Crippled Politics

After the Apocalypse, We'll All Be Gamers

2010-09-08T12:06:00.005-04:00

There's a growing trend I've been noticing in games for a while now and the games shown at E3 only added to that trend. Game developers are employing the post-apocalyptic more and more as the setting for their games. The versions of the post-apocalyptic are numerous, but the principle of the setting remains the same: there is a moral vacuum for the player to fill up. Perhaps there once was a morality that was obliterated by the apocalyptic event, but no matter what the player exists in a world that is free from moral guidelines. Before I get too far into that I'd like to cover the games that typify this trend and talk about certain ones more thoroughly.

The list so far:

Gears of War series
Fallout 3 (series)
Crysis 2
Bioshock series
Enslaved: Odyssey to the West
Borderlands
Half-Life 2
Rage
Bionic Commando
Bulletstorm
Left 4 Dead series
Darksiders
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl

These games aren't small fry. Some have done better than others, but they're all major games that have been released recently or will be soon and in one way or another involve a desolated land/world. To be fair, Fallout 3 is part of the Fallout series, which has a longer history than almost all the games here. I still believe my criticism applies in this circumstance as the post-apocalyptic is a growing trend in games, not a new one.

There is division with the post-apocalyptic games such as Crysis 2, Enslaved, Rage involve existing moral structures that are destroyed. Consider the Left 4 Dead series:

Left 4 Dead is essentially a playable zombie apocalypse. But the zombie apocalypse serves a function beyond being fun. It allows for the guiltless killing of people. Not random people from a non-existent world or land, but Americans living in the South. But, the player does not care because these people now compose a zombie horde. The moral structure that existed before the zombie apocalypse (killing people is wrong) no longer applies, because there are no people. There is simply the zombie horde threatening to kill you. Of course it's moral to kill zombies, they're not people.

Crysis 2 (I'm basing this on everything I've read and seen about the game) utilizes the post-apocalyptic in a somewhat similar fashion. Rather than making killing moral, Crysis 2 turns New York City in a playground. Without the post-apocalyptic, Crysis 2 would be a game about a guy using a super-suit being chased by the authorities for causing havoc in NYC. But, the havoc is already wrought in Crysis 2. So, whatever the guy wearing the super-suit does, he cannot harm the city anymore than it has been.

Games like Borderlands and Bulletstorm bring the apocalypse to a whole new world.

Borderlands is about opening a new frontier of sorts. Sure, the planet of Pandora has been traveled, but so had the American West when gold diggers went looking for gold. The characters in Borderlands are prospectors themselves, looking for the treasure of Pandora. Their mission calls on them to conquer the planet by killing people and animals and helping others. The post-apocalypse, in this conception, is a challenge: survive and you'll benefit somehow. (Bulletstorm is about surviving a desolated planet to get revenge).

Essential to both conceptions (the erasure of morality and the opening of a new frontier) is the sense that the player must make it on his own. The player must construct the new morality of the post-apocalyptic world. Or the player must make his own life the post-apocalyptic world. The player does not actively do this however. It's built into the storyline of these games. It's a back-to-basics experience and perhaps a reaction to extremely connected gaming. The Mass Effect series has email for crying out loud. Grand Theft Auto IV had cellphones. The Halo series always had Cortana or some military guy in your ear. Not only do some games socially network the player with other NPCs, but they're extremely advanced technologically. Post-apocalyptic games may have advanced technology, but they create rustic feel to them. Nothing in them works 100% of the time. The player must fix cars or guns or whatever himself.

And that's why gamers will be better prepared for the world after the apocalypse than anyone else.

The Abilities of a Smaller Nation

2010-08-30T09:20:00.002-04:00

Radley Balko trumpets this story of Vietnamese and Chinese relations like this:

You know, I’m kind of digging Vietnam’s pillars of foreign policy.

So, as a regular critic of US foreign policy, I wondered what could be Vietnam's approach to the world. From the story:

Vinh reconfirmed the three pillars of Vietnam’s defense policy: not joining in any military alliances or becoming a military ally of any country; not allowing any country to set up military bases in Vietnam; and not relying on one country to oppose another.

The funny thing is this reads more like "Vietnam's pillars of dealing with the United States and China." South East Asia is a bit of a fix right now. China is obviously on the rise, but the big, bad regional player is the United States. Has been for 50-60 years. The question that South East Asian nations now face is which regional player do you get behind? The aging, sometimes-helpful-always-brutish United States or the rising, possibly-helpful-probably-brutish China. Oddly enough, the relative helpfulness or brutishness of either nation will probably not matter too much. What will matter is the belief of the policymakers in these nations that they are safe. In other words, this is a matter of security, and virtually nothing else, for these nations.

Think about this story. Out of context, Vietnam's foreign policy pillars seem to be independent of any geopolitical factors. But when you see that graph embedded in a story about a meeting between top Vietnamese and Chinese officials, who both said they want to increase cooperation and support each other, you need to put on your geopolitical glasses see those pillars for what they are: support for China. Let's break down the pillars.

Pillar One: no military alliances with anyone. Translation: Vietnam will not be dragged into a violent conflict by any nation. Who really wants a military alliance with Vietnam and for what reason? China does for the purpose of increasing it's geopolitical power in its region. A nation or a group of nations for balancing against China. The United States for balancing against China. So, China benefits merely by Vietnam not having any military alliances.
Pillar Two: no military bases for any other nation in Vietnam. Translation: Vietnam will not be any other nation's ground for projecting force or launching an attack. What nation really wants to use Vietnam for projecting force or launching an attack? China doesn't; it's right next door. Nobody else in the region wants to or can. That just leaves the United States.
Pillar Three: Vietnam will not rely on a nation to oppose another nation. Translation: Vietnam won't ever oppose China because the only way we could is if the United States stood behind us.

These pillars are hardly a nation claiming its geopolitical independence. It's Vietnam bandwagonning (yes, it's a verb) with the rising power. Why is Vietnam doing this? For the same reason any smaller nation latches on to a strengthening one: it's safer. The abilities of of a smaller nation are extremely limited in this context, and living in blissful independence is not one of them. That leaves two games in town. With China Vietnam shares a border, the region, a history, and possibly complementary interests. With the United States Vietnam shares...? So China's power grows a little more in the region.

Marcel

2010-08-29T10:57:00.002-04:00

MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON from Dean Fleischer-Camp on Vimeo.

Song of the Day

2010-08-27T18:57:00.002-04:00

Millenial Foreign Policy

2010-08-27T14:22:00.000-04:00

I saw this at Dan Drezner's blog Monday and Conor Friedersdorf reprinted it. The time has given me a chance to consider it properly.

As I think about it, here are the Millennials' foundational foreign policy experiences:

1) An early childhood of peace and prosperity -- a.k.a., the Nineties;

2) The September 11th attacks;

3) Two Very Long Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq;

4) One Financial Panic/Great Recession;

5) The ascent of China under the shadow of U.S. hegemony.

From these experiences, I would have to conclude that this generation should be anti-interventionist to the point of isolationism. Then again, I'm looking at this through my own irony-drenched Gen-X eyes.

I'm curious to hear from twentysomethings in the comments -- what are the foreign policy lessons that you can draw from your upbringing? I'm also curious what lessons twentysomethings in other countries can draw from their own formative experiences.

Being a millenial (I hate that that's our name) and interested in foreign policy, it seems only natural that I comment on this. Indeed, the peaceful nineties were a terrible bait and switch for my generation. We spent a decade of our formative years in peace and prosperity and then--BAM--George Bush.

9/11 was probably the most important event for my interest in foreign policy. Before that day, the most I knew about international conflict was Kosovo and the bombings in that region were so remote that it barely registered. 9/11 was abrupt realization that there's world out of people that were angry and determined to attack the US, the West, what-have-you, and a world of people who are unhappy with the United States, who had needs that they could not meet, who lived in dire circumstances. Then there was the world of people who were doing fine in their stable governments.

Then Iraq became the target. I didn't know much of anything about Iraq except there was a no fly zone and Saddam Hussein was bad. I supported the war at first, relying on liberal sensibilities that going into countries and toppling dictators was a great idea. And as long as Iraq was the first of the nations to be helped, I was on board. Of course, I was proven a fool. Iraq would not only be the only nation on the list of nations to help, but the United States would be really bad a doing it. And that leads me to the first lesson I've learned about American foreign policy.

Even though foreign intervention might in some circumstances be morally defensible and logically sound, we suck at it.

That's why, as Drezner surmised, I am staunchly anti-interventionist. It doesn't stem from the conservative principle that the internal matters of a state are that state's business, although I do hold to that principle now. It stems from liberal principle that helping the suffering through government action is a good thing. However, in the case of foreign intervention, we can't help anyone. In fact, we often make things worse, because we do not understand the culture, the religion, the politics of the people we are trying to help. We simply cannot know enough to intervene in a helpful manner. This leads to the second lesson.

Democracy isn't the be-all-end-all of governmental systems.

Is democracy morally superior? Sure. Of course, that depends on how you define democracy. Does dealing with democracies make us sleep better at night and make us feel good about ourselves? Definitely. But it forces us to think in terms that are no conducive to conducting a sane foreign policy. If Iran were a democracy (it's a counter factual question but just roll with it), would we really be as afraid of their nuclear development? If North Korea had a system of regular elections, would we really fret about the nuking of Seattle? If your answer is no, then we have some serious foreign policy problems in terms of conception. The argument is always made that if these dictators were not crazy dictators, then they wouldn't want nuclear weapons. Spare me. Nuclear technology is popular in Iran. What would be better is if we viewed Iran, North Korea, and other states without the liberal ideological lens.

A formative experience that Drezner left out of his list is the total lack of great power war. My generation is not only without the experiences of the first and second World Wars, but we never experienced the Cold War. The Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the momentous arms negotiations and treaties--I've only read about them. I suspect this experience, or lack thereof, leads me to a different conclusion than most of my generation, but here's the next lesson.

Nuclear weapons are good.

Yes, good. The lesson I figure most millenials take is "why do we even need nuclear weapons? Let's work towards dismantling them all." I, on the other hand, look at the peace that has existed between the great powers for more than fifty years and look for a reason. Globalization, or economic interconnectedness, is great explanation, but I find it wanting. Europe was similarly interconnected before the start of World War 1, and yet politics got the better of pocketbooks and the war happened. Nuclear weapons, mutually assured destruction, the belief that attacking another nuclear nation will result in the destruction of one's own nation, these are good things. They make leaders hesitate. And, with the rise of China, I hope that leaders on both sides hesitate before they try to check each other.

Another experience that Drezner did not mention is growing up with technology and the internet. These experience find their foreign policy relevance in cyberwarfare and drone technology. Frankly, cyberwarfare mystifies me. I'm somewhat conversant about hackers and cybersecurity, but by no means an expert. How a nation facing a threat from foreign hackers, either representing a state or not, defends against that threat or even identifies the threat's source is beyond me. Drones, on the other hand, are easier to get one's mind around and lead me to my last foreign policy lesson learned.

Drones are the future and they're bad.

Drone technology scares me the most of any of the destructive technologies we now possess. Drones represent the dehumanization of warfare. Many cheer this as sparing the lives of soldiers. Well, what about the lives of the people we use those drones on? War will someday be meaningless to us (and you thought it already was). Imagine a conflict in which the United States secretly bombs people without our permission or knowledge. You don't need to imagine that, it's happening right now. The CIA secretly bombs people all the time. Do we really care that they're killing civilians as well as terrorists? No, because there are no boots on the ground. Congress doesn't have to approve it, the President doesn't have make a speech on the major channels, and we don't get to debate it or discuss it.

So, let's review the American foreign policy lessons I have taken from the formative experience of being a millenial:

Even though foreign intervention might in some circumstances be morally defensible and logically sound, we suck at it.
Democracy isn't the be-all-end-all of governmental systems.
Nuclear weapons are good.
Drones are the future and they're bad.

The rest is just guesswork.

Song of the Day

2010-08-23T20:15:00.001-04:00

Maintaining Power

2010-08-23T17:32:00.000-04:00

Stephen Prothero hits Mormon political leaders for their cowardice over the Park 51 controversy:

I thought that Romney, as a Mormon, might speak out passionately for the First Amendment. I thought he might remember how the founder of his religion, Joseph Smith Jr., was murdered by an anti-Mormon mob. I thought he might recall how the U.S. government brought down much of its coercive power against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the last decades of the nineteenth century.

Apparently not. According to a statement released on August 10 by his spokesperson Eric Fehrnstrom, “Governor Romney opposes the construction of the mosque at Ground Zero. The wishes of the families of the deceased and the potential for extremists to use the mosque for global recruiting and propaganda compel rejection of this site."

More recently, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, also a Mormon, opened the floodgates for what will likely be a steady stream of Democratic equivocation on this important issue. "The First Amendment protects freedom of religion," Reid’s spokesman Jim Manley said in an August 16 statement. "Sen. Reid respects that but thinks that the mosque should be built some place else.”

This thought occurred to me a few weeks ago when Harry Reid came out against the mosque. The story of Mormonism is the story of American religious intolerance. In some cases, the Mormons of the 1800s gave reason for the wariness they encountered. But, the hatred, the violence, and the government instituted campaign against them were responses that could not possibly be justified. The governor of Missouri in 1838, Lilburn Boggs, issued an extermination order against Mormons:

The Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the State if necessary, for the public peace-their outrages are beyond all description.

Mormons were not welcome in New York, Ohio, Missouri, or Illinois. The opposition towards them focused on a number of moral outrages, but the strongest of these was the practice of polygamy. Consider this analogy please: Mormonism is to polygamy as Islam is to radicalism. Some Mormons did practice polygamy, but it was very few of them. The same is true of Muslims. There are those that subscribe to radicalism, but it is by far the minority within Islam. Yet, as all Mormons were painted with the brush of polygamy, all Muslims now are painted with the brush of radicalism.

Of course, the moral outrages of the Mormons were go-to arguments for those who were afraid of losing their political, economic, and cultural power. Mormons during the nineteenth century voted as a bloc and created closed economic systems (as opposed to the Amish, who, although they have a somewhat closed community, still trade and deal with outsiders). Joseph Smith, the prophet and president of Mormonism, also created a Mormon militia called the Nauvoo Legion, named himself mayor and chief justice of Nauvoo Illinois, and ran for President of the United States. In other words, he was taking on image of a theocrat. Mormons and Joseph Smith encountered distrust because of all these things, but polygamy was always the lodestone of anti-Mormonism. The lens of anti-Islam forces is a mosque (or more accurately mosques). But, much like Mormons and polygamy, the religious intolerance directed at Muslims is not really about the building of mosques no matter where they are. It's about maintaining the power of those that already have it. The perception is "American culture" is under threat and frankly it is understandable considering the horrific nature of what the worst of Islam has wrought, just like it is understandable that Mormons were met with distrust. But that doesn't make it right.

