Halbert's Cubicle

Theory vs. Practice, or "How did I get myself into this mess?"

2011-04-27T21:07:00.000-05:00

I'm going to assume the dearth of posts lately hasn't escaped your notice. This isn't like the other long periods of blog-silence, my creative energies are being channeled elsewhere these days. A few months ago, I started talking about the Dresden Files RPG. Well, now I'm actually running a campaign of the game for my gaming group. I'm even keeping a wiki of the campaign for the group, or others, to follow along. If you're at all interested in such stories, you might find it worth a read. Although I've already fallen behind on the session synopses, surprise-surprise.

Despite the last few posts I've written here being about the theory of running RPGs, I'm finding myself completely overwhelmed at times trying to follow my own advice. Yes yes, "Gaming is hard," blah blah blah.

Take my earlier posts on making all called rolls count. The general advice there was making both failure and success interesting, and not calling for rolls if either state was boring. In practice, this is more difficult. A big part of playing RPGs is getting to toss dice. Most players will balk at the idea of letting their dice sit idle for the majority of a session. It's not so simple, because most failure states are boring, and players ask to roll their dice. A lot. Typically, this will go something like, "I want to find out what I can about that NPC and what he's been doing." (Maybe your players word their questions that vaguely; I try to push my players for specifics, but sometimes I forget.) Because my players hate me, this will always be regarding an NPC for whom I have not prepared answers. Which leaves me about 3-5 seconds to answer the following questions:

Is this NPC worth an answer?
Will the player have the capacity to find these answers?
Do I have an answer to the question at all?
What makes sense, and does this critically affect anything?
How difficult should this be, and what is their chance of success?
Should I encourage them to take measures to increase their chance of success, if needed?
What should success look like?
What should failure look like? Should I just deny the information, let them have it after a delay, cut off a finger for the information?
Oh crap, they're already rolling. Why are they already rolling?

Yeah, no pressure. Repeat that for four more hours and you can see how all that theorizing about proper challenge design gets chucked out the window in favor of hemming, hawing, and hedging.

A lot of this is me being my own worst critic. I have incredibly high expectations for myself, and despite my feelings of inadequacy, my players have issued mostly praise for the way things have gone so far.

I guess the lesson is that RPG theory is only as good as its ability to be implemented under fire. (I.E. No battle plan survives enemy contact.)

When to call for a roll: Further thoughts

2011-02-08T05:53:00.000-06:00

I've considered a few more things worth tacking on to my previous post about calling for rolls. Hey, if I'm lucky, this could turn into an entire series of posts.

The Knowledge Dump
Many games have knowledge skills; for example, in D&D 4th edition, you have History, Religion, Arcana, Dungeoneering, and Streetwise. It can be tempting to put game information behind these skill rolls in order to get some use out of them. I'm inclined to think these days, however, that that is a bad idea.

Information about the game world touches on a lot of elements. It gives depth to the setting, showing off the skills of the GM (or whoever wrote the material being used). It provides players tools for interacting with the setting and understanding the nuances of how things work. It can even be critical for short-term goals, such as deciphering the instructions to a puzzle in a dungeon, or discovering the location of a mission-critical goal.

So why would putting any of that behind a skill roll be a good idea, given the chance of player failure? If it's mission-critical stuff, then we're back to the problems in my first post on this topic. If it isn't mission-critical, then risking the players not rolling high enough does not provide anything. Your world will seem flatter and less interesting for the lack of information.

However, if only ancillary information is put behind knowledge skill rolls, some players may be less likely to take them, since they don't provide anything "necessary."

Success, but . . .
The Dresden Files RPG describes this strategy as, "Success, but . . ." and I really like it. That scenario from before, with the locked door? Instead of interpreting failure as the players not getting through the door, the players get through the door but make so much noise that they attract a guard's attention. I like this, as it makes failure much more interesting without letting the game grind to a stop while your players make the same roll over and over until the dice-gods relent.

Here's an example to put it together: Let's say your players are looking for the location of a mages' tower long lost to common knowledge. They rightly suspect that the historical archives in the capital city will have the information they seek. The player with the best score in History would want to go to the archives to study and find this information.

In the past, I might have had the player roll, with a bonus to the roll for using all the reference material of the library. This still invites the possibility of failure, unless I make the bonus so outlandish that the information was coming one way or another. I don't think this is a very interesting way to do things.

There needs to be a way to give the information on a failed roll, but offer up a minor penalty to the players anyhow. You could say that the research takes longer, depending on how badly the roll failed, but that can be game dependent. In some games, the passage of extra time might not mean much to the players, nor to the GM. Instead, let's say that failure results in needing the staff of the archives to help the players find the information they seek. Of course, the staff of the archives doesn't work for free, so it'll cost the players some amount of gold to pay for the services. Even better, let's say that instead of paying in gold, the players could offer to run "errands" for the archivists, retrieving specific historical texts from the locations they visit, including that mages' tower.

Failure has been made more interesting, but what about success? If the players are getting the information either way, success needs to be more than just, "You don't get punished." Perhaps, in finding the location of the mages' tower, the players also find some other interesting bit of information. A treasure depot, perhaps? Or maybe they learn about some of the defenses the mages' tower used to have, giving them a heads up on what to expect when they get there. Maybe there are monsters in the tower now, but the excellent research gives them an advantage in combat when they fight the monsters. In a completely different route, you could say that the player's research leads him to translate a section the archivists had been unable to interpret previously, so they pay the players for their help.

It seems like it would be difficult to make every skill roll this dynamic and interesting; not every player action is quite so complicated, after all. Still, as far as skill rolls are concerned, I think a little extra planning and the right frame of mind can do a lot to add to a game.

When to call for a roll

2011-02-04T17:04:00.001-06:00

I tend to discuss RPG topics with my friends, and one of the topics that came to mind a while back has stuck with me enough that I think it's worth putting to the blog: When do you ask your players for a roll? It might seem simple enough, but it starts delving into the fundamental aspects of how (and why) RPGs are played.

For the uninitiated, RPGs tend to have players roll dice to determine the outcome of any event the player wants to resolve which would have an element of randomness to the outcome. For example, you would roll to see if you hit a monster with a fireball, and then roll again to determine how much damage the fireball does to the monster if it connects. But you might not roll if you're, say, hitting a door with an axe, since inanimate objects tend to be easier to hit.

There was something in the Dresden Files RPG books that I really liked, and I think makes for a great jumping off point. This is the advice they give GMs when considering whether to ask their players to roll: "1. Consider success. 2. Consider failure."

When you're asking someone to roll for something, there is the implication that they could fail at what they're trying to do. For the game to be fun, both success and failure need to be interesting. Combat seems to cover this automatically; if you succeed at a combat roll, you're that much closer to victory, and if you fail, that much closer to defeat. But skill and knowledge checks, well, there are definitely right and wrong ways to handle those. Here's some examples as to how that might work:

The Inevitable Victory
Let's say there is a locked door, and a character with a skill for picking locks wants to get through it. If they succeed, great, they get to find out what's on the other side, but what if they fail? Some GMs might just tell the player to try again, and keep that up until he gets it right. That's boring. Same thing if you let every other player with a lock picking skills to take a crack at it, as the odds are good that at least one person will roll high enough to make it happen.

Oh, and if they get through that door? There needs to be something worth seeing on the other side; if it's nothing of interest to the game, then you shouldn't have had them roll to get through the lock in the first place.

The Quick Recovery
Let's take another scenario: This time, you have the player in a treacherous situation, like avoiding a trap or accident of some kind. The player rolls to avoid the trap but fails. The consequence? Let's say a small penalty, or some minor damage. This is a fine consequence. But let's say that you then avoid any situation where the consequence would matter . . . what was the point? If the trap did damage to the character, but the character immediately gets to sleep it off, then there was no reason for asking him to roll to avoid the trap in the first place.

The Necessary Success
Quick story: I ran a game in which my players spent a lot of time fighting an evil lich who had raised an army of zombies. At the end, they met with the leaders of the combined mortal armies to push back against the lich; the idea being that they were going to ask the military leaders to lead the charge against the lich. So I had a player roll to see if they go for it. He failed . . . and I just let him have it, anyhow.

What was I going to do? The game had been building to this climactic final showdown, why would I just cut it off because of a single roll? That roll should never have been called for in the first place.

So, I think I can see a few principles for calling for rolls in an RPG:

Success needs to be meaningful to the player's goal
Failure needs to have consequences that are both felt and tested
The game cannot hinge on a successful roll

I'm willing to bet I could come up with a few more, but this seems like a good place to start.

Non-Combat Gameplay

2011-01-17T11:20:00.001-06:00

First things first: If you think video games can be more than just mindless entertainment, and actually enjoy considering their potential and meaning, then you should be watching Extra Credits over at The Escapist.

That said, their most recent video was about non-combat gameplay. In short: A great majority of video games are mostly played through combat, and while this is both entertaining and a cheap way of introducing tension and drama, it neglects the many other aspects of life that video games could entertainingly portray in order to tell a good story.

Why is this so? I imagine it's the same reason sex, by which I mean scantily clad females, is so ubiquitous in video games. A great deal of both the creators and the players are male; while this has balanced somewhat in the last decade or so, men seem to be the dominant force in the industry. And let's face it: Men like violence. I don't mean this in any sort of denigrating way, it's just the sort of fantasy which we enjoy. Let's save psychology and philosophizing about why that is for another time.

Could you make a game that is entertaining which doesn't involve combat? I've no doubt. But I think the thing that will ultimately make that sort of game successful is a good story, not good mechanics.

The problem is that unless you have programming good enough to respond to a wide variety of player inputs, these sorts of games will probably be a long series of if/then statements. If player does X, computer responds with Y. Which is fine, and I'm sure it can be more complicated than that, but it will eventually boil down to predictable management of minutiae, which is going to be problematic for this sort of gameplay.

The entire idea is that you're offering a different way of overcoming obstacles in these games. Not combat, basically. If you don't replace the elements that make combat a cheap dramatic resource (tension, risk, the unknown possibilities), then the gameplay becomes formulaic.

Which is not the kiss of death for game, as I said; it's just that the impetus is then on making a good story. I loved the Phoenix Wright games, and I think they're an excellent example of this sort of thing. But I'm skeptical we'll ever see a game that fully replaces combat with philosophical debate, pushing the cloak and sheathing the dagger.

The Unlockables

2011-01-05T23:00:00.003-06:00

I picked up the new Goldeneye: 007 game for the Wii over Christmas. This is a classic game for me, one I spent many hours with in high school, whiling away afternoons with friends. In fact, I never played the single player game when this was on the N64, so finding out that Nintendo was remaking the game inspired a lot of nostalgia for the days of sitting on the couch and blowing my friends up.

So you know what happened when I picked up the game with some friends on New Year's Eve? I found out that half the features I wanted had to be unlocked, including the proximity mines (AKA the greatest video game weapons ever). There was much nerd rage to be had.

Seriously, why do game designers do this? What possible reason could there be to make players spend hours and hours playing one game mode to unlock features in another? I'd say it's to get people to play the game for longer, but it's not like designers get paid by the hours people play the game. It reeks of artificial padding.

I can think of worse examples, of course. Wario Ware on the Wii required you to beat the single player game before you could even access multiplayer. I've played DDR games where you had to progressively unlock each difficulty level for a song. Smash Brothers is defined by all of the unlockable features, which is pretty obnoxious if you bought it to play with friends. It's pretty disheartening when you crack open a game, anticipating a heavily advertised feature, only to find that you have to play the game endlessly before you can access it.

Consider this a negative review of Goldeneye for the Wii. The one feature I was looking forward to, proximity mines, is only unlocked through online play. How? Why, by earning experience and gaining levels through good performance. Oh, and what level do you unlock proximity mines? Level 53. Yeah, whoever made that decision can go suck an egg.

Edit: Forgot to add probably the most important point: This sort of gameplay has a limited shelf life. That is, the online community with which to play the game is only going to be around for so long. What happens when that well dries up? Will that content be forever locked away?

As FATE would have it . . .

2011-01-03T06:48:00.000-06:00

As I mentioned in a previous post, I've been reading The Dresden Files books recently. Well, "recently" may be generous, as I burned through the last of the books in May; the only things I haven't read yet in that series are the short story collections. With thirteen novels in the series, you can rightly call my interest piqued. I even purchased the Dresden Files RPG books by Evil Hat. I'll be the next person to sit in the GM's chair for my gaming group, so it's likely I'll end up running this, if for no other reason than I think the guys are ready for something besides D&D.

Dresden uses the FATE system, and if you haven't heard of it before, you should really check it out. I've been highly intrigued by it, and I'm really looking forward to giving it a shot. In short, there's a lot of mechanical inducements for role-playing, and the flexibility of it seems like it could make for very cool gaming moments.

Each character has to take a number of Aspects. These are essentially descriptors of the character, for anything from personality quirks to life goals, or even just physical attributes. The more wordy, the better the Aspect. For example, Harry Dresden, lead character of the novels, might take an Aspect such as "Wizard." That's accurate, but very dull and boring. Instead, he might take the Aspect, "The only Wizard listed in the yellow pages." Much more descriptive, and gives a lot more room to work with.

Why do you need room to work with? Well, characters get a number of Fate points to play with. You can spend your Fate points to obtain supernatural powers or learn special skill tricks, but all unspent points can be used in the course to play to make things go your way. This is done through "compulsion" and "invocation" of Aspects.

Let's say that Harry wants to make something happen in the game. He can invoke one of his Aspects by spending a Fate point if it's related. This can give him a bonus to a roll, let him reroll, or even just declare something to be, depending on the situation. Of course, the GM can also compel his Aspects. If Harry is trying to keep a low profile during an investigation, the GM could compel his Aspect mentioned above, forcing circumstances or actions on Harry's part; if Harry accepts this, he gains a Fate point he can use later. If he'd rather not have this hanging over his head, he can instead spend a Fate point to tell the GM to go suck an egg.

Aspects aren't just for characters, either, meaning there's a lot of interesting ways to make use of this system. I really like the back-and-forth potential this creates between players and the GM, and it sets the players up for really getting to shine in the spotlight when they need to.

I know some might complain that the GM has a lot of power to screw over the players in this sort of system, but I think if you're worried about the GM abusing power, and the players, then you already have problems in your game. This sort of system only works when the GM is working together with the players to tell an interesting story. If it's just the GM telling his story, or just pushing the players as hard as possible because you're only doing it right if the players are tearing out their hair, then the system breaks down. Those GMs, though, probably don't get the point of this sytem in the first place.

Go check it out, if nothing else. It's a really neat looking game, and the design and production values of the books are fantastic.

TRON: Legacy

2011-01-01T15:21:00.000-06:00

As part of my resolutions for the year, I'm attempting to post more frequently on the blog. While a Monday-Friday schedule might be more conducive for traffic, I may as well start the year off right.

You might recall (by scrolling down the page) that I wrote about a little game called TRON 2.0 back in August. This was partly as preparation for the upcoming film, TRON: Legacy. Well, I saw said sequel over my Christmas holiday. (For what it's worth, none of the content of TRON 2.0 is referenced by the movie.)

Overall, I liked it. I think this is partially because of my fondness for the concepts and atmosphere of the series. The film isn't breaking any new ground, story-wise. In fact, I'd argue that most of it is simply recycled from the first film. So, light on plot, heavy on spectacle; exactly the reasons I disliked Avatar. I'm still not sure what to make of that, except to say that Legacy seemed to at least attempt to tell a new story, albeit one with very familiar elements.

The film really is stunning, though. I didn't see it in 3D*, but I'm told it's makes good use of the technology. As with the original, the film does a lot with a little, making very attractive settings through the use of geometrically simple structures and monochromatic designs. The music is a fantastic companion to the visuals as well; I liked Daft Punk before, but they truly outdid themselves for this film.

Should you see it? If you're a fan of the original, then you won't want to miss this. If you like sci-fi action films, then this is worth your time. If you're into the spectacle of films, and loved Avatar because of how pretty it was, then you'll probably enjoy this as well. Everyone else . . . your mileage may vary.

You might also be interested in this review of the movie, courtesy of Movie Bob, over at The Escapist.

* - I really, really hate the surge of 3D films coming out in the last 5 or so years. I find it to be mostly a gimmick, as well as an excuse to sell $15 tickets. After all, if you're having trouble putting butts in seats, why not reverse that trend with double-price tickets and a technology that isn't easily replicated at home?

But mostly, it's because I wear glasses. Those 3D glasses you have to wear are a massive pain to wear for the course of a movie, and eventually those movies end up making me vaguely motion sick. Stupid 3D movies.

Resolve

2010-12-31T08:51:00.000-06:00

It's that time of year again, when people start thinking about everything they've botched up the previous year and what they'd like to change in the coming year. Or at least what they'll complain about botching up next year.

Like most other Americans, I have some fairly predictable resolutions: Spend less, save more, lose weight, spend more time with enriching hobbies and less with the unfruitful ones.

Still, this post over at Shamus's blog had me thinking about my own little corner of the internet. I always did like blogging, even when my only hits were the three friends who would check in a day, various trolls, and random Google hits that didn't result in anyone actually sticking around to read something. I really do regret letting the blog sit more or less fallow this year.

I think part of the problem is that I just don't have the same passions as I did when I started this back in college. I used to write a lot about philosophy and religion then, but I was exposed to so much more at the time. These days I just don't have the same exposure to material to inspire anything worth writing about (which is probably an indictment of my reading habits, if nothing else).

News commentary and criticism? Eh, perhaps, but it's not like there isn't enough of that going on. Plus, college newspapers always made it so easy, given the goofy things that they'll publish.

Science writing? I actually wish I did more of that. I'm about to finish Ben Goldacre's book (which deserves its own post, really), and it's definitely inspired me to write more about responsible science. It's the sort of thing I'd enjoy getting paid to do, although it would mean writing more and writing better. I'm no slob with the written word, but I've been lazy, and there's plenty of people out there willing to bang out 500 words about why some study or other is a bunch of horse pucky. If I want to go that direction, I'll need to step my game up.

Video games? Goodness knows that occupies enough of my writing anyhow, little though it is. Unfortunately, most of what I play these days is World of Warcraft, and I can really only write so much about that. Oh, there's an audience for it, but I don't want that to be my occupying focus.

It was suggested to me that getting back into blogging would be easier if I refocused the blog. Having a clear purpose would help, and feeling passionate about my topic(s) would go even further. I'm still not sure what that is, but at least I know that I need to figure it out. Probably not the most exciting resolution, but it's a start.

Happy New Year, folks, and good luck in 2011.

TRON

2010-08-28T12:19:00.001-05:00

If you've seen any movies this summer, then you've likely seen at least one preview for the upcoming TRON: Legacy. The original TRON was released early in my life, so I can't say exactly how the visuals compared to other movies at the time. Still, the previews for the sequel look very attractive with today's level of CG animation.

To prepare for the new movie, I rented the original a few weeks ago. It wasn't nearly as good as I remembered it, though its problems weren't much different than any other 80s movie, Sci-Fi or otherwise. Still, the movie has maintained a following for almost 30 years, so it did something right.

The jaunt to the past inspired me to partake in another TRON franchise, mostly to see if it gets utilized for the upcoming Legacy: TRON 2.0. (Why yes, I am about to talk about a video game well after it was relevant. How did you know?)

Continue below the fold

TRON 2.0 was a computer game from 2003. For it to make any sense, let's recall the plot to the original TRON (And hey, if you are worried about spoilers to a 28 year old movie, you need help):

Alan Bradley and Kevin Flynn are former co-workers for ENCOM, a company that has its hands in sophisticated scientific research and video game development (seriously, who came up with that one?). Kevin made video games, but a seedy coworker stole his programs, worked his way up to VP, then fired Kevin. Alan, meanwhile, works on a program called TRON, designed to act as a system watchdog. Kevin and Alan break into the company to get evidence that the VP is a lying weasel, only to have Kevin fall victim to the advanced science and get transported into the computer network, where he must get the help of TRON to take on the Master Control Program, an invention of the weasel VP that threatens to take over the entire world. After a crazy adventure, Kevin returns to the world of the living, the MCP is defeated, and our VP gets the boot, only to be replaced by Kevin. Happy ending high fives all around.

While Legacy will be following the adventures of Kevin's son, TRON 2.0 follows the adventures of Alan Bradley's son, Jet. Jet is most likely a Mary Sue: Crazy intelligent slacker who has a bad relationship with his father, he ends up working at ENCOM with his Dad, but refuses to follow in his father's footsteps. Rather than joining his father on the "digitization" project that led to the events in TRON, Jet works as a video game programmer. However, one day something happens to his father in the lab, and when Jet rushes to see what has happened, he, too, ends up being transported into the crazy world of the computers.

Two parallel stories unfold as you play. Inside the computer, you will spend your time rescuing important programs such as Ma3a, running from "the Kernel," an anti-virus program, and fighting off a powerful virus that is corrupting the network. You'll get glimpses of the world outside by finding emails scattered around the network, which tell the tale of the hostile takeover of ENCOM by Future Con, which seeks to get its hands on the digitization technology.

One aspect of that really bothers me. At some point, you see a cutscene where fCon sends some thugs to harass Alan for the codes to make the technology work properly. Why? He works for them now! It's not like they're stealing this stuff, they own it!

One of the things the game gets right is the visuals. TRON utilized contrasting neon colors to create lush, futuristic settings, while maintaining simple aesthetics to give the illusion of being on a circuit board at times. Transferred over to the game, this gives the opportunity to make the setting come to life without taxing the computer, as much of the setting is simply two-tone polygons of one design or another.

The gameplay utilizes an RPG-like system where the Jet "upgrades" his "version" every so often, allowing him to get more health, energy, or a few other abilities. As you go through the game, you'll find new programs that Jet can "load" which benefit him in specific ways. You'll find armor, weapons, and various utility programs such as stealth or higher jumping.

This system is . . . okay, I guess. You only have so many slots to load programs into. Each program has three levels of strength, where the lowest level is the weakest and takes the most space. This means that you'll generally have to choose which upgrades you want because you can't have them all. It ends up being counter-intuitive, because many of the weapons will be left unused; why take up space for the "shotgun," when you can have extra armor? It ends up feeling very restrictive and punishing, for reasons I'll get to in a bit.

The worst aspect of the game is the sense of monotony. You'll find the same three or so enemies the entire game: Green virus programs who act more like diseased monkeys than anything threatening, red anti-virus programs more intent on harassing you than stopping the actual virus, and purple wraiths/hackers who will make you hate the game with a passion. None of the enemies really distinguish themselves from one another (if you see one red program, you've seen them all), so it's fairly trivial to figure out what you're confronting at any given time. You'd think that would make for an easy game, right?

You'd be wrong. My biggest complaint about this game is that it's brutally difficult. The game has four difficulty levels; the moment you move past the lowest level, the enemies start hitting like trucks. This wouldn't be terrible, except you'll frequently find yourself in wide open areas, unable to restore any health, unable to dodge the enemies' attacks, and probably outnumbered. It often seems like changing strategies, via weapon switches, would help with this, but that doesn't work so well.

