Thoughts on Virtual Worlds

So Guild Wars 2 recently released a fake April Fool's joke:  the Super Adventure Box.  I need to stress that this is a fake April Fool's joke, by which I mean that it looks like an April Fool's joke, but is actually entirely real.  I promise I am not making this up.

For the month of April, players will be able to use Moto's Super Adventure Box, a training device for young children learning to make their way in the world which uses games as a form of educating with entertainment - edutainment!  Of course, it's only "for young children" in the game world of Guild Wars 2; for players in the real world, it's a nostalgic romp through a neo-retro mashup of old video games united with a decidedly Minecraftian aesthetic.  Fuckin'... sign me up!  Why am I writing this and not playing right now?!

Look, they even made an 80s-tastic commercial for it!

Oh, right, because I thought about it for two seconds.  And now I have to write those thoughts down, or pretty soon they'll pile up and my head will explode (yes, this is actually why I write).  Then I can play.

And what will I be playing?  I'll be playing a game... which will be about my character playing another game.  I suppose this is just another mini-game in a way, but what got me thinking was considering it as not "just another mini-game."  Yes, yes, there are plenty of games with mini-games wherein the character you play then plays another game (a game within a game), and this is nothing special.  What's special about this is that I'm entering a virtual world, and in that virtual world, my character enters another virtual world.

It's not just a game within a game, this time; it's The Matrix within The Matrix.

Quickies!

I have something of a tab explosion of things I want to talk about, but none of them is really worth a full-on ramble, so here's a pile just to get 'em out of the way.  On to bigger and better things!

Grammar Girl on How to Write Numbers:  I was actually going to go off on a whole rant about style and the horrors of homogeneity, but decided to skip it because fuck it.  It wasn't going to be a rant at Grammar Girl, anyhow; in truth, I was going to be railing against The System, and tooting my own horn a lot.  But after thinking it through, that's not something I really feel like doing.  The main thing is that there's an insoluble tension in a mongrel language like English:  on the one hand, there's a need for some standardization, just to make sure that we can be clear on what we're actually saying; on the other hand, if you have too many rules then you end up with only one way to express a thought, and that's awful.  If you remember your Orwell, that was the point of Newspeak in 1984.  In case you can't guess, I'm right in the middle - of course, I probably only think it's the middle because I'm the one standing there, but whatever.  I mean, we need the rules for things that ought to be clear and unambiguous, including engineering manuals and Western philosophy; but art is half knowing rules and half breaking them creatively, which we need for things like literature and poetry and Continental philosophy.  You'll notice I didn't use a serial comma there, and that was deliberate - because I wasn't pausing in my head, and I didn't want you to pause in your head, either.

Spelling a Word One Way:  I was going to open the aforementioned rant with a quote of dubious origin, which I decided to look up.  Turns out, there is no answer - or at least not one I can know with confidence - and that may or may not have been the straw that broke the camel's hump.  (The hump is my motivation.)  But now I've got a wonderful new resource for diving headlong into trivia, so hooray!  I entertained the idea of ranting on spelling instead of style, but again, fuck it.  In a language like Spanish, rigid spelling conventions make sense, because it's got enough diacritics and few enough sounds that you can tell how to spell a word by hearing it and tell how to pronounce it by looking at it.  But that won't work for English, because English has a much messier and more complicated origin.  And really, all I wanted to say was that I can effect a change in my affect to have different effects when I want to affect someone in this or that particular way.  There.  Done.  No need to conjure up a half-assed rant around it.

Garfield Minus Garfield:  I read about this some years ago, when it was a single web page (as I recall) and just kind of stayed that way for a while.  While I was away, Jim Davis applauded the derivative work, showing uncommon grace and perspective.  If you're not savvy, Garfield Minus Garfield digitally removes Garfield from his own strip, revealing Jon Arbuckle's struggles with his own unstable mind.  While the original Garfield stuck to a narrow range of the emotional palette, slightly amusing within the confines of what you could talk with your folks about at Thanksgiving dinner, the removal of the cat allows the strip to transcend those boundaries and wander all over the map.  The strips now range from bizarre, to hilarious, to depressing, to uncanny, to pitiful, to vindicating, to existential, to insightful.  I'm amazed by it, and you should check it out.

Open Letter from a Millennial:  Yowza.  I have a lot of thoughts on this one, but every time I go over them, they change radically.  Not back and forth, but round and round, in an expanding spiral that keeps touching down at various points in history and possibility.  The more I think about it, the more I think that continuing to think about it is what I should do, rather than come up with some kind of "answer."  But even that may change.  So I offer it to you without further comment.

That Reminds Me:  Stephen Colbert gave a commencement speech at Northwestern last year.  You need to watch this.  It's twenty minutes of awesome, even the "boring" introductory matter.  You owe it to yourself.

Thoughts on "Food, Inc."

I recently watched Food, Inc. (yes, it's two years old; no, I don't care), and I have to say, I agree with the advertising. This is an important movie, and everybody should watch it, for one simple reason. There are others, of course, and I agree or disagree with them to various degrees, but one reason I think any decent person could agree to is: it is important to know where your food comes from.

I also ought to say that I am a quality consultant in my office life, and so I am marginally sympathetic to the corporate perspective in this situation. I mean, I spend my downtime at the office reading up on things like process compliance an' shit. Just two days ago, I read about How To Think Like a Factory, and my mind is abuzz with ways to apply this to the call center floor which will be good for both the corporation's bottom line and the mental stability of us drones.

With those caveats out of the way, you should still watch Food, Inc. It's really well made, and it highlights some core parts of the industry that a great many people would probably prefer to ignore. Blissful ignorance is precisely why the food industry has been able to get away with this sort of thing, and if it makes people uncomfortable, then they need to be made aware so that they can vote with their dollars and pay the extra buck-two-ninety-eight to get a product that is brought to them in a way they can stomach.

OK, so I want to talk about how things got here, and not in terms of blame and disgust and harsh invective, but in terms of impersonal and perfectly logical (if unfortunate) progression. It's very simple. So simple, in fact, it's stupid. Try walking out into the street and asking people about "factory farming", and I can almost guarantee that a sizable fraction will think it's a metaphor, most will have vaguely unpleasant thoughts, a few will regurgitate very similar talking points (and probably smell of patchouli), and a tiny minority will have something well-informed and thoughtful to say. This is just the industrial revolution, applied to what you put in your belly every single day: a similar thing is happening in consumer electronics, Wired put out an article on it and called it "The Good Enough Revolution". In most of our day-to-day lives, quick & dirty is just fine, and top-of-the-line gizmos can be left for professionals and cutting-edge aficionados. Ah, but when you're struggling to feed your family, what approach is going to garner the most of your votes dollars? The costlier but more wholesome product, or the cheaper bulk product? Imagine this decision being made in dozens of millions of homes across the nation, and at the other end are chief executive officers who want to make as much money as they can and control as much of the market as they can. How should they do this? By trying to put out a costlier but more wholesome product, or by putting out cheaper bulk products? It all comes down to selection pressures.

What do you think a successful climber of the corporate ladder would do? I'm not asking what you would do, since you haven't climbed to the top of your corporate ladder - these decisions are in the hands of the ruthless opportunists who have climbed on the backs of their competitors to be where they are today, not the people who have made the decision to be satisfied with a modest existence.