Modern Mormons should understand this better than most and Reid and Mitt Romney should not trade the moral authority of their faith for the lowest of their political base. But, as any sociologist will tell you, once an out-group gets accepted into the in-group, they won't do anything to help all the other out-groups. They often just make things worse.

Song of the Day

2010-08-19T18:05:00.001-04:00

Game Trailers Are Getting More Brilliant

2010-08-19T08:49:00.002-04:00

Maybe it's the growth of gaming conventions or just part of the gaming industry growing up, but game trailers have become some of the most stunning productions of any developer.
Bioshock Infinite:

The Bioshock series has always traded in politics. Infinite will be no different. Instead of dealing with the philosophy of Ayn Rand, Infinite will grapple with American exceptionalism and xenophobia, as the ubiquitous nature of the American flags tells us. Furthermore, the trailer draws a line from the underwater environment of the first game to the city-in-the-sky setting of Infinite. We see a poster that tells us the citizens of this sky city are encouraged to engage in their own eugenics by discarding weak babies, as the Spartans did. Yet, the sinister nature of the city is not the implications of what we see, but the secrets, the men whose faces are always in shadow, always turned away from us.

InFamous 2:

Sucker Punch seems to be a pretty confident developer. How else do you explain their willingness to display every skin and surface in still frame, when they often look their worst? Granted it was all probably cleaned up for this trailer, but it's bold nonetheless. They trust their work, and they're not going to dress it up with a fight scene that couldn't potentially be in the game.

Resistance 3:

This is the creepiest game trailer since Crysis 2. It captures perfectly the Resistance series mix of past and future. It's like the Samurai Jack motif, but treated seriously. It combines the natural with the alien and the normal with the fantastic. It tells a story surprisingly well.

Song of the Day

2010-08-18T19:55:00.001-04:00

Dragon Age: Disappointment

2010-08-18T10:15:00.000-04:00

I'm really not a fan of the direction Bioware is taking Dragon Age 2. Here's the latest trailer.

The first Dragon Age was a matter of origins. The player chooses what race his or her character is and his or her background. These choices become defining parts of the player's experience. City Elves are the targets of racism and oppression. Mages are treated with fear and suspicion. These elements remain throughout the game. Dragon Age 2, however, forces both a race and background on the player. Instead of developing a random character, one that is just another person in a world of characters, Dragon Age 2 forces players to develop a preexisting character, Hawke. As Hawke, the player can make all the moral decisions that make BioWare games so good. But, there is no denying that the gaming experience will be substantially different from the original.

I have no problem with game developers taking their games in new directions, but this isn't a new direction. We've seen this format before and it was developed by none other than BioWare. The Mass Effect series asks the player to become the human agent Shepard. When playing Mass Effect, the player cannot escape the reality that Shepard is not wholly his or her character. The game tells the player that Shepard is important and indispensable. In the context of Mass Effect, that's a good thing. But Dragon Age: Origins created the feeling, albeit a false one, that the character the player created was their own. That character was not special because the game said so, but because playing as the character made him special. The best thing for Bioware to do would have been to double down on that feeling. They should have made the character even more open to individualization. Then Dragon Age would've secured its status as another good Bioware series instead of Mass Effect's little brother.

Song of the Day

2010-08-17T16:15:00.002-04:00

How I learned Not To Be Afraid of the Bomb

2010-08-17T13:58:00.001-04:00

Yes, I haven't posted in forever. Sue me.

Christopher Hitchens offers some of the weakest arguments I have seen for bombing Iran: consequences of Iran developing a bomb. He leads into these consequences thusly,

If the Iranian dictatorship succeeds in "breaking out" and becoming a nuclear power, the following things will have happened:

This statement should immediately warn you that a bunch of baseless predictions are coming your way. Here's the first:

1) International law and the stewardship of the United Nations will have been irretrievably ruined. The mullahs will have broken every solemn undertaking that they ever gave: to the International Atomic Energy Agency; to the European Union, which has been their main negotiating interlocutor up until now; and to the United Nations. (Tehran specifically rejects the right of the U.N. Security Council to have any say in this question.) Those who usually fetishize the role of the United Nations and of the international nuclear inspectors have a special responsibility to notice this appalling outcome.

Why? Israel, the nation everyone is worried will be wiped off the map, has violated dozens of UN resolutions and continues to violate others. Why hasn't the system of international law and the august organization known as the UN not fallen to pieces from those violations? To make a better analogy: what about North Korea? The UN and the US demanded that North Korea not build a bomb and not test missiles. North Korea did both of these and, last I checked, we're still talking about the UN like it matters and the US is still treated seriously internationally. So, why when Iran, not the first nation to violate a UN resolution and not the first country to develop a bomb in opposition to the US, develops a bomb will international law and US power mean nothing?

2) The "Revolutionary Guards," who last year shot and raped their way to near-absolute power in Iran, are also the guardians of the underground weapons program. A successful consummation of that program would be an immeasurable enhancement of the most aggressive faction of the current dictatorship.

Why? The worst nuclear theorists always trot out this notion of prestige enhanced by nuclear weapons. If someone could explain it to me and give an example in history of when any nation has ever gained "prestige" by developing a bomb, I'd appreciate that. But, Hitchens isn't talking about a nation per se, he's talking about a "faction" within the government of a nation. Therefore we have to ask compared to whom, to what degree, and how would the revolutionary guard be enhanced? Will they be enhanced compared to other factions within the Iranian government? Will we only be negotiating with the guard from now on or will it be a Pakistan situation where the military controls the bombs (hopefully, in Pakistan's case) and yet we try to work with other leadership? And, how will they be enhanced? By what magic will this happen?

3) The power of the guards to project violence outside Iran's borders would likewise be increased. Any Hezbollah subversion of Lebanese democracy or missile attack on Israel; any Iranian collusion with the Taliban or with nihilist forces in Iraq would be harder to counter in that it would involve a confrontation with a nuclear godfather.

Why? By the same reasoning, Iran will be afraid to attack US and Israeli proxies because it might lead to a nuclear confrontation with either nation. I'm always amazed by how Iran becomes a special nation in the minds of those who fear it. So special in fact that the normal logic of international behavior no longer applies. This is how the reasoning always goes:

"Iran and its allies won't be afraid to attack us because we'll be scared of their bomb."

"Why won't Iran and its allies be afraid of our thousands of bombs?"

"Because it's Iran."

This is obviously nonsensical.

4) The same powerful strategic ambiguity would apply in the case of any Iranian move on a neighboring Sunni Arab Gulf state, such as Bahrain. The more extreme of Iran's theocratic newspapers already gloat at such a prospect, which is why so many Arab regimes hope—sometimes publicly—that this "existential" threat to them also be removed.

Why? When has this ever happened? These Arab nations that are so afraid of Iran will one of two things once they develop a bomb: try to develop their own bomb or, and far more likely, choose to fall in line with either Israel or Iran.

5) There will never be a settlement of the Israel-Palestine dispute, because the rejectionist Palestinians will be even more a proxy of a regime that calls for Israel's elimination, and the rejectionist Jews will be vindicated in their belief that concessions are a waste of time, if not worse.

Why? Furthermore, why the assumption there will ever be a settlement?

6) The concept of "nonproliferation," so dear to the heart of the right-thinking, will go straight into the history books along with the League of Nations.

Why? And why should we care? We should care only so far as we want to maintain the West's, really the US's, ability to bomb/invade any country it wants. 'Cause there is only one prediction I can make, and pay attention because there's really no getting around this: if and when Iran develops a nuclear weapon, the United States will never bomb or invade one square foot of Iranian territory. And, I bet that it's for this purpose that Iran wants a nuclear weapon and not some nihilist hope of obliterating its enemies. The US and Israel, since at least 2003 have labeled Iran has a nation to be attacked, to be bombed, to brought into the West's fold. Look how well it turned out for Iraq and Afghanistan, two non-nuclear nations. Look how well it turned out for North Korea's leadership, who are still in power and still horrifically abusing that nation's people. Of course Iran wants a bomb; it always will.

Are there reasons to bomb Iran? Maybe, but these are not them. I recall a time when the United States was concerned about actual nuclear weapons instead of possible nuclear weapons. Would someone please explain why I should worry about a nation with the most paltry of armed forces and no nuclear weapons and no means to deliver them.

Baseball's History

2010-06-04T18:36:00.001-04:00

It's hard to express how wrong and unjust this call was. Tim Kurkjian on it:

More than any sport, baseball is one about history. So when a terrible call like this is made it is a stain upon the sport. A stain not because Galarraga will not get the credit for throwing the perfect game that he did, but because what actually occurred was not recorded. In other words, the record is illegitimate, though it is presented as such. Which brings us to the obvious conclusion that baseball needs extensive instant replay. Jerry Crasnick's response to that:

It's a worthwhile debate, but consider this for a second: How gratifying would it have felt if Joyce's botched call was followed by a trip to the replay booth, a five-minute conference, the umpiring crew emerging from the tunnel and Joyce throwing up his right arm with an "out" sign.

Yes, Galarraga would have had his perfect game, on paper, but that single transcendent moment of celebration is something that can never be retrieved. In baseball or any other sport, winners don't get mulligans on euphoria.

Who cares? Yeah, the celebration wouldn't have been what it would if Jim Joyce got the call right, but he didn't. Jim Joyce made a mistake. The right thing, the just thing would be to correct that mistake, for Galarraga's sake, for Joyce's, and for baseball's. Everyone knows what actually happened. The umps need to be able to get these calls right instead of ruining perfect games. That's why the changes need to extend beyond instituting replay.

Bud Selig should correct the record to reflect the truth and award Galarraga his perfect game. If it were a bad call in the fifth inning I wouldn't argue this. If it were a bad call on the second out of the ninth inning I wouldn't argue this. The fact that Joyce made the erroneous call on the last out of the ninth inning changes everything. In basketball, instant replay is required in the last moments of big games when a tough call is made. The same is true of football. The efforts of the refs are directed at making sure what really happened is what is reflected in the call. Where is that in baseball? All I hear about is keeping the games running smooth and on time. Well keeping the flow of the game has robbed the game of history. Baseball needs to stop being quaint and start adjusting to modernity.

I'm Back and Fighting Divine Influence

2010-05-25T12:43:00.002-04:00

So when I wrote two weeks I really meant three. So sue me.

This piece in io9 is just so wrong it hurts my brain. Read:

The presence of God in television finales alarms me for a number of reasons. Culturally, I think it reflects the general shift toward conservatism in the West. Most stories that involve the presence of God (or at least a divine entity of some sort, whether it's Krishna in The Bhagavad-Gita or The Furies/Eumenides in The Oresteia, are about characters finding their path at a moment of confusion, or coming back down to Earth after reaching too high. In both cases, the Divine re-establishes the "natural" order. Arjuna steps into his role as a virtuous prince. Orestes accepts that vengeance is not his to take.

These stories come from an inherently conservative point of view: everyone has a place to stand and a part to play, and attempts to step outside those boundaries can only result in pain and suffering. You'll notice that stories about God commonly involve triumph over the self, not triumph over an oppressive regime - Arjuna never once thinks that he should share his riches with the lower castes, or that he'll unseat the monarchy once he wins the battle. Doing so would overturn the "natural" order of his environment. Arjuna's kingdom, once he wins it, will continue to rely on slavery to sustain itself - because that's how Krishna wants it. God's role in these stories is a conservator, one who might snip off poisoned buds or gently nudge humans in one direction or another in attempt to preserve that which is good and right, without radically altering anything. God conserves the status quo, and we're supposed to take comfort in that: a place for everyone, and everyone in their place.

Recent American television finales have embraced this logic. The endings of Avatar: The Last Airbender, Battlestar Galactica, and LOST all involve a divine figure returning balance to an earthly equation by repeating an ancient pattern. The Avatar achieves his final state and the four nations again live in harmony. Humans create Cylons, battle Cylons, and become Cylons. The Island calls people in need of personal change, gives it to them, then lets them go (to Heaven) before calling another group. All of this has happened before, and will happen again. The pattern doesn't change, it simply repeats.

Another word for "repetition" is "letdown."

...

...lately on American television, they haven't. Lately, all tension has been drained from their actions, and all opportunities for choice have been robbed from them by fate. Does it matter that humans created Cylons? Not really. They did it because God wanted them to. Does it matter that the Losties all had issues with their parents that they needed to overcome before they could be whole? Nah. They were all in Purgatory, anyhow. Does it matter that Aang had lost access to the Avatar State? No - apparently stray rocks can unblock his chakra. (That's right, kids: Aang works like the Millennium Falcon - a well-placed punch can bring his circuits back online.)

Sorry for the long quote, but it's needed to give the argument it's due. The last two paragraphs beg the question: did this person even watch the end of these series? Does it matter that humans created Cylons? Yes, it certainly does matter, because humans and Cylons were stuck in an endless cycle of self-destruction. The cycle that supposedly robs the characters of choice is what the characters choose to escape from. Lee convinces everyone in the fleet to abandon technology and then the humans and Cylons become one people. This breaks the cycle.

Does it matter that the characters on Lost had issues? Yes, it definitely does. First, they were not all in purgatory in the Island universe. The Island is real, the choices the characters made on the Island mattered. Jack's choices (to become the new protector and to send Desmond into glowy cave) lead to his own death. Sawyer's choice to not trust Jack led to Sayid, Sun, and Jin's death. Second, The flash-sideways were visions of prugatory/limbo/in-between. The thing about the flash-sideways is that they showed the characters dealing with their issues and letting go. So whether they were in purgatory or on the Island, the characters had to make choices and develop in order to move on.

The rock freeing Aang's Avatar state is just unimaginative writing, but who cares? Aang entering his Avatar, I guess, was necessary for him to win the fight with Ozai, but it was certainly necessary for Aang's character development. Aang entering his Avatar allows him to choose to abandon it, to choose to not follow the path that the past-Avatars said he had to. Aang chooses to not kill. Aang is the Avatar and as such it is his responsibility to keep the harmony between the elements. He is told by authority that he must do two things the fulfill his responsibility: kill Ozai and give up his love for Katara. He refuses to do both.

