Mile Zero
those alien bastards are gonna pay for shooting up my ride
You may have heard by now that Mother Teresa suffered a severe crisis of faith for the fifty years prior to her death. During the entire time that she worked in her ministry she felt nothing from God, according to her own private letters, and she even held doubts as to His existence. Fellow priests have called this a trial of her faith--although where I come from, we call a fifty-year streak of skepticism "being agnostic," to say the least.
It's depressing. Not because she did good work: on the contrary, this was a woman who used her influence not to build hospitals or spread vaccinations, but to provide miserable spaces for people to die in agony, simply because she thought suffering might bring them to Christ. After all she had seen, she still insisted that the greatest evil on the planet was birth control. No, as Christopher Hitchens has said, she was no friend of the poor: she was a friend of poverty.
And it turns out she didn't even believe in her own excuses. If it weren't so sad, it might almost be funny.
19:56 x Thomas x /culture/religion/catholicism x link x 0 comments
Great Moments in Management Consultants
"So pretend that you're a team at Chapeaux Hat company. What does Chapeaux mean? Right, it means 'hat.' So that's kind of a double entendre."
[for literally any situation at all]
"The example I like to use here is the iPod."
"'Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.' It was Abraham Lincoln who said that."
"And I'm sure that you all are very aware of budget. You're a bank, after all."
15:35 x Thomas x /bank/experience/personal x link x 1 comment
Television Week: Well, More Like A Day
When we first moved into our apartment, Belle and I thought carefully about television. With Netflix, we didn't really need movie channels, but I'd gotten used to having an onscreen guide from digital cable. You get that with TiVo, and Belle really wanted one. So we went with regular ol' analog cable and spent the extra money on the TiVo subscription, and everyone was happy. Well, except for Comcast, but I'm not really shedding any tears over that.
There are lots of nice things about TiVo, little advantages that you don't get with the generic DVRs. Like the way that the fast-forward takes your reflexes into account, and rewinds a little bit so you don't overshoot the end of the commercial break. That's very thoughtful. It's also nice that the box will record recommendations if there's space left on the hard drive--most of the time it's stuff we'll never watch, but sometimes there are jewels, or programs that we meant to record but forgot to add to the list.
Turns out there's some really good stuff on basic cable nowadays. Even besides Galactica. I remember a few years ago, the general consensus seemed to be that if you wanted quality TV, you probably needed HBO. That was back when the reality show craze was in full swing, and all the news outlets screamed that we'd be watching nothing but reality TV in just a few years. So much for that.
11:03 x Thomas x /movies/television x link x 1 comment
By a combination of opportunity and wheedling, I've garnered an invitation to contribute articles on digital audio to Ars Technica, both from a production standpoint as well as the technical side. This is kind of a wide range. Now I just need to get some pitches together. Here are a few that I'm considering, and I'd appreciate feedback.
Suggestions are also welcome, and feel free to bring up topics where I'm not any kind of expert. I'm always interested in exploring new areas and then writing about them.
09:52 x Thomas x /journalism/writing x link x 1 comment
Sometimes, especially as we've been holding job interviews, people ask me what I enjoy most about working at the World Bank. Is it the feeling of satisfaction that comes from working at a non-profit, albeit a huge and controversial institution? Is it the multicultural environment filled with brilliant and interesting people? Is it the wide-ranging nature of the issues that we get to present to the world? Is it the compensation package? Is it the big, shiny building?
Well, I say, those are all very nice. But I also really like the chocolate. Because on days like today, when our colleagues from offices in Europe or Latin America drop in at headquarters for meetings or training, they usually bring chocolate from around the world to share with the rest of us.
I'm getting spoiled.
14:59 x Thomas x /bank/experience/personal x link x 0 comments
EQ Magazine has some nice features up this month. The most meat comes from an interview with Pete Townshend. It's a little disjointed, but good. Then they also toss in a few questions with Kid Beyond, who just released a CD of his looped beatboxing titled Amplivate.
