "not gay enough" (in one instance, the Conservatives alleged that Vancouver's Xtra newspaper had said as much). It's that they are members of a party that condones and facilitates the treatment of GLBTQQ* people as second-class citizens in this country. Whether or not gay conservatives are okay with that kind of treatment, it's not what Salerno (and, I would imagine, most gay people?) are going to vote for. He points out around this time that, under regulations brought in by the Conservatives, Cabinet Minister John Baird is not allowed to save lives by donating his organs (you can even join a Facebook group for that). Additionally, under the criminal code of Canada, anal sex still has a different age of consent in ~5 provinces, and all the territories (the others have found the law to be in violation of the charter of rights and freedoms). As he says, it is legal for a 40 year old to have hours of vaginal sex with your 16-year-old daughter in Winnipeg - but not for two men, ages 17 and 21, to consummate a long and committed relationship. Understandably, he does not link a John-Baird related Facebook page on that particular issue.

*Sorry if I left out any letters!

This might not sound very civil, but the whole show is presented very matter-of-factly, and not without some measure of balance. In the opening minutes, Salerno does go out of his way to point out that Stephen Harper's Canada is still in many ways more gay-friendly than the (perceived progressive) Obama's America. He does not froth at the mouth, does not accuse the Conservatives of wanting him dead, and calls them no names worse than "bible thumping". He's not without bias, but he presents his agenda clearly and up-front. He says that if people take away any message from his show, it should be to get involved in politics, and to get more people to care about gay rights (as a subset of human rights, viz "first they came for the gays, and I did not speak up...").

As for the story and the dramatic component of the show, they definitely take a back seat to the political lessons of the show. That being said, Fucking Stephen Harper
has the strongest emotional core of the three plays I've seen thus far, all of them very grounded in facts and figures. Salerno's motivations are not incredibly complex, but they really don't have to be. It's easy to understand how Salerno - as an aspiring journalist - would feel driven to great lengths to get answers from the man who threatens his livelihood (and, by extension, all our livelihoods - see the last parenthetical note). As he is stonewalled at every turn, frustration builds to the point where the now-infamous ambush becomes inevitable.

In the end, Fucking Stephen Harper is worth seeing. The story is good, the wit is dry, and the political humour plays well in Ottawa.

Ottawa Fringe Reviews 1 and 2

2011-06-18T13:20:00.000-04:00

Every Story Ever Told and Einstein's Bicycle

Telling stories within or - similarly - about stories is a trope as old as the hills. From the more modern examples of Inception and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged!), back to Hamlet's play-within-a-play, the Thousand and One Nights, and that one whole season of Dallas, storytellers seem to agree that, when it comes to layers of narrative...

Both Every Story Ever Told and Einstein's Bicycle fit into this spectrum of meta-fictional/meta-referential storytelling. True to its name, Every Story Ever Told is a one-man show in which the protagonist (?) attempts to rattle off, uhh, every story ever told. Starting, of course, with War and Peace. Ryan Gladstone makes a heroic effort to remember an interminable litany of Russian names, even if he stumbles once or twice. Since he's playing overambitious/insecure, it's hard to tell to what extent any of the slip-ups in the show were scripted or not - and therein I think lies a certain genius. Gladstone is, to some extent, trying to communicate the futility of his own enterprise, any mistakes he does (appear?) to make seem to underscore the message, rather than contravene it. As for the 4th wall, it's never really there to begin with, so there's nothing for him to break.

About halfway through the show, he decides to make the switch from telling every story to telling one archetypal story ("the perfect story"), in the vein of Campbell's monomyth (which he does mention - albeit briefly). This is, I think, the weakest part of the show. Gladstone solicits input from the audience, and weaves a tale of heroic adventure starring a fictionalized version of an audience member (in this case, the young woman sitting to my direct left). He inter-cuts this story (actually quite deftly) with examples from fiction of each of the many stages of the hero's journey. He has a really funny part here where he uses EVERY ROCKY MOVIE to explain a different segment of the monomyth. The didactic interludes are all, in fact, quite good; it's the audience's story that's weak. Gladstone's improv-fu needs work; he'll stumble over the details, and his story didn't always cleave to the very promising premise of Love amid Chaos (inspired by that viral photo of a couple kissing amongst the recent Vancouver riots). To his credit, Gladstone does know when and how to keep things going if there's an awkward pause.

Every Story Ever Told almost feels like it should be a lecture, instead of a show. That's something I'll say about Einstein's bicycle, as well. Maybe a TED talk/performance is closer to the mark. Both seem to be an awkward balance of education and entertainment. Both deal in a measure of fact and fiction (or, in this case, facts about fiction), but neither seem to draw much of a conclusion on either front. In any show - I think - either the facts or the fiction should serve to make a point. The most powerful Fringe shows I have ever seen have been centered around the emotional deconstruction of one or more characters. They (and we, the audience), get to discover who the characters really are as their worlds are turned upside-down, and their illusions are stripped away. This is a principle well-known in science and technology: destructive testing/analysis. Both ESET and Einstein's Bicycle have a specimen clearly in their sights, but refuse to scrape off the skin to find what lies underneath. Gladstone's conclusion - factually- seems to be that our stories are both multitudinous beyond count...and yet reducible to sets of common themes and plot elements, but it says nothing controversial. On the emotional side, he doesn't really delve too deep into the psychology of the storyteller, specifically himself. Beyond "wanting to end his Fringe career with a bang", he doesn't examine his own desire to tell all these stories, nor even the reasons behind the (very human) need to tell stories in the first place.

Einstein's Bicycle is actually a collection of 6 short plays. Taken together, they're the stage-play equivalent to the all blue entry on TVTropes. Practically every line is a quote from somewhere, or a reference to something - to the extent that the program contains copious footnotes for three or four of the sub-plays. All in all, it's an enjoyable experience, but in being a synthesis of so much information from so many sources, it sometimes runs the risk of saying nothing itself.

I think the first two short plays are my favourites. In the first, a science reporter and a manhattan project engineer have a chance encounter on Bikini Atoll - just prior to a nuclear test. The dialogue is fun and flirty, but slowly reveals a more sinister underlying reality. In SF, it's often altogether too easy to examine the impact of new technologies in alarmist, reactionary ways. What I like about this first play is that it seems to address the fundamental change to our reality wrought by the development of atomic weaponry without bludgeoning us over the head with symbolism and the spectre of mass human suffering (all the while conveniently omitting the fact that the firebombings of Tokyo and Dresden were, by far, worse atrocities in that regard). The second is a young Lois lane and Clark Kent preparing to canoodle in a Rocket '88, as Sputnik ("Spoot-nik", they say) orbits overhead. "Can they see us?", the young Americans ask each other, repeatedly, as if Stalin himself has become a cosmic voyeur. I admit I have less of a solid grasp on what this one is supposed to mean, but the innuendos stay on the thin line between funny and sexy, and the leads have the chemistry to sell it all.

A Question of Civility

2011-06-03T21:25:00.002-04:00

Like any Canadian progressive, I am not thrilled that Stephen Harper won the election. But it would seem that I am much less upset than one Brigette DePape, recently fired from her job as a senate page for holding up a "STOP Harper" sign...during the speech from the throne. As spunky, defiant moves go, I think it's kind of boss. As politics go, not so much.

Ms. DePape seems to be a woman possessed of intelligence, creativity, and courage. She is worthy of respect. But so are the institutions of Canadian parliament. Her statements against the worst policies of the Harper government DO have merit, but I think that it is important to voice these complaints in the proper forum. That sounds very stodgy and conservative of me, but I think there is a good reason to believe that, in the long run, civility is just as important an issue as climate change.

My reasoning is this: because of how charged our political debates can be at the best of times, we need to have public fora that are as neutral as possible. If a Conservative protester interrupted a Liberal or NDP speech, it would not be very polite. I don't think we can make a good case that Ms. DePape's conduct should be judged by a different standard, just because we agree with what she says. No, I think that as a private citizen she had every right to say what she did. But as an agent of our Parliament, she had a duty to remain impartial - no matter how offensive she found Harper's agenda. There are all policies that we find offensive, but if we allow Parliament itself to become polarized and partisan, we have failed.

The good thing about Government and Parliament being separate is that we may remain loyal to the institutions of government, even while we have vehement disagreements with the present ruling party. This separation reminds us that the Government is not the ultimate authority - it is subservient to the good of the country and the will of the people. The Conservative party and its disastrous policies are a temporary thing. Showing disrespect to the Conservatives is not so bad; it may mean that you are uncivil, but it will pass. To show disrespect for parliament, however, shows a lack of faith in Canada and its people. I may not like that we elected Harper, but that does not mean I'm going to take out my anger on democracy, civility, and neutrality.

-LOUD!

Autopsy 2011

2011-05-10T01:23:00.000-04:00

This is the story of a deficit, an election, and the men who would be Prime Minister. It's about all of these things in the reverse order.

Former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff has the dubious blessing of being able to watch his own autopsy. We knew that the pen was mightier than the sword, but this week it has proved itself the scalpel's equal; every pundit has busily - and sometimes not so carefully - peeled another layer off this candidate's carcass to be put under the microscope. When all is said and done, what secrets will the investigation yield to us? Just where did Michael Ignatieff go wrong? At this point, we have several prevailing narratives of the election. The Toronto Star seems to believe that the turning point was during the English leaders' debate, when Layton asked Ignatieff to explain his dismal voting record in the House of Commons. Much of what I have heard on CBC radio seems to focus on the arrogance - perceived and actual - of the Liberal leader. On the radio and in the Ottawa Citizen, I heard it said that Ignatieff's moderate messages fell on increasingly polarized - and ultimately deaf - ears. And then there is the matter of the Conservatives' smear campaign against Mr. Ignatieff, which has been going on to various degrees since he took the job of party leader.

The story I wanted to tell about the election is that of the deficit. Possibly two (or even three) deficits, although I hope to show that they are, at least symbolically, linked. Throughout the
election, Harper's promises revolved around the economy, and the fiscal deficit that he hopes to eliminate. Ignatieff also proposed to eliminate a deficit, but one of a different sort: the so-called
"democratic deficit" that has plagued Canada for more than a decade. The common element of both deficits was, and is, trust. At the basest level, consider that in a society where fiat currency is
used, money is trust. Trust not only in the mint and the state and the government, but in other people. The mortgages and loans which, when their holders defaulted, sent the world economy spiraling into a recession, were the product of too much trust. Stephen Harper's rationale for keeping Canadian corporate taxes low was that it would earn the trust (in the form of investment and jobs) of corporations. A functioning democracy (indeed any just society) is also built on trust: trust in the system, trust in authority, and - most importantly - trust in candidates as it is measured at the polls.

Ignatieff argued, I would say correctly, that Harper had yet to earn a majority government because Canadians did not trust him. This, he said, was because Harper did not trust Canadians: he didn't trust them to ask the right questions at his campaign rallies; he didn't trust Canadian climate scientists enough to let them speak freely; he barely trusted his own cabinet to speak on their own. Harper had shown contempt not just of Parliament, but of Canadians themselves. It was a compelling argument, alas it seemed to go unheeded on election day.

...by a good 40% of the population.

Having established the link between trust and money, I think I'm beginning to see where Ignatieff's campaign went wrong. I might also be able to explain at the same time why Jack Layton did so well. Ignatieff's implicit promise in condemning Harper's treatment of democracy was that he was going to find some way to restore Canadians' trust in their political system. I wonder if he had simply failed to amass a sufficient wealth of our trust before he made that promise. Harper and Layton both have extensive histories in politics. Harper comes with Reform-party era cred as an Albertan rabble-rouser. Layton worked his way up from Toronto municipal politics. Say what you want about the Conservative ads attacking Ignatieff for his absenteeism from Canada, and his allegedly selfish and opportunistic entry into politics - one of these candidates was not like the others. The people who voted for Harper on election day presumably voted with confidence that they were getting the vindictive social and economic conservative they wanted. I have seen it argued that the NDP's upswing in popularity was largely attributable not to their policies, but to the charisma of Jack Layton. From what I saw of the leaders' trustworthiness ratings in campaign polls, this rings true. The proportion of respondents saying they would vote for the NDP was - for a time - no greater than usual, but the general opinion of Jack Layton's competence and trustworthiness were, if I recall correctly, higher even than Harper's. In short, I think voters saw Ignatieff as writing cheques he could not cash.

Let's also take a moment to examine the Liberal platform on democratic reform and renewal. Not that any party had a particularly strong showing in this area, but every other party, including the Conservatives, supports senate reform*. The Conservatives, it should be noted, also pledged to give more seats in Parliament to presently under-represented provinces. The only plank in the Liberal platform that could generously be described as "democratic reform" is the proposal for an online voting initiative. It isn't that I think online voting is a bad idea - which it is without extreme security safeguards - but I heard a lot of talk from Mr. Ignatieff...but I look at his platform and see no promises to fix the parts of our democracy that are currently broken.

* Technically, the NDP just want to scrap the whole thing, but the Liberals seem quite content with Canada's undemocratic elephant-in-the-room.

To bring some of this full-circle, I think Layton's question as to Michael Ignatieff's whereabouts in the House of Commons when 70% of the votes were going on cuts to the heart of the matter. Ignatieff talked the talk about respecting democracy, and changing partisan attitudes, but never really did the groundwork to back it up. As I said before, I don't think the Liberals should have avoided showing up to the House when Harper bullied them around with another confidence motion they didn't want to defeat. Sure, when an election comes, they want to be able to say "we didn't support any of their policies". I get it. But there is no shame in saying "voting for this bill is better for Canada than a federal election", and being honest about that. Or, at least, I don't think there should be. Instead of actually trying to extend an olive branch in the House of Commons, the Liberals decided to play a partisan game - not encouraging.

In any event, it's like "they" say: "The surest way to lose is not to show up at all"

Still A Distant Third

2011-04-20T00:14:00.003-04:00

I can still vaguely recall the very beginnings of my political socialization. I remember that my parents, before they took me along to the polling station, explained the Canadian political system in terms that my 5(?)-year-old self could understand. They said something about political parties: there was a Red one, a Blue one, and an Orange one. Being my younger self, my assumption at the time was that the Red party could do no wrong. They had chosen the best of the colours, hadn't they? That night, as we watched Jean Cretien's government secure a majority, I rejoiced in the tide of Red washing over the House of Commons.

Times changed. In the next election, I remember supporting Jean Charest's Progressive Conservative party (Parents: "I thought you wanted the Red party to win?"), for reasons I can no longer remember. Given the guy's subsequent reputation in Quebec (as a Liberal, no less), I think that has to go on the record as one of my more regrettable opinions. Not long after this election, the extremely damaging education cuts of Progressive Conservative (Ontario) Premier Mike Harris put me off the "Blue parties" for good.

As put off as I am from Conservative politics*, the problem in this country is that the likely alternative - that is to say, the Liberal party - is hardly inspiring. At the outset of this campaign, I would have said that Michael Ignatieff was decidedly preferable to Stephen Harper. If you ask me today, I'll tell you the same thing - but I'll say it in that voice; that "I'm-really-not-happy-saying-this" voice, that "I-am-contractually-obliged-to-tell-you-this voice". Every day, I'm losing a little more faith in the man. Every day I wonder why the Liberals agonized so much about getting this man onto the ballot. Oh, wait, we don't directly elect people to the ever-more-powerful** office of Prime Minister - I had us confused with a real democracy for a second***. Regardless, he's beginning to remind me a little of Paul Martin, the guy who managed to wait 20 years to be Prime Minister...without developing any strong vision for the country. I've had more profound political visions waiting at the dentist's office. I'll break it down:

* Big-C and small-c alike

**Since the Trudeau era; I won't say it's all Harper's fault.

*** Ok, so there's three branches of Government: Legislative (ie. House of Commons), Executive (Presidents), and Judicial (the Courts). Technically, our head of state is the Queen/Governor General, but they're figureheads, not functionaries. Other countries (America and France, to name just two) get to elect a President (head of state = executive) who is separate from the Prime Minister, who nominally serves as the head of government. In Canada, the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) has taken on the role of both Prime Minister and President, and yet is an unelected office****. Neither Judges nor Senators are elected in Canada, either. Out of three branches of Governments, Canadians may vote for only half (three quarters, if we're being generous) of JUST ONE BRANCH.

****Yes, you can elect the individual party leaders as MPs, but that is not the same thing.

No Support for Coalition Governments

It's bad enough that Stephen Harper - an enthusiastic supporter of a coalition that would have put him in charge - has renounced and denounced the notion of a legitimate governing coalition. What's worse is that Ignatieff doesn't seem too happy with the concept either. He seems to be of the opinion that he can restore the Liberal hegemony that predominated throughout the 20th century. After the corruption that has been exposed in both the Liberal and Conservative parties, however, It's unlikely that we are going to see an end to minority parliaments any time soon. What we've seen so far is a lot of brinksmanship from the Conservatives: by making a judicious use of confidence motions in the house, they force Liberals into compliance (and, largely, absenteeism) by dangling over them the threat of an (implied: unpopular) election.

Coalition governments suggest to me a different way of ruling, one that is more democratic than the present one. We have, time and again, elected a very divided House of Commons. What that suggests to Stephen Harper seems to be "I have the most seats, therefore I call the shots". To me, those results say: "Many Canadians desire Conservative policies, but MOST DO NOT". The obvious answer should be some sort of compromise, but of course this seems to sit well with no party's support base. And why would it? A good compromise - as Bill Watterson's Calvin observes - leaves everybody mad.

Everybody, of course, except for the 2/3rds of Canadian voters who find themselves alienated and ill-represented by the Conservative party's agenda. Those of us who are ashamed Canada's increasingly regressive stance on the environment, aboriginal rights, and birth control/abortion*****. The majority of Canada's most recent parliament was comprised of members of center-left parties. To me, that should mean a center-left agenda, even a center-left mandate. When Michael Ignatieff tries to distance himself from this idea of a coalition government, when he tries to present the Liberal party as the only credible alternative to Harper's conservatives, he seems to hearken back to a Liberal party that rules not to give the people justice - but for the sake of ruling. After ten years of Cretien and Martin, after six years of Harper...I'm getting tired of this shit.

Oh, yeah: I'm tired of this shit about disregarding the Bloc's voice in parliament on the sole basis of their separatist agenda. They also exist as duly-elected Members of Parliament representing the Citizens of Quebec; they should be allowed to participate in a government - and that is that!

*****Harper's Conservatives made it clear that none of their foreign aid money earmarked for improving the lot of women/mothers would fund abortions. They have yet to challenge abortion rights at home, but the double standard evinced here strikes me as cowardly, striking out at those who had no power to vote him out of office.

"Caring, Compassionate, Liberal Government"

This goes back to something my mom says, every time the Liberals play up the "compassion" angle. She says that it's all so much bleeding-heart bullshit, a meaningless appeal to the emotions. It sticks with me, because now it's all I can do not to retch when I hear Ignatieff say the word "compassionate". I hear "condescending". I'm a political liberal (note: small-l) because I believe in an inclusive social and cultural framework. I reject the toxic jingoism and intolerance of social conservatism. I'm not a liberal because I want people to be mollycoddled or looked down upon with pity. People who struggle to get by don't seem to want "compassion"; they want action. When I hear people speak at social justice events, I don't hear them demand a more "compassionate" form of top-down, hierarchical government. What they DO demand is empowerment, reform, revolution. The Canadian Liberal party is in many ways what American conservatives accuse the Democratic party of being. I had hoped, perhaps, that Ignatieff could have brought something new to the table...but all I see is more of the same.

(Dis)Respect for Parliamentary Institutions

Ignatieff has been trying to gain the high ground by pointing out that Stephen Harper is the first ever Westminster-style Prime Minister to be found in contempt of parliament. He says that Harper does not deserve the trust of Canadians, because he does not trust Canadians. I tend to agree. But Jack Layton was quick to point out in the leader's debate that Ignatieff has the poorest attendance record in the whole House of Commons. I can understand that the Liberals did not want to force an election they did not see a chance of winning...but to resort to chronic absenteeism strikes me as a kind of political cowardice. Either they support the Government's policies, or they do not. If they were afraid of going into an election having supported Conservative policies in order to stall an election (which, by inaction, they did), perhaps they should have DONE THEIR JOB as the official opposition and attempted to affect change in Conservative policy?

With his cowardly voting reputation, I'm afraid I don't think Ignatieff has even one foot to stand on. He only has himself to blame

In short, while I don't think I will ever vote Liberal in this country, I'm used to thinking of that party as the one I'd rather have in power, if it's going to be either them or the Cons. I thought that maybe Ignatieff's leadership (if one was to believe the hype) could have upgraded them to "meh, not bad", or even "a decent second choice"...but the fact that he has not managed to do even that, well, that's just another sign of Canada's crippling drought of political vision.

LOUD!

Platform 2011

2011-04-04T00:06:00.001-04:00

In the rush to (hopefully, if doubtfully) give our esteemed Mr. Harper the boot in the upcoming federal election, I may have neglected something. I have been too keen to talk about what it is I do not want for Canada, and in so doing I have lost sight of a far more important question: what DO I want? Tonight, I intend to answer that question as best I can.

Election Results:

Unfortunately, a coalition government seems to be a non-option. I think we've seen that any party - Liberal or Conservative - will quickly forget its promises to its supporters if given any position of sufficient leverage to govern alone. No, I fear that even a Liberal minority would be impossible to distinguish in practice from the present adversarial brinksmanship of Harper and his cronies. I think, perversely, that another Conservative minority (the likely result of this election) may actually be the best option. It may eventually impress upon the Liberals the value of forming a coalition government, and it would probably put pressure on Harper to resign. Since Harper has been practicing a very autocratic kind of governance, I imagine there is no ready successor. It's a long shot, but a Conservative party so humbled might actually be worth dealing with.

Structural Reform

This is a big one, so here goes. I want the senate either overhauled or completely scrapped. Two options for the former: directly elected with equal representation for each province and territory, OR elected with parties receiving senate seats in direct proportion to their share of the vote (a neat idea suggested to me last night in a bar: still the cornerstones of democratic society!). Given the continuing consolidation of power in the Prime Minister's Office, I think it is no longer acceptable that Canadians do not directly elect their PM. I find it distressing that the results of a party's leadership convention are, in some ways, more significant than the outcome of a FEDERAL ELECTION. This cannot continue to be the case. Finally, I want some kind of electoral reform. I think Preferential Voting would be just about right. No system is perfect, of course, but I find First-Past-The-Post to be obviously unsuitable for a multi-party democracy.

Policy Initiatives

I want Canada to get a real environmental policy. The Liberals sat on Kyoto for 10 years and did nothing. The Conservatives castigated them for it, and then had the gall to start backpedaling, to the point that our country is now an embarrassment to itself in the international community. I want us to scale back development of the Albertan tar sands. I don't want us to go chasing arctic territory only so we can keep gulping at the dregs of the world's oil supply while the planet dies all around us. I want money invested in producing cellulosic ethanol, which is made from plant waste, and does not steal food from needy mouths. I want money invested in building green energy that is more than just a stupid publicity stunt. I want an emphasis on reduced consumption, increased re-use, and - more generally - sponsorship and support for bio-mimetic architecture and technology.

I want more funding for education, with the express goal of lowering tuition fees. I may not be saddled with student debt (yet), but the very institution of giant student loans is a kind of debt slavery for those who lacked the foresight to be born rich (oh, yes, how could they forget?!). I do not approve of this behavior on the part of schools, banks, or the government. If we believe that access to education is a right, let's put our money where our mouths are.

I think we should set a timetable for a gradual withdrawal of our combat forces from Afghanistan. I have seesawed back and forth on this issue, but I do not see a way for us to achieve our goals in the present political climate there. I think that we should remain committed to humanitarian efforts in the region, but frankly, 9/11 was ten years ago. If we have not achieved sufficient vengeance by now, then we never will. I think we should take some time, get some perspective, and make a considered plan for our continued involvement in Afghanistan. That plan should not involve fighting a war whose victory conditions are nebulous and unattainable.

I believe those are the major points. Thank you, and goodnight.

Cowabunga, Dude.

2011-03-28T22:12:00.000-04:00

It's a heady combination of a coming election with my own mercurial literary ambitions, getting me into that frame of mind in which I want to have arguments with big words and big ideas.

I get excited about elections. It's probably not a good habit, though - these things are expensive. It's also perplexing; I don't think I have ever in my life cast a vote for a winning candidate. Depending on your metrics, I have wasted every single vote I've ever cast. That's in three years of being legal voting age - just imagine the poor blokes for whom this has been a reality for thirty! Why all the excitement, why the nervous energy and the hope for changes that will never come? It would be too easy to become despondent, and perhaps I would have more reason than most. Well, if we're being technical, more reason to do so than a plurality of the Canadians who even bother to vote.

It's at a time like this when perspective can be, for lack of a better word, handy. Dandy, even. Why should this election's failure to produce radical, progressive change in this country bother me? Human history is a long chronicle of justice mostly prevailing over injustice. I realize that I run the risk of sounding positively panglossian when I write this, and I would like to qualify this statement. Progress has been erratic, fundamentally un-equal, and above all else it will never be complete. That does not mean that progress has not happened, nor does it excuse us from trying to extend the rights, freedoms, and quality of life that "we" (i.e., the kind of people who are affluent enough to spend their monday evenings blogging for no pay) possess to as many people as possible.

I should be careful to define my terms. "Progress" is a vague and loaded term, but I shall do my best to reach an agreeable definition. Progress may be scientific, technological, social, or spiritual. Progress can be said to have happened when we reach a new, or more complete understanding of an object, a process, or a concept than we previously had. Progress can also be innovations or insights gained from such understanding. I think that some people question this sort of definition, because some innovations are not "good" in their eyes. I don't think it should matter that a novel design of coal plant is an environmental nightmare; it merely offers us the ability to accomplish a task in a different way than we have before. When we come to understand that burning coal is not desirable - for any number of reasons - that, too, is a kind of progress. It is our responsibility to apply the new wisdom we have gained, and in this case, to stop building coal-fired power plants. At least, it is if we believe in the cause of environmentalism. I should add, finally, that progress can be said to have happened when humans meet the goals they have set for themselves.

I think that while it has taken "us" a very long time to come to a more complete understanding of what constitutes a human being and a citizen, that the definition has nevertheless been continuously expanding. From the exclusive club of propertied Athenian men, how our definitions have grown. Grown from white men to encompass men of every colour and creed. Grown from men exclusively to include women. Grown to encompass notions not only of belonging to a city-state, but to states and provinces, counties, countries, and even now the notion of global citizenship gains traction. We talk about citizenship and participation in online communities, which cross national boundaries (although linguistic ones may prove harder to breach...). Our notion of rights is expanding, too: we can conceive of rights to reproductive choice, to sexuality - healthy sexuality, to fresh drinking water, to education, to privacy...rights that have never existed comprehensively and for entire populations before in the whole history of our species.

The Harper Government has not been a stellar one. It can even be argued that they have tried to back-pedal on some of these crucial liberties. But always remember that it is we, we who side with the greater measure of liberty, inclusiveness, and tolerance who surf atop the inexorable wave of history. Let Harper build his sand-castle prisons; the tide is coming.

My Life Measured in Garbage Bags

2011-03-26T18:37:00.001-04:00

Three years is enough time to accumulate quite a bit of unnecessary shit. I would be polite, but there is frankly no other way to describe the utterly superfluous junk that I find not-even-sentimental reasons to save from their truly deserved place in a trash heap. Poorly-written snippets of RPG systems I was making up, long abandoned. Sketches of cool futuristic guns that I draw whenever I get bored. Eight hundred course outlines and schedules. The panic-ridden house-cleaning that my compatriots and I have recently completed has opened my eyes to a certain disparity between the person who I am, and the one I would like to be.

To borrow a phrase from Daydream Believer, I don't want to settle. Or, more precisely I don't want to be the kind of person who settles. I'm young, I'm physically fit, I don't have a lot of obligations: no children, no permanent career position with good benefits and a nice pension plan. Why should I tie myself down as though I do? Why should I spent what will be - if not the best - the most able and mobile years of my life building a nest? I will have plenty of time to build a nest when it's time to, um, lay some...eggs...in...it? There are some pragmatic and political reasons, too; I don't want to be the kind of person who gives in too easily to the empty acquisition of mass consumerism. I mean, where's the fun in that? I'm not such an extremist to believe that nothing bought can have "real value" - precisely the opposite: I'd rather have less stuff, but individually I want the stuff I have to mean more. Less stuff is easier to move. It's not as messy, even when it's not exactly cleanly arranged either.

This desire for less "stuff" is also a broader part of a life philosophy that I've been entertaining for a while now. We can call it "Technomadic" culture, if it indeed deserves a name at all. The combination of highly-portable computing devices, ubiquitous wi-fi and wireless internet access, and "cloud computing"* means that I can be a knowledge worker from anywhere, at - roughly speaking - any time. Besides, cross-time-zone businesses are practically old-hat now. What relevance does the standard workday have when you need to be ready to help customers half a world away? It should be possible to, through a conscious minimizing of junk possessions, escape some of the "shackles" of a traditional white-collar job, especially in a knowledge industry. It should also be possible to make re-locating myself much, much easier if most of my stuff fits into a modestly-sized attaché case and a laptop bag. I could move to a new city by hopping on a train, or taking the next flight. There are still accommodations to be considered, but as long as one sticks to cities with month-to-month rentals available it shouldn't be too much of an issue.

That's an awfully...different speculative life than the one I lead now. It's possibly not too environmentally-friendly (depending on where and how I move), and it most certainly is rooted in a certain kind of middle-class privilege. I can only say that it's a notion in its infancy, likely untenable. I find myself nonetheless compelled by a certain minimalist component. If I have to choose, I would rather live with a few items of high quality, than with an ocean of disposable junk. I would rather live modestly in several interesting places, than live opulently in just one. That is, of course, still my aspirational self talking. My real self is still content to sit on his ass and play videogames. But a man can dream, so dream he shall.

In other news, there's an election now looming on the horizon, and I may give Stephen Harper credit, for once in my life; he did say that this was something Canadians didn't really want. Well, from my tiny cross-section of the Canadian population, it looks like he was probably right, albeit not for the reasons that he would hope. The people I know don't see any difference between the two parties who can be expected to form governments in this country. "Mildly objectionable" has been the only way to describe Canadian Prime Ministers since Brian Mulroney was "Very Much Objectionable" in the late 1980s (or, if you like it with a dose of perspective, since before I was born). Of course, "Not Something Canada Wants" is not the same as "Not Something Canada Needs". Can we, perhaps, salvage this poor election by proving that it needs to happen? Eh, maybe.