You don't have ammo for the special weapons; instead, you use an energy supply that all of the weapons draw from. The thing is, you'll also use that energy supply to download new programs, emails, or "permissions," (i.e. keys) to move through the levels. Since you can only recharge your energy every so often, this discourages the use of the special weapons. But then let's say you find a situation where a special weapon would be useful? If you haven't been carrying it around (and why would you?), you need to enter the menu and trade out one or your useful programs, like attack strength or armor, for the special weapon. You use your new toy to put the hurt on your enemies, except you haven't found an upgrade for this weapon yet, so it hits like a wet noodle. You finally beat the enemies, but now you're out of energy, down to a quarter of your health, and staring down the rest of the level yet to come.

Over all, I like the game. It's visually appealing, and fun to play despite the occasional slow or frustratingly difficult sections. If you never played it in the past and are planning on seeing Legacy, I would highly recommend it (assuming you can find it cheap).

The Dresden Files

2010-06-15T22:48:00.000-05:00

I've always been reluctant to be too critical of variations in media. What I mean is, if someone turns a book into a movie, I try not to get hung up on the differences and simply appreciate each for its various merits. Not that there isn't room for that. It's just that the criticisms are often a measure of what you wanted the translation to be, not what it is.

At least, until I started reading The Dresden Files.

Originally, I was introduced to the short-lived (one season) series on the Sci-Fi Channel (before it became SyFy). The premise: Harry Dresden is a hard-boiled Chicago PI, and also a wizard. He's not shy about it; in fact, he advertises in the phone book as a wizard. He spends his time handling various cases for clients as well as providing his services as a consultant for the Chicago PD on cases that are "unusual." He uses a hockey stick as a staff and a drum stick as a wand. It's like Harry Potter meets film noir.

At the time, I appreciated it for what it was. Then I found out a friend of mine read the book series, and a few loans later I was tearing through the books. It's been a while since I've gotten to enjoy fiction like this, and it's been refreshing. Maddening, too, since I finish them so fast I'm left with a constant thirst for more.

Recently, my girlfriend rented the DVDs of the television show for me, and it's been bittersweet. It's fun seeing the show again, but I'm having trouble appreciating it the way I did before I knew about the books. The show was cheesy, to be sure, and definitely would have benefited from being picked up by any station but Sci-Fi. Still, I find myself picking it apart for all the things that differ from the book. There's perfectly reasonable explanations for the changes in many cases, but it's difficult to enjoy all the same when I spend more time thinking about the differences than appreciating it for what it is.

Not much else to say on this, really. Just a recommendation to pick up the books, and a plea to some other network to clean up after Sci-Fi's failure to recognize a quality franchise when it comes along.

It could always be worse

2010-05-26T05:49:00.002-05:00

So, I caught the last half-hour or so of the LOST series finale, which effectively doubled the amount of time I've spent watching the show over all. Call it a mix of morbid curiosity and a desire to understand the reactions of my friends who watched it. Apparently they went the "Fulfill characters' stories" route rather than the "Explain all the sci-fi mysteries" route, which angered a lot of people. I guess everyone was already dead the entire time, or there was a parallel universe that was purgatory, or something. I didn't get it.

It actually reminded me of the ending of a series I watched on Cartoon Network a few years ago, The Big-O. The premise was awesome: A post-apocalyptic world where the only survivors were the inhabitants of Paradigm City, a place controlled by a corporation with an agenda. Forty years after the event which turned the rest of the world into an uninhabitable wasteland, nobody in the city has any memory of their lives before the incident, leaving them to struggle with understanding their history, their lives, the traditions and customs that drive and bind them . . . and at the center of it all, the protagonist: Roger Smith, a billionaire superhero reminiscent of Batman. Oh, except instead of fighting crime in a funny suit, he acts as a "negotiator" for hire and fights monsters and robots in his giant robot ("megadeus"), the Big O.

Neat, eh? As the series wears on, we learn a lot about the world. People slowly discover memories, personal or otherwise, of life before the apocalypse, something of great interest to the Paradigm Corporation. We learn that there is life outside of Paradigm City, both when giant robots attack from beyond the city, but also when Roger encounters a woman who works for "foreign powers."

Roger seems to be on the cusp of discovering the relationship between the Paradigm Corporation, the apocalypse, and the foreign powers when the series ends. As it ends, Roger finishes a fight with another giant robot, and . . . we see him open the door into a control room, where one of the characters sits and operates a console that seems to be directing everything.

That's right . . . it was all just an illusion being programmed by someone. What a ridiculous cop out.

Still, at least it's an ending. Many of the shows I enjoyed watching were started, only to drop before they finished (Inuyasha), or be transferred off of the channel I watched it on (Naruto). Some of them suffered from a lack of interest and vanished before they intended to (Undergrads), while still others carried on but became a shell of what they once were (Heroes, The Simpsons).

So, LOST fans, it could be worse. At least you got an ending, even if you didn't like it.

You're not qualified to have fun

2010-03-06T10:36:00.000-06:00

I haven't written about it much here, but back in 2008 I started playing World of Warcraft. I always wondered why people found such games so addicting, but, well, now I know. I haven't written much about it because it's kind of a specialized interest; it's easy enough to write a single review of a game, or even a short series, but WoW is one of those games that can take up a lot of attention. People even have full-time jobs just writing about it!

Recently in game, I applied to a new guild. For those who don't know, players band together in groups called guilds to facilitate higher level play. Often, the "endgame" content requires 10-25 players to accomplish, so being a part of a guild not only provides a (semi)stable structure for doing so, but also offers a stronger sense of community than you get otherwise. In many ways, it's almost required to be a part of a guild in order to see that endgame content. You can just group together with strangers (pick-up groups, or "pugs"), but often times this can be very stressful; expectations are very high, and there's very little patience or tolerance of mistakes. Sometimes it's akin to demanding a PhD for a burger flipping job.

I recently applied to join a guild on my server. If you think it sounds funny to say that I applied, as if it were an actual job, then you're not alone. I was rejected, and my reaction was worth pondering for a moment.

Some people take this game very seriously. There are people who play many, many hours a day and are highly competitive about completing "world first" achievements. Even though some guilds will never play on that level, they are very serious about completing the same content. As such, their standards can be exceedingly high. They won't take someone into an instance who hasn't been there before (which leads many players into a Catch-22 scenario). The wide variety ways that you can customize your character become irrelevant, as suddenly there are "right" choices and "wrong" choices. There are people who will tell you that you're a substandard player based on, say, a 1% difference in health pool, or a 2% difference in damage. The fervent belief in such things can be almost religious.

It's an odd thing, being rejected for what is, at its heart, a hobby. I mean, it might make some sense for an intramural sports team, for example (although people would understandably be upset about perpetually riding the pine), but this is a video game. I can't imagine someone saying, "No, you're not good enough at Donkey Kong, you can't play with me. You'll drag down the entire game."

There's certainly something to be said about playing as well as you can. If you're counting on nine (or 24) other people to put on their "A game," it can be frustrating that progress is blocked because someone is slacking off in one way or another. Still, the level of elitism and hostility that arises out of a cooperative hobby is very surprising sometimes. Perhaps it's just an extension of the GIF theory.

Back from the wilderness

2010-03-06T09:35:00.000-06:00

Ah, the old girl's still here. Glad to know Google doesn't delete these things when a blogger disappears for a few months.
So where was I? The demands of graduate school left me studying ~8 hrs a day for, well, almost two months. It's not like I couldn't have found five minutes at the end of the day to jot down something, but there's only so much mileage you can get out of, "Exams suck. Grad school sucks. Is it March yet?" You wouldn't believe how consuming it can be.

A lot of things are up in the air still, but my hope is to get back to regular posting. Whatever "regular" means for this blog, at least.

Forging science in the CRUcible

2009-12-03T20:33:00.001-06:00

I should probably be burned alive for the title pun, but never mind that. I've neglected to write about a story that broke before Thanksgiving, but I feel compelled to finally do so. I don't really have a good link to a "summary" of the whole story, but you probably don't have to look very far if you just google "Climategate." (Ugh. Can we please get away from adding "gate" to word to name a controversy? It's just silly, people.)

Edit: Ah, I have such little imagination. Here's one from the Times of UK, and here's one AEI.

Here's what I can recall from memory:

A few weeks ago, some computers purportedly hacked at the East Anglia (that's England) Climate Research Unit and a vast array of information leaked onto the internet. Email, data, modeling programs and algorithms . . . it was a treasure trove of information. Analysis of the leaked information has led people to conclude that life at CRU was fishy at best and fraudulent at worst. The emails indicated that the scientists there were purposely avoiding FOIA requests for their data (which they are required to give, since they receive American grant money), spiking the research of colleagues who published research that rejects anthropogenic global warming, and manipulating their data to hide trends which contradicts the AGW hypothesis. As this has been coming to light and calls have been made for investigations, CRU has admitted to destroying data.

Altogether, that's bad. It's very counter-intuitive to how the scientific process is supposed to work. You might want to say that this isn't that big of a deal because this is only one place, and in general peer review is supposed to root out bad science and bad scientists. One problem is that apparently the CRU crew were big players in the AGW scheme, playing big parts in collaborations such as the IPCC. Additionally, it seems that a lot of secondary work is based off of what CRU produces, so if they manipulate their data or produce faulty read-outs, those errors may be multiplied down the road.

Of course, you'll want to read about it yourself. Some people are debating about the implications for the veracity of the AGW hypothesis altogether. I'll save my thoughts on that for another post. Instead, I'd wanted a chance to link to this Wall Street Journal opinion piece saying that the credibility of science is on the line because of this.

I sympathize with a lot of his main point. The general public is scientifically illiterate in ways that make me uncomfortable sometimes. Combine that with the fervent, political way in which AGW has been presented to them, and the sudden development that bigwigs up top are putting down the answers that they want and then saying the dog ate their homework, well, I can see how that might lower the general trust in that field specifically and the sciences as a whole.

Still, I'm reminded of another time that big players were found to have falsified their data in a highly controversial field. It wasn't too long ago that a Korean scientist was found to have forged data related to embryonic stem cell research. It's unfortunate that I don't remember either his name or the consequences of his shenanigans, but I do remember writing about it on this blog. My point being that, despite his actions sullying the "respectability" of the field, that area of research has continued onward.

Of course, the two topics are only similar in that there was scientific fraud being committed. That doesn't make this a bad example, but it does mean that we'll have to wait and see how this plays out. This could very well be the turning point at which AGW stops being the "consensus" position and politicians stop trying to implement catastrophic economic policies based on the word of over-zealous scientists. Or it might change absolutely nothing, with a few empty words spoken about how good it is to pick out the bad eggs but that the science is still sound, settled, and must be acted upon with all haste.

I'm hoping it's the former. Time will tell.

HPV Vaccination Strategies

2009-11-13T16:32:00.000-06:00

Ugh, it makes me sad to see that Oblivion post still sitting there at the top of the page. It's like a testament to my inability to finish projects. I still have half a dozen things to say about that game, but it stops seeming like a good idea when my last entry on the subject was almost a month ago. Where does the time go?

In any case, let's talk about something else.

Not long ago, my virology class hosted a lecture on Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) by Dr. John Schiller, the guy who pioneered the work that led to Gardasil, the HPV vaccine. Needless to say, it was a very informative lecture. It made me reflect on how there's such a poor spread of scientific and medical information to the masses. Sometimes I don't think it's even just that the journalists who spread this information get things wrong, though this factors in enough, but that many laypeople don't have the patience to learn about such things.

Anyhow, one of the misconceptions I had going into this lecture was that the carcinogenic HPV strains were mainly a female problem. This turns out not to be the case. While they do cause cervical cancer in women, they can also cause rectal cancer in men. Of course, this is only a problem for men who engage in anal sex with other men, and that isn't a big portion of the population. The number of cases of rectal cancer reported each year in men is very low.

However, when it comes to vaccination strategies, this is when it starts getting complicated.

Right now the idea is to vaccinate young girls. Since they stand the largest chance of getting the infection and it is easier to check for an infection in them, there is the most to gain by vaccinating them. While the vaccine is now approved for males, its utility is unclear. With the exception of rectal tissue transformation, men are asymptomatic as far as this disease goes.

One could argue that it would be discriminatory to spend public/insurance dollars vaccinating one sex over the other when both are just as vulnerable to the disease. However, the actual rates of infection and cancer would make it hard to justify vaccinating both sexes with limited funds rather than just the one sex that is more likely to be affected by the infection.

Of course, people can buy the vaccine on their own, even if insurance won't cover it. The price will probably drop, too, now that a competitor to Gardasil is on its way. However, we've already seen lots of opposition to this from some parents. The idea of vaccinating their girls against an STD is distasteful, as if preparing them for a life of licentious behavior, or at least acquiescing to the idea. How much more resistance do you think will arise for male vaccinations? "Hey parents, vaccinate your boys just in case they turn out to be gay!" I'm not sure that'll fly. The age is a complication here as well. The vaccine is being recommend, from the looks of it, for children aged 10-14. How many gay men would have had the foresight to get vaccinated at this age? How many would balk at getting it "just in case?" It's quite the conundrum.

I'm not sure I have any real gems of wisdom to add in here, no grand suggestions to make all of this go away. I simply found it interesting.

Oblivion: Fast Travel

2009-10-17T15:35:00.001-05:00

I'm starting to realize that much of my review of Oblivion involves comparing it to Morrowind. This isn't entirely purposeless, as much of the popular reaction to the game was comparison to Morrowind, both positive and negative.

That being said, let's talk about travel as it was then, in Morrowind, and as it is "now" in Oblivion.

Continue reading below the jump

Morrowind had limited travel options. Of course, there was always the option of walking, but this was laboriously slow until later in the game. Eventually, you could get magic for flying; this didn't make it into Oblivion. Alternatively, there were various transportation systems that you could use to move between cities instantaneously; all you had to do was select your destination and you appeared in the new city. This involved either the mages' guild or use of a taxi-like service involving giant bugs. (Probably best to just leave it at that).

Bethesda fixed some things very nicely in Oblivion regarding travel. There were no more taxi services, although an expansion added teleportation to the mages' guild halls. You still could hoof it, although this had a much lower cap on your personal speed than Morrowind had. Bethesda did introduce horses you could ride. This is a nice speed boost to travel early in the game, although the system was clunky; the horses were fragile and difficult to control, you couldn't ride one during combat, they were expensive, and at high levels you could run faster than the horses. This isn't even including the odd fact that you are the only person in the game who rides horses anyhow. You'd think that the soldiers or royalty might, but you'd be wrong.

The thing that really gets controversial, however, is Fast Travel. In Oblivion, any location you discover gets marked on your in-game map; every village, every cave, every dungeon, every isolated farm. As soon as your find it, it's marked on your map. The major cities are on your map by default. When you wanted to return to one of these locations in the future, all you had to do was open your map and click on the location; the game would instantly take you there, although time would pass in-game.

You might think this sounds incredibly convenient, given that it can take quite a bit of real life time to cross the entire game world on foot. You'd be right. That didn't stop people from complaining about it, though. "It's ruined the immersion!" they cried. "It makes the game too easy!" People even made programs to take Fast Travel out of the game. I'm not sure what convinced these people that use of the system is mandatory, but it must have been something in their copy. In mine, Fast Travel is an optional system, one I would often ignore for various reasons: Exploration, appreciation of the environment (this is a very pretty game), leveling up various skills, acquiring treasure or materials, etc.

Again, this was a silly controversy. I'm quite curious how Bethesda dealt with it for Fallout 3. In the end, it was a vast improvement over the tedious pace of Morrowind and really helped keep the pace of the game moving, at least when you wanted it to.

Speaking out

2009-10-13T05:02:00.000-05:00

Just a quick follow-up: The other day in my post on the use of animals in scientific research, I mentioned that most of my colleagues thought that scientists should speak out, do more to educate the public about the importance of animal research and how seriously we take it. Well, recently I've seen some billboards here in Baltimore that do just that. The one that I've seen says, "Ever had leprosy? Thanks to animal research, you won't." The boards seem to be sponsored by ResearchSaves.org. I don't know if there's some larger sponsor behind the organization, but the premise is certainly a good one.

Side note: The animal model for leprosy is an interesting one. Apparently armadillos are the subject of choice when doing animal research with leprosy. We once had a lecturer come to our school whose work was on this. Since you can't breed armadillos in a lab setting (though not for a lack of trying), they have to catch them in the wild as needed. The researcher assured us there were many amusing tales of the local universities paying undergrads to go catch armadillos. It's fun to imagine so.

Oblivion: Factions

2009-10-12T09:11:00.002-05:00

In this edition of my continuing series on the fourth edition in the Elder Scrolls series, I plan on talking about the various groups your character can align himself with. This post should be a refreshing change, given that I started this series with the intention of discussing why I liked this game. So far all I've done is . . . well, let's say I've pointed out some idiosyncracies.

So, factions in Oblivion, eh?

Continue reading below the jump

In the game, there are four different factions in the land you can join: the Fighters' guild, Mages' guild, Thieves' guild, and Assassins' guild (the Dark Brotherhood). It's worth it to look at the previous game, Morrowind, in discussing these groups.

If you played Morrowind, you're probably thinking that that list is a little stingy. If you didn't, Morrowing had quite a few more guilds. On top of the above (although with a different Assassins' guild), they had three Great Houses you could join, two different religious organizations, and three different vampire clans you could align with. Most of these were mutually exclusive, but the replay value really holds up.

Side note: Yes, Virginia, you can become a vampire in these games. Oblivion really didn't do enough with this, I thought. There are no vampire factions to join. The only related quest is to remove your vampirism. In game, you become more "vampire-like" if you don't feed; you get stronger powers, but your appearance changes and you start taking damage from the sun. This would be fine if the game actually reacted to your appearance change. Nobody cares that you're suddenly a monster. What a wasted opportunity.

Where was I? Oh, yes. So Oblivion pared down the factions. A few other things changed. As a plus, the factions no longer require any sort of skill level. In Morrowind, you had to reach certain proficiencies with skills before you could advance in each guild. This meant that, for example, you had to get to a higher level before you could reach the highest tier of the mages guild. In Oblivion, you can play through to the end of each guild from the start of the game. Of course, the downside to this is that anyone can join any of the factions. Does it make sense to you that a fighter with no magic skills can become head of the Mages' guild? Or that a clumsy wizard who couldn't sneak past Helen Keller could lead the Thieves' guild?

The questlines involving these groups are very good. Many people seem to prefer them to the main quest of the game. The Fighters deal with a rival guild (which you can't join). The Mages try to stamp out necromancy. The Thieves . . . steal stuff. The Assassins . . . kill people. I realize those last two don't sound all that amazing, but playing through them will give you a good sense of how epic each one is. They're often quite a refreshing change from the non-faction quests, which tend to be of the, "Retrieve item X, then kill person Y," sort.

Overall, the factions are one of the great parts of the game. They'll take you all across the game world and offer lucrative rewards. What's not to like?

Oblivion Skills: Magic

2009-10-06T11:19:00.001-05:00

In my continuing effort to put fresh material on this blog while writing absolutely nothing of significance, I'm continuing my series on Oblivion. Keep reading below the jump to get an eyeful of information on the nature of magic in the game.

Continue reading below the jump

Before we start, I should explain a bit about how magic in the game works. Anybody can cast magic, but the strength of the spells you can learn and use is determined by your skill level with each particular school of magic, which make up the magic skills in the game.

Each spell has a certain budget, if you will. Points get allocated based on whether the spell is touch range or can be shot like a missile, how strong the effect is, how long the effect will last, and whether the effect is on one target or a burst. The more points a spell uses, the costly it is to cast and the higher skill required to cast it.

With that in mind, let's discuss some of the individual schools of magic.

Alteration

Alteration controls magical shields, but also effects water (breathing in it or walking on it), opening locks, and making your load lighter. Most people will find all but the latter worthlesss.

Only someone playing an unarmored mage will appreciate the shield spells, but they're never terribly effective. They don't last very long and the protection they give is marginal compared to level-appropriate armor. Plus, they can't supplement armor past a certain level, so there's no reason to use them if you're going to wear armor.

The water spells might seem useful, but they become obsolete very fast, as it's trivial to find equipment which grants you the exact same abilities. The same holds true for the lock opening spells; the skill takes so long to level that you're likely to be unable to keep up (that is, the locks you encounter will be stronger than your skill with the spell). Given that actual lockpicking is easy enough for any character to do, there's no usefulness here.

The only really helpful spell are the Feather spells, which reduce the weight of whatever gear you're currently carrying. Since this lets you cart much heavier loads out of a dungeon, it's very lucrative to invest in such spells.

Conjuration

This school allows you to summon either equipment or creatures for a short period of time. The creatures are useful, the equipment not so much.

Since the monsters you summon can fight alongside you, they often provide, if nothing else, a second target for the monsters you fight. The strange thing is, however, that the game makes no secret of the fact that the creatures you summon are evil. If you run into one in the wild, it is a bad thing. In fact, reputable members of the mages' guild will teach you these spells, including spells to summon undead. Now, necromancy is considered a very bad thing in this place, but summoning a zombie is okay? How do you think that zombie came to be? It's just strange.

The summoned equipment is worthless. It's spread out too far over the skill level, meaning that you have to be a master of the skill before you can summon a chest piece or a helmet, but it's also only an improvement over level-appropriate gear early in the game. Add to that the fact that your own gear can be enchanted (while the summoned gear cannot) and you've got spells which have no point. It was a nice idea, anyhow.

Destruction

This is combat magic; fireballs, lightning bolts, and all the other ways you can go pew-pew-pew. The only thing worth mentioning here is that some of the spells you can make here are very fun. My favorite is to make a fireball with maximum burst size but minimal damage, making it cheap to cast and easy to learn. I love finding a room full of bookshelves, casting my spell, and watching the physics engine do its thing. Alternatively, if you're feeling ornery, just find a crowded room and fire this one off. You can't really hurt anybody, but it's always amusing to see what happens when you tick off an entire crowd of people at once. Heh heh.

Illusion

Another school of varying usefulness. This one includes light spells, charm spells, invisibility, and, for some reason, paralysis.

The light spell basically replicates a torch. Of course, given that most of the dungeons aren't all that dark in the first place, these are hit and miss. I've already discussed the charm spells. Invisibility is a weird one. Normal invisibility helps you escape detection, though you'll reappear if you do anything besides walk.

However, there's a different invisibility called chameleon. This is like a stealth effect; it enhances your natural stealth skill. What's game-breaking is if you get chameleon up to the maximum score. At that point, you are completely, irreversibly invisible to every NPC in the game. You can hit someone in the face with a sword and they won't so much as crack a frown at you.

Restoration

Healing magic. I don't really have to explain why this is helpful. Like most of the other schools of magic, it doesn't progress fast enough to stay relevant in the late game.

Mysticism

Yet another school of magic with effects that get quickly replaced by magic gear. You can see in the dark, you can detect the presence of life, and you can capture someone's immortal soul.

Yeah, let's talk about that last one for a second here. In order to enchant your own magic gear, you have to use these items called soul gems. Soul gems start out empty, and in order to fill them, you have to kill a creature while it has the soul-capturing spell on it. You then can use the soul of the trapped creature to make your boots glow in the dark, or whatever you want to do with them.

Now, you can't use any old soul gem to capture a person's soul. You have to use special black soul gems to do so, and the game widely acknowledges that doing such a thing is evil. Duh.

Quick note: In the game, there's a morality system. This is generally represented by points in either "fame" or "infamy." You get fame points by doing good quests. You get infamy by either killing innocents or doing evil quests.