12:18 x Thomas x /music/artists x link x 0 comments
Ars Technica has posted the remaining two articles I wrote about UX Week. The first is mostly about Yahoo! Teachers. The second covers the OLPC Design Keynote, thus proving that I am not above reporting on initiatives I personally find distasteful.
09:47 x Thomas x /journalism/articles x link x 1 comment
There are bad reviews, and then there's Pitchfork:
Finding the band's music polished to an almost blinding sheen, Blacklight is not a commercial album so much as Rilo Kiley's conception (or misconception) of what a commercial album is. It's their "Project Mersh", an alternate-universe sell-out move. But beneath that surface-- and Under the Blacklight is at first listen almost overwhelmingly surface-- Rilo Kiley must know they're full of shit. Either they're utterly serious about their flirtation with the mainstream or they're taking the piss with a wink. In both cases, the songs suffer a smothering slow death by context. ... At the same time, the fun-- or maybe "fun"-- disc stresses how humorless and full of shit Rilo Kiley's former indie brethren remain, scared stiff of the prospect of unabashed pop in the true please-the-masses sense. But it's still an audacious, fascinating exploration of banality, almost to a patronizing point.... Ah, L.A., where there's a thrift shop on every corner, the breakfast spots bustle well into the night, the lines at clubland bathroom stalls snake to early 1980s lengths, acts get signed at karaoke bars, and the plastic surgeons know just the thing to do with all those rough edges. Forget that Rilo Kiley's songs namedrop Brighton, New York, and Laredo: Under the Blacklight adds up to the familiar headline "California Band Makes California Album." Were all the AOR indulgences at least tied together into a concept they might have been more easily forgiven. And were any of those lyrics a little more pointed and less generalized, like they were in the anomalously galvanizing anti-Bush protest "It's a Hit", they'd add up to more than just a 40-minute short story collection on tape (with incidental music).
For the relative few who really, really care, debates may rage over whether Under the Blacklight marks some sort of progress, though what's just as likely is that Rilo Kiley's earlier output was artificially regressive in a bid for some sort of cred. ... Song by song it goes down awfully easy, but be warned. The band sure cleans up well, but there's a fair amount of guilty washing and hand-scrubbing to be done afterwards.
One asks: What does that even mean? Isn't it all just a bunch of rambling, snobby pseudophilosophy from someone who evaluates albums based only on some ill-defined indie authenticity? Doesn't this show, once again, that Pitchfork reviews are less about the mechanics and expression of music, and more about getting back at someone's Creative Writing 101 professor?
Yes. It is, and it does. This has been another edition of short answers to rhetorical questions.
17:13 x Thomas x /music/artists/rilo_kiley x link x 1 comment
How many "pro" musicians are using Garageband as a serious music production tool? Peter at CDM sorts them into a few basic categories in a post on improvements in Garageband '08, which finally includes some features that I would say a real DAW needs to have: plugin automation, multiple time signatures, and multi-take recording. It's still a toy, but it's becoming a decent entry-level recording tool, instead of just another ACID clone.
It's been said that Microsoft should think about offering a comparable production program for Windows, so PC users can also have a (sort-of) free music creation tool. But I'm not so sure that we need it. I'm not terribly conversant with the state of OS X freeware, but there's lots of free software on the PC that offers the same functionality (or more) as Garageband, and after three years of experimentation on the cheap, I think I've probably used most of it. Here's a few good options for newcomers to audio production on Windows:
There's also a whole world of standalone, budget (~$100) software "for beginners" out there, but I tend to think that it's kind of a waste, depending on the package. Midrange copies of Sonar or Pro Tools are just not that much more money than something like Sequel or Project 5, and the capabilities they offer go much farther. Even the low-end versions, like Sonar Home Studio, can be pretty good, and the upgrade path is easier on the wallet.
13:02 x Thomas x /music/tools/digital/daw x link x 1 comment
Because I know I was looking for this information and couldn't find it: Bioshock (the demo, at least) does run playably well on my Thinkpad, which is using an nVidia Quadro 140M (roughly equivalent to a destkop GeForce 6600). Obviously it doesn't run native resolution with everything turned up, but I seem to get good results from 854x480 and High settings, or native resolution and low settings.