So, where's the lack of choice? Where's the divinity robbing these characters of their development? 'Cause all I see are characters having a cycle or path laid before them and choosing to either follow it or to find their own way. What's more, they're often making choices that have nothing to do with the cycle/path. You might not like the spiritualism in television today, but the notion that it's taking away from the characters just isn't true. At least, not in the series discussed here.

Finals

2010-05-04T09:16:00.002-04:00

I'm in the middle of studying for finals, so there will be no posts for two weeks. In the mean time:

Psychotic Realism

2010-04-26T15:19:00.000-04:00

Over the last decade, cartoons have appeared that are best described as psychotic. Sealab 2021, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law, the Brak Show. By psychotic I mean, these cartoons do not do not develop a narrative in any form. They don't have a series narrative, a season narrative, or even an episode narrative. Things just kindof happen (I can't describe it much better than that) with no reason or connection to prior events. Oddly, the best comparison I can think of is magic realism. What these psychotic cartoons share with magic realism is a placement of otherworldly things in realistic settings. Aqua Teen Hunger Force is about a talking carton of french fries, a talking milkshake, and a talking wad of meat living in a suburban neighborhood. Harvey Birdman is about the visage of the old Birdman character working as an attorney. Of course, I won't put these cartoons under the genre of magic realism, because magic realism has a reason and meaning. That's what makes these shows psychotic, they have no reason and nothing that happens has meaning. Things just kindof happen.

The cartoon that started all this is called Space Ghost Coast to Coast and it aired in 1994.

Space Ghost C2C was a late night talk show hosted by the old Space Ghost character, his nemesis Zorak as the musical sidekick, and his nemesis Moltar as the producer. Again, otherworldly things placed in a mundane, realistic setting. Space Ghost C2C makes no sense. As a talk show, it's terrible. The guests are treated terribly, have jokes played on them, and have their responses taken out of context. Space Ghost is hated by both Zorak and Moltar. Space Ghost has a penchant for zapping Zorak. To this day I have no idea why anything that happened in a specific episode happened, but that doesn't matter because it's funny.

The latest of these cartoons is Archer. Archer delves into world made up of rival spy agencies that are absolutely terrible at espionage. The lead character Sterling Archer, codename "Duchess," is a mediocre spy, but exhibits some hilarious anti-social behavior including womanizing, manipulation, and a bizarre obsession with his mother. Archer, the character, acts like big time spy, but really he is the dregs of espionage world. In this way, Archer, the show, is a lot like The Venture Brothers, a cartoon that parodies Johnny Quest. Instead of the brilliant Dr. Quest, The Venture Brothers features the brilliant, but frail and pathetic Dr. Venture. The Venture Brothers and Archer are, if you want to go that far with it, about normal human failure in the fantastic worlds of mad science and espionage. Archer is also completely lost in time: the clothes are from the sixties, the computers are from the eighties, the spy tech is from the present/future. This creates a surprisingly interesting aesthetic. The strongest narrative in the show is the relationship between Lana and Cyril. After that, Archer doesn't really have a narrative. Things just kindof happen, and its's hilarious.

Playing at War

2010-04-20T13:56:00.002-04:00

Clive Thompson remarks on video games and war:

Predator drone strikes, they're highly virtualized situations, right? I mean, you have someone sitting on American soil or in a nearby country, you know, piloting a drone able to shoot and kill. And so, everything is done through an interface in the same way that everything on a video game is done through an interface.

It’s going to be a constant question for us as a society and for the military whether or not, as they become more game-like, that creates an effect that makes it easier to kill people in a way that you might not want to make it easier to kill people.

I've written about this before, though more from the robotics angle.

It disturbs me as a game to think that the skills and mindset I have developed over years playing games makes me a candidate for piloting drones like the predator. After reading what it takes to be a predator pilot, I'm fairly confident I could do a decent job of it. I'm also fairly confident that the better gamers out there, the vast group of players that are so much better than me, would do an amazing job of it. That scares me. A whole generation of kids and adults have unknowingly been trained to operate killing machines. Even developers who have no relationship with the military have unknowingly been providing this training.

My only hope is that that the distance that drones create between killing and the soldier is not enough to turn gamers into killers. I've often questioned the supposed link between gaming and violence because I don't buy that the average gamer cannot tell the difference between the game and reality. But, drones operate on a system like a game and create a virtual reality that is much like that of an actual game. And though operate drones carries consequences, those consequences are far away in another part of the world. That's a lot of distance and it makes killing easier. However, unlike a lot of games, drone pilots will always have a choice about pulling the trigger. As games where killing is not the objective have shown us, many gamers will choose not to kill even virtual people.

Goodbye Splinter Cell

2010-04-20T09:25:00.002-04:00

The trouble with rebooting a bit of culture (Star Trek, Doom, Sherlock Holmes, any superhero ever) is that you inevitably have to choose what to keep and what to lose. Everything depends on those decisions, because you might have new and interesting version of a series that was good but that's become stale. Or, you might end up with something that barely resembles what you were trying to renew. The latter is what's happened with the Splinter Cell series. Over the weekend I played through the campaign of the latest Splinter Cell Conviction and can say that it wasn't a Splinter Cell game. It wasn't a bad game, not at all, but it was not a continuation of the stealth-based series of games that I love.

The Splinter Cell series (and I'll be referencing Chaos Theory almost exclusively) is based upon being hidden, both philosophically and literally. As Sam Fisher, you have to stay in the shadows, hide in vents, hang from pipes, find hidden paths, and stay silent to accomplish your mission. Having a guard or soldier spot you meant your objectives would be much harder and far riskier to accomplish. Silence and invisibility was also part of the philosophy of the game. As an agent of Third Echelon, a division within the NSA, Fisher was tasked with stealing information. Not killing people. Killing guards could not only be detrimental to your mission, as it leaves evidence of your existence, but could cause you to fail your mission. (Several missions involve infiltrating American facilities or the facilities of an ally. As an American spy that "does not exist," killing American soldiers or the soldiers of allies is not allowed. However, because these soldiers consider you an enemy you still have to neutralize them.) You steal information regarding cyberwarfare and arms deals. You can kill people to steal that information, but it is not necessary.

Fraser McMillan describes his Chaoes Theory experience:

Having killed the pair in a panicky moral haze, I'd decided that enough was enough, and within two more missions of similar dilemma I had firmly concluded that I'd be as non-lethal as possible for the game's remainder. I like to think I went pretty far out of my way to deal with enemies via hand-to-hand combat or incapacitating strangulation, resisting the knife's brutally efficient allure or the pistol's middle-distance aptitude in favour of sticky shockers and gas-expelling wall cameras.

And it enhanced the play experience as well as satisfying my own entirely selfish aversion to guilt. My spatial awareness was enhanced, my takedowns were more creative and my control over Sam more careful. Chaos Theory's nature is one of precision and tactfulness. Sneaking in silently and extracting an hour later without having even fired a gun is something that few games support, never mind encourage, and the manner in which the latter is achieved is remarkably understated.

This is why Conviction is not a continuation of the Splinter Cell series. Not just because the element of stealth has been balanced with the element of action, but because the philosophy of the game is different. Conviction is more akin to a Jason Bourne movie, where Jason Bourne is hidden sometimes and other times he's running around shooting people or killing them in slick fashion. In Conviction, Sam Fisher is not longer an agent of Third Echelon, so his mission is no longer stealing information and he is no longer compelled be silent or invisible or to not kill anyone. In fact, Conviction forces you to kill. The game forces you to shoot people, blow them up, or drop heavy objects on them. And, the forced violence of Conviction cannot be reconciled with the ambiguity of Chaos Theory. A game that relies on bullets and death cannot be connected to a games that relies on shadows and silence. Other than the names of characters and of organizations, these two games have nothing to do with one another. Beyond that, Conviction cannot be said to relate to the larger Splinter Cell series.

Ash

2010-04-13T17:31:00.004-04:00

Am I the only one disturbed by the new Gears of War 3 trailer, and not in a good way?

It reminds me of a story told to me (this could easily be apocryphal) about the early excavations at Pompeii. When they discovered cavities within the earth and hardened ash, cavities that were later revealed to be the vestiges of people that were consumed by the volcano's pyroclastic flow, they poured plaster into them to capture what these people looked like at the moment of their deaths. Eventually, a more gelatinous hardening material was used to fill newly discovered cavities. These casts were found so lifelike and so disturbing that the gelatinous material was abandoned for the plaster. I find myself having a similar reaction looking at the ash casts in this trailer. They're disturbing to point of asking are they necessary? And is it really necessary for Dom to go smashing through those casts?

I'm a big believer in letting creators (authors, comedians, game designers, etc.) do whatever they want, no matter how offensive, 'cause that's how we break new ground culturally. But I do believe that creators have a responsibility unto themselves to ask if the offensive components of their material serve the larger purpose of the art. The word "bitch" is ugly and its use awful, but I understand its use in certain hip-hop songs and certain movies as it represents a reality that should not be glossed over. I don't want to tell the Gears of War 3 developers what they can have in the game. I do want them to ask themselves if what is in the game is necessary and not gratuitous.

The Score

2010-04-13T09:22:00.002-04:00

Steven James Snyder has an awesome bit on the music from this scene from Sunshine:

It's really a beautifully constructed sequence, from the nuclear explosion of sunrays to the ways in which Kaneda turns to confront his destiny head-on, to the way that Capa is so worried about his colleague that he almost forgets to take shelter from the shockwave in time. The action all looks great, but it also bears an unforgettable sound. John Murphy's score is big and brash, less about building up to a climax that maintaining a certain level of high-throttle adrenaline. His music doesn't so much build as emanate. And appropriately enough, this becomes the perfect counterpoint for a game-changing turn of events - a life-altering decision to plunge into the white void.

I think what John Murphy's score gets right is that it tells you where the scene is going from the first few bars. There's no suspense, no wondering which way it'll go. You know Kaneda will die. It's undeniable. It's so fitting because it corresponds with Danny Boyle's conception of the Sun as a raw, unyeilding source of energy. It helps that the score is as powerful as the image of a wall of white energy.

Nihilism as Comedy

2010-04-12T11:45:00.001-04:00

KFC Continues Its Reign of Terror

2010-04-12T10:06:00.000-04:00

A bacon cheese sandwich which two pieces of fried chicken as buns. Which reminds me of:

Just a Reminder

2010-04-12T09:02:00.001-04:00

In case anyone forgot.

My New Favorite Game Trailer

2010-04-09T15:20:00.003-04:00

The Crysis 2 trailer is here and it's the creepiest game trailer I've ever seen.

Setting the game in New York was a great idea. The best moments of the Halo campaigns, and there were very few, were the sequences set in urban settings. There can never been too much urban warfare in a FPS.

UPDATE:
I just realized I wrote "...set in urban settings."

While We're on the Subject

2010-04-09T11:31:00.003-04:00

I've been geeking out on foreign policy and nuclear policy for a couple days, so I figure that's how I'll close out the week. Matt Yglesias writes:

So my best cut at articulating the difference in a high-level way is that the right sees the world as zero-sum. Arrangements that advance the interests of others are inherently suspect because the mere fact that (say) the Russians think a deal is worth signing indicates that it must be bad for the United States. Progressives see a positive-sum world and believe in advancing American interests by means that including allowing others to advance their own interests. Progressives recognize the Hobbesian aspects of the international system that make positive-sum interactions difficult to obtain, but we see this as a challenge that can be overcome and seek means of overcoming it. Conservatives, meanwhile, are perpetually tempting fate—by sending the message to the world that America cares most about preserving its power relative to others, we indicate that the only way for others to advance their interests is by undermining our position. On human rights, conservatives have (recently) embraced the rhetoric, but the deeper structure of their worldview makes it impossible to incorporate genuine concern for the well-being of foreigners inevitably rendering professions of humanitarian concern hollow and opportunistic.

Yglesias is far too general in his misappropriation of foreign policy ideology. The simple assignation of "the right = zero-sum, the left = positive sum" is slipshod at best. If by "the right" Yglesias means the segment of conservatives that have realist inclinations, then zero-sum is somewhat accurate but not completely. If by "the right" Yglesias means neocons then he is completely wrong. Neocon ideology stems from Wilsonian ideals and the left's Democratic Peace Theory. Of course, necons have abandoned Wilson's belief in international institutions, but they wholeheartedly embrace his belief in democracies. And they believe that liberal democracies are inherently peaceful, as stated by DPT. Neocon theory isn't concerned with zero sum calculations because the end is a global pacification like it was with Wilson. As for those on the right with realist sympathies, just because they buy into a zero sum basis of international relations does not mean they believe agreement between nations is necessarily bad. To a certain extent, what Yglesias treats as differences in foreign policy is politics. The Republicans will look for any way to attack democrats, even if they don't really disagree. Liz Cheney's defense of Karzai is proof of that.

Late to the Party

2010-04-08T16:16:00.003-04:00

South Park makes fun of Facebook, several years after it was funny to make fun of Facebook.

Bad Criticism of the NPR

2010-04-08T09:35:00.004-04:00

The worst thing about the President's NPR is that commentators take it seriously. This from Mackenzie Eaglen at NRO is an example:

The NPR is full of problems. For example, while the strategy outlines many current threats accurately, its solutions are based on the misguided belief that the right message is enough to scare Iran and North Korea into submission.

The NPR inappropriately treats rogue states as greater threats than nuclear states, but I've been over that. The real problem with Eaglen's criticism is that she's attacking the NPR for being what it is: a message. What, other than a message, was she expecting from the NPR? Even if the NPR said it was US policy to nuke any country we don't like it would still be just a message.

She continues her criticism:

Another problem is the assumption that if the U.S. leads by example, others will follow. While this works well for Army infantrymen, it does not work well in the international arena. U.S. leaders must view the world as it is, and not as they wish it to be. This means acknowledging the reality that in the past decade alone, the number of global nuclear powers has grown from six to nine. The expanding nuclear club belies the presumption that reducing our own nuclear-weapons numbers will in itself lead to a safer world.

Six to nine in a decade? This fact would be frightening if from 1952 to 1964 three countries hadn't joined the nuclear club, but they did so it's not. Is Eaglen's argument really that because three countries developed nukes in two less years than it happened before the US is less safe? The correct way to appraise the history of nuclear proliferation is in the 65 years since the first use of a nuclear weapon only nine countries have developed and currently maintain a nuke. That's remarkably less frightening, isn't it? That's because it doesn't portray nuclear weapons as spreading like wildfire.