The game's morality system doesn't keep up with the gems, though. If you steal a person's soul, you don't gain infamy. If you have black soul gems on you, the mages' guild doesn't kick you out. They don't even bat an eye. Vendors who should know better will gladly buy them off of you. It's a bizarre lapse, and really creepy at times knowing that my lightning-shooting mace is powered by a troll spirit and a highway bandit's soul.

Oblivion Skills: Mercantile

2009-10-04T18:10:00.001-05:00

Hmph. While I have a bunch of studying I ought to be doing right now . . . I'm just not feeling it. So instead, you're getting another video game-related post.

In our last installment, we were discussing the stranger skills of Oblivion. This time, I'd like to discuss the very strange state of Mercantilism. The mercantile skill allows you to get more money for the things you sell to people. In order to truly understand this, we'll need to go back to Morrowind.

Continue reading below the jump

In Morrowind, merchants only had so much gold on them. Let's say a merchant has 500 gold on him. If you sell him 500 gold worth of goods, he has nothing left. If you now buy something from him, he has whatever you pay. Tomorrow, his money will reset to 500 gold, as if he stopped by the bank to make a deposit (or withdrawal).

This presented a problem, in that oftentimes you would end up with items worth far more than any shopkeeper would have on them. You could sell the item, but what's the point? You'll just get a pittance for it. There was a "secret" merchant in the game who had 5000 gold on him (a significant improvement over all the other vendors). He even gave you full price for all of your goods, regardless of mercantile score. It was common practice for players to sell him exactly 5000g worth of materials, wait a day for his money to reset, then repeat the process. You might waste a month or more of ingame time just unloading goods on him, but you'd end up with more money than you'd ever know what to do with.

So let's step into Oblivion. This system must have irked people, so instead of a maximum amount of gold the merchant had on them, their "limit" set the maximum price they would pay for any given item. Of course, this led to oddities; for example, a merchant might refuse to buy your stack of 10 potions for 1000 gold, but they might agree to buy each individual potion for 100 gold. Eh, whatever.

There is a strong incentive to raise your mercantile skill. Not only will merchants give you better prices when you sell them goods, but they'll have a higher limit on what they'll buy back. At the highest level of mercantile, you can even invest in each merchant, further raising their limit on buyback.

So how do you raise mercantile? By selling stuff back to people. Now, this comes naturally, given that you'll spend your game time crawling through dungeons and returning to town with a backpack full of stuff with a price tag on it. However, this process slows down considerably as the game goes on. You'll often have to sell many, many items just to raise mercantile one point. If you really want to work on it, you can buy, say, 200 arrows from a merchant, then sell them back one at a time.

This way lies madness. It's not as if you just put your cursor over the sell button and start jamming on the left mouse button. You have to consciously select items, prices, and confirmations. It's often a laborious process just to clear out your bag, much less sell individual items. And so, mercantile . . . will . . . level . . . v . . . e . . . r . . . y . . . s . . . l . . . o . . . w . . . l . . . . . . . . . . . y.

In the end, this one doesn't affect things terribly much. You'll still be selling items of such value by the end of the game that you'll end up with more money than you know what to do with. It's just an oddity. And I love it.

Oblivion Skills: Speechcraft

2009-10-04T08:46:00.002-05:00

First things first, I want to thank Chocolate Hammer for shooting me a link. I always appreciate it when another blogger notices me.

That being said, let's talk about some of the stranger skills in Oblivion. In my last post on the topic, I mentioned that some of the skills are pretty difficult to level. Speechcraft is definitely one of them, but in order to understand just how strange a skill this is in Oblivion, we need to go back to its predecessor, Morrowind.

Continue reading below the jump

In these games, you have an "influence" level with people. At 100, you're their best friend, someone for whom they'd spill state secrets if you would just ask. At 0, they're likely to attack you on sight, even if you're powerful enough to kill a god by looking at him the wrong way.

Your current level with most people is based on a few things: Your reputation, whether you're part of the same faction as them, any previous interactions you've had with them or their town, etc. But let's say you want to change your standing. You have a few options. Bribery is the most straight forward. After that, you could insult them, threaten them, compliment them, or tell them a joke. You never know exactly what you're saying when you select those options, but the person reacts accordingly.

Well, I say "accordingly," but the truth is that each person seems to react differently. Some people will respond to threats positively, though only temporarily. Some people don't take kindly to bribes. Some people just hate you and won't respond to anything.

I remember playing through the game and having a rough time with said system. There were times I needed someone to like me, and spent nearly an hour trying to sweet talk them and then reloading the game because the results were always random. Other times, I would abuse the fact that you could taunt someone into attacking you. This had the nice benefit that if are attacked first, then killing the person isn't a crime. Heh heh.

So now we come to Oblivion. What did they change? I guess people thought the "mash a conversation button over and over" strategy was too boring. Bribery is still an option, though it suffers from diminishing returns pretty badly, and it's not much of an option early in the game.

This time around, when you want to influence somebody, you will joke with them, insult them, threaten them, and compliment them all at once. Make sense? Yeah, I didn't think so.

Bethesda turned speechcraft into a mini-game. You get a wheel with each of the four options, and differently sized pie-slices in the middle. You pick a big pie slice to get a big reaction, and a small slice to get a small reaction. The character will react to each of the four options differently (as represented by facial cues), so you have to try to choose a big pie slice on the options they like and a small slice on the options they dislike. Of course, the arrangement of the slices is random, and they'll rotate each time you choose one, so it's at least somewhat challenging.

You have to play this mini-game everytime you want to raise your influence with someone. As you raise your skill, you can raise the "influence" cap with people and you'll have more time to make your choices, although by the time you get said increases you probably won't need it.

Overall, this new incarnation is just strange. It doesn't really reflect reality in any way. You can't goad people into attacking you anymore. Really, the only reason to get people to like you is to get better prices from the merchants and to get quest information. That's it.

The really bizarre thing is that all of the above can be completely bypassed by a charm spell. That's right folks, a wizard can simply make a spell to completely skip the long periods of speechcraft by casting a spell. Nobody notices (or cares) that you've just cast a spell on them. If you train in that school of spellcasting, you get a bunch of other options out of it as well. And best of all, because of the way the spell creation system in the game works, coupled with the fact that the game pauses while you chit chat with people, it becomes trivial to make a charm spell that will max out your influence with someone very early in the game.

So this system tends to either result in a lot of metagaming or in immersion-breaking tedium. It still drew me in for countless hours. I guess we're going to have to work out what that was in another post.

Oblivion: Skills, leveling, and auto-balance

2009-10-02T15:15:00.001-05:00

In thinking about what I would write about Oblivion and why I sunk so much time into it, I ended up deciding to do a post first about the skill system in the game. Then I thought about Shamus, who blogs endlessly on video games, and did a quick search of his site. Turns out he wrote my exact post quite some time ago.

So, his post is worth reading, but I'm still gonna put my version after the jump. Heh, "after the jump." I'm so glad Blogger finally added that feature.

In Oblivion, you have a variety of skill sets used to take you through your adventure. At the beginning, you choose a "major" set and a "minor" set, the difference being that one group improves faster and influences your leveling. Your skills improve the more you use them; you swing a sword a lot, you get better at using it. Makes sense, right?

So when you raise your skills enough times from your major skill set, you gain a level (and associated attribute bonuses). This seems like an organic way to advance the game, yes? You use your skills, you get stronger.

The problem comes in the game's use of auto-balancing. At level one, when you kick in the door of a dungeon, you'll be attacked by rats and skeletons. At level 20, when you kick in that same door, you'll be attacked by ancient demons and . . . more skeletons. But they're really tough skeletons! Also, on fire. Did I mention that? It's kind of important.

Anyhow, this sort of thing is counter to how most RPGs work, with a static world where monsters are stronger in some places and less so in others. In that system, there are zones you just don't go to until you've played for while. You get your butt kicked by something at level 1, you come back later and stomp it with your level 5 boots. The plus to the auto-balancing system is that you can start off in a quest of epic proportions because the monsters will all be at the same level as you; in the alternative, you spend your first couple of days killing rats, finding lost kittens, and generally trying not to hurt yourself with your own sword.

It all turns, however, on skill selection and use. Let me give you an example which is suspiciously like my first character when I tried the game.

Let's say you want to play an archetypical rogue: Sneaky, steals everything that isn't bolted down, wears light armor, carries a dagger for those times when he's seen, silver-tongued . . . yeah, that's the ticket. So this guy probably doesn't fight much, does he? You likely sneak as much as possible to avoid the monsters, spend many nights stealing from local houses, and smooth-talk the shopkeepers to get better prices for the stuff you want to sell. Doing all of those things, you'll gain levels like crazy.

Except, eventually you have to fight something. It just can't be helped. And as soon as you do, you'll realize just how much you've been duped; you're now fighting monsters for which the designers have assumed that you've been raising combat skills. Except you have the sneakiness and charisma of a level 5 character but the health and combat prowess of a level 1 character. It's not a good place to end up, and I had to start that character over with one who used combat a little more frequently.

Of course, more silly is the type of "gaming" of the system it can lead to. It ends up paying to make your "major" skills all combat related, regardless of what your character concept is. This way, you gain power along with the monsters, and non-combat skills don't cause you to gain levels without increasing your power.

An even sillier method is to choose major skills you have no intent to use. While this means that your real skill set will increase at a glacial pace, you'll never gain a level. You could max out your skills and still be going toe-to-toe with rats and skeletons. You know, the non-combustible kind.

Another factor in this is the ease of actually leveling some of these skills. Some skills, like armor skills or sneaking, raise naturally; you get hit while wearing armor, you'll gain skill, you sneak around, you gain skill. Others, like harmful magic or a weapon skill, just require using them against monsters. Others are so easy to level that it's a joke; non-combat magic can be raised from the comfort of your chosen resting place. Just spam the "cast spell" button and you'll eventually have a level. Alchemy is similar; you can easily buy endless ingredients to make potions, and just sit and spam their creation all day long (and then sell them for a huge markup, at that). That's actually a good strategy; you can end up as a low-level character with potions that will last you the rest of the game.

Still, some of the skills are so painful to level that it amazes me Bethesda put them in at all. I'll save their discussion for another post.

Despite all the weirdness of this system, it was still compelling enough to get me to play several different characters.

Let's play a time sink

2009-10-02T07:04:00.003-05:00

Apparently there's this thing that some video game bloggers do called "Let's play." It's a series where the blogger starts up a video game and, through a series of posts, takes his readers through the experience of playing the game (through his eyes, of course). Shamus pointed me to a "Let's play" series about The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind. He subsequently started one himself for Champions Online.

Reading through the material at Chocolate Hammer has been amusing. The author there is playing Morrowind, which is the third episode in a series of games. I played it through once while he played it through enough to know the game inside and out, but his series reminded me of the fourth episode, Oblivion. Looking back through my archives, it doesn't seem that I ever wrote about playing the game, which amazes me considering the amount of time I devoted to it.

Morrowind and Oblivion were set apart from other RPGs by being sandbox games. While most RPGs will put you in a defined role and tell you a specific story, sandbox games drop you off in a setting and let you do your thing. There's a story, to be sure, but following it is up to you, and there's plenty of other things to occupy your time if you so choose. As for your role, well, you get to decide that for yourself as well.

Of course, both of these game types have their flaws (Chocolate Hammer highlighting those in a game like Morrowind), but one of the big strengths a sandbox game has is replay value. You can play as a wizard or a warrior, valiant hero or swarthy rogue. Each time you play through, you're likely to discover something else that appeals to you. Bethesda, the makers of the game, enabled player-made modifications to the game to be relatively simple, resulting in a vast trove of material to extend the game even further.

I don't really care to start up a "Let's play" series for Oblivion; I'm still trying to figure out how to break out of my WoW addiction, so it's not like I need another time sink. Still, I might end up writing about the game at least some. Considering the hours I spent in that game, I just can't believe I didn't say a single word about it. It's a few years old at this point, but still an amazing game.

Research ethics and animal use

2009-09-29T10:27:00.003-05:00

The other day, I was talking with some of the new students in my department. I was rather curious why most of them wanted to work in microbiology rather than immunology, and it turned out that the reason had a lot to do with an unwillingness to work with animals. For several of these students, there was no justification for harming animals; at least, "in the name of science," wasn't good enough for them.

Yesterday, during our monthly ethics seminar/discussion, the topic fell to lab animal care and rights. Several people had stories falling one way or the other, either researchers who refused to use anything but cell lines (and even then, some refused to use animal derived cell lines), while others told tales of of lab techs who would euthanize their animals by whacking their heads against the counter, or smacking them in the head with a stick. Blech.

The mission leader stated that 52% of the public opposes animal use in research. I don't know where he read that, but it's a dangerous number all the same. He only had one explanation for such opposition, but I can think of a few reasons to add to it:

Ignorance. The thought was that people oppose animal research because they don't really understand how much benefit it brings, how widespread its use is, how much caution and care is taken in the use of laboratory animals, etc. I find it likely that this makes up the majority of that 52%. At least, I hope that's the case. These people likely oppose it when asked for a survey, but don't care enough to make an issue out of it during an electoral cycle.
Naturalism. These are people who think that most modern, biological sciences are tampering with things that ought to be left well enough alone. This is the same group that rabidly opposes "frankenfoods" and other uses of bioengineering. I don't think this is a large segment, but they are quite vocal, and visible, when they want to be.
Anthropomorphism. The fundamental justification behind the use of animals in research is that the life of a mouse (or rabbit, goat, rat, frog, etc.) is not worth the same as a human; the loss of a mouse to save the life of a human is, thus, a "no-brainer." If you place any sort of equivalence between human life and animal life, I'm not sure there's much to be done to convince you that animal research is worthwhile. For what it's worth, I dislike this position most of all because the end result is often people who will attempt to kill researchers in an attempt to "save" the lives of their research animals.

Oh, I'm probably oversimplifying things, but I think scientists need to hope that most of that 52% falls into the first category. My colleagues keep suggesting that scientists need to become more visible in the public eye, defending their efforts and justifying their work. I don't necessarily disagree, but it's awfully dangerous to be a spokesman for animal research these days.

No one's immune

2009-09-29T07:48:00.003-05:00

Sometimes my colleagues worry about how the public perceives them and their profession (that is, research scientists). There's a worry across the country that too many laypeople are uninformed about basic science and thus unable to appreciate what it is that we do. This can reflect poorly when it comes to public attitude about the sciences, affecting funding and policy.

Guys . . . stories like this don't help:

Employee misconduct investigations, often involving workers accessing pornography from their government computers, grew sixfold last year inside the taxpayer-funded foundation that doles out billions of dollars of scientific research grants, according to budget documents and other records obtained by The Washington Times.
The problems at the National Science Foundation (NSF) were so pervasive they swamped the agency's inspector general and forced the internal watchdog to cut back on its primary mission of investigating grant fraud and recovering misspent tax dollars.

Okay. This is bad. But at least the people involved copped to it, right? I mean, intelligent, rational people know when to acknowledge that they've been caught with their hand in the cookie jar. Right?

When finally caught, the NSF official retired. He even offered, among other explanations, a humanitarian defense, suggesting that he frequented the porn sites to provide a living to the poor overseas women. Investigators put the cost to taxpayers of the senior official's porn surfing at between $13,800 and about $58,000.
"He explained that these young women are from poor countries and need to make money to help their parents and this site helps them do that," investigators wrote in a memo.

. . . I don't think that's gonna help your case, buddy.

I'm always glad when a spotlight is shone on the abuse of taxpayer dollars, but this is just embarrassing. Thanks NSF, glad to know that you're putting a good face out there for us.

Furthering the health care discussion

2009-09-14T09:03:00.002-05:00

I'm putting my conversation with Ryan from the comments below into a new post, for various reasons. Partly because it gives me an excuse to have another post on the blog, partly because the amount I'll need to write is just not conducive in the meager commenting function Blogger offers, and partly because it's my blog and I feel like it. So there.

Anyhow . . .

Re: Preventative Care

I wouldn't fuss with this one, except that the people attempting to sell the President's health care bill keep saying that this will pay for itself by cutting costs and finding new efficiencies, such as emphasizing preventative care. This raises so many problems for me. How do you achieve such savings, since preventative care is largely dependent on the cooperation of the patients? How much money would this actually save, since the estimates say that Obama's plan will cost at least $1 trillion? Would a failure of patients to follow preventative care measures result in penalties for doctors? Would treatment of conditions which could be prevented be rationed, discouraged, or used as reason to punish doctors?

I'd like answers to those questions before I accept "More preventative medicine!" as a cure-all for this bill.

Re: Other models

I'm not sure which country the Obama bill most resembles, a lot of people suspect that it's a "foot-in-the-door" strategy to get to a British system (based largely on things like this).

In any case, I'm still not sure why we'd want to emulate the health care models of other countries. We still have the best system in terms of outcome following treatment, and the other systems have plenty of problems associated with them. Japan faces a problem of staffing shortages as well, and Germany's care comes at the cost of what I understand to be excruciating taxes.

Re: Skepticism on the spending

First off, I don't think it's unreasonable to be concerned with revolutionary levels of spending during painful recessions; there are a lot of estimates that the passage of Obama's bill could strangle any economic recovery for years, maybe even decades. It just seems like a bad idea to restructure such a large portion of our economy in one fell swoop like this, especially when it keeps seeming like Obama wants to hurry it through.

In any case, I think the appeals to Iraq and Afghanistan are unfair. "If you're going to spend money on X, why not spend it on Y as well?" doesn't strike me as a logical argument if X and Y aren't really related. It's a debate of national security vs. domestic policy, and it's not really the topic at hand (plus, I think most people will agree that national security ought to take priority). In any case, I did complain during the spending sprees of the previous administration; not in regards to foreign policy, but definitely relating to TARP and automotive bailouts.

Re: Insurance industry collapse

I posted a link earlier as to why people think the insurance industry will be threatened by this, but I'll sum up the arguments: The plan currently would force insurance companies to accept all applicants, the plan forces mandatory coverage, the proposal is to subsidize those who can't afford coverage, and the plan puts mandates on employers for employee health care as well.

I don't have a lot of data to support the threat those issue pose. I can say that they seem threatening. I can say that mandatory coverage doesn't seem to have worked so well for Massachusetts. I can say that forcing insurance companies to compete with the government will never work out for them, but I'm incredibly skeptical.

Re: Letting them die

You know, I never said I just wanted to let the uninsured sit outside emergency rooms and die. I feel like that's putting words in my mouth.

To the best of my knowledge, the law on the books is that hospitals have to treat emergency patients, regardless of insurance or ability to pay. While I understand such a thing to be a burden to the hospitals, how much of a burden is it? It seems to be assumed that this is a massive cost, and while I've seen various numbers bandied about as to how much this runs, I've yet to see a citation for those numbers. It's worth asking, however, whether moving to a system where the uninsured receive taxpayer-subsidized insurance will actually do anything besides shift costs around; again, people still seem worried that a sudden influx of newly insured people will cause a strain on the system that will decrease the quality of care currently available. There's also the concern that a publicly subsidized plan would ration care in order to control costs. Is any of that unreasonable?

In the end, I'm not sure I'm the best spokesman for the issue; my grasp of the fine details is lacking, and I work mainly with hunches, suppositions, and reasoning based on incomplete knowledge. That doesn't change my position that it's a bad idea in its current form, though, as always, my mindless blatherings should be taken with an extra helping of salt.

The timely review is a lie

2009-09-11T11:23:00.004-05:00

You know how I know I'm this guy? I recently played (and finished) Portal. Finally.

I'm not sure what would be gained from offering a "review" of this game. It's old enough at this point that you either know you should play it or have already played it. Everyone else probably just doesn't care about the FPS genre or PC games in general.

Still, I haven't met my useless blather quota for 2009 yet, so I might as well write about it.

This isn't a traditional FPS (first-person shooter, for those not in the know). The only "gun" you use during the game creates portals; by firing a blue portal at one location and an orange portal at another, you can instantly move through time and space. In essence, this is a physics platform/puzzle game played in first-person. It really is as clever and fun as everyone said it was.

I finished the game in roughly 2 hours. I'll give Valve credit for polishing it to a perfect shine, but it's essentially a demo, which is why I guess it came bundled with several other games as part of the Orange Box.

The mystery put together by the rather spartan clues of story in the game left me aching for more. Gee, what an unusual change of pace from Valve! The game should be enjoyed for what it is, but I'm a sucker when it comes to a good story, and the brief, leading clues drew me in easily. What I wouldn't give for a few minutes alone with the Valve writers just to pick at their brains.

Anyhow, this game comes with my recommendation, whatever that's worth. It's cheap and easy to pick up on Steam these days, too, so give it a try if you've got a couple of hours to kill and need something fun to do.

Autocratic Mash Note

2009-09-09T12:53:00.002-05:00

Keeping with a theme, I guess, Thomas Friedman's column for today was yearning for the type of benevolent rule we see in . . . China? Yeesh.

Anyhow, Jonah Goldberg isn't buying it. Nobody in their right mind is.

Reasons to oppose Obamacare

2009-09-09T10:56:00.002-05:00

Even with the "government option" seemingly off the table, there's still plenty of reasons that Obama's proposed reforms are a bad idea.

This post over at Ace's place is a concise summation of said reasons. It's worth a read if you think the only reason to oppose it is because dead peasants make excellent fertilizer for the lawns Republicans plant in front of their diamond mines.

Update
This is related: Five lies Obama will tell in his speech to Congress.

Harry Potter and the Health Care Reform Seminar

2009-09-04T14:59:00.004-05:00

I know the title makes no sense, but I figured it might at least make the event seem more interesting than it actually was. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but certainly not what I received; the event was not open to the public, the crowd was completely subdued, and the floor was not open to questions. I'd complain, but they took pre-written questions before the event, and one of the organizers asked congressman Sarbanes the questions during a brief Q&A period. I'd speculate on the person asking only "friendly" questions, but mine was one chosen, so I can't imagine that to be the case.

The set-up for the event was such: John Sarbanes gave a 30 min. introductory talk, going over what they wanted to accomplish with health care reform, what they needed to do yet, and a bit of why it needed to be done. This was followed by representatives from each of the schools here (Pharmacy, Nursing, Law, Social Work, Dentistry, and Medicine) talking about what health care reform means to them, what challenges they see for their profession in the coming years, etc.

All in all, it was non-controversial. Sarbanes stuck to the party line talking points when discussing reform. I was hoping for something YouTube worthy. At least something like, "All those people who oppose this are morons!" Nothing. The only real moments of conflict were drawn from my question and inspired by the dean of the law school, of all people. I asked Sarbanes why litigation reform wasn't on the table (his answer being that studies show that it won't save any costs, though I'm not inclined to believe such and don't think that's sufficient anyhow). When the law school dean was up to speak, he mentioned it again in a, "Yeah, that's not gonna happen," kind of way. However, later when the med school representative spoke, he looked at the rest of the panel and countered with, "Nuts to you guys, we need tort reform." The law school guy spent the rest of the evening shooting daggers with his eyes at the med school speaker. Very exciting, yes?

A couple of things I do want to grab onto, though. First, Sarbanes spoke continually about moving to preventative care as a means of saving money. I have yet to see anybody show this to be the case. In fact, it's part of the "defensive medicine" that doctors complain about practicing now; running extraneous tests to catch something "just in case" is not a money saving procedure.