The Conservatives were set to fall on their budget, so regardless of whether or not they turned out to be in contempt of Parliament, there was an election coming. I found Harper's suggestion that the budget was "not a political game" to be disingenuous; a bad budget implemented quickly isn't actually good for Canada. Was the budget bad? I must confess that I have not read it, but all of the opposition parties - together representing a majority of those Canadians who bothered to vote in the last election - seemed to think that it was. Their obvious partiality aside, the Harper Government seemed unwilling to introduce compromise measures to woo even one party's support. I think that's characteristic of Harper's government style, so it's no surprise. It's problematic to me, because I can stand a Conservative minority that makes concessions, that ever acts in the spirit of co-operation for the benefit of the nation and its people. I don't really have time for Stephen Harper and his mildly objectionable political games.

But let's talk about this "contempt of Parliament" thing for a moment. For the first time ever in any Westminster parliament, our Conservative government has been found in contempt of said body. If it were some antiquated relic, something that was a commonplace occurrence - a slap on the wrist - I might not think it altogether important. However, the fact of the matter is that the government was asked in a legal and legitimate fashion for information which they did not provide. This was a party that had run on a platform of increased accountability, and it fell flat on its face. This is to speak nothing of their broken promises to reform the senate and the judiciary. If Stephen Harper had kept his word on any one of these issues, I would be singing a different tune. Stephen Harper may have been an antidote to years of Liberal corruption, he may have been what we needed at the time...but now he has proven himself no better than those he supplanted. We may not have anyone capable of articulating a coherent and inspiring agenda here in this country, but we can give this douche the Boot. "And why not?", say I.

For International Women's Day

2011-03-08T16:11:00.000-05:00

And now for something a little more serious.

I think these may be separate days, but around this time last year there was a call for people on the internet to make a blog post about an inspirational woman. It may have been in the STEM (Science Technology Math Engineering) fields specifically, but I don't remember. Last year I missed the date and felt kind of bad, so this year I'm going to do it (probably) early, and no less on International Women's Day.

I thought about this for a little while. Ada Lovelace is a strong suggestion, being arguably the first computer programmer in human history...but I've only recently become aware of her and her contributions to math and computer science. No, I have selected a figure far more ingrained in my memory, one Roberta Bondar. Take a look at that article. The woman has, like, six university degrees. I couldn't even manage a lousy one! She's also a celebrated landscape photographer. On top of that, she has visited the Final Frontier.

Roberta Bondar became something of a childhood hero to me when I first read (and then re-read something like a million times) her book eight days in space. I still remember at least one fact from that book: she found out that in microgravity, she no longer required glasses or contact lenses as her eyeballs had assumed the 'correct' shape, and could see normally. Along with Star Wars, Star Trek, and this one film that I think was called "Space Camp" (which, like her book, I revisited an innumerable number of times as a child), I think it is safe to say that her book fuelled my desire to become an Engineer or Astronaut. Unfortunately...

I would like to raise a rhetorical toast to Ms. Bondar on today, International Women's Day, in the hopes that many fine women will follow her example.

Hear, hear!

Maximum Game?

2011-03-03T13:14:00.000-05:00

I know that it has been a very, very long time since I last posted here. Not only am I hoping to change that, I have an interesting project in the works. Stay tuned.

I feel a bit guilty that I'm not going to write about the recent uprisings across the Arabic world today, but I'm easing myself back into this - have patience. Today I've got something a little fluffier: first impressions of the Crysis 2 Multiplayer Demo (ugh, aren't I rich and white today?)

Prelude: I still haven't finished Far Cry, but I do own it. I've only ever played the demo portion of Crysis' single-player campaign. A few months ago, I
downloaded the free Crysis Wars multiplayer-only client, which I needed it to play a cool Cryengine remake of this old game Outcast. Of course, I also fooled around with the vanilla Crysis multiplay. For those uninitiated, Crysis is a PC-only
First-Person Shooter in which the player (a US Delta Force operative, callsign "Nomad") is sent to rescue some scientists (who have made a 'wondrous' discovery) from
North Korean forces who have taken control of the islands on which they have been conducting research. Oh yeah: it's 2019 and "Delta Force" means not only are you a
special-forces badass, you're also wearing a state-of-the art "Nanosuit", capable of making you: 1)incredibly resilient to damage, 2)strong enough to flip trucks and jump
like an NBA player in mooon boots, 3) Fast. Usain Bolt fast. 4) Invisible ... but only one of these things at a time. Also, there are frosty aliens who look like the
Sentinels from The Matrix.

In the multiplayer portion of Crysis, it's nanosuit-wearing soldiers versus nanosuit-wearing soldiers (US vs. North Korean knock-off suits*, equal for the purposes of game balance). There are also vehicles on certain maps, depending on the type of game you're playing (the game features Death Matches and a Territorial Control mode). The resource-management aspect of the Nanosuit (it has limited power, and each mode draws power when you take certain actions, e.g., speed mode increases your sprinting speed at the cost of suit energy, Armour soaks damage at the cost of energy, etc.) adds to the game some tactical variety that simply isn't available in a game like Counter-Strike or the various Calls of Duty. The "problem" is, I'm not entirely sure how 'tactical' the game ends up being. Crysis to a large extent espouses a certain amount of simulationism: the nanosuits are camouflaged, and do not stand out against the backdrop of the game. Enemy load-outs are not readily discernable from their silhouette, not at range. Headshots tend to be pretty instantly lethal. In short, it is in many ways like the modern trend toward "realistic" shooters, like the Battlefield series or to a lesser extent, Modern Warfare. The key determinant in success seems to remain fast-twitch reflexes, and not strategic use of the nanosuit.

* I believe these also appear in the Single-Player campaign later on

Crysis 2 is similar to its predecessor. The primary change is that the suit modes are different. Where "Maximum Armour" used to be the default mode, there are now only 3 modes, with "Power" (a combination of speed and strength) now being the default. Armour and Stealth modes now cost energy to run, and are activated by Q and E respectively. A small part of me wants to "Cry" because those buttons really should be for leaning left and right, but alas the ability to lean seems to be a casualty of Consolitis (Crysis 2 is no longer PC-exclusive). I don't think there is any way to drop prone in this game either, which is also a minor sadness. The benefit is that, compared to the awkward radial menu from the first game, switching modes in mid-combat is now (though futile because you're probably dead anyway) possible and not kind of a crap-shoot that requires you to take your finger off the trigger button. I was thinking that the reduction from 4 to 3 suit modes would be another console-centric simplification, but the fact is that Speed Mode was a one-trick pony in Crysis 1; Strength mode increased your mobility with a super-jump but ALSO increased the stability of your weapon aim and the damage of your melee attacks. Speed Mode was useful in the campaign, but it didn't do anything a "sprint" button didn't already do.

I like that Crysis 2 has 6-on-6 team multiplay. I like that it tracks kills AND kill assists. I like that it has a point-scoring system that tracks both kills and objectives into one score. Those are pretty standard features, though. What about the suit modes? Stealth mode enables instant stealth kills from behind, but I suck at stealth so I can't really give you a good idea of how much fun it is (yet). Armour mode...Crysis is a lethal-enough game that if you're in someone's crosshairs you're going to die if you aren't already shooting them, or aren't a headshot wizard. I like that it's there, but I think that the default Power Mode provides better armour in the Sprint function, which makes you functionally very hard to hit (not helped by lag - Crysis 2 is an MP game that may be too pretty for my system even at the lowest setting, and moreover really belongs at LAN parties where latency is a non-issue). Theoretically, I think that Halo: Reach's "suit lock" might be a better model for an ability that actually feels useful.

I'm not sure how I feel about the Call-of-Duty-style XP/promotion/unlock system. Bluntly, it feels like the rich are going to get richer, and in a twitch-based MP game they don't need any help anyways. Not to begrudge people their sense of advancement, but what I liked about Crysis was the premise of modularity and adaptability: from the get-go you could choose a play style in the Single-Player campaign, and the game had suit modes and weapon attachments to go with it. Sneaky Bastard? Stealth mode and silencers! Speed Freak? Speed mode and SOCOM pistols akimbo! Bruiser? Strength mode and FISTS! Sniper? Any suit mode and sniper scopes on EVERY GUN (you could even throw the 8x scope on the shotgun!?). The need to unlock your favoured gear, and even the four basic classes...it feels too linear and structured. Anyone who plays long enough will be able to unlock most anything they want, but I just don't think shooters need all that much of a meta-game. This isn't League of Legends, after all. I do like getting "HEADSHOT KILL: 150xp!" as a message, but that's just a copycat feature from Call of Duty, as are the now de-rigeur killstreak awards (doing well at this game? Here have a GAMMA RAY SPACE LASER** because you clearly need the help!). Crysis was, in many ways, the Halo of PC: over-hyped, over-rated, overcompensating for something. Except that Halo has jetpacks and Forge World now, whereas Crysis merely offers more of the same.

- LOUD!

The Once-Chained People

2011-01-31T10:47:00.000-05:00

Watch.

More later

Be Careful What You Wish For

2011-01-28T11:02:00.001-05:00

Compare and contrast these two articles.

I think by now, we all know and understand the dangers of "realism" such as it applies to modern games. The shit-brown and grey colour palate has lost any vestige of novelty that it once had. The iron sights of the M-16A4 assault rifle and the AK-47* have become tired and familiar...you know the drill

*or AK-74 and other models/derivatives thereof.

Although Yahtzee writes that Peter Moleneux is to be admired because he still lives in a time when the games industry produced auteurs, and that gaming today suffers because this is no longer so. I think, however, that Moleneux and the shit-brown shooter collective share a key problem. It's realism, or at least, the promise of realism.

Different games and different developers have this problem for different reasons, but it's the same problem: "realistic" doesn't equal "fun". The obvious starter is graphics: realistic graphics are very nice to look at, to be sure, but when you put a premium on verisimilitude, you miss something: readability. For those who followed the development of Team Fortress 2, the original concept was to make a very realistic class-based military shooter. That was all thrown out when the developers realized a) everyone was doing that already and b) it wasn't very much fun. When they decided to start over, they put a premium on making easily identifiable player silhouettes. They added a kill-cam to show you where you were killed from. They made the team colours stand out against the environments.

A stealth game, it is not. But when you die in TF2, it is rare that you don't understand WHY. And when you can do that, you can learn from your mistakes. That's how games are supposed to work.

So how does Peter Moleneux suffer from the same problem? Well, Fable may not have realistic graphics, but I think he's trying to "solve" the "problem" that RPGs have where you can only interact with certain parts of the world. In your classic RPG, you can visit the village, you can rent a room at the inn...but not with all the gold in the Kingdom (which, of course, you do acquire) can you buy and own property, unless it's specifically part of the plot. You can talk to the barmaid, but you can't ask her to marry you, or have children with her. Not very realistic. The end result is that you don't feel immersed in the world because your character, like the player, is merely an observer.Well, thinks Peter Moleneux, with FABLE 1/2/3, I can FIX THAT!

I sympathize, because I do feel that way about some RPGs. Of course, like Yahtzee says these features all SOUND good on paper, but when you actually implement them...it turns your swashbuckling adventure into either too much of a management sim - or too little of one if that's what you were looking for.

The Problem (capital T capital P) is that when a developer confuses a game with a simulation, they end up making a product that is a little of both, and enough of neither. Games are by nature based on arbitrary rulesets, abstractions of a greater reality. It's OK in a game if you can't sex up the Barmaid, because maybe that's beyond the scope of the rules. Conversely, it would be ok if ALL you could do was sex up the barmaid (dating sims, anyone?). Games are conducive to narratives and literary conventions because the character doesn't really have a life to live; they have a single purpose: complete the quest(s) (get lamp, slay the dragon, rescue the princess, get eaten by a grue...). Simulations, on the other hand, are by their very nature more suited to a sandbox style of play. They can have objectives, sure (see: ARMA 2), but their most powerful moments are always player-driven. Of course, games and simulations give different kinds of satisfaction. Games have an end to them. You can WIN a game, and that's satisfying. You can't win a simulation, but what you can do is create and play. The problem with a sim/game hybrid, in my mind, is that an experience like Fable has conditioned you to treat it like a game...and when the game ends, it drops you in a sandbox with no more challenges to complete, and it feels empty.

We used to know that you could only talk to the NPCs with names, and that's how it was. Now that the unnamed NPCs CAN talk, we're sad because they don't have anything interesting to say.

-LOUD!

The Ghost of Christmas Presents

2010-12-26T00:40:00.002-05:00

I don't believe a word of it. I don't believe that a demigod was born some two thousand and ten years ago on this day. I don't believe in demigods at all; I'm an Atheist. So why do I feel bad about not buying anyone a gift (yet) this year?

For the record, I know the answer: it's cultural. I grew up celebrating Christmas, even if it wasn't a religious event for me, so I feel as though I should honour the spirit of the season. Which is fine, but this year I'm poor. I make enough money to feed myself and not much else, where are these gifts supposed to come from? I don't have any brilliant ideas about the perfect gift for anyone, and I don't have something quite so sentimentally cool* as the tarot cards Hangedman (Gold) handed out this year (designed them himself, too!). Besides, I'm beginning to think that I don't really want *stuff* for Christmas, anyway

*It's weird to call something "sentimentally cool", but they're sweet designs and he's got a reason for giving each person a particular card. It's the only thing I can say

That sounds more mature than I am. The reality is a little more cynical, a little more pragmatic. The things I like are toys, and usually they are tech toys. I read reviews, I look at benchmarks, I fuss over settings...the joy of technology for me is total involvement. Getting a tech gift is wonderful, but at this point I'm going to start making the kind of money where I can buy my own. It no longer feels very nice to ask "santa" for this stuff, 'cause it's pricey. It's a hobby; an investment. Lego is almost the same way. It used to be that my means were insufficient to get a lot of this stuff on my own, but now I can maybe squirrel away a little cash for a videogame here, a video card there...waiting until the 25th December seems arbitrary, and also mean because rather than make someone else buy the stuff, I can get it for half price the day after. If I could wait this long, why not one more day?

What I'm saying is, the things that I want from other people aren't really the things they have to buy me. I just want to get back into town and spend time with the people I've been missing. I honestly don't care if they buy me videogames or not. As awfully trite as this will sound, I'm with the guy hit hard by the recession asking "santa" for a job! That's the kind of thing I'm looking for right now: peace of mind, some concrete goals for my future, a decent job in the new year...and no one can give that. It's just another thing I have to work for.

That's not to say I'm ungrateful for what I did get this year. I got some clothes, I got a "plumbing auger" for unclogging my drains, some books and old Analog SF magazines...and of course the ever-important chocolate orange. I guess what I'm saying is that it's hard to miss with the small stuff, but the big gifts? I'm a big kid and I can buy my own toys now.

LOUD!

Little World

2010-12-07T18:45:00.000-05:00

December 6 – Make. What was the last thing you made? What materials did you use? Is there something you want to make, but you need to clear some time for it?
(Author: Gretchen Rubin)

Actually, this qualifies as a second answer to question 5! This year (and last year), I was the photographer for Little Worlds...which is also something I gave up. I'm not sure if that's really what the question means by "made"...but I engaged in a creative activity - what more do you want?

Little Worlds was very good for me in some ways. It gave me a reason to wander around Halifax with friends while practicing photography. I don't take nearly enough pictures when left to my own devices, which really is a shame. I enjoyed being part of a creative enterprise: it makes a better answer than "not much" when someone asks you what you do, at the very least. I liked finding (what could pass for) a parallel world of pure urban decay and foreboding in familiar Halifax.

Some things about Little Worlds weren't as positive. It was billed as a collaborative endeavor, but it didn't turn out that way. No one besides the creator/writer seemed to feel invested or authorized to take much control (that includes me). I think it might have been better to explicitly acknowledge that one person was going to be putting in most of the work, and taking most of the control from the beginning, if only for the sake of clarity and honesty. We didn't advertise much, and we didn't buy advertisements that cost any real amount of money. We didn't get an entirely separate forum from the creator's other comic, which had a rather different demographic appeal...

I don't have any ill-will about this, or not very much anyway. I would still work with the same people again if I had the chance. I think I would know what to do differently this time around. But there you have it, in the end: something I made AND something I gave up.

-LOUD!

Loud Earned the Power of Self-Respect!

2010-12-06T10:15:00.000-05:00

December 5 – Let Go. What (or whom) did you let go of this year? Why?
(Author: Alice Bradley)

Given that I chose "separation" as my word-of-the-year, you already know some of the things that I've let go of, or maybe those things or people let go of me? Either way, you have at least half the story. If I had to add anything, I'd say that this year I finished letting go of my very own Evil Ex (thank you, Scott Pilgrim!). Frankly, that's a little embarrassing that it took so long, but a) I can't change anything now and b) I might as well own who I am, even if I have made some mistakes in the past. I put too much hope, too much of myself into one person, and when the inevitable happened, I felt that I had invested too much to give up, even if giving up would have been the sane, the sensible, the adult thing to do. But I wouldn't say that I was an adult then.

I...I would answer "why", but it's really, really obvious why I would do such a thing.

-LOUD!

Somewhere Out There

2010-12-05T18:30:00.001-05:00

December 4 – Wonder. How did you cultivate a sense of wonder in your life this year?
(Author: Jeffrey Davis)

One word: Exoplanets.

From Formalhaut b to Gliese 581g, we're seeing a lot of planets outside our solar system, and we've only just started looking. Man, just LOOK AT THIS. Our tools are only going to get better. Our models of solar system formation and behavior are only going to get better. This is just the tip of a galactic iceberg! I don't think we'll find confirmation of extra-solar life anytime soon, but we can't even detect earth-sized exoplanets yet. Who knows what we'll have found in another 10 years?

I think that exoplanetology is rekindling my enthusiasm for space. The ailing shuttle program, the dismal prospects for a Mars mission any time soon (or even a manned moonshot) have been getting me down for the longest time. When I was growing up, we figured that habitable planets were really super rare, and we didn't even know how many *planets* there were at all in other systems. Now, all of that's changing, and it looks like some of our fears (or "pragmatic analysis") are proving wrong. There are plenty of planets out there, and many more red dwarf stars than we thought, too (with, of course, more planets of their own). And this is one tiny corner of one unspectacular galaxy. There must be trillions of trillions of planets out there, each with its own secrets, just waiting for us to uncover them.

It is a goddamn cool time to be alive

-LOUD!

(Arrive) Alive

2010-12-04T19:12:00.001-05:00

Ooooh, here's an interesting prompt!

December 3 – Moment.

Pick one moment during which you felt most alive this year. Describe it in vivid detail (texture, smells, voices, noises, colors).

(Author: Ali Edwards)

A preface: almost two years ago, my cousin was driving home from the Ottawa airport, when her car (also containing her father and younger sister) was hit by a drunk driver. She did not survive the collision, but fortunately the other two were spared at least. You may remember that I blogged about it at the time. Well, there is now a [name redacted] memorial run: an annual event at which there are not one, not two, but three whole races of 10, 5, and 2km. I didn't make down to Ontario the first year it happened, because I had just been home for Thanksgiving and I was worried about school scheduling, etc. This year, I forwent a thanksgiving trip and went for the run. I don't run, really, but I had let my sister talk me into doing the 10k. "What the hell", I thought, "I can roll out of bed and do a 5k with my sis, I can run 10k ONCE".

I did. I ran 10k in 48:56. For a guy who was hoping to "do it in under an hour", that's pretty damn sweet. I destroyed my goal. I also beat my sister's goal of under 50 minutes...AND I beat her first years' time by maybe a minute or two. Of course, she was a few minutes faster than me this time around, and she didn't have an older brother to egg her on that time, but this isn't really about any rivalries between the two of us. No: I ran 10k - something I didn't know I could do - and I did it fast enough to draw a little praise. And man, did I ever feel alive. Also, dead. The race was on Saturday and my legs did not stop hurting until Thursday. Next year: training first!

The day could hardly have been more perfect: clear skies, chilly but not arctic, not too much wind. There might have been some black ice on the roads we ran on, but I never encountered it. A crisp day. A local school served as the staging point, wherein we all got our digital time trackers (!) and numbers to pin on our chests. Elementary schools look and feel a lot different when you aren't three feet tall. It reminded me a little bit of a school I barely attended as a kid, but that's about it. We arrived pretty early, but we weren't the first ones there. We got our numbers, and waited. And waited. And lined up to use the washrooms. And grabbed free snacks.

Finally, it was time to race. I kept pace with my sister for about 6k, walked 1/3 to 1/2 a km, and then took up a somewhat slower pace for the remainder. It was tough going in a couple of places, but every so often I would break through a "wall", and the endorphins would power me onward. I sprinted (or, well, whatever you call "running with all you've got after 9 3/4km") the very last bit while my sis yelled encouragement (or whatever you call "my grandma can go faster than you!"). It was awesome. Then I felt alternatively great and abysmal for the next couple of hours. The sense of accomplishment was, of course, worth it.

It occurred to me as I was writing this that maybe I felt alive because I was thinking about death. Thinking about how much I should want to live and live well because of how truly fragile that is. I don't know if that's what drove me to run 10k. I don't know if that's why I felt so alive when I did it. My cousin, well, she lived life to the fullest - without hyperbole - so any time we remember her, there's a message: "get out, and live your life. Be a little more like she was.". That might have had something to do with it. All I know is that I beat my own expectations, which is something I haven't done in a very, VERY long time. It felt good. It felt like actually being alive, and not just going through the motions. It felt like something I should do more often.

-LOUD!

When I'm not writing

2010-12-02T21:20:00.000-05:00

Today's Prompt:

December 2 Writing.

What do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your writing — and can you eliminate it?

(Author: Leo Babauta)

The first thing that comes to mind is that - as a nonprofessional writer - it's not what I do, it's what I don't do that's the problem. If there is a problem. I mean, if I were intending to profit from my writing, then indeed I write too little. And I haven't written any fiction in at least a year. That's kind of a big if, though.

If, however, I interpret the question to mean "what do I do that doesn't contribute to the writing that you (as a blogger) actually do. In which case, what I do instead of writing (even when I think I should be) is more or less the same thing I do whenever I should be doing anything: videogames, wikipedia, TV Tropes, loud music, etc. No revelations here, just your standard time-wasting. Could I stop doing these things and just "git-r-done", as they say? ADHD kid vs. a world of distractions...place your bets, ladies and gentlemen.

I've been thinking that I might want to, at some point, look for a job writing a blog or even reviews for some tech site or other. Freelance for PC gamer or something. Probably not a good career move without an english degree, although now that I have a few IT certifications, I suppose it couldn't hurt to look for some kind of entry-level position. Someone's gotta be looking for an intern to run endless passes of the latest 3DMark while they skip out for coffee, after all. I'm only going into the trouble of mentioning this because I think the only way I could be expected to start writing on a more regular basis was if there was some kind of paycheque in it for me. Not that I don't like writing, but without a deadline or some kind of economic incentive, I write when I feel like I have something to say. Hopefully, something I haven't already said too, too much about (ie. Copyright, more recently Cyborgs). If that doesn't happen, I lose out on nothing...and you, dear reader, are spared another lecture about the value of sharing and sharing alike. Can we agree that it's probably better this way?

- LOUD!

"Separation"

2010-12-02T00:14:00.000-05:00

I'm not entirely certain about this Reverb 10 thing; I'm all for a month's worth of reflective writing prompts, but this "manifest what's next" business smacks of new-age jargon. I'm...skeptical, but for now I'm going to play along.

Today's (er, yesterday's) prompt is as follows:

December 1 One Word.
Encapsulate the year 2010 in one word. Explain why you’re choosing that word. Now, imagine it’s one year from today, what would you like the word to be that captures 2011 for you?
(Author: Gwen Bell)

I thought I'd be all clever and do something with statistical analysis, ie. "what is my most-used word of 2010?", but of course that would yield...[drumroll]

The

Not very inspiring. That, and I didn't want to spend an age collecting every post from 2010 and pasting it into a giant text file. I imagine some of the formatting text or html tags would get carried along and mess up the analysis anyway. Long story short, I got lazy. For what it's worth, I think the most-used "real word" on my blog (maybe just the front page, I'm not sure how the tool I fed the link to works) is "internet" or something? Not too exciting, and by no means unique to 2010.

Aw, man, I hate it when I have to do some real soul-searching! Alright, this year's word is "Separation"

This year, I got into a relationship that went long-distance for four months. That certainly qualifies as separation, even if we're back in the same place now (heck, I'm even typing up this post on her laptop :p). I spent the summer here in Halifax, attending school...separated from family and friends that I would have been seeing otherwise. Two...no, three good friends have moved away this year, and others are busy all the time or have become more distant for other reasons (I barely see ELI anymore, he's practically moved in with his girlfriend). I've been spending a year going to college and cleaning toilets, which is me becoming more distant (or...separated?) from the person I would like to be, and the achievements I would have liked to obtain at this point in my life.

I could have chosen "lonely" or maybe "distant" or something, but the first rings untrue: I still *have* a wonderful girlfriend, I can't say I'm wanting for company. Distant...doesn't quite cover it. I've been far from home for going on three years now...distance isn't really the problem. There is an ongoing process of separation as people leave, or prepare to leave for new horizons (also, law school. Kudos, Gnomesque!)

This wasn't a bad year by any means, but if you were looking for nuance, ya should've asked for more than a single word!

So what do I want the word of 2011 to be? Maybe "redemption", in the context of me redeeming myself in my own eyes: make amends, make money, make friends, and make tracks. I want to see new places. I'm thinking about moving somewhere new, starting fresh. But you know what? One-word summaries work fine in the past tense: I have a year's worth of experiences, and I can pick out a common theme in my mind. I don't really want to put the future in the same box before I've even had a chance to see it. I want next year to be better than this year was, not because I think this year was bad, but because there's no point in treading water or backsliding.

I think these are supposed to be 750 words, but nuts to counting. I've said as much as I want to say.

-LOUD!

#(2^8) - On attack, on defense, on the internet

2010-11-30T11:32:00.001-05:00

I have known my friend Etarran to look down on me for reading Boing Boing. Or, I guess look down on me for giving any kind of credence to the politics of its authors, or the veracity of any news I find there, or something. Anyhow, Boing Boing. Apparently having it as my home page (in Linux) is worth making fun of, even. Well, maybe I'm not being entirely fair.

"Anything [Loud] does is worth making fun of"

- [Etarran]

Anyway, the only reason I bring it up at all is this. It's a look at the inner workings of Boing Boing, insofar as they exist. And - as the author correctly identifies - what makes BB interesting in the age of "monetizing" and "[jargon]izing your revenue streams" and professionals whose job it is to help your dinosaur corporation look fluffy and interactive...is that it's not really about any of that. Oh yes, it's profitable (seven figures of profitable, even!)...but its audience (and, therefore, its revenue) seems to be drawn not to some clever marketing ploy, but to an honest kind of stream-of-consciousness writing from a host of intriguing minds. The kind of blogging that's been declared dead seventeen times over in the wake of facebook/twitter. The kind of blogging that the internet forgot when blogs went mainstream.

The most surprising quote from the article - in my mind, anyhow - is:

"Denton tells me his io9 site, which focuses on science fiction and weird science, was built specifically to compete with Boing Boing -- and points out that, according to Quantcast, it already has more readers. "Io9 is like Boing Boing without the complacency," he says."

It's weird that he doesn't get it. Boing Boing trades as much on personality as on content. IO9 can't really compete. I don't think it could emulate BB (try forcing spontenaity sometime), and for that matter its contributors have their own personalities. Furthermore, IO9 can't help being so much more commercial in its outlook. What's on the big screen next year? What just happened on Lost or SG:U? Why isn't Joss Whedon working on the new Buffy reboot? (And why is that even a thing? THAT SHOULD NOT BE A THING!). The mad science demographic probably overlaps pretty nicely between the two, but I don't really understand how I09 is supposed to be the competition: it's more focused, much less off-the-cuff, and to be blunt it has never once exhorted me to "just look at" this banana-related product. I read both BB and IO9, and really I had never conceived of one being positioned as "competition" to the other. This isn't Popular Science vs. Wired Magazine...this is, I dunno, Hollywood Insider vs. That Guy With Opinions at your Local Hobby Shop. Different categories. I wonder how you can be such a force in the blogging market, and not understand that you can't really even "compete" with people who don't really think too hard about their market share, and don't even think about what they're doing as a job.

He's declaring victory in a game they weren't even playing

- LOUD!

Another Addendum

2010-11-29T22:05:00.000-05:00

"The Times has taken care to exclude, in its articles and in supplementary material, in print and online, information that would endanger confidential informants or compromise national security. The Times’s redactions were shared with other news organizations and communicated to WikiLeaks, in the hope that they would similarly edit the documents they planned to post online.

After its own redactions, The Times sent Obama administration officials the cables it planned to post and invited them to challenge publication of any information that, in the official view, would harm the national interest. After reviewing the cables, the officials — while making clear they condemn the publication of secret material — suggested additional redactions. The Times agreed to some, but not all. The Times is forwarding the administration’s concerns to other news organizations and, at the suggestion of the State Department, to WikiLeaks itself. In all, The Times plans to post on its Web site the text of about 100 cables — some edited, some in full — that illuminate aspects of American foreign policy."

- The New York Times

I had an argument with some friends recently about Wikileaks, and while I came out in support of its radical assault on secrecy, they did not. They said that the cost of publishing data like the names of Afghan informants wasn't worth it. They said that governments, and not individual citizens, should be empowered to determine what is and is not secret. I disagreed then, and I think I still do now. Post-9/11 government security paranoia has surely served us well, but it's too easy a cloak to hide under when you've got something you want swept under a rug.

Perhaps if Wikileaks, rather than publishing material itself, would simply give their leaks to the press - who do have standards and who are accountable - rather than publish raw data themselves, we might see the kind of restraint that can save lives, while still giving power back to the citizens to take their oppressors in governments and corporations to task.

Power to the people!

-LOUD!

Crowd-Sourced Justice: the Resurgence of Mob Rule in a Networked Society

2010-11-19T09:15:00.000-05:00

Justice 101: the system of laws and courts that most of you, the readership, live with is based on a few precepts:

It is, in general, not a good idea to allow individuals to pursue vengeance against wrongdoers, as there will be no consistency or impartiality in the rendition of justice.
Law and order should serve to protect the rights of citizens (from excesses of government, murderers, discriminatory hiring practices, etc). Removing a person's liberty is, essentially, the ur-crime.
Being that punishment often necessitates removing or curtailing liberties, we have established the presumption of innocence and the system of due process because we believe that false positives are worse than false negatives.