So of course we're in the situation we're in today. It couldn't have happened any other way. No single person is to blame for this: we're all to blame. The producers are to blame for their production, and the consumers are to blame for their consumption, and no single person "decided" that this is the way it would go. This is the way it had to go. At least, so far. I dunno, maybe I'm just saying that because I'm a determinist, but the point remains that there's no great and powerful wizard behind the curtain. There's nobody behind the curtain at all.

I want to take some time to talk about some of the "gross" aspects of industrial food production, like chlorine baths. Actually, that's a great example in itself. See, if you've got a huge food operation, this is going to be a literal wellspring of opportunity for disease. Any disease that could infiltrate such an enormous and far-reaching niche would be hugely successful. But of course we don't want diseases to be able to carve out a niche in our food supply - we want our food supply to be a safe, standardized, idiot-proof sort of thing that we can set up anywhere and have a dependable outcome. We don't want to have to think about every single fucking food purchase, we want to be able to just pick something we want that's in our price range and take the rest for granted. We want factory farming, and so as a corollary we want to set up an over-the-top obstacle to give pathogenic would-be infiltrators as little opportunity as possible to survive and adapt. Corporations have an honest interest in making their operations disease-proof, because their customers can sue if something goes wrong. Food, Inc. has a segment where a mother relates the story of how her son fucking died from a food-borne pathogen. It's a goddamned tragedy, and I'm being perfectly serious about this: losing a child is one of the worst experiences a person can have, and for a whole lot of reasons, and if that death was caused by the food you put in that child's mouth, but you didn't make that food, then whoever did is going to fucking pay.

But now stop and consider the numbers. We're not talking about whether this particular child would have died or not, but the raw, impersonal statistics. This is reality, where things go wrong, and sometimes they go wrong in very bad ways, and there's nothing anyone can do to stop it for good. Mistakes shall always be made, and someone will always need to pay for them, because we are a litigious people and that's how things go. As it stands, this is one child out of millions, and it's terrible and awful and a genuine tragedy, and the corporation paid something for their mistake - but what's the alternative? Let's say that we go all organic and local, and all our producers feed grass to their cows and butcher their free-range chickens under open sky and they all have twenty times fewer pathogens. This is great! Ninety-five percent less children will die of food-borne pathogens!

But what about the other five percent? For every twenty food-related lawsuits we have now, we'll only have one, and this is truly great news. But in order to save nineteen families from a personal tragedy, we'll have to upset the lives of an entire farm's worth of folks because I can guarantee that those honest, hard-working, wholesome farmers who fucked up once won't have the money to pay hot-shot lawyers to stop litigious citizens from breaking their banks. When something bad happens with less frequency, those few times it does happen become all the more significant, and someone will still have to pay. Now, personally, I think it's better that a few dozen families have their incomes destabilized in order to save nineteen out of twenty lives. This is a genuinely smaller cost. But it's still a cost, it's just diffused and lessened, and it bothers me when people think that going all-organic (or whatever the fuckin' buzzword is gonna be) will make everything turn to sunshine and rainbows. I dunno, maybe I'm just upset that not everybody is as cynical as I am.

Anyway.

Enough defending dehumanizing corporate practices as logical outgrowths of consumer disinterest. We should follow the film's advice and vote for the bucolic, sustainable approach to our food - y'know, the kind that costs more money because you'll have to train folks to do more steps in a process, which requires a larger up-front investment and blah blah blah - because if we don't, I can see where things are going. The corporations will continue to control the means of production, and pretty soon, complete nutrition will come in the form of convenient pills so that people can keep their bodies running smoothly without all those pesky calories that make you fat. I mean, who wouldn't want to be able to ensure that they stay slim and get all the nutrients they need without drinking Liquid Sanctimony? Sure, the act of actually eating will become a luxury, but that's OK because more folks will be able to eke out a decent living on less money. The cost of feeding oneself will become an increasingly known quantity, and when you combine that with the cost of housing and clothing oneself, suddenly we have a precise calculation of what the minimum wage needs to be to let people just barely keep their heads above water. And honestly, that's all you need: to tread water your whole life, with tax breaks for deciding to permanently shack up with someone and raise some offspring, and the requirements for this will also be a known quantity. Pretty soon, the middle class will be entirely eliminated, and the corporate overlords will manage the lives of their drones with vaguely humane efficiency, since they know exactly what they need to pay their workers to keep them alive without giving them the opportunity for their offspring to break into the upper class.

You might have doubts that things could go that far, for the simple reason that pills alone won't fill you up - but have you heard of the Full Bar?

A Matter of Scale

I have to thank Silver Garou for pointing me at this video of the Universe as we see it:

It reminds me of the Total Perspective Vortex from Adams' Hitchhiker trilogy. Then there's this, from Rhodopsin:

The Universe is such a huge and awesome place! And while I'm at this, I should also mention that cl linked me to Symphony of Science a few weeks back, which is great stuff! What's not to love about auto-tuned prose from great science popularizers, set to ambient techno with imagery from science programs? Here's Our Place in the Cosmos, which features one of my favorite Dawkins quotes: "Matter flows from place to place and momentarily combines to be you. Some people find that thought disturbing - I find the reality thrilling."

Enjoy!

Too Awesome Not to Share

This was just too amazing to leave alone on the internet:

click for big, source

So yeah, this site is just awesome. It might even be called "epic," in a "win" sort of way. For the win.

Doin it Rong: How to Creatively Play with Your Toys

Rhodopsin had this tasty little tidbit waiting for me in my inbox this morning. Now "watch a young lady with a flute totally pass for a Very Serious Yelling Man with a facial tattoo," and enjoy!

It reminds me of this next one, which itself is a new twist on an old favorite. This guy injured one of his fingers, but still wanted to play Guitar Hero, so he rigged up a MIDI pad to help. Then he just kept on drumming. Behold, drumming Through the Fire and Flames on Expert, complete with Bullet Time! (Not really, but kinda-sorta.)

Last, we have a collection of young gentlemen who are just plain doin it rong. Or, perhaps, doin it just rite, if there are bonus points for teaming up. Actually, I think there are.

Yeah, OK, I take it back: totally doin it rite. Hooray for team-building and stuff!

NaNoWriMo Update: I crossed the 20K mark last night. Huzzah!

Let's Play Dress-Up! Halloween '09 (part two)

We left off last time when I wasn't even like half done. Turns out, things like spray paint and papier mache take the Hell-ass long to dry. Anyway, I got it done and it turned out acceptable, so here's the wrap-up!

The next step was to assemble the blade/tape-frame thing and fasten everything in place with finishing nails. With enough duct tape, cardboard, styrofoam, and finishing nails, you can make pretty much any prop. Look, see:

The above was taken after laying the first two layers of papier mache (with newspaper), which ended up including the smaller blade because the bare cardboard looked even more like crap than the main blade, and now it just looks less like crap. This is what I get for giving myself one week instead of, say, three; lesson learned. Anyway, after spraypainting the smaller blade silver, I used toilet paper to papier mache over the whole non-sharp part, then I used Plasti-Dip (rubberizer) to smooth out the transition from arm to blade. I am very happy with how the texture came out:

click for huge!

I think that's a very good approximation of the kind of thing I was going for:

source

The tendrils also turned out rather acceptable:

And here's what the whole thing looks like on top of a laser printer:

We had a costume party at the office on Friday, and I got someone to take a couple pictures on my cell phone, but they mostly turned out awful. This is one I took myself, and I think it's OK:

I had to do a bit of 'shopping (here's the original), as you can probably tell, but with the scratchy face, the bloodied frame, and the slight discoloration, I think that's more or less in keeping with the game's aesthetic. Good enough for me, anyway. And, of course, for anyone who doesn't know what this is all about, here's the intro video:

Happy Halloween, y'all! Time for me to start writing The Quantum Mechanic. Wish me luck!