Neither of these is an optimal solution, of course: replaying Halo and Half-Life 2 on the laptop, which runs them better than my old desktop, is a revelation in how much easier they are to play with high resolutions and smooth framerates. But Bioshock is certainly playable, especially considering that I beat and enjoyed both of those other games at similar view sizes (and without all the eye candy). If I were willing to try a combination of medium settings and non-native resolutions, I'm sure I could do quite well.
Actually, it does raise the question, though, of how well something has to run before it becomes unplayable or clumsy. When I used to play Counterstrike, before I realized that it wasn't much fun being beaten by obsessive players with better reflexes and equipment, I would always hear that the really competitive players turned off as much detail as they could, in order to boost the resolution and still keep a good framerate. The argument, I believe, was that it's easier to be precise when your view is sharper, even if it's not as pretty.
But then, I don't really play multiplayer anymore. So what makes the game "better?" Which side of the tradeoff between resolution and eye candy, given limited hardware (since I am never going to be the kind of person that spends $600 on a video card), works best for an individual? For me personally, I've been choosing shiny effects over more pixels, particularly for a game like F.E.A.R. where the graphics are kind of the point. I find that I don't notice the low resolution once the game is in motion anyway, especially on a 14" screen.
As for Bioshock, the demo is reasonably fun, but it's short (I downloaded two gigs for that?), and I don't really understand what all the fuss is about. It's slick and well-presented, but there are some jarring exceptions: I always thought System Shock 2's menagerie was odd-looking, and Bioshock shows that Irrational still can't do a human model that doesn't look vaguely like a creepy marionette. The hack minigame, also, is one of those things that yanks me right out of suspension of disbelief. Why am I suddenly playing Pipe Dreams? It's been thirteen years since the first System Shock game, and no-one can think of a better way to do this?
09:30 x Thomas x /gaming/software/bioshock x link x 0 comments
Something for everyone, except the dog
File under "slightly unsettling things you learn from the Internet": there's a flickr group just for muzzled pets. Thanks, Wallace.
14:09 x Thomas x /random/tech x link x 1 comment
A scene from the Barnes & Noble parking lot:
Old woman: Excuse me? Sir?It's funny: as long as you're on their own terms, they think your time is theirs to waste. But the moment you bring up a few issues of theodicy, they've got somewhere else to be.
Myself: Yes?
Old woman: Have you ever studied the bible?
Myself: I've read from it a time or two.
Old woman: Are you a Christian?
Myself: Not as such, no.
Old woman: (confused) Oh.
Young woman: (catching up to the party) Have you ever thought about Bible prophecy?
Myself: Not really.
Young woman: Well, I don't know if you know this, but many theologians--even the ones who aren't religious--admit that the Bible's prophecies have all come true.
Myself: All of them?
Young woman: Oh, yes.
Myself: That's impressive. Even the ones from John in Revelations, where he sees the seven-headed beast and all that? You'd think I'd remember a seven-headed beast.
Young woman: Well, see, when you learn to read with the eye of prophecy--
Myself: (interrupting) Here's what I don't get: why do I have to learn the eye of whatever? If God's omnipotent, why can't he just write what he means? Wouldn't it be a lot easier to get people to convert that way? Then everyone could go to heaven. That'd be nice.
Young woman: Ah, but God doesn't want everyone in heaven. He has a chosen few.
Myself: Your God's kind of a creep then, isn't he? I mean, if I acted that way, being all exclusive with my power, you'd think I was a jerk. Don't you think you deserve better?
Young woman: Who are we to question his almighty plan?
Myself: Decent human beings, I should hope.
Young woman: We're getting off the subject. About the bible--
Myself: Now I'm certainly not going to believe the bible on anything by itself.
Young woman: Why not?
Myself: Well, you believe it because it's the word of God. But if I don't believe it's the word of God, then it's got no authority.
Young woman: Yes, but in the Book of Isaiah--
Myself: Which is in the bible.
Young woman: Right.
Myself: You can't use something from inside the bible to testify for its own authenticity. That's a circular argument.