"Crowd-sourced justice" is really just a pretty euphemism for "mob rule in the age of pervasive networked recording devices". Before the internet and camera phones were ubiquitous, the people with enough publishing power to make libelous or slanderous character assassinations were few. Fewer, anyhow. And they had printing presses or radio towers...big, physical landmarks with fairly unambiguous records of ownership. I suppose you could always have spread dirty rumours, but anything you could do verbally or in written communication you can do ten thousand times more efficiently now with a platform like twitter or blogger. It should not be particularly surprising that in the pseudo-anarchy of the internet, you can see aspects of the "state of nature" explored by the likes of Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau; the lawless, orderless never-never land which preceded the advent of politics. There are no authorities to which we may transfer our "right" of vengeance to in exchange for a measured response. There might be a Leviathan in the form of China's Great Firewall, but its reach does not yet extend across the whole network. And, if the things we did on the internet had no ramifications on the outside world, that would not be particularly worrisome. Unfortunately, we are seeing the intersection of internet and real-world justice. And, so far, I don't believe anyone has a very good profile for dealing with these situations.

The first example is the response of the US Big Content industry to online file-sharing, which runs flat-out into a brick wall because of internet anonymity. We have seen the RIAA and MPAA sue grandmothers and grandfathers who barely know how to send an e-mail, because their grandchildren have used limewire on their computers. We have seen ISPs subpoenaed to get at the names of their subscribers so that they can be subjected to lawsuit after lawsuit. We are seeing a push toward abandoning the presumption of innocence in favour of so-called "three strikes" laws which not only a) make internet subscribers DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE for EVERYTHING conducted on their connections, but also has them automatically disconnected without recourse after being *accused* of copyright infringement 3 times. And don't mistake this for a copyright rant: we should not let corporations run roughshod over our individual rights simply because it would be TOO HARD to take individual file-sharers to court and make the charges stick. Cry me a fucking river - your monopolies are not worth selling out the fundamental rights of an entire citizenry, end of story.

My second case study is the infamous woman who threw a cat into a garbage can, and was caught on camera. Within a day or so of the footage hitting the internet, 4chan and its ilk had discovered the woman's name, and she went from being a potential suspect to protective custody due to death threats. Here, there was never a shield of anonymity to begin with. This woman wasn't, as far as I know, a significant presence on the web behind some pseudonym or forum guest account. Not an unmasking, this was a kangaroo-court, with but one piece of evidence submitted before the faceless hordes pressed in to deliver their justice. The physical authorities had to step in to defend this woman from their presumption of guilt. No matter how incontrovertible the evidence, no one is to be punished before due process has been observed. If we should fail to uphold that principle even once, it undermines the foundations of a civil and just society. What troubles me is that there is no sensible way in which someone's name could be removed from the internet after being attached to such footage. Countries - for example, the UK, are already having trouble with overzealous libel laws justifying censorship. With the ability to post and mirror and hide content anonymously, and with legions of people willing to do so, there is simply no way to stuff the genie back in the bottle. Once a name and a deed are out there, they are inseparable...and indelible.

Which brings me to my third case study: Noirin Shirley. Reporting that she had been assaulted by a fellow Apache-Con attendee on her blog, she set off the usual shitstorm of slut-shaming, victim-blaming, and vitriolic misogyny that regrettably characterizes about half the total volume of commentary on feminist content on the internet*. The alleged assailant's full name was featured in the post, which was picked up in short order around the tech-news community. The worst comments accused Ms. Shirley of being "crazy", "a tease", "an attention whore", "a character assassin"...in, I would like to note, stark contrast to any and all available evidence in the style and content of her writing elsewhere on her blog. The woman displays a level of self-awareness that I would frankly find painful. Not that I couldn't imagine a circumstance in which even the most level-headed person might want to vilify another...I just think the burden of proof re: Noirin's supposed "craziness" sure as hell ain't on me. I did commend her (I'm "Loud!" in the comments, if you want to see what I said) on her bravery in posting as she did. Her stated motivations were laudable: "I’m tired", she said, "...of the fear. I’m tired of people who think I should wear something different. I’m tired of people who think I should avoid having a beer in case my vigilance lapses for a moment. I’m tired of people who say that guys can’t read me right and I have to read them, and avoid giving the wrong impression.". What's tragic about this, is that if you abuse a cat on the internet, you get threats. The kind of threats that put you into protective custody. If you abuse a woman, the internet...leaps to your defense (some screaming vocal woman-haters do, anyhow)? This is the kind of disproportionate response that justice systems supplant. Of course, calling someone out by name on the internet for a crime they have not been convicted of? Questionable, to be sure. Ms. Shirley's actions will, I hope, be a catalyst for a serious inquiry into sexual harassment at conventions and meet-ups of all kinds. But they also transgress against a fundamental rule of our justice system, and as much as it would pain me to see her face consequences, she might have to.

* What gets me is that you'll see this scum show up in the comments on feminist spaces where they're clearly not members of the normal community/discussion. Is there someone out there shining a giant douche-signal (it's in the shape of a giant cock) like they're calling down the wrath of the goddamn Douche-Bat on any woman who dares to defend her personhood on the internet?

I didn't want to get too much into the nature of the case (being that it is in the hands of the Police now), but I have become sidetracked as I am wont to do. I keep thinking about these cases. Is there way we can ensure ethical use of our internet services without resorting to tyranny? Would it have been better for Ms. Shirley to write her account after the police and the courts had rendered a verdict? What happens if her assailant is guilty, but acquitted? Vice versa? What are we going to do, since it really isn't possible to stop people from doing this sort of thing with the internet without shutting the whole damned thing down?

Last night, I had an argument with some friends about Wikileaks, and I realized that it, too, is a part of this "crowd-sourced justice". On the one hand, I think that we're still dealing with reduced governmental transparency in the wake of 9/11, and that something like Wikileaks is the sort of radical activism that could force governments to publish more and better data about what they are doing. But I can't overlook that - in publishing the names of Afghan informants as part of the "Afghan War Diary" - wikileaks' zeal has made it an accessory to murder most foul. Etarran identified the problem as being a lack of accountability and responsibility. Wikileaks is acting outside any regulatory framework, and one must ask the question "who watches the watchman's watchmen?". Julian Assange (who, by the way, if he turns out to be guilty of rape deserves to burn) has an interest in creating, and profiting from (if not in money, than in publicity) scandal. I can't believe that what we are learning is worth the lives of those informants, and what's worse I can't do anything to effect a change in Wikileaks' policies because it is not a democratic institution, nor does it answer to one. I cannot shake the notion, however, that in light of how internal regulatory measures have failed us in our time of paranoia and hypocrisy, that someone could have done it better. Someone could have shown us a world without lies, but instead all we got was a different kind of corruption.

I am resolute in my belief that there must always be a place where can be found the stories of victims, rebels, visionaries, prophets, and whistle-blowers. Our commitment to freedom in speech, in thought, and in the pursuit of fulfillment demands of us that we should hear the voices of the oppressed, and that we must answer. But, at the same time, our commitment to peace, order, and truth means that both speaker and listener have the most solemn duty to check facts, consider opinions, and act with deliberation and conscience. When we fail to do these things, we are giving in to a kind of knee-jerk lynch-mob insanity that our societies are built to protect us from.

-LOUD!

Sometimes I wonder why I even bother....

2010-11-17T09:46:00.001-05:00

Sometimes, you really can't make this shit up. Nuclear energy providers and pathologists conspiring to steal organs from corpses for 40 years. It sounds like a damn conspiracy theory, but here it is in the news. I've got practically nothing; did they think this would never come to light? Did they really think *this* was the way to increase public confidence in Nuclear power? More importantly, is anyone going to face even a modest amount of justice for these crimes? Are the pathologists who stole organs without consent going to lose their licences, or at least face some kind of disciplinary action?

I can barely think of something insightful to say about this kind of malfeasance. We're talking about stealing bones and organs from corpses to maybe cover up the dangers of working in an irradiated environment...I mean, it's not as if people wouldn't or couldn't or shouldn't perceive nuclear power plants as pretty dangerous places! It's like the article says: if some of the families had been contacted to make an informed decision, they would have allowed those organs to be used for research purposes. Just because something is potentially dangerous or unsavoury does not mean that people will automatically reject it. People choose to work in dangerous conditions when they feel that the risk is worth it. People will want to use nuclear electricity even if they know about Chernobyl...I mean, that's what we're doing RIGHT NOW, isn't it? If you live in France, or Ontario you sure are! If instead of stealing organs, these organizations had made a publicized effort to study the effects of chronic radiation exposure on their workforce (or, er, former workforce I guess?), they'd look better. They'd look conscientious. They would not be fucking grave robbers.

Update to Post #250

2010-11-10T10:05:00.001-05:00

this should speak for itself, really. I would submit to you that if there is a correlation between high-risk behaviour and texting/social networking, it would seem likely that those individuals more prone to addiction (eg., drugs, alcohol) would of course become addicted to text messaging and facebook. I can't say with any certainty that these stimuli push the same buttons in the brain, but that's my hypothesis for the moment

As an aside, I take issue with the idea that teens reporting "no texting" activity is 'on the bright side', as the article puts it. Really, Ars? You're really playing the grumpy old dude who can't understand young people these days, and in my day we didn't text message by golly if we wanted to see someone we walked to their house? Argh!

LOUD!

Skip this Post if You Don't Like Self Pity

2010-11-04T17:15:00.000-04:00

When you put it in perspective, I have not - in my life - been confronted with particularly many threats. No large predatory cats, no potato famine, no one has ever leveled a gun at my head. So when I receive a threat, I guess I find myself lacking in experience.

Today, I received a threat. Today I was threatened with expulsion. And I suppose as a corollary I might get fired, too.

It's not easy to react to, and not productive. I'm sitting there looking off into space thinking "it seems as though you want a response, but you've left me no options. I have no defense. What do you want?". And what did he want? All I could offer him was a meek "alright" (or whatever it is I said) anyhow. And so now I'm living day-to-day, one-more-strike and you're out style. And the part that concerns me is: I know I won't make it. Maybe it'll be a day, maybe a week: I'm going to screw up. I'll go to bed too late, or the alarm won't work, or my bike's gonna break, or I'll have a moment of weakness while staring down a sleet storm in the 7AM darkness and I am going to flunk my pasty white ass out of school and out of Adulthood itself, if my parents have anything to say about it. And unless I find a job that'll pay me rent and food it'll be back to Ottawa, to live forever in the flawless shadow of my sister the Engineer.

The problem is, of course, that I have no one to blame but myself

LOUD!

Post #250 (hoooray!): What Alcoholism Teaches Us About Being Cyborgs

2010-10-04T11:02:00.002-04:00

I step out of the classroom to switch from the brain amp (for as much as it augments my cognition, it also exacerbates the less helpful aspects of my brain) to the muscle amp. Actually, I don't get very far. I hit up the Tim Hortons around the corner for a muffin and a liquid stimulant suspension, which I hope will serve to temporarily increase my physical and mental performance - albeit with side effects (man, have we not figured out how to counteract the diuretic effects of caffeine yet?). I've been reading about cyborgs yet again. I guess I'd like to say that it's blowing my mind, but really I'm coming to realize that the story of the cyborg is the story of all Popular Science (capitalization intentional); we're sold one story by people whose job it is to froth at the mouth and speculate wildly and inventively...and then we're sold products by people whose job it is to make devices which are nominally durable and actually usable (and most importantly available without an additional ten years and ten thousand in R&D).

I'm about to step into the elevator (ok, done with the futuristic euphemisms) on my way down to the bike and I think "computers and bikes are pretty sweet, but where's my cybernetic enhancement that makes me less socially awkward?". A beat, and then: "ALCOHOL! Durrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr....". The "original" cyborg was a pretty heavy drug user, in theory. Drugs to keep awake, drugs to go to sleep for extended periods of not much to do. There's something in there about periods of intense sensory stimulation to combat the boredom inherent to long space voyages, and I'll give you three guesses as to what probably turns out to be a pretty energy- and mass-efficient means for "intense sensory stimulation". Alcohol-as-cyborg-enhancement is a wonderful thought experiment, as I'm discovering. I tripped some balls when I found out that cooking was an artificial, external organ...and that also applies to brewing! It's going to be pretty weird referring to "the brewery" as a human external organ (which we should totally start compiling a list of, guys?), but it's a fusion of living matter and technology which performs a chemical transformation so that our bodies may make "better" use of raw materials! Sweet!

Through this lens, alcoholism is a kind of technological dependence. I think this is particularly interesting...and also scary. I have been quick in the past to dismiss terms like "internet addiction" and "video game addiction" as unsubstantiated, products of an aging culture that refuses to understand mine and instead condemns it. But while the levels of physical and mental compulsion may be different, can we really draw a moral distinction between two kinds of technological over reliance? I think that texting-and-driving bans are just the first wave of realization that we're going to have to say "no". And that's uncomfortable for a lot of us, we who depend upon pervasive computing, who feel the loss of an internet connection like it's blindness, deafness, and laryngitis all in one (albeit temporary). Scary is good, though. Scary is important. Alcoholism is a clear, concrete, not-Hollywood example of what we don't want to be as cyborgs, which is to say helpless. Cybernetic enhancement is supposed to leave "[People] free to think, feel, and create" (not an exact quote) without having to worry too much about what amounts to bookkeeping. The enhancements taking control is a pretty straightforward nightmare scenario - and Alcoholics live it every day. They ARE the Borg.

I have two potential conclusions that I'm drawing from this so far. One is that when you see those ads (as in old Archie comics or what-have-you) that say things like "you don't need drugs to enjoy music", that's about as true as "you don't *need* shoes to enjoy walking". Drug policy also starts looking kind of weird, like you're being imprisoned for the crime of being a cyborg. I'll bet that's pretty small consolation to the frankly absurd number of people languishing in prison for such "crimes". Also, William Shatner's TekWar doesn't...seem...as...dumb? Olympic (and other) doping scandals start looking even dumber; why are drugs necessarily so different from the latest, greatest piece of sporting equipment? Drug paranoia boils down to luddism and future-phobia; these policies are based not on good logic and good sense, but as some kind of imagined bulwark against a tomorrow when the particulars of ones birth no longer govern the limits of his or her success. And isn't it funny that in fiction, that's what the BAD GUY's talking about (viz. The Incredibles; Harrison Bergeron)?

Now, lumping all drugs together for the purposes of this argument certainly does strain credibility. Legalizing pot is not really the kind of cybernetic revolution that we're particularly excited about (maybe it would help us mellow out and forget how much we're disappointed that stupid, dangerous, impractical, fuel-inefficient flying cars haven't happened yet?), nor does legalizing cocaine really seem like "human enhancement". This is where the second possible conclusion comes in. The idea of a drug using cyborg comes from the 1960s (surprise, surprise). Did they really expect that even when their proposed drugs became a reality that they would be free of negative side-effects? Pull out a US magazine and look at the mountainous fine-print on the back of the drug ads (illegal in Canadian publications)! Remember what I said about Caffeine earlier? Maybe we CAN'T remove the side effects. Biochemistry is already exceedingly complex and incompletely understood, not to mention that it varies demonstrably between individuals: some are more predisposed to become addicted to alcohol or tobacco, others less, for instance. Do I have things backwards? Is the dream of the drug-fueled cyborg just another dream from the past whose reality is much more dangerous and much less glamorous than we would have liked to believe when we dreamed it? Of course, if we can become addicted to devices and services (phones, internet) just as much, is there really a reason to see drugs as any different? Steroids shrink your balls, paper and digital records shrink your memory, right? So in which direction is it most correct to err on the whole oevre of human enhancement, in the end? Dangerous addiction is a proven and real danger of ubiquitous availability, but it's a lottery. Prohibition and proscription are unsustainable and have proven impossible time and again. So it seems that in enhancing ourselves we create - inevitably, though without any malice - an underclass of people who are controlled, rather than take control. Of course, we can suggest careful genetic manipulation to reduce the possibility for addiction...but think for a moment. Before genetic technology, what would be the comparable suggestion? More drugs to combat addiction.

"as much as it augments my cognition, it also exacerbates the less helpful aspects of my brain"

As the cyborg was at the time of its inception a construction designed to make humans MORE human, it seems appropriate that an amplification of our faults is perhaps inextricable from the process of being cyborg. So I guess, Etarran, that as much as you hate internet culture, it could be that you cannot have the transformative powers of the web without 4chan after all?

"...give the Red States Blue Balls!" (21/??)

2010-09-28T00:06:00.000-04:00

I was having a conversation with Daydream Believer, and she was telling me (after I complained of a sort of writer's block) that there was plenty to write about. And she mentioned the lack of support for safe abortions evident in Bill/Melinda Gates' charity efforts for Womens' health as one potential topic. I said that it was probably a political necessity when operating in the United States, and that a "different kind of soldier" was needed to fight for the acceptance of abortion in the US. And it strikes me now that this is perhaps not the best metaphor that I could have chosen for this, or any of a hundred thousand other ideological disputes. Analogy to warfare is not ineffective, not by a longshot; the wisdom of Sun-Tzu is valuable to many people whose job description is not "warrior prince" (gosh, would I ever love that on my résumé!), after all! But recourse to violence is often too real a response when no one is willing to give an inch. Should we dignify that by using the language of war? Should we cheapen the suffering of those who live in real wars by thinking and writing and speaking as though we are under siege, when in fact we live in peace? I am certainly leaning toward "no".

When the use of particular language is challenged on such grounds, the obvious counter-argument is that being proscriptive about language in this manner constrains the author. That to remove fiery language is to rob the verbal artist of the tools of his or her craft. And this is precisely the point. The intent of fiery rhetoric is to stir the blood, and not the brain. Thus, this is as much a gift to the health of a debate as it is a theft from the rabble-rousers who - it would seem - care little for solutions.

The metaphor of warfare and soldiering is especially damaging because inherent to these are formations, hierarchy, and battle lines. War is constructed such that there are generally two sides. The cohesiveness of a unit is tactical necessity, a union of purpose among allied forces a strategic imperative. But there are no such requirements in a debate, if one values truth over victory. There is a place for nuance and difference in debate; the only lines are the ones we choose to draw in the sand. An argument can look like a Venn diagram, where the sides may share common ground (like, say, Catholics and Protestants disagree about a lot of stuff, but they have God and Jesus sorta mostly in common?). The language of battle is clearly both innacurate and inappropriate.

It should go without saying that the logic, as well as the language, of war must also be expunged. An example from my conversation with Daydream Believer is that in attempting to figure out HOW to affect a policy change on abortion in the US, I quoted a line from a book I had leafed through many years ago. It said "Women: don't fuck Republicans". It was sound advice, but of course - as we both understood - there is not a homogenous battalion called "women" that can do (or, rather refuse to do) such a thing. And so while it can be expected that many different women may gather under the auspices of feminism when they can agree on certain minimum standards...it will work only as far as their disparate agendas permit. Unfortunately, when this happens it can give rise to the idea that there is only one feminism and, ergo, we can divide people along the lines of feminist/not feminist*. Another example would be the unnatural union of religious psychopathy and fiscal conservatism that produces the modern Republican party. It is a strategic alliance that produces victory, but also great internal tension because these are not always the most pleasant of bedfellows. And the focus on gaining power (victory) begins to outweigh the desire to use that power constructively. And if you think I'm down on American politics, the two main parties in Canada aren't even the result of fused ideologies, so much as they are strategic alliances of people with no positive beliefs beyond "I am entitled to Rule"!

*This realization has caused me to reverse my previous belief about something that EK has said, which is that one should necessarily self-identify as "feminist" if they believe in equality between Men and Women. Feminism is not only at this point a loaded term, but it can also describe easily dozens of distinct sub-ideologies. I do call myself a feminist, but I imagine there are those for whom I do not fit the definition. And, hence, I believe that no single ideological statement - no matter how noble - can really tell a person whether or not they should call themselves a feminist or not. It is far easier to state clearly what we believe than it is to spend our days clarifying labels.

LOUD!

Points of Failure (20/??)

2010-09-26T23:23:00.000-04:00

The important question is "where did I fail?", or in more charitable terms, "what did I learn?".

I suppose it is true that I have not yet failed to provide you with 30 posts in 30 days, but it seems likely that I will get no higher than 25 or 26 if I am diligent over the next couple of days. It is certainly possible that I could concoct 10 posts in 3 days, but at that pace I think the sacrifice of quality might defeat the purpose. We shall see. At this point, however, let's assume I don't quite make my target number. I haven't really learned anything new about my "work" habits. Procrastination hurts my recreational efforts as much as the professional. At least this blog doesn't cost my parents tens of thousands of dollars per annum, unlike some of my other failures. Which is perhaps a lesson in itself - high or low stakes don't seem to affect my performance too much. So it doesn't behoove me to look for either in a job, although obviously if I have a tendency to drop the ball I'd rather it be less than a critical error. Whatever.

Pursuant to this, I think it has reenforced a few things. Back in Polysci (especially first year), I had a tendency to write drafts on paper of blog posts. Usually something would occur to me during a debate or a lecture. Without that back-and-forth environment (and without input from beyond a limited social circle), I'm losing opportunities for new material. I also don't read the news half as much as when it was pertinent to a degree I thought I wanted. I guess Polysci doesn't get a lot of love either from the Engineers ("McDonalds" was the sickening refrain that my Engineer sister was encouraged to sing whenever a pack of Poli majors walked by during frosh week*) and real sciences...I dunno about its relationship to the rest of the humanities. I imagine that its pretense to some kind of objective/empirical study of politics puts it at odds with historical and philosophical perspectives that stress an understanding of the specific people, ideas, and cultures involved with a movement or event rather than push all-encompassing theories. But for whatever reason I was prepared to adopt it as a career path. And probably because someone suggested it to me offhandedly, too; I didn't have the marks for a science degree, so why did it matter what I did?

*I say "sickening" even though I still think in terms of Science/Engineering > Humanities > Trades. I think I'm allowed to be wrong as long as I'm aware of my error and try to correct it. Yeah, maybe it is funny, but like a lot of "just a jokes" it reflects a bias that we're not even trying to rid ourselves of. Engineers have more classes than I do, they do a harder job than I will (unless I get my shit together), they will have a deeper understanding of science than I do. Do I think that means we ought to tacitly endorse a heirarchy that puts them on top? No. And I'm sorry if I'm being humourless about this, but I bet it stings for those polysci majors to be told for a week that their degree is just a useless piece of paper. Enough arts majors have those worries already.

That's not really about what I learned, though. But yeah, I think I need to get back to drafting posts beforehand. It gives me a greater opportunity to put thoughts in order and eliminate some of the worse tangents (like what I didn't do just now for a paragraph and a half). I think I should read the news more. I think I need to widen my circle of discussions and opinions. I think these are all valid lessons to have learned.

And that is all for tonight. Tomorrow: something else, probably.

LOUD!

PS. I totally played a game of Civ V online with someone internet-famous (the instigator of Boobquake, no less) today. The MP is kinda buggy, although between all the players I think the game spanned from the west coast of the US to France, so it might just be that trying to play a game across, like, ten time zones is a really bad idea.

Civilization V

2010-09-24T15:56:00.001-04:00

I decided to buy Civilization V about a day after launch. I don't know why the wait. It's certainly part of the reason why I've taken the last few days off (that, and a pretty serious creative drought), so for your trouble you will at least get a preliminary review.

I never got into the Civ series as such; my entry point to Sid Meier-brand games was Alpha Centauri. I was too much into Age of Empires to bother with the slower pace of Civ 2, I gave Civ 3 a pass for whatever reason, and I've tried out a few games of Civ 4. So what do I think of Civilization V? Compared to Civ 4 it's a few steps forward, a few steps back, and a few steps sideways. While it carries on the visual aesthetic of Civ 4 for the most part, the feel of the game has changed appreciably in some ways. Compared to Alpha Centauri, I think Civ 5 is good. Better? Maybe not, although that could be my preference for Science Fiction.

What I like about Civ V is that Firaxis has pared down the interface a little, and made it a little more helpful. Important events/cities/units get highlighted, the pop-up notifications are placed where they're noticeable but not too obtrusive, and most of the menus are tucked away by default so that you can see more of the map. It's good. I think it's going to be non-threatening to a new player of the series. Speaking of paring down, there are now only four advisors (Economy, Foreign Affairs, Military, Science). I think the number was getting out of hand in Civ 4. Military units don't stack anymore, which is - hear me out now - a good thing. For one it makes battles a lot more readable. It's a lot easier to gauge the threat level when you don't have to peer into every stack of units to see which has 5 guys and which has 15. As every review will also tell you, it means that mountain passes are actually of strategic value for city placement, because you can bottleneck armies in tight corridors (Thermopylae can actually happen in Civ V, where it probably couldn't in the previous games). Culture points now work to expand your city borders, you can buy new tiles for your cities to work (awesome when you really need to get access to a specific resource). You can also use Culture to unlock policies, which have replaced the civics of Civ 4 and AC. I do and I don't like this change. I remember thinking that it would be pretty cool if you could have a "build your own constitution" mechanic, where you could adopt certain laws and principles...and this is pretty much that. I'll get to what I don't like in a second. Finally, it's pretty awesome that the other leaders talk to you now...IN THEIR OWN LANGUAGES. So you meet Catherine the great and she speaks friggin' Russian at you. + Immersion!

There are a few changes that I'm ambivalent about. The switch to hexes doesn't feel like it makes a huge difference. The unit promotion mechanic is neat, but the initial options are rather small bonuses, or a full auto-heal to full health. So I either set my unit on the path to improvement (in which case it is still at low health and probably dies), or I heal it...and it doesn't actually get any better. The addition of city states is...well, I dunno. They give out quests that I'm never conveniently located to accomplish, and they get angry when my units are set to auto-explore and run through their territory. And as far as I can tell they're a resource sink where you blow cash on influence that degrades. Essentially, city-states are needy gold-diggers, and I'm not sure I like them.

And finally, the stuff I don't like. Religion's gone (except for the "piety" civic, but it's not the same thing). Civilization 4's treatment of religion was utterly respectful, and it really did add a historical element which had been missing from the game. I guess I understand that it's gone in the name of simplicity...and it's weird that I would whine about removing religion from a game, but here I am. I also sort of miss the old-school civics from Civ 4 (and also Alpha Centauri), if only because they were a little more concrete than the new policies are about how your government/economy/society functioned, and I'm kind of a stickler for detail that way. Oh, yeah, and the game needs a "formation" command so that you can arrange your armies to move in blocks for convenience. That would be pretty neat. Oh yeah, and I don't like the happiness/sadness mechanic being a civ-wide thing rather than base-specific. Also, the game says unhelpful things like "X unhappiness from population" without telling you which direction you want to shoot for. Are there too many people? Not enough? HELP!

Oh, and the intro cinematic is really pretty but did you have to make it play EVERY TIME I START THE GAME? Yeah I totally renamed the file to "____.old" so now it just has a mild seizure and tosses me into the menu. Pro, I know.

LOUD!

Glorious Lethargy (18/30)

2010-09-20T21:43:00.001-04:00

Skulking around the internets, I found some things. They are:

Transformers from repey815 on Vimeo.

Russian Badassery, this time of the Transformers variety.

Marian Call, singing with wonderful lyrics and vocal harmonies about the joys of being a (true) geek

And then this. Social commentary so biting that it will make you bleed. I don't think I'm going to be able to use the suffix "-man" ever again. Every woman I have ever called "dude", I am so very sorry. Clearly this is wrong practice and must stop.

That Thing We Gamers Do (17/30)

2010-09-19T23:39:00.001-04:00

Here's a possibly amusing exercise. I have here a character I've written for an upcoming Dungeons and Dragons game. I wonder if you can guess what his class is? (hint: it's not in the Player's Handbook)

For your consideration, I give you Yssan Karais (uh-SAN Ka-RAY-us):

Yssan was born one cold winter's day, in the back of a wagon. His mother was a travelling acrobat, contortionist, actress, juggler, and ventriloquist. She never did mention a father, and none of the men in the troupe ever claimed the honour. Yssan supposes that he might have been a lord or baron who requested a “private audience”, which was not unknown. Venita Karais was a woman of considerable talent and beauty. Before her death, she instilled in her son a warm heart, and great reverence for Ithene, goddess of her people. Each night, Venita would enthral not only Yssan, but the whole of the troupe with tales of gods and goddesses, heroes and horrors, sages and savages. Yssan fell in love with Ithene - fastest, cleverest, wisest of all immortals.

Venita was accosted and killed by street thugs in Caer Cadren, just before the outbreak of war. Yssan was only 10 years old. With not a quarter of his mother's talent, he was of little use to a travelling act, and was abandoned by the very people who raised him. Yssan bounced back and forth from street gangs to the care of the church for some years. He was conscripted by both sides for service in the town guard during the war, as the city changed hands. He would often hide to avoid the draft, but did not always receive warning in time.

Yssan would always attend services and ceremonies at the Temple of Ithene. He would pray for skill in battle, and he would ask the priest for guidance. He courted a comely young peasant girl, Trieste, and married her there (paying her dowry with money he had stolen or won in battle) in the seventh year of the war.

In one of the final sieges of the war, the priest of Ithene was gravely injured. Though the defence could not hold, Yssan took up residence in the temple, tending to the wounded for weeks while the siege pressed on. He performed services and temple rights for the living and the dead. He sang and told stories. He washed his hands more than he had ever done in his life, and still they were stained red with the blood of the dead and the dying. In the end, he saved the lives of the priest, a local justice, and ten others. So impressed was the priest that he pronounced Yssan a disciple of the faith. For this service, and some distinction in the general defence of the city, Yssan was awarded knighthood at age 22.

Trieste survived the war alongside Yssan. They have one child, a two-year-old daughter. They lost a baby boy during the war to disease and starvation. As a couple, the two are in many ways happy to be leaving Caer Cadren behind; it holds many painful memories for the both of them. Trieste has seen the people of her hometown raped and brutalized ten times over; Yssan has seen his friends die in robberies and battle alike. But they are both of them aware that Crossroad Keep will be a rougher life than even they are accustomed to.

And there you have him. I'm really excited to play this character; I intend to explore some profound themes with this guy. Here's a guy who is (I think) good at heart, he's trying to leave behind a life of petty (and not-petty) crime and take up his newfound calling as a priest...but of course he's going to find himself trapped. He probably knows too much to leave the underworld for good. There's also the question of whether or not he himself can give up the sword. There's this scene in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, where Li Mu Bai (legendary warrior) has regained possession of the Green Destiny (suitably epic sword). He's practicing with it in a courtyard, and it is clear that the sword is an extension of his being, no matter how much he had intended to forsake it (and he *was* trying to at first). I think I found that moment more than a little inspirational for this character.

And, now that I'm invested in him, he's definitely going to die on some orc's lucky critical hit.

LOUD!

Oops (16.5/30)

2010-09-19T00:16:00.001-04:00

Saturday's intended post derailed by beer, dungeons, and dragons. This probably qualifies as final and irrevocable failure in my goal to post "at least once daily", but I assume that "30 posts in one 30-day month" will suffice (a la NaBloPoMo).

That puts me on the hook for a few backlog posts, I guess.

