Sunday Morning Reading Material: Second Sunday in March 2011– Spring Forward!
It’s Sunday Morning. Sundays are for getting out of bed an hour early because congress still kowtows to the 3% of Americans who Farm. Sundays are also for doing chores before heading to work, and for being thankful you have a shitty, shitty job. Also? Sundays are for PAX– which really ought to be a conference dedicated to peace, rather than nerds. Also also: Sundays are for lounging around in bed or at the couch, drinking coffee and reading this very blog post.
This week: Japan experienced a seismic event of sufficient magnitude to shrink it’s national boundary by at least 8 feet. The very Earth on which we all reside was itself shrunk by this event. As I type this, the crisis is still unfolding. Also: the Governor of Wisconsin employed some possibly illegal tactics to destroy the public Sector Unions. As of right now there is talk about a general strike in that state. Must say: proud to be an American. Also: the world celebrated international women’s day.
Sometimes you write and you talk, and you harangue and you argue and you shout and you feel like you’re getting nowhere. Perhaps, though, a single lifetime isn’t enough to judge such things. After all, history is vast, and humanity is numerous. Still, one person, at the right place, at the right time, with enough conviction, set in motion a series of events which would– 150 years later– culminate in the ending of slavery in North America. This is what the “arc of history” looks like.
I don’t know what history will record as the final outcome in Wisconsin. If I did, I’d be making a lot more money than I am. Still, it’s important to take a stand. One voice, or one hundred thousand. The only things that matter are: “where will you have been?” and “with whom did you stand?” Me? I’ve been standing with the unions before the rest of the nation woke up and discovered they were under attack.
Know who I do stand against? Vigilantes. Murderous thugs at worst, wannabe Batmen (batmans?) at best. They create a society in which everyone is watching everyone at all times for any infractions. Morality police. In Israel, “Modesty Patrols” scream at women who don’t follow their code. In Saudi Arabia, people are killed. Enforcing the law is the proper function of the government, which can be policed by citizens.
In real life, if you fail at a task, there are consequences. Very rarely (in modern times) does that entail death. Games. though, are different. When players fail at tasks in games it’s usually game over, try again. Reload. Bill Abner talks a bit about how to make failure interesting.
How how not to fail with a one night stand.
My general feeling is that free speech means “consequence free”. Or, at least, free from consequences other than being thought an idiot, shouted down, or held in high esteem and made the god-emperor of Dune. You want to rent some microphones and hire a hall? Say whatever you want about whoever you want. Consequence free. But money ain’t speech. I’ve been a political fundraiser. Let me tell you: giving money to a politician is a fucking bribe. It’s legal, but that doesn’t make it morally acceptable. So when a bunch of Wisconsin firefighters decline to continue giving money to their declared class enemies, I think they’re acting in the right.
Work badge of a proud union member, worn by his granddaughter, as she fights for her future grandchildren.
This. This. This should make you very angry. In the United States, just 400 people have more wealth than that owned by half the nation. I think it’s safe to say that the US is no longer a democracy. How can it be, when “money is speech”, and 400 people can out-shout half the nation? How can the US be a democracy when the poorest half of the country are scrambling to buy food while the richest 400 people can buy access to politicians as easily as they can buy access to fancy new cars? When at least one major party is doing it’s best to make sure the poor have as hard a time as possible voting, this situation will be difficult to redress.
Let’s give a big hand to the government regulators at OSHA, who are serving us all by making our bosses keep us safe.
Macs? Not safer, just used less often.
I’m not what one calls a “joiner”. Even at my own birthday party, I was live-tweeting it because I have a hard time just being part of a crowd– even when that crowd is several of my closest friends. This probably owes something to my NVLD. Most of the times when I’m taking pictures at an event, I’m taking pictures of camera people. In a large sense, “meta” is how I cope. It sounds like Jess Barrow has a touch of this as well. She, as I, finds sports interesting in the way that it tends to create bonds between us and others, forcing her into the moment.
Interestingly, Ms. Barrow and I served together in Ohio, during the Obama campaign. I’m fairly sure we have never met, but we do stay in occasional twitter contact. If you are not on twitter, but are curious what all the fuss is about, this is a pretty good guide.
There is something deep in every nerd’s soul that gets deeply turned on by numbers. The fear is that we might start to– in TS Eliot’s words– measured out my life with coffee spoons. Games are basically computer programs, and all computer programs are a very large set of mathematical functions- numbers. The question, then, is how much math can game developers expose to players before the romance is lost? what does that say about us? What other questions might we ask for the purpose of rhetoric before you click the link?
These adorable birds are very angry and I want them!
So: there are places you can go where if you show up and fill out some paperwork, they will give you books, CDs, movies, and other information for free. Obviously, this is rank socialism. If you’re a profit maximizing firm, your goal is to turn every single consumer of all of your media into a revenue center. A library interferes with that, but there’s no real way to stop it. At least, there wasn’t, until books went digital, and publishers could put the D in DRM [digital rights management]. Let’s be clear on this: the fight is over ownership of culture. On one side the publishers believe that they have the right to decide which parts of the culture are monetized, and how. They believe that cultural artifacts arrive de novo, and thus it is wholly moral and just for people who create such artifacts to reap all the rewards from their hard work. On the other side, you have people who understand culture to be something created by every human being, ever day. West Side Story was stolen from Romeo and Juliet, which was stolen from Ovid, which in turn was stolen from someone else. And that’s just the good stuff. Imagine who the b-list modern author is stealing from (probably Ovid). Which is all a long winded way of saying the libraries are fighting back. This fight is every bit as important as the one in Wisconsin.
Did you say you wanted some map porn? Me too! My geeky soul is turned on by maps, and international organizations.
It’s only class warfare when the poor fight back. this is what we’re fighting for. This is a weapon of the other side.
I spent many, many happy hours playing Galactic Civilizations 2. It’s a game about empire building in space, where you get to build spaceships. Many of my readers have no interests at all in playing such a game. But they might want to know what it’s like to do so. This is an After Action Report. It’s quite, quite funny. That might not be enough. Here’s a sample: “Who would have thought repeatedly angering and insulting the most powerful race in the galaxy while completely defenceless could have consequences?” Go read it!
Let’s end on a happy note. Actually: the happiest possible note. the happiest man in America has been found
This week’s theme has been the secrets of the nerd soul. So dear nerds: what sorts of things delight you?