Second, Sarbanes got an answer about increasing access to health care for the millions of new people who will end up on the public dole because of this, and his answer was incredibly evasive. The fact of the matter is, if you suddenly have 50 million new people with insurance, they're going to start seeing doctors. That means we need a lot more health care workers at all levels, or we're going to have the same, awful staff shortages that Britain's NHS suffers. Exactly how does Congress propose to get these people without the quality of the care suffering?

Third, Sarbanes made a point of saying that the public plan will remain competitive with private insurance because it isn't for-profit, but that it must also stand on its own feet (by law). That is, it can't be taxpayer subsidized by pay for itself. He said with a smirk afterwards that those darn insurance companies are just gonna have to cut executive pay to stay competitive. I could dedicate an entire post to what was wrong with that sentiment, but suffice it to say that nobody in their right mind believes a politician when they say that a program will pay for itself. When has a government program like this ever been within budget? And why on Earth would a politician not opt to "temporarily" infuse tax dollars into the program to keep it afloat once it's running?

He also mentioned that the CBO estimated only 12 million people would be on the public plan after however many years, and I don't recall ever hearing that. You know, because the government has never underestimated the popularity of one of its programs.

Finally, just a bit of rhetoric. In talking about the emphasis in moving to preventative care, Sarbanes stated that it was society's duty to keep people healthy, not just treat them once they're sick. That, as Jonah Goldberg might say, is liberal fascism talking. It is a personal responsibility to take care of oneself. Society has no place there.

(And when Obama appeals to Christians that the Bible says that, "I am my brother's keeper," he's talking out the wrong end of his digestive tract. That never appears in the Bible.)

So, the event wasn't terribly exciting, but it did give me something to blog about. Finally.

Interesting things to come

2009-09-03T11:08:00.002-05:00

You'd think that, since I seem to have moved to a monthly posting schedule, that I'd be putting more interesting or substantive posts up. Not today, friends.

However! Tonight I'll be attending an "informational seminar" regarding the proposed healthcare reform bill, and apparently my congressman (John Sarbanes) will be there. I'm not entirely certain if it's going to have a Q&A session or not. Either way, I'm hoping to have some very interesting material to write about afterwards.

As an aside, the promotional material for the event invites people to attend "a civil discussion" about healthcare reform. I'm going to be ticked if there's no Q&A; how arrogant is it when people call it a discussion but don't allow questions? That's not a discussion, that's you sharing your point of view and me having to shut up and listen.

Obama the Fascist

2009-08-05T17:19:00.002-05:00

One more timely example. It would be easier for Obama to avoid charges of fascism if perhaps things like this weren't coming out of the Whitehouse:

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

The president of the US . . . asking his supporters to act as informers on any political speech which opposes his plans . . . reminds me of Wilson and his American Protective League.

Obama the "Liberal"

2009-07-31T05:53:00.003-05:00

There were several requests in my last blog post to expand on my premise about Obama's similarity to previous fascistic movements. I suppose I can finally get around to doing so.

An aside: I have no idea why it's been so long since I've posted. I guess I haven't had much interesting to say about science, video games, or philosophy, and there's only so much I can say about politics without drumming the same beat over and over.

In any case, I have to be very careful here. Goldberg spends a lot of time in his book detailing what he means by fascism because its use today is so generalized. Most people just use it as an epithet for something they don't like. "You mean they took the free coffee out of the break room? What a bunch of fascists."

Also, Goldberg spends the first part of the book looking at the fascist movements of Europe, first Italy and then Germany, then follows up with the American fascist movements before talking about what they ended up looking like in modern America. Yes, it happened here in America. No, it wasn't identical to Italian or German fascism. All of these movements were born of their own time period to specific peoples, so each fascist movement is going to carry specific markers. Italian fascism didn't involve virulent anti-semitism, and American fascism never involved dictators (though it came close at times). My point being that fascism doesn't just mean, "tyrannical dictatorship," and because Goldberg spends hundreds of pages setting up his premises, it would be very difficult for me to do the arguments justice in a single blog post.

So, why do I think Obama is eerily reminiscent of American fascist movements? The political messianism, the cult of youth and action, the reliance on personality and destiny rather than argument and idea; those are strongly familiar themes. The general philosophy of governance is similar, too: Everything within the state, nothing outside the state. American fascism (which took the name "progressivism") worked diligently to dissolve individualism, erase the lines between private corporations and the federal government, establish a welfare state so expansive that people would be absolutely reliant on the government, and create a government not "of the people" but of benign experts who would create an ordered society through their expertise and brilliance as opposed to the debauchery of "democracy."

So what do we see? A man who campaigned on "hope and change," as "the One we have been waiting for." Under his governance, the federal government became the majority shareholder of a major American corporation and has attempted to expand that ownership to the healthcare field. We have more "czars" in the Obama administration than Russia ever had. The drumbeat for a "new New Deal" repeats almost every other day.

So, no, I'm not calling Obama a Hitler or a Mussolini. He's more like a Wilson or an FDR. But it would be worth it to understand why the comparisons can be made before criticizing them. I recommend reading Goldberg's book; even if you disagree with conservatives, it's worth it to understand where ideas come from and how they evolve over time. If you end up thinking that he's gotten it wrong, at least you know what it is that he's arguing first.

"Liberal" Indeed

2009-06-10T15:16:00.002-05:00

I recently picked up a copy of Liberal Fascism from an airport bookstore. I'd intended to read it for some time, but never got around to it. Now that I'm starting it . . . this book terrifies me.

Goldberg ends his introduction by settling on a definition for "fascism," which is apparently much more complicated than you would think. As much as the term gets thrown around by hot-headed political junkies (and politicians), most people never really explain what they mean when they say it. The definition Goldberg uses encompasses a lot of progressive movements, both at home and abroad. I've only read through the chapters on Mussolini and the Italian Fascists (with a capital 'F'), Hitler and his National Socialists, and the Woodrow Wilson / Teddy Roosevelt era. I never knew much about Wilson, but now that I read some of the things he wrote and said . . . the man would have been a dictator had he been given the chance.

Anyhow, what's starting to spook me is the degree of similarity between Obama, his presidency, and these fascist movements of the past. The rhetoric, the reasoning, the nature of the popular support, the direction of government . . . a lot of it looks very familiar to those who know what to look for.

I often hear how "those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it." It's a shame nobody ever applies this to the pedigree of the philosophy and ideas being sold to them by politicians and movements.

See figure 1

2009-06-01T09:26:00.002-05:00

One of the first lessons you learn in grad school is that your text book(s) is/are as valuable as a paperweight. At least in the hard sciences, the field tends to move fast enough that, by the time a text book is published, the information within is either incomplete or inaccurate. Consequently, you'll spend more time reading the relevant journals for your field than any text book, and new information is introduced through review articles.

The long preface is only to introduce Shamus's post on the problems he encounters in the tech world, writing support documents and other technical documentation. Though many of his examples are angled towards programming or coding languages, the general principles are by no means unique to his field.

I find often that the scientific literature suffers from the problems Shamus describes: No explanation of technical terms, assuming a higher level of knowledge on the part of readers than is warranted, assuming a high level of knowledge in related (or not) fields, over-complicated examples, building too steep a learning curve, and so on. One problem that is more unique to this field is the use of self-serving examples. That is, all of the "relevant" work referenced by the author of a review is to his (or their) own work in the field. While this might be appropriate if you're one of a handful of people who actually study the topic at hand, it usually gives only a narrow impression of the work being done in the field, and thus not appropriate for a "review."

One idea that Shamus introduced that I would love to see implemented more fully in the scientific journals is better use of the electronic medium. Everything that is published on paper also is published online as a PDF. Journals like Science usually affix a "title" page to it, with links to the supplemental material on the web (additional figures, movies, and whatever else the authors considered important enough to include but not critical enough to warrant space in the paper). However, taking this further would be an incredible step in bringing science into the age of the internet.

In a review article, what if certain terms or phrases were hyperlinks to either a "dictionary" of terms or to futher review articles on the specific topic? What if the citations at the end of the paper were themselves hyperlinks which would take you to the reference? What if each of the authors' names were hyperlinks to other articles they have published? When a technique is not fully explained by said to be done "as previously described," either link to where it was described or to a database which explains the principles such techniques.

While I realize this might seem like a lot of work to put into a simple PDF journal article, this would be insanely useful to all sorts of people. And these are just the hasty suggestions of a graduate student . . . I'd love to see what sorts of suggestions actual experts might come up with.

Sending a message

2009-05-22T13:05:00.003-05:00

I wonder how Facebook decides on which ads it shows you when you surf their pages. This is what I saw today:

Exactly what are you trying to tell me, Facebook?

Tools of the trade

2009-05-19T10:03:00.002-05:00

Grad school . . . what a meat grinder. I ought to be studying for my exams, but I'm feeling a bit of burnout, so a quick post to remind people that this site exists seems like quite the remedy. Allow me a bit of navel gazing (Ha! Like you have a choice.).

As I'm studying for my exams, I find myself pawing through piles of powerpoint printouts, each covering various areas of immunology in (sometimes) exquisite detail. I sometimes wonder how this process went for PhD students in ages past. Information imparted during lectures was limited to what the professor could write on the chalk board or show on an overhead transparency. You wrote down what you could during lecture, and tried to scrape everything else from the text books. These days, it's much different. You get superfluous notes and carefully rendered illustrations (graphs, models, photographs, etc.) from powerpoint presentations. The textbooks are rarely used, as they're typically behind the curve by the time they hit the shelves.

There's certainly advantages to the new system. The professors get to share much more information, rather than focussing on the bare essentials they want you to leave lecture with. You're free(er) to listen to the lecturer rather than furiously scribble notes in an attempt to have a lasting impression of the lecture. You get to see details of the science (such as FACS plots and tissue stains) in lecture rather than having to go to the library to look up the journals.

All of this makes me wonder, though . . . do these tools make us better or worse students? Subsequently, are we producing better scientists for all of these tools?

I have no answers to this. I'm not even sure how you'd begin to answer this, given all the variables involved, but I'm quite interested in how people might respond.

It's the end of the world as we know it

2009-04-06T21:24:00.002-05:00

And I don't feel fine. Honestly, I never thought I'd see the decline of America as the world's superpower in my lifetime. I even figured, on the off chance that it happened, that I'd be an old man with grandchildren before then. But this?

PRAGUE – Just hours after North Korea launched a long-range rocket, President Barack Obama called for "a world without nuclear weapons" and said the United States has a “moral responsibility ” to lead the way, as the only nation ever to use them.

. . .

Obama proposed doing so by reducing America’s arsenal, if not altogether eliminating it; hosting a summit on nuclear security; seeking ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; strengthening the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; and pursuing a new agreement aimed at stopping the production of fissile materials.

I wouldn't have believed even this of Obama during the campaigns. What could he possibly be thinking?

Hat tip to Big Lizards, with whom I agree; if Obama is crazy enough to go through with this, he'll be handing over the reigns of power to the likes of North Korea, China, and Iran. God help us all.

Hiring Practices

2009-03-31T05:27:00.003-05:00

Sometimes I really have to disabuse myself of this notion that I'm a "reasonably intelligent person." I say this because I usually have something cogent and illuminating to add to any philosophical/political discussion . . . about an hour after it's finished.

Yesterday during our monthly "research ethics" course, we were talking about hiring practices. It was commonly accepted around the table that a physics department was more than justified in passing over the most qualified applicants for a position in order to hire a woman. After all, she brings benefits that you don't find on the resume, and it helps to have women there to help other women keep from getting lost in the milieu.

First things first, I don't find that diversity, in and of itself, has any inherent value. At least, not from a scientific perspective. If they're trying to hire someone, they should hire the person who brings the most to the department, and this should be regardless of what the applicants have dangling (or not) between their legs.

Ah, but the counter-argument is that "diverse " people bring other benefits to the table. Benefits you can't put on a resume. Benefits that only they can provide, with their gender/skin color. Benefits that students of the same gender/skin color require to succeed in this field.

I've never heard these benefits explained or defined. I think it's important to answer this question: To what extent to these "benefits of diversity" match or exceed the gap between the standard credentials on a resume? Normal resume differences can be quantified in a situation such as this: Length of experience, number of publications, number of high profile publications, research grant money, etc. How does a department quantify that? How many research grants are two X chromosomes worth? How many Nature or Science papers is being black worth?

Finally, it's always gets back, for me, to the "What would happen if this went the other direction?" argument. By hiring a "diverse" candidate simply for their "diversity," that physics department is saying, "We only hired you because you're a woman, and we need more women around here." The corollary to this is that they're telling the most qualified applicant, "We're not hiring you because you're a man. Sorry, we don't need any more men around here."

Now imagine how this might work in the opposite direction. "Sorry, we've decided to hire someone else. Yes, you're the most qualified, but you're black, and we don't need any more black people around here." Good lord, can you imagine the lawsuits? I find it worth pointing out that people have sued for similar situations (that is, white male applicants passed over for "diverse" candidates) and won.

If you disagree, do try to articulate your opposition in a meaningful sense; the problem I have with these arguments is that I've never heard them explained in a cogent sense. Now if only I could do the same in a timely manner. I really hate that, by sitting at the discussion and not objecting, people think that I'm okay with such discrimination.

Smarter Diplomacy

2009-03-20T11:06:00.004-05:00

I've held off writing about my various misgivings about President Obama and his team of super-competent staffers and cabinet members for many reasons, but I've been considering his "outreach" efforts to the rest of the world and I'm finding myself embarrassed. Remember during the campaign how, it was argued, Obama would restore our place in the world, healing the rifts made between us and our closest allies? All it seems, lately, is that Obama is better at alienating them than anything else.

He's been in office two months, and let's look at the record:

1. First, there's Hilary Clinton's gag gift which she gave to the Russian Foreign Minister. It was a "reset button" in a box, to indicate that we wanted to "reset" our relationship with Russia (As an aside, can these people spend five minutes not criticizing the previous administration?). Considering how symbolic a gift this was supposed to be, you'd think that someone in her department would have at least been able to get the Russian translation of "reset" correct.

2. Obama scheduled a meeting with the Brazilian president on St. Patrick's Day, then rescheduled the meeting because he somehow forgot that he already had plans with the Irish Prime Minister. Oops. What happened afterwards is icing on the cake, so to speak.

3. The Japanese Prime Minister was the first foreign dignitary to visit President Obama after his election, and apparently couldn't be bothered to even let him stay in the White House guest house, much less treat it like it was an important visit. What kind of diplomacy is it to make the Japanese PM rent a room at the Best Western?

4. The biggie, the one you probably already know about: Britain's Prime Minister comes to visit, and he comes bearing gifts of great significance. How does Obama relate to our oldest ally? Not only does he treat the visit with the same lack of pomp and circumstance as he did with the Japanese PM's visit, but he gives PM Brown a rather insulting gift: A DVD box set! Twenty-five classic American films . . . what a delight. On top of all that, the DVDs are region-specific, and don't even work in British DVD players!

If someone wants to say, "Hey, inexperienced politicians have growing pains," fine. Not that there weren't ample arguments about how inexperienced and unprepared this guy was when he started running for office, but whatever. Still, this guy was supposed to be the one who healed our relationships with the rest of the world, and this is how he treats the people who like us?

Gracious, are there any adults in charge in the White House?

Update
Geez man, if you can't even play nice with the French, who can you play nice with?

Change you can believe in

2009-03-19T08:09:00.001-05:00

Okay, there's "cult of personality," and then there's creepy.

This is just creepy.

Scientific Meanderings

2009-03-11T17:13:00.003-05:00

Grad school has swallowed me whole, lately. I've had a lot of interesting observations and musings I've wanted to jot down here, but I keep forgetting or putting it off. Let's get a few of these out there:

So, what do you do for a living?

In one of my classes, we learned of a study where researchers wanted to see whether or not gonorrhea undergoes selective mutations during an infection. How did they test this? They infected volunteers with the freaking thing and sequenced the bug at various times during the infection.

I'm not sure I can put a dollar value on what it would take to willingly get infected with an STD, regardless of whether antibiotics will treat it. I'm having enough trouble getting a date these days without something like that mucking it all up.

The Pertussis Scare

Today we talked a lot about bordetella pertussis, the bacteria behind whooping cough. The disease is typically included in a cocktail vaccine, including diptheria and tetanus as well. I found it interesting that, for a period of time starting a few decades ago, Europe ceased to include pertussis in the mix due to some fears of deaths that may have been related to the vaccine. It turned out that they weren't, but there was enough public fear and bad PR floating around that it was only recently that Europe began vaccinating for pertussis again. As you would expect, there's been a lot of whooping cough in Europe in the meantime.

Given everything I hear about Europe's reactions to new vaccines, drugs, and genetically modified crops (especially GM crops), this doesn't really surprise me. It makes me wonder: We hear so much about how the US is so scientifically illiterate, how we're these religious nuts who want to drag scientific progress back to the dark ages and revert medicine to the time when leeches were considered the hot new thing. Why is it, then, that our more "enlightened" cousins across the pond always seem to be so eager to break out the pitchforks and torches when a new drug weighs the same as a duck?

Where's it all coming from?

In a related anecdote, while talking about pertussis it was shown that pertussis infections have been ticking upward for the last 20-30 years, with a noticeable spike during the 90s. There is apparently some debate over whether this is an actual increase in cases or just better reporting of cases. The argument being that, with vastly improved technologies for diagnosis, we're just finding the infections more readily than in the past.

We didn't discuss it in class, but I can't help but wonder if it isn't related to illegal immigration. It's not news to anyone who's been paying attention that a lot of the people coming here illegally don't get vaccinated from anything themselves, resulting in upticks in diseases only rarely seen in the US. Several of the studies cited to us about the spread of the disease were centered in California, which isn't exactly a model of immigration law enforcement.

I really don't have much to add to that. Curiosity, but not much else.

Health care not a right

2009-03-07T12:04:00.002-06:00

I saw this post over at National Review's The Corner, and it rang true with me, largely because I've had this argument dozens of times before.

The idea that we have a right to health care is quite dangerous. All rights we've enshrined heretofore were things that could only be taken away from you; life, liberty, etc. Health care, like any other good or service, is something that can only be given.

If we enshrine a right to something that must be given to us, it creates an ever-dreaded slippery slope. At what point do the rights stop? and who gets to decide?

Celebrity

2009-02-20T08:20:00.002-06:00

I've said for a while now that I think Obama's popularity is driven by a "cult of personality," or perhaps a "cult of celebrity." Either way, I tend to think that there's a lot more at work behind this than people thinking his policies are super-duper.

The response I tend to get from liberals to this range from, "Nu-uh," to, "You're just jealous 'cause you lost." Perhaps. Then again, when I see stuff like this, I can't help but feel vidicated. I'll include a screencap in case it goes away.

Pelosi and the Pope

2009-02-18T17:57:00.002-06:00

Not a news story per se, but I enjoy this National Review post discussing Nancy Pelosi's recent visit to the Vatican. The short version is that the Pope gave her (and by extension, all pro-choice Catholic politicians) a dressing down for supporting abortion.

While it's no secret that I disagree with Catholic theology (one of these days we'll finish a conversation, Ryan) on everything that separates them from Protestants, I appreciate that the Pope doesn't pull any punches on this issue. In the structure of the Catholic church, there is no room for "disagreement" on issues like this. If you're going to claim the church as your own, you have some requirements to meet. I think that the broader Christian church is the same in principle, though there's obviously no central power structure for enforcement. Not that we've seen any pro-choice Catholic politicians excommunicated recently.

I must disagree with the author of this on one point, however. He states that politicians like Pelosi are where they are because they're poorly catechized, getting their teachings from high-brow Catholic intellectuals who don't want to deal with "embarrassing" teachings. I can't give them this much leeway. The teachings of the Catholic church are accessible enough that there should be no mystery on what it really teaches. For crying out loud, Pelosi just got it from the horse's mouth (so to speak). If she suddenly changes course and becomes a pro-life politician, I'll offer up a heartfelt apology, but I doubt she, nor any other pro-choice Catholic politician, is going to change anytime soon. These people hold onto their religious affiliation, I suspect, out of political expediency, even necessity, rather than any heartfelt conviction. Perhaps it's the cultural identity that they desire instead. Either way, there is no other explanation for people who claim a title while denying its most important or relevant teachings.

Who will police the police?

2009-02-11T17:28:00.002-06:00

Coast Guard?

Okay, enough Simpsons references. This is an interesting story. It seems that a cop in Iowa emailed a bunch of mugshots (the article leaves us to guess who they were sent to) of people wearing Obama shirts. Apparently he remarked on the quality of Obama's fanbase and it was not well received. He was suspended for 30 days and will be undergoing "DPS training." Whatever that is.

On the surface, this looks like an unseemly quashing of free speech. The officer sent the email on his own time from his own computer. However, the article seems to imply that the officer broke some sort of departmental policy in doing this. Perhaps the mugshots he made public were not quite ready to be made public? We're left to guess.

Still, can you imagine if such an event had happened during the Bush administration? I'm not sure we'd be hearing the end of it.

Pandora's Cell

2009-02-03T11:45:00.003-06:00

Developmental biology is a Pandora's Box of scientific mysteries. We understand a lot of things about how indeterminate lumps of matter know to become a thumb or a finger, the spine or the lungs, or any number of other things. For all that we know, however, there's an almost endless list of things we don't know or don't understand. Especially when it comes to humans, since the methods that would be used to study them are almost universally considered unethical, even to people who don't think twice about harvesting embryos for stem cells.

So, when I read about experiments like this, where scientists try to make human/animal hybrid embryos, I start to wonder how we get scientists so devoid of morals or ethics.

My best guess as to why this fails is probably genetic incompatibility with the transcription factors. Transcription factors are the proteins which latch onto your DNA and signal for other proteins to be made. They're usually pretty picky about where they will bind, and even slight changes in either the TF or the DNA it binds can be fatal. More than likely, the TFs in the animal cell just aren't good enough to keep things going.

My only other guess would be that they're attempting to turn on genes which turn off at development. Cells turn these genes off (and work very hard to keep them off) because letting them run rampant leads to all kinds of problems. Cancer is usually the most obvious result, but I'm sure it's not the only one.

I'm really not complaining about the failure. The monsters who do these sorts of things ought to have their degrees stripped away.

They all need better games

2009-01-31T13:49:00.002-06:00

My cousin (who needs to update his freaking blog sometime) passed along this article entitled, "The Wii needs better games now."

While I don't usually trust people in the mainstream media to write about such matters, I can't disagree with the premise of the article. The Wii is suffering from a drought of good content. Sure, there's fun stuff to download on Wii Ware, but the last full game I bought was Mario Kart, and that was almost a year ago. When I go to the stores, the shelves are full, but full of what? Crappy movie or TV tie-ins, animal sims, pet sims, "girl" games, silly sport games . . . it's like a wasteland of entertainment. Nintendo's own products are considered the best, but the last thing they produced was Wii Music, a product I doubt will light the world on fire. My DS suffers from the same problem.

Still, I can't merely fault the Wii for this. Most other consoles are also under the curse of a lack of creativity. It's a field full of sport franchises, endless sequels, and remakes of games that didn't need them. Where are the games with memorable characters and good writing?