Let's Play Dress-Up! Halloween '09 (part one)

I don't always go all-out for Halloween; actually, I usually make a point of not putting much effort into my costumes. One year I went as Wonder Woman for a "Low-Rent Superfriends" theme; then I went to a superhero costume party as The Raving Objectivist - I dressed up and did my hair like Ayn Rand's, and wore a name tag - my friend Andrew said I was her spit & image, which I took as a compliment, but it was still kinda creepy (to be fair, he was also creeped out by my appearance, even though he said it was awesome, so I guess we're even). Perhaps my favorite costume was "Zombie Apocalypse Survivor," because I got to make a mess all over myself and carry around a crowbar.

Well, one of my roommates, Rhodopsin, informed me of someone he'd seen at DragonCon who fabricated a prosthetic blade arm from Prototype, and I started thinking about how I could do such a thing, because I want one. I came up with a workable idea, my friends helped me scale it down a bit at our D&D session Friday night (what?! I'm a huge fuckin' nerd, OK?), and then I had a plan. I bought some materials on Saturday, and combined them with a few tools I had lying around the house:

...and Sunday was building day. I screwed up and made it too bulky at first (more like Nightmare's sword than Mercer's blade arm) and I wanted to make it thin and sharp-lookin'. I took a look at some online photos to get an idea, because I didn't feel like reinventing the wheel at this point, so I'm using what I've got to improvise and scale it back some more. Fortunately, I've got enough time left to start over and still end up with a product I like. So, starting over! I unwound some wire hangers for my wireframe and assembled them like so, with a handle and a styrofoam housing for the blade:

Then I taped over the frame/handle assembly and added a plastic sleeve (so I don't duct tape the whole thing to my arm - hooray for recycling grocery bags!). The whole bit looks like this:

Notice the wire "tendrils" sticking out; those will be important later on. Next, I cut cardboard to size for the blade proper, and glued it together three layers thick so it's nice & sturdy:

I have some shaping to do on it yet, but the hard part's over and the rest is tedium. I have to spraypaint and assemble the thing, then paper mache several layers over the non-sharp-like bits, add a coat of paint and rubberize the details. More later; wish me luck!

On to part 2!

Axe of the Apostles, book one: "Genesis 2: God Takes a Mulligan"

I wrote this for NaNoWriMo 2008; but I never finished, because satirizing all 66 books of the Bible is too much to do in thirty days. But I thought it started out well, even though I was bored and sick of it by the end of Deuteronomy, so I thought I'd share here. Enjoy!

In the beginning, there was nothing - which EXPLODED! God, never one to miss an entrance, did his best Clint Eastwood impression and walked menacingly into reality, squinting partly from the brightness but mostly to look like a badass. After staring down the young Universe for some time, God was about to deliver a witty one-liner - but then he realized that the Universe was expanding at the speed of light, which is much faster than sound, and he hadn't yet created other life, and sound can't travel in the vacuum of space anyway, so he gave up.

"Screw this," thought God, "I'm starting over."

In the beginning, there was nothing - except for God, who thought he was pretty hot shit for being the first one on the scene. Later sources would disagree, but they weren't around at the time and didn't see it for themselves, so who cares? Not God, that's for sure.

At this point, God decided he was perfect - able to do anything, aware of everything, and supremely good. As he was the only one around, a logical consequence of this situation is that he was also the most vile and despicable being in existence, but God hadn't invented logic yet and so was not concerned with this fact. At any rate, God got bored and lonely after contemplating his own perfection for a few minutes, so he decided to make some company for himself.

His first creation was called Lucifer, the star of the morning, the lightbringer. Lucifer was beautiful to behold, and lovely in every way. As God was the only other one around at the time, and beauty is relative, it is left to the reader to determine what conclusions may be drawn from this - remember, no logic allowed! After creating Lucifer, God immediately began feeling jealous, so he created a bunch of angels in order to get back to feeling superior.

There were many classes of angels: the cherry-pickers; the sycophants; the shark-angels; and of course the garden variety angel, a Mexican named Angel who was Heaven's groudskeeper - as there was no Heaven yet, this explains why God made Mexicans lazy). God, who by this point was back to feeling supremely awesome, then decided it was time for a speech.

"Hey, everyone. My name is God, and I made you all, so you all need to do what I say. Dig?"

"Laaaaaaaaame," Lucifer said, rolling the most gorgeous pair of eyes you ever saw.

"Well, you can go to Hell," God shouted angrily. "I've had enough of your shit!" With that, God created Heaven at one stroke, just so he could kick Lucifer out of it. Then he created Hell, and he stuck Lucifer there on infinite time-out. "You think about what you've done! And then maybe you can come back up to hang out with the cool kids."

"Hey, don't you think that was kind of harsh," one of the angels asked.

"Well, if you feel so sorry for Lucifer, then you two can hang out together!" And God cast that angel, and anyone who looked like him, out of Heaven and into the depths of Hell with Lucifer. This worked out to be about a third of the Heavenly host, as God isn't very creative, and by that point God had pretty much spent his temper tantrum and was feeling a bit better. "OK, now as I was saying, I made you all, so you have to do what I say, or I'll kick the shit outta you. Capisce?" None of the angels spoke Italian, as there wasn't a Vatican or a pope or anything, but they nodded their heads in agreement because Heaven was pretty nice and they didn't want to ruin their fun.

"All right, then," God continued, "I've got some work to do, so keep it quiet out here, OK?" Then God locked himself in his room for seven days.

In those seven days, God was working hard. First he made a star, and then a planet to go around that star, and then he tried to put stuff on the planet. Trouble was, he made the planet entirely out of sky, and it quickly started storming and made it a generally rough place to be. So he tried making a planet out of rock, but he put that one too close to the star, and it quickly became too hot for even God to handle, so he just left it there. The next rock was way too far away and was so cold that God's nipples got hard just thinking about it, so he tried making a sky-planet again, but it still didn't work out. This went on for a while, but finally God was able to make a planet out of rock which was just the right distance from the star, give or take, to allow for truly excellent beaches and some pretty sweet sunsets, too.

After that, God started putting other things up in the sky. First he made a moon, because moons are sweet, and then he tried to make some more stars so the night would have that neat "night-time" look to it. But the stars were too bright, so instead of making them smaller, he just put them really far away so they looked small. He put some of them way too far away, though, and there was no way to see them without melting some sand into glass and putting that into space and taking teeny-tiny pictures with the focus way zoomed out. But God figured that someone would eventually try that, so he just left well enough alone.

Next, God started putting plants and animals on the planet. First he made some wicked-cool looking things, like scaly trilobytes and giant lizards and humongous spiders and rather epic sharks, but then he decided that wasn't really how he wanted to do things, so he buried them all one at a time in a very specific order which would later confuse scientists into thinking they had actually lived and died in that order. Then he moved the land masses around, since he was bored by the whole cluster thing he had going on the one side. Then he made some more animals, but smaller this time.

Then God got lonely again, and those angels sure were a bunch of pricks, so he decided to make someone different to hang out with. This time, he made someone who looked just like him, and called him Adam.