More Eaglen:

The NPR unnecessarily takes options off the table for responding to chemical or biological attacks. The nation should not tie one hand behind its back when deciding how to defend American citizens.

This is completely false. Per Marc Ambinder:

The administration explicitly retains the right to put the nuclear option back on the table if a non-nuclear country violates its treaty obligations, or it stands up its conventional, biological or chemical weapon capacities in a way that threatens the U.S. and its allies. The NPR contains that self-exonerating flip. The nuclear option remains on the table.

Even if this option did not remain, the NPR is a bunch of words that could easily be contradicted by the President at any moment.

Then Eaglen lies outright:

An irony lies in the fact that by limiting the use of nuclear weapons, Obama’s vision increases the value of conventional military forces — which Obama is busy cutting. His defense budgets may compromise U.S. military superiority, including its air dominance, maritime control, space control, and ability to project power to distant regions.

The President is not cutting military spending. Remember his big spending freeze, the freeze that halted all spending increases except, among other major programs, military spending? I hear this line of attack repeated often and it's just not true. Military spending has only increased under Barack Obama. The cutting Eaglen is referring to is the cutting of useless and overpriced fighter programs to spend more money on urban warfare programs. But even if the President were cutting military spending, the US would still far outpace the nearest spender.

There are good reasons to criticize the NPR, but these are not among them.

Meaningless

2010-04-08T08:02:00.000-04:00

Stephen Walt echoes what I said:

I'll concede that this new statement may have some public relations value -- i.e, it lowers the priority given to nuclear weapons in U.S. strategic thinking, consistent with Obama's commitment to eventually reduce global nuclear arsenals. But from a purely strategic perspective, this new statement is largely meaningless. To the extent that it does matter, it may even be counter-productive.

Here's why. No matter what the U.S. government says about its nuclear strategy, no potential adversary can confidently assume that the U.S. would stick to its declared policy in the event of a crisis or war. If you were a world leader thinking about launching a major conventional attack on an important U.S. ally or interest, or contemplating the use of chemical or biological weapons in a situation where the United States was involved, would you conclude that it was safe to do so simply because Barack Obama said back in 2010 that the U.S. wasn't going to use nuclear weapons in that situation?

Of course you wouldn't, because there is absolutely nothing to stop the United States from changing its mind. You'd worry that the United States might conclude that the interests at stake were worth issuing a nuclear threat, and maybe even using a nuclear weapon, and that it really didn't matter what anyone had said in a posture review or an interview with a few journalists. And you'd also have to worry that the situation might escalate in unpredictable or unintended ways -- what Thomas Schelling famously termed the "threat that leaves something to chance -- and thereby ruin your whole day.

The President's New Nuke Strategy

2010-04-07T09:00:00.006-04:00

I can't say I don't like the President's Nuclear Posture Review because I don't really believe it. Talk is cheap, as they say, and this talk ranks somewhere between the President scolding Israel and imposing sanctions on Iran. But, I'll get to that later. I'd first like to address this piece of ridiculousness in the Times:

Mr. Obama’s strategy is a sharp shift from those of his predecessors and seeks to revamp the nation’s nuclear posture for a new age in which rogue states and terrorist organizations are greater threats than traditional powers like Russia and China.

This is either an odd bit of editorial in a news article or the President stated this in some manner. In either case, it's neocon bullshit. In what universe, is a rogue state or a terrorist group a greater than countries like Russia or China which have standing armies and vast arsenals of nuclear weapons? Russia and China can obliterate the US; no rogue state has the capability to reach beyond its region. No terrorist group can strike anything greater than very specific targets, such as buildings, planes, or subways. (I don't mean to minimize the devastation and pain caused by such terrorist attacks, but an honest comparison of must be made between capabilities of terrorists and the capabilities of ICBM armed states). Only in the minds of George Bush, Condoleezza Rice, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and other neocons does such logic work and it's frightening to see the President agree with it and the Times not interrogate it.

About this, the President is not wrong:

For the first time, the United States is explicitly committing not to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, even if they attacked the United States with biological or chemical weapons or launched a crippling cyberattack.

Those threats, Mr. Obama argued, could be deterred with “a series of graded options,” a combination of old and new conventional weapons.

Conventional weapons could serve as a deterrent and already do. The United States polices the world merely by stationing aircraft carriers in specific locations. Ever wonder why there's always a carrier group in the Persian Gulf? The threat of an American attack is near omnipresent around the globe. So this shift is not that revolutionary, I just don't believe it.

Here's why:

White House officials said the new strategy would include the option of reconsidering the use of nuclear retaliation against a biological attack, if the development of such weapons reached a level that made the United States vulnerable to a devastating strike.

...

The document to be released Tuesday after months of study led by the Defense Department will declare that “the fundamental role” of nuclear weapons is to deter nuclear attacks on the United States, allies or partners, a narrower presumption than the past. But Mr. Obama rejected the formulation sought by arms control advocates to declare that the “sole role” of nuclear weapons is to deter a nuclear attack.

The President has officially declared that the United States will not use nuclear weapons in response to biological and chemical weapons, except in the case of a rogue state, and except if we later decide we do want to use them. This strategy is interesting only because it states its ambiguity outright. Past nuclear strategy was something that was best figured out by interpreting the Pentagon's actions. So, the President made a statement that the US can be held accountable for. But, does anyone really believe that if the President has even weak intelligence suggesting an imminent biological or chemical attack, he'll not consider for a moment using nuclear weapons?

The Problem with Fringe

2010-04-06T13:32:00.000-04:00

Fringe is a good show...or it can be. It varies from episode to episode and that's the problem. What is Fringe? A science-y version of Lost? A rip off of The X-Files? Something else entirely? I'm not even sure the creators know because in any given episode, you'll get one of those options. Last week's episode was a Lost episode. We were taken back in time to watch Walter Bishop abduct then young son Peter from the alternate universe. This informs us of Walter's motivations in the present. Two episodes earlier, we saw the last of six weeks of of Monster of the Week episodes. These are X-Files episodes. The X-Files had a simple formula of switching between mythology episodes to Monster of the Week episodes each week. Fringe has changed this formula by keeping the monster episodes and throwing out almost all of the mythology episodes. Then you get an episode like Jacksonville, which combines character development and narrative development, mythology and science. Jacksonville is an episode when Fringe is being something else entirely.

Fringe can go any of these three ways. It can be The X-Files. That would be disappointing because the Monster of the Week format is the least fulfilling. It can be Lost. That would'nt be inventive, but Lost has a great format to be copied. Or, it could be something else entirely. It could strike out on its own in this genre become a great show. The problem is that Fringe is trying to be all three and it's just not working out. Fans either love the monsters or they hate them. They either love the mythology or they hate it. Because the show has no focus. The creators need to decide who they want to please, because attempting to please everyone is leading to a discordant, uneven whole.

Splinter Cell Launch

2010-04-01T14:03:00.000-04:00

The new Splinter Cell launch trailer is here:

I played the demo off Xbox Live and I can say without doubt I'll be picking this game up (as opposed to Just Cause 2's demo, which only proved terrible controls can ruin great mechanics). Conviction's play is a lot of fun. The hand-to-hand combat is slick, the mark and execute gives you a ton of options, and there is still an element of stealth to this game despite all the action. The stealth element is the lead up to the action. In Chaos Theory, you could completely avoid guards and accomplish your mission without firing a shot or being seen. Conviction isn't like that. You have to fight. You can't sneak your way out of any situation. So you end up using stealth to put you in the best position for a fight.

While the gameplay is great, the story looks absolutely ridiculous. EMPs? The White House? A domestic intelligence agency assassinating the President? While Chaos Theory never went that far. It's believable that a Blackwater-esque PMC would attempt to secure for itself weapons technology and sell it to the highest bidder. Hopefully, Conviction's trailer gives the wrong impression.

Is it me or does Michael Ironside's voice no longer fit Sam Fisher? It's almost too gravelly, too bass. Whenever I see Fisher talk I'm immediately reminded that it's Michael Ironside.

Denfensive Maneuvers

2010-03-31T11:32:00.004-04:00

Matt Yglesias reacts to the President opening new coastal drilling areas:

I don’t understand this at all. Increased coastal drilling would be a small price to pay in exchange for actual congressional votes for an overall energy package that shifts us to a low-carbon economy over time. But any price is too high a price to pay in exchange for nothing at all. This isn’t the greatest environmental crime in human history, but it sure does seem like poor legislative strategy.

This isn't legislative strategy. This has nothing to do with legislation. This is politics pure and simple. There's no deal, no trade. The campaign to reelect Barack Obama has already begun and opening the eastern seaboard to drilling is part of it. This is protection. When some Republican goes on TV and says "Barack Obama has the most liberal/radical record of any president in history," Robert Gibbs gets to say, "That just doesn't stand up to the facts. Look: he opened the coast to drilling as part of his centrist energy plan." Doing this allows the President to take away a line of attack from Republicans like Sarah Palin, who is wrongfully regarded as an energy expert. This is only defensive, only politics and that's why it's so depressing. The President traded the destruction of the east coast for a better shot at being reelected.

Racebending

2010-03-31T08:54:00.002-04:00

Racebending is a delightful term thought up by fans of Avatar: The Last Airbender. It refers to two things: the power of characters in the cartoon to bend elements (airbending, waterbending, earthbending, firbending) and M. Night Shyamalan's casting for The Last Airbender movie. Avatar: The Last Airbender takes a lot of its inspiration from Eastern cultures and certain characters, most notably Katara and Sokka, are obviously dark-skinned. As the trailer shows, M. Night obviously did not cast dark-skinned actors for these roles, in fact he cast pasty white actors. In other words, he did some racebending. Some of the fans of the cartoon are freaking out. M. Night recently addressed this issue with io9:

When we were casting, I was like, "I don't care who walks through my door, whoever is best for the part. I'm going to figure it out like a chessgame." Ideally we separate the nations ethnically — ideally. I didn't know how or what it was going to be. And it was so fluid. For example if you found a great brother, [but] he didn't go with my favorite Katara, then we couldn't use him. Theoretical things like that. There was an Ang that we really loved, but he was like 5'10." There's all kinds of issues that come to the table physically. And I had a board of all the people that I was considering, the seven or eight. There was, at one time, a Chinese Sokka and Katara, and they were over here. One of them was a better actor than the other, and so I was gathering my pros and cons.

I don't think we can ask much more of M. Night in terms of casting. Here's the thing: of course you can find good actors of other ethnicities. However, being a good actor and having the same skin tone as a character are not enough to be cast as that character. While acting ability should and, according to M. Night, did come first, whoever plays Aang has to be a certain height and weight, has to have the right shaped head, have martial arts skills, and work well with the other actors. Furthermore, Katara and Sokka, because they are siblings, have to be of the same ethnicity. If the best actress for Katara is white, then the actor for Sokka must also be white.

Some fans argue that Katara and Sokka are Innuit and that M. Night should have represented that. The problem with that line of reasoning is that Avatar takes place in a fictional world where there are no Innuit people. The people the fans call Innuit are the Water Tribe. The Water Tribe lives at the north and south poles and last I checked the Innuit don't live at the north or south poles. Some fans think that the Fire Nation is a stand in for China, some say India, others just say the East. Assigning real world ethnicities and nationalities to those of a fictional world is a fool's errand. The proper thing for fans to do is to not draw a relation between the two at all. The creators of the Avatar cartoon took elements of many cultures and distilled them into four nations. Four. So none of these fictional nations is going to correspond to just one nation or ethnicity in the real world.

Smurfs: The Movie?

2010-03-29T15:01:00.003-04:00

This is one of the worst ideas for an adaptation I've ever heard:

The idea of the new movie, the first in a potential franchise, is that the Smurfs enter the real world and the lives of a young couple played by stars Neil Patrick Harris and Jayma Mays.

Potential franchise? Were the Smurfs really that popular? And if they were, do we really want them to be that popular again? Isn't there a reason we always refer back to the Smurfs as a joke?

It gets worse:

“We liked the idea of juxtaposing the Smurf values with the modern world,” Minghella explained. “Smurfs grow their own food and are very environmentally conscious. They don’t have technology or electricity. They do everything together and are really supportive of each other. For us, that was the starting point. Let’s bring that magic into the real world, the grounded world.”

I've seen this movie before, it was called Avatar. Only Avatar was cool to look at and didn't have Katy Perry in it. They actually cast Katy Perry in this movie.

Then there's the magic:

So the blue people are actually, uh, green. That catches the humans off-guard at first. “They don’t know how to react, but the Smurfs become an agent of change and bring magic into their lives,” Minghella said.

The Smurfs? Really? Didn't we learn anything from Garfield?

Or Alvin and the Chipmunks?

And can't we have movies that express something other than how awesome it is to be green? Not that I'm against being green, but I know there are other morals out there with which to indoctrinate children. How about losing weight?

The Trouble of Playing with Everyone

2010-03-29T10:46:00.000-04:00

Chris Kohler has a nice preview/review of Crackdown 2 and APB at PAX East. But there's one part of his post that I want to highlight:

As I continued to play APB, I watched the chat window in the corner to see what the beta testers were saying to each other. “There should be a way to identify all the people playing at PAX,” one said. “We should all gang up on them.”

That’s one of the problems that APB is going to face: Other people are dicks. Hopefully the final game’s balance keeps things fun even in a world where player-versus-player is unavoidable.

That seems to be the familiar beat of online gaming; it's not even exclusive to the player-versus-player format. Some of the worst online gaming experiences of my life have happened when I was on the same team as other people. There's a survival map in Left4Dead where all four team members have to jump onto an elevator and then activate it for the level to start and the zombie rush to begin. What some players like to do is jump on the elevator before everyone else and activate it so the other team members are left on the ground to face the zombie, thus ruining that playthrough of the level. When someone does this once it's mildly funny. The second time requires everyone to explain to that player what the point of survival is: everyone is supposed to survive. The tenth time, you quit the game.

The thing is that's not a rare experience. From Halo to Modern Warfare 2, games that are supposed to involve teamwork necessarily involve teammates being dicks to other teammates. Game developers abstractly laud this behavior as part of the freedom open world or team gaming, as if setting loose the malign urges of human nature, which are normally hemmed in by the threat of actual physical violence, is a good thing. Online gaming could use some policing. Xbox Live could use some policing. Because, like Kohler says, other people are dicks (it's a variation on the Sartre line). That's the problem with being in a world with no consequence with other people: other people are there. Online gaming needs more consequence.