If you're a Wii owner, what have you bought in the last year that you liked, or what are you looking forward to?

The Beginning of Wisdom

2009-01-29T08:31:00.002-06:00

There's something very odd about being in a lab where you don't really know any of the experimental techniques. I'm starting to suspect the following is true in most areas of life, but current circumstances have brought it to mind.

When you're ignorant of something, is it better to find the information on your own, or to go to an expert and seek their assistance? When is one path better than the other?

This is not usually easy to determine. Experiments which are commonly done in the lab can be tricky. Sometimes when I need a ubiquitous reagent or piece of plasticware, someone will be happy to point it out to me. Other times I'll be told to, "Just go look for it." Sometimes I'm confused about the exact nature of the protocol, since my tutorial involved very general outlines. If I ask someone about, say, precise volumes or concentrations or reagents to add, sometimes I'm told what I seek. Sometimes I'm told to just go "find a protocol on Google." Other times I'm given such a run-around it's silly. "Hm . . . I don't remember. Why don't you go ask that guy?" It's even better when I get to the end of the chain, usually three or four people down the line, and they question the experiment in the first place. "Why would you run that? It won't work and won't show you what you want to do? Here's a different three-day experiment you need to run instead."

Perhaps there is no set answer, but I find that I have a difficult time knowing when to take one path or the other. I suppose figuring out the difference is a large part of success in this field.

Making Bad Professors

2009-01-21T11:11:00.002-06:00

I've written before about all the joys of being a TA. One of the things I never covered was how being a TA is very poor training towards taking over a classroom. This article from the Pope Center discusses the problems of taking graduate students and chucking them into a classroom with little to no formal training.

I can certainly speak to this from my own experiences. Since I've mainly taught chemistry, my experience has largely been teaching labs. UMSL gave me the opportunity to throw in discussion sessions as well. Typically, the lead-up to any of this at the start of the semester was anything from a day to a week of seminars about being a TA. Some of it plain common sense and some of it just policy. I found much of it to be unhelpful, but like I said, a lot of it is common sense.

I saw a lot of foreign grad students sent to lead classes or discussion groups who had very poor english. That should never happen. You are handicapping their students by giving them a second hurdle to overcome (aside from understanding the material).

If I had to give my own thoughts to improving the situation for science TAs, this is what I might say:

Public speaking classes

These should be optional but available. Not everyone is comfortable or competant at speaking in front of others. Tossing these people into a teaching position doesn't help anybody. If the person isn't meeting a certain level of english proficiency, don't let them get out of this, either.

Allow time to test the labs

This is a big one. Most lab TAs will have no idea how the lab is supposed to go until they see their first section go through it. This can lead to TAs not knowing how to answer certain questions or knowing that the results are poor until too late in the session.

The easy solution to this would be to bank time for the TAs to all do each experiment before teaching it. This way they know the equipment, they know the reagents, and they know what each stage of the experiment looks like.

Give the TAs real authority

This one is truly necessary for discussion sessions. I had a very talkative, very unruly group for my discussion sessions. The students showed up for the graded quiz, and didn't really care to participate in anything else we were to do there. In one lab, a student started swearing at me when she failed to follow the directions and had to repeat the experiment.

In every case, I really had no recourse. I'm not allowed to deduct points at any stage for behavioral problems. I was only allowed to report to the professor about the problem and let them handle it. It usually meant a warning to start, then an "official" warning in the form of a hearing with a disciplinary panel. Too much run around for a very slow pay off.

The point is, the power lies in the hands of either the students or the professor. The TAs are simply middle men with no ability to keep students in line short of having campus police haul a disruptive trouble maker out of class. That's not helpful to anyone.

Give them a chance to lecture

The thrust of the Pope Center article was that TAs in these settings aren't being given proper preparation to become a decent professor. This is a big problem for science TAs, who may not ever be in front of a classroom until they get their PhD and a teaching position. An easy remedy would be to allow the TA(s) to teach at least part of a lecture sometime during the semester. It gives them experience, and the professor could easily observe and give corrective guidance.

I realize that's not a feasible option for courses with 300 students and 20 TAs, but the option could at least be offered to those TAs. Nobody learns to drive by first pulling onto the interstate during rush hour or going into a downtown metropolis. Why should teaching be any different?

No, it's not a lie

2009-01-19T22:04:00.002-06:00

Despite the fact that I'm forecasting political grumpiness for the next 4-8 years (unless something really stupid happens), this is still pretty darn funny.

Long term savings?

2009-01-08T13:19:00.002-06:00

This was just a little thought experiment, so try not to take this too seriously. I saw someone quote some numbers recently to the effect that a Prius gets ~46 mpg, while a comparably sized standard vehicle gets 31 mpg. The price difference between these vehicles was said to be $7000.

So, I thought to myself . . . how long do you have to drive that Prius to make up the price difference?

Feel free to check my math, but here's the formula I used:

ΔE * G * M = Δ$

Where ΔE is the difference in fuel efficiency of the vehicles, G is the cost of gasoline, and M is the number of miles you have to drive to make up Δ$, the difference in cost between the two vehicles. Efficiency, in this case, has to be put in gallons per mile to work out properly.

Anyhow, I estimate that if gasoline were running $4/gal. again, you'd have to drive that Prius for 175k miles to make up that $7k price difference.

That's not a good number, especially because it only gets higher when gasoline is cheaper. This also doesn't take into account any differences in maintenance costs, since I have no idea what that might be. Unless you're driving that car a lot, it's going to take a very long time to make up the price difference on gasoline costs, and it's entirely possible that by the time you've driven the car that much, vehicles at least as efficient (if not more) will be similarly priced as the non-hybrid.

I only bring this up because I heard on the radio this morning that part of Obama's plans for reducing government cost is to make all government buildings more energy efficient. I don't know what goes into such measures, but I'm betting it will be expensive. The question is, however, what's the return on investment? Or more precisely, how long will that building have to stand before that investment is returned?

If it's anything like our Prius example above, it could be decades before that cost is made up, which seems like the intent is more to pander to environmental groups than offer any substantive benefit to the tax payer. Perhaps I'm just being cynical, but I haven't heard anybody challenging him on this one yet.

Press A to Jump

2009-01-06T09:18:00.003-06:00

One of my favorite new shows to be made in the last few years was Big Bang Theory. If you haven't seen this show yet on CBS, you really ought to. The show centers around four friends who work at a California university; two are theoretical physicists, one is an engineer for the space program, and the other is an astrophysicist. The show is a constant barrage of geek culture, and it is both hilarious and sad, in the sense that I see myself in way too many of the jokes.

Because the show is such a tribute to geeky interests, the writers seem to make an effort to get things as accurately as possible (within trademark limitations, I imagine). However, they made a mistake that every movie and television show (ever) makes. In one episode, the guys sit around and play Halo. Since there's not a lot of action to see on screen when you show people playing video games, writers tend to have their actors play the game in a absurdly over-the-top manner. People will stand up for no reason, they'll mash buttons both rapidly and randomly, in an attempt to communicate to us that, yes, they're playing a game.

Someday, I want a television show to give us a bit of credit and trust that, when we see the character holding the controller and staring at the television, we know they're playing video games.

The comic comes from Digital Unrest, so do give them some traffic so I don't feel too guilty about posting this.

Select Difficulty

2009-01-04T15:38:00.003-06:00

While I was home for the holidays, I had the good opportunity to fire up my old NES. Between that, and two recent discussions on video game difficulty, and I thought I had some good blog fodder.

Shamus points out in his video that a lot of "hardcore" players, or at least those of us with a modicum of skill, grew up learning to play on the old NES. We had a lifetime of scaling difficulty, both in game quality and control scheme complexity, to get to where we are, so people who are just joining the party are right to feel overwhelmed by the mess that is modern video gaming.

There's something to be said about the part pertaining to new players. There's a reason games like Bejeweled and Chuzzle are so popular. While there was a time that you would sooner admit to being a chronic bed-wetter before telling girls you played video games, these days it's really easy to convince women to play a game of Wii Sports, Mario Party, Mario Kart, Rock Band, etc.

Still, I find the former more interesting. I think there's a lot of nostalgia that goes into saying, "Video games in the NES era were perfect! We learned to game in a beautiful harmony!"

I think it's many of those older games which paved the way for today's games, which feature crushing difficulty and what Shamus likes to call "Do it again, stupid" (DIAS) syndrome. DIAS is the state where the game presents you with a challenge with little room for error. When you fail, you have to repeat the challenge over and over until you get it right. Sometimes failure sends you back to an earlier point in the game, which leads to a frustrating situation where you might have to play the same 10-20 minutes of a game over and over because of one part you can't get past.

Here's a few examples from the games I picked up this past week:

Super Mario Bros. 3

This game is considered one of the best games for the NES, even one of the best ever made. While the game is quite fun, I would argue that most people only ever beat it by "cheating" with the Warp Whistles, which no casual player would have known about. Playing the game normally takes something on the order of 6-8 hours, and there's no save function. Many of the levels contain puzzles which would be nearly impossible to solve without access to game guides. Others feature situations requiring such lightning fast reflexes and time-critical moves that only someone well-versed in the genre is going to tackle it. The point being, this is a hard game.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

If you were eight years old and played this game, it was like a slap in the face. I'll post this link, with a warning for foul language. You controlled the turtles one at a time, going through levels to rescue Splinter from Shredder. Sounds like fun for someone who watched the cartoon every day, right? Except the game was filled with labrynthine levels, rare health pickups or power-ups, and swarms of enemies too big to avoid and too strong to kill quickly. Since you could freely switch between the turtles, you technically had four lives. However, some of the turtles had attacks which were nearly useless. You could "rescue" a turtle who lost all his health, but figuring out where those locations are was a feat in itself. Very few people who played this game ever made it to the end, and even fewer managed to topple Shredder when it happened.

Mega Man

Okay, I remember this game fondly as well, but I never finished it in my youth. Once again, the complexity of some of the jumping puzzles, as well as the difficulty of the enemies, made it nearly impossible for an unskilled player. Most levels featured a robot which was difficult to avoid and stole half your health if it touched you. Some of the bosses were only within reach of most players (including me) due to a cheat involving the pause button, a feature removed in future installments of the game.

So, a lot of the older games are difficult. So what? My point is that there are games of crushing difficulty from every era. We may remember those games fondly in retrospect, but most of us put them down in frustration at one point or another. We kept up with the hobby because of the games that were within reach of our skill level. Those games can still be good today, and I think it's worth keeping in mind the things which made those games good when looking at the newer games. A game can be easy enough for new players without simplifying it too much. Sure, games like Nintendogs convinced a lot of people to buy a DS, but they can still be challenged by, and enjoy, games like Phoenix Wright.

Not that anyone's asking my opinion on game design theory. I can dream, can't I?

Oh, and no discussion of difficult video games of the past would be complete without pointing you to the Angry Video Game Nerd (again, be wary - he uses lots of foul language).

A retrospective on December 31

2009-01-02T00:19:00.002-06:00

Most years, at the start of the new year, I tend to think about where I'm heading, what I want to accomplish, and how I want my life to change in the twelve months to come. Given how much of my life is up in the air for 2009, my thoughts have been drawn more to previous years and what my perspectives were at the time.

On Dec. 31, 2008, I was playing cards with my cousin and his wife. I'm in Maryland studying immunology and wondering where my studies will take me in the next few years, when I'll ever find a girlfriend, and whether I'll be home before next Christmas for any reason besides my sister's graduation.

On Dec. 31, 2007, I was in Chicago, celebrating with college buddies at a party which was sparsely attended due to a foot of fresh snow. I was excited about having just earned my MS and incredibly confused as to where I would end up for my PhD work.

On Dec. 31, 2006, I was with my cousin and his wife, again, but this was a party, so there were many others as well. I was working my my MS, still sore about having left Northwestern, and trying to figure out if I'd ever get over my ex-girlfriend.

On Dec. 31, 2005, I was in Evanston, at a party with Northwestern people. My girlfriend was visiting at the time, so she was there as well. I was spending quite a bit of time then wondering whether I would make it at Northwestern and hoping that the classes would not be as crushingly difficult as I feared they would be. I'd also just started doing research with my new PI, and I was very hopeful about where it was heading.

I could go further back, but I find the retrospective helpful. It's interesting what things we're worried about at various times in our lives and how those thing change over the course of just a year. One year doesn't seem like that much time, but when I look back at prior New Year's eves, it seems like an eternity.

I don't know what the coming year holds for me, but I'll wish all of you the best for the next twelve months.

I guess I'm a double agent

2008-12-22T12:03:00.001-06:00

This is pure, distilled awesomeness in stick figure form.

I hope they don't make me pick a side.

Know your stuff

2008-12-20T17:21:00.002-06:00

A new Pew survey was recently released, and the results are very strange. Apparently, a large number of Christians (half in evangelical churches and more than that in other Christian groups) believe that there is more than one way to heaven. The link leads to Dr. Mohler's analysis of the story, and he has some more details as well as links to the Pew data.

Furthermore, in this data is that these people who say that there are other ways to heaven say that the groups of non-Christians who get to go to heaven will do so by their good works.

I realize it can be a little awkward to tell somebody, "I believe that you'll go to hell if you don't change your faith," but this clearly isn't the answer. I can understand this coming from mainline Protestant groups, as they have been trending away from respect for the text for some time now. I can understand this from Catholics, as their theological leadership often seems more inclined to play politics with the other faiths of the world than actually stick to their guns.

But evangelical churches? This is oddball stuff for evangelical Christians. So where is it coming from? A desire to be "polite" in mixed company and not be "offensive?" Poor teaching from the pulpit? A trendiness in taking the title of "evangelical" without actually caring about the beliefs?

It's hard to say. But I will offer this to any of the Christians out there who want to say that there is more than one way to heaven: You can only reach this conclusion by actively ignoring the Biblical text. If you're going to believe as you do, then you either have to offer up a compelling reinterpretation of those verses or explain why those verses can be ignored.

Murine apocalypse

2008-12-18T16:22:00.003-06:00

I've started my first rotation in an immunology lab, and I have to say that the transition is raising a few starts out of me. I've only ever worked with microorganisms, bacteria and yeast, so switching over to immunology's preferred model, mice, has been a strange experience.

The last two days I've gone to the vivarium to either observe or to practice handling the animals myself. It was somewhat disturbing to watch samples being taken from the mice, either orbitally (having a capillary stuck behind the eye to produce blood) or by snipping off a piece of the tail. I'd have guessed the latter to be incredibly distressing, but apparently this isn't the case.

I also watched as mice were sacrificed, either by CO₂ asphyxiation or by having their necks broken. I'm assuming the latter is within proper protocol, though I'm not certain.

It's the sacrificial part that really felt weird. I've been a pet owner all my life, so it's rather jarring to see small, fuzzy creatures being killed. In my head, I know that it's all for the sake of scientific progress, and I personally have no problems with the use of lab animals, but that doesn't change the lurching feeling it gave me.

I suppose this is very similar to the reaction people have when they see these things at a slaughterhouse, on a hunting trip, or even on a family farm. As a society, we're largely removed from the production of our food, which puts us several steps away from these animals being killed. (I keep trying to come up with a good "6 degrees of _Kevin Bacon" joke, but it's not happening). We're far removed from the days where almost everybody had to kill an animal for food at least once in their lives, so it's understandable when the practice makes people a bit squeamish.

Still, maybe it's a good thing that I feel uneasy about the whole affair. The conventional wisdom seems to be that most serial killers get their start torturing/killing animals. I should probably worry if I ever start to enjoy doing it. Hm . . . what if many would-be serial killers end up in science careers so they can stick to what they know? What if science turned people into serial killers?

Incidentally, does anyone know a good recipe for fava beans? I was hoping for something that would go well with a nice chianti.

I guess Firefox is for whites

2008-12-11T06:58:00.002-06:00

That's the only conclusion I can reach, and it sounds like someone reached the same conclusion.

Some things are just beyond parody. Seriously, do I even need to tell you why this is stupid?

Newsweek on Gay Marriage

2008-12-09T12:01:00.002-06:00

I share Dr. Mohler's amazement that a reputable news magazine would put what is clearly an op-ed as its cover story. Priorities, I suppose.

The entire article is about the religious argument in relation to gay marriage, and how, according to author Lisa Miller, the Bible cannot be used to condemn it but rather to support it. There are so many things to unpack in her article I scarcely know where to begin. I could go through every paragraph in the article and find something wrong, but instead I'll try to hit the broader points and categorical mistakes.

First, Miller wants to argue that the Bible's lack of prohibition on polygamy means that it says nothing normative on marriage. We'll skip past that for now because I don't think arguing about Old Testament rules on polygamy really adds to anything here, but there's one small problem for her in this: Even if you accept that the Bible is okay with polygamy, how does this translate to acceptance of homosexuality and gay marriage? The polygamous marriages described in the Bible were always heterosexual. It's a logical fallacy to say, "You're wrong, therefor I am right." The two can be mutually exclusive.

Next, Miller wants to argue that Biblical prohibitions and condemnation of homosexuality either isn't what it says it is or is no longer authoritative. She hits this from both the Old Testament (with the Levitical injunction against homosexuality) and the New (with Paul's condemnations against it, too). The OT argument is an old one, which I won't rehash here for sake of space. I will, however, ask a question: If Old Testament rules are no longer in force because they're "outdated," how do you decide which ones to follow and which ones to ignore? I'd say that answering that question is important to understanding Biblical interpretation, and critical to arriving at the question of the morality of homosexuality.

As for Paul, she writes that Paul was merely condemning the excesses of sinful Nero or Caligula, though she doesn't really get into why he would mention the homosexuality if he didn't think it was sinful. There's also the old argument that, in Romans 1, Paul is condemning those heterosexuals who practice homosexuality, not homosexuals just being themselves.

The problem with both of those arguments is that it ignores Paul's talk of homosexuality elsewhere in the New Testament, such as in 1st Corinthians 6. There, Paul describes those who are "unrighteous." He lists two groups, both of them homosexuals. In the greek, there are actually two words for homosexual: The one who "received" and the one who "gave" (and I'll leave the description at that). Paul condemns both, which ought to drive home the idea that it's the act itself that is singled out as sinful, not any particular mindset going into it.

Third, Miller argues that Jesus rarely talked about marriage and never about homosexuality, so clearly it's not an issue. This is, once again, an old fallacy: Jesus didn't discuss X, so X is not sinful. We don't know all the details about Jesus's ministry, so it's possible that he did discuss the issue at some point and it's lost to history as to what he said. However, considering his support of the law and for the unity of man and woman in marriage, I doubt he would have had much positive to say about homosexuality. Even that aside, Jesus came to Earth with a rather specific purpose and a rather specific message. His goal was not to reinforce Jewish law or to tell everybody how to live, how great brotherly love is, and how it'd be really nice if people would start getting serious about showing up at the Temple again. Jesus came to prepare the world for what was a major change in God's relationship with mankind; Jesus came to announce the solvation of the old covenant and the coming of the new covenant, to call people to redemption and to prepare them to understand just what his life and death (and life again) would mean.

I'll even toss in here her mentioning of Paul's singlehood, with his wish that everyone else could "be as [he] is." The thing is, Paul offers this up not as a "command from the Lord" but as his own personal advice. Paul's bachelor status meant that he was able to spend his life travelling the world and spreading the gospel. Paul only wishes that everyone else could take part in such a lifestyle! But Paul also acknowledges that everyone has different callings from God on their life, and that some people will inevitably marry. Again, I don't see how this equates soft support for gay marriage, as Miller does.

Finally, I just want to address the overall problem Miller seems to have in this. She makes a lot of statements that reveal the overall problem:

"Biblical literalists will disagree, but the Bible is a living document, powerful for more than 2,000 years because its truths speak to us even as we change through history."
"But . . . if you believe that the Bible was written by men and not handed down in its leather bindings by God . . ."
"A mature view of scriptural authority requires us, as we have in the past, to move beyond literalism. The Bible was written for a world so unlike our own, it's impossible to apply its rules, at face value, to ours."

At the root of this is the fundamental question of what the Bible is, who wrote it, and from where its authority comes. If you believe that the voice of God cannot be distinguished from the voice of men in the text, then how do you distinguish which parts of the text are still authoritative? If it's all just a matter of what "speaks to us" at this stage of history, then does one decide what is from God and what isn't?

No, this is an old argument, wherein Biblical passages are considered "out of date" and simply tossed aside. The problem is that this is theology by popularity; if enough people get together and decide they don't like verse X anymore, then let's just ignore it! God is speaking to us and telling us that we need to "move past" such outmoded thinking.

Miller goes on and on about the Bible's passages on love, inclusion, and acceptance, but she ignores a critical element of it. True Biblical love does not ignore sin. It does not accept it, it does not explain it away, it does not excuse it, it does not look past it. True Biblical love confronts sin directly, as Jesus died as the payment for our atonement. As such, everyone is eligible for inclusion in the new covenant, but there's a catch: Participation in the covenant means acknowledging your sin and repenting of it (that is, leaving it behind). The Christianity Miller rails against is very inclusive; she just wants them to change their definition of sin.

Corruption Charges in Illinois

2008-12-09T10:48:00.002-06:00

Would every Illinois governor who isn't currently in or going to prison please step forward?

Whoa, not so fast Rod Blagojevich.

While Gov. Blagojevich (or as I like to call him, G-Rod) has been under investigation for corruption for a number of years now, this incident is completely unrelated to any of the previous investigations.

Apparently, this complain stems from Blagojevich attempting to sell the vacant senate seat left by President-Elect Obama. This being Illinois (and by that, I mean Chicago), I am in no way surprised. What surprises me is that he was caught so blatantly. I can only guess that some of the other players in the Chicago power structure decided that Blagojevich had become a liability and it was time to let him go.

I guess it's too much to hope that this might somehow get linked back to Obama, although at this point all that would mean is that we'd get President Biden instead. *Shudder*. Either way, it's about time something finally stuck to this guy. Blagojevich has played fast and loose with the rules ever since he came into office in 2000, so I'm surprised it took this long for things to finally turn out this way. Still, this can only mean more trouble for a state that is not exactly in good political and financial health to begin with. I'm curious where all of this will lead.

Of course, I'd love to pretend that I'm going to cover this in great detail, but who am I kidding? I am and always will be a "highlights" kind of blogger when it comes to big news stories. If you want good coverage and analysis, I might suggest an Illinois newspaper (one that isn't declaring bankruptcy, I might add), and of course the always impressive Capitol Fax blog.

Nobody understands irony

2008-12-08T13:49:00.003-06:00

For the class I was taking this past semester, when we answered our exam questions we were given a limited amount of space and told that any answer exceeding that space would not be graded.

If you're the professor making the exam key, and you get to type your answer, don't you think it might be a good idea to be sure that the answer fits within that alloted space?

You can pick your Research Advisor, and you can pick your nose . . .

2008-12-03T16:31:00.002-06:00

Stop me if you've heard this one.

My semester's pretty much over, with all the in-class exams finished and just a take-home yet to go. I'm told by the older students that it's a cake walk, so I'm not stressing over that. No, what I'm stressing over is the end of the semester itself. Friday is the last day of classes and we're supposed to start our first rotation the following Monday. This wouldn't be so stressful if I'd get off my tuckus and find a lab.