"Hey, buddy," said God, "Your name is Adam. I'm God. My middle name is 'I Am,' and my last name is 'Awesome.' I guess you can have those middle and last names, too, because I think you're pretty awesome. I would know. I made you, after all."

"Neat," Adam said. "Right, then. What do I do?"

"Well, you know, stuff. There's chilling, hanging out, lounging around, passing the time, all sorts of stuff."

"I see. And what's this bit hanging off me here, then?"

"Oh," said God, blushing a bit, "That's a penis. I don't really know what it's for, I only gave it to you because I had one and I wanted you to be just like me. Really, though, it just makes me confused and angry sometimes, especially when I think about Lucifer."

"Who's that?"

"Huh? Oh, nobody. Nobody! Don't worry about that, forget I said anything. Anyway, yeah." God started trailing off at this point.

Adam got bored about now, so he wandered off and started looking at things. God felt a little snubbed by this, but he didn't want to let on, so he just said, "Oh, yeah, I gotta go, too. I'll see you around."

Over the next couple days, God watched Adam wander around on the planet he had made. He didn't seem to have a care in the world, and that frustrated God, because he was still feeling bad about what happened between him and Lucifer. That's when God decided that he would put Adam in a similar situation, and see how Adam reacted, and then if it worked out OK, then God would try the same thing.

That night, while Adam was sleeping, God created someone who looked just like Lucifer.

"Why, hello there," the new creation said.

"Hi," God answered, feeling a bit nervous. "My name's God. You're Eve. This is Adam. You should chill with him, he's pretty awesome."

"I dunno, he looks kind of lame," Eve said, looking over the snoring man next to her on the ground.

"Oh, that's only because he's sleeping. He's way more exciting during the day, I promise."

The next morning, Adam woke up and saw Eve next to him on the ground.

"Hey there, hot stuff," he said.

"Good morning," Eve said after waking up and rubbing her eyes a little. "So yeah, what do you want to do?"

Adam thought about this for a moment - there were a whole lot of things he wanted to do, but he didn't know which would impress this vision of loveliness the most, so he just said, "I don't know. What do you want to do?"

"Well, this is lame," Eve said. "God said you'd be way more exciting during the day."

"Oh, you want excitement? Well, there's this waterfall just through the forest over there, we could jump off it, it's great times!" This sounded like a good idea to Eve, so off they went.

God was watching this from the bushes, and he followed Adam and Eve and watched them have a great time at the waterfall. None of this was helpful - he had already gotten off on the wrong foot with Lucifer, and he didn't put any waterfalls in Hell, and he sure wasn't about to let her back into Heaven, so he couldn't see as how any of this applied to his situation.

With Adam and Eve getting along so well, God was starting to feel frustrated, so he decided to give them some rules to make their life harder. He planted two special trees, the tree of life and the tree of knowledge, and then he brought Adam and Eve over and laid down the law.

"OK, you two" said God, "Fun's over. I called this meeting so I could tell you what the rules are. I just put these two trees here, but you're not allowed to eat them, because I said so."

"Why not," asked Eve.

"Because I fucking said so, that's why! Don't ask stupid questions."

"All right, whatever you say," Adam said. "What are the other rules?"

"Umm," God stammered, "Well, you can't eat from that one tree, and you can't eat from the other tree, either. It's just wrong. And if you do, you'll die. Those are the rules, for now. I'll let you know if I come up with any other rules."

"What's 'die' mean," Eve asked. She had never seen anything die, and was curious what it meant.

"It sucks and you don't want it to happen, that's what it means! What did I tell you about asking stupid questions?"

A few days later, Adam and Eve still hadn't eaten from either of the trees, since they didn't want bad things to happen to them. God was apparently in charge, and they didn't want to piss him off, so they just went about their business of having fun and generally enjoying life. This was very frustrating to God, because he still didn't see how any of this could help him with Lucifer, and he couldn't really think of anything else to do with his time. Then God got an idea.

God went down to Hell and knocked on Lucifer's door. During her time in Hell, Lucifer and the exiled third of the Heavenly host had done wonders with the place. There was a coffee table with magazines in the living room, some nice paintings in the hallway, and a fresh paint job to boot. God, who had told his remaining angels just to sit tight while he locked himself in his room, was a bit embarrassed at the comparison. He To Whom All Is One was taking this all in when Lucifer answered the door.

"Hey there, Lucy. Long time, no see! I like what you've done with the place."

"Um, thanks, I guess. We made do with what we had, it seems to have worked out well."

"Yeah, so, do you mind if I come in?" Lucifer glanced about for a moment.

"I don't see why not. Mi casa, su casa."

"Thanks," God said, ambling inside. "So yeah, I was wondering if you would do me a favor?" Lucifer rolled her dewy, beautiful eyes.

"I should have known."

"No, no, it's not like that. Look, I'll tell you what: you give me a hand with this, we'll let bygones be bygones, you come on back up to Heaven and we'll have a grand old time. What do you say?"

"Well," Lucifer cocked her head to one side and weighed her options. "Yeah, OK, that sounds like it could work out. What did you have in mind?"

"See, it's like this," God began, "I went and created some more, after the angel thing kinda fell apart. I was playing around, and these humans kinda cropped up, but I'm trying to show 'em the rules, dig? They don't quite seem to get it - I mean, they're obeying the rules just fine, but I don't think they understand what will happen if they break the rules, you know?"

"I'm not sure I follow," Lucifer said.

"It's kind of hard to explain," God said, stroking his chin. "It's like, they're fine with following the rules for now, I just want them to see what happens if they break 'em, so they'll know not to do it. We show them an easy case, they learn from it, then things work out just fine forever!"

"Wait," Lucifer asked, looking confused. "So, let me see if I've got this straight - are you asking me to play the bad guy to teach your new friends a lesson?"

"Erm, no, it's not quite like that," God stammered, "But - yeah, I suppose that's the thrust of it. Afterwards, though, we'll all have a meeting, everything's gonna be out on the table, it'll be just fine. I promise."

"Full disclosure? We'll let them vent and everything? I mean, this seems pretty manipulative, they might be upset."

"I know, but it's for their own good. I'm sure that if we explain it together, they'll understand. What do you say?"

Lucifer mulled this over for a few moments before responding.

"OK, I'm in."

Adam was off for one of his walks in the wilderness. Eve had tagged along on plenty of those, and wanted to take a look at these trees they weren't supposed to eat from. She was a curious sort, and wanted to know just what was so special about them. When Lucifer came up from Hell, she saw Eve contemplating the tree of knowledge, and decided to make her move. Not wanting to be stuck with a bum rap in the event that things went South, Lucifer took on the shape of a serpent, in the hopes that she'd have plausible deniability.

"Hey there, sweetcakes," Lucifer said, after twining herself in the tree's branches.

"Oh, hi!" Eve was a bit startled, but quickly regained her composure. "Didn't see you there. What's up?"

"Well, I see you've been looking at this tree."

"Yeah," Eve said, looking back at the tree of knowledge. "God said we weren't supposed to eat from it, or we'd die, and that's bad. I'm just trying to figure out what could be so bad about eating this one kind of fruit."

"Oh, really? What kind of tree is it?"

"God said this one is the tree of knowledge. That other one over there is the tree of life."

"Knowledge, huh? Well, I'll tell you something: God knows everything. He said so himself. It doesn't seem to have done him any harm, eh? I bet there's more to this than he's letting on."