Young woman: So you don't want to talk about the bible at all?
Myself: Not unless you've got something else to back it up.
Young woman: Well then, I guess we'll be going.
I'll say this: I'm not a big fan of Mormonism, but at least those Elder kids in Centreville stuck around to talk about it. I think I've still got the book they gave me, too.
13:14 x Thomas x /culture/religion/evangelical x link x 1 comment
In 2005, Woody Allen made Match Point. It surprised a lot of people, because it was A) not a screwball comedy, B) did not put Allen on screen, and C) was actually quite good (perhaps because of A and B).
I haven't watched a lot of Woody Allen movies, but I enjoyed Match Point. So I was looking forward to Scoop, his next film. Like its predecessor, it stars Scarlet Johansson, it is set in England, and it concerns itself with murderous aristocrats--but this time, it is a screwball comedy, it does include Woody Allen, and unfortunately it's not very good at all.
Scoop sets up Johansson as a college reporter on vacation in London who attends a magic show hosted by The Great Splendini (Allen), only to be visited by the ghost of an investigative journalist (Deadwood's Ian McShane) who says that a rich playboy (Hugh Jackman) is actually the Tarot Card Killer. Johansson teams up with Allen to uncover the story, while trying not to fall for the killer. If that sounds like a stretch, it's because it is.
At around 90 minutes, you wouldn't expect the movie to move slowly, but it does. I'd say that it's due to Allen's dawdling performance as Splendini, but the pace remains slack even when he's not on screen. When you've got a premise as offbeat as this, you really need it to be snappy to distract from the plot holes and the awkward story constraints, and Scoop is anything but.
It doesn't help that there's no chemistry at all between any of the three leads, making their actions seem disjointed. Allen and Johansson bicker amiably enough, but there's no real affection there, and I could never quite figure out why they were working together. Likewise, why Jackman and Johansson become involved is a mystery--and making Scarlet Johansson seem unappealing is an impressive feat. It's particularly odd, considering that in Match Point she was such a sexually-charged figure. Clearly, it wouldn't match the tone of the rest of the film for her to be a full-on seductress, but a little romantic tension is desparately needed. She and Jackman are boring together, if not a little creepy.
Hints of a better, funnier movie peek out from time to time in Scoop, which makes it all the more disappointing. There are some good lines here for both Johansson and Allen, even if they're lethargically delivered--she doesn't quite seem to get what makes them funny, and he's moving too slow for the one-liners to catch viewers unaware.
Sondra Pransky: I wouldn't be surprised if he asked me to marry him someday.It's a crime against casting that these aren't delivered well (they cry out for someone capable of a Thin Man-styled banter), not to mention the waste of McShane in a tossed-off role that's not much more than a cameo. Surely, there must have been actors better suited to play the roles of cub reporter, aristocrat, and vaudeville entertainer. The material's all there. It's just self-indulgently performed and shot. All of which is what I would have expected, not knowing any better, from a Woody Allen movie. That's the problem with making a Match Point and raising expectations. It becomes more disappointing when they're not met.Sid Waterman: You come from an orthodox family, would they accept a serial killer?
11:06 x Thomas x /movies/reviews/drama x link x 1 comment
I've got three short articles on UX Week 2007 going up on Ars Technica, the first of which has been posted. The rest will be published today, I hope, so keep an eye out.
07:38 x Thomas x /journalism/articles x link x 0 comments
Today at work, we started discussing combining the World Bank's B-SPAN video archive with YouTube. This is a big step for the organization, and it may not happen while I'm still at the Bank. But I think it's a much-needed initiative, and I'm glad to see it taking place.
Right now, B-SPAN technically has two different kinds of clientele. We serve the wider Internet, of course, and our external viewers are about who you would think, as far as we can tell: academics and policy thinkers in Europe and North America. But the other side of the equation is the content for B-SPAN--event managers actually pay us out of their budget to tape and host their presentations. It wasn't always like that. B-SPAN used to be free for Bank teams, which meant that it had a lot more internal clients, but was also a bit unfocused and hard to justify within our vice presidency. About two and a half years ago, the decision was made to charge for B-SPAN services, and since then we've almost managed to recover our costs each year. Since the B-SPAN team tends to be made up of versatile young people who can also act as video (or in my case, audio) producers, it's a pretty good value for WBI.