I guess the problem is that I don't know exactly what it is I want to do with myself. Not that your PhD research has to be the defining moment of your career, but we've heard from a lot of professors who wanted to take students this year and none of them exactly set me on fire. I have other options than the people we've heard from, of course, but that means making a slightly less-informed decision, and I really hate doing that.

I guess I should be thankful we get to do three rotations (four if we're feeling indecisive). It's possible I'd still be at Northwestern if I'd had that option. Still, three rotations doesn't feel like it makes it any easier when the list of people I might want to rotate with is three or four times that long.

The only thing I would think to change about this system, at least up to now, would be to change how we hear from professors about their research. At the moment, it seems like professors who have funding and want students volunteer to take part in the research presentations to first year students. That's all well and good, but apparently the entire section of our department devoted to viral research got the email about speaking and went, "Meh." Oh, they have funding and openings, but apparently they think that ought to be a big secret.

Perhaps there ought to be conditions for making their presentations mandatory. I can't say what that might look like, but 90% of our presentations were from bacteriologists, and that just didn't do anything for me.

Hm, this post is over and I didn't say anything funny or controversial. Wait, I got it: Why didn't they do that?

Abandon all hope ye who enter here

2008-11-30T08:24:00.002-06:00

My dating pool has dried up ever since I moved out to Baltimore, so just for kicks and grins I signed up for one of those dating sites (that isn't eHarmony, anyhow). Just the free version, mind you. I've no intention of paying good money to get rejected by women, as I'm already getting enough of that for free.

In any event, I can understand why people are often as skeptical as they are about online dating websites. I imagine that some are better than others, but there seems to be common issues resonating on all of these sites, and it's more of a problem with the people than the sites themselves. Although let's face it, most of these sites do have the problem of being like a party where you see a bunch of people standing around and every time you try to talk to someone the host walks up and demands $5 before he'll let you chit-chat.

In any case, let's talk about the things that make these women's profiles so egregious, as I don't have anything else interesting to blog about lately:

Photos
This is clearly the biggest issue for your profile, as it's the first thing a guy is going to notice about you, yet also seems to be the one thing that people spend no time or effort on. Common issues include:

The eye gouger- Seriously, you couldn't find a better looking picture than that? You have one eye half shut and your tongue is hanging out.
The lonely shot - You wanted to get a quick headshot in, so you held your digital camera at the arm's length and took a photo. Since you're paying $20/month for this, you couldn't spend a little time to change out of your pajamas and get a friend to snap the photo for you?
The ex - Why in God's name would you post a picture of your ex-boyfriend licking your face to a dating website?
The woman of mystery - Okay, so you like the picture of you and all your friends at the beach. Since we can't tell which of the 13 women in the picture is you, we're just going to assume you're the one who looks like she got a once-over from Hannibal Lecter and move on.
The time warp - We can all tell when you're using a picture older than the children you talk about in your profile. You might want to give us some credit and post something that was taken since the advent of digital cameras.

The Profile
You get a bunch of multiple choice radio boxes and a 500 word essay to sell yourself to me. Why is it that some people can't seem to get this one right?

First, there's weight. Look, if you're not going to post a picture of yourself, it's just polite to fill this portion out. Unfortunately, the websites seem to be in the habit of letting people live in Imagination Land (TM), because most have four categories: Slim, Athletic, Average, and "A few extra pounds." From what I've seen, people who pick that last one are making quite the understatement.

Next come your activities. I don't know a lot of people who will say that they hate being outdoors, and I think all of us can find enjoyment if we're at a picnic and get roped into a game of volleyball or horseshoes. But don't tell me that you regularly enjoy kayaking, hiking, swimming, tennis, basketball, badminton, water polo, bowling, competitive dance, base jumping, and speed skating. You can't possibly partake in all of those often enough to call any of them a hobby, and you certainly don't look athletic enough for that to be believable anyhow.

The biggest hurdle is the free-form profile. Spelling is the most obvious issue; again, you're spending a lot of money on this to try to find a mate. Don't you think you could have spent 10 seconds running this thing through spell-check? The biggest thing I notice is the abundance of nonsense phrases. These can include, but are not limited to:

"Looking for someone who doesn't play games" - Like what, checkers? What does that even mean?
"I love to laugh/have a good time" - Phew. For a second, I thought you might have been a kill joy.
"Friends are very important to me" - Me, I'm just going to hang out in the Batcave all day and be broody and emo. Friends . . . pfft.
"I'm looking for . . ." - This list could go on for a long time. Basically, it involves any number of qualities that only the socially retarded will be lacking. Then again, this being the internet, perhaps those things can't go without saying. You know, things like "someone who's down to earth," "someone who is a good listener," "someone who will appreciate me," "someone who is confident in himself." They all seem like a good thing to say, but they mean absolutely nothing. Oh, and if you decide to say that you're looking for someone who "shares (my) interests," it would be a good idea to actually say what those are.

So there you have it. Internet dating . . . I'm willing to concede that it might improve once you're willing to spend money on it. Until I have that kind of disposable income, however, I'm going to stick with my usual strategy: Making awkward chit-chat with ladies on the train from work, then following them in the parking lot, get a face full of pepper spray, and then run off screaming something about coffee and phone numbers.

Perhaps it sounds painful, but how could it be worse than online dating?

Is that an antigen you're presenting or are you just happy to see me?

2008-11-29T06:52:00.003-06:00

I'm working on my PhD in Immunology, so I found this article fascinating on a few different levels (there's a long version and a short version). Recent research has found, apparently, that women are more attracted to men who are immunologically dissimilar (that is, their MHC* alleles are more distinct) than those who are similar to them. The interesting thing about this is that it is "detected" through scent. The kicker is that this trend reverses when a woman is on birth control pills; she is more likely to be attracted to immunologically similar men than not.

Of course, pheremone and other scent-based research often ought to be taken with a grain of salt, but if it's true, it's interesting. The authors of these articles (and the researchers) speculate that a lot of relationships may experience difficulty because a woman will find herself attracted to her partner while she is on the pill, but after they marry and she goes off of it she suddenly finds herself attracted to different scents. This does ignore the human element in every relationship, but it's certainly feasible that this might be a factor.

I've said for a while now that I think research is going to find, someday, that these birth control schemes are not as healthy for women as we think. It may not be overtly harmful, but there's a lot of subtle things happening in there, and it's going to be those things which get overlooked in short-term studies.

On a different note, perhaps I should figure out how to turn the clothing I wear to bed into a cologne. Apparently the ladies can't resist a big ol' wiff of your MHC.

* - For those of you not in the know, MHC stands for "major histocompatibility complex." The immune system uses it for presentation of foreign components in order to trigger an immune response as well as preventing the immune system from reacting to your own proteins.

Being Thankful

2008-11-26T05:50:00.002-06:00

This is a strange year for me. It's the first year that I'll celebrate Thanksgiving away from home. When I was in college, I managed to get away each year to go home and enjoy the holiday with my family, but this year it's just not in the cards. I suppose I could curse my program for scheduling an exam the Monday after, but that's just the way the schedule turned out.

However, my parents and sister did come into town this past weekend, and we celebrated Thanksgiving together Sunday evening. It wasn't quite the same, but it means the world to me that they took the effort all the same.

There's no real point to this post, I suppose. I just wanted to share that story. Whatever your circumstances this year for the holiday, be thankful for what you have.

Bad genes are racist?

2008-11-26T05:41:00.002-06:00

I'll admit that I'm pretty hard on college-age liberals. It's been my experience, by and large, that they're driven largely by passion. This gives them the illusion of legitimacy, but results in people who end up throwing their brains out the window at the behest of their "passions."

Like I said, sometimes I think I ought to give them the benefit of the doubt. Then I read stories like this:

OTTAWA - The Carleton University Students' Association has voted to drop a cystic fibrosis charity as the beneficiary of its annual Shinearama fundraiser, supporting a motion that argued the disease is not "inclusive" enough.
Cystic fibrosis "has been recently revealed to only affect white people, and primarily men" said the motion read Monday night to student councillors, who voted almost unanimously in favour of it. The decision caused heated reaction and left at least one member of council calling for a new vote.
Every year near the beginning of fall classes, during university orientation for new arrivals, students fan out across the city and seek donations from passersby. According to the motion, "all orientees and volunteers should feel like their fundraising efforts will serve their (sic) diverse communities."

I'm not sure I can accurately describe just how flabbergasted this leaves me. If you are so wrapped up in identity politics that you're willing to declare that "white" diseases unworthy of your dime, then perhaps we need to revisit the concept of "racism."

Yeesh. This is exactly why I don't like discussing politics on university campuses.

Cool your jets

2008-11-17T05:31:00.002-06:00

Woo! Everyone who has ever made fun of me for using this word can eat those words! I totally called this!

Er, um, ahem. I mean, uh, whatever. Who cares? Not like it's worth getting excited about or anything.

Which is kinda how I feel about the exam I have in 2 hours. Is it Christmas yet?

The One's Biggest Fan

2008-11-05T17:51:00.003-06:00

Hanging out at the student center, I just heard CNN interviewing Oprah about Obama ("The One")'s election. She was near tears. I just had to laugh, though.

When asked how she felt, she choked back and told the reporter, "I just feel . . . like anything is possible, now."

Really? You have what is likely the highest rated afternoon talk show in the world, not to mention being a multimillionaire yourself, and it's this that makes you feel like anything is possible?

Some people lack perspective. Or a sense of irony. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference.

Post Election Hangover

2008-11-05T11:57:00.002-06:00

A lot of people think that we only end up with the government that we deserve. I typically hope that doesn't end up being the case.

While I'm severely disappointed that Obama ended up winning the election, I at least have a few good things to look forward to. Chief among them, I suspect President Obama will give me endless material to blog about.

Most importantly, though, I think a lot of people are going to have something of an "awakening," maybe even within the first year of Obama's term. Obama walked into office by telling each audience what he thought they wanted to hear, the only constant being his vapid and transparent appeals to "hope and change." Once he's in office, though, he actually has to get around to doing something. I suspect he'll attempt to pull off the radically liberal agenda he affirmed to some audiences and then denied to others. Whether he gets them past Congress is another matter, but mandating taxpayer-funded abortions and bankrupting coal-fired power plants may certainly raise a few eyebrows. If nothing else, he'll never live up to the promise that so many of his followers saw in him, and this will lead to disllusionment and anger. People will either feel that they were sold a socialist in centrists' clothing, or a centrist in socialists' clothing, but either way someone is going to have buyer's remorse.

One thing I especially want to hit on, though, is this hype about how "historical" it is that we've elected our first black President. Let's skip past the obvious line about judging someone by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. Will the election of a black President change anything?

I could see it go either way. Perhaps those black nationalists that Obama associated himself with all these years will see a black man in the highest position of power in the country, see little change, and realize that perhaps the paranoid conspiracy theories about the government concocting AIDS to kill black people (among silly beliefs) are nothing but that. Perhaps they'll realize that things really have changed in the last few decades, and now it is more incumbent on people themselves to lift themselves up, rather than blame all their troubles on the malice of others.

Unfortunately, I find it just as likely that these people will be racist nutters no matter what happens. When President Obama doesn't immediately release the super-secret government cure for AIDS, spend government money to pay for all of their bills, and release every black man from prison, they'll conclude he's just another "Uncle Tom" and wait for a "real" black politician to step up and lead them to the promised land. Whatever that might be.

I don't know what the next few years will bring. I can only hope that we'll avoid lasting damage to this country and in the world at large before it's all over.

Why so serious?

2008-10-25T11:13:00.002-05:00

My blog posts have been just a tad to infrequent lately, and it seems like those few posts that do emerge are a bit serious. It's Saturday, why not lighten the mood?

First up, we have Mr. Green Genes, a cat who had green-fluorescent protein genes transformed with his own. The scientists on this project can claim whatever purpose they want for doing this, we all know why they really did it: He's super cute and can't hide from you in the dark. Very helpful when they're eating your shoes at 1 in the morning. Not that I'd know anything about that.

Moving along . . .

I've only been out of the country once in my life. It was fun. Sometimes I wish I did it more often, that I could see more of the world. Then I see stories like this, and I think to myself, "Screw the rest of the world, I'm staying home." We don't EVER see monstrosities like that in Farmland, USA.

So there's your news-lite Saturday. Now go do something fun.

Why a pro-life person can't vote for Obama

2008-10-23T18:52:00.002-05:00

This is related to my post below. The Hot Air piece did include a section on abortion. However, this is a much more comprehensive article on that subject in itself, so it's a must read if you consider yourself pro-life and are considering voting for Obama this year.

The most eye-catching indictment is that Obama intends to sign the freedom of choice act as soon as he's in office, which would make abortions a right in federal law, provide public funds for abortions (though public health aid), and remove conscience clauses that allow physicians and nurses to opt out of such procedures on moral grounds.

There's lots more, including analysis both on what he would do as president and what he has already done as a senator (state and national).

The bottom line is that Obama is in no way, shape, or form a pro-life candidate. If that platform is important to you, then there is no justifying a vote for him.

The Case Against Obama

2008-10-21T18:39:00.002-05:00

I realize I've been largely silent on the election for the last several months. It's just been rather tiring. The rather "friendly" treatment Barack Obama receives from the media, alongside the absolutely atrocious treatment of Sarah Palin has left me shaking my head.

Still, it's worth it to point out the reasons why I won't (and wouldn't ever) vote Obama in November. There's so much to go with that it's hard to know where to start. That's why I'm glad some of the good folks over at Hot Air wrote this: The comprehensive argument against Barack Obama.

I hope you do take the time to read it. Unless you're the type to vote Democrat under any circumstances, I think you'll find something worth considering in the piece.

4th Edition

2008-10-06T14:08:00.002-05:00

I've been struggling on topics to write about lately. Politics are just leaving me too melancholy as of late. Science is bogging me down in pretty much every other waking moment of my life, so I'd prefer some escape from that at the moment. I haven't felt very insightful lately when it comes to theology or philosophy. I'm just a bit too strapped for cash at the moment to be writing about video games (well, new ones at least).

Then I remembered that Dungeons and Dragons was something of a popular topic previously. That's something I can write about, right? And if I can write about it without driving away 90% of my audience, all the better!

The topic up for grabs here is the 4th edition of D&D. If you're not familiar, Wizards of the Coast released the fourth edition of this classic game several months ago. Also, if you're not familiar, I'm going to suggest you go read up on the topic, because the rest of this post won't make much sense to people who haven't played it before. I'll try to fill in the blanks, but I can only do so much with a single blog post.

Before 4th ed. was released, I'd only played 3.5. What can I say, I've only been at this for a year or so. I thought I'd mainly compare my thoughts on the new edition to its most recent predecessor.

As far as combat-powers and abilities go, I really like where 4th ed. is. In 3.5, spellcasters could only cast a limited number of spells each day before they were spent. Martial characters didn't have this problem, but they suffered from a distinct lack of options. They generally would walk up, hit the monster, wait for their turn to whack it again, and repeat ad nauseum until it stopped moving. As time went on, this started to pale in comparison to the reality altering hijinks of wizards and clerics.

The new edition seems to get around this by offering all characters something to do each round. Powers are now divided into At-will (which have unlimited usage), Encounter (which can be used once each fight), and Daily (which can be used once a day). Martial classes and spellcasters have these alike, and each one does something different but at comparable power levels. With the power gap closed, it's useful to have fighters and rogues in the party, and clerics and wizards don't steal all the thunder. In fact, I've been playing a cleric in my current 4th ed game, and my main contributions to combat are healing.

All in all, I like where the system went. Characters have various options at their disposal and each class has a specific and useful role to play.

Non-combat situations, on the other hand, have suffered slightly. All those spells that casters used to have access to which could be used outside of combat are now gone. They've been replaced by rituals, but rituals are burdensome and expensive, useful only in critical or non-spontaneous situations. When they take 10 minutes (in game) to cast, you can't just pull them out of your hat, so to speak.

In addition, the skill list has been cut down dramatically. While this is useful in simplifying what used to be a complicated and intimidating arrangement, it leaves a lot of people unsure of how to apply their various skills, and I've found it also makes players reluctant to use them as well.

Perhaps saying that the rules here "suffered" is overstating it a bit. It may just take time for players familiar with the 3.5 system to adjust to the new metagame. Still, there was far greater versatility in non-combat approaches to the world in 3.5 than is apparent in 4th ed (so far).

Over all, I like 4th ed. If I ever get the chance, or even have the time, to run a D&D game again, I'm not sure whether I would choose 4th ed or 3.5 for the system. Both are fun and enjoyable, and both have their advantages and disadvantages. Then again, the way grad school is progressing, I may not have to worry about it for several years.

Oh well. At least I still get to play.

Missing Something

2008-09-30T13:54:00.002-05:00

You may not know this, but people are celebrating Rosh Hashanah right now. I wouldn't have known, except we had classes cancelled for today and tomorrow. I guess there were enough jewish people involved with the course that they saw fit to cancel classes.

Apparently, during Rosh Hashanah, one is prohibited from doing any work that was done in the tabernacle. I'm not sure who's in charge of the modern day interpretation of this, but last night my neighbors asked me if I could turn off their alarm clock for them, as they weren't allowed to. They even panicked when I left a lightswitch on in their bedroom, as that's another bit of "work" they can't do either.

Let's leave aside any theological disagreements I might have with such practices. I found this to be something quite startling all the same. These people care so much about honoring God that they had to ask their neighbor to turn off their alarm clock for them.

When I think about a lot of people in the modern church, including myself, I have to wonder whether there is that level of dedication, whether we are too permissive. Do we consider holiness that important? What would it look like if we did?

I guess the whole affair left me with more questions than answers.

The Banality of Evil

2008-09-19T21:53:00.002-05:00

Today in lecture, we were discussing the diagnosis of genetic diseases, sickle cell anemia and thalassemia in particular.

Thalassemia is a rather brutal disease when one is homozygous for the disease. It's not pretty. The lecturer discussed various methods by which the Italian island of Sardinia reduced the number of cases of people with the advanced form of the disease. Genetic counseling and widespread testing lead to people not having children if they were at risk of having diseased children.

If that had been all, I would have been fine with it. The professor also decided to mention prenatal testing, and cited abortion as the obvious outcome of such a procedure. She made reference to Italy legalizing abortion in the 70s, and apparently no one has looked back. She made a joke about the Pope being free to mind his own business. Some people in the class chuckled.

I'm not going to pretend that such decisions are easy to make. It's certainly a heavy matter to find out that your child is going to be born with a painfully crippling disease. This doesn't change the morality of such a decision, but I'm not going to trivialize it.

Still, the amazing thing to me was how glib the professor was about the matter, as if she was referring to something as simple as an appendectomy. Some people laughed when she acted glibly about it; I think you could have picked my jaw off the floor.

There are some thing I'll just never understand.

Genetics as a model

2008-09-12T11:11:00.002-05:00

Yesterday I had the great opportunity to sit in on a lecture by a professor from John Hopkins. His talk was on ciliopathies, which might not sound terribly exciting, but the man was a terrifically engaging speaker.

There's probably little interest in hearing about any of that stuff amongst you readers, but he did use it to emphasize an overarching message about scientific bias. In the world of disease genetics, it seems there's a tendency to think in terms of, "one disease, one gene." Especially in the idea that what you observe in the inheritance patterns is definitive. This guy, Nicholas Katsanis, instead argued that incomplete penetrance demands that such thinking be put aside and alternative explanations examined. The end result being that most genetic diseases are incredibly complicated, with most of the involved mutations to the pathways providing only a percentage of the observed result. That is to say, three individual mutations might not show any sort of disease phenotype, but combinations of those mutations could give a spectrum of disease severity. He related this to his research by showing that genes which are written off as having nothing to do with a disease can, in fact, contribute to a disease state.

It's not really my intention to turn this blog into the "scientific bias" show, but if such problems can exist in biological sciences, why can't it be a problem for people involved in global warming research?

Thinking like a hypothesis

2008-09-10T11:33:00.003-05:00

During my first week here, we had a "back to basics" lecture entitled, "Thinking Like a Scientist: How to Formulate a Hypothesis." I wasn't paying much attention, to the above title is what I ended up writing on my page of notes. Sometimes even I wonder what strange malady addles my brain. At least I got some blog fodder out of it.

Of course, the take home message of the whole thing was that a hypothesis isn't scientific if it isn't falsifiable. This could come in any number of forms: The thing you want to prove isn't testable, the way the test is designed automatically gives the assumed result, any outcome results in a confirmation of the hypothesis, etc. This is has to be distinguished from modifying your hypothesis to fit new data. Unfortunately, sometimes modifying the hypothesis can look like bending the data to fit a favored conclusion.

This is one of the things that I find so frustrating about the global warming debate. Not really being versed in the specifics of the science, a lot of what takes place looks to be a case of sticking to a favored conclusion (or in the case of guys like James Hansen, it's more than just appearance). We see things like, "If the glaciers melt, it's global warming, but if they grow in mass, it's also global warming." How could you not reach that conclusion?

Still, I admit the possibility that what we see more of is adaptation of the theories based on expanding data. I don't think this is communicated very well if it's the case. I think what concerns me most is that it doesn't seem to take place enough. There are significant numbers of studies out there which reject the idea that anthropogenic carbon dioxide is going to destroy us all, but it seems like it is more often rejected outright rather than integrated into the existing theories regarding climate science. This wouldn't be so much of a problem if politics weren't so tightly bound to this. When people are proposing plans of action that will restructure society and cost trillions of dollars, it seems like it might be a good idea to take as much information in as possible before you start running with a plan.

Then again, what do I know?

That research is fowl

2008-08-28T14:47:00.002-05:00

Today I had a seminar on how to give a scientific presentation. Sounds pretty boring, right? This is especially true when you've given enough of them that it's "old hat."

Ah, but then our presenter warned us on the dangers of having presentations that all sound alike. It was in that that I saw the funniest piece of science EVAH.

This is the way science should be done.

I can't find that powerpoint presentation, but it's based off of this journal article here.

Man, I need to get into that journal.

The More Things Change

2008-08-09T20:26:00.003-05:00

Ah, you know the drill.

I know I've been absent for a while, but my excuse this time is that I've moved 900 miles away. That'll keep you busy for a while.

Anyhow, I'm mostly settled into Baltimore now. It's a bit strange, but I think I'll manage. You should get some posts out of me relatively soon. I'm still trying to get into a good groove. A regular posting schedule will probably come with the start of school in two weeks. In the mean time, there'll probably be stuff popping up sporadically.

Oh, did I mention I also adopted the world's cutest kitty?

Going once . . . going twice . . .

2008-07-13T21:53:00.002-05:00

Sold.

In case you're not the link-followin' type, Anheuser-Busch has been sold to InBev for $49.9B. That's $70/share.

I don't really know what to say about this. It's the nature of the market that such things happen. Still, it would have been nice for the area had ownership been maintained here.

Still, so long as the products remain the same (or improve) and jobs aren't slashed in the region, I guess I have nothing real to complain about.

Here's to you, Mr. Foreign-Conglomerate Guy.

Yellow Science

2008-07-02T11:03:00.003-05:00

That's the title of an article that recently appeared in the Wall Street Journal. It compares the use of disreputable, sensational journalism (Yellow Journalism) to the "science" being peddled as global warming (or global climate change, whatever's in vogue right now).