LOUD!

Dude, you have no Quran! (16/30)

2010-09-17T22:28:00.001-04:00

Pursuant to my 14th post, I found the following. I believe it more than speaks for itself:

LOUD!

Automata (15/30)

2010-09-16T23:08:00.003-04:00

It all began here, but quickly spiralled out of control.

I have written about what makes a "cyborg" before, and it seems that my train of thought was actually in keeping with the current wisdom in cybernetics. It turns out that we're already cyborgs, we just don't think about it that way because we're waiting for our bionic implants. It just turns out to be a lot easier to upgrade your technology when it isn't hard-wired into your body is all, and it's going to be that way for a while yet. This, I had considered before, but I also encountered a thought that ran counter to my ideas about what the future could and should hold. Experiments are confirming little by little that not a lot of human action is undertaken consciously, and that we are often bad at understanding even our own true motivations. This I have always assumed is kind of a bad thing, guys, because I don't really like the idea that I have this one set of motivations that isn't necessarily guided by the morals and beliefs that I have chosen to adopt consciously. I don't like the idea that I'm not really in control of myself, so to speak. So I have assumed that any technology that could grant my conscious mind more control over my brain is a good and desireable one. It turns out that giving myself more knobs to play with might not make me into the superbeing I'd want to be. And here's why: the human attention span is pretty limited, and it's already pretty easy to lose concentration. The more processes you have to micromanage, the less time you'll have to think and think clearly. This article talks about the attention span problem in light of new augmented reality tech, but here's the kicker:

"No organism can afford to be conscious of matters with which it could deal at unconscious levels.”

I shouldn't really want to bother with any of this micromanagement crap, even if it were possible! Sure it's worrisome that much of me still runs on some kind of holdover animal logic or whatever...but that's fine. As long as the body is taking care of itself, my (conscious) mind is relatively free to wander as it pleases. If I had to actually think about every minute action, I would need to think much faster...and a whole hell of a lot of my thoughts would be really boring. I don't need that, nor do I want it. It feels a bit callous to say that I can live with most of my brain and body on autopilot as long as that means the part I do control and understand is free to operate, but I guess it's the best thing an abstract thinker can ask for? In some ways it isn't a lot different from being in a brain-in-a-jar placed upon an amusement ride. Maybe I can't steer, and I probably can't do much with the life support mechanism...but it's a good ride: I'm alive and able to think.

The promise of technology has in past eras been that of a reduced workload, that automation would remove the need for humans to perform menial tasks such that we might focus upon fulfillment of our bodies and minds. I think we need to be reminded of that promise from time to time, especially when the Blackberry has become a device which which will sometimes extend the chain attaching you to your day job, rather than set you free. I still believe that this freedom from the mundane and the rote is possible, and desirable.

So where's my robot butler, already?

oh wait, most of me IS some kind of robot butler for my conscious mind?

LOUD!

Fine and Dandy (14/30)

2010-09-16T00:01:00.003-04:00

"What did you do this year, Molly Norris?" "I blasphemed against a major religion and was then targeted for assassination!". There's this old saying I've heard of. Something about removing onesself from the interior of a cooking device if the ambient conditions within are unpleasant? Draw Mohammed day struck me as an idea that was passable - if you didn't think about it too hard. Yes, if your pet poops on the carpet you can rub their face in it (can you even do that anymore? That's probably abuse, man!). You can sometimes change undesirable behavior or change someone's opinion if you demonstrate to them why they're annoying/wrong. But you can't...you can't cure someone of their faith. Because faith isn't really a condition. For one thing, faith isn't inherently wrong. This will come across as "ethical theories 101" here, but there are some good arguments. From Grade 12 philosophy I remember the argument that while a skeptical trainful of passengers might allow themselves to be robbed (since each person within has no definite assurance of aid were he or she to resist), some [unsubstantiated] faith in their carriage-mates might lead to an effective resistance that could defeat a small gang of bandits. And once we can prove that some good may come of such faith, we can understand that philosophies which stress the maximization of "The Good" or "Human Happiness" might be obliged to say that faith is a net positive (and therefore, moral). But back on track here. If you imagine the goal of draw mohammed day as trying to get muslims in general to loosen up about depictions of a man who they are expressly forbidden to depict (and I believe expected to denounce the depiction of by others), I think it's helpful to have historical context. Draw Mohammed day plays off this stupid subtext of "the enlightened (Christian) west is already over this shit, get with the program already!". How well did Christianity do when someone decided to challenge the orthodoxy? That guy nailed 95 bullet points to a church door, which isn't even at all like making graven images of God or disrespectful drawings of Jesus on the cross. Was it with open arms and reconcilliatory dialog? Hmm, no try again. Was it with ~200 years of religious warfare?...oh yeah. That.

I guess it could be worse, I mean, someone could have made up....

Oh wait, they did. I meant to talk about that on 9/11 this year, but I was too busy laughing at the above video (awesome parody, in case it's not readily evident) and also trying to be constructive. I still don't have much to say. That's gone so far past "well-intentioned but ultimately fruitless" that I don't even...I don't even WANT to dignify it with analysis. I just wanted to show you that video.

I guess I'm not a fan of these fatwas, though. Which is what something like "draw mohammed day" could really be about (I think I talked about this already); showing solidarity with the people who have to hide for fear of violent reprisal because they exercised their right to free speech. I mean, what CAN we do? I'd say "maybe we could put some of these radical clerics on our own deathlists, see how they like it?" but I think the US army might have beaten me to the punch. And I don't think the eye for an eye strategy is really all that effective anyhow. But the pronouncement of death threats should really not be within the scope of religious freedom. And it should be within the realm of international law. I don't know how extensively the kind of person who pronounces a fatwa travels, but I think that as a matter of principle they should not be allowed to travel to countries where death threats and hiring assassins are illegal (like, say, Canada) without fear of arrest and prosecution. And yeah, it's a pretty huge shitstorm when you arrest a religious official (I will admit to a glimmer of hope at Richard Dawkins' suggestion that the Pope be arrested in England for being complicit in cases of child molestation. Arresting the Pope would certainly make for an interesting week in international politics!) but death threats and assassination orders are not laughing matters, and should not be allowed to go unpunished. PERIOD.

I suppose there is a little irony to be found in that I am suggesting one limitation on speech as a solution to another? But then I don't think anyone should be under the impression that we were free to yell "FIRE!" in a movie theatre. Criticism - ESPECIALLY that of political and religious dogma - is paramount to the health of society. The ability to censor others by threatening death? Quite the opposite.

LOUD!

I'm going to whine here until I feel better (13/30)

2010-09-14T23:38:00.002-04:00

Essentially the absolute worst part of going off to live on one's own is getting sick. Without parents to tell you what's probably wrong with you, or to bring you everything you want and make sure you're comfy, etc. it just gets old fast. Also spooky because it's not like you've memorized one of those family medicine books that tells you how to diagnose common illnesses. It's fun for the day when you call in sick and watch DVDs or play videogames all day, but pretty soon you want your vim and vigor back, so you can have fun with your friends again. JAZ bought/toasted me strudel today, which was delicious - so bein' sick? Not all bad. Thank you!

At any rate, the importance of this exercise was in part to encourage me to put into writing what I would otherwise have filed away as "maybe, but needs polish", because then I post next to nothing and I think I lose an aspect of rawness and relevance if I deliberate too much. But it's also about the habit of posting daily, and so there's a certain value to going through the motions even if I don't have something particularly insightful to write down every single time.

This is also a bit of a rough time of year because everyone going back to university is getting into the swing of things, talking about the classes they're excited for, professors they like or don't like...and I'm still chugging along with my year-round courses at DropOut College. I guess next September I might be settling in to a real job, but then I guess I'm trading depression for terror. Job security, saving for educating kids of my own (which will hopefully go better than this), saving for retirement...all of these adult worries that I'm not sure I'm ready for. Or maybe the world just looks bleaker when I'm sick, who knows? At least once I'm better the 15-odd-degree weather is essentially perfect for biking.

Biking is one of the things I've really been enjoying this year. It's something I'm pretty good at, and it's something that I'm content to work on getting better at. It's such a surprise because growing up I acquired the most profound distaste for physical achievement. Or maybe just competition. I don't even know why I care about my cycling ability, but I do, and it gives me hope that I'm not useless at all kinds of work, just most of them. Somewhere out there, there's a job for me that I won't hate. Somewhere.

LOUD!

Something Fallout 3 did Wrong (12/30)

2010-09-13T23:33:00.003-04:00

While riding my bike the other day, I was struck by this thought: Science Fiction is set when it is written...sort of. When we write speculatively, we're often writing about our present worries enlarged to the point where they threaten the girl/the world/humanity. And I was thinking about Fallout 3, which is sorta 1950s-style "retro" SF. And while Bethesda studios did a pretty good job capturing the aesthetic of that imagined future (with personal robots and atomic cars, etc.) I think they missed out on the social aspect of the 1950s. See, when people in the '50s imagined the future they could envision wondrous technologies...but they did not presage even an imminent social force like first wave feminism. Or for that matter much of the civil rights movement. I think it was William Gibson wrote that this "raygun gothic" style draws an eerie parallel to the striking architecture of the Nazis; a utopia for white man and white marble.

I was thinking that Fallout 3 is really more of a paean to that old futurism, presenting a lot of the flavour of 1950s society, but it misses a lot of the gender issues: opression, denial of female sexuality and independence...I'll give them the ghouls as an OK treatment of racism, but on sexism they dropped the ball. I was stammering my way through this to JAZ, who pointed out that no one really wants to be penalized for a choice like using a female avatar. And that's where I'm stuck, because I think that's pretty valid. I can't really condone a game that penalizes a character for being female, and yet if we don't...we're getting oddly revisionist about our history. And I don't think that the men who could conceive of free men on the moon but not free women on Earth should get off scott-free. I think the best solution I can imagine is if they could portray a struggle between the people desperately trying to preserve the remnants of prewar society (ie. The Brotherhood of Steel), and those who believe that you can't really separate the achievements and knowledge of a culture from its underlying values, which in this case seem quite probably sexist. That provides room for empowered females within the narrative of the game - PC and NPC - and introduces what I think is an interesting debate: whether it's better to rebuild on past success (note: the society whose heritage the BOS are preserving ALSO nuked itself to death), or blaze a new path. And it's not even too much at odds with existing faction goals, ie. those of The Enclave.

The only reason that I don't buy "well, maybe sex and gender are nonissues as of 2077 in the Fallout world?" is that it feels like a sort of developer fiat; "oh yeah: the rhetoric, clothing, hairstyles, personalities...they're all IRONICALLY retro, you see? The actual implicit sexism is totally gone!". Fallout wouldn't be Fallout without the 1950s aesthetic, and the 1950s aren't the 1950s if we overlook all of the things we did and thought incorrectly. I guess I'm just not a fan of the revisionism? I think Red Dead Redemption is an interesting counterexample, because they actually went ahead and put one strong female character into a man's world...and while her dialogue is occasionally a bit "nudge nudge, wink wink, I'm inventing suffrage" she works. If they had put a tough female gunslinger in her place (and there could be one in the game, I haven't finished it yet), it wouldn't have felt as authentic*. Bonnie McFarlane is a strong woman, but she's still a sorta-kinda believable historical character, which I think helps immersion.

*Revisionist Action Girl is kind of a played-out trope anyhow. If Rockstar got Gina Torres to do voice work for one, though, I'd be so down!

LOUD!

And on the twelfth day... (11/30)

2010-09-12T22:47:00.001-04:00

Quality time with girlfriend. Blog will have to wait tonight

EDIT: ok that sounds worrisome. More fully expressed, that was: "I'm tired and comfy, no way am I dragging my ass out of bed to write extensively tonight"

The Third Cup of Tea (10/30)

2010-09-11T23:05:00.003-04:00

So I guess I lied about a cool beer post on Friday. I couldn't really get anyone else in my house interested in buying/making equipment, and I'm not sure I have the finances or the wherewithall to do this whole process alone for the first time. But the dream lives on, so stay tuned.

I've been playing a bit of Red Dead Redemption and so far I think it's working for me. Yeah, yeah it's just Grand Theft Horse...but I dunno. For whatever reason I can't get too much into GTA, but RDR's period piece aesthetic does it for me. I guess maybe it seems more mature, bein' set in history and all? I don't really know what it is. It's far too late to review, but I'll post occasional thoughts as I get further into it.

It's September 11th again. 9 years now. Still no sign of Osama Bin Laden (and I bet you a couple bucks it'll be the same story next year). It's starting to feel like part of a different time, a different life. It's so very weird to look back, because while technology and culture have been moving forward at the usual rapid pace...look at all the awful baggage that we're carrying: Britain is still living an actual Orwellian nightmare of pervasive surveilance; the US is still embroiled in two theatres of war, and us in one of them; airport security is still paranoid and ridiculous. And we have to start asking some tought questions like "when are we going to get over it?". If our goal was to beat terror, why are we still afraid?

I guess we are slowly getting our shit back together, but in a way maybe that's part of the problem. Maybe we've adjusted too much to a little more restriction of our civil liberties. Maybe we're too busy worrying about the economy to understand the irreparable damage we've done to our integrity by having ever allowed human beings to be held without trial. Maybe we're too busy worrying about bringing the troops home to ask what the hell is going to happen in Afghanistan after they leave? I think there are some things we need to be afraid of now, and unfortunately they're all our fault. Or the US's, but I mean we're not so separate really.

The answer to this problem of violent fundamentalist religion has always been understanding, education, and goodwill. The work of individuals like Greg Mortenson (founder of the Central Asia institute) is of extreme value in this regard:

"Central Asia Institute’s mission is to promote and support community-based education, especially for girls, in remote regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The philosophy is to empower the local people through their own initiative. As of 2010, Central Asia Institute has successfully established 145 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which provide (or have provided) education to over 64,000 students, with a emphasis on girls’ education. Over the first decade of CAI’s evolution, our programs and projects expanded to several regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan with an emphasis on education, health issues, environment and cultural preservation."

I've taken IDS* and I know to be critical of missions to "develop" other countries, but there's something here. Because I have only ever heard of one truly successful way to empower communities, and that is to educate the women. I recall my grandfather relating the story of an orchard project in which the men of a community were being offered the chance to make some money working on this orchard. Not bad, right? Local business, (presumably) some kind of self-employment...certainly not a sweatshop factory. Turns out the women wanted none of this, because they said the men would just take their wages and drink them away. It seems that on some kind of macro-economic scale, my kind are just not very forward-looking when it comes to money and prosperity. If you educate women, however, they can gain power and traction in communities. When that happens, they can then exercise that power to improve conditions for them and their families.

*International Development Studies

So let's not compound the waste of dollars and lives we've been funding for 9 years now. Rather than sending an invasion force to foist development on people, let's spend our money on envoys who will take the time to get to know a community, to ask them about their aspirations, and then try to make those into reality. Maybe in another 9 years the world might actually start looking like a better place.

LOUD!

EULAAAAAAUGH! (9/30)

2010-09-10T23:27:00.003-04:00

In committing to these daily posts, I was trying to edge out of my comfort zone a little bit, write about some different topics. Today not so much, and I hate to drag you readers back toward anything that remotely resembles a copyright debate. A recent US ruling on software has got me rattled, though. Ars Technica analyses it here, probably better than I will. The short form is: the courts have decided that the bullshit EULA that you never read anyhow is actually enforceable, at least when it comes to resale.

I think this is ridiculous, for a number of reasons. The first and foremost among my objections is that the software industry should never been allowed to sell you a license and not a product in the first place! This kind of example is getting old, but the copyright that protects a book does so even when I own the physical object itself. The copyright doesn't protect paper; it protects IDEAS. When I take my ONE copy of a book and sell the whole thing without retaining any part of it (except, presumably, for memories and any little bits of cover that fell off if I read it excessively)...the ideas contained within are not harmed, modified, plagiarized, or pirated. I had a material possession and I sold it, the end. With digital goods, we think it gets more complicated. But this is buying into a fiction that just because something is "digital", it is not physical. The information stored in your computer is REAL and PHYSICAL. It exists as carefully constructed patterns in actual matter in your hard disk. Yes, digital goods are easily copied blah blah blah. I don't know about the actual legality of this, but if I photocopy the entirety of that book I own and sell that to you - but destroy my original copy - I don't think it's morally any different from selling you the original. I guess the book analogy can get old or preachy or whatever, but I think it's unfair to grant vastly different controls and protections under the SAME laws to different art forms. What the hell is so special about software that the developers get to tell me everything I can and can't do with it. Authors spend a lot of time and effort on their craft, and seem to be happy with less. They're happy with libraries and interpersonal loans, and second-hand book shops (probably? Or if they aren't they're kinda curmudgeonly. And fuck, I even saw a book by AYN RAND that had been donated - DONATED! - by an eponymous foundation to some school or other, in a second hand bookshop yesterday).

I think I might be rambling in all directions a bit here, so I'm going to try and get this in order. I don't like the idea of software as a licensed service unless software companies start acting more like they're selling services, and less like they're selling you products with legalese copouts stapled to them. If software lisencing is going to be upheld by law it needs to be regulated BY LAW, and it should NOT simply be protected by law by virtue of it existing. Just because I own property does not mean that I can do anything I want there. I can't kill people in my house just because it's my house, and software companies should likewise not be able to write all the rules for their software. I think there should be limits on their power. I think that resale should be protected by law. I think that companies should not be able to stipulate what constitutes "acceptable conduct" (some EULAs say that you can't use the product to disparage the creators thereof, etc). I think that companies should not be allowed to terminate or alter these contracts without warning. I think that companies should have a responsibility to all licensees for the complete and total duration of the license. Right now it seems that the software companies have all the leverage over you, the consumer, and that's not really how things should work. Without some rules for consumer protection, the market is going to trend toward restrictive EULAS, which hurts users, hurts the economy, and hurts creativity. Again: copyright should NOT protect anything other than the CONTENT of the book, program, film itself. Filmmakers don't get to tell you what kind of reviews you can write. Authors don't get to tell you that you can't make your own custom cover for their books. Software should be no different!

I may end up rewriting this for clarity and continuity. For now I'm tired, and upset with the courts.

LOUD!

The (Other) Tragedy of the Commons (8/30)

2010-09-09T23:12:00.002-04:00

I wouldn't count on this becoming a weeklong theme, but I thought this was worth posting on its own anyway.

As a relatively new import to Halifax, I feel a little bit awkward making pronouncements about municipal politics here...but there is a clear and present danger to a longstanding Haligonian institution - the North Commons - and I feel compelled to speak out! Unlike all too many cities, Halifax has got this wonderful stretch of common land right in the middle. Anyone can walk, run, bike, etc. as well as hold events/get-togethers, play sports...basically it's a big flat park that nobody really manages. Sort of. Of late, the city has started allowing for-profit concerts into the commons. Never mind that Halifax has at least three suitable buildings for ticketed events (The Metro Center, The Forum, Dalhousie's Rebecca Cohen auditorium)...the very spirit of a commons is stretched to the breaking point by fences and guards and price tags. It's not like you can play a concert in the Black Eyed Peas' backyard on a whim and charge admission. It's not like they can do the same in yours. That's how property works. Common land...well, I personally can't kick the BEP out of the commmons...but I wasn't even consulted. I suppose I can't suggest that we have a referendum every time someone wants to have a concert in the Commons, but whoever gave the BEP the go-ahead...I'm not sure they should have the authority to do that. Yes, there needs to be some measure of order even on common land. The police obviously still have juristiction. But there should be no one who wields a power of ownership over the Commons, and yet someone is behaving as if they do. This is troublesome.

Fortunately, I'm not the only one to see things this way. Tomorrow there is to be a "Take back the commons" dance party in the North Commons. I think I will probably go check it out. It's at 9 near the fountain if you're in Halifax and want to see what's up. I think this kind of event is exactly what SHOULD be happening in the commons: free, grassroots, and leaving little mark behind. This in contrast to the private, top-down, ground-pounding shows we've had come through here. If we want to preserve the freedom of a community resource like the commons, it is essential to lead by example. I can't imagine anyone living in Halifax being unaware of the Commons, but there are likely many who do not consider its true potential. By holding events like an outdoor dance party, these people can be shown precisely what is at stake. And, with any luck, they will join us in defending it.

LOUD!

PS: I recently found out that Clive Doucet is running for mayor of Ottawa. I met him once when he was adjudicating a provincial all-candidates meeting (I blogged about it way back), and he was very well spoken and I think I agree with a lot of his positions (I'll double check this against his current platform and give you an update). Until then, consider him possessed of a full, unreserved LOUD endorsement. If you live in Ottawa, please vote for this man so that there is hope for our moronic city bureacracy to get its shit together and start making my hometown a better place to live!

Slipping (7/30)

2010-09-08T23:56:00.001-04:00

Ironically, tonight's post is filler because I am tired and I ate too much.

But, I do promise an extra-special food-related post on Friday (which will hopefully put me back on schedule), which I have decreed will be "make my first ever home-brewed beer day"! I would love to have done this post during the actual food week, but I don't think the middle of the week is such a good time to be learning and documenting new skills.

So far, I think I'm learning a little bit about how to manage these daily posts. I think I need to start writing these more in advance if I want to do factual research pieces (ie. Vertical Farming), and I think I enjoy doing step-by-step instructions. More of my blog posts should come with pictures. I should get back to my older routine where I would write a blog post in rough draft during the day (read: during first-year classes) and then edit it and type it come nightfall. I have, first and foremost, learned that bedtime is not always the best time to be stressing over a blog post when one has a wonderful girlfriend.

Speakin' of which, I'm gonna go now...back tomorrow with a new topic (and hopefully real content!)

LOUD!

Bribe GM with Food (6/30)

2010-09-07T23:04:00.001-04:00

We're almost at the end of theme week 1. I have no idea whatsoever as to the theme of week 2.

Tonight I'm going to cheat a little bit and write about games. And food. games and food. games with food! It's actually something I've been thinking about for a while, food (and other necessities) in gaming. At first blush, it's textbook simulationism, really: in real life you have to eat food or somehow get nutrients into your body or its game over. I was even going to say as much, but it struck me not too long ago that that's a very limited view. There's a lot of potential for narrativist use of food in gaming as well! I remember that in a D&D game run by Etarran, he described in elaborate detail this spiralling restaurant table, where the further in you went, the more you paid and the better you ate. And indeed some of the players ate there, but it was never "where are your characters going to eat tonight?" so much as "are you going to engage with the world?". Or I can imagine a very roleplaying heavy game in a medieval court, in which banquets (and doubtlessly poison) play a very important role, but for their social - rather than nutritional - aspect. And of course, one must remember that food is one of the easiest ways to bribe your GM to let you take that super-broken feat.

Some videogames that take the simulationist route with food are STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl, The Sims 1-3, The Ship (I think?), and...the Oregon trail, I guess?. I guess food is also a healing item in STALKER, but you can and will get hungry and die of hunger if you're not careful in game. Maybe our generation was so traumatized by the Oregon trail that they decided never again to force a player to eat to survive in a game? I think perhaps that no one has thought of a compelling reason why food for food's sake would make a game more compelling. Think about it: Videogames tend to convey information by way of sight and sound. Sometimes touch if you have force-feedback. Food is taste, smell, and texture. There's essentially no overlap, unless you can figure out how to make an xbox controller rumble like you're holding a sandwich! STALKER doesn't even have an animation or sound effect for eating, and I think it's fairly obvious why: slowing the game down for food would likely be intolerable, even to a player hardcore enough to want to have to eat in a survival-horror game. There's just no possible REWARD for taking the time to eat. And don't give me this "but NOT DYING is your reward!" crap, either - that's the kind of game design philosophy that leads to quicktime events! Shooting a gun in a shooter is fun not because it helps you live when your enemies are dead; it's fun because there's visceral feedback. If you can't provide that, then go for some kind of intellectual fulfillment ("I outflanked/outwitted/outfought him! How daringly clever of me!"), but if neither is attainable, just leave it out. And that's what most game designers seem to have done.

Food as a nonessential stat boost shows up in a couple more places, like Bethesda RPGs, really. Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines if you think blood=food (also =mana in that game, hence why it's not in category 1). Or any RTS which has "food" as a resource. Alchemy is a pretty important part of Morrowind, and I realized once when I was crafting potions out of "kwarma eggs" and "saltrice" that I wasn't really brewing a potion so much as making fried rice! Remember when I was talking about rewards in games? A cooking/alchemy mechanic which rewards patience and study with stat boosts is a pretty good way to give players both intellectual and visceral pleasure from doing food-related things in a game. Especially if killing some enemies gives you ingredients ("woohooo! dog meat!"). There are two food-related quests in Mass Effect 2, which reward you with XP and ingratiate you with some minor characters/members of your crew. The food is entirely inconsequential by way of game mechanics, but having Shepherd bond with Dr. Chakwas over a bottle of brandy is one of my favourite moments in the game...and one of Shepherd's most human. As much as the whole "stat boosts" thing bothers me in a game like Fallout 3 (it's too lighthearted for the dire tone of the world, especially when you compare with something ACTUALLY dark *coughSTALKERcough*), I think that on the whole it's a reasonable compromise (I think Etarran may have even given characters some minor bonuses for eating at that cool restaurant, now that I think about it). The world seems all the more real for having food in it, but the player is rewarded for being engaged, rather than penalized for being negligent. On a final note, Team Fortress 2's Sandvich, Bonk!, Crit-a-cola, and Dalokhs bar are pretty much the embodiment of "food-as-stat boost", but they're weird in that they occur in an intentionally stylized gameworld where no one even NEEDED to ask "where's all the food?" in the first place.

Food as decoration or pure flavour is probably in a lot more games than I remember. Counter-Strike has a map with fruit-filled market stalls, there are watermelons in Half-Life 2 (and the Vortigaunt chefs from Black Mesa East! Squeeeee ^^!), You have to knife a watermelon in the tutorial for CoD4...I'm sure you've seen it. There are, after all, a lot of games that don't really need to include "sustenance" into their respective paradigms. It doesn't really add much to the run-and-gun shooter, after all. But there's sort of a trend toward treating more and more objects as "real" in a gameworld. Physics are all the rage now, but I can't imagine that's the be-all and end-all of it. It seems funny to think that every game might someday include an eating mechanic...but perhaps stranger still is the molecular-level simulation of matter that will let you shoot a gun with ultimate fidelity, set fire to whole forests, hurl boulders, run through grassy fields, watch the sunset over the ocean with the sand running over your fingers...but won't let you eat?

LOUD!

Grow Up! (5/30)

2010-09-06T22:16:00.002-04:00

Carrying on from yesterday's introduction of vertical farming, I thought I would try to put together a little bit more of a primer for you.

First off, Discovery channel offers this video. Basic, but effective:

First and foremost among the reasons we "need" vertical farming* is that we have a growing population of humans what need feeding, contrasted with an ever-shrinking amount of arable land for farming. If that sounds familiar, it's because it's pretty much what Thomas Malthus was talking about a couple hundred years ago in England (minus the whole bit about vertical farms, and plus a whole lot of OH GOD OH GOD WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!). We've had pretty good luck so far avoiding the direst of his predictions, and that's because - surprise surprise - people aren't actually that eager to die in droves, and we've been perfecting farming technologies that have allowed us to greatly increase the crop yield of our finite fields. Unfortunately, not all of these technologies are without cost: chemical fertilizers and pesticides have been contaminating water and animal tissues since their respective inventions, and the high-yield monocultures that we grow today are leaving us ever more succeptable to devastating blights, should they arise. I think I would argue that while these technologies have definitely served us well in the past, they're a bit of a misstep overall. We're looking at the problem a little bit backwards. In its early phases, agriculture was the creation of a controlled environment where before humans had to deal with the fortune that nature dealt them. As an extension of that control, synthetic fertilizers and pesticides seem more or less logical...but now that we can grow food indoors with hydroponics/aeroponics, we can leapfrog the whole problem of trying to reign nature in by building the ultimate controlled environment quite literally across the street.

*Ok, so we don't actually need it. We could just let people die or keep poisoning the Earth.

Hydroponics is probably a technology you've already heard of: you grow plants in nutrient-infused water, it saves space and doesn't require dirt, etc. Aeroponics is pretty much the same deal, except that rather than being immersed in water, the roots of a crop are sprayed with it. The water requirements of an aeroponic crop are comparatively much lower than that of a conventionally or hydroponically grown one. And once you've bypassed the need for dirt, you can pretty much stack your crops in racks on top of each other (with a little root space in between). I was ballparking the efficiency of a vertical farm much, MUCH too low when I guessed fifty times that of a conventional farm yesterday. Scientfic American puts the figure somewhere around five hundred times more efficient (they say a one-city block x 30 story building could equal 2400 acres of farmland, and it seems a Manhattan city block is about 5-6 acres)...and I missed another interesting point: a lot of these designs also include living space. I'm not sure there's anything necessarily superior about this configuration, but I'm a fan of the idea anyhow.

The million-dollar (well, probably 5 or 20 million in today's dollars) question is, of course, whether or not anyone is actually going to do it. On paper it's a pretty perfect solution: piles of local organic food without pests and presumably at affordable prices (even if the infrastructure's pricey you'll be killing the competition in volume and on top of that your growing season never ends!). It's a nice change of pace for your city skyline, and it reforges a lost connection between people and their food. Unfortunately, I think there's a potential chicken-and-egg problem: since that link has been severed, does anyone really care enough about food to support such an undertaking? Would vertical farming even win a few percentage points as a plank in a mayoral platform? Obviously I can't say, but I'm not holding my breath...

The closest thing I've seen so far is a planned eco-city in the UAE called "Masdar". It's supposed to be some kind of sustainable paradise. Solar powered, more or less self-sufficient, etc. Of course, the UAE is probably not the best place for conventional agriculture...but they do have the kind of venture capital to look into building a vertical farm. Even if it's just for show now, it should subsidize the startup costs of future iterations by getting all the kinks worked out beforehand. So while I may be a little too cynical to book my tickets for Abu Dhabi just yet, I'll be keeping my eyes on this bizarrely utopian project (set to open in this quarter, no less!)

That's all I've got for now. If I come across some more interesting material I will tack it on somewhere. Until tomorrow, goodnight

LOUD!

Wasting Away (4/30)

2010-09-05T22:00:00.000-04:00

You are likely aware that "developed" countries waste a lot of food. Practitioners of 'dumpster diving' have known for goodness knows how long that supermarkets and restaurants have to throw out huge quantities of quite edible food, due to commercial practice or overly stringent health & safety regulations. It turns out that the amount of food energy wasted in this fashion is quite immense. Immense like "more energy than is extracted yearly in crude from the Gulf of Mexico"! And if you look at the cited paper, the authors consider their figure to be a lower bound for the amount of wasted energy.