However, charging event managers for hosting and writing costs did slow the flood of prospective clients a bit. And for the last year, we've started to take a hard look at exactly what we do. Online video services like YouTube or BrightCove have raised the question of why anyone would pay for B-SPAN. Our RealMedia solution, while a Bank standard (for whatever reason), has never been helpful for reaching a wide audience. And while we've tried to add features like RSS and podcasting to the site to stay modern, we still lag on items like e-mailing features, comments, and video embedding.
Now, I still think B-SPAN is a great value for the Bank. We provide a service that External Affairs so far has not addressed, and we try to invite the world into the institution in an honest way--something that for all its talk about transparency, still troubles the Bank. And for what we do--taping, indexing, annotation, and creating a rich content database--I think our prices are very reasonable. So the challenge we're taking on is to continue that richness, while using YouTube or similar solutions as a back end. In effect, there will be two ways to access B-SPAN videos: you can continue to use our worldbank.org/bspan front page, where you'll be able to sort the videos by categories like topic or presenter, or you can find us on YouTube searches like anyone else.
It will take a lot of work--our current production chain will have to adapt, and we'll have to scrape down the archives to convert our old metadata and Realmedia files into new formats--but I think once the growing pains are over, we'll have improved our service, and opened it up to our audience in a more useful and interactive way.
23:17 x Thomas x /bank/events/bspan x link x 0 comments
It is a little funny to watch the OLPC team run through their "world-changing laptop" schtick in the keynote presentation this morning, followed two sessions later by a Yahoo! team that points out that American students are as wired as anyone in the entire world, and yet one-third of them don't graduate from high school.
But if they just had a "constructionist" "school-in-a-box" with cute green plastic antennae...
Right.
12:02 x Thomas x /bank/analysis/development/technology x link x 1 comment
How much material, every year, gets wasted or manufactured for no good reason except to fill gift bags at conferences? Including the bags themselves? The bag for this conference is not even particularly generous, but I'm still looking at a pair of branded flip-flops, a set of laptop screen cleaners, a mousepad, some kind of IP phone gadget, two magazines, and assorted promotional cards. When I think about the sheer number of CDs, USB Keys, rubber toys, and assorted office junk that gets thrown at conference attendees each year--not to mention millions of branded nylon tote bags--almost all of which will probably be thrown away or forgotten within a week, it makes me shudder.
The tech industry is not particularly good at being sustainable in the first place. There's potential there, don't get me wrong--just by digitally delivering movies and music, we could theoretically save a tremendous amount of plastic and industrial pollutants that go into CDs and DVDs. But as it is right now, hi-tech doesn't usually mean good for the environment. It would probably not make much of a dent in the overall impact if conference sponsors went green with their swag, but it would be a nice symbol.
18:14 x Thomas x /science/environment x link x 1 comment
Today and tomorrow, I'm going to be attending UX Week 2007 for a local trade publication. Feel free to take a look at the schedule and see if there's something you'd like me to check out while I'm here--I'm trying to record the sessions when possible so I can put together a report for one of the area radio stations. Suggestions for other places to file stories on UX Week would be appreciated.
12:03 x Thomas x /meta/announce x link x 0 comments
For my own reference: WiinRemote connects a Wii remote to a Bluetooth-enabled computer for manipulating the mouse cursor or keys.
Because I could buy a Bluetooth mouse, or I could just use one of the Wiimotes that we've got, and that we almost never use...
11:43 x Thomas x /gaming/hardware/control x link x 1 comment
Interviews and Office Furniture
Guess what I'm working on today?
What were you thinking when you accepted a role in Bloodrayne? It's so hard to imagine someone so gifted not realizing what a terrible film that would be!And honestly, while I'm no great fan of the flick, I see his point. If I were Sir Ben Kingsley, internationally-renowned thespian, it would be tempting to do anything that came along, if it seemed like enough fun. See also: Sam L. Jackson."I don't know whether to be upset or flattered by that question," read his response. "To be honest, I have always wanted to play a vampire, with the teeth and the long black cape. Let's say that my motives were somewhat immature for doing it."