Fun with Spray Paint

2010-03-24T07:59:00.004-04:00

The people over at FWD are flipping out over this Glee promo.

meloukhia at FWD asks:

What’s Wrong With This Promotional Still For Glee?

It's for Glee?

No, meloukhia's problem with the promo is that Artie, the lovable cripple, has his face spray painted instead of his body. Maybe it's just me but I don't get it. I tried reading some of the comments for further explanation. Georgina commented:

It’s actually quite a disturbing image when you deconstruct it. From the violence of being sprayed in the face with a chemical to the position of Artie’s hands and feet making it look like his hands and feet have been bound, there is just so much that is horribly wrong about this picture.

Maybe Georgina shouldn't deconstruct images 'cause I see pictures of people with their hands together and/or feet crossed all the time and never once has the thought occurred to me, "you know that person with their hands together looks like they've been tied up."

TheDeviantE commented:

oooh oooh! call on me! Is it perhaps because, though the other characters are given the indignity of having an outfit ruined by spray paint, ummmm the kid in the wheelchair apparently is fucking ASSAULTED by the spray paint wielder? Could that be it!?!

Actually, they're all technically assaulted and they all suffer the indignity of being spray painted. So what's the problem?

Lauredhel commented:

There’s also the aspect, along with the assault, of the erasure of his identity by obscuring his face. It’s creepy, creepy, creepy.

He doesn't have an identity, he's a fictional character. He is not a person. He is not real. Nor is this image real. It is artifice, artificial, fake. "Artie" is not actually assaulted because he doesn't exist. Maybe the people at FWD should worry about the problems of real disabled people and not the make-believe ones.

Shales Attacks Amanpour

2010-03-23T15:49:00.003-04:00

Glenn Greenwald goes after Tom Shales's ridiculous and ugly attacks on Christiane Amanpour:

So here we finally have a prominent journalist with a half-Persian background -- in an extremely homogenized media culture which steadfastly excludes from Middle Eastern coverage voices from that region -- and her national origin is immediately cited as a means of questioning her journalistic objectivity and even opposing her as a choice to host This Week (can someone from Iran with an Iranian father possibly be objective???). Could the double standard here be any more obvious or unpleasant?

No, it couldn't. And, the rest of his charges, such as Amanpour not fitting the Sunday morning mold, are bogus as well. Shales is supposed to be a media critic and as such identify when a medium or format has become stale. And is there anything more stale than Sunday morning talk shows? Every one has the same format. Interviews with political hacks, politicians, and, if you're lucky, foreign dignitaries, and then a panel of commentators and pundits. That's every Sunday, whether it's This Week, Meet the Press, Face the Nation, State of the Union, or Fox News Sunday. That Amanpour has more depth with international news is good thing. It's a breath of fresh air. There is news happening outside Washington, outside the US for that matter, that is just as important as whether someone yelled "baby killer" at Bart Stupak. Hopefully, Amanpour will bring us that news.

Chris Evans Is Cap'n America

2010-03-23T14:41:00.000-04:00

The news hit yesterday that Chris Evans is all but signed to be the legendary super soldier Steve Rogers. I don't know enough about Captain America comics to comment on the character. I can however speak to the acting chops of Chris Evans. I've mentioned before how amazingly awesome and unjustly underrated I think the movie Sunshine is. Stemming from my unnatural love of that movie is a love of all the actors involved in it, including Chris Evans.

Evans plays young characters best and seemingly can't escape that appearance. In Sunshine, he played Mace, the most utilitarian and grounded of the ensemble of character. He's the first to sacrifice the crew, including himself, to accomplish the mission. However, there are various cracks in this facade, like sticking his hand in super cold water to retrieve a wrench, that allow Evans to play the reckless youth. This predilection for playing the hooligan is taken to the extreme in the Fantastic 4 movies, two terrible flicks. Evans is okay as Johnny Storm, but his work is nothing special. The same thing is true of his role in Push: he's fine but nothing special. Youthful, but at times serious. That's the curse of Evans's career so far. He's been type cast as the good-natured jock and rightfully so. I'll leave to others to say whether that fits the Captain America character. Evans does have the ability to break out of his mold as he showed us in Sunshine.

Healthcare Passes

2010-03-22T07:55:00.000-04:00

And Jonathan Chait is in love:

Let me offer a ludicrously premature opinion: Barack Obama has sealed his reputation as a president of great historical import. We don't know what will follow in his presidency, and it's quite possible that some future event--a war, a scandal--will define his presidency. But we do know that he has put his imprint on the structure of American government in a way that no Democratic president since Lyndon Johnson has.

"Great historical import?" What low bar to set for a president. George W. Bush, Richard Nixon, Woodrow Wilson were presidents of "great historical import," so what the hell kind of distinction is that? This title is meaningfully positive if you define it as "a president that passed major social legislation." Oh wait, George Bush passed a huge unpaid prescription drug program for seniors. Nixon put in place the employer based health care we have now. Wait, this definition will fix the problem: "a Democratic president of modern times that passed major social legislation." Congratz, Pres. Obama

Karl Rove and David Plouffe Suck

2010-03-21T16:26:00.004-04:00

This was easily the worst meeting of the minds ever. Here's a short bit of it:

Rove: "This thing is paid for with Bernie-Madoff-style accounting. ... It's a gigantic disaster."

Plouffe: "Karl and the Republicans would be familiar with that."

Rove: "You will bankrupt the country if this bill passes. ... For God's sake, will you stop throwing around epitaphs [sic] and deal with the facts for once, David? ... We will fight the election on this,. and the Democrats will have significant losses in the House and Senate as a result of this bill."

Plouffe: "If Karl and a lot of Republicans want to call the election already, they ought to break out that 'Mission Accomplished' banner."

Rove: "That's cheesy, David. ... You should not denigrate the mission of the USS Abraham Lincoln."

What was discussed here? I don't know. I have this feeling like watching this "debate" made me stupider. Rove actually said epitaphs instead of epithets. He accused the Democrats of Bernie Madoff accounting and, worse yet, Plouffe returned the same accusation of the Republicans. Then Plouffe brought up the "Mission Accomplished" banner...for what reason I have no clue. At what point will Democrats drop the "Mission Accomplished" attack? (I know Keith Olbermann won't, but that's because he's a pure ideologue). And then Rove acts as if Plouffe was insulting the sailors of the USS Abraham Lincoln. This "debate" wasn't worthy of airing on television. It wasn't interesting, it wasn't news. These two rank partisans said exactly what you'd expect them to say, except that's not even true. What they said was far worse than what you'd expect them to say.

Buddhism and Cyberbullying

2010-03-21T11:12:00.004-04:00

A California court has ruled that cyberbullying, or, more accurately, threatening cyberbullying, is not protected speech. Apparently, a group of students decided to comment on another student's promotional website. These comments were not nice. While I'll get to the matter of unprotected speech in a second, I'd just like to highlight a bit from Kim Zetter's post:

The student-defendant stated in court documents that he was directed to the “Danny Alexander” site by another student and was “offended and put off by its ‘I am better than you’ attitude and its blatant bragging and self promotion.”

“I had spent time in the past studying Buddhism,” the defendant stated, “and in light of the Buddhist tradition of quiet understatement, the website’s distinctively narcissistic tone was disturbing.”

So he posted a message threatening to kill “Danny Alexander” with an ice pick.

The defendant says he was inspired by the derogatory comments of other posters and wanted to “one-up” them.

“I was in a playful mood and decided to add my own message to the internet graffiti contest that was apparently going on,” he said. “My message is fanciful, hyperbolic, jocular and taunting and was motivated by [the plaintiff's] pompous, self aggrandizing, and narcissistic website — not his sexual orientation.”

The student says he later sent a letter of apology to the plaintiff and his family regretting his “infantile, immature” conduct. His father also grounded him and canceled his internet account.

Well, now that his account has been canceled, it's time to move on.

The legal definition of free speech has always had exceptions. You cannot cause imminent harm by yelling fire in a crowded theater, you cannot write or say factually untrue statements about another person. The courts used to recognize the limit on fighting words, or speech that would incite a fight, but no longer. All these limits are subject to definitions that vary with the Court. What is at hand here is the limit on threats. You have no legal right to threaten someone. The question in this case is whether what these teens wrote are rightfully considered threats. Do the defendants have to have believed their statements were threats or does the plaintiff have to have taken those statements as threats? Do we take the statements at face value? Because they read like threats, but then I've said some stupid things in my younger years, things that would sound mean and threatening were they not laden with sarcasm. The internet allows for a lot of fun, doesn't it.

Song of the Day

2010-03-18T17:48:00.003-04:00

It's Time for a Change

2010-03-18T17:43:00.001-04:00

Count me as one of those psyched to hear that ABC did the brave thing and hired Christiane Amanpour to host This Week. This a gamble, not for Amanpour, but the viewer. Amanpour will do well no matter what the format of This Week is under her auspices. As a viewer, here's hoping Amanpour brings her interview and world news skills to Sunday morning. In the words of James Poniewozik:

We already have four or five (depending which shows you count) interview shows working that same circuit every Sunday morning. Do we need that many? With Amanpour, who's more known for her work in the Balkans than in the Beltway, ABC has a chance to do a show that breaks from the Sunday shows' myopic obsessions, that focuses on policies and ideas over partisan handicapping (and kneecapping). It could even—crazy talk, I know—build a show that focuses on world news rather than Washington news.

Amanpour, like Charlie Rose, understands the power of the television interview. Of course, Amanpour and Rose have completely different styles. Amanpour is more aggressive and more pressing with the person across the table. Being the host of This Week will require her to "interview" such ignoble people as John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi, people who make evading questions and sniping at the opposition an art form. But if she gets to bring a little bit of the rest of the world to Sunday, that'll be a step forward.

Chat Roulette

2010-03-16T12:49:00.002-04:00

Song of the Day

2010-03-08T17:13:00.000-05:00

I don't know if I've ever written about my unnatural love for a cappella and choral music. I tune into WERS on weekend afternoons for my fix. I'm not one to buy the music of a cappella groups 'cause studio production ruins the music. To enjoy this kind of music you need too see it live. Here's a group I just learned about: the Penn Masala.

Back in Wonderland

2010-03-08T09:17:00.000-05:00

So I decided to not post during my spring break week too. I started playing Borderlands, an insanely addictive role playing shooter, I read a collection of Pablo Neruda poems, and I saw Alice in Wonderland.

About Alice, it seems the reviews are uniformly lukewarm. The movie is described as both visually arresting and, as computer generated imagery goes these days, boring. When he's not ruining the childhood of Lewis fans, Burton is stealing from the fantasy blockbusters of the last ten years. Oh, and my favorite critique, the movie contains a too unified narrative.

While some of the criticism is spot on, I think they're missing the boat on what is altogether a solid fantasy epic with an awesome female protagonist, which is a plus in this genre because it is such a rarity. There was the Golden Compass, with Lyra Silvertongue, but that movie failed to be good. I've never taken the Bechdel test that seriously, I think throwing in female characters for gender equality's sake is contrary to true gender equality. The reason why I find it so cool that Alice in Wonderland presents a female character in a good movie is I'm bored with male characters in the fantasy genre. There are so many of them. And it's not like there aren't other fantasy stories out there with female protagonists that Hollywood could steal from. They just don't. Or, here's a crazy idea, how 'bout a scriptwriter comes up with a relatively original fantasy epic that involves a woman not just as the protagonist, but as the ass-kicking, day-saving hero of the story? Of course, it won't matter if the movie is terrible, but if it's as good as Alice in Wonderland, which was good, it'll be a breath of fresh air.

Break

2010-02-22T13:53:00.002-05:00

I'm in the middle of midterms, so posts will be near non-existent for a week or so.

Just a Reminder

2010-02-19T09:33:00.000-05:00

In case anyone forgot.

Song of the Day

2010-02-18T16:20:00.001-05:00

It's the Ten Year Anniversary of the Movie Pitch Black, What Did You Get Vin Diesel?

2010-02-18T13:17:00.003-05:00

'Cause he got you something: another Riddick movie. Before you say that's the worst gift ever, let's take a look back and see how good the first two Riddick movies were.

Man, what a classic.

Who doesn't remember those scenes?

This is your new Riddick movie gift:

"Though billed as a back-to-basics approach to the character popularized by Diesel, the script features the character -- the most wanted man in the galaxy -- left for dead on a barren alien planet, dealing with 'trisons' (three-legged bisons) and 'mud demons.' He must then contend with two squads of bounty hunters, one of which ride rockets called jetcycles."

Mud Demons and jetcycles? Vin, you shouldn't have.

Song of the Day

2010-02-17T12:18:00.000-05:00

Avatar (Not the Blue People One)

2010-02-17T09:17:00.001-05:00

To prove that top 10 lists are stupid, I've already found an oversight in my top 10 cartoons of the last decade. As was made clear by this Superbowl ad, M. Night Shyamalan has written and directed a new movie based upon a cartoon called Avatar: The Last Airbender. And, while the movie looks fun (although you can never trust M. Night), I took the time to give the cartoon another chance. I watched one or two episodes when it first premiered and I was unimpressed. It seemed like your typical Nicktoons cartoon and an American attempt at anime. Coming back to it now, I realize I should've given Avatar more of a chance, because is one of the top 10 cartoons of the last decade. It is surprisingly well written, has surprisingly complex characters, hell, everything about this cartoon is a surprise.

As premises go, Avatar is your usual fantasy epic. There are four nations, based on the four elements of air, earth, fire, and water. Each nation takes on the attributes of its element. The Fire Nation is fierce and aggressive, the Air Nomads are peaceful, fun-loving monks. Some of the people of each nation can control and manipulate their nation's element; this is called bending. One person, called the Avatar, has the ability to bend all four elements, and he or she is tasked with maintaining a balance among all the nations and elements. The Avatar is continually reincarnated in a cycle through each nation. The intro of each episode tells us that the four nations lived in harmony until the Fire Nation committed a genocide and wiped out the Air Nomads. After the death of the Fire Nation Avatar, the next Avatar was born into the Air Nomads. This Avatar, named Aang, escaped before the genocide and accidentally entered into hibernation in a iceberg. He's rediscovered one hundred years later by Katara and Sokka of the Water Tribes. With the Fire Nation bearing down on the world, Katara and Sokka ust help Aang train to become the fully realized Avatar and save the world.

