Sunday Morning Reading Material Second Sunday in August 2011- The Lights of the City Edition
Mega Man. Mega Man. Does whatever his defeated enemies can!
It’s Sunday Morning. Sundays are for Dim Sum. Or Sundays are for celebratory piercings. Possibly Sundays might be for, you know, doing the work thing.
This week Western Civilization got ever closer to collapse. The war in Libya continued past it’s 20th (or so) week, making the world wonder how many weeks it does take before it turns into “months”. And human-caused global climate change lead to the thinnest arctic ice shelf in human history. It’s not all bad: Google Plus is letting users play games on it’s service.
Once upon a time there was a TV show called “Junkyard Wars”. They’d take two teams of ordinary people and put them in a junkyard. Those teams were told that 24hrs later, they’d have to engage in a specific competition using whatever they’d built. The hovercraft races sold me. It was while watching that show that I had a revelation: humanity is glorious and endlessly inventive. Any species that can turn junk into an underwater pressure suit, or a minesweeper, or a hovercraft is just alright with me. Along those lines: here is a panoramic view of the control console for a space shuttle. If you’re an American, this is your tax dollars at work.
I’d have to check, but I think most of the last Several Sunday posts have contained something about Monopoly. This version teaches us important lessons about both class warfare and board games.
The function of government is to solve collective action dilemmas, and create situations which enable win/win “games” to be constructed and played. Which is fancy talk for “government threatens to kill us if we don’t get along, which makes us all better behaved”.
The problem is that in order to get us to behave better, government really does have to threaten to kill us. And sometimes they have to carry out that threat. That’s not actually the problem. The problem is that government is run by humans, and Lord Acton was pretty much correct in his assessment of how humans deal with power. Figuring out how to create a government of the correct size is basically the ongoing technocratic struggle.
I have mixed views on American slavery. On the one wrist: I consider the idea that a human can be owned as morally repugnant. Dehumanizing a single person devalues humanity as a whole. At the same time: slavery has been so roundly practiced by so many people– people who otherwise might have been wholly admirable– that it seems impossible to merely condemn it.
Slavery is the issue most often danced around when talking about cloning. There is no reason that a clone ought not count exactly the same as a utero-gestated human. The humanity and potential genetic sequence is identical. Yet the very possibly for creating millions of identical humans seems to short out the part of our brain that assigns value to clones. I hope we figure it out before we get there.
Every now and then I have the terrifying thought that humanity isn’t the only sentient species on Earth. The things we do to apes and chimps would be terrifying if done to humans. I won’t talk about dolphins, though. Fuck ‘em.
Too serious this week? Let’s learn about punctuation.
Until there is a zombie outbreak, guns have a single and sole purpose: to turn living things into dead things. I’ve done target shooting a time or two over the years, and I have no special fear of guns. Nonetheless, the idea that there are a good many people in the US for whom a gun represents a political argument is, frankly, terrifying. There does seem to be an interesting racial undertone to the American history of gun ownership and control. This probably speaks more about America than it does about guns.
This is possibly the most bad-ass person alive.
If you want to have a child in Argentina, the name for that baby has to come from a government approved list. It’s a fairly long list, but if your ideal name isn’t on it, you have to prove that you didn’t just make the name up. Here are all the approved names starting with the letter “A”.
Stereotypically, the worst drivers in America are old Asian ladies. In reality, the worst drivers in America are young white men. Tell people this, and the first reaction is often to deny it. The thing about stereotypes is that they exist more as insults than as actual, living constructs. Americans used to make fun of Mexicans for being lazy. Now we make fun of them for being among the hardest working people in America. Whatever you (or I!) think you (or I!) know about [subgroup of humans] is likely wrong.
It’s ok to be racist against Frost Giants, though. Those fuckers really do want to destroy your soul.
About a year ago, I worked on a case which started out as a simple barbering licence SNAFU, and turned out to be about gay marriage and immigration law. The absolute most I could do for the couple was recommend some good, LGBT friendly, immigration lawyers. Anyone who says that allowing gay people to get married will harm the institution of marriage has to account for the number of marriages that the lack of recognition has destroyed.
Several English cities rioted this past week. This Jackass doesn’t realize that he’s the problem. Here’s a friendly tip: when you’ve got a large part of the population who’s only regular contact with the government is a police checkpoint, there is going to be resentment. When the government’s meager services get cut back, there’s going to be more resentment. And when the police murder citizen, well. There damned well better be some noise.
If I were told that I could borrow a million dollars today, and in 5 years I’d only have to pay back $900,000, I’d say that I’m being lied to. But if there were facts, figures, proofs, and documents attesting to this fact, I’d jump on it. A person would have to be crazy not to jump on it. This is the deal our government is being offered. We’re crazy.
You know who else liked the Welfare state? Superman.
Troy has finished the final nation in his series chronicling how various games have quantified national history. This series might honestly be among the finest in game journalism. It says much less about games than it does about humanity’s view of itself as the 20th century has given way to the 21st. I do hope you’ve been reading them.
Captain Morgan’s ship has been found. No word yet on his booty.
Money is a vehicle by which labor can be stored. There is, of course, a lot more to it than that. That’s what has been so fascinating about watching the rise of private currencies. Store gift cards are money issued by a company which trade at 1:1 with the USD. Microsoft/Sony points are a floating currency. Airline miles may be the most abstract of all the corporate currencies– they’re constantly being revalued. No one is quite sure what they’re worth.
If you read just one thing:
I’ve written a lot this week about how governments and citizens interact. Sometimes that’s much less important than how humans connect with one another unofficially.
This week’s theme has been government. How it works and why it fails. In the comments below, let me know about your favorite experience with a government worker.
<"http://www.collegehumor.com/moogaloop/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=6582695&use_node_id=true&fullscreen=1"target="_blank">After all that, I think we could use a cuddle, eh?
Related posts:
- Sunday Morning Reading Material First Sunday in August 2011- Holy Catan Batman Edition
- Sunday Morning Reading Material: First Sunday in May 2011: Chemically Enhanced Edition
- Sunday Morning Reading Material Fifth Sunday in July 2011- Jobbed Recovery Edition
- Sunday Morning Reading Material: Second Sunday in June 2011: The legend of Laura Secord Edition
- Sunday Morning Reading Material Third Sunday in July 2011- Harry Potter is Dancing with Dragons Edition
My favorite interaction with a government worker?
The time a surprisingly warm and helpful DMV worker ignored the fact that I had taken over a year to change my registration to North Carolina.
1) “Young x” for x in all racial groups is guaranteed to be a worse driving population than “adult x”. If you correct for age, I guarantee you that adult Asians and Indians are worse drivers than, say, Germans.
I mean, look at it this way: one culture has been driving since there was such a thing as driving. The other culture still uses donkeys for purposes other than entertainment. China’s economic spectrum stretches all the way from BMW-driving executives (<<1%) to literal stone age peasants. The latter people know as little of cars as neolithic man knew of the moon, whereas even the poorest American probably knows how to drive–indeed, America is one place in the world where being poor and rural essentially requires you to learn to drive that pickup/tractor/whatever as soon as you're tall enough to reach the pedals.
Now, take a healthy helping of those thoroughly unenculturated Chinese FOBs and dump them, at age 20+, into the Land of Automobility. Just as quick on the uptake, or not so much?
(editor’s note: I know this comment is incredibly racist. Any of my readers want to explain why?)
2) Every stereotype grows from a kernel of truth. You know all those stereotypes about how Germans are terrible drivers, or Asians are lazy and bad at math? No? That's because they don't exist, because they have no basis in truth. Asians no worse at driving than anyone else? You've obviously never lived in Fremont, where "Asian In Minivan" is a checkbox on the insurance claim forms.
Here I go to all this trouble to cook up a nice, offensive comment, and you go and trump me at dickery with one little condescending apology on its behalf. And that “does anyone want to tell little Johnny what he did wrong” twist on it–masterful! I mean, I guess I could bring up China’s appalling traffic fatality statistics, or the difference between nationality and race, but what’s the use? I’m out of my league.