10:45 x Thomas x /random/linky x link x 1 comment
The controversy over Resident Evil 5 being set in Africa, not to mention featuring a White character mowing down infected Black zombies (we hope they are zombies), has a lot of resonance. It's one of those topics that brings out the worst of the online community, and makes some of us despair. Josh covers the reasoned perspective well, I think, but I think an anecdote may explain why I both fear the worst and hope for the best.
I didn't play RE4 until about six months ago, long after it won so many awards and got ported to everything under the sun. I enjoyed it while playing, although I found myself oddly reluctant to load it up in the first place. It's a game with relatively few areas of tedium, and a number of amazing, memorable scenes. It also had a great horror movie feel, and a hilariously-overwrought level of gore: Belle walked through several times, and would always express her disgust at the exploding heads onscreen, long after I'd become inured to them.
But what I remember most from the game, and what I think was its most powerful moment, was at the very start, when Leon (the main character) first walks into the village. At that point, he (and the player, by extension) has already defended himself against a crazed misanthrope or three, but still has no idea what's going on. Entering the village proper means confronting a new set of villagers--the woman model makes an appearance for the first time, as do the alternate male villagers. So it's not just the same cookie-cutter experience of video game bad guys.
The first time I played this level, I didn't even take a shot. It was disturbing--the characters onscreen move erratically, but they're not traditional zombies. They carry tools around, and speak in gutteral Spanish--still people, in other words, ones rendered with surprising realism. I had an innate reaction to the ambiguity of it: you don't just shoot people in the head! That's wrong! And then, of course, they slaughtered me like a Christmas turkey.
After that, I dehumanized them enough to play the game without worrying about real-world legalities and ethics. But it's still unsettling to think about it. Neither Leon nor the player has any indication that the Ganados are anything other than extremely territorial farmers at that point, and yet they're terminated with extreme prejudice. To some degree, I liked that about it, because it made me re-examine just what those video game ethics really meant.
The fact that RE4 could provoke that kind of feeling is impressive and artistically pleasing, and it gives me hope that the fifth game might also give me something to think about on more than a simplistic, fictional level. But RE4 also never again really touched that kind of political or social awareness, leading me to think that Capcom probably didn't actually mean to do so sustainably, and may not have any plans to recognize how genuinely unsettling (at best) its African references could be.
14:39 x Thomas x /gaming/society/class_and_race x link x 0 comments
Has it really been a year since Fafblog went cold?
If you have not had the pleasure, the following examples may explain why I keep up hope for the return of Fafnir and Giblets:
09:51 x Thomas x /politics/blogs x link x 0 comments
If permadeath in RPGs is anything like Fire Emblem, don't ever sign me up with the hardcore.
Permadeath--the idea that a video game character gets one life, ever, and must start completely over in case of fatality--is generally restricted to gung-ho online gamers, who can usually be considered insane in the first place, or the Steel Battallion series, which is unquestionably mad (sure, I'll pay $200 for a video game that comes with a fake cockpit for the giant robot and deletes my save game if I die. Then we can practice home trepanation for fun). But it's also a "feature" of the Fire Emblem series, a series of cute wargames that permanently removes from play any units that fall on the field.
If I were trapped on a desert island (one that somehow had power generators--what kind of desert islands are these scenarios, anyway?) with a single game, it'd be Advance Wars, so I figured I'd like Fire Emblem too--same company, same basic gameplay with a few twists. I could handle the death thing, I figured. I was wrong. When a character gets wiped out, they make this little speech about how they'll never see Paris or something, and it hits me right in the perfection reflex. I can't help it: I immediately restart the level from the beginning and try to get through it without losing any of the main characters. I have to start the battle over, actually, because the designers have anticipated that I might just save a game while everyone is alive and then reload it, so they added backup autosaves after every turn. I appreciate the idea, but I wish they'd just let me cheat.