When you start to think about it, this gets pretty scary. All that waste energy comes from - well, ok: it all comes from the Sun, which on any reasonable human timescale is effectively inexhaustable. Fine. But a lot of that energy (transport, processing) we obtain through oil, the superconcentrated sunlight that CAN and WILL run out (or diminish in yield significantly) during our lifetimes, or near enough to. It's one thing perhaps if that energy is being used to ferry us around, clothe us, feed us, deliver us videogames over the internet...but this is just straight-up waste. I guess one can make the case that composting ameliorates some of the damage, but I mean there are much more efficient ways of enriching your soil than with wasted food shipped from California or Mexico or somewhere else similarly far away. I feel a little hypocritical writing this now because I sure do waste food. I guess this whole "living on my own" business is taking me longer to learn than it ought, because stuff still goes bad in my fridge. I tend to pack up leftovers and I try to eat them quickly most of the time, but there's always the one or two dishes that fall through the net, as it were. I'm a bit of a compulsive worrier when it comes to food going bad, so if I'm on the ball I'll toss stuff that looks like it's going moldy...possibly before I ought. So there's my dirty laundry out for all to see. I am Loud, and I have a food wasting problem.

Talking to ELI some time ago, he mentioned that the mother of his girlfriend shopped "Parisian style", ie. buying food on a day-to-day basis. He didn't really see the value in taking that much extra time at the store as opposed to the more North American(?) weekly shopping trip. At the time, I had some semblance of an answer. I mean, you have the romance of a European way of living - as opposed to our evidently inferior ways, of course - as well as a constant procession of fresh(er) ingredients in one's cooking, rather than a roster of ever-squishier fruits and vegetables. Now I'm beginning to consider the day-to-day shopping model as a potential cure for my personal food waste, even if it does present a potential increase in my food expenses (buying in bulk being somewhat cheaper, on the whole). It's definitely wishful thinking that I can avoid developing some semblance of organization and responsibility with a lifestyle change that doesn't specifically nurture either, but I guess I'd rather do something sexy (can I call shopping for food every day sexy? I guess at this point I have exposed the extent of my elitism/europhilia) than something dull but effective.

It's at once good and bad that the waste here occurs at many levels. Being so widespread a problem means that no one will really want to step up to the plate if they think they can blame other people. On the other hand, there are a lot of angles for improvement. More care with perishable items in our homes; a greater emphasis on local agriculture; programs that redirect still-usable foodstuffs from supermarkets et. all to local food banks (probably contingent on some manner of legal reform). If you wanted to be particularly radical but don't have the patience for systemic change, you could even start feeding yourself on the spoils of dumpster diving (there are a lot of guides out there, written by people who actually do that. Trust them, not me).

The note on local agriculture is worth expounding upon, because such as it is there's a dearth of truly local fare in urban areas. You know, because stuff is kind of hard to grow on pavement and the soil is sometimes full of poison, etc. There are some interesting solutions, however. I've heard tell of restaurants with rooftop gardens, but most interestingly there is the concept of vertical farming. A vertical farm is essentially a hydroponic garden/greenhouse but in the size and proportions of an apartment building. It sockets pretty innocuously (even prettily) into your downtown core, and is probably 50 times more horizontal-space efficient (assuming you stop at 50 stories) than your average conventional farm. Besides having an actual food source which resides inside the city (so in case of serious emergencies lasting more than a week you're not all totally boned), it also does a few cool things: it drastically reduces transportation costs, it could re-establish the connection between people and their food that you really lose when it's all grown somewhere you don't see very often, and they'd probably be made of glass and mirrors and as a result quite pleasing (or blinding, depending on the time of day) to look at. On a much longer time-scale, the prospect of actually giving back some land to wildlife sounds rather refreshing, compared to dim-wittedly bulldozing it to feed our ever growing (and increasingly urban) population.

I will expound upon this idea of urban/vertical farming some more tomorrow, and I think I may concoct another pictoral how-to if anyone thought the last one was helpful. I also want to talk a little about how the wartime/postwar mentality of "clean your plate" sounds like good policy, but might unintentionally encourage overconsumption (even if it cuts down on wasted food).

LOUD!

Hurricane (3.5/30)

2010-09-05T18:06:00.000-04:00

Downside of living in Nova Scotia: sometimes your plans to make a blog post every day are thwarted by a hurricane. I am not sure whether I have two posts worth of content to put up tonight, but Monday is a holiday, so there's hope, I guess. I'll be back later with a proper update, I promise!

Nate the Great (3/30)

2010-09-03T23:35:00.002-04:00

Nate the Great,as you may have read yesterday, was more or less the muppet-baby cousin to Sherlock Holmes. Three or four feet tall, with accordingly sized hat and trenchcoat. Somewhere between "Firefighter" and "Astronaut", I went through a period in which my aspirational career was "Detective". I can no longer remember whether this was inspired by watching dubbed episodes of "Les Intrepides" on TVO (and other detective shows of its ilk), or if that was a symptom rather than the cause. In either case, besides his vocation, there was one other talent possessed by Nate the Great to which I aspired: the ability to make onesself pancakes. Nate would, when pondering a particularly difficult case, often return home and make himself a batch. I was always a little jealous that he could just make them himself; it didn't matter that he was ficticious - I wanted to be able to do it, too!

Fast-forward who-knows-how-many years, and I eventually learned from my father (as did he from his father before him) the process by which one concocts Dutch pancakes, or Pannekoeken. Since moving to Nova Scotia, I've run into more than a few people who insist on calling these "crépes", because "pancake" here seems to refer exclusively to the fluffy kind. Weird. What I am going to do today is teach you how to make your Very Own panekoeken!

First, let's talk equipment. You're going to want:

A mixing bowl, and a sturdy fork

A cast iron skillet

Canola Oil

The ingredients you need are simple, ubiquitous, and few. You will need:

Flour
Milk
Eggs

Ok, and we're on to the process. Follow closely, even if it's kind of stupid obvious:

I was feeding myself and one other person when I made these, and I used one and a half cups of flour, plus three eggs. The rule of thumb as my dad tells it is about one egg per person, but an extra egg will often serve you well. A double recipe would probably be good for anything from four to six, depending on hunger and how much else there is for breakfast. Ok, the first thing to do is make some space for the eggs (it doesn't really have to be a "well" per se, like you see in cookbooks. Just put them someplace where they'll all stay together), and then beat them. Try not to mix in too much of the flour yet (or beat the eggs in a separate bowl if you like), because that will probably land you with some very lumpy batter.

The next step is to add the milk. No, I don't have a measurement for you. The consistency you're aiming for is definitely runny, but with some lingering viscosity. If you're doing this for the first time, I think it's better to err on the side of thickness, because if you make this stuff too thin it's going to be hell when you try and work with it in the pan. If you've made the "other" kind of pancake before, try for a noticeably runnier batter than you're used to, and you'll be on the right track. Then, beat it with your fork until there aren't very many lumps left in it. Some lumps is fine; they'll cook out in the pan, by and large.

The next thing to do is put some canola oil into your pan, which you should set to a medium-highish heat. On my electic stove here a 6.5 seems to be about right. On my gas stove in Ottawa I would heat the pan on high and then turn it down to a 7 or 8, which was probably a little hot. This one is really trial-and-error and I can't help you too too much without knowing the vagaries of your unique stove. When you see a pattern like this start to form, it is time to begin making pancakes!

I was using a 1/3 cup measure, and it took about 2 or 2 and a half loads to get a full pancake. Probably a 2/3 or 3/4 cup measure is preferable

You'll want to spread the batter out. Using an oven mitt (a good one!) pick up the pan and tilt it in a kind of rotating motion such that the batter pours around the pan in a circular motion. If you don't get full coverage, add more batter to complete the pancake and fill in any holes. It goes without saying that since you're waving around a hot block of iron that you should be extremely careful. Tell everyone else in the kitchen to go bugger off if you must, just don't burn anyone!

Soon, you should find yourself with something resembling the above. It's not really ready to flip until the top is almost entirely dry (it will be changing colour, you will know when), but once the thing starts looking sturdy enough, start unsticking it from the pan. A note here on oil usage: you needn't replenish the oil in the pan after every pancake, but you should add at least a healthy dollop every 3 or 4 and slosh it around. If there's sufficient oil in the pan and you're not cooking at too high a heat, un-sticking the pancake should not be too hard. A spatula is good for this task, but I accidentally stumbled upon the humble kitchen spoon as an alternative. Again, if you're using a short metal stick next to hot iron, be careful! Now you'll want to do this slowly. Come at the edge obliquely, and sort of pry around wherever it yields most easily, and use the leverage to gradually unstick the whole thing. This will take practice, but you will improve. Probably start with the spatula, just make sure it's kinda slim/sharp. If your pancake tears too readily at the edges, consider thickening the batter with flour. About a quarter-cup at a time is the most I'd reccommend: there's a tipping point and you'll reach it quickly

Now, here's the advanced lesson: flipping the pancake. The easy way is to use your spatula. Get it under the centre of the pancake and heave it over cleanly onto the other side. That's boring. Real pros do it like this:

If the pancake is unstuck, it should shimmy about when you slide the pan forward and backward. This is sort of step 1: get comfy. Next is to gently, but firmly make a tossing motion that will send the pancake flipping end over end. You'll get a feel for the balance. The lighter-weight your skillet, the easier it will be. Heavier pans with high walls will take 2 hands, and are probably not ideal for beginners. If you don't feel comfortable with this, DON'T TRY IT. Also, even very good pancake chefs have their bad flips. Have a spatula and knife/spoon/fork handy to detangle any screw-ups (and there were many of these when I was learning. Don't get discouraged; they still taste good with syrup!)

If you've made it this far, you're doing really well! At this point the pancake doesn't need to cook for much longer, usually no more than a minute. Check the underside: once you see little circles of browned pancake, it's time to get this thing on someone's plate!
Maple Syrup is an obvious topping, but by no means stop there. A friend of mine once called my pannekoeken "lacking" in comparison to his brand of sweetened, fluffy pancakes. If your Dutch pancake is lacking in flavour, YOU are lacking in imagination. Fresh or frozen fruit, chocolate shavings, cinnamon/sugar, yogurt, fresh vegetables and cheese/cheese sauce/bechamel sauce/hollandaise sauce, etc - anything's a topping!. Since these are unsweetened, they can be paired with sweet and savoury toppings alike.
The final step, of course, is to find a grateful, hungry person to feed these to. Enjoy!

LOUD!

Thought for Food (2/30)

2010-09-02T23:08:00.003-04:00

I think I always have it in the back of my head to post more regularly than I do. That said, I didn't actually decide to do this until fairly recently, so while I want to practice my writing and move outside of my normal topic zone...I don't have a lot of time for research. So what do I do?

Well, it turns out that for a guy who cooks (and is proud of it), I don't actually write about food all that much. At least, not outside of the economy/ethics of food production - and that's really more of an environmentalist analysis. I do ever so occasionally look at food blogs for a recipe or two, but I'm not really into that scene. I think EK is friendly with the author of It Ain't Meat, Babe, a vegan cooking/journal blog. There's that and Not Quite Nigella, from which I got a phenomenal chili spiced brownie* recipe this one time...and, well, that's all I know about food blogs. Guess it's time to spend a week learning some more!

*If you've never tried a chili-chocolate hybrid of any kind, do so ASAP! Chocolate flavour with the burn of chili is a pleasure not to be missed. If you're kind of a spice wuss (as was I, once upon a time) I think a good place to start is with the chili-chocolate bars you can find at the supermarket. They have a pretty mild burn, but they'll give you a good enough idea of whether or not you'll like anything stronger.

Since I am committing to a whole week of posts on a theme (I guess this will be six days because I cheated with a statement of intent on day 1), I'll try to pace myself. Today's post will be a sort of précis, a rhetorical answer to the question "why write about food?".

To that, dear reader, I answer: "Because food is a pretty integral part of the human experience. Part of the experience of being anything living (technically only anything chemohetrotrophic). It has a sensual appeal (both in that we have the sense of taste/smell which is engaged by food, and that there can be an erotic dimension to food and to eating. Furthermore, I enjoy cooking, but I don't recall ever writing about it in particular detail. And finally, because although I'm trying to stretch my boundaries a little here, there are still ethical, economic, and political aspects to the growing, distribution, sale, and consumption of food.".

Being raised in a family of some privilege even within a society that is by and large itself quite well to do, my perspective on food has never really been shaped by scarcity - or even the threat thereof. I might have once missed a meal for misbehaving exceptionally poorly. Maybe I slept through one once, for all I can remember. As a child I recall that I used to watch cooking shows in the morning before Theodore Tugboat or somesuch; there was this jovial man who would always cook his guests a sit-down meal, but I cannot for the life of me remember his name. I don't think I can recall a single dish he ever served. I think the mindset of the cooking show/food column is however illustrative of my relationship to food: one essentially of leisure more than need. Sure, when I'm hungry I'm hungry...but when I think about cooking it's quite often "what would be an interesting challenge to make?" that I'm concerned with. I'm by no means the most pretentious person I have ever met with regards to food (that honour might go our former housemate from Maine?), but even so, recognizing and accepting the privilege that I have had makes holding certain views on food...problematic. I tend to believe that people should eat real food. I'm not a huge fan of things like "artificially-soured" sour cream. Sure it doesn't taste much different, but if we want to follow this path, we might as well just eat a watery sugar/nutrient paste with a plethora of flavour shots in it. I understand that some things lend themselves more readily to industrial processing/manufacture - and thus are likely to be lower in price, hence more affordable. And I get that in the choice between artificially-soured cream and no sour cream at all, you shouldn't go without because someone's paying you too little. But as long as we're on the crutch of artificial flavours and industrial-scale processing, I don't think anyone is going to put a lot of thought or effort into making real food affordable. It still annoys me that "organic" food is a boutique item, rather than a viable choice for anyone of any income who has health concerns about pesticides.

Something that I do belive, and that I intend to expand upon tomorrow, is that everyone should learn to cook. And cook at least something well. It's not only a measure of self-sufficiency, but - like I said - food is an integral part of being human. Not learning how to cook is a little bit like short-changing yourself on sleep; you're probably going to enjoy your days a lot less if you do. Tomorrow, I'll tell you how my role model in this regard was the [fictional] Nate the Great.

Until then, goodnight and good eating.

LOUD!

1/30 Complete

2010-09-01T23:25:00.001-04:00

It's fair to say that I've fallen into another lapse in my blogging habits this year (after some not indecent work in the early year), and I intend to make amends. So starting today, *ahemcoughcough* the first of September, I will post at least once every day of the month. I am considering choosing a theme for each week of posts, but that might be a little too long to sustain my own enthusiasm, so I'll play it by ear. At any rate, tomorrow I will introduce the first of these themes and hopefully some more original thoughts than I've managed lately. Suggestions for future themes (as long as I can keep this daily/thematic posting up) are absolutely welcomed.

Today's post is a bit of a cheat because it's been about 30 degrees and gross in Halifax and pretty much all of my good higher brain functionality is being cooked out of me. But for once I'm happy to take the 'useless filler' post and run with it because, hey, at least it might help me form a posting habit, which is more than I can say for doing nothing (as usual). So with that, I will see you tomorrow with real thoughts.

LOUD!

Scott Pilgrim - Rating: Awesome.

2010-08-24T10:51:00.000-04:00

What do you do when a technology you like is co-opted by a business model you don't? Well, when Apple makes a PC, I'm content to ignore them. But what if the US were to mandate the installation of FM radios into...well, pretty much anything electronic and handheld - at the behest of the RIAA et al? I personally enjoy the FM tuner functionality of my Sandisk Sansa e260 (still better than your iPod nano), even if everyone else considers the technology somewhat quaint and outdated. Somewhere out there, I saw a commenter say "NPR is the only sound coming out of my radio now", which is sort of the camp I'm in; I sometimes like to listen to CBC radio while I'm walking. Would I prefer internet or satellite radio functionality? Quite probably, but then I'd have to get used to about half as much battery life as I want.

It's pretty obvious where I stand on this issue: mandatory FM radios are bullshit. This is a matter of customer preference, not safety...and I don't think it's consumer protection. False advertising is one thing: if you make a "digital music player" and don't bother to mention on the package that it will only play .rm files and not Mp3s, you're kind of a dirtbag. But a digital music player that plays your digital music and nothing more? That's exactly what most people are paying for, unless they're like me and demand a certain amount of additional functionality just in case. For that matter, I really like my FM radio because it can record songs, which I'll bet you is NOT part of what the RIAA wants in this deal.

I think this issue is making me revisit my stance on FM radios in my Mp3 players. Before it was a way to feel smug about how I could do some neat stuff that iPods didn't. Now, it's about letting go. Radio is dead, and now the RIAA's necromancy has enslaved its ghost. It stalks the air, screaming in agony as it is made to pour poison in our ears.

Has anyone thought about making a wifi or 3G enabled mp3 player with baked-in bittorrent? Pirate Pod: ARRRRRRR, shiver your tympanic membranes!

This might be a little hypocritical after I've spent a while bashing Big Media, but you should seriously go see Scott Pilgrim vs The World if you haven't already!

I've run into a little resistance among my incredulous friends, so I thought I might write a review in order to explain why people ought to do so. Scott Pilgrim does a few things wrong in its marketing. About seven of those things are Michael Cera, who is a lot more tolerable in this film than the trailers might have you believe. I also have a beef with that "epic of epic epicness" shit on the posters. Since its more-or-less monomythic, Scott Pilgrim is technically an epic tale. But as taglines go it still feels like its trying to hard, or that there is nothing to say about the content of the film BESIDES that it is epic, which is false. Scott Pilgrim is like....Star Wars*? Bohemian Rhapsody? Maybe the closest analogy is Buffy The Vampire Slayer; the trials and tribulations of adolesence/young adulthood, represented by supernatural enemies who must be defeated with Mortal Kombat/love (depending on what message we're sending this week).

*listen to the part where he talks about protagonists. Scott Pilgrim does it right, like the original Star Wars did.

(stop reading if you don't want spoilers) Scott Pilgrim does something especially wonderful, or something that I think is pretty good. You know the hapless protagonist a lot of movies have? The guy who just loses at everything until he gets a montage like halfway through the movie? Yeah, Scott Pilgrim isn't really like that. It surprised and delighted me when Scott actually fights the first time he's attacked by an Evil Ex. Especially after a scene in which Michael Ce--I mean, Scott has displayed a cute ineptitude with the ladies, it's good to know that he's got something going for him. I'll be clear: I don't need my heroes to be tough, but if they aren't they had better be sharp, or nimble...or, you know, something - anything - positive. If Scott just needed to beef up to defeat the Evil Exes, it would make the movie about overcoming a physical/skill-based weakness. It would be telling us that weak men must become Strong Men to win the respect of women. Scott's problem is not that he needs to gain strength or cunning - though he does develop and display both as he goes along - it's that he must wonder if the love of a woman is worth all of this strife. It allows the story to question the value of the fighting, and of his strength. There are two lines that stand out for me in this regard. Ramona says "you're just an Evil Ex waiting to happen" and "I'm tired of people getting hurt because of me" (separate occasions). Scott responds to the latter by saying he'll get over it, and she says "I don't mean just you". And we realize that while we've been rooting for Scott to beat the Exes and get the girl, he's been so myopically focused on his end goal that he no longer cares about the trail of bodies he's leaving behind on the way there. And back to the first of those two lines: doesn't that look familiar?

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche

Oh shit, IT'S NIETZSCHE! It's perfect: rather than making us cheer for a loser who eventually becomes a badass, we skip the depressing part at the beginning of the cycle...and are allowed time to question whether or not the badassification process has turned our hero into someone who no longer deserves the love he was fighting for. And in the end, what does Ramona value in Scott? That he is "The nicest guy [she] ever dated". Not the strongest, not the smartest, not the nimblest...the nicest.

This is by no means to be taken as a comprehensive review. I've not even touched on a lot of what makes the movie fun and well-made, but it is all of those things and more. Stop draggin' your stupid heels, shut up about how you can't stand Michael Cera and go see this goddamned fantastic film already!

-LOUD!

Still Kind of a Silly Title....

2010-08-13T10:55:00.001-04:00

Irrational Games has finally revealed their new project. Would you kindly go have a look?

Spoilers ahead

I wasn't really sure what to expect, but thankfully Bioshock Infinite wasn't really it. On some level, the domain "whatisicarus.com" had me thinking lofty thoughts (possibly something to do with the indie game "guns of icarus"?), but codenames are unreliable. Anyway, I'm cautiously optimistic. You see, Bioshock Infinite seems to be tied to the original game (and its sequel) by name and by gameplay, not by narrative and characters. I thought Bioshock 2 was already trying to beat a dead horse by revisiting a story in which most - if not all - of the interesting characters were already dead. That's why I think the new trailer is actually quite good; it pretended to be more of the same until I had almost lost my enthusiasm for this secret thing they had been foreshadowing for about a week...and then POW!, they toss you into a flying city as if to say "what, you thought we were THAT dumb? COME ON".

It's still a long way out (16mo says Kotaku, and you know how development cycles are), but here's a list of the things I like so far:

FLOATING CITY!
Not everyone will attack you on sight, apparently
"Murder of Crows" is a power that lets you ATTACK PEOPLE WITH BIRDS*

And here, a list of some concerns I have

Bioshock's AI kinda blew, and the developers shied away from letting you interact with characters face-to-face. Irrational can write a decent story, but between System Shock 2 and Bioshock, there was no difference in presentation; it was relayed through uninteractive audio diaries. Half-Life 2 set a pretty high bar, and almost every CRPG since the dawn of time has at least let you talk to people. I would rather be a participant in a videogame story than a mostly-passive observer.
Bioshock's vaunted "moral choice" was pretty lame after a while. You can do better than "Press X to be good, press Y to be evil".
Vertical gameplay. It's a super-tall city in the sky, I hope they take advantage of that to build some novel combat scenarios. Irrational did make a Tribes game, and while it was decidedly a weak one, they should at least understand the Dynamix formula: Shooter + Jetpack = WIN

Beating my head against the Wall (Street Journal)

2010-07-29T11:09:00.000-04:00

"'As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality...but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.'
-commissioner Pravin Lal, Human Declaration of Rights"
-Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

It's a punchy piece of prose that makes my hair stand on end even now hearing it for what must be the hundredth time. It's a truth which we neglect at our gravest peril. So when I see something like this:

"If American voters come to believe that newspapers or websites are cavalier about putting U.S. soldiers or allies at risk against our enemies, politicians will follow the public mood. The press will put its own freedom in jeopardy."
-Wall Street Journal (take the first link provided, as it will get you past the WSJ's paywall)

I tend to get a little riled up. "No", I want to shout, "that is NOT how it works". Reading the rest of the article will put the quote in context, but it won't do much to excuse the WSJ. For one, the piece reads less as though they are actually in opposition to the release of the Afghan documents...and more incensed that they were not approached as media partners, witness:

"We don't believe in prior restraint, but it is worth asking whether the Times, the Guardian or Der Spiegel are really serving the public, much less allied security interests, in validating Mr. Assange's methods by flying in publishing formation with him."
-WSJ

This is an opinion which seems to rest on the assertion that the leaked documents aren't telling the public anything they don't already know, an opinion which I've seen floating around several articles and comment threads on the issue. The clever response has been: "why, then, were they classified?". I think this "nothing new" logic is a flimsy argument perched on top of a flimsier one: that we should implicitly trust our governments to provide us with accurate, unbiased information. I highly doubt that the people who have come out against this leak would be in favour of state-run media, so why would they imply that we ought to trust the official story? The US government especially has a lot of face to lose in this war - after 9 years prosecuting it that's inevitable. Are they likely to publicise their failings openly and transparently? We wish. Fortunately, we have wikileaks and some semblance of a free press.
If there's a valid claim in the WSJ article, it's that wikileaks should probably have done a better job editing or erasing the names of Afghan informants. After all, those names aren't all that important to our understanding of the war. Keeping their identities secret benefits them and us, because we want people to keep becoming informants if we're going to "win", whatever that means anymore.
Beyond this one particular leak, though, I think it's so crucially important to support wikileaks (would that I had any money to spare!). The public SHOULD KNOW what's in treaties like ACTA because the public is precisely who they're going to affect. The public SHOULD HAVE access to better information about the progress of the Afghan war because not only are we as taxpayers funding these wars, we as citizens bear in part the responsibility for them. The Afghan war is certainly the kind of issue that could sway an election, but which way? If we don't have good information, we can't be sure! It's not a question of priviliged access here: it's whether we do or do not live in a democracy. Yes, we vote; no one is taking that away from us (yet). But voting without adequate, accurate information is a ritual, a rote action taken more out of habit than conscience. It is not the informed decision that we should have every right to make. Living as we still are in the paranoid fantasies of post-9/11 government, Wikileaks is an invaluable resource. An election whose result is the censorship of wikileaks and/or the press -as the WSJ suggests may be the result of radical anti-secrecy - would represent nothing less than the cascade failure of democratic society.
-LOUD!

"Then, one day, you find / 10 years have got behind you / No one told you when to run / You missed the starting gun"

2010-07-16T00:52:00.000-04:00

In response to this post on Gnomesque's blog:

I used to think that all smart people go to university. On some level, I think I still do. Every couple of days when I'm working I'll have this thought: "If 10 years ago I had thought about the life of a person who gets mediocre marks in college and cleans the bathrooms as a part-part-part time job, I think I might have considered it a fate worse than death". And yet here I am, now embodying the nightmare-closet visions of Future Binkley from Bloom County (and we don't even have self-tying shoelaces yet!)...at least in part.

Do I think I went to University for the wrong reasons? Yes. No. I think I went to University with the wrong mindset. I didn't work very hard in my last years of high school. I didn't actually do any research on what university would be best suited for me. Frankly, I didn't have the marks to get into the kind of program I was really interested in doing*, and so what was the point, anyhow? Even coming to Dal, I didn't really look into what it was renowned for. In the end, one big university turns out to be just like another. Carleton and Dalhousie did not feel substantially different, at least not at the undergraduate level.

I haven't read More Money Than Brains, so my understanding of the author's arguments will be limited. I don't think Engineering belongs in a college system just because "Engineer" is a career choice. I think that's a little ridiculous. What about "Historian"? That's a career, too. Is it that the Engineer will probably make more money? I don't think that makes it any more of a trade and any less of an intellectual endeavor. Is the idea that only those interested in "Academia" should go to university? Because that's not only its own career path, it's also potentially quite lucrative. I even think that if universities only existed to train their future faculties that would end up being a little bit circular. I'm not sure I understand the reason for this distinction.

Sillier still is to object to the idea of a university education as a monetary investment. Dare I ask why it's intelligent to spend thousands of dollars per year without some reasonable assurance that you'll be able to pay your way back out of the hole on the other end? What is this ridiculous scholar-figure who pays money to study just because he or she wants to learn? The OpenCourseWare Consortium and movements like it exist precisely to provide learning materials at no cost, but - of course - they don't come with a degree. And if you only want to learn for the sake of learning, why do you need the piece of paper? Ego? Or, more likely, because no one will hire you for an intellectually demanding job without one, unless the social aspect of university is so difficult to duplicate that the thousands of dollars of debt are worth it and the piece of paper that multiplies your value possibly tenfold is just a "side benefit".

People with university degrees make a lot more in a lifetime than those without, generally speaking. As long as this fact remains true, the rhetoric of "learning for learning's sake" seems to ring pretty hollow in my ears. But what would I know? I'm just a bitter dropout who couldn't write an essay to save his grades.

PS. I sometimes get the question "why are you ashamed of going to College?" (really just from ELI and Etarran). Now you know.

Hello, Ladies.

2010-07-15T11:25:00.000-04:00

If you haven't been following the antics of OldSpice on youtube, I think you've been missing history in the making. Not the broad sweep of empire and ideology, no, but something about the whole enterprise of advertising is going to change.

To frame this discussion, I thought I would look to my preferred authority on ad culture; one Terry O'Reilly (of O'Reilly on Advertising and The Age of Pursuasion on CBC radio.) There's nothing on his blog as yet about Old Spice specifically, but just yesterday he posted "HOW TO MARKET TO MEN IN 2010". Let's see what he says:

"Men are really two men: The man they are, and the man they want to be."

"The Man Your Man Could Smell Like" truly does embody this sentiment. Here is - as ELI said this morning - the Form of Man. And here he is selling you a deodorant that will let you smell just like him. It's just the right blend of irony, absurdity, and hubris.

"Men search out answers on the internet and have no problem seeking answers to important life questions from people they don't know. The web is a big provider of comfort to men."

Well, ok it's not "real" advice that Old Spice Man dispenses. But as a man I think I'm qualified to say that men sometimes just need affirmation, ego stroking; assurance. Failing that, we should be able to laugh at our problems and ourselves. That, or we really do wish we could solve our problems by wrestling sharks.

"At the end of the day, the question most marketers should be asking themselves is

- how do I get bookmarked?

What do I have to offer men to ensure I am one of the 10 websites they surf more often than any others.

All websites should be conversations.

Is yours?"

A-HA! Here you have it, folks! Viral marketing is nothing new, but creating an actual conversation with the audience IS. Viral marketing has suffered in the past from what I'll call an "authenticity problem": savvy customers eventually catch on to the marketing schemes that advertisers try to camouflage as "grassroots", thinking we'll respond favourably. Inevitably, though, the consumer gets a little jaded. It isn't really fun when the "new" advertising is still just a Man in a suit telling you what to think. Heck, now it's worse because he's lying to you to begin with. It should be self-evident that such attempted subterfuge is about the worst strategy for building a bond of trust between you and your prospective customers. Successful viral marketing campaigns, on the other hand, often take the form of a puzzle game, where the audience has to solve a series of clues which are often obliquely related to the theme of the product. No lies, but it gets people talking and it gets them engaged. I think it's important that if Old Spice guy is lying to you it's ludicrous exaggeration and not subterfuge. He does not pretend not to be a company spokesperson. He doesn't claim to be just one of us. He DOES, however, talk to you if you post a comment and you're lucky. It's honest in the right ways, and engaging in the right ways. Not a puzzle, but a game nonetheless. And as Mr. O'Reilly would say, part of the covenant between advertisers and consumers is that the advertiser should provide you with (among other things) entertainment value in exchange for your time and attention.

So, every other ad agency on the planet: your move.

Theory of Parallel Evolution

2010-07-14T19:05:00.001-04:00

I just finished Mass Effect 2. I think it's good enough that I'm going to try not to spoil it for you. Daydream Believer remembered that the last time I had played a Mass Effect game I had decried it as somewhat ineffective. And I still believe that, although the ability to import your character into the second game does add some value to the first title (it's worth something in narrative and gameplay terms, so some props to bioware are due).