You should read the entire thing, but here's a nice sample:

Nevertheless, over the past several decades an increasing number of scientists have shed the restraints imposed by the scientific method and begun to proclaim the truth of man-made global warming. This is a hypothesis that remains untested, makes no predictions that can be tested in the near future, and cannot offer a numerical explanation for the limited evidence to which it clings. No equations have been shown to explain the relationship between fossil-fuel emission and global temperature. The only predictions that have been made are apocalyptic, so the hypothesis has to be accepted before it can be tested.

The only evidence that can be said to support this so-called scientific consensus is the supposed correlation of historical global temperatures with historical carbon-dioxide content in the atmosphere. Even if we do not question the accuracy of our estimates of global temperatures into previous centuries, and even if we ignore the falling global temperatures over the past decade as fossil-fuel emissions have continued to increase, an honest scientist would still have to admit that the hypothesis of man-made global warming hardly rises to the level of "an assertion of what has been or would be the result of carrying out a specified observational procedure." Global warming may or may not be "the greatest scam in history," as it was recently called by John Coleman, a prominent meteorologist and the founder of the Weather Channel. Certainly, however, under the scientific method it does not rise to the level of an "item of physical knowledge."

I have to admit that, when it comes to atmospheric science, I'm not much better off than a layman. I'm a chemist and molecular biologist by training, so much of the physics that goes into it is beyond me. However, I can tell when something is not being put to the rigorous scrutiny that science demands. All I've ever seen out of the global warming "debate" is a great PR blitz; Don't question it, don't try to understand it, just go along with it or else you're evil.

This wouldn't be so big a deal if the goal were to just get global warming acknowledged. However, the larger goal is a restructuring of societies and economies at a scale that has never been seen in human history before. It's not irresponsible to suggest that we should have more debate, and better confirmation, of the apocalyptic predictions that global warming could
unleash before drastically altering everything that has made humanity prosperous since the 19th century.

My preferred solution is to wait. When predictions like these are made, they seem to assume a static level of technology. Who's to say that 50 years from now there won't be technology that will either give better information or allow for better handling of any actual problems that might arise? I'm not arguing that we should bank on solutions that don't yet exist, but to assume that only the environment will be different in that amount of time is just as silly.

Ahem, all that aside, read the whole article.

Slum Lord Obama

2008-07-01T23:37:00.003-05:00

One of the things we see as part of Obama's "impressive" resume is his experience as a "community organizer." Everytime I see that, I wonder to myself what, exactly, a community organizer does. Now we know:

The squat brick buildings of Grove Parc Plaza, in a dense neighborhood that Barack Obama represented for eight years as a state senator, hold 504 apartments subsidized by the federal government for people who can't afford to live anywhere else.

But it's not safe to live here.
About 99 of the units are vacant, many rendered uninhabitable by unfixed problems, such as collapsed roofs and fire damage. Mice scamper through the halls. Battered mailboxes hang open. Sewage backs up into kitchen sinks. In 2006, federal inspectors graded the condition of the complex an 11 on a 100-point scale - a score so bad the buildings now face demolition.
Grove Parc has become a symbol for some in Chicago of the broader failures of giving public subsidies to private companies to build and manage affordable housing - an approach strongly backed by Obama as the best replacement for public housing.
As a state senator, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee coauthored an Illinois law creating a new pool of tax credits for developers. As a US senator, he pressed for increased federal subsidies. And as a presidential candidate, he has campaigned on a promise to create an Affordable Housing Trust Fund that could give developers an estimated $500 million a year.
But a Globe review found that thousands of apartments across Chicago that had been built with local, state, and federal subsidies - including several hundred in Obama's former district - deteriorated so completely that they were no longer habitable.
Grove Parc and several other prominent failures were developed and managed by Obama's close friends and political supporters. Those people profited from the subsidies even as many of Obama's constituents suffered. Tenants lost their homes; surrounding neighborhoods were blighted.

As much as I quoted, there's much more to the article. Read it all.

This only continues to confirm, for me, the hypocrisy and general sleazy nature of Barack Obama. The question in my mind, then, is whether or not this will change anyone's mind. Sadly, I imagine a lot of people who want to vote for Captain Hopey McChange will tell themselves, "Yes, he's a scumbag, but he's our scumbag."

Hat tip: Ace

My Life as King: Slow Bleed

2008-06-27T15:10:00.002-05:00

One of the biggest gripes Gamespot had about this game was the nature of the microtransactions. I didn't consider it in my review, but it's definitely worth mentioning.

Available for additional purchase after you download the game ($15) are several add-ons. These don't change the game dramatically, so none of them are critical to actually playing through the game. However, some people are completionists, and it will drive them up the wall to know they don't have everything.

The items for download cost between $1-3. Some of them simply add new dungeons for your followers to complete, along with whatever rewards might be found therein. Others allow for new buildings to be constructed, including those which draw citizens of different races to your city. Still others are just cosmetic upgrades, such as a new outfit for the king.

My reaction to this was somewhat double-minded; on the one hand, if you're enjoying a game, what's an additional $1 to add in some more content? On the other, purchasing everything they have available doubles the price of the game. And a full dollar just for a freaking costume change? That's ridiculous.

On top of that, it seems as though a lot of the new content is built into the game; this means that you're just paying to unlock it. A lot of people rightly fear that games will go in this direction. You pay full price for a game that only allows you access to the most basic aspects of it, while slowly bleeding your wallet so that you can enjoy the entire game.

You might find this to be a disgusting business practice. I can't say I disagree. I guess we all have to vote with our wallets, but good luck turning back the clock on this one.

Labels

2008-06-26T20:26:00.002-05:00

Sometimes I despise post-modern America, where labels mean whatever you want them to mean. Oh sure, that's not universally true. I could call myself a lesbian, but most people would just look at me like I was a certified whacko. Still, there are areas where this seems to flourish, and it drives me batty.

Here's what I'm getting at: The Pew Forum recently released the data for the second part of their Religious Landscape survey in America. One of the most disturbing aspects, at least to me, involves self-identified Evangelical Christians. When asked whether their religion was the only way to heaven (a central dogma in Christianity), 57% said no. Fifty-seven percent! That means that at least half, if not more, of all self-identifying Evangelical Christians don't even understand what it means to be Christian! Is it any wonder that American Christianity sees such decline?

Of course, such silliness is not limited to Christians, either. Apparently 5% of atheists believe in God. Seriously? This word you keep using, "atheist" . . . I don't think it means what you think it means.

Review: My Life as King

2008-06-26T19:36:00.003-05:00

I haven't bought a lot of video games lately, mainly due to rising costs elsewhere in my life. Moving across the country ain't cheap, I'm slowly discovering. Still, after hearing the praise this game received from others, I thought I'd give Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as King a try.

This game is one of the new Wii Ware titles, downloadable games attracting a bit more attention than the ports from earlier times Nintendo offered previously.

This title has a lot of the themes you'd find familiar in a Final Fantasy game: White and Black Mages, Thieves and Warriors, buying armor and weapons and potions (Oh my!), etc. The catch is that a lot of that stuff is now out of your hands.

Think of it as a blend of SimCity (or The Sims, depending on your preferred flavor) and a traditional Final Fantasy game. You're the king of this developing nation. You use your magic to summon buildings (and thus people) into the city. From each home you bring in, you can recruit an adventurer. These adventurers can be trained into other classes, and will go forth from your city each day to earn experience and fight monsters. You can issue royal edicts to tell them where to go and what to do, too, in order to prosper your realm.

When your adventurers and other citizens start needing amenities in their city, you build those as well: Weapon and Armor shops, Bakeries, Taverns . . . a great assortment of buildings and features to better your city and help it prosper.

You don't just run around building all day, either. You can chat up your citizens, which increases morale in the city. When you've increased morale to certain levels, you can spend the "excess" and advance your city. Alternatively, you can use your magic with the morale to really help your citizens, allowing bonuses for your adventurers as they go out or helping your citizens get along with their friends and family better.

Though this might sound rather complicated, the game is, at its heart, a fairly simple strategy/sim game. Despite the mediocre review given to it by Gamespot, I was quite taken with it. I lost a lot of hours to Maxis games in the past, so this game's appeal was striking.

I would recommend this game heartily to anyone who either 1) likes fantasy, or 2) likes Sim games. If you like both, then why haven't you downloaded it yet?

Ten Concerns on Obama

2008-06-25T16:41:00.003-05:00

Sometimes, when I tell people that I'm not going to vote for Barack Obama, they look at me in utter shock. It's as if I'm telling them I don't like ice cream, or that raping puppies should be the new national pastime. Something to that effect, anyway.

To summarize my objections, I offer this NRO article: Ten Concerns about Barack Obama. You should definitely read the entire thing, but I'll distill the thing down to the authors' bullet points:

Barack Obama’s foreign policy is dangerous, naïve, and betrays a profound misreading of history
Barack Obama’s Iraq policy will hand al-Qaeda a victory and undercut our entire position in the Middle East, while at the same time put a huge source of oil in the hands of terrorists
Barack Obama has sent mixed, confusing, and inconsistent messages on his policy toward Israel
In the primary campaign, Barack Obama consistently campaigned against NAFTA, but has now changed his tune, as he has with other issues
Barack Obama’s judgment about personal and professional affiliations is more than troubling
Obama is simply out of step with how terrorists should be handled; he would turn back the clock on how we fight terrorism, using the failed strategy of the 1990s as opposed to the post-9/11 strategy that has kept us safe
Barack Obama’s economic policies would hurt the economy
Barack Obama opposes drilling on and offshore to reduce gas and oil prices
Barack Obama is to the left of Hillary Clinton and NARAL on the issue of life
Barack Obama is actually to the left of every member of the U.S. Senate

Hip to be square

2008-06-09T08:29:00.002-05:00

Last night I went to a concert with an old high school friend. She works for a small record label, Polyvinyl, so going to trendy clubs for concerts is both a common thing and a big deal for her. If you know anything about me, you know that this sort of thing puts me completely out of my element.

After last night, I don't think anything changed that at all.

Perhaps I just don't understand what draws people to certain subcultural trends. It strikes me that a lot of the current 'hipster' trends reflects an attempt to live in ages bygone. I'm not really certain why my generation looks back at previous decades and wistfully dreams of reliving such golden days, but it seems to be the way it is. The 70s seem to bring out the hideous plaid shirts, the beers that are inexplicably being brewed yet, the haircuts (and facial hair) that show a contempt for the barber's tools . . . I don't get it. The 80s bring out too-tight, too-short jeans, Converse All-Stars (as well as other shoes which were probably fished out of a Thrift Store dumpster), etc.

Look, I'm probably the last person who should criticize anyone's fashion tastes. Lord knows my own choices run the gamut from "My sister dressed me at American Eagle" and "I own 1000 silly gamer tees." It's just strange to me how it seems like so much of the hipster scene is an attempt to capture something from the past. I wonder why that is.

Anyhow, to put a cap on this pointless post, I thought I would leave you all with Hipster Bingo. Enjoy!

For Me, Not Thee

2008-06-03T17:53:00.002-05:00

I saw something about this in an article the other day, but it was mentioned in an off-hand way so that I didn't think too much about it.

At York University (Canada), the student government is voting on a measure to ban all student-led pro-life groups from campus. Their reasoning? It violates women's rights to allow someone to tell them that abortion is wrong or to call it murder.

One of the things to keep in mind is that most of the student body has left for the summer, so some people might be returning in the fall to find out that their group has been disbanded by order of the student government. What better time to enact such matters than when the plebians are least likely to complain?

I can't fathom the mindset of such people. Is it that they think there is some redeeming quality to taking away someone's right to free speech? Or is it that they genuinely think women have a right to be inoculated against pro-life messages? Either way, the thinking is alien to me.

Hat tip: Ace

Off-label, Indeed

2008-06-03T09:52:00.003-05:00

I've never been much a club-going, bar-hopping hipster. A friend of mine drug me to a bar with a DJ not too long ago and it didn't do too much for me. It really doesn't surprise me, then, that I missed this silly little trend:

New York bouncer, blogger and author Rob Fitzgerald has noticed a trend among many of the macho young men waiting outside his clubs. He says the guys are slathering up their torsos with the hemorrhoid cream Preparation H to make themselves look "ripped" for the ladies.

I can't decide if this is one of those things that's too silly to be made up, or too silly to be true. Either way . . . yikes.

My favorite comment I've heard on this, so far, is that this isn't really off-label use. Afterall, isn't Preparation H meant to be rubbed on irritating . . . well, you know. Really, though, the best part is the picture they included with the story:

All of the above?

2008-06-02T07:52:00.002-05:00

I was driving back from Chicago the other day and something strange happened to me.

A van began to pass me on the left. While that is not unusual, I was surprised when the passenger put a sign up on her window for me to read.

Horny? We are!

It was then followed by two MySpace addresses. I couldn't tell you what they were, the girls were driving too fast. I was quite confused. Why are these ladies doing this? Are they "adult models?" Hookers? Just looking for a "good time?" Or are they simply attention whores, looking for traffic to their pages?

Hard to say, but it was just very weird.

And yeah, I realize I have squandered my moments of high traffic by not posting on the blog for a while. Surprisingly, I've had a life to occupy my time. Go figure, eh?

Ni!

2008-05-08T23:25:00.001-05:00

Heh.

A Classic Bully

2008-05-08T21:29:00.002-05:00

I've been critical of the decision to allow China to host the olympics for quite a while, and everytime I read another story about the torch journeying around the world, my reasons are only confirmed.

Over at Big Lizards, Sachi has a long post documenting some of the recent shenanigans committed in China's name by protesters. It seems that when countries would not allow China's "secret" police to "guard" the torch as it went, they called their foreign nationals to action, fomenting them to violent demonstrations.

The whole thing is worth reading.

Video Game Stuff

2008-05-05T08:53:00.004-05:00

Why? Because I'm a huge nerd with lots of time on my hands, that's why. I haven't written much about video games since the new Smash Bros. was released, so I thought I'd toss a couple of things in.

Mario Kart
It's hard to write a review about such an iconic game. If you own a Wii, you either know about this series or you don't. After so many years and so many iterations, you've either played it and enjoyed it or you haven't.

That said, I do have some thoughts on this new version.

The game is just as brutal and unforgiving as it has been in the recent past. I find it quite frustrating playing through the single player campaigns; I'm a fine driver, pretty decent if I do say so myself. Yet it's horrible to even attempt the higher difficulty races, just because the computer devastates you with an endless barrage of items. There's not much more infuriating than seeing that finish line in front of you and getting hit with a blue shell.

The game is still fun, though. While I'm not excited about paying $15 for pieces of plastic, the wheel really does feel comfortable and natural for playing the game. I haven't been online yet, so I can't comment on how well that mode works. The bikes are an interesting addition as well, though I'm not sure they're a huge deal.

Cosmetically, the game is nice. One of my favorite "small touches" added to the game are the Miis who populate the race courses. For example, they can be in the audience, or on the interstate track they work the tollbooths.

Things they got wrong? Unlockable content. It's very frustrating to know how many more characters and karts there are, but they can only be won by beating the most infuriatingly difficult portions of the single player game. That's not keeping with the multiplayer fun introduced by Double Dash.

Also, there are lots of courses that are taken straight from previous games. I dislike this trend; if they spent the energy making new courses instead of bringing old ones up-to-date, they would have a much richer game. As it is, it feels a bit lazy and recycled.

Professor Layton and the Curious Village
This one is interesting. The Good: Lots of puzzles and riddles, classic or otherwise, as well as some classic adventure gaming and excellent animation.

The Bad: Classic adventure gaming. As in, use the stylus to tap everything in sight and hope that something turns up. Bleh. Also, there is no soft reset feature, which is a problem for perfectionists (such as myself).

Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Yeah, more on this. What can I say, I've been playing it a lot since it was released? There's only a few things to criticize at the moment: Difficulty and lack of variety.

Not to toot my own horn, but I'm pretty good at this game. I've met no one who can completely shut me down in person, and online I typically lose only because of lag. I preface this with such bravado because the computer in this game is ridiculously difficult at the highest levels. I understand that programmers often make the game cheat to some degree or another to increase the difficulty level, but what on earth is the limit on this? I like to play games like this to completion, and the increase in difficulty on this one makes that a nearly impossible goal.

The lack of variety is more of a whine than anything. Yes, there were characters I thought they should have included in the game that they didn't. More of my thoughts on this, though, are what they could have done with the characters that they didn't.

For example, they included two different Links this time: Twilight Princess Link and Wind Waker Link. Rather than making them veritable carbon-copies of each other, as well as previous Links, why didn't they take advantage of their pedigrees? Why couldn't TP Link transform into his wolf form? Why couldn't WW Link use his baton to channel weather powers in battle? It seems like a lack of creativity that such options weren't taken advantage of. I could go on, but I think the point is clear.

That's my $0.02 on those varied topics, for what it's worth.

Making things Wright

2008-05-04T10:43:00.003-05:00

Today's issue of the Chicago Tribune had a lot of articles about the relationship between Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama. Of course, the paper officially defended Sen. Obama and continued to promote his campaign for President. However, after reading so many articles about the matter, I've come to one conclusion: Nobody writing for this newspaper either understands, or chooses to acknowledge, the real reason Rev. Wright is such an issue.

The constant refrain is that things Rev. Wright says "may be considered 'controversial,'" as if he were just guilty of saying things people didn't want to hear. Others tried to make the problem about Wright's "lack of patriotism," and his "God d**m America" statements, particularly in attributing them to Obama. That is, of course, a problem, but it's not the heart of the situation.

The real problem is that Rev. Wright buys into the most outlandish of paranoid conspiracy mongering regarding the US government, and preached it from his pulpit. This includes examples such as his declaration that the US government created AIDS in order to commit genocide against minorities, or that it gives crack and other drugs to inner city minorities in order to . . . well, does it matter why? In addition to all of this, Wright is part of a movement of theologians who are essentially the black version of the KKK, at least philosophically. When you credit theologians who declare that the only God they can believe in is one who is only for blacks, and that this God must always be seeking to destroy the white oppressor . . . that is a severe problem. This isn't even going anywhere near the offense Christians ought to be taking at such a perversion of their beliefs.

Here is where it starts to get slippery: So many people will acknowledge at least the most venial of Wright's sins, but then question how it has any relevance to Obama and his campaign. I must state unequivocally that this association completely disqualifies Obama for being President of the United States.

There's an old saying (I don't recall the source anymore) that once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, but three times is enemy action. Barack Obama sought out Wright. He has sat in the man's church for twenty years, and has referred to him as a mentor and a spiritual guide. Everything about this relationship indicates that it is more than just a casual acquaintance. What does this say about the judgment of a man who has been running on exactly that? I find it impossible that this kind of talk only recently cropped up at Trinity UCC, or that Obama never heard anything of the sort in twenty years of church membership. That kind of cop-out just strains credulity in a silly way. It either means that Obama's church membership was always a political expediency, or that he didn't care about such insanity from the pulpit. Either way, it reflects poorly on him, and makes his two very different speeches about Wright very opportunistic. It shows him to be just another weaselly politician willing to say whatever sounds right at the time to get elected.

That is why Rev. Wright matters. That is why Barack Obama is unfit to be our next President. It is just a tragedy that people are either unable or unwilling to accept it.

Religious news you can appreciate

2008-05-02T15:36:00.002-05:00

With all the talk of Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright, you might not have seen this, but the United Methodist Church has been meeting this week for its General Conference. Despite the long, slow slide into liberal unorthodoxy that the leadership of the church has been making over the last several decades, the conference maintained its position that homosexual behavior is "incompatible with Christian teaching."

This is good news, though the war is far from over. Sometimes I wonder how the UMC became so infested with those who would put liberal claptrap and liberation theology, as well as their own power, ahead of the actual purposes of the church, such as the gospel and missions.

Whatever the case may be, this development is encouraging. For now.

Hat tip: Dr. Mohler and Mark Hemingway

Grand Theft Retort

2008-05-02T08:21:00.002-05:00

I write about the various musings of Dr. Albert Mohler from time to time, so I hope you won't mind if I bring him up again. Earlier in the week, Dr. Mohler dedicated his daily radio program to discuss the release of Grand Theft Auto IV. As you can imagine, he didn't have much good to say about it. How convenient for this post, then, that he condensed the program into a blog post.

There's a lot for me to agree with Dr. Mohler regarding this subject. I can't really defend the content of GTA games, as I'd never play them myself. Games where the goal is to act criminally do not sit well with me. Anti-heroes are not what I would consider to be enjoyable escape.

That out of the way, Dr. Mohler makes a lot of mistakes in how he approaches this subject generally. While he acknowledges that these games are clearly meant for adults and not for children or teens, he seems to place equal blame on both the parents who buy these games for their children and on the creators for making the game in the first place. This is just indefensible. Should we not create things for adults only for the risk that children will be given access to it by the irresponsible? Should we ban the Bible at the risk of children reading about Lot and his many adventures?

Additionally, Dr. Mohler never explicitly comes out against video games in general, but his thematic approach is to deem them "inappropriate" at best. As in, "What responsible adult would waste their time with such things when there are other important matters to be dealt with?" This is a trend I hear a lot, and it's quite annoying. So many people tend to treat any form of entertainment with disdain, as if you're wasting your life by enjoying anything of the sort and good Christians would be better off reading the Bible than getting bogged down in that junk.

The problem is that so many people selectively apply these things. Video games are bad for you, but television is okay. Movies are bad, but literature is just fine. Card games are evil, but board games are fun for all! Take your pick, someone has argued against or for any of the above.

I can't defend people who do anything obsessively, especially when it gets in the way of real obligations and healthy lifestyle choices, but this vendetta against video games in general is misguided. There is nothing unbiblical about video games. Even if you consider it a waste of time to play them, that is your opinion. People can certainly enjoy them while maintaining a healthy balance in their life.

Campaign Differences

2008-04-29T15:50:00.000-05:00

Last week, Shamus put up a link on his blog about the end of my campaign (which was originally his). In the resulting discussion I told Shamus I'd discuss how things turned out differently between our respective campaigns. He thought other people would be curious as well, so I decided I'd turn it into a blog post.

Major Warning: This post won't make much sense if you're not familiar with Shamus's campaign, so I'd recommend reading his stuff before you read my own, or at least read them side-by-side. This post is largely about the differences between our campaigns, so it'll reference his material heavily without going into a lot of specific details. The only place you'll see heavy details are when I find them amusing or when my campaign included material not written by Shamus. Also beware: This post is a behemoth.

The Intro
This isn't technically part of Shamus' campaign, but I'd never been DM before and I thought a little intro mission was needed so we could get comfortable with the system. This was a pretty silly cliche intro, but the characters had no backstory so I had to come up with something. They answered some ad on a bulletin board looking for mercenaries. The overworked city guard needed an escaped criminal picked up, dead or alive. I should point out that their proof that they killed the right guy was to cut off his hand with his distinctive ring still on it. Bleh. Anyhow, it was a pretty simple investigation followed by some easy battles. Well, relatively easy. The elven cleric almost died at the hands of a barbarian. Most amusing part? The party snuck around a hide out, then spent an hour discussing how to ambush the gangsters within. The fighter got bored and walked over to the door and tried to bash it in. "Tried" is the operative term here. So much for the element of suprise, eh?