"Yeah, maybe," Eve added thoughtfully. "But it's more than just that, it's the knowledge of good and evil - you know, right and wrong, all that morality stuff. It seems hard."

"Meh, it's not really all that tough," Lucifer said. "It actually clears things up quite a bit. In fact, I'd bet that nothing bad would happen if you ate of this tree. Seems like the knowledge of good and evil would be a useful thing to have."

"Yeah, you're right," Eve said. "I mean, God talks about all these rules, all this right and wrong stuff, I'm not quite sure what it's all about."

"You know," said Lucifier, "I bet if you ate this here fruit, you might have a better idea of what he's talking about."

"You know what? That's a good call. Thanks for the advice, I think I'll take some of this and share it with Adam."

Eve reached up and plucked the ripest, juiciest looking fruit she could find, and went off to find Adam.

"Hey, honey. How are you?"

"I'm doing just fine, babycakes." Adam was all smiles - he always seemed to be full of energy after exploring some new area of the Earth that God had made.

"Well, check this out: you know that tree in the middle of the garden back home?"

"Uh, you mean the tree of knowledge?"

"Yeah, that's the one. I got some fruit from that tree right here."

"Hey, sweetheart," Adam said hesitantly, "God said not to eat that. I'd be careful if I were you."

"Well, listen," Eve countered, "I had this talk with a serpent in the tree, and it really doesn't seem so bad. I mean, God knows everything, right? So how bad could it be for some of that knowledge to pass on to us?"

"Umm, I don't know," Adam said, glancing about nervously. "Look, God said not to eat it, or else we'd die, and that dying is bad. I don't want to have to deal with that, really."

"Oh, come on," Eve implored. "How bad could it be? I mean, God himself knows all this stuff, and he seems like an OK guy, right?"

"I guess you've got a point there. Ahh, what the heck? Why not? I'll give it a shot."

So Adam and Eve each took a bite of the fruit from the tree of knowledge. As they did so, knowledge - all knowledge - flowed through their minds. A torrent of information swept through their consciousness, so enormous that they were barely able to understand any of it. But from all the chaos, one thing stood out: they saw themselves as God saw them, as mere tools, as means to an end. They looked upon themselves as the window dressing that God had built them for, and they were ashamed.

As quickly as it came, the flood of knowledge left their minds, blown away like dust in the wind. But the emotional impression of their role on Earth remained with them, the sense of their place in God's scheme of things would not be rubbed out. They knew God's mind for but a moment, yet their hearts were scarred for life.

Adam and Eve walked back to the garden in tears.

Look Out, Nonsense: Here Comes Science!

They Might Be Giants really took a page from the theists' playbook with their latest album, Here Comes Science: hook 'em while they're young (the Jesuits were famous for saying, "Give us the child for his first seven years, and we will show you the man"). I've been listening to Here Comes Science more or less every day since I got it. I know, I know, it's supposed to be children's educational music. But I like it! And it's a breath of fresh air! And it's a big "fuck you" to a whole bunch of superstitious nonsense without even making a big deal out of it! OK, it probably wasn't meant as a "fuck you," but still, that interpretation is available for almost every song (well, sixteen of the seventeen "real" songs, anyway). Here, watch:

1. Science Is Real: The message is clear in this song: "Science is real, your superstitious crap is imaginary." And people complain about this, which is awesome.
2. Meet the Elements: This one's kind of a stretch, but a belligerent interpretation is available. I imagine this song undermining homeopaths and other such hokum. Everything we think of as an "object" is made out of elements: nutrients are elements, medicines are elements, poisons are made out of elements, pizza places are made out of elements. It's all chemicals, and "chemicals is just chemicals." Keep in mind here that there are people who seriously believe that there is a difference between the ascorbic acid you find in an orange and the ascorbic acid you find in a vitamin C tablet (pro tip: there is no such difference, because ascorbic acid is ascorbic acid no matter where you get it from).
3. I Am a Paleontologist: One line: "It's so fun to think about how a species has evolved." Field scientists are the rock stars of their respective fields of inquiry, because they're out in the (sometimes literal) trenches looking at the world, and showing that to kids will help prepare them to laugh off Creatards & IDiots who don't know just how awesome a dig really is. Or all the science behind it, and all the science that goes into analyzing and interpreting whatever is found. For further reading, see Ardi's recent news spotlight on Easy Mode or Hard Mode, as well as PZ's coverage of the media circus to see the landmark discovery ignorantly dismissed as trivial, and abused to support homophobia.
4. The Bloodmobile: (Right song, but couldn't find the actual video.) Blood is life, which at least one holy book can tell you, but no holy book can tell you why. This song explains why. Oh, and all that crap you hear about "toxins" and whatever? Yep, that's what your blood is for. No pseudoscientific woo required, your body already takes care of it!
5. Electric Car: I love this song because it's unapologetic propaganda for electric cars. Y'know, to counterbalance all the anti-electric-car propaganda... right, guys? But you see, the USA makes guns which it sells to certain oil-rich nations (as Pat Condell put it, "It would be hard to think of a more oily place than Saudi Arabia"), and things like electric cars are inimical to such profitable business relationships. Y'know, now that I'm actually writing this, I can't say that this one is anti-superstition, but it is counter-anti-scientific progress, so I don't care.
6. My Brother the Ape: (Live performance.) All the world is kin, the end. We are not only related to apes, we are apes. Naked, brainy, hifalutin apes; but apes nonetheless. The best part: "They all kept saying how much we look alike. I don't think that we look alike at all, but I'll admit that I look more like a chimp than I look like my cousin the shrimp, or my distant kin the lichen, or the snowy egret, or the moss." Tru fax - the very truest.
7. What Is a Shooting Star?: (Live performance.) Oh, man! I'm excited about this one! See, there's this building called the Kaaba, the most sacred site in Islam. It's so fucking holy, it's why Muslims face Mecca to pray, no matter where in the world they are. So what's so goddamned special about it? Its eastern cornerstone is a black stone, which according to legend is a "piece of Heaven" that fell to Earth, showing Adam and Eve where to build the first shrine. Piece of Heaven? Fell to Earth? Sounds like a meteorite to me, or the firmament is falling! But Hell, it might just be obsidian or pumice instead - we haven't exactly been able to do any proper science to it, for stupid, stupid reasons.
8. How Many Planets?: One of the great things about science is that it is self-correcting (ideally). Rather than claiming absolute authority forever, scientists instead make provisional claims about what they can test and show. So when the IAU revised just what it means by the word "planet" back in 2006, they realized that they'd have to either cut out Pluto, or welcome in a bunch of other stuff, or engage in some rather egregious special-pleading shenanigans. Well, they picked option one, to the outrage of third-graders and small-minded adult-type persons alike. This song shows that reality is fuckin' complicated, and that planets aren't people and thus can't get their feelings hurt.
9. Why Does the Sun Shine?: This is just a groovy song. It also shows that the Sun is not a god, it's a naturally-occurring object just like any other star. The Universe has a few of them about, you see. One more metaphysical explanation supplanted by science!
10. Why Does the Sun Really Shine?: ...And one more scientific explanation revised by better science! Like How Many Planets?, Why Does the Sun Really Shine? shows explicitly that science is self-correcting: "The Sun is a miasma of incandescent plasma, the Sun's not simply made out of gas. The Sun is a quagmire, it's not made of fire, forget what you've been told in the past." Because, you see, we have something better now.
11. Roy G. Biv: Rainbows occur as a necessary consequence of the properties of light and water vapor in the air (such as after a rainfall). Rainbows are absolutely not the sign of a covenant between God and humanity to not blow up the world again because some people stick it in the naughty place. Besides, we see how well God's plan to wipe out evil forever has worked... over and over and over again. What a fuck-up.
12. Put It to the Test: When I'm away from my computer at work, the screen flashes with my favorite line from this song: "Find a way to show what would happen if you were incorrect; a fact is just a fantasy, unless it can be checked." I can't install electric sheep at the office, you see, so I put up something else that makes me smile instead. But yeah, falsifiability is important - I recently raised this point with cl, the idea being that a god who cannot be detected is epistemologically indistinct from a god who does not exist.
13. Photosynthesis: (No video available.) This one is pretty obvious. "Photosynthesis is why plants need light, and photosynthesis is why humans need plants, because through photosynthesis plants make oxygen, and humans need oxygen to breathe." But you see, there are some tool-bags who believe (as this person evidently once did) that it doesn't matter what we do to the planet because Jesus is returning soon, or even that the environment's decline is a sign of his impending arrival! ("So many incidents and elements that indicate the end of times have been taking place. First sign is the depletion of our natural resources...") Yeah, so... 'nuff said. Nutters.
14. Cells: (No video available.) Life, which includes people, is made out of cells. Not dirt, or clay, or mud, or spit, or ribs, or anything else that could be sculpted by an intelligent and magical creator. Just cells.
15. Speed and Velocity: Surprise, kids! Some words which are used interchangeably in common parlance have specific meanings in scientific contexts! It's an amazing fact, I know, but as it turns out, we sometimes need to watch our mouths when discussing matters if we wish to speak of facts and not bullshit. Because, y'know, words have meaning & all that jazz.
16. Computer Assisted Design: "See how you get from a thought to an object." It's not "God said 'Let there be light,' and lo, there was light." It's more like, "And humanity said, 'Let there be stuff,' and lo, with the aid of machines, there was stuff." No magic required!
17. Solid Liquid Gas: (No video available.) Yeah, so I spent this whole time trying to think of how the three (most commonly encountered) states of matter is anything in the face of superstitious nonsense. I got nothin'. Not even a stretch. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed what videos there are, and you should go check out the album, it comes with a DVD with all the videos that you can watch at your leisure under the intoxicant of your choice!