Some of my problems with Mass Effect are still there, but some are gone. I expected to hate the removal of the inventory system - which I thought was a cop-out compared to fixing it - but you know what? It works. Shepherd started the last game wearing the worst armour...which is kinda dumb when it's the STANDARD ISSUE for human troops, and you find better armour lying around in space barrels. In RPGs where you start life as a nobody, your peasant burlap really would make sucky armour, and this is absolutely OK, but we're talking about the Executive Officer of Humanity's most advanced prototype space frigate here! Mass Effect 2 has "fewer" guns, but they feel more distinct. I think that if nothing else, this is a lesson RPGs might want to learn and learn well: a worn rusty shortsword is not actually all that different from a pitted dirk of the badgerlord if all you do with either of them is click-click-click stab-stab-stab anyhow. When you aquire a new weapon in Mass Effect 2 it seems at least to behave differently (ie. Semi-auto versus bolt-action sniper rifle*). Rather than fishing armour out of space barrels, Shepherd can now augment her (yes, her) armour with components that you can buy around the galaxy, but these are 5-10% bonuses to complement your playstyle and not entirely better bits of armour that space pirates have and the alliance navy doesn't. It works, and since there weren't any items in Mass Effect 1 besides armaments, you don't miss anything. Omni-Gel is gone and no one cares, and there's no healing and only resurrection of your party with Medi-Gel (which wasn't part of your inventory proper in ME1 anyway, and is tracked the same way in ME2). It brings the gameplay and narrative more in-line, and I for one like the consistency.

*Yeah, the guns have "thermal clips" instead of overheating like before. A necessary gameplay convention perhaps but probably they would not be loaded into and ejected from guns in quite the same fashion as present-day ammo. Also beef: why "clip"? Modern guns don't use clips, they use magazines**...and "thermal magazine" is probably more correct anyway. Or just "heatsink"

**The clip is specifically a "stripper clip" which is a metal strip into which the bullets fit at one end so they stay together and can be loaded into the weapon, which (I think) has a spring inside it to push them up. A magazine has the rounds stacked inside a box with a spring mechanism at the bottom to feed them into the gun. I think "thermal magazine" is more correct not necessarily because I think the weapons in Mass Effect 2 use anything quite analogous to either clips or magazines mechanically, but mostly because of the other meaning of "magazine" ie the place where you store ammo on a naval vessel. Semi-logically a "thermal magazine" is where you would keep all your heat?

Mass Effect 2 is not without problems, of course. I think Shepherd (especially male Shepherd whose voice actor sounds like he is being paid 10 cents the hour to dictate inter-office memos) is now one of the weakest characters in the cast. Frankly, it's because Shepherd is a blunt instrument whose power is heart; that's just not the interesting person to be when you live in the future. Yes, Shepherd had to be a soldier to set up the plot correctly, and yes fully-voiced dialogue means that you don't necessarily get to have as many options as you might in another RPG, and yes the target demographic of this game is probably frat boys who don't like pontsy RPGs with faeries...it's still irksome. Shepherd was not limited to being just a gun-wielding jarhead: she could be a tech expert or a biotic (read: telekinetic), or any hybrid of two of the three skillsets. In-fiction, Biotic abilities are rare in humans, so biotic Shepherd is not rank-and-file military, rather she'd be spec-ops - as might techie Shepherd. Yet still Shepherd's limited dialogue options make it hard not to sound like a knownothing. I sort of expect that if someone is at the vanguard of humanity, she should perhaps have recieved - you know - ANY prior education about the other species present in galactic politics. Techie Shepherd would presumably have risen up the ranks as an engineer of some kind, maybe aboard ships? She is definitely of a commissioned rank, and therefore presumably possesses some kind of military-sponsored degree? The few moments in Mass Effect 1 and 2 where Shepherd actually speaks or acts as though she knows more than I personally do are really actually quite satisfying. I don't expect the writers to do ALL the work for me, but it makes for a more interesting dialogue if both Shepherd and her conversational partner can be engaged in educating the player about the universe. Witness:

Shepherd: "Pilgrimmage? That's when young Quarians leave the flotilla and make their own way in the galaxy, right?"

Tali (a Quarian): "Not exactly. You see, we're not just out to see the worlds*** - we have to find something of value to the fleet and bring it back."

Shepherd: "I've also heard that the Pilgrimmage is related to your marriage customs. How does that work?"

Tali: Well, you have to understand that Quarians marry outside of their birth vessels to ensure genetic diversity. When we get married, we move to the vessel of our spouse - or they to ours. Of course, when a captain takes on a new passenger, he or she needs to be sure that they're useful, and committed to the well-being of the fleet"

*** Important pluralisation when your universe has more than one of these.

As compared to what happens in Mass Effect 1, where (as I recall) Shepherd basically asks questions as though she has only recently come to terms with what a Quarian is. I know that not every character I roleplay has to be intelligent to the point of genius. All I'm asking is that Shepherd talk a little more like she has actually lived in the universe she inhabits. To boot, Mass Effect 2 introduces a lot of sharp, intelligent characters...and it really makes Shepherd seem quite dull in comparison.

On the shooting front, I think they have their cover-shooter mechanics more or less done right. I think the regenerative health AND shields are maybe a bit much, and that Halo, for all its flaws, got it right with it's hybrid of resource-management health with a nice recharging bar of forgiveness overtop. Enemies can also have three layers of defense (barrier/shield, armour, health) and it's weird that you can't seem to have armour that can soak damage like they can. The powers from the first game are back, and they're useful enough. But since every character has fewer and certain defenses preclude the use of certain powers, it doesn't feel as though you have as many options in combat as before. I think the developers should have seriously considered ripping off BioShock's handling of a shooter with guns and magic powers, rather than keeping a holdover system from when they were making an RPG with guns rather than a shooter with exploration and dialogue.

Recently, I've heard that Dragon Age II will be getting "The Mass Effect" treatment in terms of dialogue and story; you'll be able to play only male/female versions of a single protagonist, you'll have the dialogue wheel that instead of giving you full-text responses lets you declare your character's intent (actually, as one Kotaku poster put it, borrowed from Alpha Protocol...)...and I don't think I'm happy. Even if I like Mass Effect, I don't think it makes for a very deep RPG. I do like the idea that action games can have a narrative and characters and not be just one linear path from start to end lined all the way with ablative meat...I REALLY DO! But taking an RPG and "advancing it" by 1) making it more like this franchise you already have and 2) eliminating the one actually nifty feature of your first game (the distinct origin stories for different character types)...seems like a bad idea. I think Mass Effect 2 is actually a perfect game for introducing people to PC RPGS if they tend to be first- or third-person shooter fans. I know I have had a lot of trouble getting into games like Morrowind from a cold start, because at some point I just want things to go boom. Games like ME2, the S.T.A.L.K.E.R series, System Shock 2, Deus Ex, and to an extent even Fallout 3 are good because they sort of bridge the gap: they have less all-the-time shooting and more character interaction, more world exploration...but they also have BOOM. I don't think Bioware needs two franchises to straddle the divide between action and RPG. On Kotaku, someone said that Mass Effect was "dragging the RPG into the 21st century", and I don't think I like that notion because it sort of expresses the ideal that games should be flashy and showy and cinematic but at the cost of depth and character and player choice. I don't like that. I think that Dragon Age could and should evolve, but not in this particular direction.

LOUD!

Word to The Other

2010-06-22T11:00:00.001-04:00

Apologies to Etarran for mercilessly appropriating his joke for a title

Yesterday, a pair of posts over on EK's blog caught my eye. The first of which was entitled And People Think We Don't Need Feminists Anymore, the second: Citizenship and Immigration.

Lately I have been reading Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, and a few chapters into the first book I noticed something (yes, I'm going somewhere pertinent with this). Something about the characters. What could it....ah, yes none of these people are women!. And then, by and by, it struck me. Foundation is about history, and this is what the orthodoxy must have looked like before the 1960s or thereabouts: pompous men fighting it out in legislatures with almost nary a mention of women. They weren't hysteric mothers, they weren't sex objects...it was as though not a woman existed within Foundation space! I began to wonder if the Imperium had not managed in its 12 000 years to perfect parthenogenesis.

Foundation and Empire actually does very quickly introduce an educated female protagonist, who manages to articulate a well-founded and ultimately correct position within the first couple of pages. Foundation and Foundation and Empire were published in 1951 and 1952 respectively, so it was likely not a cultural shift which produced the character of Bayta Darell. It is an interesting change between books, because as I recall the last mention of women in Foundation was when they (presumably) formed a social movement suing for peace with the Foundation because it had stopped supplying their planet with atom-powered domestic goods.

So what of this? I think for me it highlighted progress that the feminist movement has made.

EK's outrage at the slaughter of Aqsa Parvez is really the only legitimate response there is. I need that thought to stand on its own because I am going to say "but" soon, and I don't want any of that language to spill over. This is not about the criminals - I have no buts or howevers for them. BUT I think that the immigration and values debate that often proceeds from these events is a way of trading one kind of prejudice (namely, sexual) for another (cultural). I don't really believe in tolerance for sexism, but I think we have to do some serious introspection before we start pointing fingers. If one looks at North American culture from the outside, what does one see? This will sound tired, but are short shorts a mark of female emancipation, or do they represent an implicit relegation of women to the role of eye candy? Oh very well, "here you can choose what to wear" is a fine counter-argument, but those choices don't exist in a vacuum. A not insignificant portion of our present economy is predicated on manufactured dissatisfaction. With how we act, how we eat, how we look, how we water our plants...doesn't matter. If we didn't think something was missing we would not be compelled to buy and buy and buy and buy. We are presented with what some people like to call "unrealistic standards of beauty", and I prefer to call "arbitrary and often unhealthy aesthetics" because 1) beauty is objective and 2) because calling it that tells people that they must be satisfied with the lesser beauty they already possess, which in light of point the first is frankly moronic. Don't take my word for it; look at the goddamn Birth of Venus. There is a woman with curves and by Kim Kardashian* standards a rather modest set of breasts. But homeboy was emphatically not painting a modestly attractive woman! This was the goddess of sexy! So yeah.

Ok, digression over. As a counterpoint on the short-shorts issue we have Boobquake, which for all the jerks derailing it was an essentially perfect example of a not (originally) coercive event in which short-shorts and low-cut tops were presented as a vehicle for women to make an unequivocal political statement. We've still got some problems, though. Consider:

Or...

Ah, good old XKCD for illustrating a problem faster than I could write a paragraph about it. Science, Math, and Engineering are still male-dominated, even if overall undergraduate enrollment favours women. And let's not forget the Canada Excllence Research Chairs fiasco where not one woman seems to have "made the cut". Our Parliament is pretty atrocious for the representation of women MPs...I could go on. Theoretically we're doing good - better than good, but this immigration debate has the unsavoury subtext of "we are civilized, and you are not", and I think there's plenty of evidence that we should not be priding ourselves as paragons juuuuuust yet. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't expect people to obey Canadian law when they immigrate. But I think the legal argument holds a lot more water than the idea that we need to imprint "Canadian Values", especially because even we Canucks are often none-too-sure about what that even means. Not too long ago I was talking to my far-away girlfriend (I'll ask her if she'd like to choose a pseudonym next time I get the chance), and she told me - distressingly - that in her experience there are some serious problems with sexism and racism in rural Canada. But she did not say that they aren't evident everywhere...only that they are worse in some places than others. So whose "Canadian Values" are we thinking of promoting here? Are supposedly-enlightened urban Canadians somehow more Canadian than rural Canadians? This seems problematic, to say the least!

I suppose what I'm saying is that we don't have to look far past our own noses to see why we (and the world at large) still need feminists.

LOUD!

PS: Why do we see this choice between ghettoised tapestry and homogenized melting pot? I think it's funny that we don't really think about what it would be like to have a Canada-wide culture that drew from that of immigrants as well as that of natives. I think it's because we're afraid of losing our culture - sound familiar?. Some people don't come here for maple syrup and ice hockey. Some people are fleeing war and persecution and death elsewhere. I imagine a particular fear is "well, we couldn't adopt their views on women", which I think is odd. If we're right about women, should our view not be somehow more compelling? Surely we have nothing to fear. No, I get this feeling that we're afraid because we see The Other, and we're disturbed by it. And when you think about it, maybe that's how some immigrants feel about us. Just throwing that out there.

Macintosh Empire

2010-06-11T18:15:00.000-04:00

A certain someone for whom I care a great deal is celebrating her birthday today. You could pay her DeviantArt page a visit if you like, her work is fantastic - more than worth your time!

Seriously, I'll still be here when you get back!

I heard the other day - I think it was on last week's Maximum PC No BS Podcast - that Apple's market capitalization has exceeded Microsoft's, making it the largest tech company around. The podcasters mostly addressed the whole "underdog" versus "big evil corporation" shtick that may not play quite so much in Apple's favour, but they missed something. They mentioned iPads and iPods and iPhones throughout the show when supporting/mocking Apple, but no one said "this market cap thing is probably because Apple sells hardware devices, and lots of them". I don't know what percentage of Apple's business is what, but I do know that Microsoft doesn't manufacture and sell its own branded platform of computers, and I'm not even going to spend more than this sentence talking about the Zune. We have two companies with platforms that work in different ways. Consider that you'll hear grudging MS users talk about the "Microsoft Tax" when they have to install windows on a system for specific software, or because their company requires it...but that's only $100-200 on top of your base system cost which is maybe $1000 on average. For a $1000 Mac system the "Apple Tax" is 100% (or near enough) of the purchase price.

I would not go so far as to say that this the case of - pardon the pun - Apple v. Orange. We're looking at tech companies that see themselves as competitors, the differing nature of their platforms be damned! The rhetoric of their feud does - I think - have a reasonable analog in the rivalry of Coke and Pepsi. Coke doesn't compare itself to Pepsi in its ads because it doesn't have to; in fact, to do so would legitimize their opponent. Coke needs only be coke - the original, the iconic, the go-to beverage - something it has been for decades, and might be for centuries assuming we don't blow ourselves up before then. Apple and Pepsi, on the other hand, are operating in markets where even after years of competition there is a clear market leader who will not displace easily. Hence the "3/4 Canadians prefer Pepsi over Coke!" ad you probably saw a million times in the '90s. Apple with its' "buy a mac" ads look rather like a win for Apple on the surface, because hey look how hip and cool and secure and crash-free mr.Mac is! But in mentioning the PC at all, Apple has already acknowledged the uphill battle that it's fighting. If you doubt me, how about this: do you see Apple comparing the iPod or the iPhone to ANYTHING else in their advertisements? Of course not! Droid and the others have been saddled with the burden of proof in this case, and the sale is lost unless you can explain in 15 seconds why the customer wants your puny phone and not Steve Jobs' latest toy.

But I may be accused so far of avoiding the issue. It's not an unfair charge, because I'm strongly pro-PC. Yes, Apple is bigger than Microsoft, but I think that it's not so much a case of the tables being turned and all of a sudden MS users have to play the underdogs and talk about how "big Apple" is now the monolithic bad guy. Competition and adversity are necessary to avoid stagnation. If Apple doesn't ever pose a threat to the dominance of Microsoft, they retain the power to bilk us for the same shitty code year after year after year. It's evolution in action: if the Microsoft Entity can't adapt fast enough to preserve its own existence (something that it is at present in no need of, but one may hope) then it must perish. Again, that's far from immediate, but in the now they are facing a situation that does not make for the very best of PR. Who cares what this means in actuality? All most people are going to see is "Blah blah Apple > Microsoft blah market capitalization". It's not that people are dumb, just that most of them aren't economists or enthusiasts who care about the details.

I have just had a tragic epiphany. In this corporate rivalry our choices are between a corporate giant bordering on the soulless that carries a strong distaste for free code and free culture...and a slightly more stylish version of the same.

There are days when I just hate software.

-LOUD!

Look at you, Student; a pathetic creature of flesh and bone, panting and sweating as you run through my calculus course ...

2010-06-09T11:07:00.000-04:00

I'm not entirely sure how one goes about integrating a math lesson into a first-person-shooter game, but it seems as though someone has. Naturally, of course, the reaction from some parents has been less than stellar. These luddites are ruffling my feathers. Bad.

Educational videogames are counted among my favourite memories from grade school. In fact, I defy you to find someone who grew up in my generation who does not have a deep and enduring love for Treasure Mountain/Mathstorm, Outnumbered!, Gizmos and Gadgets...heck, maybe even Reader Rabbit! These were games we played of our own volition, practically from the moment we learned how to use the school computers; games which managed to craft fun experiences with educational content. I think that it's perfectly reasonable for educational games to keep up with the times. That means they have to compete in terms of content and entertainment value with the games we buy off the shelves. I don't think they need bleeding edge graphics, but basically they should look and feel like something kids would take seriously as a video game first, and the educational experience should seek not to bludgeon the poor child, but to insinuate itself seamlessly into the normal course of gameplay. It's a bit like hiding spinach in food, I guess.

So on the matter of an educational first-person-shooter: FPS gameplay is popular, recognizable, and it's been in vogue since about 1993. FPS gameplay is relevant, and that's very important. If you make an educational FPS you're doing some novel things. One, you're allowing a skill that kids will likely have developed outside the classroom to be helpful inside the classroom. This means not only will kids understand your game from the get-go, it creates a two-way relationship: you want them to learn math, and you can offer them the chance to improve their FPS skillz at the same time. You are offering BOTH a long-term reward AND a short-term reward. I think it's a good answer to this supposed "problem" of the modern attention span. Instead of sticking to the bankrupt rhetoric of "well, kids should just suck it up and be bored at school because it's good for them!" you're saying that learning doesn't have to suck. If you've got reservations about the violent nature of shooters, check yourself: this educational shooter's main weapon is some kind of goo gun. For that matter, videogames feature avatars pointing guns at avatars. If you want something that actually teaches kids to point something at another kid and pull a trigger, how about you go on a crusade to ban super soakers, nerf guns, paintball and laser tag! I even think that shooters could use an injection of non-conventional arsenals. You don't need graphic headshots and real-time dismemberment - just give people a reward for good performance. Maybe you're playing capture the flag with guns that force your enemies to dance uncontrollably for three or five seconds? Or maybe you've got ~~portal guns~~ Aperture Science Hand-held Portal Devices and you have to get your opponents stuck in infinite loops or toss them off cliffs. If that's too violent for you I suppose you've been petitioning childrens' TV stations to stop showing road runner and coyote cartoons for the last thirty years, haven't you? Hey, why not something like Iain M. Banks' Lazy Guns that summon anvils or what-have-you above the target's head? In a cartoon world, that hardly stuns a guy! I think I've made my point, but essentially I think that the blithe equation of the shooter genre with gut-splattering violence is the same kind of irritating short-sightedness that makes commercial shooters so bland and samey!

I remember reading a book by Seymour Papert in which he discussed why the education system seems to be faltering, while kids spend more and more time captivated by videogames. His response (paraphrased) was more or less "Isn't it obvious? One of these things has grown and adapted to teach a child often complex concepts using multiple forms of stimuli as best as cutting-edge technology allows. One of them has not". In short, education is stuck at the book (printing press/movable type is 15th-century tech, for those keeping score), and this generation seems to demand something a little more their speed. Dare I say that rather than working so hard to ban iPhones in school that we should instead be proud to say "Trouble with calculus? There's an app for that."? Banning games like this educational shooter - which I intend to try and review at my earliest convenience - sets a terrible precedent. When you think about it, it isn't too different from some other topical issues in education: sex education and the intelligent design fiasco. In each of these cases you can see that one side is trying to supersede evidence (or in the case of educational videogames the chance to even gather evidence about their efficacy as learning tools) with ideology. Even though learning about safe sex is PROVEN to be an actual bulwark against unintended pregnancy and STIs, children should be taught abstinence-only education because it's wrong to even condone premarital sex. Even though evolution fits all the observed data, we should teach our children that there is "controversy" because some nutjobs are convinced that "5% of an eye isn't useful" = "YHWH designed the eyeball" (in case you've never heard of the light sensor and its uses, these guys are already wrong). Even though videogames offer us a way to fully harness technology to teach and engage, we can't use them to teach our children because learning isn't supposed to be fun. Or participatory. Or even vaguely remotely violent. OH REALLY?

Looking into the future, I even see a use for games not explicitly designed for educational purposes in learning. Unless you want to argue that education shouldn't keep up with current knowledge and culture, I fail to see how Dragon Age or Morrowind should not be analyzed when we look at the legacy of - say - Tolkien in high fantasy! Do we really understand our culture's concept of villainy if we don't analyse Bowser, SHODAN, and GlaDOS? The world didn't end in 1980, so why should education?

-Loud!

They See Me Rollin'/ In Linen / Patrollin' / They Tryin' To Catch Me Ridin' Pretty

2010-06-08T00:48:00.000-04:00

First up, I will draw attention to a new Process Blog post for Little Worlds, which is now back from hiatus. Check it out if you didn't before!

Over the weekend I had an encounter with what I guess must be called "pretty cyclists" or "pretty riders". It wasn't really by chance, but because I don't look before I leap I had decided to attend an event described as a "pretty ride"; I naturally assumed that living in a city that isn't hard on the eyes (and I believe fancies itself to be picturesque), this was a geological/architectural sort of pretty we were talking about here. "I am down with biking past pretty places", said I. Only later when I went to see where I ought to park myself come fourteen-hundred-and-thirty Saturday did I notice a link to an article describing the act of "riding pretty". Riding pretty, besides being something you'd expect to hear in a Chamillionaire parody, is a movement whose goal is to disarm road rage and intolerance toward cyclists with an aesthetic shift from what you expect (spandex, muscle shirts and cargoes if we're talking mountain or BMX bikes) to something a little more whimsical, perhaps. Helmets which have velcro-on hat coverings. Lipstick. The pretty rider falls somewhere in the area of 'hipster' or 'retro-chic' on the fashion spectrum. Suits seem to be accepted also (one man and one woman came so attired). It was raining Saturday afternoon, and so I went somewhat less-than-prettily, following my usual logic of "if you would mind getting chain grease on it, don't wear it on a bike!".

These pretty riders turn out to be a nice bunch, so it didn't even turn out to be a thing that I looked as though I had not received a memo. Perhaps they were too polite to make a point of it? If it happens again on a nicer day I shall dutifully suit up, perhaps? In any case, it didn't end up being a very long bike ride on account of the rain and the cold, but that made tea at the end rather gratifying.

The Pretty Ride was a part of cycling week here in Halifax, which is a rather encouraging phenomenon. Halifax has rather fewer bike paths than Ottawa does, and almost nothing like the sections of trans-Canada trail and similar pathways that wind along the rivers and the Canal. Oddly enough it makes cycling a little more visible when you have to take the roads everywhere, but the flip-side is that even comparatively deferential Nova Scotia drivers can scare some would-be cyclists off the road as-is. About a week before the pretty ride was an event called "critical mass" in which cyclists saturated about a lane's worth of roads and even tackled one of the big suspension bridges over to Dartmouth, so I hear it. ELI was rather disdainful of their tactics ("You shouldn't be allowed on the road if you can't keep up with traffic!"), but I rather enjoyed the idea of such a high-visibility tactic. It's really too easy to miss cyclists when they're confined to the narrow margin between car door and kerb.

It seems not unreasonable that major streets should have dedicated bike lanes. The nice, bold white lines make everybody's lives easier. The margin for cyclists is well-defined, it's clearly delineated...it removes a lot of ambiguity from the relationship between car and bicycle drivers, I think. Halifax has a few good bike lanes, but not enough. But beyond that, we should be looking at how to reverse the car-centric approach to urban transport. Peninsular (Metro) Halifax isn't that big - maybe 25km from end-to-end, if that. That's a long bike ride if you need to go from one tip to the other, and most people probably don't.

Bikes are - at least according to Mind Trap - the most efficient vehicle ever designed by humankind. They have a much better vehicle-weight-to-payload weight ratio...actually, it's so good that it's the other way around! It's a rare person who weighs less than their bike! I'll sound like a broken record saying this, but you want an easy way to kill two birds with one stone? Bikes are a pretty good tandem solution to over-dependence on oil and potentially the obesity epidemic - certainly if you encourage cycling from childhood.

I've never really been heavily invested in velopolitics (a term I have just now coined) but this bike week, and a couple of recent discoveries have made me consider it more strongly (that, and it will make a lovely break from copyright law!). Bikes are forbidden in Halifax's public gardens. I'm cool if I have to walk my bike in quiet, slow-paced pedestrian crowds...but even WALKING MY BIKE is apparently disallowed. I will go to great pains to keep it out of peoples' way; I just want to cut through somewhere pretty and not have to backtrack in order to get to my ride! Furthermore bikes are also prohibited on the weekends in Point Pleasant Park. THIS IS MADNESS. What good is Saturday and Sunday biking if the nicest places in the city to look at are off-limits to me? I drive slow on the paths, I look out for people. I stop when dogs take an interest and let them sniff so I don't run into them. THE DOG OWNERS APOLOGISE, EVEN (they needn't!). I don't ask to be able to be a speed demon in a shared pedestrian/cyclist park, but I would like to be able to see the sights in my own chosen way!

That is all for now, methinks.

-LOUD!

Some Unrelated Notions

2010-06-01T22:18:00.000-04:00

Short Story: io9 has one of those comedic movie reviews that takes a bad example of genre X (in this case, super-materialistic rom-com Sex and the City 2) and casts it as a quirky, innovative take on Genre Y (in this case, Dark-City* esque solipsistic SF)

*What, you haven't seen? Go get it. But before you leave to do that, I have one fact that will save you a lot of breath: it was made before The Matrix.

Long Story: I wanted to dismiss this as a potential topic because in general I think the above meme (can we call it that? I think the ironic movie review has got to count!) is kinda dumb, probably because it fails occam's razor; are we to presume that mainstream writers are busy hiding complex themes of existence, identity, time, and control in (apparently) vapid fluff for calceivorous fortysomethings - especially when it is much simpler to believe that mainstream writers really do just write dreck? But I lingered just too long upon the topic, which is when a little voice in my head decided that it actually wanted to see that movie.

...no, the other movie, the one that doesn't exist about four women trapped in consumer heaven-or-is-it-hell for eternity, blessed/cursed to spend eternity buying more and more expensive shoes and handbags and dresses that somehow consistently fail to scratch the itch to consume more still, and where neither volume nor quantity of Manhattan hookups can fill the gaping void in their empty souls. And yet at the same time I think that somehow such a film would be an inevitably preachy condemnation of capitalist living; and why make that film when our propaganda (SatC2) does the same job so well already (apparently)? The natural objection is that satire can be done effectively, and that this "inescapable" cheesiness simply isn't, which is pretty valid. Next, then, we must ask how to avoid making an unenjoyable movie. I'd suggest that instead of focusing on the satire itself, or the nature of whatever dark forces are manipulating the characters, let's focus on the characters and their stories. People will have to fill in some of the gaps: Why are these people here? Is this nightmare world a function of their collective insanity, or the work of aliens/mind flayers/posthuman AI? You know, a movie that thrills by posing questions to which definite answers are not always given. But now the circle of paradox is almost complete, because I think the movie I just described would not look altogther that different from Sex and the City 2 (ok, so I haven't seen SatC2, but let's assume that one movie about the commercial and sexual exploits of four aging Manhattanite girlfriends looks like another?). Would audiences know the difference? Could you market a movie as SF that was really more inplicitly than explicitly so?

In more recent news, we have dolphins using touchscreen devices to communicate with humans. This is pretty damned cute, but also a sweet advance for anyone who likes dolphins and/or is a fan of David Brin's Uplift series (fuck you, Etarran**; I love those books!). I'd love to speculate about a glorious future for animal-human communication, but at first we get to learn about the nature of dolphin intelligence and language, maybe. Dolphins got flippers instead of 10 digits, so if they have a concept of or can be taught numeracy, what kind of base system will make the most sense to them, if any? How long an individual memory do they have? Do they have any kind of oral history, and if so how far back does it go? I'm not sure the last one will turn out to be true, but damn it would be bitchin' cool. If communication does turn out to be fruitful, of course, we have a further issue on our hands; we're going to have to re-evaluate our treatment of dolphins and other animals. In his uplift books, David Brin always (to my knowledge) ends with an ecological message about the value of preserving dolphins and apes so that one day we may know their minds as the characters in his books do (or something like it, I suppose). I think it would be a great step forward for environmentalism and animal rights if it turns out that we can communicate with dolphins on a complex and abstract level.

**Thinks David Brin is a hack.

Probably in large part due to Brin's work, I have a rather deep-seated fixation with the notion of uplifting other primates and dolphins to sentience, or failing that even establishing some kind of inter-species language. It's almost the same thing I feel about mechanical AI; I want to talk to one so that I can try to understand how another kind of being thinks about the world. Etarran has said before that anything we can understand is functionally human; it will think rather like us, and we should afford it the same rights as we would a human (I agree with the latter unequivocally). Even if this is so, I think there's still hope that communicating with a different kind of life-form could still be eye-opening; dolphins are astronomically unlikely to share any kind of cultural commmon ground with humans, besides what comes with being mammalian. If we talk to dolphins (and we don't just hear about how good the fish was, and other mundane details) and their thought processes aren't altogether that different, maybe dolphin similes turn out to be really neat, or something? Maybe they tell jokes we've never heard before! Again, it probably won't work like that but imagine someone just totally estranged from every bit of human culture that exists, and now imagine talking to them about what they think happens when you die, for example. I'll bet their answer would be surprising (assuming you speak a common language with some fluency, or established one with great difficulty). We're likely years away from any of my pipe dreams, but that we are even a step closer is pretty nifty. Also, if dolphins are taking to the iPad that means that even if they aren't all that smart, then neither are we.

HOLY SHIT SYNTHETIC LIFE!

2010-05-20T14:33:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure what sort of coverage this will get in the mainstream media, but it had better be big. Huge. Epic. What is "this"? Oh, only a watershed moment in human existence; the creation of synthetic life!

I'm still watching/listening to the press conference (accessible through the link above if you see this in time, but so far my understanding is that they have synthesized an entire genome (!) and inserted it into an existing bacterial cell with the DNA removed. The DNA they synthesized seems to have been coded/designed (I'll have to talk to some of my biologist friends to learn the correct terminology) on a computer and then more or less literally pieced together from synthesized A, C, T, and G molecules. It's a pretty minimal genome, I think, but what's important here is that now that we've done it once at this level of complexity, it's only a matter of time before we scale it up. So far the projected applications are in fuel generation, water purification, and improved vaccines...and I think that's just future bacteria!