The characters in Avatar are the show. as good as the animation is and as awesome as the writing is, this show would be nothing without its characters. While certainly not the best among them, Aang, the protogonist, is quite rich as a character. Caught between earthly and spiritual concerns, personal and worldly affairs, Aang isn't a hero in the fantasy epic tradition. Fantasy heroes tend to be larger than life and to be suited the heroic task they must complete. Aang is a child; he's innocent and exuberant. He might be the Avatar, but he's limited, even fearful of the task that lies before him. The only moment when he becomes capable of completing his mission is when his past lives force themselves upon him in what is called the "Avatar state." In this state all the power and knowledge of past Avatars is combined within him, turning him into a whole other person. Indeed, we learn that Aang is at much at conflict with his role as the Avatar as he is with the Fire Nation. He refuses to give up his love for Katara and he refuses to become a murderer, both seemingly necessary for him to fulfill is responsibility. Katara, an immensely powerful waterbender, seems generic, but I find her to be one of the scariest characters of the cartoon because of her ability to bloodbend, that is manipulate the blood within the veins of a person. She is presented as nurturing and motherly, but there's a fierceness in her character that continually resurfaces. She insists on learning how to fight with her waterbending rather than learning how to be a healer. She's jealous that Aang at first learns waterbending more swiftly. Through her determination, she becomes a master waterbender before even Aang and becomes his teacher. When confronted with the death of her friends, Katara is forced use her bloodbending ability to save them. However, when presented with the chance of confronting her mothers killer, she uses bloodbending to torture him. Without a doubt my favorite character is Toph, a blind girl that is exceptionally skilled at earthbending. She is hilarious.

Toph is driven by pride in a John Locke kind of way. Her parents coddled and protected her because of her blindness, so she refuses to be told what she can or can't do. While this gives her a stubborn, hard edge, she wants to be recognized for the person she is rather than her disability. The best character of the series, by far, is Zuko. Literally scarred by his father for disrespect, Zuko must track down the Avatar to regain his honor and his father's love. Zuko's story is about realizing limitations, what cannot be accomplished. No matter what he does, Zuko cannot make his father love him and he cannot be better than his sister.

Avatar is a serialized cartoon, something usually seen in anime. Although there are stand-alone episodes, the narrative is not limited to those episodes. It develops over multiple seasons. Events that take place in the first season have an effect on events in the third season. The narrative is limited by the three seasons. This show could be extended as a franchise, but the story of Aang and his friends has a ending. Avatar has a tight, succinct quality: each season is part of the larger story, each episode of those seasons develops that larger story and the characters. Rarely do the shows writers engage in useless side stories that never lead anywhere. Everything has a purpose, everything matters. In fact, the succinctness of the show is what leads to one of its weaknesses, unaddressed issues. Avatar is a show about balance, but the genocide of Aang's people, the act that created an imbalance, is never really addressed at the end of the series. Aang doesn't try to rebuild his lost civilization or even try to continue his people's tradition. He is simply the last airbender, but the implications of that are never shown in a satisfying way. Avatar could've had more of an epilogue, despite the limited nature of the show.

Avatar: The Last Airbender is brilliant work and a cartoon masterpiece. It was all to easy for me to look over. I treated it like most people treat cartoons. It's honestly something you need to see to understand what I mean, because even if I read this review that I've just written I wouldn't believe it.

My Favorite Blog Post Title Ever

2010-02-12T11:52:00.002-05:00

"Those Who Play Video Game Tic-Tac-Toe Will Be Judged" is an awesome title, and not just 'cause it hilarious. Gamers are some of the most judgmental bastards that you'll find. We tend to size up people by what games they play, what kind of games they play, what console they play them on, or if they play them on a PC. One of the most maligned groups of gamers has arisen in recent years. That group is the casual gamer. For many gamers "casual" might as well be replaced with "poser." Playing Wii Tennis does not count as gaming, some say. I try to avoid such insults, but I can help but agree with that post title. When I hear that someone plays tic-tac-toe as a video game, I'm certain that guy is destined for one of the deeper circles of hell. Stephen Totilo, author of the post, writes:

People have no taste? Perhaps that brings us back to Tic-Tac-Toe man. He was playing a game that I thought you can't win. ... Surely folks beyond the age of 12 know how to lock Tic-Tac-Toe into a draw every single time, that the outcome is just about never going to change and that the path to that outcome isn't going to be interesting, varied or... fun, right? Who would play a video game version of that?

But this guy, he always played the lower-left corner and sometimes he beat the computer. Sometimes he lost. Sometimes he had a draw. He was playing at an eye-blink pace, tapping through session after session. Maybe he was having fun. But what was he doing playing Tic-Tac-Toe on his iPhone? Why hadn't he downloaded, I don't know, Canabalt, Spider, Need For Speed, Call of Duty, Wordfu, Peggle, Dungeon Hunter, etc?

Maybe this man was having fun. Maybe Tic-Tac-Toe on the iPhone is all this man needed to satisfy his video gaming jones. Maybe I'll have to live with that, because, really, why should I care?

Keep playing, Tic-Tac-Toe man. I'll try not to judge you harshly, even if you make so little sense to me.

I really try not to begrudge how people get their video game kicks. I might think that Petz Horses 2 is the dumbest video game ever, but my mom wanted it so I bought it for her. If someone enjoys computer solitaire, to each his own (I have a sick addiction to minesweeper). But, Tic-Tac-Toe? I'd look down on an adult who played tic-tac-toe on paper, so how I do not do that same to those who play video game tic-tac-toe? I'll try.

Proof That The Internets Is Awesome

2010-02-09T16:41:00.000-05:00

A Day In Sri Lanka

2010-02-09T11:23:00.000-05:00

Just to note how quickly things happen. Yesterday, I read this article at 9:00AM and this article at 9:00PM.

Criminal Justice

2010-02-09T09:48:00.000-05:00

Radley Balko assesses the state of our justice system after 250th person has been exonerated by DNA:

One of the more farcical attempts at writing off the growing number of DNA exonerations came in a concurring opinion that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in the 2005 case Kansas v. Marsh. Scalia began by dismissing the idea that an innocent person may have been executed in America, explaining that if such a tragedy had occurred, "we would not have to hunt for it; the innocent’s name would be shouted from the rooftops by the abolition lobby."

Scalia has probably since become acquainted with the name Cameron Todd Willingham, the Texas man executed in 2004 who was likely innocent. But the justice's pique also betrays an unfamiliarity with how death penalty opposition organizations work. While Scalia is right that proof of an executed innocent would be good rhetorical fodder for death penalty abolitionists, legal aid groups aren't about to waste their limited resources hunting down mistaken executions when there are living, breathing innocents still to be discovered. Moreover, in many jurisdictions, prosecutors destroy the case files after an execution, making any post-execution investigation rather difficult. That we don't know for certain about more executed innocents doesn't mean they haven't happened.

Scalia then cited some absurd math from Josh Marquis, an Oregon prosecutor who has held various executive positions for the National District Attorneys Association. According to the Marquis formula Scalia endorsed, at the time there had been about 200 DNA exonerations. For posterity, Marquis then arbitrarily multiplied that number by 10, to come up with 2,000 wrongful convictions. Marquis then took every single felony conviction over the previous 15 years as his denominator, to come up with a meager .027 wrongful conviction rate. Move along, America. Nothing to see here. Your criminal justice system's performing just fine.

It's truly frightening how our justice system operates. Not only do we send innocent people to jail, but the American population either doesn't care about this or is in support of it.

Another Way To Tell A Story

2010-02-09T08:34:00.000-05:00

The coolest thing about this Google is it found a completely new way to sell a story: Google searches. It's like Hemingway's six word story or Pixar's movies. They found a new medium and used it to foster emotions in the viewer. That's not just a commercial, that's art.

Song of the Day

2010-02-08T21:07:00.001-05:00

Writing for Today

2010-02-08T17:41:00.000-05:00

The Atlanic has a cool piece of Dante's Inferno...the game:

Ultimately, one of the most groundbreaking aspects of Dante’s poem was its accessibility: he chose to write it in the vernacular, rather than in the more formal, elitist style of Latin that was then typical of literature dedicated to grand themes. (The language of his poem became the foundation for modern day Italian.)

While Dante's Inferno the video game is certainly no classic, by updating the 700-year-old text into the vernacular of video gaming, it just might win over a new generation of readers. Indeed, among the game's more than 18,000 Facebook friends, many are expressing an interest in the original poem. “You should really read the literature before playing the game,” wrote one Facebook fan. “It's an awesome story." Of course, the Facebook page also reveals how times have changed. “A world without video games,” wrote another fan, “now that would be like living in hell.”

Yes, yes it would.

Go to Hell

2010-02-05T07:50:00.004-05:00

This is the spot that EA wanted to run during the Superbowl for their new game Dante's Inferno:

But, CBS freaked out not because of the scythe-swinging violence, nor the dark images of hell filled with demons, but 'cause the tagline "Go to Hell" is...mean? So a pro-life ad is okay, the taunting and violence of football players is okay, but please, for the love of god, don't say "go to H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks." So here's the censor approved ad:

"Hell awaits?" How 'bout "Go to Heck?" That would've been hilarious.

Defending Mass Effect 2

2010-02-04T12:20:00.004-05:00

Seth Schiesel doesn't think Mass Effect 2 was so brave:

That said, as professional and engaging as the writing in Mass Effect 2 certainly is, the overall story arc is as unambitious as the game’s design.

At the heart of the original Mass Effect’s story were big choices on how ruthless to be in confronting the big threat to the universe. In the first game, humanity was clawing for respect among the galaxy’s other sentient species, and the player confronted major moral choices in deciding how best to ensure humanity’s destiny. The stakes seemed almost unimaginably high.

Yet Mass Effect 2 suffers the fate of so many second acts: its narrative seems meant only to tie together the exposition of the first act and the presumed resolution of the third. Here, too, you sense BioWare playing it safe.

While I agree that the stakes are not so high in Mass Effect 2, the galaxy can't always face an existential threat. Otherwise, Bioware would just be trotting out the same plot as the first Mass Effect. It's like this anime I used to watch as a kid called Dragon Ball Z. Every story arc, or saga as they called them, there would be the biggest, baddest enemy ever seen. This enemy would be ten times worse than the one who came before him forcing the heroes to become stronger than they ever had before. Well, after the third arc that plot was very stale. I see this as Bioware taking a risk. What's a 30-40 hour game without galactic consequences? It's on its way to being Mass Effect 2. ME2 is about going on a dangerous and suicidal mission. The consequences are huge for your character, not for the galaxy. Much of the game is spent in preparation for this mission. Schiesel doesn't like this:

Most of the game is spent on a series of side missions in which you build and strengthen your team of fellow adventurers. Those side quests are well constructed, and a few of them are quite emotionally poignant. But in the big story of attacking and defeating the alien menace and saving humanity, they can feel like endless throat-clearing and busywork.

Before I address the heart of this, if you don't like busywork, don't play role-playing games. Much of what a role-playing game is micromanagement, or what some would refer to as busywork. Bioware actually removed a lot of busywork from ME2. The problem here is that Schiesel thinks recruiting team members is busywork, when in fact it's part of the plot. Again, the plot of ME2 is you are preparing for a suicide mission, for which you need team members. From the game trailer to the first segments of the game this is made entirely clear. Schiesel wants ME2 to be like every other role-playing game he's ever played. He wants the narrative to focus on the larger arc of the series. Well, too bad. ME2 is remarkably and bravely about the characters.

Song of the Day

2010-02-03T23:07:00.000-05:00

Demand Question Time

2010-02-03T17:44:00.002-05:00

The White House is criticizing the idea of a regular Q&A session between the President and Congress because it's "impractical." Which is just dumb. Look: I get why the President wouldn't want to do a Q&A twice a week. I get why he wouldn't want to do it once a week. Those two scenarios could actually be impractical. They could even devalue the importance of the Q&A. The President's weekly address is ignored by everyone expect...well "Mark Haleperin's" blog is the only place that covers it. It used to matter, and now it doesn't. But, how about a Q&A twice a month? Once a month? Once a business quarter? How is that impractical?

Here's a way you could do it: you have the leaders of both houses get together at the beginning of the year and they come up with a schedule that they check with the White House. This is to make sure no important events or trips for the President are interrupted. To ensure that the Q&A is well run, the President will have to have a session with one house at a time. A joint session would just get out of hand. T?he way the time would be divided is the President's opposition gets 3/4 of the question time. So right now, Republicans would get 45 minutes and Democrats would get 15. It would switch when there's a Republican president. The leader of either caucus would be responsible for selecting which of their members will ask a question. So Minority Leader Boehner would select say...Paul Ryan to ask the first question. This would put the leaders of either caucus in the position of putting their own political capital at risk along with the member asking the question and hopefully lead to better questions. So if Michele Bachman asks the President "will you promise not to switch to a world currency," we can ask Rep. Boehner why he let her ask that question.

The virtue of a regular Q&A session is it would cut the media out of the process. Half of the problem with political discourse in this country is that it's filtered through 24 hour networks, pundits, and bloggers. In the words of Jon Stewart, the media is part of a politician's strategies. What we need to do is get these people in a room, put a camera on them, and force them to talk to each other without Chuck Todd or Brit Hume telling us what it all means.

Mass Effect 2: What Games Can Be

2010-02-02T21:38:00.000-05:00

There are already a bunch of Mass Effect 2 reviews out there, so I don't really want to write one. Mine would be just as perversely loving as all the others. I do want to discuss Mass Effect 2's in relation to games and where games is going in the future. I believe something Mass Effect 2 is what games, or games of its ilk, should aim for. Beyond bugs here or there, ME2 is a seamless, unparalleled masterpiece. I have never played a game that so thoroughly created a world (universe is a more accurate word) and then let me bend the narrative of that world based upon the character I created. Rockstar came close with its recent GTA games, but the narrative was lacking and the character is forced upon the player. MMOs create a world and allow the player to create a character, but beyond that they have no story. ME2 is simply unlike every game out there.