This wouldn't be so frustrating if it weren't the astonishing weakness of some of the troops. Of course, if the player doesn't use them, they won't get any stronger, so you've got to take them out--at which point the enemy AI will probably also take them out, if you know what I mean. I've played through the fifth level at least twenty times now, and this Ross kid keeps biting the dust. Which means I keep starting over. I've about reached the limit of my patience with it.
If I just let the virtual grim reaper carry off the odd straggler, I'd probably have a much easier time. But games elicit a powerful impulse to do things perfectly and minimize loss. I'll only play through this thing once, probably, so I don't want to miss out, and I don't want to get slammed in later levels because I let one too many units pass on. Instead, I may just pass on the game. I am not this hardcore. I've got better things to do.
Indeed, if the permadeath experience is indicative of anything, it's how little tolerance for mistakes that games instil in players, and how players react to that. The people who are the biggest fans of permadeath are not really interested in realism, I'd guess. They're interested in perfection--they want to force players to play a completely clean, rational, sterile strategy. Perhaps it appeals to their heightened sense of order. Maybe they're just jerks. Either way, their obsession is unnatural compared to other media. While my other hobbies--music, writing, a rare sketch or two--can find new opportunities or inspiration in mistakes, I'm not aware of any game that rewards errors, other than the sense of recovering from them. That's too bad. Mistakes add richness to life. They're at the heart of scientific progress, and the inevitable byproduct of any creative endeavor. We should be encouraging mistakes in interactive media. I just have no idea how to do it.
I know how I'm not going to do it, and that's playing through level five again. It gets one more try, and then me and Fire Emblem--and permadeath with it--are quits.
10:57 x Thomas x /gaming/design x link x 1 comment
This month, technically for the August 1st podcast but let's call it July anyway, we dipped into the archives to highlight one of the events that's always on our top ten most-viewed. Our new coordinator/writer is also working on a new description for its main entry. What is it?
There's an old joke that Economics is the only field in which two people can win the Nobel prize for saying the exact opposite thing. For evidence that economic disagreements can be spirited, especially in development, look no further than this entry from the B-SPAN archives. After former World Bank Chief Economist Joseph Stiglitz published his controversial book, Globalization and its Discontents, which expressed his own discontent with the International Monetary Fund, he and IMF Research Director Ken Rogoff squared off in a 2002 panel discussion on its claims. The resulting debate has become one of the most relevant on the role of international institutions in promoting globalization.
You can listen to the dueling economists here.
20:52 x Thomas x /bank/events/bspan x link x 0 comments
I've gotten really bad about keeping up with the Skeptic's Circle carnival, but this month's entry is nicely done. There's some interesting posts on diet soda and heart disease (say it ain't so!), the bad influence of CSI on jury members (not to mention the national taste), and a collection of Mr. Wizard tribute videos.
10:23 x Thomas x /science/skepticism x link x 0 comments
If you bring up superheroes outside of comics, sooner or later someone will mention The Incredibles. It happened to me lately. And much like Harry Potter, you're not supposed to dislike The Incredibles. It's a Pixar film, after all. What are you, some sort of hateful hater, filled to the brim with more hate, and living on 101 Hate Lane? How could you feel that way about The Incredibles?
The answer "because it's fascist propaganda" is probably not the most tactful response, in case you wondered.
In order to understand this, you have to separate the story of the movie, which is crafted with Pixar's typical care and humor, from its message, which is abhorrent. Ignore the villain's desire to conquer the world, and ignore his ruthless demeanor. Pay no attention to the charming way that the Parr family reacts to each other, and actually listen to what each character is saying:
Mr. Incredible: You mean you killed off real heroes so that you could *pretend* to be one?That's not an isolated line, either. The theme of "if everyone's special, no-one is special" gets parroted by several characters, although the emphasis changes--family brat Dash clearly stands in for the audience when he despises this philosophy, since it's the rationale his parents use to keep him from using his superspeed, while Syndrome just as clearly thinks it's a great e-e-e-evil plan.
