BSGood Riddance

Battlestar Galactica is over. Thank god. Of course the fact that I’ve been watching a show that I haven’t been enjoying for two seasons probably says something sick and perverse about me. I guess knowing that the end was around the corner was enough to make me come back and “finish the show.”

In short, I found the last few episodes and the finale to be very unsatisfying. The last few episodes were basically treading water because they had the story where they needed it for the finale and they didn’t actually need or evidently want to advance the plot. The penultimate episode had needless flashbacks for crying out loud! They were blatantly just killing the clock. But enough of that. I’ll spend a bit of time nitpicking it later on…but first let me address the more grievous crimes of the series.

I’m addressing the big picture here so I’ll be painting with a broad brush. In the end I found BSG to be ultimately disappointing because I feel betrayed by the series. The show started off as one of the best shows on televisions. As such, I threw my support behind it and praised it to anyone who would listen. It was that most rare of science fiction endeavors, one that realized the key good science fiction revolves around stories and characters that would be interesting regardless of the setting. The setting just so happened to be sci-fi. But along the way something changed...

The crime I charge BSG with is around the 2nd and 3rd season the show changed from an interesting sci-fi show into a poetic meditation on faith. I’ve talked to a number of people who enjoyed the end of the show. I think it may have something to do with how you view actions based on faith when in obvious contradiction to reason.

The motivations and actions of the characters stopped being coherent and understandable, they were no longer grounded in reason - they just started to do whatever felt right. This had all sorts of consequences. Characters changed jobs at a drop of a hat. Where at once the survival of humanity and the conservation of scarce resources were paramount…they now had time to dedicate a ship and a crew to finger painting in space looking for music. The goals of various groups and factions in the show swung drastically from episode to episode. No hair-brained scheme would be denied if it had a poetic justification. Ultimately the show ended clumsily with the heavy handed message that faith is all important and technology is evil.

Now to pick on the last episode a bit…

Who are undeniably the best pilots in the fleet? Perhaps people who have served as CAG during the course of the show… well guess what…now they’re marines! That’s right in this toughest of tough battles they decided to turn their ace pilots into marines? I guess that’s a military tactic.

They’ve been pedaling that opera house metaphor for how long now…. That shared hallucination between all the pivotal members of the cast…and it that was it? Some kid running threw a ship? Talk about an anticlimactic build up.

Whereas the fleet was tearing itself apart just a few episodes ago, to the point where the Galatica suffered a mutiny, does anyone believe that all the people would be of one mind about anything? Everyone wants to ditch technology for the chance to have a new beginning and rough it on fake earth? Yeah right, screw medicine that stuff is for chumps. It’s been holding us back. How can anyone be happy with all the knowledge and learning? Time to scuttle that garbage.

Seriously does anyone in their right minds think that Ty and Ellen are going to let them send the last bars in the galaxy into the sun without a fight? I don’t believe for a second that the people of the fleet were willing to give up their boozalators.

I beg to differ

I played a crappy video game recently. I quite enjoyed it.

Every review I can find about the video game Haze says that it’s awful. Really awful. It was universally panned. Yet when a friend and I recently played it our impression was that it was a fun game and a good time. A lot of reviewers that I respect and normally agree with found the game to be absolutely despicable. This leaves us a bit confounded – why did we have such a giant disconnect with the rest of the gaming industry? I’ve been thinking about that and I have a few theories.