The Trip to Mar Tesaro
I tried to stay true to Shamus's material on this part, which was a mistake. There was an entire scene of role playing while the characters took a ship over to the island the game would be set on. I was a new GM. Shamus probably had a nice environment set up for his ship with great chances of interaction. Mine played out more or less like a static movie. "Okay guys, now here's another thing happening that will turn out the same whatever you choose to say or do." I tried to make it interactive, I really did. Retrospect tells me a lot about what I did wrong. In the end, they were ship-wrecked at Mar Tesaro. I wanted to follow the normal rules for swimming and drowning and so forth, but I realized that was going to wipe out my guys very fast. Nobody had ranks in swim, and I think they'd have died before they abandoned any of their gear. They ended up getting to keep everything and still end up washing ashore on the beach. The players were happy, but I think it could have turned out better.

The Adventure Hook
So, why were my guys on a ship in the first place? Their initial mission was supposed to be a "test." The king sent them after that criminal because he needed adventurers to accompany one of his special forces operatives on a journey. The journey? There really was no journey, but that wasn't important, since they were getting shipwrecked anyhow. The character was a Blade Lord, a fighter-type character who might seem suspiciously familiar.

After they'd shipwrecked the only people who seemed to have survived were the party and a sailor named Beck. If you don't know Shamus's story, Beck had a pregnant girlfriend on another island and he wanted to get back to her. Beck was supposed to act as the fill-in; since there was no rogue in the party, they needed someone who could pick locks and do other skillful things. He was almost worthless in combat, but he had levels in an NPC class. That happens.

The party ends up finding the sword that belonged to their special forces guide, Oltean, indicating that he'd survived. For some reason, it looks like he started heading south without his sword. The party decided to go chasing after him with his sword. (This takes the place of Endo the monk, who had was the one to head south in Shamus's game.)

Breakshore
This portion of the adventure wasn't terribly different from Shamus's version. The party rolls into town, finds that their mark has fled south, and get a side-quest to filch some stuff out of the blacksmith's house, currently occupied by enemy soldiers. Again, no rogue meant they had to come up with a creative way to get rid of the soldiers guarding the front door. The bard summoned a celestial owl, which lead the soldiers on a wild goose chase through the woods. The party then went down to get stuff out of the basement, but I still ended up making the same mistake Shamus did: No light source for the party, so the dwarf should have been the only one who could see. Oops.

Shamus originally intended that quest as a way of restocking his guys, since they lost a bunch of stuff in the shipwreck. My guys didn't lose a thing, so they took it as a chance to load up on stuff. The funny thing was, the quest was to liberate some stuff for the resistance to utilize; weapons, armor, supplies, etc. The blacksmith told them if they pulled it off, they could grab a few things out of the supplies. My guys couldn't use most of it, but they wanted to take ALL of it. I had to talk them out of it. I also provided them the same magic horn that Shamus gave to his players. I gave it very minimal stats, based on what Shamus wrote of it. This would teach me some lessons in how to properly balance a magical item later on.

Breakshore was also the first chance for the party to interact with the game world. We were three sessions in at this point, and here was my first problem: The guys weren't interacting with my world. Yes, they were hitting up locations in the village, but the NPCs? I had to goad them into asking questions. My guys approached the NPCs like this: "Hey, we're looking for a guy, have you seen him? Oh, he went south, thanks. Hey, can you give me anything to help me out?" It was a little more drawn out than that, but that question came up a lot during the campaign.

My next problem was the elven cleric. This character worshipped the elven god, but these were mainly human lands; there were originally no temples for the elves anywhere. As soon as we entered the town, the cleric says, "I go to the Corellon temple." Um . . . uh oh. I tried to solve this problem with a reference to the island's history.

In Shamus's story, the original inhabitants of the island were a group of peaceful, rustic elves. They were killed by a group of dwarves for the riches of the mountain. This invoked a curse from the spirit of the mountain on all who would mine its bounty. What I came up with was a follow-up curse on the elves because of the evil of the dwarves. When great dwarven leaders die, their ashes are sometimes imbued into weapons to give them great power. When the original dwarven king died, his ashes were turned into a weapon, which resulted in a curse on the elves who were killed. Their spirits would restlessly remain in the land, and future elves who tried to dwell on the island would lose their normal carefree spirits.

Well, this subplot seemed like a good idea, but I didn't do a very good job weaving it in.

Jolana Village
In Shamus's original campaign, the party could either head southeast over the plains to Jolana Village or head southwest through the forest to Woodhurst. In both his campaign and my own, the players opted to head across the not-so-fruited plains. This played out exactly as it did in Shamus's campaign, which was largely due to the awesome map and dungeon notes Shamus posted about this leg of the journey. I threw a few more traps in on the way to the dungeon, but otherwise it was almost identical. Thanks, Shamus!

The Weather Hills
Shamus's party skipped right over this part. His cleric was high enough in level to cast a spell for walking on water, so they just crossed the river. My guys weren't high enough at that point, so they had to work their way through the goblin infested hills. This was a pretty good "dungeon."

I had the hills set up as a natural maze. There was a natural path, filled with thick undergrowth, running between the various hills. The party could cross over the hills, but it wouldn't get them through any faster, and they'd be exposed to attack from the goblins. The party didn't have a map, but they generally knew they needed to head southeast. At each intersection, I rolled randomly for the traps they'd encounter on a table I made. A failed spot check resulted in a trap that triggered, and the goblins would spring out and attack.

They only got attacked once, but this turned out pretty good all the same. The party fighter ended up in a pit, which made it a pretty interesting fight, as he'd have torn right through the goblins.

There was one other trap that rather failed. I found a template for trapped weapons, which deal damage to the wielder when they swing it the first time, so I had the goblins leave a trapped greatsword sitting in the middle of the plain. Of course, the party fighter scooped it up, but he had no intention of using it. He was a dwarf; his waraxe was his only weapon! I figured he'd do something with it at some point. Even if he only sold it, the shopkeeper would get injured checking it out. Except . . . he "sold" it without telling me when he got to the next town. Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Crossway
This part, too, turned out very similarly to Shamus's campaign. A membership to the mage's guild from a wizard they killed led the party bard to try to impersonate him to get discounts on new gear. This lead to an arrest attempt on the party. I felt bad for railroading at this point, but I wasn't given much choice. The bard tried for a good 15 minutes, real time, to talk his way out of arrest. This was in spite of the repeated statements by the guards of, "Surrender or my 20 soldiers will attack." At one point, I should have had the soldiers just attack them and carry their battered bodies in front of the town magistrate, but I hadn't statted them out. Oh well.

The rest turned out similarly. The dungeon housing Mordan was pretty fun to build. Rather than have them search for traps and kill monsters, I searched out some logic/maze puzzles from the web and built them into the dungeon. The party had a rough time figuring them out, but they made it through and liked them quite a bit. There was a maze where you could only turn right or left at each intersection and a Theseus and the Minotaur maze. There was a third, but I can't recall it now and my notes are nowhere to be found.

The freeing of Mordan almost was a disaster, though. Shamus's guys freed him, then ran like the dickens. My guys released him, then sat in his chamber and argued about it for a long time. Even after I had their NPC run away, screaming in terror, they still sat and argued. It almost resulted in an in-character fight, as one of the players tried to introduce some background to his character. (A family killed by a lich in the past . . . do adventurers ever come from a normal, non-traumatic background?)

The Chase
At this point, things started to diverge from Shamus's campaign a bit. The party, running from the now free Lich King, fled south, all the way to a village named Tal Podere. Here is where the party started falling prey to attacks by Mordan's undead monsters. Shamus never said what the stats were for these monsters, as he custom made them. In the beginning, I just put a ghast out there and called it a gravewalker. Later on, I started upgrading them because the party was just tearing through them too quickly. Bigger claws, better armor and stats, and eventually a size increase made them pretty formidable.

This is also where the party finally regrouped with Oltean, the soldier they'd been chasing after since they landed on the island. It seemed like the players expected him to rise up and take control of the situation after the Queen's mind-control helmet was removed (If you're lost, I told you to read Shamus's stuff first!). He had no idea what was going on, so the players were left to decide where to go from here.

At this point, I should point out that I decided I'd have a little fun statting out Oltean's character. If you read the basics of the character at his website, you'd see that Shamus and Co. came up with a custom character class with a custom weapon. I thought it would be fun to try this thing out and see how it played. I chose to give him the 'vorpal' ability on his sword, just as a wild card. This will come back to haunt me.

I also started passing notes to the cleric when they slept. As the cleric held the lich's phylactery, she was having nightmares where the lich was trying to invade her mind or scare her into returning the phylactery. I used them to either induce paranoia or foreshadow coming events, but everything was colored with half-truths. I didn't find out until the campaign was over, but apparently we were a hair's width from the cleric attacking the rest of the party. I guess it worked.

The Diversion
After rescuing Oltean, we had a player absence, and a lack of a desire to skip a week, so I ended up with a great side quest. The cleric stayed behind in Tal Podere to take care of Oltean and learn some new spells while the bard, the fighter, and the NPC headed east to Sar Diga.

The players in Shamus's game never touched Sar Diga, so it was something of an empty space on the map I could work with. I had to figure out what kind of set-up would make sense for this place. There was a ferry that ran exclusively to it. It was a coastal city. I decided that it was a port town, though shut down because of the war, and a very wealthy one at that. It was going to be a center of black market trade on the island, but it never came up.

The party was lured out there by a call for musicians in the city. With the closing of the port, business was hurting in Sar Diga. The magistrate had decided that he would have a large party, with the dual goals of cheering up the local business leaders and hopefully getting some of the illicit business connections moving (again, this part didn't come up). The bard agreed to play at the party, and money was even provided for the rest of the party to attend. It was bizarre, though; the guys acted as though the party was going to be attended by ninjas out to get them. The party was to be held in the ballroom of a fancy hotel in the city. It even had a skylight and fire escapes, they were that wealthy. During the bard's intermission, a buxom blonde approached him and slipped him a note with a room number (coincidentally right next to the room they were staying in) on it. How could he pass it up?

After the party, the bard went up there to "meet her." Of course she was scantily clad, but before any shenanigans could go down, there was a pounding on the door. Into the room bursts a group of soldiers and the town magistrate, who just happened to be married to the buxom blonde. Oops. The bard, in a burst of inspiration, dives out the window onto the fire escape and torches the curtains on his way out, delaying any pursuit. He calls over for his comrades to join him, and they realize that the ladders leading to the ground for them were all destroyed. Up to the roof they went! There, they saw movement in the ballroom again, through the skylight. They went and saw the same blonde talking to some guy. It turns out he was the magistrate's assistant, and they were trying to get the magistrate killed so the assistant could take power. They figured the players would do the job when her husband busted in on the midnight rendezvous. Of course the players had to leap through the skylight to confront her. I totally intended for it to happen. I didn't intend for the fighter to fall flat on his face and nearly kill himself when he did it, but it was pretty amusing all the same.

*Crash*
Bard: Ah ha!
Beck: How dare you?!
Fighter: *Splat*

That fight was a challenge, but they still won. The woman went to jail, the assistant died, and the players were now owed a big favor from a city leader. They returned to Tal Podere for the cleric feeling pretty pleased with themselves.

By this time, Beck had racked up quite a bit of gold. The players were sharing the loot with him, and he wasn't spending anything so he could take care of his pregnant girlfriend when he made it home. On the way out to Sar Diga, the players (jokingly, I hope) talked about ambushing Beck and stealing all of his gold. It was a little unnerving, to say the least.

The Mine Riots
I included this part of Shamus's quest the first time the players entered the mining town (Della Minera). My players were not as clever as Shamus's; they decided to just kill all the gravewalkers in the mine and return for the reward. Afterwards, they realized that all the slaves were going back to work. They tried to then bargain for the slaves' freedom, but there was no way it was going to happen in that town, and they lost interest after they left.

The Big City
The players finally made their way to Fol Thron, the capitol of the southern part of the island. Unlike Shamus, I did end up including the encounter with the war criminal in the gibbet. My players not only freed the guy (to the protests of the bard), but gave him a horse to leave on as well. They were pretty steamed when the Queen told them about his crimes. They kept talking about tracking him down; I really should have turned that into another quest.

Fol Thron didn't have many differences from Shamus's group, with the exception of how I got them in to meet the crooked General. When they were in Tal Podere earlier, the party stopped an attack by gravewalkers during the night. After the long discussion with the city council about the whole affair, the party asked the town magistrate for a letter requesting audience with the Queen. He provided it, but couldn't guarantee that it would do anything for them.

When the players were ready to run out of the city without even trying to see the Queen, thinking she was in league with Mordan, or perhaps would try to kill them to steal the orb, I had Beck swipe the letter while they were doing other things. Beck ended up going through all of the bureaucratic shenanigans (behind the scenes, of course), but he brought them before General Tarvin.

Which was a mistake on my part. When that fight finally took place, our fighter blew his horn at the enemies, just as Shamus's players did. The difference was that the fighter then killed Tarvin in the next round. The wizard never cast a single spell. You'd be surprised how many of my fights turned out this way.

Taking down Noreeno
The Queen sends them on the same quest to kill Noreeno, with the party getting to the halfling village a day or so ahead of Noreeno. At first, the party seemed pretty content to ambush Noreeno on the road into town, which was fine by me; it would mean that they'd actually have a challenging fight with a wizard.

However, that changed when the party started squabbling over tactics. You see, the fighter wanted to dig a hole in the middle of the road and wait in it for Noreeno to come by, then leap out and slay him in one crazy blow. When I asked how he intended to get out of the hole, he said he'd dig stairs into it. When I told him that such a project would require quite a few hours of work, and probably some sort of Crafting skill check, he gave up on the plan in favor of just waiting in the brush by the road side.

The party didn't end up attacking Noreeno out in the wilderness; with his entourage of soldiers and other spell casters, they decided to try to ambush him in the village hotel. Which was a total disaster.

First, we had an extra player with us. This guy wanted to play a rogue, but couldn't commit to our regular sessions. He only showed up this one time. He ended up playing Oltean, but tried to play Oltean as a rogue. Oltean was a fighter in heavy armor. It wasn't good. I ignored certain things just to let him have some fun, but the strategies employed by the other players made that difficult.

This guy had Oltean climb up on the roof of the hotel, waiting for a signal to swing into a window and attack. Meanwhile, the players snuck up to the floor where Noreeno and crew were staying. The cleric cast Silence on the fighter, who was now a walking zone of absolute quiet. He then proceeded to walk into every hotel room unchallenged and slaughter everything within as it slept. Meanwhile, Oltean waited on the roof for a signal that never came.

I even tried to get one parting shot off at the players, including a letter in Noreeno's belongings that looked like a message for the Queen, but in reality was Explosive Runes for anyone who killed him enroute. They didn't fall for it, sadly.

In an amusing twist, the party had decided that they needed to bury Noreeno in his entirety, not just his ring. I had them attacked by gravewalkers while they did it, which resulted in a chase where they fled from dozens of the things back across the river to Fol Thron. Probably a pretty heavy dose of railroading, but I think if I'd left them to their own devices they wouldn't have known what to do next.

Southward Bound
The players ended up heading to the southermost cities on the island in search of the lost Prince Garrett; first to Telwin Port, then to Washport. They wanted to find the Magus Archives, but didn't really know why apart from "possible clues" that it could provide. My players, just like Shamus's, simply paid bail for the guy and left town. The bard ordered a fancy, undead killing bow before leaving, expecting it to be delivered to Washport in a week.

In Washport, the players encountered a mob-like group of anti-adventurers who had shut down the town's magic industry, hoarding it for themselves. They made their rounds each day, collecting "protection" payments from every shopkeeper, but wouldn't allow anyone to sell anything remotely magical (scrolls, potions, etc.). This would become the most frustrating part of the adventure for me.

My players tried to confront them in the crowded market streets as they first rolled into town, but the mob played it ignorant and cool and just walked away from them. They went to a tavern that night, and a halfling fighter from the group was in there. He was quite drunk, and decided to start flapping his mouth off at the party when he saw them. "You guys think you're *hic* heroes, do ya! Ha! We own this town. Just try to touch us, just try it!" At that point, in the middle of a crowded tavern, the fighter and the cleric pull out their weapons and attack the unarmed halfling.

The halfling escaped and then gathered his cohorts (five in total). The leader of the group challenged the party to a one-on-one duel; if their champion could handle the mob's champion, they'd leave town and never bother Washport again. If not, then the players had to shut up and get out themselves. The dwarven fighter of the party decided on a duel with the dwarven barbarian in the mob.

Here is where I regretted not being more careful with the magic items I'd given the party. After the barbarian had the fighter on the ropes, the player pulled out that magic horn I'd given him and started blowing on it. Over and over and over. He did this, healing himself up in between blows with potions, while the barbarian just sat there stunned. I was flabbergasted at this tactic; so much so that I let the player get away with taking far too many actions each round. After healing back to full health, he knocked the barbarian out, and the cleric told him to finish the job. The mob was just going to knock them out, it wasn't going to kill them. I ended up having the rest of the mob attack. This went badly, too.

I had one of the mobsters statted out as a werebear, exactly as seen in the Monster Manual. Nobody had silver weapons; I figured this fight would be extremely challenging for them. This was not to be. Remember that vorpal sword I'd given the party NPC? Yeah, first blow out of the gate, he chops the head off of the werebear. The fight ended soon thereafter.

The entire thing was frustrating for me because, in giving my players all these goodies, I was making it impossible to challenge them appropriately. They were waltzing through all of my encounters. Lessons learned, I supposed, and after that fight I retooled that magic horn to be much less game-breaking.

Heading for the Mountains
As the players headed out to the Magus Archives and Mount Khelberg, I had a surprise for them. In the wilderness, they were ambushed by a red dragon. This was supposed to be a challenging fight for them, as the monster would blow fire at them, then hide while waiting for his breath weapon to be ready again.

Sadly, this wasn't meant to be, either. At one point, the dwarven fighter dropped his magic axe and grabbed a bow. With it sitting there, gleaming on the ground, the dragon couldn't resist and flew over to pick it up. Guess what? Their NPC with the vorpal sword walks over and chops the thing's head off before it can fly away. What was supposed to be their most challenging fight was the shortest one to that point in the campaign.

I was crushed, but this taught me quite a few lessons: Don't get attached to your encounters, don't give your players overwhelmingly powerful magic items, don't be surprised when things go awry, allow your players to do cool things, etc.

Anyhow, the players eventually made it to the Magus Archives. Once again, I have to thank Shamus for his descriptive details in these things. Inside, Shamus placed a statue that was clearly trapped by the mages for anyone who would break in later. So, I described a few trinkets on there, knowing what horrors they would unleash on the player greedy enough to take them. The party fighter, knowing the cleric could simply prepare "Remove Curse," grabbed all five cursed items on the statue. As amusing as these things were, it rather dulled their effect that it was just a bit of a laugh for them, rather than something to be feared and avoided.

Freeing Fiore, and on to The End
The players freed Fiore, just as Shamus's did, though I think I railroaded them into tossing Mordan's phylactery into the box. I'm not very good and giving subtle clues, and the players aren't good at taking them. I didn't want the campaign to drag on the way Shamus theorized it could have had this solution not been taken, and I don't think the players did either. It turned out to be for the best.

The explosion of the mountain was also the culmination of the cursed axe sidequest. When a lava channel opened up in the Chasm of the Dead, the elven cleric tossed the axe in , LoTR style, and the curse was lifted. Bonus XP all around!

From this point onward, the campaign played out almost exactly as Shamus's did. The dwarves attacked while the players were in the wilderness, but they completely demolished Telwin Port. Without Beck there to rally the defenses (he stuck with the party the entire game), the city just wasn't able to survive. The party met with the dwarves and convinced them to join with the Queen to defeat Mordan. They then helped the Queen's men defend the bridge for a night.

Actually, that deserves some mention, because it was a very fun battle. I gave Beck the ability to man a catapult the way Shamus did, which worked out to be a good use for him. Each of the players were also given control of three low-level grunts with a sword and a bow; this would give them options, since the cleric tended to just sit in the back and buff/heal, while the bard tended to just sit in the back and buff. This also saved them from being overwhelmed by the large number of gravewalkers I threw at the party. I only used two waves, but it was an exciting battle all the same.

The party then went north and killed Mordan. The only major change here was in the "rescuing party," the army that kept Mordan occupied in the north. In Shamus's game, it was a powerful NPC from a previous campaign. Since my players didn't have that past to call upon, I had Oltean's people finally show up to rescue him. There was some post-adventure awkwardness to work out with this solution, but it settled things enough for me.

That's about everything I can recall from the entire affair. Questions and comments are welcome, as I'm betting there are details I left out. Looking at the size of the post, though, I doubt it.

Inevitable

2008-04-25T16:59:00.004-05:00

Well, it was bound to happen eventually:

More than 20,000 hits. I'd thank the guy who was the big 20k, but it was just some Canadian guy who didn't stay for more than a second.

Still, a big thank you to Shamus, who pushed me over the edge, and all of you readers out there. I guess you guys keep finding a reason to come back here. Perhaps you could explain it to me sometime.

Being a new DM

2008-04-25T08:41:00.002-05:00

Over in my post about the end of my D&D campaign, davej asked about what it's like to be new to the game and have to act as DM. I started to write an answer, and realized it was getting long enough to warrant a separate post on the subject.

If you've never played an RPG before and then you go to DM, it's not as bad as most people would lead you to believe. It does, however, require a lot out of you.

Learn your rules as thoroughly as possible before starting. Your first game will go so much more smoothly if you know how the game runs, and your players will look to you for answers when they can't remember how certain things operate or how they perform something they want to do. That said . . .
Expect your first session to get bogged down. People are new to the game; there will be a lot of flipping through the books to look up rules and general confusion about what the players can, can't, should, and shouldn't do. Just try to deal with it as best you can.
Always prepare as much as possible before hand. If you don't know your material, it could lead to problems when the players try to play further than you've mapped out. If that 4 hour session ends after only 2, people won't be very happy. I always tried to have material for at least 2 sessions ready to go: Maps drawn, NPCs statted out and personalities planned, encounters put together, and so forth. Now, this may sound like a contradiction, but . . .
Be flexible. Your players will sometimes do stuff you didn't expect them to do. Roll with it. Allow them to come up with clever alternatives that you hadn't considered. Give them a chance to succeed wildly (or fail miserably), even if it does alter things that you'd planned. It's part of the game for players to do amazing things.
Don't be afraid to use pre-made material. In the beginning, it can be difficult to figure out what to put together for a complete adventure. NPCs to stat out, maps to draw, treasure to place . . . it can be a bit intimidating. Modular adventures are nice because someone has done that work for you already; you just have to present it. Even just pulling monsters from the Monster Manual(s) can help, as you have encounters right there ready to go. Anything that makes your job easier in the beginning is a good thing. And finally. . .
Don't get too attached to your NPCs. They'll start to feel like your own characters, especially if you've spent a lot of time statting them out and working on their personalities and backgrounds. Don't be afraid to let them die. Nothing frustrates the players like a recurring villain who they can't touch, or a tag-along NPC who does all the cool stuff while they watch. If the players catch the villain, it's time for him to die. If you send an NPC with the players, make certain they are still the ones in the spotlight.

I hope that helps, dave. Good luck with your first game!