The characters are there. You could come up with the coolest story of all time and it would still suck without the characters to play the necessary parts. Like any good piece of storytelling, ME2's premise is easy to grasp and has been done before: your character is sent on a suicide mission for which you have recruit other team members. Your character is yours, other than certain limitations of the game. You can be noble, cruel, or apathetic in certain situations, compassionate, insulting, or indifferent to your friends, or you can be all across the board. Be mean to a character that rubs you the wrong way, or choose to not to step in when you see some racism because you can't be bothered. Your character is yours to develop and as you do, certain conversation choices will open up and others won't depending on where your character goes. Your character is what you make him/her. He/she can be as complex as you want, or blindly good or blindly evil. You'll have widely different gameplay experiences, based upon the character you create.

Beyond your own character is a gallery of well developed characters that aid you in your quest. The game starts off with Miranda, a woman who was genetically modified by her father to have perfect intelligence and strength. His purpose was to create an heir to his legacy; Miranda ran from this. While she is a member of a racist organization, she is there primarily because of the backing it gives to her intellectual endeavors. In the back of her mind is the well being of her young sister, her genetic copy and another of her father's attempts at creating an empire. Another interesting character is Mordin Solus, a scientist and the inventor of a biological weapon called the Genophage, which cut down the high birthrates of a dangerous alien race. Mordin often confuses scientific principles for morals. Forcibly lowering the birthrate of another race to cut down on their population is not genocide to him, it's just a necessary correction. There are a few flat characters, such as Jacob Taylor who, until you discover his father's story, is just your typical type-A personality soldier. But, these weak characters are in the minority and certainly show flashes of being able to develop into something more.

ME2 like a good drama, a good novel builds upon themes. The most compelling of these is the relationship between parents and their children. From the son who is leveled by discovering his father's crimes to the mother who is ashamed of what her daughter has become, ME2 cares about what parents do or don't do, for that matter. My favorite component of this theme is Thane Krios's relationship with his son. Having left his family behind to continue his work as an assassin, Thane allowed his wife to be murdered and his son to follow in his footsteps. Thane steps in to save his son from the emptiness he feels. ME2 also employs many outcasts. Your character has been all but abandoned by the military organization that trained him/her. Miranda feels her genetic modification separates her from others around her. Tali is (potentially) exiled (because of the sins of her father) by her people and is disturbed by their war frenzy. Jack is an incredibly powerful biotic prodigy that was tortured and trained as a child to be a weapon, used and slaved out by her rescuers, and exploited by everyone else, making her wary of connection with anyone.

Games should use ME2 as their compass. ME2 has amazing gameplay, a streamlined design, amazing graphics, and a story that its designers labored over and cared about. Modern Warfare 2 is a great game; it has all but one of the elements I just mentioned and arguably executed them better. The one element it lacks is a story its designers cared about. Instead the story of MW2 is a perfunctory feature of the game. Furthermore, a scene was included where you are forced to watch or engage in a massacre of an airport terminal. This scene is unnecessary and begs wondering if it was only included for shock value. As such, MW2 is below the standard set by ME2. ME2's designers, as Ta-Nehisi Coates said, are writers. They invest effort into creating a world and constructing a narrative. Then they turn to that more important matter of who populates that world and how they bend the narrative. This makes the characters feel real because they are attuned to the world they are a part of. The amazing part is that ME2 forces that power into your hands. They force you to create a character that bends the narrative. Not all games can do that 'cause that's Bioware's thing. But, the story and the characters, other games can do that, if only their designers care enough.

Song of the Day

2010-02-01T22:43:00.000-05:00

My Favorite Moment In Politics

2010-02-01T08:36:00.000-05:00

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Song of the Day

2010-01-29T19:31:00.001-05:00

Caprica: I Hope The Fall Happens Soon

2010-01-29T09:29:00.001-05:00

I, like many others, got my first taste of Caprica last Friday and I've been digesting the pilot ever since. When I read a review of Caprica months ago, I feared that it would become a soap opera. Well, in this interview, David Eick says that's exactly the direction they are going in:

It was really an unusual beginning to the process. Both Ron and I had done self-contained series before, Ron had done the Star Trek shows, and I had done the Hercules universe and it was in about the second season of BSG where we started to decide whether or not there was another story to be derived or hatched from this world that we were deeply immersed in. We knew we didn't want to have some sort of continuation of the story, where you'd have some paraplegic commander, some speed freak, in command this time. We debated doing another thing entirely, a Buck Rogers show that would take place in contemporary society and have an artificial person coping with reality.

Then we started looking at the big picture of something we had been discussing, about how many of the BSG episodes were self-contained versus ongoing threads. By the end of the series, I think by the beginning of the fourth season, the episodes were all essentially serialized. And they were great. And so we started talking about moving forward with something that was unapologetically a serial sci-fi soap opera, that from the beginning would be designed to be that sort of animal – free from all the responsibilities or obligations to carry through the artifice of having a beginning, middle or an end.

Eick does not understand why the serialized episodes of BSG were so much better than the stand-alones. It has everything to do with either the Cylons or the survival of the fleet being present in those episodes. No one cared about the Black Market episode because what did it matter to the plot, the themes of the show, or any other character than Lee? Yet, the very first episode of the series, 33, is a stand-alone that turns the menace of the Cylons up to 11. The viewer is constantly beset by the fear of the enemy and is shocked at what Lee does to save the fleet. Or A Measure of Salvation: a stand-alone that involves the Cylon menace, the moral choices the leaders of the fleet must make, the relationship between Helo and Sharon, and the themes of the show. The good episodes of BSG dealt with the overriding narrative of the series. The best ones mixed the narrative with the development of the characters.

Caprica lacks BSG's direction. I have no problem with Ron Moore and Eick trying to come up with a whole new story. That's what they should do as storytellers. But, I know how Moore writes his shows (he never develops the long arc) and I'll bet you anything he has no idea where Caprica ends. I don't mean he doesn't know the finer details of the ending, I mean he has no clue what the endpoint of the larger plot is. BSG had a natural endpoint and it kept Moore honest. No such luck with Caprica. The show can literally go anywhere which, if Deep Space 9 is evidence of anything, is not good. Deep Space 9 is exactly, as Eick described, what they have planned for Caprica. It was a soap opera, just not very serialized. I can already see the series spending its time on the melodrama of its characters as the writers confuse dialogue about tough issues for dealing with tough issues in a new and interesting context.

Granted this is an opinion based upon the pilot alone, but all the elements of me-not-caring are there. Worse yet, Moore and Eick could very well demystify the Cylons, making them less interesting, less consuming, less frightening. The same thing happened on Lost with the Others. At first the Others were this ever present danger that you couldn't see and could barely even hear. Then the Others were revealed to be just a closed community on the island. Excuse me while I shake in my boots. What happens when Caprica tells us exactly why the Cylons are monotheists? What happens when Caprica tells us exactly why the Cylons revolted? What happens when we learn everything about the Cylons? They'll lose their aura and I'll have to pretend like Caprica never existed.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Caprica will be a good drama and not a soap opera. Maybe the Taurons will become less of a stand-in for disliked immigrant groups. Maybe I'll start caring about Joseph Adama and Daniel Graystone's incessant blathering about what it means to be human. (The cool thing about BSG is that it addressed that question not by lecturing the viewer, but by showing its implications, most often through Sharon). But as of now, Caprica needs to improve and Moore needs to find an ending.

Song of the Day

2010-01-28T18:19:00.001-05:00

I Love You, Rudy

2010-01-28T13:45:00.002-05:00

Watch him try to create his own reality.

It's that easy!

The Enemy Of My Enemy

2010-01-28T09:47:00.003-05:00

An intriguing and hopeful thing has happen in Afghanistan. The Taliban has pissed off the Shinwari tribe one too many times, killing tribe members, messing with their business, as Dexter Filkins reports, and the Shinwari are fighting back.

The leaders of one of the largest Pashtun tribes in a Taliban stronghold said Wednesday that they had agreed to support the American-backed government, battle insurgents and burn down the home of any Afghan who harbored Taliban guerrillas.

This reminds of something.

Here's the important part from Filkins:

...the Shinwari elders did not merely declare their opposition to the Taliban. Although they declared their allegiance to the Afghan government, they directed at it a nearly equal measure of fury, condemning “all the corruption and illegal activities that threaten the Afghan people.”

“We are doing this for ourselves, and ourselves only,” said Hajji Kafta, one of the elders. “We have absolutely no faith in the Afghan government to do anything for us. We don’t trust them at all.”

Sensing opportunity — and wanting the agreement to stick — the American officers decided to bypass the government entirely and pledge $1 million in development aid directly to the Shinwari elders. That method of financing — directly to the shuras — mirrors that of the National Solidarity Program, which has gained much admiration here for the efficient way it has dispensed development aid.

Although the Shinwari declaration of war against the Taliban, tentative as it is, is a hopeful sign, the way they made this declaration makes me even less optimistic about the Afghan government. What more proof do you need of its lack of control, lack of authority when not only does a tribe declare war against an insurgency on its own terms, but also the US military has completely bypassed the government to pay off this tribe. The Shinwari declaration, if you break it down, says they'd be fighting, or at least resisting, the government if the Taliban was not a more pressing evil. What seems clear observing from afar is that the Afghan government is considered by both Afghans and the US military to be part of the problem.

A Little Fun

2010-01-28T09:03:00.001-05:00

My favorite moment from last night.

SOTU Drinking Game

2010-01-27T17:37:00.001-05:00

Finally, a way/ to make this speech tolerable.

O-Kay

2010-01-27T07:50:00.000-05:00

Westboro Baptist Church hates on Lady Gaga. I guess they were getting bored with the gays.

A Spending Freeze?

2010-01-26T18:05:00.001-05:00

Really? When all the political operatives put their heads together this is the idea they came up with? Paul Krugman:

...it’s a betrayal of everything Obama’s supporters thought they were working for. Just like that, Obama has embraced and validated the Republican world-view — and more specifically, he has embraced the policy ideas of the man he defeated in 2008. A correspondent writes, “I feel like an idiot for supporting this guy.”

Now, I still cling to a fantasy: maybe, just possibly, Obama is going to tie his spending freeze to something that would actually help the economy, like an employment tax credit. (No, trivial tax breaks don’t count). There has, however, been no hint of anything like that in the reports so far. Right now, this looks like pure disaster.

The Democrats must have one trick in their bag other than conciliation. When they began this health care fight, Democrats, the President included thought it would began with conciliation, and so single payer was never on the table and the public option became the liberal extreme. Now, after his first major political defeat, the President has decided not just to abandon principles which he campaigned on, but to embrace principles which he campaigned against. The obvious question: why did I vote for him? Why did I vote for someone who would go beyond disappointment to straight up betrayal? A lot of people said that the aura the President surrounded himself with during the campaign was a lie. And, I never disagreed. A campaign is a sale, you do what you have to sell the product. But, I figured Barack Obama had principles. I figured there were things he wanted to get done, things I agreed with. Well, it seems even that was part of the lie. If the election were held today, I wouldn't vote.

Mass Effect 2

2010-01-26T09:42:00.003-05:00

I'll be buying mine Friday. Posting may be light after that.

Learning The Rules Of Cyberwarfare

2010-01-26T09:36:00.001-05:00

This is just like I said.

Song of the Day

2010-01-25T16:25:00.001-05:00

All Your Base

2010-01-25T11:18:00.002-05:00

Japan had its own important election yesterday. And it wasn't about a truck.

Now We Have Cyberspace To Fight Over

2010-01-25T10:43:00.003-05:00

Whether the threat of Soviet space missiles was real or not (answer: not), the space race served a purpose. It let two super powers compete over something completely meaningless. By meaningless I mean no resources were gained, no vital interests were protected, no issue of security was dealt with. The space race was just an expensive competition to claim a lifeless rock. If you want proof that it was meaningless, name for me all the military and diplomatic successes the US had because we beat the Soviets to the moon.

Now, we have a whole new territory to fight over and this one actually matters...well sortof. That new territory is the internet. China, or more accurately hackers within China, recently tried to hack gmail accounts of human rights activists and tried to steal Google's company information. Then Hilary Clinton got her hands on the matter and rather than deflecting it or just not commenting, she chastised China. And, China flipped out:

Monday’s fusillade by the Chinese not only dismissed Ms. Clinton’s statements, but depicted the United States as cyberspace’s villain and China as its unwilling victim.

Zhou Yonglin, the deputy operations chief of China’s National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team, was quoted as saying that China was the world’s largest target for hackers, with more than 262,000 Internet addresses under assault last year, and that the greatest share of attacks — one in six — originates in the United States.

As of yet, cyberwarfare hasn't been figured out. As Thomas PM Barnett likes to say, there's been a rule set reset, and nobody knows the rules. The same thing happened with nuclear weapons when they were first developed. The US thought it had the ultimate weapon on its hands with which the Soviets could be pushed around. The US realized that it could not find a single situation where the use of nuclear weapons was justifiable. Now, we have a new weapon, and nobody knows how to use it. Well, that deserves clarification. It's not that we don't have hackers around the world with the know-how to use a computer and an internet connection for destructive ends. It's that no one knows the political impact of this new weapon.

A nuclear standoff like the Cuban missile crisis is a difficult mess to deal with, but simple to understand because you know who is threatening who. Nuclear deterrence works based upon us having that knowledge. If Russia launches at us, we will know it and launch at them. And, vice versa. Thus, either side are afraid to attack the other. Imagine if we knew there were nuclear weapons somewhere on the planet, but when they were launched we would have no idea where they were launched from or that they were even launched at all.

Cyberwarfare, as it appears right now, works like those hypothetical nukes. An attack could come from a state, an organization, or an individual (neither of which are necessarily associated with a state). Deterrence does not work in such a situation. So if a weapon with the destructive capacity of a nuke doesn't operate by the rules of a nuke, what rules does it operate by? We don't know yet. We're figuring it out as we go. That's why China is acting like it is. China is testing the waters. What can it do? What can it not do? Who will get angry when it steal that bit of information? Who won't have a clue? Who won't care? Turns out the Secretary of State of the United States cares. There's only one step up after her.