Sort-Of Reviews in Not-Really Stereo: "Here Comes Science" and "Act II: The Father of Death"

I finally got my meat-space copy of Act II: The Father of Death by the Protomen (I also got their bag, finally replacing my Air Force surplus carry-all of ten years) and have had time to digest it. I've been sitting on Here Comes Science for a while, since they came out in the same week, so I gave myself some time to think about that one as well.

Here Comes Science makes me laugh because a friend of mine (the philosopher who was instrumental in getting my sorry ass out of Objectivism) made a mix CD of They Might Be Giants and Sesame Street to test a professor's claim that the two are indistinguishable. So here they are with deliberate children's educational music, which I imagined would be even less distinct from Sesame Street, and... well, the answer turned out to be both yes and no.

Meet the Elements and The Bloodmobile are early-on examples of songs that I could see right at home on Sesame Street. But then there are songs like Science is Real and I Am a Paleontologist which cast scientists in a rock-star sort of light, which I fuckin' dig. Mainly, though, I find the album to be a breath of fresh air, giving some straight dope on science to kids in ways that they can appreciate and understand. For example, Put It to the Test carries a line that I almost want to get tattooed on my forehead: a fact is just a fantasy unless it can be checked.

But even better than the CD itself is the companion DVD that comes with it, containing music videos for all eighteen tracks (Here Comes Science, the song, doesn't count) strung together with contextualizing shorts narrated by John & John. Kids will laugh and be tricked into learning, but the educated viewer/listener will catch some covert lessons on falsifiability, the tentative nature of science, the importance of technical distinctions, and the place of humanity in the cosmos and on Earth. Even the liner notes are crammed with neat little things like a timeline of the Universe's life and the history of science (including the first articulation of the scientific method in 1021 by Abu Ali al-Hasan Ibn al-Haytham - a new one on me!).

So I recommend this album to everyone without reservation. If you're not a child, just imbibe your intoxicant of choice and check out the music videos, it will be perhaps the most erudite stupid-fun you could possibly have. My friend Melissa called it "a big fuck-you to religion," and the Hell of it is, she's right (more on this in later posts).

My feelings on Act II are rather thoroughly mixed. Let me first compare my experience of The Protomen (or "Act I," if you prefer) to this second album. I listened to it many times before ever seeing the liner notes, and it took a few play-throughs to grow on me. In particular, Unrest in the House of Light struck me as disorganized and sloppy until I adopted the idea that the whole song is a crescendo to the last line: You cannot win. I didn't like Vengeance until I had gotten over my falling-out with punk rock. I'm going through the same thing with Act II: even though I really like that they "turned the horns up to eleven" (as one of my friends put it), Keep Quiet and Light Up the Night are pretty eighties-tastic and rubbed me the wrong way at first, while the middle of the album drags a little to me. Compare this to the Morricone-esque opening tracks, and I think a little bit of alienation is to be expected on my part. Also, if you know off the top of your head who Ennio Morricone is, please let me know because I just might love you.

Then there's the matter of extra-lyrical narration. Both albums have narration in the liner notes which is in no way communicated in the songs themselves, and in both cases, these extra narrations are married rather happily to instrumental bits devoid of lyrical content. The upshot is that the reader/listener can read along without interrupting the experience at all (I used my internal narrator rather than reading as quickly as I could), and I think it's awesome that this stylistic device was preserved.

Switching gears, I don't like that the Protomen seem to have relied on this device more in their second album than in the first. Throughout The Protomen, the action was always clearly communicated through lyrics and music, so that one could get a "good enough" picture of what was happening and who was speaking just by listening. In Act II, this is impossible; the exile of Dr. Light could easily be confused with a train ride to imprisonment, as it is unclear from listening alone whether Light is convicted or acquitted (which matter alone says quite a bit about the state of that world!). After this ambiguous event (and a curiously suggestive instrumental number), the next speaking role is given to Joe, who simply starts singing Breaking Out without ever being introduced.

That's my only substantial complaint about the album: as a rock opera, their storytelling is a bit sloppy when compared to the directness and clarity of their first release. Or maybe they're just being more economical with their units of storytelling, I don't know. It also bears mentioning that the major character developments of the first album are not mirrored by similar developments here: the action is all about how Wily completely ruins Light's life. This is very much a prequel which sets the stage for the released-first-but-chronologically-second part of the story, and for that, I think the lack of profound character development can be forgiven.

Everything else is either improved or just as good: the thematic unity is preserved, but presented in the form of smooth transitions from song to song rather than the variations on a central chord progression that ran throughout Act I. While the "genre pallette" is not as broad, the level of musicianship is about as high, and some of the production values are cleaned up (they even start distorting the sound at the end, which makes me think they're meant to be played in chronological order). At the end of the day, you'll probably like The Father of Death if you liked The Protomen, and I recommend listening to Act II first if you ever listen to both albums in one sitting.

Second Husband of the Polyandrous Bride of the Quickies Before Work: Quickies After Work

First, simple.wikipedia.org has officially rocked my socks. My first three checks (LHC, Travelling Salesman Problem, Monty Hall Problem) were highly satisfying, but there's nothing yet on the Two Envelopes Problem (my first-ever wikipedia edit!) or the P=NP problem.