First thing first though. I must share our purchasing experience. We were actively seeking a new co-op game to play. We had criteria to fulfill. The game must support couch-coop (as opposed to on-line coop which seems to be more popular). As we entered the GampStop we knew we had our work cut out for us. There weren’t a lot of new couch coop games for the offering. We narrowed it down to only two possible candidates: America’s Army or Haze. They were the dregs of the gaming barrel, but as desperate men we had little choice. Both games got horrible reviews and had bad reputations. Something led us to decide to go with Haze. As we put the game on the checkout counter the checkout lady winced and groaned. “Are you sure you want to buy that?” We nodded. “I haven’t played it, but I hear it’s horrible. I was here when the game released and many people brought it back the same day. No one likes that game. I don’t want to sell you a bad game.” We acknowledged the bad reviews and the fact that she was giving us sage advice but persisted in the transactions. She made a few more attempts to protect us from ourselves but acquiesced to sell us the stinker. We went home mentally preparing ourselves for the worst. We even watched Dollhouse before playing the game just to fully immerse ourselves in the spirit of mediocrity and meh.

So why don’t the critics like it? Most reviews cite the same litany of complaints. The graphics are subpar, the plot is dumb, and the hero is not likable. I think that is the punch list to criticize any game. Of the three complaints I think the last one has the most credence…but I’ll get to that later on. Let me first address the first two complaints and why I think they’re mitigated for us.

The graphics are subpar: I didn’t really notice this – they weren’t the most amazing graphics ever, but they did not actively detract from the game for me. This might be due to the fact that we played it as a couch coop game or so called “split screen coop.” This means the game had to render two different views on the same screen. I’m no expert, but I think most games have to make tradeoffs and cut out bells and whistles when they are basically rendering two independent game sessions instead of the usual one. Perhaps the single player experience is lack luster compared to other single player experiences…but the slit screen graphics looked pretty much on par with other split screen graphics to me.

On top of that, the split screen coop engine worked well, better in fact than some A-list video games I could name (I’m looking at you Resistance Fall of Man 2). We were able to play the whole campaign as coop. There was a ‘heal your partner’ mechanic were you had a limit amount of time to rescue your downed coop partner. Failing that, it would respawn your partner if you managed to make it to the next checkpoint. The combination added a nice balance of being able to help each other out…but not necessarily have to replay a section if one of use could get successfully through it. That’s a pretty flexible system. There were frequent enough checkpoints that we didn’t get frustrated playing any particular section of the game over and over again.

The plot is dumb: Really? I think the plot is more original than most. The plot of Haze is your working for a private army in South America that is waging a war against guerrilla fighters. It’s the future and the army is pumping you full of a anti-depressant drug that helps numb you to the atrocities of war. Initially you are told you are fighting tyranny and working to prevent ethnic cleansing in the area. Later one you learn that’s not really the case and you’re actually helping repress the locals to further the goals of the private corporation…then you swap sides and join the locals and help fight the man.

Let’s look at the basic plot of the current crop of A-list shooters (that aren’t WWII rehashes)….we’ll take Halo, Gears of War, Resistance Fall of Man, and Killzone. People are fighting off an alien invasion and then….they take the fight to the aliens. You can change up the motivations and origin of the aliens but it’s basically the same thing. These are games that are heralded for their awesome plots.

I think Haze is interesting because it seems to break the unwritten rule of shooters. Basically you’re only allow to enjoy shooting one of two well established enemies (Nazis or terrorist) or aliens (but not plain ol people). There is a taboo about building a murder simulator where you don’t kill bad guys…because after all, you want to feel good about your slaughter. In Haze you start off by killing what you think or terrorist but find out to be just civilians trying to protect their homes..eeek. You’re a bad guy. Then you swap sides and start killing well intentioned soldiers who enlisted out of sense of nationalism and are now being manipulated by drugs towards evil ends. You don’t really get to feel good about killing them either. Shucks. Well then who can I feel good about wholesale slaughtering? Nobody…that’s kind of the point of the game.