Syndrome: Oh, I'm real. Real enough to defeat you! And I did it without your precious gifts, your oh-so-special powers. I'll give them heroics. I'll give them the most spectacular heroics the world has ever seen! And when I'm old and I've had my fun, I'll sell my inventions so that *everyone* can have powers. *Everyone* can be Super! And when everyone's Super...
[chuckles evilly]
Syndrome: No one will be.
One is forced to wonder, frankly, why this is supposed to be such an evil plan. We don't wonder why Syndrome is a villain, naturally--he makes that perfectly clear by using heroes as guinea pigs for his doom machines, and planning to manipulate the populace for his own benefit. But these don't follow directly from the "special" sentiment. They're standard bad-guy plots, which have been applied to a strawman philosophy in order to demonize it. The same thing happens with the Parr family: they're undercover to keep from being sued, which may be a shame but doesn't have anything to do with some mythical "everyone's special" point of view.
And of course, we have no reason to believe that if everyone were special in some way, that everyone would be devalued, apart from the way that The Incredibles stacks the deck. Surely everyone can have their own special gifts in their own way. It's ridiculous to think that if Syndrome could sell everyone a pair of jet boots, all of a sudden we would be plunged into a world of mediocrity. Why should it be a bad thing that everyone could reap the benefits of superpowers? Wouldn't you like to have a pair of jetboots? I would. The only possible way that you could see this in a negative light would be if your worldview is divided into two groups: those who have inborn powers (the Supers), and those who don't (and are therefore inferior mediocrities). There's something of this viewpoint evident in the contempt shown by the "natural" heroes and villains for Syndrome, who dares to work hard and build his own super powers, thus artificially crossing over from unter- to ubermensch.
I am not, by the way, the only person to have noticed this. Search Google for "the incredibles and ayn rand" and you will find many critics who have noticed its... unusual subtext.
In the film's defense, as with so many other lovingly-rendered details (the montage of cape-related disasters, the references to "monologuing,") this philosophy is true to the comic source. As a friend of mine has pointed out when we were discussing this problem, superheroes are the ultimate fantasy of agency by the powerless. They ask, "what would you do if you had amazing powers and no-one could stop you?" Dramatically, I agree that it's a fun thought experiment, and it's made for some great pop cultural moments. But it's a terrible basis for a moral or ethical message, because it by definition puts the wants and needs of other people secondary. It always assumes that the majority of people are only either A) targets to be protected, B) collateral damage, or C) barriers to the hero's progress. In almost all cases, the hero must work from outside (or even against) the system put into place by and for normal people--a point of view that's often held by fanatics and radicals, both conservative and liberal.
Both in terms of comics and their adaptation, this radical perspective is jarring when extracted from its customary position because it's so far from the usual message of American feel-good entertainment. We're used to Saturday morning fare and kids' movies (or many times, even films targeted at adults) that remind us that everyone has something of which they can be proud, or that hard work can take a person far. At times, especially for cynics, the clumsy moralizing of these plotlines may seem cloying or heavy-handed, but consider the alternative. It's hard to imagine a cartoon subtly arguing that "some people have gifts, and they are better people, who should not be restricted by society," but that's exactly what The Incredibles does. Viewers may dilute this message on their own by believing that they, too, are part of the special group, but it doesn't change the caricature of the masses oppressing their betters--shades of John Galt!
The reason that many reviews of The Incredibles mention its agenda but forgive it anyway is that the movie is honestly an amazing work of art. It's filled with clever homage, underhanded references, and witty dialogue. It's funny, and fun to watch. I admit that, but I also believe that good art and bad reasoning are not mutually exclusive. There are good reasons that Triumph of the Will is still shown to film and media criticism classes to this day--which is not to say that Pixar is on the same level as Riefenstahl. I only wish that its ideology--one shared with several genres of popular fiction--saw a little more critical awareness. We may not always want to admit it, but superheroes are a significant influence on American culture, from Spiderman to Batman, Captain America to the Tick. It would be nice if there were a little more discussion on what that ethically implies.
00:15 x Thomas x /movies/commentary/superhero x link x 1 comment