Second, these kids didn't pay attention in physics:

source

And finally, these chicks are bad-asses:

source

That's all for tonight. In the morning, I'll whine about my own bigotry!

Bride of the Quickies Before Work

Remember, kids: lists are cool!

• The Chariots of Iron guys talk a lot about Direct Relief International, pimping for it as the most efficient charity they've ever heard of. From the Wikipedia page: "Direct Relief International is one of two charities ranked by Forbes that has received a perfect fundraising efficiency score for five consecutive years and is ranked by the Chronicle of Philanthropy as California’s largest international nonprofit organization based on private support." That says it all, to me. I would add them to Ebonmuse's excellent short-list of charities most worthy of donation. Remember these guys as the holidays approach - I know that I will.
• Due to popular demand (I have popular demand?!), I will be posting my deconversion from Objectivism. Saturday.
• Norman Borlaug died like two weeks ago, and I totally missed it (I feel like such a shit!). If you don't know who he is, get thee to an educationery!
• Tomorrow (9/30/2009) is International Blaspemy Day! I'm excited! Are you excited? Get excited! And do some blasphemy!
• Bill Maher is on heroic probation. I know that the status of just who is and is not my hero is probably not news, hence the Quickie; but Maher made an excellent movie without so much as telling me that he might be into some kookery (at least Ben Stein has started wearing his crazy on his sleeve). I have yet to fact-check, but you can see for yourself in the meantime: Orac (of Respectful Insolence) has a handy list of links at the bottom of an informative post.

OK, off I goes.

Arr, me hearties! It's International "Talk Like a Pirate" Day, yarr!

Avast, ahoy, an' shiver me timbers! Methinks I be the only one o' me mates who can sing this song. Yarr, 'tis a sad state of affairs, an' one I aim to correct:

Lyrics:

Fifteen men on a dead man's chest
Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

Drink and the Devil had done for the rest

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

The mate was fixed by the bosun's pike

The bosun brained with a marlinspike

And cookie's throat was marked belike

It had been gripped by fingers ten

And there they lay, all good dead men

Like break o' day in a boozin' ken

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

Fifteen men of the whole ship's list

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

Dead and bedamned and the rest gone whist

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

The skipper lay with his nob in gore

Where the scullion's axe his cheek had shore

And the scullion he was stabbed times four

And there they lay, and the soggy skies

Dripped all day long into upstarin' eyes

At murk sunset and at foul sunrise

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

Fifteen men of 'em stiff and stark

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

Ten of the crew had the murder mark

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

'Twas a cutlass swipe or an ounce of lead

Or a yawin' hole in a battered head

And the scuppers glut with a rottin' red

And there they lay, aye, damn me eyes

All lookouts clapped on paradise

All souls bound just contrariwise

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

Fifteen men of 'em good and true

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

Every man-jack could'a sailed with old Pew

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

There was chest on chest full o' Spanish gold

With a ton of plate in the middle hold

And the cabins riot of loot untold

And there lay they that had took the plumb

With sightless glare and their lips struck dumb

While we shared all by the rule of thumb

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

More was seen through the sternlight screen

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

Chartings no doubt where a woman had been

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

A flimsy shift on a bunker cot

With a thin dirk slit in the bosom spot

And the lace stiff dry in a purplish blot

Oh, was she wench, some shudderin' maid

That dared the knife and took the blade

By god, she was stuff for a plucky jade

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

Fifteen men on a dead man's chest

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

Drink and the devil had done for the rest

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

We wrapped 'em all in a mainsail tight

With twice-ten turns of a hawser's bight

And we heaved 'em over and out of sight

With a Yo-Heave-Ho, and a Fare-Ye-Well

And a sudden plunge in the sullen swell

Ten fathoms deep on the road to Hell

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

D'arr, hyarr! Drink up, ye scurvy scallywags! An' just fer fun, a blast from me past:

Quickies Before Work

• Chariots of Iron: These guys are awesome, and you know from the title that God can't beat 'em! My favorite line: "If you really think the Earth is only six thousand years old, you shouldn't be able to get a driver's license, let alone run a country." (#33)
• Dan Savage lets drunks do his job for a day! It's cooler than it sounds, I promise.
• District 9 is awesome and everybody needs to see it. It's got everything in it (action, drama, social commentary, political allegory, you name it), and it's all done well.
• Here's a bottomless pit of stupid fun: Motivated Photos. Check them out.
• I quit cigarettes today. Mainly 'cuz I'm out and don't want to keep buying them. But I want to socially pressure myself into actually quitting and not just stopping temporarily, hence the announcement.

A Message to the Folks in Charge: I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MBIES 1N IT!!!1

So there's this thing called XBLA (pronounced "ecks-blah") where you can try, buy, and play games alone or online with your friends. It's awesome because Microsoft has this other thing on their first thing which they used to call "Community Games," which meant "games made by gamers in the XBox community." This was an appropriately informative title, but now they're called "Indie Games," which is misleading in at least one way. I mean, sure, the games are created independently, which I guess is the important part, but they're advertised, sold, and distributed by Microsoft, which is the closest you can get to an avatar of The Man.

Whatever. I still call them "Community Games," and they're still awesome. Well, some of them are, and some of them are not. But I can download free trials of all of them, and play them like I'm in an old-timey video game arcade! And with no quarters! So I found a truly awesome one, and it's probably the most stellar example I've seen of a creative and fresh new twist on an old favorite. Due to what I assume is a character limit, the game in question is called, I MAED A GAM3 W1TH ZOMBIES!!!1 However, the game's picture displays what I believe is the full title, I MAED A GAM3 W1TH ZOMBIES 1N IT!!!1 It's a twin-stick shooter, which means that you move with one joystick and shoot in whatever direction the other joystick is pointing, like Smash TV. Or Geometry Wars. Or any other twin-stick shooter.

So what makes this game so crazy fun? Well, it's got a solid gold core of simple-yet-addictive gameplay: shoot everything that moves! And surrounding that pristine nugget is a whole bunch of silly shit that cannot be taken seriously. But it's not self-conscious at all! The guys who did this (or guy? I don't know) just surrounded that quantum of joy with a whole bunch of ridiculousness and went for it. Did they make it? Umm... I think so! The background music is a poppy, catchy tune with lyrics that are about the game, and how it only costs a dollar.

WHAT?!

Yes, this simple addictive shooter, with background music that probably took longer to make than the rest of the game combined, costs but one single American dollar. Deal!

My message to the Folks in Charge is this: gameplay is king. I don't care how pretty your game is - or, rather, I care about graphics less than I care about gameplay. Everyone - and I mean absolutely everyone - is the same way, we just have minimum standards of gameplay that we will accept. Do you know how I know this? Because every gamer I know still loves old games with fantastic gameplay. Every single one of them.

Anyway, below is a video, although playing is always better than watching. Also, here is the song if you just wanna listen.