I can't find it, but I think I linked some time ago to a similar sort of experiment done by a group whose aim was to create not just a minimal genome, but also to detangle the inelegant "spaghetti" code which has accumulated over the course of evolution. In the natural world, as long as it works it's ok - but when you want to start building something that a human coder can work with, you'd like him or her to have a powerful and intuitive programming language. I recall that they had succeeded in creating an organism that was somewhat less viable, but still workable at some point in their research. I don't think these are necessarily connected groups, but someone should probably introduce them! If any of you reading this have ever owned a lego mindstorms kit, you'll remember the oft-maligned programming interface in which tasks were connected like so many lego bricks into little if/or trees; say what you want about the implementation: the dream of synthetic biology has been to render down the genetic code into little modular packages so that we're not limited by the little idiosyncracies of one organism or another when we want to purpose-build a bacterium to, say, make oil into plastic for us. Now that we seem to have had successes on both fronts, I'm getting pretty intensely excited!

There are, of course, some significant ethical/philosophical issues in light of this breakthrough. It seems that these researchers are already designing safety measures to prevent unchecked proliferation of synthetic organisms outside the lab, which is comforting. There's also the highly contentious issue of patented genes and life forms. I'm not sure where I stand on this quite yet; on the one hand I see the need to encourage further research in this field, but on the other hand we should at least draw a complexity barrier past which we start treating a synthetic being as we would any other. Maybe once a life-form can be reasonably expected to feel pain? Of course that leaves a great big loophole if we could ever create a complex being without the capacity for pain (bad idea!). I think also that while some reproductive controls should obviously be required for safety reasons, we should not start setting dangerous precedents. Terminator seeds (which sprout once, and which farmers must buy year after year) I find already disturbing. It will be a long way before we have to start worrying about farmers who can't reproduce their synthetic plants, but we should be mindful not to allow some industries to acquire disproportionate power over the livelihoods of others. Especially once food and fuel begin to enter the picture!

With all of this having been said: HOLY SHIT HUMANS JUST MADE LIFE!

...one step closer to this:

The Setup

2010-05-18T12:37:00.002-04:00

I've recently discovered a little site called "The Setup", and I'm absolutely loving it! There's something very compelling about its particular mix of gadget fetish and celebrity worship - it's even addictive enough to dull the pain of learning that some of these coders, bloggers and celebrities live as you have only dared to dream (triple monitors, 8-core workstations). On some level, it's pretty unsurprising that much of this web elite rocks a macbook and then some ancillary desktop. What I do find interesting is that a large number of these people have multiple cell phones. And not like "oh I have this old one that I unlocked when my contract ran out"; I'm talking like "I have three iPhones"* or "an N95 8Gb with a regular N95 as backup"**. Not for the first time I feel like I'm so woefully behind the curve on portable electronics (although a rockboxed Sansa e260, while light on storage, is still a good toy. I'll bet none of you with your fancy iPods are listening to 1000kbps+ FLACs on the go, hmmm?***).

* Actual loadout of interface designer Amy Hoy

**Actual loadout of sex blogger Violet Blue

***I'm sure a "real" audiophile would tell me that I'd need to solder on a new crystalliser or signal processor and buy a better set of headphones and some kind of in-line amplifier. Sure, fine. FLACs still do sound somewhat richer than mp3, although with my present setup I'm not sure they're quite worth the extra space...

Lessons Unlearned

2010-05-12T23:43:00.000-04:00

In the aftermath of Boobquake (the boobwake, if you will) I saw a few (generally female) bloggers despairing at what they perceived as a "highjacking" of boobquake by what a film geek might call the male gaze - a sort of objectifying ray emitted by the eyes of men. In all seriousness, it was a good concern; the focus of boobquake was primarily humour and skepticism...T'n A being a pleasant - if non-critical - side benefit. Men who went into Boobquake day looking for nothing more than a show of tits were clearly misapprehending the point. Worse still, I think, is that they were in a way undermining a part of Boobquake's thesis. You'll recall that in Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi's clerical error (oh, snap?) he professed that it is female immodesty that causes male infidelity (and presumably that of women as well)...and that somehow this affects plate tectonics. And how did some of us supposedly enlightened western men react? Well, kind of offensively, actually. I don't have statistics, to be sure, but I think what's important here is to recognize that freedom of clothing choice isn't the endpoint of equality. The objectification of women is still something to be reckoned with in our society, and the blithe equation of Boobquake with "yeah, shake 'em baby"...it does worse than NOT help the cause. It transforms an event dedicated to satirizing ridiculous pronouncements and the mistreatment of women into little more than us ramming our culture down another culture's throat. How DO you like them American hooters, mr. Muslim?

You see, it just trades the spark of genius for the spectre of racism and bigotry.

I'll come back to this, but first I need to work something out that's been bothering me for a while:

" How is this "feminist" response anything but an attempt to squash female expressions of our sexuality, for fear of whipping men into an uncontrollable frenzy?

How is it anything other than blaming women for the fact that many men behave badly?"

I've been going over this sort of reasoning in my head for a while. On the one hand, I think there's a point missing: Heterosexual dudes are genetically programmed to be aroused by the female form, or at least I'm pretty sure we are. I mean, it's not a very good meme for a species that reproduces sexually to be ambivalent about the process. Ah - I can hear the yells forming in your throats and I am not done yet thank you very much! Genetic predisposition isn't really an excuse, but neither is it nothing at all. Dress and manner are means of communication, often nonverbal, but communication they are. Friends of mine will recall the ladies' T-shirt I proposed with only "The medium is the message" emblazoned upon the bosom. It was my own little way of satirizing T-shirts that said things like "my eyes are up here" in bright, eye catching text across the wearers' breasts. Both of these T-shirts are saying the same thing, when you get down to it. When you wear a particular style and cut of clothing you are sending people messages. I admit full well that I try to wear snug T-shirts these days because I've got a little muscle in my upper body and it's nice to have it show. But I am under no illusion that I have a right to complain if someone makes a remark about it on the street, in class, wherever. I'm trying to show off, the least you can do is notice!

No style of clothing is to be taken as a declaration of consent, duh. I still don't think it's really a consistent position to try and separate medium and message. I might not know whether your message is targeted at a particular individual or the world at large, but what "immodest clothing" tells me is that you think you have a body worthy of aesthetic consideration. So while I do not dispute in any way shape or form that physical security is your constitutional, heck your human right when you - and I mean dudes and ladies - run amok with only strategically-placed bands of cloth...a public display is a public display. We do have a sort of content filter when you only want to control access to your sexuality, both in the visual and physical capacities. It's called modesty, and it shouldn't be a dirty word just because some people think it needs to be enforced. It's also not a binary choice of covered/uncovered, there's a lot of room I think to choose an image that you're comfortable with projecting. Now, if you want justification I am going to have to tread carefully on this ground...but hear me out: common critics of Anarchy allegedly miss the point when they talk about total chaos in the absence of law. If you ask an Anarchist you'll probably hear something about "social norms" and "unwritten codes of behavior", possibly "natural-" or "divine" law, maybe even "common sense". You would be foolish to equate the absence of a code of law with the complete absence of guidelines and cues for behaviour. Similarly, you would be unwise to confuse the absence of religious persecution against your chosen style of dress with a complete obviation of your responsibility for your own image! We are likewise never free of our responsibility for our own perceptions of other people; what I am - in essence - arguing for is clarity of communication. Don't send wrong messages, and don't get the wrong ideas. Just don't be surprised if you're showing off your tits or pecs or whatever - and someone pays them a compliment. Is it regressive to believe that people shouldn't toy with each other and send mixed messages under the pretext of "I can do anything I want without consequence"? I hope not.

But back (sort of) on the track that I was intending to go upon. If we indeed wish to show that we as individuals and as a culture have an enlightened attitude toward women, let's do that with respect, consideration, and solidarity. This isn't accomplished by clamoring for tits, nor by indulging those who do.

On the matter of solidarity, I bring your attention to "Everybody draw Muhammad day". Look at the comment thread, even just the first few will do. Is this how to advance the cause of free speech, by calling Islam a "death cult"? How blind and shortsighted we are, then; historically we have been blessed with the gift of arabic numerals (way, way easier than those dumb Roman ones!), the concept of zero (or at least Europe got wind of it by way of muslims)...in fact, the preservation of classical philosophy that would spark the Renaissance? That was totally Muslims! So their civilization is not at its height now, but are we going to pass judgement on the whole of their culture and religion while observing only such a narrow slice? One might as well characterize Europeans as being the peddlars of dogmatic barbarism (middle ages and the crusades) or America as being inherently racist and oppressive (slave trade). Worse still we're talking about a narrow cross-section of a narrow cross-section! So much for this farce of the Western thirst for knowledge and reason! Ok, you know this; what I wonder about "Draw Muhammad Day" is whether or not I should participate. On the one hand, I see a noble purpose and intent: to become one with a group of people who have faced death threats and even death itself (RIP. Theo Van Gogh) for the sake of free artistic expression. As the Blag Hag says, to "dilute the pool of targets" seems a pretty funny, interesting way to deal with some of the hostility that has greeted people who are critical of Islam. Ironically, Christianity is vehemently opposed to idolatry/graven images (depends on the brand/translation), it just happens to be one of those "pick and choose" things that gets discarded and under rug swept. Actually, I recall there being vocal outrage in the West when an artist chose to depict Jesus Christ as a black woman. So on some level this isn't cool. I don't imagine all the people taking part are hypocritical, but it bears a striking resemblance to the problem with Boobquake: this event invites people who aren't here to celebrate free speech, but to denegrate Islam. I think that if we desire logical consistency, we desperately need to expand the scope of this day! I think we need a "Depict God and Jesus as not-exclusively-white-people Day", for starters! it's easy to talk trash about Islam because it has some differences in the value system, and a thriving militant streak that the media loves to talk about. But there are militants of all stripes, and maybe if we did more to provoke them, they'd come out of the woodwork. Hell, just look at the utterly braindead response from the religious right at the abolition of that national prayer day in the US.

You can say perhaps that there aren't any death threats at work here, that we're dealing with a religion that does seek to impose upon others versus some that don't. That's an awfully thin argument. Sarah Palin wants to base US law on the 10 commandments: does that mean the manufacture of graven images would become illegal, 'cause that would just be TOO GOOD right now! In any case, that's an imposition right there, one that has a lot of undesirable implications for those who do not share in her faith. You could even argue (successfully, I might imagine) that inherent to the "don't tread on me" 2nd ammendment-happy ethos are death threats, ie. when those arms you so proudly bear come in handy for overthrowing an oppressive government. For once I'm not trying to make fun of gun culture: I think "Governments should be afraid of their people" doesn't seem much too much more conducive to good policy than the converse (think about the kind of distaste people have for legislative deadlock, and imagine if you will the kind of paralysis you might see if the lives of legislators depended upon their never crossing a rather nebulous line). Everyone has their violent streak - from Marxists to Margaret Thatcherites (ESPECIALLY these, even). It seems pretty hypocritical to condemn another culture because their soft spot is your sacrament, doesn't it?

I think these two issues boil down to a very similar core: people are constructing freedoms in the absence of responsibilities. We have freedom of expression, but we are not without responsibility for the content we express. That is not to say that you "get what you deserve". Clearly, physical attacks are not the correct way to respond to expression that confounds or offends you!

On this general theme of getting things wrong, I saw on BoingBoing the other day a link via Wired to a piece that examined the role of mercenary bloggers in documenting the war on Afghanistan. Some of the comments were very vitriolic, wishing death and ruin upon these individuals, generally to the tune of:

"Mercenaries are the scum of the Earth, I hope they all die."

I'm sorry, I forgot that the purpose of learning about someone in their own words was to justify your kneejerk reaction to their superficial qualities, what was I thinking!? I had imagined in a fever dream for a moment that reading the words of combattants on the ground would humanize them in a way that might challenge our assumptions about who these people are. Yes it is morally questionable that they are effectively paid to kill. Good job. Does the above statement reflect a more developed morality? It would be very hard to argue that it does. Again, you can see that we are receiving information, but not everyone is learning the right lesson. There's something that Christianity says, something like "love the sinner, hate the sin"? You can Godwin that to death if you like, but how else can we approach unsavoury professions like "mercenary"? Are we to decide that some people can be judged solely on the basis of their employment...but not us, oh no! We're just office drones on the weekdays; on weekends we're gorgeous unique butterflies free from the stale cucoobicle! So you don't kill for money - you waste away your life unsatisfied for money. Should I wish death upon you for squandering your human potential five days out of seven? Come on!

These are human beings. Fact. Why do some people refuse to learn that? I don't think any more kindly of the profession, but I can now put words and maybe even a face on these people. I think that makes for a better debate, somehow, if we discard this notion that we are fielding armies of demons abroad in a vein effort at...something, I dunno what. Actually, if you read some of these blogs they are often quite critical of the war effort itself: the uncertain terms of victory, the corruption in government and police forces that we turn a blind eye to...even the anti-war crowd will find some common ground here! In fact, reading these blogs has given me more reason to doubt the war than I might have ever had. I have a much better perspective now, I think, of what we have done wrong. What's very interesting is that there is a palpable level of culture shock going on. Some of the blogs I read bordered uncomfortably on racism, but it did make me think. We're talking about how best to prosecute this war in terms of drone strikes and troop surges, and we're really just not trying to talk about the cultural barriers between our peoples! It seems dangerous to have heavily armed people becoming increasingly jaded and disoriented in a country that we wish to have good relationships with, don't you think?

An Open Letter to Stephen Harper (In Progress)

2010-05-08T01:21:00.001-04:00

To the Right Honourable Stephen Harper:

Two recent pieces of news have caused me considerable consternation with regards to the policies advanced by your government; these being - in no particular order - your intent to bring "stronger" copyright law to Canada, and the intimidation of those feminist/womens' advocacy groups in Canada which have come out in opposition to your frankly contemptable decision not to support safe access to abortion for women in impoverished countries. Although these two issues aren't of themselves related, your government's adoption of these policies speaks to a perilous disconnect between the values of the Conservative party and those of the general Canadian public.

On the matter of copyright, our country has been very fortunate that circumstances have conspired against your previous attempts to reform the law, which were met with much resistance by consumers, educators, and even creators themselves. The copyright consultations held by your government last year seemed a show of good faith, a willingness to seek a superior balance between the needs of consumers and creators. Please, do not disregard the will of the people on this matter; it is in their name and their interests that you are supposed to govern. What the media conglomerates are demanding of the Canadian government (and others) is not merely protection for artists, it is support for business models that are dying. It is an end to privacy and even the presumption of innocence, the so-called "three-strikes" policy that would institute widespread monitoring of internet use and automatically disconnect citizens merely accused of copyright infringement without so much as a chance to defend their innocence. It is a lockdown on culture that simply does not make sense in an age of sharing. I do not, Mr. Prime Minister, mean "illegal file sharing" when I say sharing; I refer to a more general set of cultural phenomena. Networks and software aren't only making "theft" easier; they are also giving the means for creative self-expression to more people than ever before in history. People are chosing to create, and in many cases they are choosing to share: whether it's the Free/Libre Open Source Software movement, or the Creative Commons.

I am not so naive as to think that in some ideal future, all creators will work for free. What I do think is that the way to ensure that creation continues in this country is not to use heavy-handed legislation to lock Canadians into the old ways, old businesses whose practices are no longer suited to the current market. Apple and Amazon have demonstrated that what your legislation would call "digital locks" are not necessarily the only way forward for digital commerce: both have been selling music without such encumberances for some time now. You have children, and so I imagine that you are not unaware of the artistic medium that is the videogame (I have a bone to pick with Roger Ebert on this matter, but that is for another time and place). Stardock Studios and the website "Good Old Games" sell such products without digital locks, and they do not seem to be in dire straits. Conversely, EA Games' "Spore", a hotly anticipated title, suffered a PR nightmare when it was released with particularly strict digital locks upon it. The fact of the matter is that the more entrenched these locks become, the better (comparatively) the experience of piracy will become. A pertinent example can be seen here: commercial DVDs when played in a standard DVD player assail the viewer with often unskippable previews and warnings. The content of commerical DVDs is scrambled, making it difficult for end-users to make archival copies, or even simply watch the DVD on operating systems such as Linux. A pirated film, by contrast, simply begins playing the film when placed in a DVD player. It is simple to make copies for use in case the original becomes damaged, it can be played almost anywhere, and it can be converted to many different formats to be played on many different kinds of player. Paradoxically, the kind of broad functionality that I and many other Canadians would be interested in paying for is NOT the kind offered by the industry. It is that same industry which has been framing the choice in this debate as between Canadians (and others) being offered their very limited, highly controlled packages...or nothing at all. I wish that your party would take a stand against this, not just from a consumer rights angle, but also because we should not encode into law this caste-like distinction between producer and consumer. We are not passive; I don't believe that culture exists without interpretation, criticism, parody and remixing. These are not valueless acts, but the content industry seeks in law to make crimes of some or all of these!

I have not been very forthcoming with positive suggestions, but as a start there is perhaps NDP MP Charlie Angus'proposal to extend Canada's existing private copying levy to a new range of devices. Here, at least, is found the spirit of true compromise: the industry wants money, and Canadians want relative freedom to format-shift their media once they have legally obtained it. Rather than criminalizing the latter, the private copying levy allows both sides to enjoy what they say they want to enjoy. But if the content industry insists instead on tighter controls, you must ask yourself; if they thumb their nose at money, what is it that they really want? Do they want fair compensation for creative works, or do they want a frankly unrealistic and unfair level of control over our culture?

On the issue of your government's lack of funding support for abortion abroad, and the subsequent cutting of funds to women's advocacy groups I urge even more strongly that you reconsider your position. DVDs are one thing, but your party is endangering human lives in the hopes that it can simultaneously adopt fundamentalist values re: abortion and still somehow stay in the good graces of Canadians by maintaining the status quo on the homefront. With all due respect, Sir, just how stupid do you think Canadian feminists (both women and men) are? At best, what your policy decision indicates is that your government either does not believe in a universal standard of human rights (reproductive and otherwise) or that you intend at some later time to mount a campaign against abortion at home. Either of these conclusions should send chills down the spine of respectable Canadians, Mr. Harper. Women who are denied access to safe abortions will often seek them from less reputable sources. This can kill them, Mr. Prime Minister. I believe in providing and promoting contraceptives in places where women wish for a greater control over their reproductive lives, but if you have been following the issue you will know that it is sometimes difficult to get men to wear condoms reliably. There is an effort to produce a simple, easy-to-use, easy-to-distribute female contraceptive cream (or some similar unobtrusive substance), but this is not at present a reality. The reality is that a balanced approach to the reproductive health of women must include abortion, even if only as a last line of defence against unwanted pregnancy! That you have chosen not only to stand against abortion, but also against those groups who have lawfully and dutifully protested your choice in this matter speaks to an even greater evil than neglect, however. These groups do not exist to stroke your ego, and they will not always agree with you. Disagreement and debate are principal foundations of democratic society, and while I suppose there's no law that says you MUST fund these groups, it rather seems as though you are cheating. Quieting the debate with fear tactics and then claiming that you have won by virtue of being the loudest (or perhaps the only) voice is poor sportsmanship - and I am being generous. What is it that your government fears from these groups? That they might take a stand against what they perceive as injustice? Is that not an invaluable practice in a free society, or do you believe that all of our checks and balances and our Constitution itself are just so much window dressing for your new brand of tyranny? Well this Canadian will have none of that, and will have none of you if this is the most reasoned and mature manner in which you see fit to conduct public discourse in this once-proud nation!

Sincerely,

A Concerned Citizen.

I intend to send this letter in paper form at some point in the near future, but not quite in this present form. The final work will obviously need less of the spleen that makes blogging so delicious, but I'm curious to know what you think could be improved. Yes, I am outsourcing my proofreading. I'll be doing some of my own over the next day or two...but I won't catch everything!

Believe it Or Not

2010-05-03T23:00:00.009-04:00

Whom do you believe, and why?

The truth of the matter may be surprising - frightening, even. You may think to yourself "oh, it's just some particular pentecostals", and rest secure in the knowledge that no preacher is holding your on/off switch in his or her hand, oh no. But read the last few lines before you do that:

"It's not clear whether the results extend beyond religious leaders, but Schjødt speculates that brain regions may be deactivated in a similar way in response to doctors, parents and politicians."

You see? It could be anybody. Well, clearly not just anybody, but this effect may just be one manifestation of a multifarious menace. There's a warning to be had here, and while it's common-sense stuff I suppose it bears repeating that you shouldn't let someone get away with the appeal to authority...especially their own! At any rate, it's this last bit that's preventing me from reveling in this news as I might otherwise be inclined to. In some ways it's hardly a surprise; I know I've read before in New Scientist that the human brain is in some ways hard-wired for religion (or for religious experiences, or both?). But it's not just religion, is it? Religion is, after all, pushing buttons that were quite likely there long before there was any such thing as an organized church. We had ritual and superstition long before these were codified. Putting aside divine experiences and focusing on the social and cultural angle, what we're discovering about ourselves - what some people have long known about us - is that we're really quite easy to fool. Ask any illusionist, conjurer, con-man, cold reader...people are absolutely ready and willing to have the wool pulled over their eyes, and they'll even pay you to do it! Today's news? Not actually very bad for religion - oh, I'm sure there will be a fuss as this makes its way 'round the internet, but I don't think it's going to change anyone's mind about what they do or don't believe. Who is it bad for?

Well, that's obvious, isn't it?

Acknowledgements: First seen on Boing Boing, followed up at New Scientist, later seen at my new sidebar link: Blag Hag, recently of "Boobquake" fame (I actually first encountered her blog by chance perhaps a month or two before the whole "Boobquake" business, but I started reading it more during and thereafter, hence the link now). In the interests of being more fair to Ms. McCreight, I should mention that outside of her viral popularity she's an entertaining writer/blogger and a soon-to-be PhD student. My hat is off to this atheist in unfriendly territory.

Hear the status "cymbals" clash!

2010-04-27T00:32:00.002-04:00

I know it's probably poor sport to rag on XKCD these days, but I can't really control what inspires me to write...and here we are. It must be more than a year now since I found an old three-tube CRT projector on Kijiji at a student-size price (shout-outs to Devin, whose blog you can find at the bottom of the link list since it can't detect his updates: he drove us there and back when we were getting the thing). It's resolution is a "paltry" 480i; that is to say it is a grid with 640 horizontal pixels and 480 vertical pixels. Each time the screen is refreshed, only every second horizontal line refreshes (complete re-draws consequently take two cycles). We could not possibly care less.

In the computing world, advances in technology are fast yet incremental. This makes fools of most anyone who claims to have a "revolutionary" product, because ~18-month development cycles just don't work that way. It is for this reason that you hear geeks chuckling when Steve Jobs calls the iPad "magical"*. It's easy to become jaded in such an environment, and to some extent that's good. Where I think Mr. Munroe has gone wrong in making this comic is that he is applying the logic of one environment to another, quite unrelated one. Forget that LCD TVs and monitors are almost the same product in different packaging; that's not actually very important. More pixels will always be better on a PC, bottom line, and there's a fairly simple reason that this is so: scalability. You can always use more room for text, photo/video editing, web surfing, multitasking... as you will always have a)more pixels in the content you're working with than you have on your screen and/or b)more menu bars than you can comfortably fit on a smaller screen. If you're a gamer, you generally don't have to wait for someone to code new games to take advantage of your high-res display. Games use vector data to represent their 3-D worlds, which is then rasterized down to two dimentions: detail is conserved. TVs, on the other hand, have been displaying content in 480i or thereabouts for decades. HDTV resolutions are a greater-than-sixfold increase over the previous standard. Because - as far as I know - we don't encode video in vector format and then render it in real-time inside the TV (I imagine this would be awesome but slow or very low-fi with present technology) you actually need content tailored to your resolution in order for it to be worthwhile. Incremental advances in television resolution would actually look pretty awful, which I can prove to you with a simple experiment. Set your LCD display to a lower resolution than native. If you kept buying LCD TVs with progressively higher and higher resolutions, you'd go through long periods of everything looking like that, because the standard signal would get stretched and skewed unevenly to fit. Upgrading TV tech really only makes sense if there's sufficient content available to make it worth everyone's while to upgrade. The upshot is that the advances will be infrequent but very significant, and hence impressive to someone who has become accustomed to a decades-old format.

*Ask any D&D player worth their salt, and they'll tell you that the magical traps are the dangerous ones. "Traps? I thought this was about the iPad?!" Yes. Yes it is.

What bothers me even more about this comic is that Mr. Munroe is not just making fun of the average consumer for being impressed with a quite substantial upgrade. In mocking HDTV for being technologically inferior to other currently-available technology, he's just saying "mine's bigger, ha ha". It doesn't matter how unimpressed he is with 1080p; he's already fallen into the trap of bigger=better. What happened to XKCD tackling the real problems with modern entertainment, like DRM vs. fair use? Or hey, even better, what about the quality of content available? I think I'm surprised that people find HDTV impressive when you're still renting or buying the same shitty movies...only bigger now. With the title-text he just keeps digging himself into this hole; as you'll see if you look in the forum thread for this strip, the quality of film derives from the equipment, lighting, post-production...not just the framerate. Mr. Munroe is buying into the ridiculous fantasy that you can quantify quality (the idea of "better framerates", for example: different framerates are often as not aesthetic choices, and different settings produce different effects. The only place where more is actually always better? videogames). It's the same unfortunate logic that has brought us to where we are today in the world of entertainment: it is very difficult to blow someone away with careful scripting, nuanced acting, and artful direction...so instead we blow them away with hollow-point bullets and hollow bullet points.

One commenter on the XKCD forums said something that I thought was very perceptive:

"If it's not 24fps, it doesn't look like a movie. That's just how it is.

Let me guess, you guys think it's a travesty that lots of studios still shoot movies on film, too?"

Copyright and Copywrong at age 300

2010-04-11T03:10:00.002-04:00

It startles and astounds me just how right someone (or several someones) can be in one moment:

"The wide availability of content delivery platforms is based on standards and hardware for which interoperable content management technologies are critical [...]This calls for a heightened degree of standardisation within the digital media chain; in a highly networked environment, cross-sectoral cooperation is required to an unprecedented extent to ensure the interoperability of metadata for exploitation of primary, secondary and even tertiary markets and user need"

-WIPO

And how blatantly wrong the next:

" In most countries, there are many more consumers than creators and performers, creating political challenges for policy-makers in managing discussions on copyright"

-WIPO (emphasis is mine)

Same document. Successive paragraphs.

Now, before you take up your keyboard in anger and strike me down with all your anger, please allow me to explain. Remember what I said a few posts ago? I said:

"I think we're so used to thinking of ourselves as consumers that we almost don't consider what we are actually doing. I'm creating something right now. I took my camera to school with me, and on the way both there and back I did even more creating! As I have said, with the means of production becoming cheaper and cheaper (on the software side moreso, perhaps) there are fewer hurdles between you and creative expression than there have ever been in history"

And I'm right. We're the generation of ubiquitous connectivity and social media. All those pictures you take and the posts you write and possibly your twitter posts as long as you can prove that they constitute original expression beyond a simple statement of fact? That's all your creation, and that's all protected by copyright BY DEFAULT, thanks to the same kind of extensions to the law that Big Media wants to keep going. Look here:

"#2 Sharing Your Content and Information

You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how it is shared through your privacy and application settings. In addition:

   1. For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos ("IP content"), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook ("IP License"). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.
   2. When you delete IP content, it is deleted in a manner similar to emptying the recycle bin on a computer. However, you understand that removed content may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time (but will not be available to others).
   3. When you add an application and use Platform, your content and information is shared with the application. We require applications to respect your privacy settings, but your agreement with that application will control how the application can use the content and information you share. (To learn more about Platform, read our About Platform page.)
   4. When you publish content or information using the "everyone" setting, it means that everyone, including people off of Facebook, will have access to that information and we may not have control over what they do with it.
   5. We always appreciate your feedback or other suggestions about Facebook, but you understand that we may use them without any obligation to compensate you for them (just as you have no obligation to offer them)."

-Facebook Terms of Service

These seem like some pretty reasonable rules. Facebook needs a relative amount of freedom in order to provide effective services, and most people seem unlikely to care about stray backup copies of party photos that they have already implicitly decreed are safe for public consumption. Facebook isn't directly profiteering from your work, but indeed if it did not have these liberties its service would be greatly inferior, and hence their survival as a cultural and financial entity does in some way derive from the way they use your content. But ask Big Media if you can take about this level of liberty with the music that you buy and I guarantee you'll hear them scream bloody murder. Why is it ok for some creators to be treated worse than others, though? If this is good enough for us it should be good enough for everyone who creates, right?

Well, not really.

First, you might be thinking "well, what about quality?"

That would be a mistake. Do you mean to tell me that the moral high ground in this argument should go to the best art, because let me tell you that is NOT in the slightest what the content industry is trying to secure in this fight. Second, creation is supposed to come from the heart, not the pocketbook. Why should funding or publishers matter in whether or not we believe a creator should have some reasonable expectations about the kind of terms he or she can get for their work. I think the difference is that if the public as a whole had the kind of hold on the legislature that Big Media does (a terribly ironic conundrum), Facebook would be PAYING US to use their content in exchange for its continued presence as an advertising platform and cultural icon. But alas we do not, and are consequently treated as second-class creators.

If one looks at the world of webcomics, you'll see a lot of quality. You'll also see a lot of self-publishing. The comics that have attracted large readerships have not necessarily needed large corporate funding; they have grown because of the quality of their content. WE DID NOT NEED publishers or editors or agents to tell us which webcomics were worthy and which were not. Hey, what would you know, the invisible hand that everyone likes to talk about so goddamn much DID ITS JOB! Grassroots creativity does not mean "hatchet job" anymore, and perhaps our culture will wise up to this fact.

So, where are we now?

We are leaving a culture of passive consumerism, and we are building one where many people create, or become indirectly involved in the creation process through feedback (see: Imogen Heap's fan outreach and crowdsourcing from the making of her last album, or ANY popular blog with a thriving comment community). WIPO's stance is still rooted in the frankly archaic notion that modern content delivery is, and will continue to be a one-way process. There are many people who have been saying this for years; Lawrence Lessig being the obvious example.

But they are saying something right when they talk about interoperability. What they should have said in the next paragraph is that industries need to work together to create products that continue to foster two-way communication between creators. Not between "creators and consumers" because while indeed some people have become better or more prolific than others, we have already seen that giving everybody the same tools does in no way cheapen the best work done in a category of creative works. Did good webcomics not arise and gain fan followings because everyone and their dog could post one to the internet? The answer is beyond obvious. So give everyone the same tools for sharing their work. Some will take to it naturally, and others will leave it alone...but it will no longer be up to the creaking dinosaur industries of the past who gets to be transformed into something famous and who does not! To some extent we can already see this phenomenon in action: just watch the rise of a viral video.

Of course, if we envision a world without promoters and labels, the infamous words of Warhol look more and more like the literal truth of the now*. Perhaps being a famous artist will cease to be a true career option, and we will just spend our years constantly hunting down the latest viral sensation.