The hero is not likable: Unlike most shooters where you are the brave rugged alpha male determined to fight improbable odds, Haze casts you into the role of a college graduate who joined up in an attempt to take an active role in making the world into a better, safer, place only to find out that’s not how its working out. He keeps discovering that he’s responsible for reprehensible actions and poor decisions. Basically he’s a wishy-washy unintentional screw-up. I thought it was a refreshing change of pace for a protagonist…but I can see how people might react poorly to this forced casting (after all they’re probably fulltime screws-up as their day job…zing!) The game doesn’t let you feel good about your killing. It will let you savor the accomplishment of getting out of a tough spot then shows you that you’re not killing people who are intrinsically evil. Bummer. Supposedly they toned this aspect of the game back! Originally it was so strong that they were afraid that the game was too preachy about the nature of war. Go figure. I think some critics who got an early look at that version were ultimately disappointed that the game got mellowed. I think it retained enough of an edge to not allow you to feel like you’re in some adolescent male’s fantasy. Which is probably not a selling point for this sort of game. I will say I find it unpalatable that your character learns about the dangers of blindly following orders and responds by immediately finding a new person to blindly follow orders from…but that is hardly unique to this game (I’m looking at you GTA4).

Why did it work for me and not some many others? Perhaps I wasn’t burdened by expectations. The game had very favorable press prior to release. People were expecting a lot out of it. On the other hand, thanks to our helpful GameStop salesperson, my expectations were set exceedingly low. Or perhaps it’s simply the magic of couch coop. It’s no secret to me that having real live friends, like in the same room, can take a boring and repetitive single player experience and turn it into a memorable and enjoyable evening.

Overall I found the game to be successful. The only thing that could have made it better for me is if you discovered that the company you were working for was a banana company and you were working to oppress fruit laborers. There is a historical precedent!

I enjoyed the experience, laughed out loud, and walked away with something to think about. What more can you ask from entertainment?

Delusions of Grandeur

I had a pretty amazing night-long dream last night. I thought I’d share it with you...but you’re going to need some background information to understand it.

Contributing Factor A:
Dawn and I finished watching the BBC’s 1996 mini-series of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere last night. It’s a six-part series, complete with dodgy BBC special effects and some moderate production value and acting. I assumed that it was an adaptation of the book Neverwhere, but when we watched the interview with Neil afterwards we learned that he had written the story expressly for the BBC and later adapted the screenplays into the book.

Fun fact: Originally they wanted Neil to write a fantasy story for the BBC about the homeless in London…but Neil refused because he was afraid that he’d make being homeless look cool and inspire British teenagers to run away and live on the streets. He wrote Neverwhere instead.

For those of you unfamiliar with Neverwhere here is a one paragraph summery courtesy of Wikipedia.

Richard Mayhew, a Scot living in London encounters an injured girl named Door on the street one night. Despite his fiancée's protests he decides to help her, but that unfortunately also means that he suddenly ceases to exist for regular people and becomes real only to the denizens of 'London Below', whose inhabitants are generally invisible and non-existent to the people of 'London Above'. He loses his house, his job and nearly his mind as he travels London Below in an attempt to make sense out of it all, find a way back, and helps Door survive as she is hunted down by hired assassins.

Contributing Factor B:
I’ve been doing a lot of work with XML files lately for both work and my Thesis. More specifically, I’ve been doing a lot of work with XML file schemas lately. To not get bogged down in too many details just consider an XML file as a simple a way of storing information, any kind of information, in a tagged format. An XML file schema is a document that contains the rules that describe what sort of form the information in the XML file should take on. Basically you can compare an XML file to a schema and decide if the XML file is a well formed and valid expression of that schema.

Contributing Factor A + Contributing Factor B = Awesome Dream:
Unfortunately I can’t remember all the details of my dream that stretched all freaking night long. It was epic. But here is the basic premise and synopsis of what I can recall.

In the dream I’m in a setting not unlike the ‘London Below’ in Neverwhere. As in Neverwhere, there is a Beast that exists in the world that is to be feared and respected. Lately the Beast has been especially vile and all attempts to slay the Beast have resulted in tragedy. The Beast seems to be unbeatable.

I am sought out because like other inhabitants of ‘London Below’ I have a unique ability. My particular ability is that I can look at the very model of reality and make changes (if need be). During the dream the problem of the Beast is brought before me and I decide to check the underlying model of reality to see if I can figure out why the Beast is impossible to kill. Strangely enough, the model of reality looks like an XSD document that only I can see.

I notice that in the complex element that represents the class of the Beast that there is not a constraint that DateTime values in time and location tuples must be unique. The reason the Beast is impossible to kill is that he has figured out that having multiple instances of himself at different locations at the exact same time is a valid model of reality! With effort I tweak the model and add the constraint that all DateTime values for the Beast must be unique and restrict him to one location at a time. I am awesome.

Dream Analysis:
This is not the first time that I’ve dreamt about being able to control the world. It’s a reoccurring theme. It’s also not the first time I’ve mixed in some sort of computer shenanigans with my delusions of grandeur. I remember when I was learning ActionScript I dreamt that I had a robot that I could send out to query the property values of objects and change them. My little robot buddy would travel along the power lines and could “right-click” on objects to reveal their properties. In particular, my favorite task for him to open up the property list for an object and change the ownership value from other people to me. Essentially I was editing instances of things so that I could own them. How greedy the unconscious Bill is!

I think last night’s dream was a tad more abstract though. The robot was only able to alter available properties of instances – essentially he was stuck just editing the XML file of life. Last night I could change what form that a valid instance took, thus editing the XSD of life. But I don’t’ think I could mettle with individual instance (and thus they had to go back out and kill the Beast confident that there would only be one of him).

This morning I was wondering what the criteria for being a god was. Is being able to edit instances but not the underlying model sufficient for being a god? Obviously being able to do both allows you to create whatever you desire. How about just being able to edit the model but only being able to influence the instances via setting up constraints? That strikes as a particularly interesting scenario. You’d spend your time trying to perfect your creation by setting up the correct rules for a well formed and valid reality. Imagine creating one constraint and then figuring out that had an unanticipated consequence. Is evil the result of an imperfect set of rules governing reality?

Singapore Slings!

I had a great dinner at 801 Franklin (nice restaurant in Huntsville) tonight. Good food and great company, what more can you ask for? Dawn and I have been looking forward to the meal for more than two days. All week we’ve been mentally preparing for it. Lunch was carefully selected to prepare the gastro intestinal landscape for dinner. It’s always sad when you consciously hit the high point of your week. I guess now that we have the rest of the week is downhill.

I said what more can you ask for? Well I’m greedy, so I managed to think of something.

I had some unfinished business with 801 Franklin. The last time we were there it was my birthday, when I ordered their Singapore Sling. When it came out it was a pink girly drink…but one sip and I forgave it. I’ve looked up recipes on the internet a few times since then, but nothing the net hive-mind has suggested has been nearly as tasty. This weekend I tried one recipe from a bartender handbook that included sloe gin, which I hadn’t tried before. Even though the drink recipe was a failure, as soon as I tasted the sloe gin I knew it was part of the 801 Franklin recipe. Since then I’ve been making a concerted effort to replicate the 801 Franklin Singapore sling. It has required diligent toil, every night I’ve made two Singapore Slings and recorded each attempts recipe as I’ve slowly mutated it. Tonight, after I ordered my actual 801 Franklin Singapore Sling I asked the bartender if she would mind sharing her recipe. She happily complied! It turned out that my most recent attempt was only ½ an ounce off on the sweet and sour mix. My diligent toil was paying off! I include the actual recipe here for my own future reference:

Singapore Sling
1 oz Bombay Sapphire
½ oz Sloe Gin
1 oz Sweet & Sour Mix
½ oz Cherry Brandy

I say if you’re going to drink a girly drink then at least half the ingredients should be gin based.

The Other Strangeness
On the way into work this morning I caught a fragment of a strange local news story. It simply said that the City of Huntsville had given an award for recycling to a homeless woman who lives under the I-565 overpass. That was it. No other details.

The story has been gnawing at my mind ever since. I need more details! I feel that I need to better understand her situation to know what my response to the story should be. It is suppose to be 15 degrees outside tonight. If the lady isn’t happy about being homeless then the city showing up and giving her a certificate for recycling instead of some sort of help seems like a pretty dick move. On the other hand, perhaps it’s possible that she chooses to be homeless and the city wanted to recognize her efforts anyway. It’s not like having a mailing address is some sort of requirement for civic pride. Which is it!?!?

Fortunately I found slightly more informative version of the story. The woman’s name is Missy “Lynn” Morvant. She has been living homeless in Madison County for the last 25 years. In addition to the award for recycling they also gave her a backpack full of food, condiments, and lotions. I think the most interesting part of the story is that she started recycling around her homeless camp because it “looked so trashy everywhere. It got on my nerves."

I still feel like the brief news clip could provide more details. I want to know what lead up to them deciding to give her the award. In my head I imagine someone from the city had regularly been visiting the homeless camp and one day looked around and said something like “you know what, I really like what you’ve done with the place.”

I’m sure I’m coming off as uncompassionate and cruel. I don’t mean to. I actually think it’s a pretty cool thing for the city to do. I am still just reacting to the way the story is presented. I would have thought they would have gone through the effort to provide some context, but they seem pretty cool with leaving it as a blurb with no obvious explanations. I don't think the news knew how to handle the story.

If you watch the video about the story on the link above don’t expect to see her receive the award or anything. Evidently the news folks only know one way to cover homeless people stories. It's a lot of slow pans across their tents and talking about dead cats.

A Weekend Retrospective

Things that I learned this weekend:

The difference between obscenity and profanity.

We had a discussion about the longest word or phrase that Riblet could reasonably pronounce. We decided that it was “arrow root” although Riblet would likely have trouble with the “t”. I image it would sound like “aurrooo rooo”

Watched BSG. I realized that Adama isn’t the standard bearer of reason or logic but the enabler of crazies. By selling people on dreams and blindly following the president and Starbuck’s lead…in the face of what cold hard logic would dictate… he has help lead humanity to the brink of annihilation. I now hope he dies by the crazies he so enthusiastically sowed. I doubt I’ll get my wish.

Also I keep hoping they’ll run into a whole cylon ship full of Tyclops (err maybe Tybots?). It stands to reason that if there were Tybots on Earth and back on Caprica that they have their means of transportation. I hope the humans kill Tyclops and a ship full of fractious Tybots reaps unholy vengeance on them, possibly aided by a ship of Brother Cavils. Actually, that’s how I want the show to end. Tybots and Cavils kill everyone, curtain falls.

Read an interesting argument against the probabilistic argument that there must be a God. Namely that life is so improbable that a higher intelligence must have orchestrated it. It basically hinged on the idea that following that line of logic you should always assume the lottery is rigged because the chances of a paticular person winning are so astronomical that a higher power (the lottery commission) must have orchestrated it.

We watched the “Who Killed the Electric Car” documentary. This is a pretty depressing film. Did you know in the late 90’s GM (and other major car companies) produced electric cars and leased them to people in California? People drove them around for a few years and generally like them. Many people wanted to buy the cars outright. But by 2003 the car companies had collected all the cars and crushed them. The film explores the reasons why this was done. I found it depressing because with all the talk of looking for alternative energy for transportation we’ve already successfully done it for the majority of America’s personal transportation needs. The technology exists and has been tested. The energy delivery infrastructure is in place. The film speculates that big industry is happier when alternative energy is 15-20 years away instead of in the present because that means no big changes need to happen (business as usual!!!) The future of alternative energy is perpetually 15-20 years away.

The silver lining of watching the film was learning about Stan Ovshinsky. Evidently he’s the inventor of some of my favorite things. NiMH batteries (that power cars, laptops, cameras and various gadgets), flat screen liquid crystal displays, rewritable CDs and DVDs, thin film solar panels, etc. He’s got over 400 patents, is completely self educated, and well into his 80’s and still going strong. If you see him interviewed I think you’ll find it impossible not to be caught up in his we’ll change the world and make it a better place through science and technology attitude. Check him out, he’s an amazing guy.

Humorous postscript. As GM closed their electric car lines (about the same time they introduced the Hummer) Toyota and Honda finally caught up to their technology and introduced the Hybrid Electric cars. US Car companies were there years ahead of time but decided they were a dumb business move. Ha ha. Ha ha.

Treasure for her pleasure.

On the way home last night we remembered that we were suppose to pick up new kitty litter for Riblet. I say on the way home, but truth be told we were just about all the way home and the thought of turning around and going back out into rush hour traffic was far too disgusting to contemplate. Fortunately there was a Kroger’s grocery store that we’d be passing before we made it home. We decided to stop there and see what we could find that Riblet would think is really nice. (No, I’m serious, really great… for her to…).

Unfortunately the store didn’t have Riblet’s brand so we were forced to settle with something that we were sure that she’d find to be inappropriate. Dawn wanted to get something that was as close to her normal stuff as possible and pull a fast one on the old Ribletmiester. I had other ideas…

Everyone knows Riblet is a pretty high end cat. She sleeps on cashmere, micro-suede, leather, and memory foam pretty much exclusively. She likes to retire to the library in the evenings. She manages a small coffee plantation. And she doesn’t want to be treated like no damn pauper. Obviously ordinary kitty litter is not going to cut it.

I spied some new fangled crystal kitty litter that looked like gem stones:

I knew this was the stuff. Who wouldn’t want to poop on diamonds? I was sure this would meet with Riblet’s approval and lobbied strongly for it. Dawn was skeptical and thought we should go with something a bit more plebian. We compromised and bought one of each, which works out well since Riblet has two litter boxes anyways. Except now she has one litter box and one precious gems treasure trove box.

I saw this Indexed cartoon shortly after it was posted and thought to myself - “self, that is going to generate some thought provoking comments.” I checked back later and sure enough the two sides lined up facing each other took turns calling the other side stupid. That’s the power of the internet. No matter what your point of view you can easily find someone who disagrees with you and wants you to know it.

While it would be disingenuous to say I have any er...faith… in the power of prayer, I don’t feel the need to flog those who do. Or does this post prove otherwise? Doh!

A curious thought occurred to me over lunch. I was originally going to call it a “thought experiment” but in truth it’s more of a ridiculous analogy that I’ve managed to stretch threadbare and thin.

Why not view prayer as a vice? People have lots of vices that they enjoy even if they are not productive. I like to think of prayer in terms of drinking. Will drinking solve our problems? No. But sometimes I’ll indulge in it anyway. Why be so hard on prayer for being ineffective? In fact, drinking and prayer are a lot alike.

• Presumably, people do both because it makes them feel good.
  
• If either is practiced too heavily at the expense of other things no progress will ever be made.
  
• People like to do both at meals and right before bed.
  
• People tend to get carried away if either is done in too large of groups.
  
• In times of trouble or anxiety people turn to both for solace.
  
• There is a certain kind of person who takes pride in being able to indulge in more than you.
  
• It’s easy to resort to either in lieu of making difficult decisions.
  
• Do too much of either and you’re bound to have to some strange ideas.
  
• People who “specialize” in either tend to either love everyone or decide that everyone else is wrong and become quite quarrelsome.

I think that viewing prayer like drinking would take some of the vehemence out of the anti-prayer folks. It’s a normal human impulse to do some things that aren’t logical and/or helpful. Following that impulse doesn’t necessarily make us stupid. That being said, I like to think we’re all better off when our scientist, doctors, politicians, etc don’t make decisions while being under the influence of either.