Inglourious Basterds: A sort-of review by a not-really critic

I suspect that killing Nazis is, for most Westerners, more or less like killing zombies is for me: an end in itself, a wellspring of amusement and satisfaction, an everlasting Gobstopper of joy that banishes all unpleasantness. I have a bottomless appetite for zombie-slaying, hating the undead with a passion as I do; given the chance, I would gladly risk my real life on a daily basis to kill real zombies, should they ever become a genuine threat (though I would be loath to see such a threat foisted upon the world). Replace "zombies" with "Nazis" in the previous sentence, and that's what I imagine the general consensus is in the Western world, and why we Americans so enthusiastically consume WWII shooters: it's righteous violence for a good cause against an implacable evil that is diametrically opposed to our very existence (in the shooters, that is... and in the imaginations of many overzealous patriots... the reality of the situation gets quite a bit stickier when we try to paint it in black and white like that, though).

So I watched Inglourious Basterds last night. I had only seen one preview of it, and it looked like either a satire or parody of the World War II genre; then I found out it has Brad Pitt in it (who is hot to death and a good actor to boot); and then I found out it was directed by Quentin Tarantino, who has never done anything I haven't liked. Well, maybe it's a commentary on World War II films, but it's not a satire or a parody (at least, not in the usual way). And as for Tarantino's involvement, the tone of the movie is more or less Pulp Fiction in the 1940s (Tarantino himself describes it as a spaghetti Western in WWII). That's about all I can say without getting into spoiler territory, so take that as you will; I do recommend seeing the movie if any of that sounds even vaguely interesting to you, though.

Beware of the Spoilers! They are all floating down here!

Inglourious Basterds is a Tarantino movie through-and-through: the protagonists are not people you'd have over for dinner for any sane reason, the plot is continuously contorting itself in a series of convoluted and inscrutable gyrations like a confused stripper on E, and there's not really a central message or point except that the world is a messy place where everyone's got their fare share of fuckups, hangups, and moral failings. Normally, this makes for witty one-liners, juicy water cooler gossip, and car-crash-like scenes that make me feel good and guilty at the same time (good because I like what I'm seeing; guilty because I feel prurient for liking it). I like this feeling. So I hope you understand when I say that it was even more pronounced while watching Inglourious Basterds.

Brad Pitt's character, Aldo "the Apache" Raine, scalps Nazis. Literally. He's got a command of eight American Jews who all hate Hitler and every last bit of Aryan supremacist bullshit he stands for, and Aldo tells these men that each of them owes him one hundred Nazi scalps. Aldo doesn't take prisoners - those few who he doesn't scalp are sent back to their leaders to tell horror stories of how their entire unit was killed and scalped - oh, and the survivors have swastikas carved into their foreheads with a Bowie knife, too. The reason for this last bit is that a Nazi uniform can be taken off: Aldo likes it when the Nazis wear their uniforms, because it makes them easier to identify; if they take their uniforms off, though, they can blend in with the rest of society. Aldo can't abide this, so he gives these men "something they can't take off." ::shudder::

But Nazis are evil, dammit! Right, guys? Well, OK, yes... but so is scalping people and permanently scarring them! How much evil is permissible in defense against a greater evil? Should despicable fear tactics such as scalping and mutilation be considered "good" when employed against things like genocide? Shit, I don't know. I mean, I'm a consequentialist, and as such I have to acknowledge that demoralizing an enemy is an effective tactic. As Sun Tzu wrote, the best way to achieve victory is to remove your opponent's desire to fight. But man, where do we draw the line?

This kind of moral inclarity is delectable to me. If you want to feel good about Nazis "getting theirs," then this probably isn't the movie for you - or Hell, maybe it is, but you might not get the same things out of seeing a Nazi officer beaten to death with a baseball bat that your friends get out of it. And there's a whole bunch of neat little character development segments and some really cool symbolism (such as when Shosanna Dreyfus is putting on her makeup, and it looks like she's putting on warpaint during a couple cuts). But all this is secondary in my mind to the moral muddle that Tarantino creates by eschewing the cartoonish portrayal of World War II seen in most of the genre (or perhaps by applying such cartoonish strokes liberally upon all sides). You know what I'm talking about: Hellboy doesn't fight Nazis, he fights "Nazis" who can't be reasoned with (like zombies), and "Nazis" also populate Germany, Italy, and France in most of the World War II genre. Tarantino's Nazis are closer to real Nazis, whom it must be remembered were also real people, than they are to "Nazis."

So yeah, I enjoyed watching Inglourious Basterds, and I recommend at least one viewing, but this sure isn't your daddy's World War II film. Given how saturated the market is with your daddy's WWII film, I say hooray for that.

Call Ripley! AI vs. AI in a No-Holds-Barred Video Game Contest!

Fine, not quite; but AIs are playing Super Mario Brothers! No joke!

Baumgarten's AI also had some pleasant surprises. Without programming, the AI learned to grab the shells from defeated enemies and use them to destroy other enemies.

"This nice behavior sometimes just appears," said Baumgarten. "We try to optimize the behaviors that will lead to success."

They're learning! Or at least "acting as if learning," which is close enough (and what we do, anyway, once you get past the whole "self-awareness" issue). Now, this may be premature, but I welcome our new robot overlords. I can't wait for the day when we as a species outgrow our cyberpunk adolescence and move on to a postcyberpunk utopia.

Tycho Brahe already said everything I wanted to say!

I don't know how these guys keep hitting the nail right on the goddamned head. Tycho (of Penny Arcade, as opposed to History) writes on the ThinkB4YouSpeak campaign:

Trying to regulate how people speak is a problematic endeavor. People sometimes try to assert that Information Wants To Be Free, when that isn't actually true, because information can't want things. It's a false corollary of something that is true, though - namely, that Communication Cannot Be Contained. A true corollary of this notion would be that People Will Say Things You Don't Like, And May Even Hate, a shard of schoolyard wisdom I previously thought well distributed.

Gabe, in deliciously uncharacteristic form, has his own riff right below where he gives undue analysis to what was, in all likelihood, a rather thoughtless comment from someone he doesn't even remember.

I gotta say, I'm with 'em. (Full Disclosure: I was against 'em before, and with the ThinkB4YouSpeak folks, but I've since changed my mind.) I think that people who think "gay" is an insult are stupid, but you can't really fight stupid with stupider. "Gay" will continue to be an insult as long as those assholes think it is, for the same reason that "special" is now (and "retard" before it, and "moron" & "idiot" before that). It's a very simple thing, really: the insult word is something that the speaker does not wish to be. "Chug that beer or you're gay" has the same argumentative weight as "Chug that beer or you have cancer." It's every bit as insensitive and ignorant, no matter the specific manifestation.

So how do we win? Well, leaving aside for the moment that you can't actually "win culture" or "win language" (OK, maybe you can... I certainly lose at language when under certain chemical influences...), I like Dan Savage's "leotarded" approach. I like it because it's fun, it's stupid, and it shows just how stupid the whole thing is. You want me to stop saying "leotarded?" Fine, stop saying "retarded" and I'll think about it. Neener-neener, nanny-fuckin'-boo-boo. And when you've blown the last raspberry, then you'll know you've won.

Just kidding. The insult, it turns out, only has the power you let it have (like, say, any other insult). Things may or may not change in your lifetime, and you'd save yourself a lot of grief & angst if you'd just get over it. Yeah, I know, they're wrong and it sucks and you just wanna do something about it. Well, by all means, do something about it! But if you're not also preparing yourself for the inevitable backlash and the possibility of failure by inoculating yourself against such barbs, well, then you might go a little nuts. And cry in public when someone calls you "gay," then cry more when they call you "gay for crying."

Besides, if we couldn't use "gay" frivolously, then skeletons couldn't be gay for deals! And that would be a true tragedy. For Serious.