Song of the Day

2010-01-22T21:39:00.001-05:00

Quad Fraud

2010-01-22T16:00:00.002-05:00

This reminds me of this:

For You Losties

2010-01-22T13:12:00.000-05:00

Song of the Day

2010-01-21T22:16:00.002-05:00

Please Leave

2010-01-21T15:56:00.002-05:00

I learned something during Massachusetts' special election for Ted Kennedy's seat: I'll never again assume I know anything about the voting concerns of people living in other states, other districts, other communities than my own or those that I've studied. We have been on the receiving end of the scrutiny of the national media and it's been...is there a word more severe than "enraging?" News organizations like FNC and MSNBC cannot just tell you what they know to be true. They have to speculate, theorize, and predict. And they do this based upon assumptions that are often as wrong as they are right. Like this exit poll. The poll says fifty two percent of voters voted for Brown to stop federal health care reform. The conclusion then of FNC and Mitch McConnell before the race was that if health care reform itself is unpopular even in liberal Massachusetts then it must be unpopular everywhere. Well, no, because health care reform isn't unpopular in Massachusetts, nor did Scott Brown run against health care reform. He ran against national health care reform, under the premise that Massachusetts already fixed its system, why should it have to pay to fix the system of other states? Brown essentially said to Massachusetts voters, "we got ours, we're not helpin' anyone else." Brown never said he wanted to get rid of Massachusetts health care system. In fact, his stance was quite the opposite. That's because health care reform, state health care reform, remains popular in Massachusetts.

After Brown won, the conclusion Morning Joe crew was that there was an ideological shift in Massachusetts. In a state that voted down a ballot measure to abolish the state income tax? No, Massachusetts did not shift anywhere. Brown won because of a confluence of reasons. Among them was the unpopularity of Martha Coakley, the weakness of the Coakley campaign, and the spinelessness of the of the Democratic party as a whole. Democratic voters, liberal voters had no reason to vote. People who have voted Democratic all their lives voted against a candidate and a party that were not serving their interests.

Now that the national media is gone, I can only wonder how New Hampshire does this every four years. Every four years the national media turns its great eye toward New Hampshire and tells them how they are going to vote, why they're going to vote. I'd lose my mind if I had to endure that for any longer than the two weeks I already have. When I was younger I wished Massachusetts would get more attention. Now, I just hope this never happens again. I don't an election of national import to ever take place in this state again. I don't want Chris Matthews or Rachel Maddow visiting locals bars. I don't want Sean Hannity telling me there's been a revolution in Massachusetts. In summary, national media, please leave, and don't come back.

Superman Is a Jackass

2010-01-21T10:49:00.000-05:00

Proof.

Song of the Day

2010-01-20T17:39:00.001-05:00

Lost

2010-01-20T16:05:00.000-05:00

During winter break I wisely spent my time watching the entire series of Lost up to its latest episode. I've waited a while before writing anything about it so I wouldn't look back with rose-colored glasses. The following post will contain spoilers. Like this one right here.

Ignore all the Jack and Kate scenes and focus on Jack's comment about the past. Jack says that what they've done before reaching the island shouldn't matter. Those lines are completely at odds with the entirety of the series because Lost cares a lot about where its characters came from and what they did. That's the coolest thing about Lost: while it's certainly a plot oriented show, the characters are full. There's something there. The writing is not genius, but its reliably good, and every now and then its great. The style of splitting the narrative of an episode between the past and the present (I have no idea if it's been done like this before) is ingenious. Through that style a character like John Locke, who appears to be the most capable of all the survivors, is revealed to be weak and desperate. So, while the viewer cares about the secrets of the island, he/she also wants to know what makes each character react the way they do to the revelations of those secrets. In this way, Lost tells us nobody gets a second chance, nobody gets a second life. Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Locke, they all may start fresh, but they'll always be dealing with their baggage. Indeed, the characters that most want to return to their lives are the ones that have the firmest grasp upon reality. Michael, Jin, Sun, Juliet, and especially Desmond. Desmond is saved maybe five times by his relationship with Penny.

The failures in writing extend to all areas of the show. There's not just some bad character development, there's dropped plots, a lack of planning, and some bad dialogue. The dropped plots are quite stunning. Polar bears are on the island, but that's never really explained. Walt is supposed to be some special kid, but that's abandoned. Libby is connected to Hurley through a mental institution, but that goes no where. Shannon sees visions of Walt that lead to nothing. There was supposed to be a divide between the survivors who decided to live in the caves and those that live on the beach, but the caves suddenly disappear. It's understandable that this would happen on a tv show, but it seems to happen a lot on Lost. There's also a deficiency with the female characters. This isn't a feminist critique that the women are stereotypical and/or weak. The female characters are just not well developed. Kate and Juliet are the exceptions to this. Otherwise, Sun, Claire, Ana Lucia, and Shannon all have one note to play. Whereas the developed male characters include Jack, Locke, Sawyer, Sayid, Ben, Hurley, Eko, Desmond. I would also like to note that the episode Expose, starring Nikki and Paulo, is the worst episode of the series.

Michael Emerson deserves a special mention as his acting is the best of anyone on Lost. Emerson has to walk a fine line with the character of Ben. He has to be threatening, yet weak, scheming, yet believable, the holder of all the answers, and yet as lost as everyone else. There's something boyish about Ben, as if he never grew up from the kid who desperately wanted to be with his dead mother. He treats the island like it's his sandbox to play in, using his people and the survivors to get what he wants. Over this season, Ben has been demystified by being dethroned. He's no longer a leader and he no longer has the underlings to do his bidding. But still, Emerson walks that line.

The first season was the strongest of all of them. It combined the elements of mystery and survival into one strong narrative. The monster is a complete unknown; what it is, what it wants, what its purpose is constantly gnaws at the viewer. The hatch's discovery leads to so many ideas, so many theories as to what's inside. The existence of the Others creates a constant sense of menace. For me, the most frightening thing was Rousseau's recording. But, the element of survival is my favorite part of the season. Where do we get fresh water? How do we find food? What environment is the best for shelter? How can we get rescued? How do we all get along? My favorite episode is "Do No Harm" in which Jack tries to save Boone's life and deliver Claire's baby by proxy. Boone is a nothing character, but Jack's desperation and willingness to do anything to fix Boone is powerful to watch. "Do No Harm" doesn't really advance the mystery of Lost, it's just about survival. The first season also works well because the two elements of mystery and survival feed off each other. The efforts of Locke to survive lead to the mysteries that consume him and hurt Boone leading to Jack's efforts to save him. Beginning with the second season, survival takes a backseat and the mysteries of the island become the focus of the show, to its detriment. As focus shifts, the mysteries lose their power because they steadily lose their aura. However, the characterization remains pretty strong.

The final Lost season begins February 2nd. I have no doubt it's written specifically to please the fans. Mysteries will be revealed, the Jack-Kate-Sawyer love triangle will be resolved, and somebody is going to live happily ever after. The writers of Lost have used the binary opposition between good and bad for a while and will continue to. Light versus dark, Jacob versus Samuel, Jack versus Locke. Should be fun to watch.

Using Public Opinion

2010-01-19T10:56:00.001-05:00

Gleen Greenwald counters Brooks.

Finding The Wrong Words

2010-01-19T10:17:00.002-05:00

This is the perfect example of why I despise Matt Taibbi's writing, despite the fact that I often agree with him. Instead of actually addressing an argument he disagrees with, he engages in ad hominem attacks and the translation technique often employed by bloggers, where you rewrite the words of the person you disagree with in the foulest, most disagreeable manner possible. We get it, Matt, you're edgy and you don't care who you offend. Now, please, find another schtick, maybe one that's constructive.

How We Run Things

2010-01-19T10:10:00.001-05:00

There are times when David Brooks is spot and then there times like today.

Driven by circumstances and self-confidence, the president has made himself the star performer in the national drama. He has been ubiquitous, appearing everywhere, trying to overhaul most sectors of national life: finance, health, energy, automobiles and transportation, housing, and education, among others.

He is no ideologue, but over the past year he has come to seem like the sovereign on the cover of “Leviathan” — the brain of the nation to which all the cells in the body and the nervous system must report and defer.

Americans, with their deep, vestigial sense of proportion, have reacted. The crucial movement came between April and June, when the president’s approval rating among independents fell by 15 percentage points and the percentage of independents who regarded him as liberal or very liberal rose by 18 points. Since then, the public has rejected any effort to centralize authority or increase the role of government.

This is classic Brooks: establish a cultural narrative and then apply it to the current political situation. The problem with this method is that it forces him to read vast implications into momentary poll results. The President's lost popularity among independents is not the result of Democratic ineffectiveness and/or Republican scorched earth opposition, but rather that the President is violating the American ideal of not having a leviathan government, an ideal originally established by the Pilgrims when they left Britain. Nor is the bad economy to blame or the pendulous motions of the American electorate. No, it's because the President is threatening the "basic sense of proportion" that all Americans have for their government. Who knew all Americans have the same basic sense of proportion for the role of their government?

Brooks's catastrophic poll reading requires the sober reading of Jonathan Chait, who is quickly becoming my favorite politics blogger:

What’s actually surprising about public opinion is not how much has changed since 2008, but how little. His approval rating in the latest Washington Post/ABC poll, 53-44, nearly matches his 2008 vote total. Obama still enjoys a massive edge in trust over congressional Republicans. That Democrats are suffering from a voter backlash anyway just shows how mechanistically public opinion can behave.

Between the liberal reading of Brooks and the conservative reading of Chait, I'll follow the notion that momentary poll results are just that. Brooks is simply going too far with the wrong idea. He seems to think that American government is determined by polling, when, in fact, we have elections to figure who is going to run things. This is ghastly to Brooks:

Many Democrats, as always, are caught in their insular liberal information loop. They think the polls are bad simply because the economy is bad. They tell each other health care is unpopular because the people aren’t sophisticated enough to understand it. Some believe they can still pass health care even if their candidate, Martha Coakley, loses the Senate race in Massachusetts on Tuesday.

That, of course, would be political suicide. It would be the act of a party so arrogant, elitist and contemptuous of popular wisdom that it would not deserve to govern. Marie Antoinette would applaud, but voters would rage.

This is just crazy to me. So, because the Democrats are polling badly, they should abandon their efforts to pass legislation that will hopefully be just the beginning of reform of a sector of the economy that is squeezing the life out of the rest? How is that in any way reasonable? Should not legislators do what they believe to be best? Was is not the conservative Edmund Burke who said this:

Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

The President isn't violating some sense balance endemic to only Americans, if there is such a thing. The President is doing his job despite the perfunctory polling backlash that every president experiences, despite the lack of help from his own party, and despite the malignant tumor that is the current Republican party. He is doing what he was elected to do, because that's an actual American tradition.

Midnight

2010-01-18T11:01:00.003-05:00

Song of the Day

2010-01-16T17:25:00.000-05:00

Then There's This

2010-01-16T15:39:00.002-05:00

If the Democrats lose, I won't really care.

Reconciliation

2010-01-16T11:32:00.000-05:00

At least they're talking about it.

What Outsiders Don't Know About Scott Brown

2010-01-16T11:31:00.001-05:00

Anne Laurie hates on Scott Brown

And Scott Brown is Sarah Palin without the starbursts. He may even be dumber than Palin, although he doesn’t come across quite as vicious, possibly because he’s got more socially acceptable outlets for physical violence. Giving him a higher profile would make Boston comedians’ jobs a whole lot easier, which in combination with the traditional Irish/Italian ethnic gynophobia probably explains his endorsement by certain jovial professional alcoholics. As a lifelong drone in the state’s Permanent Minority Party, Brown’s never found a position he couldn’t be against before he was in favor, or vice versa—he’s a low-rent, downscale version of Willard Romney, doggedly pursuing the role of farce to Mitt’s tragedy.

While too strong for my tastes, I can't disagree with much here.

Song of the Day

2010-01-15T15:42:00.000-05:00

A Must Win

2010-01-15T13:45:00.004-05:00

Jonathan Chait details the options for Democrats if Scott Brown wins the election:

Obviously, the alternative is option 4: Crawl into a hole and die. Now, the Republican mantra is that we should kill this bill and "start over." But the truth is, there isn't and has never been a real Republican plan on the table to deal with, and even the conservative plans that Republicans haven't embraced are unworkable or do nothing. So walking away means admitting you did nothing on the issue that consumed most of your time, and wait for your November beating as a failed Congress running with a failed president. Numerous conservative pundits have advised Democrats to take this approach, but I don't think it's a very sensible plan.

Starting over is not a good idea. Democrats should abandon the pretense of bipartisanship and and fairness and use reconciliation to pass their weak health care reform bill. You cannot get this far in this bad a legislation fight and lose. The President has taken a large hit just to get to this point. Democrats cannot allow this to devolve once more into the ridiculousness of last year. Democrats need a win, I don't care how pathetic it is, but it has to be something they can campaign on. They need to be able to say they achieved something.

The Danger Of Bullshit

2010-01-15T11:40:00.003-05:00

Ta-Nehisi Coates addresses Sarah Palin's "all of them" response when asked who is her favorite founder:

It's not that what she says is objectively untrue. It's that you can't shake the sense that she's bullshitting you the whole way. Even that, in and of itself, is not unique. I get that people, of all stripes, enjoy being bullshitted, on some level. Still, there's usually some kind of distracting veneer employed to render the scatological respectable. Think Glenn Beck's charts and chalkboards, or Rush Limbaugh's performance poetry.

Sarah Palin, on the other hand, has no sense of showmanship. Instead she just offers proud ignorance in all of its naked, fulminating glory. The odious humors regularly issuing forth from her gaping, defecating maw are unconstrained. Here is a bullshitter--unleashed, unperfumed, and unashamed.

In the Frankfurt definition, Sarah Palin is a bullshitter. It's not that she's lying. Lying requires knowledge of the truth is. Palin does not care about truth in any way. She just makes statements without any regard for reality. Her objective is not achieve some change in policy, some effect upon the country, but to sway her audience. Everything she says is directed toward that end. And, that makes her morally dangerous. Plato warned about people like Sarah Palin in his Phaedrus dialogue:

...suppose an orator who doesn't know about good and bad gains power in a city which is in the same state of ignorance and tries to persuade it...by making bad seem good. Suppose he's carefully studied the opnions of the masses and succeeds in persuading them to act badly instead of well, what kind of crop do you think rhetoric would later harvest from the seeds it set about sowing?

Palin may be leading her followers to a good or bad end, I just don't think she knows which. I don't think she cares. As Coates says, Glenn Beck dresses up his bullshit, Rush Limbaugh disguises his lack of concern for the truth. That in itself suggests that they know they are ignoring the truth. Palin on the other hand, as Plato feared, seems to be ignorant that the truth even exists, that there are a good and a bad. That makes her very dangerous. But, there is hope: Plato tells us that in order for the ignorant orator to be successful the city, the polity itself, must be equally ignorant. As long as we call her on her bullshit, we'll be okay.