I'm not sure I've touched on sharing in this future world yet, but of course I am no oracle. I can say that I believe if creators were treated equally I think we might see agitation for truly balanced copyright law. The profit motives would be properly aligned for once, as what you have is no longer two adversarial groups, each trying to swindle the other. What you have is one group that has to weigh the protection of its individual livelihoods against the protection of cultural heritage. What you have is one group that has to balance its need to eat with its desire to remix, review, and renew its culture from time to time.

-Loud!

Oh yes, and check this out.

*"15 minutes of fame", in case that wasn't clear

A Social Experiment

2010-04-08T22:50:00.000-04:00

There's a chance I might be a little intoxicated after tonight's beer and BBQ, so this will likely be a shortish post. I just thought I would like to share the results of a social experiment ongoing outside my very own house.

Behold, the boost tile. You're looking at about two-fifths of a box of sidewalk chalk, all in the name of creating this videogame-inspired artifact in the real world. I don't remember exactly why I had this idea, although I know it happened when one of the guys I live with was taking back some videos to the rental store and I decided to hit up the Canadian Tire for sidewalk chalk. So far not a lot of people have used it, and even then it requires prodding. Do people assume that this thing is only allowed to have private meaning, and that they shouldn't "use" it, for fear of offending? Sure, there are people who will never do this sort of thing, but one guy was even wearing a t-shirt with Mario himself on it, and even when a whole crowd of sidewalk-chalkers (there were some later additions to the adjacent segments of concrete) encouraged him to use the boost tile, he essentially ignored us. What is it that makes us so resistant to fun, even when it is placed in front of us AT NO COST? Does no one think that boost tiles are fun?

I'm at a complete loss right now. At least *SOME* people seem to be enjoying it for what it is, but they tend to be people I already know and like. Strangers, you're letting me down!

-LOUD!

Shutterbug

2010-02-16T19:18:00.000-05:00


I was thinking to myself on the way to school "I'm carrying my camera, I should be looking for photo-opportunities" and at that moment I looked up. (This was taken some days before the rest of the pictures in this post)


Usually I don't put up pictures where the content is more notable than the form, but I saw this old-style car today and thought it was pretty cool.


I'm doing this content-over-form thing TWICE today because I thought Gold would like to know that converting a church into your house actually happened right here in Halifax. Who knew?

A lot of the public spaces here are open "until dusk", which means that sunset photography feels a little bit like a race against time.


This is the best picture I got of this structure today. Doesn't quite convey the ridiculous magnitude of these...grain silos? I think they are, anyhow. Trivia: did you know that Halifax has both a "Bland" and a "South Bland" street?


You can't really read the placque from this angle, but this place is named for a Father of Confederation.

And another burial ground. Guess it must come with being an older city?

Contagion

2010-02-07T18:50:00.000-05:00

Gnomesque has passed on to me the task of revealing 10 little-known facts about myself, as per this Honest Scrap thing that's going on. Without further ado, I present:

10 Things You May Not Know About Loud:

1) Of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy, I have read only The Fellowship of the Ring all the way through.

2) I used to think (like when I was REALLY little) that a lot of words needed to have the sound of "é" tacked on to the end. Most embarassing? The word "Chef". I thought it needed to sound more french/debonair.

3) At age 10, my imaginary self-at-age-20 had invented faster-than-light travel, was the head of what in retrospect I guess would have to be a corporate government entity on the scale of Weyland-Yutani*, and fought "robbers" with (among other things) a laser rifle (of his own design).

*I was way less evil

4) As a child, I once tried to slice a banana by - and I am not kidding - shoving it in my ear. Hey, IT WORKED FOR THE CARTOON CAT, OKAY?

5) I got kicked out of the Ottawa museum of nature for sliding down one of the really big marble railings on the main staircase.

6) I watched the first season/series of Digimon and to this day I think it was better than the Pokemon TV show.

7) I have never broken a bone, or if I have it wasn't bad enough that I noticed?

8) I have a recurring worry that I live in a simulated universe or I'm in a coma and dreaming my entire life and one day I'll wake up, and I'll have to live my life over again except all the laws of physics will be different and no one I know will have been real. I realize after not very long that this is probably not the case.

9) It is plausible that I will go to my grave having never owned a cell phone.

10) I had asthma, but I seem to have grown out of it.

I don't know if there are seven active bloggers that I can tag to continue this meme, but I'll do something about that within the next couple of days.

More Aesthetically Pleasing Arrays of Coloured Dots for Your Retinal Cells

2010-02-05T03:29:00.000-05:00

I had originally intended to go take pictures from the top of a parking garage, but they had a dude whose job it was to tell people like me that loitering isn't ok. I took this on the way back down the elevator on a whim. I like the lighting.

We get extra-pretty sunsets around here. This is at least the third day running of really pretty skies around sixish.

Not too much different. I'll try to take pictures of more varied things, but when my walk home is a) at sunset and b) takes me RIGHT PAST the best vantage point in the city it's a little like my arms are tied.

iRate

2010-02-04T03:21:00.000-05:00

I am going to be a little unhappy writing about the Apple iPad.

Unfortunately, the internet is not going to shut up, nor will the device simply go away. So here we are.

At some point, and I am not sure precisely when this occurred, Apple gained what it - and others - seem to take for the power to decide what people want. If you buy into the theory of the "Steve Jobs reality distortion field" perhaps they had it from the beginning. It doesn't make a lot of difference to what I am about to say. I believe that the success of the iPod and iTunes have gone to Apple's collecitve head, and now it believes that it has the power to shape the market and succeed as long as there is enough, um, Apple? in their solution to a perceived problem or void in the market. I have probably commented on the glaring repeat omissions of the iPod (FM tuner/recorder and microphone, for the most part), but these are pretty trivial in light of what the iPod has and continues to have : a best (or near-best) in industry interface, a trend which they have managed to continue with the iPod touch and iPhone, and iTunes (the gold standard in digital distribution, despite what you could (and what I WOULD) say about DRM). In short, a smooth and cohesive user experience for most people. But the iPod is as much a historical phenomenon as it is a triumph of design and marketing; the arrival of widespread broadband combined with increasingly cheap storage and audio compression (and what I really mean here is the ultimate confluence of the three: Napster) pretty much set the stage for the popularization of portable mp3 player hardware.

Flush with the success of iPod as not only a product and a cultural phenomenon, Apple now had the ear of the common man and woman as never before. Presenting a unified brand that does not, and perhaps cannot exist anywhere else in the computing/consumer electronics industry, Apple has a unique opportunity: it can at once unify and attack a thousand disparate vendors ("PC") almost without reprisal. It is very hard to explain to a largely non-technical audience within its thirty-second attention span that the strength of the PC as a platform is not a single application or hardware device, but rather the plethora of options available to the consumer. Furthermore, it might be the truth, but it's pretty terrible advertising strategy to tell someone that they ought to choose your platform because - hey - you could also buy something similar from someone else at a competitive price! In war - in any conflict - the ability to choose the time and place of a battle is not the single greatest tactical asset, but I'm pretty sure Sun-Tzu ranked it as "pretty friggin important, you guys". Apple has that power.

Taken together, Apple's position looks pretty good: they can at least manufacture desire, and they can (metaphorically speaking) manipulate the terrain on which the battle for your dollars takes place.

Enter the iPad.

It's like an iPod touch for people with pockets of unusual size ("I doubt they exist")

I think it's funny that Steve Jobs should promote this device by trashing the netbook, because the iPad is going to take portable electronics down a path which will be just as unsatisfying as that which we embarked upon after the release of Asus' eeepc. In the case of the latter, the eventual problem which arose was that people sort of expected these tiny things to be like a notebook computer, only smaller. As it turned out, they were often too slow, had too little RAM, and probably suffered from less-than-ideal build quality. With the iPad, the thinking seems to go that Apple should be able to dodge this bullet by making a smartphone bigger and faster, rather than making a laptop smaller and slower. I don't think it's going to work (don't get me wrong: it's going to sell and it's going to be influential, but I don't think it will be magical), because what they are essentially delivering is pocket-sized functionality at messenger-bag size . The only way I could be wrong is if the ebook and online newsreading functionality finally catalyses the death of print media. The problem with that angle is that the death of paper is an event which I imagine will be concurrent with the advent of viable nuclear fusion reactors (which is to say, "perpetually 50 years away"). What I want from a portable device is either going to work on a smartphone ("where is the nearest indian restaurant, and is it any good?", "what IS the name of that song?", "what time is my flight?", etc) OR I'm going to want a laptop ("I want to go to this LAN party", "I want to write a blog post*"...). I'm not sure that the void in the market posited by Steve Jobs really exists. I do think that he has created a need for these products, but it's not you and me who need them; It's Apple's competitors.

*Only real keyboards need apply, smarty-pantses.

No one wants to be caught with their pants down when there's money to be made, so within days of the iPad's physical launch we are already guaranteed to see the inevitable Attack of the Clones. These will have more functionality, and less (depending on your measures). What they won't do - as we have seen with netbooks - is address the shortcomings of the form factor. My inclination would be to say that it could be done with hardware more akin to that of an ultraportable notebook (ie. the macbook air, which I will get to in a moment), but then convertible tablet PCs have been around for a while now and yet they still seem to 1) cost too much and 2) not be very prevalent. The price of the Apple tablet is at once commendible - because it seems to be a departure from the parsec-wide profit margin on most of their products - and contemptible - because that headroom is no longer available for other vendors to spend on cramming more stuff into their competing devices. The worst of it is that the feature I'd actually like to see catch on - the iPad's IPS* LCD screen - is the kind of part whose price is only justifiable if 1) you're Apple or 2) your customer base knows and cares what that means. The higher-quality display is likely the first thing on the chopping block when another vendor asks "how can I undercut this iPad thing?", in fact. That said, I wish Apple had also made a move to higher screen resolutions. 1024 x 768? What is this, 1990?

* IPS stands for In-Plane Switching. It is one of several approaches to building an LCD screen, and it is by most estimates the best in terms of image quality, viewing angle, and colour accuracy. Of course, it is also the most expensive.

Perhaps I have not made a compelling enough case that you will not have any real reason to use an iPad should you buy one. Allow me to quote my friend ELI (whom you may remember), who was present for much of the time I spent writing this post. One of his first responses to my claims that the iPad would not be very useful was "no; it'll be good for doing...tablet things". Tablet Things, indeed. Later, he adopted the opinion that the e-reading functionality of the iPad and its ilk could be employed to reduce the mighty burden of heavy textbooks, which is not altogether a bad notion. There are probably small fortunes riding now on whether Apple can seal the deal that Amazon has yet to clinch with its own Kindle, and there is at least a potential analogy to the success of the iPod here. Of course, pre-iPod mp3 players were built by companes that you probably haven't heard of (Ricoh, anyone?). It would be hard to argue that Sony and Amazon are so obscure! Furthermore, while the iPad could indeed act as a pretty sweet textbook replacement, is it really going to stand in for your laptop when it comes time to write a paper? Is the interface so much better than that of a laptop for reading ebooks that you and your classmates would justify dropping AT LEAST $500 on top of what you already spent on a laptop (and then you STILL have to buy your textbooks, which aren't likely to be that much cheaper in ebook format)? Maybe if the universities could find out how to subsidize the readers, but what would the motivation be in that case? A grand corporate kickback from Apple? On top of all this, if you're a student you're going to "need" a cellphone, too, unless Jobs/Apple were lying and you CAN use the iPad as a phone*. I thought this product was supposed to be about FILLING a niche!

*Boy, if you thought the infamous taco-phone looked silly held to the ear...

I mentioned earlier the macbook air, which I'd like to examine in comparison to the iPad in terms of product launches. It didn't reinvent computing, it was just a laptop that you could fit in a manilla envelope. It didn't have enough ports (mostly it needed more USB), and the lack of an integral CD/DVD drive is kind of lame, but you make tradeoffs. What I think was good about the macbook air is that what it DID do was start an arms race where the goal was to contain the performance of an existing laptop within a thinner, lighter package. The 12-14" space is about the size where a laptop might not have gaming cohones, but can still support a real man's x86 processor and 4 gigs of ram and a keyboard that doesn't suck. In short, they issued a challenge to developers to make an already-useful platform more mobile (in some ways, more useful). If you'll note what I said about the apparent design philosophy of the iPad, you'll see where I'm going with this: Apple's challenge to other vendors is to take an already-useful platform and make it LESS mobile*.

* Even were someone to put laptop guts into a keyboardless slate-type device, that's just an instance of taking existing hardware and making it flat-out LESS USEFUL.

Photos Taken Whilst On The Bus One Winter's Morning

2010-02-02T14:34:00.000-05:00

Free Beer and Swords

2010-02-02T03:17:00.007-05:00

I imagine I am not unlike a significant fraction of you, dear readers, in that I like to leave a nice, generous space between waking up and getting up. I like to fill that space with the reassuring tones of CBC radio (if for no other reason than it’s pretty much the only thing you can listen to on the radio unless your interests are “the same awful – read: popular – music over and over again” or “trying to solve your midlife crisis with a liberal application of hair metal”*) Today, I awoke to a very compelling treatise on economics, in particular the “hidden” or “deferred” costs of our purchases: Raj Patel*’s The Value of Nothing. The author’s first example was an icon of western consumer culture – the hamburger. A hamburger will run you about $4 under our present economic system. Calculate the overall resource use, social and environmental damage, what you might call the “true” cost of a burger, and you end up with a figure (supposedly) approaching $200. Where’s your “value menu” now, Ronald? This is but the tip of the iceberg, of course. Approaching “Third World Debt”, Mr. Patel invited listeners to consider that what “they owe us”, in terms of loan repayments and the like, is nothing in comparison to what we owe them as recompense for what we take (in, among other things, natural resources)***.

*As solutions go, I suppose this isn’t bad.

** You can find the interview here (scroll down to part 2), which I reccomend you listen to because a) it's actually quite engaging and b) this dude has a fantastic voice.

***Political realism would suggest that you can’t really call this a ‘debt’. After all, ‘debt’ on the international level is what you can effectively demand from other governments. In other words, we’re living in a great spherical high school where the bullies are free to live off the lunch money of the weak.

Not all of the “true cost” of that hamburger is extracted from poor nations, however; look into your own pocketbook, and you may find a very unwelcome siphon. With your tax dollars* you’re subsidizing the criminally low wages that the hamburger joint is allowed to pay its employees. With your tax dollars you are paying for a healthcare system that is someday going to have to deal with the great reckoning of cholesterol and sucrose. With your tax dollars, you’re ideally going to be paying to counteract the environmental and climactic effects of all the deforestation and diesel-burning that goes on in the name of cheap meat. Whenever someone says they are “I am passing the savings along to you”, what they probably mean is “I am passing the costs along to you, minus the sticker shock”. If - having become aware of this burden - you are uncomfortable with it, you’ve got a few options. The simplest of these is to try and rein in the excesses of the free market with legislation; you know, what we’ve ostensibly been trying to do pretty much since the industrial revolution. This is at least a serviceable option, but just how many asterisks can we append to the statement “Free markets are the best way of providing services” before we entertain the notion that just maybe we’re dealing with more than just errata?

*Ok so probably not many of you pay taxes. But you will.

Raj Patel’s ideas about a more just economic system seemed to hinge on what we might call “The Commons”, a useful concept which is also invoked in the work of Lawrence Lessig (and, as we will see, the two are very much connected). Most people, Patel said, hear commons and think:

Commons - a physical space which people are free to access without bias (in this case, the big field).

But it’s really more useful to think of The Commons in terms of resources. Space is a valuable resource; indeed many a developer would likely love nothing more than to pave over land with the kind of property value that a municipal commons must have! However, people like to have space, but individually can’t all afford to own little chunks. Allowing private development might create more wealth than leaving the commons as they are, but that wealth would be restricted to a select few. As a society, we’re okay with a certain amount of inequality, but we have decided that access to recreational space is something that we’d like everyone to have. What Patel (and also Lessig, but I’ll get to that later) seemed to me to be arguing is that we as a society should perhaps raise the bar a little. We should declare a few more resources to be made ownerless such that they can be shared by all, regardless of individual wealth. Before the consolidation of capital into wealthy hands, we had de facto rules for managing these resources to ensure that they were equitably divided and – more importantly – preserved for the future.

If you’ve read Lawrence Lessig, you’ll find a lot of this very familiar. Just as the consolidation of capital in the hands of the few deprived so many independent craftspeople of their livelihoods, Lessig might say that the consolidation of content in the claws of communications conglomerates is doing much the same to creators who choose to operate outside the world of studios and record labels. Enter the Census (sic) of Files Available on Bittorrent*, which I stumbled upon this morning with thoughts of alternate economic systems lodged firmly in mind.

*As it is a mere representative sample, the term Census is somewhat misapplied.

So the data suggest that piracy is pretty much the rule on the ol’ inter-tubes. The comments on the article seem to be about a 2:1 mix of “people who might be free-culture moderates”:“people who are peeved at the cultural prevalence of theft on the internet”. To my mind, one of the more interesting comments is:

“Of course, given that copyright has been a part of our history since long before the existence of the internet, it shouldn't surprise us that the number of cultural artifacts under copyright vastly outnumber the number outside of it.”

The piracy we see now could be a transitional phase on the way to a new model of culture. That’s probably not much of a relief to the purveyors of content, but then there’s not really anything they can do anyway, right? Zearle's* Hackers and Crackers proposes that warez are a form of liberation from economic oppression. After all, the creative power afforded by programs like photoshop and maya is only available to those who can, well, afford them. Now, from the data in this study it would look like the majority of bittorrent users are pirating tv and movies (also porn), not content-creation programs with which to empower themselves. It would be too easy to write this kind of behaviour off as lazy, cut-and-dry theft. Consider the following:

“I'm not ok with the fact that 99% of the culture that people want to share is somehow "owned" by someone. That's not how culture works, and trying to force it to work that way simply ends up destroying that culture. Culture is fundamentally a shared experience. Take away our ability to share it freely and what you have is at best commerce, not culture.”

* I have written about Zearle in the past with...interesting results.

I could not tell you just how politically-motivated your average bittorrent user is, but I know that as a student I can't really afford to buy new DVDs, for example. Does that make downloading them on Bittorrent a form of protest? I don't really imagine so. What, however, is the net difference to the creator if I download something as opposed to buying it used, or from value village? I don't think the producers, creators, actors, set designers, etc. see an additional penny either way. Bittorrent happens to be the cheaper option for me, it has a superior user interface, and better selection to boot. Probably there will never be a paid option as compelling as bittorrent, nor perhaps could there be. If we're lucky, though, there won't have to be. Enter some alternative economic systems.

Frankly, we have opened the can of worms when it comes to free and ubiquitous copying; I don't believe there is really any hope – not in the near- to mid-term, at any rate – of returning to some gloriously ignorant past. The question, then, isn't how we go about ending piracy by force, but how we establish a relationship with creators in which no one starves. And we all get to enjoy our favourite TV show or whatever. There are at present a number of schools of thought on this issue, which can be generalized under the heading “post-scarcity economics”. That's probably an oxymoron to at least one of you reading this, isn't it? Economics is all about supply and demand; what do you DO when you've the capacity to all but eliminate both (even for just a subset of all possible commodities)? A surprisingly coherent answer is “sell what cannot be copied”. Sell a personalized experience that simply won't have the same kind of value to another person. So what if someone gives away a virtual concert, programmed to sound as though it were performed in their very own living room (as per an example in the linked article)? It won't be the same thing to anyone else, unless perhaps they recreate the space themselves! It's not a bad notion, and it does dovetail nicely with some of the other options I am about to explore, but I don't find it without weakness. Like the business model we're heading away from, this sort of philosophy will seem just as antiquated as the onward progress of technology slowly erodes the list of “things beyond copying”. Some sound devices already come with a calibration utility to help you arrange audio channels in an ideal way to suit the space, so what happens when we develop the technology to take an audio file and have it sound as though it is being played live in any given space?

As long as we keep the current paradigm of money, I think it's safe to say that people will try to save as much as possible. Would adopting an alternative currency help the situation? Consider the notion of “Whuffie”, which is sort of like a measure of prestige, or social credit. You can see this kind of system pop up in the fiction of several Science Fiction authors, among them Cory Doctorow (who coined the term) and Charles Stross (pretty much everything past the near-future in Accelerando). What I find interesting about this system is that it allows for a person who would in any other case be materially poor to live quite happily through their reputation. Where we tend to measure wealth in terms of purchasing power, liquid assets, etc, social credit systems are – as I understand them – a complex interplay of favours and loans with your integrity as collateral. Let's look at an individual – say Richard Stallman – under the lens of two different kinds of wealth measurement. We might expect, under traditional economics, to see a wealth breakdown that looks something like this:

But I would argue that even in our world of hard currency this doesn't REALLY measure all available wealth. I mean, think of all the free software geeks who would buy the dude a beer, or put him up for a night or several, or buy him a katana because of xkcd. We're not really accounting for the value of what this guy could have if he really wanted. Below is a chart more reflective of social credit:

Sweet Jesus the man is made of free beer and swords!

(I officially disclaim any relationship of these charts to the actual wealth of Richard Stallman, this is just an amusing example because who else can count both free beer and katanas in their pool of potential wealth?)

The idea of social credit based accounting is an interesting one, and its pretty internally-consistent. Where does all the beer come from? Well, if you make good beer, that's the kind of social credit that can probably alleviate most of your material concerns. Just sponge off people and provide delicious brew in return, right? Of course, if we follow this "who would you buy a beer" logic too far, you start to wonder at what point the beer itself shouldn't just become the currency?

The wonderful thing about beer-as-currency is that it allows for denominations which are currently impossible. To wit: behold the minus-ten-dollar ~~bill~~ bottle!

The obvious issue with a social-currency based economy is more or less evident when you consider the kind of person proposing it: they command a great deal of respect, they produce content, and they're active participants in at least some kind of community (online or otherwise). The pressure to make something that other people will like enough to credit you is kind of analogous to the struggle faced by the starving artist in present economics, isn't it?

I think we're so used to thinking of ourselves as consumers that we almost don't consider what we are actually doing. I'm creating something right now. I took my camera to school with me, and on the way both there and back I did even more creating! As I have said, with the means of production becoming cheaper and cheaper (on the software side moreso, perhaps) there are fewer hurdles between you and creative expression than there have ever been in history, more or less! And speaking of the commons and cameras, there is no better story to illustrate why the former is so important than that of the legal status of the latter. The whole story is - I believe - contained in Free Culture, but here's the deal: you can take photographs in public, and pretty much only famous people have any veto power over that. If the law had not sided with photographers, and made permission necessary, think of just how few people would actually take up photography as a hobby...or even as a career. After all, what would stop people from charging exorbitant amounts for the use of their image, if that was their perogative? Photographers enjoy a magnificently expansive commons, and pretty much everyone is the better for it. Without ubiquitous photography, we would be lacking not only a key technology which helps us archive our lives, we would be giving up an art form and a powerful ally in the service of democratic accountability (read: we couldn't really take pictures of police brutality)!

I'll upload more later, but for now my internet service is uncooperative. The Wonderful thing about creating is that it doesn't have to be a "good once only" kind of thing; by applying a Creative Commons license to my photographs, these become a potential springboard for future creativity....even a gift of sorts. Even better, the terms of the license stipulate that any derivative works YOU make have to be shared on the same terms - the gift keeps on giving!

-Loud!

A Loud Kind Of Alchemy

2010-01-27T01:13:00.002-05:00

(I have added a neat video at the bottom, so even if you've read this before scroll down!)

You're nursing your drink of choice at a party, chilling on the couch or whatever it is you like to do in a socially-lubricated milieu. There's a wireless media streaming device of some kind hooked up to the TV and/or the sound system, and you're grooving to the fresh beats. You don't think about it too much at the time; it's plug-and-play, touch-of-a-button kind of stuff, right? For that matter, if you're not me (or very much like me) you mightn't give the technology a second thought.

I woke up one morning, though, and I considered the nigh-alchemical transformations taking place. The music you* were listening to was probably on someone's computer. We go, then, to the whirling drive platters on which the information is inscribed in minute magnetic markings**. These are converted by the drive head into electrical pulses, travelling along the wires and circuit traces, recorded, written into memory, repeated, and finally output via cable to a wireless antenna somewhere (a wireless network adaptor or router). Here, the electric impulses become light – radio waves – which radiate and permeate the house. At the receiving antenna, where they are converted back to electricity, and remain in this form as they pass to the processor, to an audio device, to the stereo receiver, and out along the speaker wire to the drivers and tweeters. The electricity once again becomes magnetism in the speakers, driving the paper cones therein to produce waves of compression and rarefaction in the local atmosphere, which spread out from the point source(s) and make their way into your ear, where they are converted into electrochemical signals and finally interpreted by your brain.

If you prefer a more perfect symmetry, consider that the song began in a composer's very own brain meats, and trace the steps from mind to mouth and written page, from recording equipment to CD stamping device to the laser which read the disk when you ripped it. By the time it arrives to settle down in your brain, the music you hear has likely been encoded as every kind of energy we know except for probably gravity (and hey, it's really only a matter of time before we start using that as some kind of interplanetary signalling protocol, right?)

All of this happens at the touch of a button (!). XKCD explored a similar theme a while back as regards the mighty computing power which now serves to furnish us with droll images of domesticated felines. I think I feel a little more godlike when I consider the power that our artifice has over the fundamental forces of the universe than I do when measuring it in our own self-created terms for performance (Ghz, etc). Either way I guess I got poached on this idea. Wouldn't be the first time (Oscaaaaaaar Wiiiiiiiiilde!).

This is post #200. This year will be my blog's fourth anniversary, which means I've posted about 50 posts a year - one a week. I guess that's reassuring, but I wouldn't call it optimal.

So we had yet another visitor come to stay with us this past weekend. This is she:

I have never had an objection to visitors, in fact I always enjoy it when someone comes around to disrupt my daily routine a little. This being said, I feel as though people spend perhaps a little too much to see us (Etarran and myself, for the most part) for not long enough. This is not their fault, as they have only so much time to spare before they must return to their own lives. I might expect the answer to be something along the lines of "well, it's not so much that I want to see 3-4 days worth of your city, but that I would like 3-4 days of your company", and sure my ego is going to be happy that I have such value; I am nevertheless going to question of spending the money to go so far, to go to a different city, and more or less hang around the house with us. Maybe that's more awesome than I quite grasp, but hanging around in a house is the kind of thing when vacations/parental budget result in a fortuitous co-location of the old guard. You may note, of course, that the above picture was taken on the top of Citadel Hill, which should lead you to the conclusion that our esteemed guest did not see nothing of our city here. Indeed, I made sure of that much. Maybe it only boggles my mind because I don't really have "visiting money" to spend. Whatever the reason, suffice it to say that I don't know why you keep visiting, but I sure appreciate that you do, my friends!

This recalls a conversation I had with Etarran before we left for the winter break, in which he stated that his reasons for travelling to other places were predominantly cultural - that he could get more or less every other part of the experience from pictures, etc. By contrast, I think I'm inclined to take more of a visual/tactile approach to travel. It's really satisfying to have been somewhere in meatspace (I am not very cyberpunk, I guess), especially because our present means of replicating the experience are at best limited. Even though I enjoy photography, I never think of it as a replacement for the experiences which it purports to capture. Photography is useful as an aide-memoire, but the limited frame (in both the physical and temporal sense) makes the camera a vessel for art more than for experience. When we acquire the ability to record most everything we see and do for posterity, I think the game will change a little, though.

Telepresence is getting better and better all the time, to the point where laptops are out-of-the-box designed to facilitate videoconferencing. Some phones, even (took us long enough)! I guess we need USB arms next, or something? Thing is, nobody I know really does that. My parents bought me a webcam not so long ago, but it's now on loan to a friend so he could do higher-resolution music videos on the internets. I've heard that you can, for example, play D&D with at least one participant present corresponding via webcam, and it's something I figure I'd like to try. Heck, if you carry around a laptop at head-height, you could address a person more or less as you would anyway (if they were made of plastic and had a keyboard under their face). Maybe you could build a rig to carry the laptop around like that TV trolley that the AI Holly used in Red Dwarf from time to time!

Still, no one I know besides me has really expressed interest in this. Yeah, I've done the "video chat with significant other" thing* a couple of times, but that wasn't even long distance. Etarran's reaction on being informed that the Roomba people were making a telepresence bot? "Great, now we can institutionalize absentee parenting" (paraphrased). Maybe I'm missing all the people who actually use telepresence in their everyday lives (people with real jobs, does this happen for meetings or something?), but maybe we're just not interested. Or maybe I'm looking in all the wrong places.

*Heads out of the gutter, PLEASE.
If you look at online gaming as a whole, from Tribes, to Battlefield, to Team Fortress 2, World of Warcraft, Second Life, EVE online...these are all a vague sort of telepresence, it just happens to be that everyone is connecting remotely and is represented in a virtual environment. It's probably telling, in fact, that the sort of people one would expect to relish this kind of communication do so in a manner which lets them take a form of their choosing when interacting at a distance. And why would I want Steve, my man from back home, to just follow me around in an AV cart all day when we could do our telecommunication in a medium of stylized ultraviolence, as opposed to "let's spend all day staying close to outlets and far away from stairs" (which is not meant as a slight against people who need some kind of electric wheelchair and for whom this is a pretty everyday game. That said, wouldn't they also perhaps relish the opportunity for some virtual ultraviolence as an alternative?)

The logical endpoint (minus a large part of the violence) of this line of reasoning is something like second life. Indeed, the virtual environment does solve the bulk of your interaction problems, and hey if you're going to play D&D anyway, I'm pretty sure that Neverwinter Nights was supposed to have shipped with some pretty extensive editing tools so that one guy could play GM for all of his online friends. Maybe we won't see large strides forward in consumer teleoperational gear simply because we've found (in predictably unpredictable fashion) a compelling workaround.

I guess what I am trying to say in a long and convaluted way is that there are a lot of people that I like to see, but either they don't have the money to burn (and I don't blame them), or I don't. Furthermore, we have developed a technological intermediary which could help us recreate in part the experience of hanging out (that is to say, multiplayer gaming). In conclusion, we (meaning me and anyone reading this who is so inclined) should probably schedule some online gaming times, in order to compensate for our geographical isolation, ESPECIALLY in light of the fact that most people who do come here in person mostly hang out with us anyhow.

I think it's pretty good for a numerically significant post to end with a message of togetherness, so I shall leave you with the wisdom that "Friends who SLAY together**, STAY together"

-LOUD!

**Virtually

EDIT:

YOU SHOULD WATCH THIS IT IS PRETTY IMPORTANT AND ALSO INSPIRING: