Indignant Desert Birds

(Come bards from the north, elves off the moor!)

It’s Sunday morning. Sundays are for cuddling in bed reading this very thing right now. Or Sundays could be for recovering from the cold which inspired the edition name of this post. Alternately, Sundays might be for recovering from a very bad, no good, horrible date.

This week, President Obama caught some flack for saying the sort of perfectly sensible things about Israel that every president has said since 1967. Economically ravaged Iceland experienced an eruption of it’s most active volcano. Also: Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh promised to step down. Eventually. At some point. Also Also: the Iranian president is at loggerheads with the Iranian supreme leader- both men want more power.

Last Sunday, we San Franciscans held a “race” called the Bay to Breakers. I put the word “race” in quotes because we San Franciscans don’t take it very seriously as an athletic competition. For most of us, it really is a giant, drunken, moving street fair, complete with costumes, nudity, and floats. The floats are how we know that it’s a special day in San Francisco. I mention this because every year, there is a male and a female winner of the race. Every year that winner is from Africa- usually Kenya. It amazes me that there is a large enough prize pool that traveling across 3 continents to race is worth the bother. But then, Kenya is a very poor country.

This comic does a great job at capturing the dynamic of cross-pond super hero expectations.

The single most depressing job I can imagine is oncology. The entire job is dealing with people who either have cancer, or think they might have cancer. The best news an oncologist can deliver is “the problem you’re experiencing isn’t cancer.” Fortunately, oncologists have a simple Six-Step Protocol for Delivering Bad News. Handy for all your bad dates! Table 2 is especially noteworthy.

Secret Service makes a whoopsy.

The supreme court this week decided that the police may enter a home without a warrant if they suspect that illegal behavior is happening inside that home. Put more bluntly, the Supreme Court violated its oath to the US Constitution by wiping its metaphorical ass with the 4th Amendment. As much as I truly detest marijuana, I don’t hate America more than I hate pot. I’m not sure why the Supreme Court seems to.

The idea of putting cameras on police officers seems obvious. The money counting room at a grocery store has cameras. The police are a lot better armed than your average Safeway clerk. Shooting someone is a lot more serious than stealing from the till. This shouldn’t be at all controversial.

A week or so ago I mentioned that I don’t understand the idea of being transgendered. I’ve also said that I don’t have to understand, I only have to accept. Carolyn Michelle is a damned good games reviewer. Anyone who will overlook that fact because of her gender is doing themselves a grave disservice- and failing in a prime duty as a human.

One of the more interesting things about the emergence of trans people into the public consciousness has been grammatical. While English isn’t nearly as gendered a language as the Romance languages, it does lack a gender-neutral option. Attempts to change this, or any parts of the language, have been met with incredulity, derision, hostility, and illogic.

One of the more interesting realizations I’ve had over the past few years is that even if all gender identities were treated with true equality, there would still be need for separate spaces for the various genders. The problem is not that “The Mary Sue” exists (far from!), nor is it a problem that “The Mary Sue” needs to exist (I just said it would be necessary even in a perfect world). No. The problem is that The Mary Sue is the female version of a default that is assumed to be male. That’s not their problem. That’s mine.

One of the things that becomes clear reading this retrospective from Rosanne Barr is that by the end of the show, she was crazy, and it was unfunny. Unfortunately, so many people had told her that she was crazy and unfunny when it was demonstrably untrue that she was unable to distinguish between lies and truth. Did the patriarchy literally cost Ms. Barr a bit of her sanity? Arguably. It certainly cost her a crucial bit of judgment and cost humanity an enormous talent.

I watched Thor this week. It was incredibly good. In fact, it was so good that I went back and re-watched Iron Man 1 and 2, as well as the most recent Hulk movie. They were all pretty enjoyable. I came to the conclusion that a good script, good director, and good acting can make any concept fun. Wonder Woman is a kind of silly concept. It isn’t sillier than Thor, Hulk, or Iron Man. Those stories feature men, though, and are thus given a lot more leeway than a story featuring a woman.

Speaking of Norsemen in modern times: Official NASA instructions for a viking attack.

Every Saturday night, I sit down and bang out a bunch of words to put together a post you guys can enjoy on a Sunday Morning. Sometimes it’s better than others. Sometimes it’s easier than other times. I do know that if I skipped a week I, people would notice, and (I hope) complain. That knowledge is one of the things that keeps me motivated. I say that because whatever my problems as a writer, George R R Martin has them ten or a hundred thousand times worse. It’s been about 12 years since the 3rd book in his epic was published. Book 5 is due soon.

Speaking of good writing? A good friend of mine is stretching her abilities a bit. I can’t wait for her to publish a collection of short stories.

Representative Ryan would like to cut funding for the elderly and the poor, so that America can slash taxes for the rich. Before the implementation of Social Security, one in two of the elderly were impoverished. Representative Ryan would like to undo decades of progress and return to the days when grandparents died on America’s sidewalks. Representative Ryan would like to replace all the government programs with strong multiplier effects and replace them with programs that have small multiplier effects- thus shrinking America’s economy and giving a bigger share of it those who are already well off. Representative Ryan claims that President Obama is engaged in Class Warfare. Representative Ryan is implicitly agreeing with us: it’s only class warfare when the poor fight back.

Musical Interlude (the second track is excellent)

The major difference between East Coast geeks and West Coast Geeks is that East Coasters can love sports and West Coasters cannot. Even in my geekdom, I am atypical, I guess. Sports really do create enormous safe spaces to engage in mutual activities. Even small steps towards becoming more inclusive are, of course, welcome.

A person who, this week, is newly old enough to drink would have lived their entire life without Jim Henson.

I’m not really a fan of wrestling. Nothing against it, but nothing for it either. It’s just not my thing. So the rapturous death of “Macho Man” Randy Savage didn’t move me. Nevertheless, this obituary paints a picture of a man who was a net positive to the human experience. That is all anyone can ask for in a lifetime.

Fun fact: George Orwell’s grandson taught my introduction to Political Science course. That’s why I often refer to the great author as “Eric Blair”. Orwell was undeniably brilliant, and so often correct that it’s more than a bit humbling. In his diary, he makes some guesses as to England’s probable fate in the war. It’s shockingly plausible, given what we know of history. It is also entirely wrong. I wonder why he misread Churchill so badly.

Sound design is one of those things most people rarely pay attention to. It is generally one of those things done at least adequately. It is worth, therefore, spending some time thinking about what makes sound design good– extraordinary.

I don’t have anything really to say about this article about death in video games. It’s good. Go read it.

The penultimate sentence of this article contains a truth so profound that once you realize it, everything changes forever.

Every teacher at a University of California is (in theory) committed to spending about a third of their time “for the public good”. Sadly, things like Academic Senate counts as fulfilling that requirement, and the public good is conflated with the downward gaze at one’s own navel. Nonetheless, it points to an important truth: Universities aren’t merely for teaching, but for learning new things about the way humanity- or the universe works- and using that knowledge. The mission of every public university and college is- or very much ought to be- the betterment of humankind through the creation and dissemination of knowledge. Someone in the Obama administration gets this, and is taking steps towards making it happen.

One of the more interesting things I learned while studying theology in college is that it is unclear whether Jesus was insulting bankers by calling them terrorists– or if he felt that calling them bankers was a sufficient insult. While it’s arguable that Jesus didn’t have disgust for the rich, he certainly had violent rage towards anyone who stood between poor people and meeting the needs of poor people. Shockingly, it seems it is possible to have spent a lifetime in bible study and utterly fail to understand this point.

Fact: San Francisco invented the burrito. There are places in London claiming that they make burritos the way we do. I wonder if they’re even close?

Know what else San Francisco does better than anyone else on Earth? Porn. Imagine a porn company with the corporate ethos of Ben and Jerry’s. That’s Kink.com. They’re doing pretty well by the City. Also: the fact that they’re located at the Armory means they’re literally making love, not war.

It’s not trespassing if it’s done in the name of art, right? It can’t be. How can anyone call themselves a photographer of beautiful things and fail to climb the Golden Gate Bridge to photograph San Francisco at dawn? We here at Indignant Desert Birds applaud audacity, oddity, and awesomeness. Also: beauty.

Some day in the future, I can well imagine that people will only buy paper versions of their most-beloved books. That cheep paperback I bought to pass time on a plane? Gonna delete that file when I’m done. The new Michael Lewis masterpiece? Let me proudly display that on my shelf. Like Ezra Klein, I was resistant to ebooks. Now? Obviously I’m a convert.

I’m not sure this is really the best model for the library of the future. I am glad that someone is thinking about these things.

If you read just one thing:

Douglas Adams died a decade ago this week. He made his reputation as a humorist, but he seemed to have a deep and fundamental grasp on what makes humanity tick. Read this in remembrance of him.

This week’s theme was the cost of non-inclusiveness. In the comments, leave a link to a cute puppy.

(Some great story telling and photography)

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One day in the tenth grade, I suddenly needed glasses.This was back in the dark ages, when chalkboards were still in use, and I was no longer able to read one while sitting in the back of a classroom. Convincing my mother of this was difficult, but after a week or so she consented to take me to an opthamologist.

After about half an hour of the sort of fiddling and fussing that eye doctors do, he gave me a prescription. I don’t know that my mother looked horrified- I couldn’t see her very well given my lack of eyewear- but her reaction was disbelief. She argued with the doctor. Finally I asked the doctor if there was any way, given all his machinery, if he could invert my prescription, and let her see the world I as saw it. He blinked, fiddled a bit, and invited my mother into the chair.

I got the glasses.

I have Attention Deficit Disorder. This is a fairly recent diagnosis, and one that I myself didn’t really believe until medication for it was prescribed for me. Actually, I didn’t really believe it then, either. But I trusted that the doctor knew more about brains than I did, and so I took the medication.

In talking with people, I find that they misunderstand what ADD is. “That must make multitasking really easy!” is a common response. That’s not quite it. Let me try to do for ADD what I did for my nearsightedness. I will attempt to show a bit of the world, through my eyes.

(Click play on both of them at about the same time.)

Now: while these videos are playing, try and play a video game. The point isn’t to try and play the game– the point is to try and pay attention to all these things at once. That is what my unmedicated brain is like. Is it, then any wonder that ADD people have a reputation for absentmindedness? Or hyperactivity? Bizarrely, until very recently I had thought that this was normal. I had believed that this was the world everyone else experienced, and that I was just… a bad human because I was unable to manage it.

My “ah-ha!” moment. I was watching a youtube video. It was about 90 seconds long. During that time, I received a pair of IMs and a text message. The flashing lights and long-duration tones did not cause me to pause the video and immediately answer the various communiques. 90 seconds of attention to a video was something I noticed as new and different.

Psychology and psychiatry deal with the mind, and both take their prefix from the Greek word for soul. The idea that the mind is nothing more than electrochemical impulses is one that makes utter sense– and is utterly rebelled against. Yet knowing that redressing a chemical imbalance can fix a major deficiency in my behavior is comforting. It means that this problem is no more the fault of a defective soul than being unable to walk would be.

Sadly, the medication has not granted me super powers. I am as susceptible to boredom as I ever was- but now I can recognize it as such, rather than merely being desirous of even more stimulation. Nor has my writing or gameplay improved. Those are skills that must be practiced.

Unfortunately, ADD isn’t the major problem with this brain of mine. For reasons hinted at above, the seat of my personality- the home to my stupendous ego- is prone to fits of depression and self-destruction. Changing the mental wiring to fix prevent those things may be as easy as introducing a new chemical to my brain. It may not be. My doctor and I will have to do a bit of experimenting. That’s a whole different topic, however.

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Parents and children and Google.

It’s Sunday Morning. Sundays are for celebrating one’s maternal relations. Alternately, Sundays are for showing off one’s child while visiting the town you lived in before having said child. Then again, Sundays could be for going “OMG! I’m in Paris!” Also? Sundays are for moving back to the USA. Possibly Sundays are for lamenting that one is unable to be with one’s own mother, and hoping that a video will suffice.

This week: the world began wondering why the US would launch a 10 year invasion and occupation of Afghanistan to do something it takes a Navy Seal + CIA team a couple years to accomplish in Pakistan. Also this week, Singapore, held elections where the majority party won with a significantly smaller majority than it had ever previously won with. Also: the Canadians held an election where the ruling minority party was able to secure a majority. Also: the United Kingdom held a referendum where they decided to retain the broken “first past the post” system, instead of going with a far more sensible “instant runoff” system. And in other news: Americans held their annual celebration of a Mexican victory over the French Empire.

Last Sunday, American forces did kill Osama bin Laden, and I’ll have more to say on that later. Many people celebrated, and many others feel that it is ugly to celebrate the death of a human being. I’ll have more to say on that later as well. For now: I think it is fair to say bin Laden left a legacy of death. It is, I think, therefore fitting to commemorate his shuffling off of the mortal coil by giving the gift of life. I do know that for many of my readers, donating money to any cause is an unbearable financial burden. If you are fortunate enough to be comfortable, I do strongly urge you to send a few dollars to a worthy cause.

One of the most awesome and humbling tricks the human brain is capable of is the one yours is performing right now: taking abstract shapes and making symbolic meaning of them. Reading. I have been reading since the age of two, and I literally cannot imagine what it is like to not be able to read. I call it a “trick” because it is not intrinsic to the human mind, but rather something that must be learned. Neural pathways must be shaped, molded, and guided into discrete and measurable tracks that literally change not only how a human things, but the very thoughts the person is capable of thinking. In Detroit, half of all adults are functionally illiterate. This means that they are literally not capable of thinking the same sorts of thoughts that you and I are capable of– that that living-wage employers demand. This is why one of my favorite causes, when I do get the chance to donate, is adult literacy.

I’ve remarked on this before, but science fiction is one of the most-useful genres of literature. It allows the human experience to be freed from historical and contemporary constraints and- if the author wishes- lets us see the underlying truths of the human condition. Granted, science fiction is (like anything else) subject to Sturgeon’s Law (90% of everything is crap), but even crap can be revealing. For instance: how Star Wars authors deal with female characters reveals a great deal about what contemporary society feels the underlying truth of male/female relationships are like.

Musical Interlude.

For a decade, Democrats had been pointing out that Al Qaeda more closely resembled an criminal organization than a governmental one. For a decade we argued that this implied a more strongly law-enforcement mentality than a military one. For a decade, we Democrats were mocked and ridiculed. Obama got bin Laden. Bush couldn’t. I bet Obama spent many fewer taxpayer dollars doing this than Bush did. Between this, Universal Healthcare, and pulling out of Iraq, I’m ready to vote for Obama again.

For some reason the chattering classes take one look at the amazingly low interest rates being offered to the American government, a huge population of unemployed people, and are unable to do the basic math that says America must borrow money now to put people to work. Instead those chatterers are suddenly in a moral panic about debt, insisting that the only way to solve this non-problem is to slash the social services that make America a great nation– and have incidentally kept America’s economy from falling directly into the toilet. Rarely is the question asked: is our media knowing where the deficit came from? Nixon may have been our most evil president. Bush was easily the least-competent. The fun part? Proposed solutions to the deficit would basically amount to a major transfer payment from the poor to the rich. That’s right: rich people are arguing in their own class interest.

The New Republic allows liberal writers on their staff? Who knew?

It is very easy to come up with rules for, commandments about, and prohibitions on behavior. By crafting a set of instructions for the human condition, we reduce the amount of thought needed to perform a given action. Please understand when I say that I understand and agree with the impulse to create rules for behavior. We must also very much understand that rules are but shadows on Plato’s cave. They are not in themselves proper behavior, but merely guide posts to what proper behavior might be. Thinkers ranging from the Christian prophet (“The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath”), to Eric Blair (“[...]correct grammar and syntax, which are of no importance so long as one makes one’s meaning clear”) have made this point. The only real counter to the lazy habits of thought and writing imposed by glue-stick adherence to rules, consciously think about each phrase before fingers and keyboard engage in the modern dance. Put differently: one must engage in self-criticism before criticizing others.

Speaking of self-criticism: I used to work as a field representative for an elected official. That official’s district had (shamefully) began as a red-line zone for whites to flee to. This report detailing the racist manner in which cross-race constituents were treated by their elected officials made me wonder how well I did with my own responsibilities. No one likes to think of themselves as a racist– that doesn’t change the fact that a lot of these negative actions permeate society.

Speaking of race: I’m not sure what, if anything, we San Franciscans can or should do about this.

The good people at VALVe recognize that the need to take positive action to make their language as inclusive as possible. What’s interesting here is that they’re not only making a conscious effort at being better, they’re showing a bit of annoyance with “rules” which had prevented them from doing so previously.

My awesomely talented friend has moved to Paris.

A common complaint about the space program is that there are many millions of hungry people to feed here on Earth. I do very much understand this line of thinking, though I consider it almost criminally short sighted. It seems to have taken us 95 years and a baker’s dozen new technologies to confirm a theory Einstein dashed off between grading papers. I don’t know what those thirteen new technologies are. I have a very good idea that at least one of them will lead to an idea that will feed a very many people who would otherwise have gone hungry.

Funranium Labs wants to improve your booze and your coffee with science. Act now and get a 10% discount.

Why the recording industry is in sharp decline.

Osama bin Laden used his natural charisma, organizational genius, and inherited money for no better purpose than mass murder. Before his death, he had built nothing, and yet had filled graveyards. I think that the greatest testimony I can give to the humanity I share with the man is joy at his death. And yet. I do wish that we had put the psychopath on trial. To my way of thinking, justice cannot be served unless someone is allowed to stand up and defend their actions before the world. Without a trial, without some attempt at impartiality, we are left with nothing more than vengeance and slaughter. Sometimes- and it seems that this is one of those times- vengeance is all circumstances will allow for. And yet. I do wish for a different set of circumstances. The Slactivist looks at the hunting and killing of Osama bin Laden from a different point of view.

If you read just one link:

Rob Zacny is introspective. I think saying anything else would be a spoiler for the post, and take away from some of it’s inquisitive mastery.

Fittingly, for a post written on Free Comic book day, this week’s theme was truth, justice, and the American way. I didn’t even plan that. In the comments below, let me know why Batman is more awesome than Superman.

And the final bit of moral instruction can be found here:

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It’s Sunday Morning. Sundays are for writing blog posts while on Adderall so that you can figure out if it helps you become a better writer. Sundays are also for getting together with friends to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer and try out the boardgame. Alternately, Sundays could be for being sheepish in the Greater Tacoma Area.

This week a major tornado ripped through Alabama, killing hundreds. Also this week: the British government shut down the United Kingdom because a non-citizen married a citizen. Also also: The current Catholic Pope took the first step in canonizing the his immediate predecessor. Also: the “president” of Yemen refuses to step down, even though everyone has asked him rather nicely.

One of the major stories in the electronic world over the past few days has been the destruction of the Playstation Network. Hackers were able to seize control of network, steal every password, (possibly) every credit card number, and probably every home address that anyone had ever registered on the site. Then they shut it down. The scary thing is that most people use the same password for damned near every site on the web. Now is an excellent time to change your password to something secure. There are simple ways a person can create secure passwords. Try one out.

Obviously- obviously!- the language a person uses to describe a circumstance will shape the way that circumstance is perceived. Obviously- obviously!- we wish to use inclusive language at all times so that everyone is allowed into the conversation, and that no one will feel that the conversation-space is unwelcoming to them. Unfortunately, it is rather easy to use the insistence on “correct” language as another tool for privilege to propagate itself. Given that my own demographic is how the patriarchy is usually defined, I am not well placed to tell other people they’re going too far in demanding certain words be used or not used. So instead I’ll point out the linked article and allow the conversation to happen around me.

We humans have eyes. Also? We humans have sex drives. Not all of us have either- or both- of those things, but the vast majority of us do. Naturally we humans are going to find one another physically attractive. Any philosophy which demands that we humans cease to find one another attractive will simply fail. Given these things, we humans need to learn to check one another out without causing distress to those we observe. This seems like a good beginning point to figuring out how to do that.

How did you celebrate World Penguin Day?

There are certain things that I really just don’t understand. They are so far outside of my life experience that I simply have no frame of reference around which empathy can be draped. Something I have learned is that empathy is an unnecessary emotion. I do not need to feel what another person is feeling. I do not need to understand what they’re going through. All I need to do is treat them and their circumstances with respect and dignity. Empathy is a tool for this end, but a failure of empathy does not absolve me of my responsibilities. I say all this because I do not understand being trans-gendered. But I am very glad to see that my government will no longer be discriminating against trans-gendered people. This is one of the many small things the Obama administration has done correctly.

A small slice of social history of regarding a trans gendered “person”. “Person” is put in quotes there because, well. Click the link and it should be obvious.

Children of 2083 are already mocking us for taking so long to legalize being gay gay marriage. Also: they need to get off my lawn.

Let’s toss out all the rules and reinvent chess. Because we’re eight, and the world hasn’t taught we shouldn’t.

Portal 2 themed musical interlude

Liberals and conservatives have a longstanding dispute about the efficacy of government involvement in society. We liberals believe that without government, society could not function. Conservatives- American ones at any rate- believe that “I’m from the government and I’m here to help” is a “terrifying” phrase. Interestingly, the former Bush speech writer who coined the phrase “axis of evil” seems to be hitting back at conservative anti-government rhetoric.

One of the weirder aspects of the American federal system is that the nation government is much more rigorously watched than local governments. CNN, MSNBC, FOX news, the BBC, Al Jazeera, and a myriad of other networks, magazines, and newspapers cover the goings-on of Washington DC. By contrast, there might be a pair of non-local newspapers which cover the California state capital, and approximately the same number of Tv stations. As a result of this, it is much easier for local bullies to create massive harm than is for national bullies to do likewise. a similar dynamic has played out throughout human history.

The Civil War wasn’t tragic.

Yes it was. (They’re both right.)

The Galactic Civil war happened a long time ago, in a Galaxy far, far away. It saw the destruction of at least one planet. Was that actually an efficient use of Imperial resources? The short answer is that it depends on the aims of the empire. My take? The destruction of Alderaan was the Imperial version 9/11: a massive show of strength which scared the opposition so badly that they utterly destroyed the people responsible. Strategic blunder of the highest order.

SETI will no longer have a dedicated set of telescopes with which to look for non-human intelligent life.

Get vaccinated or die. Not only will you die, you’ll probably kill other people as well.

Being privileged, it’s easy to give racist people the benefit of the doubt. Concerns over a president’s birth certificate certainly can look legitimate. Being privileged, it is easy to take the self-justification of other privileged people at face value. In the end, doing so only leads to the same old tired dance.

President Obama spoke at the White House correspondents dinner. The man made cruel mockery of his opponents, causing the entire press to laugh with him and at them. Sometimes we need to be reminded of the greatness of the man “who brought us Universal Healthcare”

One of the things I’ve spoken about- at great length- is that our culture is forever attacking things that appeal to women. Twilight may be a vacuous set of books, but they’re not worse than New York Times best selling author David Webber’s trashy novels. The royal wedding was a huge and noisy pageant. It was very fashionable to mock it- because it was coded for women.

There is, however, a very good reason to mock the royal wedding. As an American, we should be siding with Cromwell. Just so we’re clear: any article which-as does this one- implies strongly that Reagan is a traitor to America will get a link from me.

The economics of being a fashion model. Making a living as a model is roughly as humanity-reaffirming as eating while being a model. Shockingly Obviously, the majority of this personhood destruction is being done to women.

If you click just one link:

I’ve tweeted and talked quite a bit about my mental health issues. I am… not entirely well. The subhead for this week’s post refers to the fact that I am- on the advice of my shrink- on medication as I type these words. It is, in fact, much easier to focus with this medication. What is difficult for me (sometimes impossible (sometimes painfully so)) is to actually sit down and try to type. Unfortunately, the chemical rebalancing of my brain isn’t really meant to deal with this. This statement by Ira Glass is part of the reason why I have a hard time doing things I want to do. And perhaps part of the solution. In a week, or a month, or a year, please remind me of this.

This week’s theme has been empathy, sympathy, and privilege. In the comments below, let me know what you’ve been most privileged to enjoy over the past year. Instant messaging me or tweeting me isn’t nearly as good as leaving a comment in the comment box.

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So: I said “ah” a bit too much. And didn’t realize quite how much I was looking down from the cam. But I hope that you found my ramblings entertaining.

Suggestions for next time?

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It’s Sunday. Sundays are remembering all the poor firstborn males of Egypt who were sacrificed so that the ancient Jews could be freed. Alternately, it is for remembering the death and resurrection of a man who was also a god who died so that all of humanity might be free. Alternately, it’s for wondering why people make such a fuss about a holy day that can’t really be holy because it’s not on a Friday. Alternately again: it could just be for grabbing an excuse to visit with the family. Or in my case: working.

This week: Thailand and Cambodia had a militarized border dispute- the Thai prime minister is vowing to back their army. Abu Dhabi launched it’s first satellite. Also also: a bunch of fucking bicyclists got upset because they were asked to please stop slamming into pedestrians while commuting over the Golden Gate Bridge.

One of the biggest problems a journalist can face is that of “access”. In order for a journalist to get a story, they need to talk to the people who have the information they need. This doesn’t come free. Sometimes the price being requested is monetary (legitimate news organizations will fire people who pay sources.), sometimes it’s the opportunity for the source to attack their enemies, and sometimes the price being demanded is the chance to shape the story to be most flattering to said source. A journalist must walk a very fine line between being biased on one hand, and being a stenographer for salespeople (and other liars) on the other. Games journalism is a curious beast, with it’s own set of rules and pitfalls.

If a democracy is to survive, power must be inherently untrusted. A journalist’s job is to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable”– to keep watch over power and never, ever trust it. Ever. If a tomb opens Sunday morning, and a pair of journalists are there to see Jesus Christ rising from the dead, they damned well better ask to see the holes in his wrists. The “good news” they print should be that those holes have been accounted for. Having said all that, can anyone tell me why Philippa Thomas has not been vilified and fired? There is no such thing- ever- as “off the record” when a journalist is listening.

This is an amazing story about the triumph of capitalism, and multiculturalism.

If it were proved in a court of law that a company was selling a product it knew could be deadly, what should the consequence be? What if it were food? A company was selling food they suspected could cause permanent injury or death? What if they refused to consult the relevant experts because they didn’t care enough? In America, given a fact pattern like that, we laugh at the victim, and make an old woman the butt of a thousand national jokes. Yes. We laugh at the victim. Which brings up a final question: what is wrong with America?

One of the weirder aspects to American society is that our tax rates can reach upward of 50%– but almost no one actually pays that. The effective tax rate is about 19%, on average. A “flat tax” won’t make our tax system any simpler– charging everyone the same 19% would simply keep things at the same regressive state they are currently. If we want to simplify our tax code, we should get rid of all the various deductions that have crept in. Why should the government care if people buy their home or rent it?

It probably comes as no surprise that, while in college, I was on my school’s debate team. We were alright. It wouldn’t actually serve any higher purpose if we showered intellectual competitions with the same pomp and praise as we do physical ones. It would, however, be somewhat awesome.

I am the Elf your Dwarf could smell like.

About 100,000 years ago, human beings climbed to the top of the food chain by using our mastery of memetic exchange. Other critters had to rely on the slow ravages of biological evolution to enable their adaptation– we humans could invent, discover, and (most importantly) share new information. It is therefore fascinating to me that humanity is capable of losing technology. The Greeks had working steam engines. The Chinese abandoned the printing press. The Russians used to be the finest leather workers in the world. No one currently remembers how they did it. The instructions didn’t survive. This is one of the things I fear about Digital Rights Management tools, and the current Intellectual property regime.

What would Sunday be without a Comics section? Here’s XKCD. Here’s Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.

More of my fears? Congress basically sucks at doing things. It took about a hundred years to create anti-lynching laws, nearly 70 to get Universal Healthcare, and congress can’t even seem to declare war when we start sending troops around the world to kill in the name of the United States. This problem seems to be getting worse, and the solution is to let more powers devolve to the Executive branch. Much as I hate the Citizens United ruling, and much as I want congress to have overturned it, executives simply shouldn’t be making law. That’s not their function. That’s the path towards dictatorship.

Musical Interlude.

A (now Ex) girlfriend once suggested that I ditch my OK Cupid profile. I never visit the thing, and it’s an annoyance to have to delete their weekly email. Yet I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it. At base, OK Cupid is run by data nerds, and dammit I want to be part of their experiment. Anyone who doesn’t really get that about me is not going to last long as my partner.

Some data may be useful, but I do question the methods by which it is collected.

San Francisco is beautiful.

Class warfare. I write about it on this blog. A lot. Sorry about that. We tend to think of this as the big stuff. Tax cuts for the Rich paid for by service cuts to everyone else! Strikes! The bosses murdering people to break strikes! Sometimes, though, it looks a lot different. Sometimes it looks a lot like… Dr. Horrible. No, seriously. Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog was an attempt by labor to own the means of production. Make a note here: it was a huge success. And it looks like they’re doing a sequel.

It’s the holiest day in the Christian calendar, so I’ll mention one of the more interesting parts of their theology: the exhortation to visit those in prison. It is explicitly stated that a failure to visit people in prison is worth a direct ticket to hell. The context for that visit is also worth noting: people should be visited because being in prison sucks, and it’s nice to have people visit. This is all rather tangential to the think: American cops sure do seem to generate a lot of false confessions.

Musical Interlude.

People talk about doing “back end work” on websites, web hosting, and spider webs. I know that a lot of that sort of work involves typing in funny, made up languages that aren’t Klingon. Until now, though, I didn’t know exactly what was going on.

Portal two came out this week, and the only things I’ve done since then have been working, playing Portal 2, sleeping, and writing this post. The game is amazing, and involve a whole lot of physics bending puzzles. The writing, too is top notch. I’m probably going to go into more detail in a later post.

One of the more interesting ways that people are racist is by ascribing to a certain racial category characteristics that are common to humanity in general. Once a culture decides that a “race” has a certain characteristic, people tend to notice the confirming examples, and ignore the examples which fail to confirm the bias. Add in some lazy screen writing, and viola! perpetual motion racism.

Let’s pause for a moment and take a moment of silence for the inventor of the Cartridge-based video game console.

If you only read one link:

Approximately one third of all the world’s humans are Christian. Today is the holiest day on their calendar. That makes it worth reflecting a bit on what the story of Easter means. Easter is, perhaps, not about Sunday, but about the day before. I’m not going to say much here. I’m going to let Fred Clark do the talking.

This week’s theme has been Easter Sunday. So in the comments, let us know what holy day you find most interesting. Perhaps that’s a little too on the nose.

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Vader? Kind of the Man.

It’s Sunday. Sundays are for getting together with your family to find out how long until they kick you out of your house. Or Sundays are for being with good friends in Las Vegas. Or Sundays are for preparing to host a hoard of nerds for a highly anticipated TV show.

This week the Eastern Seaboard of the US was wracked by storms. Also this week, Cuba celebrated the 50th anniversary of the failed US invasion of their country. Also also? The French nabbed alleged monster Laurent Gbagbo, and turned him over to those seeking justice for his alleged crimes. That’s justice, 21st century style.

I am a proud member of tribe nerd. We nerds, much like any other tribe, have our own totems, holy texts, styles, images, icons, and heroes. To a nerd, most questions have the answer “42″. Occasionally, however, the answer is 24 mph.

I am something of a clothes horse. I like to look good, and I’ll combine things in interesting ways to make that happen. I wear nice slacks when I can get away with it, and good jeans when that’s appropriate. I have a friend who will only, always, and forever wear black slacks. That’s fine. That’s just taste. My taste is manifestly not the final arbiter of all that is good and holy about fashion. I’ll pretend they are, for fun, but I do understand the difference between objective and subjective reality. Perhaps this is why I am not a New York Times columnist .

One of the weirder things about fashion is the way it’s always changing. People in the 1980s thought they looked “radical”. The first time a King of France put on a pair of high healed shoes, his entire court believed they were the most manly things ever to be donned by a manly man. It should therefore shock no one that pink was once considered a very masculine color.

It is odd that the entire media establishment would freak out about a boy wearing pink nail polish. After all: if pink used to be the color of boys, then you’d think the conservatives would love to restore traditional gender norms by bringing it back.

You know who “throws like a girl”? Everyone who hasn’t learned how to throw a ball. Each and every notional instance of gendered behavior that is rooted in anything other than society must be uprooted, and examined. That’s not to say that gender isn’t important. Rather: any professional female athlete could beat me at the sport of their choosing.

Of course, since being a woman isn’t a thing that is discriminated against any longer, feminism is an outdated, unnecessary relic. Women are welcomed with open arms into every profession, past time, and are paid the same wages and respect. Wait. Ah nuts.

Leala talks about why she believes that it matters that she’s a “girl gamer”. Given that “Fat, Ugly, or Slutty” needs to exist, I fully understand the desire to create a safe-space for women to be gamers. That’s part of what she’s arguing for, but not really all of it. I’m going to be honest: I’m not really sure I understand her argument. I think that this might be one of those cases where my own privilege is blinding me to what she’s saying. If that’s the case, I’m just going to point over to her work and shut the hell up.

Adorable Interlude.

I have long said that it’s a really weird idea to take a person’s primary investment vehicle, and make it something as enormously difficult to liquidate as real estate. It seems to me that the difficulty in cashing out this investment ought to be worth a rather large discount.

Pirates are loathsome, awful people who’s business ought to be destroyed utterly. Indeed: piracy only flourishes in places where civilization has broken down to the extend that piracy is a viable alternative to any other type of work. That’s basically always been true, as a casual perusal of Roman history will attest. Nonetheless, there is something charming about pirate recreationists. They may gloss over all the truly ugly parts of actual history, but what they leave behind is pure swashbuckling fun.

Whitewashing history in order enjoy wooden sailing ships and black powder explosions is utterly harmless and fun. Ignoring history to pretend the South left the Union for any reason other than slavery is dangerous. The entire Southern system was built on a foundation of aristocracy and class much at odds with American notions of Democracy. Those memes were defeated on the battlefield, and should have been buried forever at Appomattox. We see echoes of them every time some whackjob congressperson argues against the minimum wage.

This might be the most frightening graph I’ve ever seen.

Just so that we are 100 percent, absolutely clear about the causes of the Civil War, let’s let the Confederate Vice President speak on his own behalf.

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

We can decide what parts of history we chose to remember. The State of Virginia has proclaimed that Lee and Jackson were brilliant, but the escaped slave who fought for the Union was heroic.

One of the really cool things about Massively Multiplayer Games is the way they act as natural sociology experiments. Conditions can be tweaked, and outcomes observed. An interesting game is “Eve Online”. Ever want to be a space pirate? This is your chance. It’s a wonderfully “real politic” universe where power really does seem to rule. Rock Paper Shotgun did an interesting interview with one of the in-game rulers of that game.

Speaking of places that require a bit of imagination to reach: top 10 imaginary travel destinations.

There are two basic animating ideas of how American society ought to behave. On the one side, you have the “individualist” ideas, which permeate the modern Republican party, and the founders of the Confederate nation. One of the side notes mentioned by the CS Vice President in that speech I just linked to is that any city or state which wishes to improve it’s infrastructure is and ought to be free to do so– alone. The idea that New Orleans ought to help pay for improvements to the part of the Mississippi river which lays in Arkansas is soundly rejected. The other idea is that of “commonweal”. This is the idea that we’re each tied to one another and that there is a moral responsibility to work for society. This notion was embraced by Lincoln’s Republican party. This week, President Obama offered a sirring defense.

Tax dollars. Where do they go?

One of the weirder things about the Republican plan to meddle with the Federal budget is that if congress does nothing, there will be no deficit. If all that the Republican party wanted to do was bring our budget into line, they can all go home and announce “mission accomplished”.

Obviously, Republicans want to do more than simply fix the budget. They wish to radically redraw the lines of responsibly between American citizens. It seems their utopia begins with the destruction of the commonweal. This might explain why they’re not popular in New England.

San Francisco is not an imaginary place. But it does spark the mind, and capture the soul.

if you only click one link this week:

One of the things I say over and repeatedly again about politics is “don’t hate the player, hate the game”. Everything that moves follows the path of least resistance. While there will be variations on this, we should tend to expect similar behavior from similar groups when conditions are similar. Let’s come at it from a different angle, though. F1 racing. When F1 racing wants to see certain types of of behavior from racers, they don’t merely ask racers to not engage in bad behavior. Nor do they simply ban said behavior. They’ll actually redesign the cars in order to make certain winning strategies more or less viable. Interestingly, it seems that a lot of the philosophy around this is video game inspired.

This week’s theme was Hugin and Munin- Thought, memory and reclaiming it from the hole that Orwell warned us about. In the comments below, please let me know what you hope will be your fonded memory of the first episode of the Game of Thrones.

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A wonderful defense of drunk driving. The obvious solution- funding buses and trains- doesn’t seem to have entered the conversation.

It’s Sunday morning. Sundays are for getting up when the alarm goes off so you can do chores before heading to work. Sundays are for sleeping in after a day spent at WonderCon. Sundays are for being in Old Vegas and celebrating your birthday. Sundays, much like the Diety of Abraham, simply are.

This week, the Afghan, Iraq, and Libyan wars continued. The Canadians and French campaigned for their previously planned elections. The Japanese are still dealing with the cleanup of their nation. The Haitians are also still trying to fix their country. This week, in other words, was uniquely like millions of others in human history.

Sadly accurate: male nerds will offer girls sex pretty much whenever girls show up in proximity to nerds. I think this sheds some interesting light on misogyny in general; male nerds aren’t really looking at the actual human being creating the works or doing the deeds they’re enjoying. It’s that failure to look past the “what” (and the tits secondary sexual characteristics) and see the “who” that is the most troubling aspect of sexism.

Speaking of identity politics: everyone knows that claims about Obama’s lack of an American Birth Certificate are racist, right? The subtext is that since he’s black, he can’t really be an American. It’s bothersome, then, that Donald Trump is making racist attacks on the Americaness of our duly elected President. Canadian general was put in charge of the NATO effort in Libya? It seems that the Canadians are a bit grumpy about being in this war at all. I think the last time they were all “aye ready aye” about anything was Juno Beach, though.

Canada is basically the best damned neighbor the US could have. We have been at peace since 1846, share a common defense, a tightly integrated economy, and have a similar enough culture that we get one another’s jokes. Every American owes it to our Canadian friends to have at least a clue about how Canada works.

Unrelated: It’s really nifty when you can do a search for movie times, and get local results. This happens because your browser can figure out where you are, and pass that information along to whatever site is requesting that information. This seems like an unwarranted step towards the million eyed “little brother” future Orwell might have imagined had he lived past 1948. Here’s how to shut it off.

The Dadaists were basically the forerunners to the contemporary “hipsters”. You know who else was a hipster?

In the short run, America absolutely needs to vote early and often for the Democratic party. We’re not on the side of angles here, but we’re the least-bad option on the table. When you’ve fallen off the high-wire and discover that there’s no safety net, the smart thing is to slow your rate of descent. That’s what the Democratic party represents: getting worse more slowly. This is preferable to the opposition who wish to make us as aerodynamic as possible.

It is fortunate that America isn’t in nearly as bad a spot as the communist Bloc in the 1980s. The irony, is that the economic problems with American Capitalism and Soviet-style communism are roughly the same: in neither system is labor able to bargain for better compensation. Obviously the political problems faced by Soviet-ruled nations were significantly worse, involving some rather violent repression by the State.

Current US tax law says that if you own part of a company, and realize profit from your ownership of that company, the tax rate is significantly lower than if you had labored for that company and helped create the revenues that became that profit. We’re told this is a right and just thing because corporations are merely collections of individuals, and since corporate profits are taxed, taxing income derived from dividends or the sale of stock is “double taxation”. Is it still “double taxation” when a corporation makes $14.2 billion in profit, yet manages to avoid paying taxes at all?

Don’t hate the player, hate the game. Everyone follows incentives created by the system, and the incentives in the modern American political system are incredibly fucked up. I won’t pretend I have a robe that grants the ability to read minds, so I don’t know what Barack Obama really wants to do. I can say that no American politician can long stand on the national stage without corporate backing. We need to fix that problem first. Everything else should follow.

Let’s have a musical interlude

Microsoft failed to really grok the web. It didn’t get search, and to a large extent still doesn’t. This allowed Google the room to create an advertising empire mighty enough that Google was able to fund the next several iterations of computer operating systems. Google, though, never really understood social media. They know this is a huge blindspot, and are hoping to fix it before Facebook creates the next generation of web ads. And I just broke my “no linking to gawker” rule. Sorry guys.

This is why Funranium is always invited to my parties. That, and he’s generally a good conversationalists and devious game player.

Did you know that in the United States, it is illegal to use an intern to do anything useful? It’s true! You can’t use an intern to take the place of someone you would normally pay. This is a widely flouted law, but it’s existence says nice things about how labor ought to be treated.

Many–though by no means all– writers for the Huffington Post are doing so without pay. The Newspaper Guild has called a strike against HufPo until those free writers are paid. In theory, I’m 100% behind this: labor has value. In practice, I’m not sure. As above, it is illegal to use an intern to do work you’d have to pay someone to do. What HufPo wants from its writers is eyeballs on page– ad revenue. Are the unpaid writers delivering those eyeballs? If so, then HufPo certainly does owe those writers recompense! If not, then this strike is about as meaningful as one against wordpress might be.

One of the odd things about America is that we really don’t know how badly we have it. Our medical system is roughly 45th best in the world– just barely better than Cuba. Our income mobility is one of the worst in the developed world, and our communications technology is, frankly, a blight.

The US executive branch announced this week that it no longer considers the US legislative branch to have war making powers. It’s frightening to me that Obama is a constitutional scholar, and yet still came to that conclusion.

Another musical interlude.

Don’t hate the player, hate the game. Everyone follows incentives of the system before them, and the incentives in the modern American strategy game are incredibly fucked up. I won’t pretend I have a robe that grants the ability to read minds, so I don’t know what Troy Goodfellow really wants to do. I can say that no Canadian Strategy Gamer can win a game without slaughtering peasants. We need to fix that problem first. Everything else should follow.

I tend to fall on the “Art is that which elicits emotion” and “art is that which has commentary on the human experience” side of the argument. Brian Moriarty is on the other side of the argument. Even though he is obviously wrong (as are are all fools who disagree with me), his points are well worth considering.

I consider Babylon 5 to be among the best television shows of all time. I’ll go further: I honestly believe that it stands as one of the great works of human art. It is an incisive look at evil, and offers the sort of allegorical moral guidance I’m used to reading in holy texts. Replace the cool spaceship battles with a war among gods, and it might be mistaken for a contemporaneous work of Homer’s. Sadly, it has to fight for it’s place in the sci-fi cannon.

Ear-worm interlude.

That concludes this week’s Sunday Reading. The theme has been systems of dada hipsters in magical realms. Please list your favorite kitchen knives in the comment section below. And don’t forget to use the various sharing buttons below!

Bisexuals: how do they work?! #Magnets

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I was surprised to find a monster at the center of the dungeon. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been: since the days when stone tablets were too precious to inscribe stories on, story tellers have been inventing labyrinths and putting monsters in them. Nevertheless, the magistrate had contracted me to find a criminal and return him to face justice. The father of his most recent victim had told me that no human would ever be held accountable for the murder of elves. The elf begged me to create justice by killing the human.

I’ve got a thing about justice. To me, justice isn’t merely a matter of outcomes. Rather, it resides at the intersection of correct outcomes and correct procedure. This is what makes, for instance, Batman so compelling. When outcomes and procedure stand at odds, I almost invariably side with procedure. But that’s me. I don’t know how Hawke will feel about it.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered not just any criminal, but a child molester. That seems simple enough. Also simple enough? Diagnosing this child molester as schizophrenic. This makes a difference. Perhaps he could be rehabilitated? He’d still need to be punished, but I’d rather have him productive and sane than not. That’s when I realized that not even in the 21st century can such a thing be accomplished. Fantasy medieval empires are “fantasy” because they involve dragons, not because they involve really high end mental health clinics.

And there’s another problem: the mentally ill child molesting murderer hasn’t yet faced justice because he’s the son of a judge. I don’t really blame the judge for not condemning his own child. I can’t even really blame the judge for sheltering his child from legal repercussions. There might be an element of racism (the victims, after all, were elves), but protecting one’s children is a very human reaction.

So there are my choices: ignore procedural justice and outcome justice by returning this person to his father, or, kill this person and anger one of the most powerful people in the city. I thought about it for a bit. That’s when I realized that this is a Bioware game. There is no way at all that any decision I make will be the wrong one. In another, better, game this would be a wrenching decision. I’d have to figure out exactly how much I’m willing to sacrifice for my sense of justice, or honor, or to simply protect a community. I’m betting Bioware won’t make this decision cost me anything.

I slay the monster.

When I return to the magistrate, he knows what has happens, and vows that I’ll be punished. He didn’t get the memo that I’m the hero of this story, and his job is to make me look good.

It is interesting to me that meta gaming with Merrill made me really bond with the game, but in this quest, meta gaming ripped me out of the story and made my decisions easier. I think the difference is that with Merrill, I used meta gaming to give my character a goal, and tools to achieve that goal. In this instance, meta gaming was the result of having seen through the system, to the underlying mechanics.

I think this wraps up my thoughts about Dragon Age 2, act 1. I’ll leave with possibly the best quote of the entire game so far. It’s why I love Merrill:

But don’t go that way, there’s this huge dragon” – NPC fleeing for his life.

“Oh! Are we going to go that way? I’ve never seen a huge dragon before!” – Merrill.

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It’s Sunday Morning. Sundays are for bombing targets in Libya and hoping that your intelligence agency isn’t accidentally targeting the embassy of a rival nation. Sunday is for lounging around in bed swearing that this time you really will finish reading that damned book. Sunday is for pulling the covers up high, thanking your ancestors that we’ve learned how to build weatherproof houses. Sundays are for drinking coffee.

This week: Humanity rose up with one voice and declared that Gaddafi is a bad, bad man and so we must help his citizens overthrow him. Also this week: Saudi Arabia decided that the pro-democracy protesters in Bahrain were bad, bad people and so they sent in troops to help keep the government from being overthrown. Also also: the world has declined to help aid anti-government protesters in Yemen- tanks being used against civilian targets is insufficient grounds for a war. And again, also: humanity put something around the orbit of Mercury. One more? Egypt held a vote.

My family owns the house I’m living in. My share is 1/9 of the total value of the property. We’re thinking of selling this place to capitalize on our mutual inheritance. I got to talk with the appraiser on Saturday- who is, let’s be clear, a salesperson- and he was convinced that now is a great time to buy. He and I very lightly got into an argument over whether home ownership makes any kind of sense at all. My opinion? Living in your single largest financial asset makes no gods damned sense. Making that asset liquid means moving. Anyway: here’s an opinion agreeing with mine. It must, therefore, be correct.

It’s good to remember that when facing a collective action problem, humans task governments to enforce mutually beneficial solutions. If the government is prevented from doing so, it’s proof that we need to overhaul our system of government. Contra my libertarian friends, this is not proof that we ought not have a government at all.

If war, earthquakes, foreclosure, and bankers weren’t scary enough, San Francisco is facing another kind of terror.

The patriarchy? It’s bad for your marriage. I really hope I’m able to rise above my upbringing when I find the right lady to partner off with.

Was talking with one of my coworkers. She was telling me that she basically spends her non-work time playing video games. We have, like, zero games in common. This amuses me to no end. She made the comment that she is just about the only woman she knows who games. I think that if women understood that other women game, there might be more women gamers. Communities can help overcome problems. And how female gamers are treated? It’s a huge problem.

Speaking of huge problems: the amount of radiation leaking from the Japanese reactors and into the surrounding area. Actually, it’s probably not a very big problem, mostly because their government made sure that the code the plant had to be built had a rather generous safety margin.

I am a proud member of the human species. I mean that seriously and literally. I am proud of what we do, and have done as a species. That video above? Made with human artifacts that we’ve sent out of our atmosphere and around other planets entirely. I don’t understand camping, but I do love to visit museums. So any article called “Infrastructure” is bound to get my attention. Click over for some beautiful pictures of human crafted tools serving the needs of humanity.

For some reason, humanity likes to sub divide itself into smaller groups called “races”. There is no biological basis for this construction, and yet we see these cultural groupings pop up repeatedly in human history. It’s odd to me how fluid these groupings are. The several ethnicities in modern “India” don’t tend to consider themselves “Indian” until they reach Western shores. Likewise the Han, Zhuang, Manchu, Hui, Miao, Uighur (etc) who make up China don’t think of themselves as similar at all. But when you take all the above mentioned groups, add others, stick them in America (or Europe), suddenly they all become “Asian”. Bizarre. Anyway: Ok Cupid asks: what does dating look like in an America with fewer white people?

Speaking of race: Troy Goodfellow asks how the essentials of French character can be codified and numbered in a video game. This provides a lens through which we can examine the limits of video game design. I’m being a bit opaque, as I want you to click the link. Having said that, games do very badly with non-binary states. France prides itself on subtly.

We San Franciscans pride ourselves on our commitment to democracy. Why be satisfied with a single vote, when each voter can get three? As it happens, I rather like ranked choice voting, and hope that we see it used in more important campaigns.

Why be satisfied with attraction to a single gender, when each person can have attraction to three two. Short version? Bisexuality: not “just a phase”. Nor is it there for the amusement of the patriarchy. Nor should you take a drink every time I use the phrase “the patriarchy” on this blog. You’ll go blind.

I would prefer a world in which elections had immediate consequences. Neglect to show at the polls, and badness may ensue. Voters would know exactly who to blame, and who to punish for it. The fact that America can’t address many of it’s problems because we only put 59% of one of the chambers into the hands of a single party, and therefore legislation won’t pass… it’s a bit of a mess. I’m therefore shockingly ok with this. In the future, Wisconsin is going to know how to stop having these sorts of problems.

Which sort of does beg the question: why are Republicans so much more aggressive than Democrats?

War games have their own language. Their own vernacular. The truly hard core “grognard” games will try and model a particular conflict. What they mostly fail to to do is force players to make the same choices and decisions that actual historical figures made. Except, maybe there’s one game that might have managed it.

There’s a great line in Scott Pilgrim Vs the World: (quoting from memory) “I just discovered that music could be good, like, last week”. And I remember the exact instant I discovered music. I was 16 years old, and sitting in homeroom when someone put on “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. Within a few months Kurt Cobain would kill himself. Yes, I was a late bloomer. If music be the food of love play on.

That was way too serious. Have some penguins.

Millionaires don’t feel rich, because they compare themselves to people who are even richer. Also: millionaires who don’t feel rich should buy pitchforks and torches for the rest of us.

In my professional life, I attend a lot of meetings. My jobs tend to involve meeting with people, learning things, and then making decisions based on what I have learned. The “making decisions about what I have learned” is a creative process. It involves a lot of writing, a lot of study, a lot of learning and creating and discovering. That’s why this article feels rather suspect. Can it truly be the case that creative people are merely getting started after 4 or 5 hours (roughly half a work day)? I don’t buy it. The writer is someone who is so paralyzed by the idea of meetings that he will actually lose an entire day’s productivity because of a 15 minute conference. Nonetheless, it is always worth thinking about different personalities in the workplace, and different ways to meet their various needs.

You know when you’re playing a game, and you go to open a door and you’re like “Dammit! This door doesn’t go anywhere, the designer must just have wanted to create the illusion of space without doing the hard work of creating that space!” Those doors are now coming to San Francisco. Because we San Franciscans live the surreal life.

Ever notice how the closer people live to one another, the more liberal they become? It’s almost like density fosters a sort of “love thy neighbor” mindset where people want to try and help one another out. I mention this because Texas is becoming more urban. I wonder how long until they turn blue?

The Slactivist attacks theodicy from another angle. Or is that “Angel”? I always get those confused.

Mario. He’s our culture’s Iliad

This week’s theme was drinking games. And Video games. In the comments below, let me know your favorite drinking video games.

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