Second Life in a nutshell

I’ve been meaning to blog this video forever. It was made in Second Life and does a good job of summing up SL in less than 4 minutes.

Memorial Day

The usual chattering imbeciles are currently going on about a verbal mistake Obama made that confused Memorial Day with Veteran’s Day, in that he (sort of) implied that the former was to honor all veterans, not just war dead. Or something.

What I found a lot more interesting was the official Memorial Day concert on the Mall, which I caught some of on PBS. (Update: it turns out to have been a rerun from a couple years ago). It had Joe Montagna as emcee, one of the guys from Dukes of Hazzard singing, and some other GOP celebs, like the ever-more-bugeyed Gary Sinise. It was every bit as grotesque as it sounds, and that’s not even counting Sinise’s eyeballs. I just had to watch some of it, though. I also slow down for serious traffic accidents.

It turns out that they, too, at the official Memorial Day Concert on the Mall, seemed to talk a lot about veterans and not a lot about the dead. Oh, death was mentioned, but as just of the many sacrifices veterans make. It might as well have been Veteran’s Day. You can’t really blame them; it’s very difficult to put on a rah-rah show on the National Mall that properly conflates patriotism with militarism when the bodies are stacking up right across the Potomac after all.

Iraq War Cost vs Marshall Plan

The local public TV station is running a documentary on Harry Truman (one of my three favorite Presidents, along with Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt). The discussion of the Marshall Plan led me to think of the parallels with Iraq. The Marshall Plan rebuilt Europe so it wouldn’t fall into Communist hands, as our efforts in Iraq are to rebuild it so it doesn’t fall into Islamic extremist hands. So I started wondering about relative costs.

The Marshall Plan cost $13 billion in 1947. Adjusting to today’s dollars (based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics calculator) gives $125 billion. Estimates for the cost of the Iraq War are at least ten times that amount, and some more recent estimates are much higher still.

Of course the Marshall Plan didn’t involve getting shot at. On the other hand, the Marshall Plan rebuilt sixteen countries, including several of the largest and most important nations on earth, rather than one middle-eastern backwater. It’s an imperfect comparison, but the old platinum standard for spending on geopolitical re-engineering is way out the window.

Why no open-source games?

I started wondering the other day why there have been no successful open-source games. There are open-source alternatives to just about every sort of software, but no games. It’s not simply a matter of it being too much work: Linux is far larger than any game.

A lot of people do open-source work for the recognition. Given the number of people who would like to get into the game industry, it seems like there would be a strong incentive for people to contribute to an open source project.

It has been pointed out that game development is more cross-disciplinary than most other software, requiring artists and modelers and game designers in addition to programmers. Unlike programmers, the artists and game designers are generally unable to build on what has been done before. Each game requires totally new art, and the lifespan of games is usually quite short. By comparison, Linux developers are adding to a code base that’s been around since the mid 80’s (GNU Project), a clone of a system created in the late 60’s (Unix). Similarly, the end-users for Linux (which include the developers) continue to use Linux, and will for years if not decades. People lose interest in games in a few months to a couple of years, tops, and will stop contributing.

If an open-source game were to be sucessful, it could not be content-based, but rather would rely on interesting game-play. It would probably be a casual game with addictive characteristics: a Tetris for the 2000’s.

Bob Barr Wins

Bob Barr won the Libertarian nomination, as expected. Hilarious. Coming in second was a woman named Mary Ruwart, whose chief claim to claim is her support for legalizing child pornography.

“Children who willingly participate in sexual acts have the right to make that decision as well, even if it’s distasteful to us personally. Some children will make poor choices just as some adults do in smoking and drinking to excess. When we outlaw child pornography, the prices paid for child performers rise, increasing the incentives for parents to use children against their will.”

– Mary Ruwart, runner-up for the Libertarian Party presidential nomination.

Normally I’d try to make some clever, trenchant observation, but some things speak for themselves.

Google Alert

It took only four days from my starting this new blog until Google figured out my full name! I have a Google Alert set on my name and I just received one about this site, even though my full name isn’t on it anywhere. And yes, if you Google me this site is the #4 result.

Google is creepy. Another creepy organization is LinkedIn. Its list of “people you may know” is scary good sometimes.

Indiana Jones

Indiana Jones returns to the big screen this weekend, for what reason I’m not sure. It’s no art project, and it’s not like the three sextagenarian principals need the money. The reviews are lukewarm, so I guess they didn’t exactly knock themselves out. Or George Lucas is simply out of ideas. Actually, George Lucas has clearly been out of ideas since, well, the first Indiana Jones movie.

I suppose it was a case three older guys with some time on their hands who liked working together and decided it would be fun. Which is fine. If I could get together with my buddies for a few months, have fun and make enough money to buy a chain of private islands in the process I’d do it too, I guess.

What’s a little shocking to me is that the original film, released in 1981, was a pastiche of adventure serials of the 40’s and 50’s. Which means nearly as much time has passed since Raiders was released as passed between those serials and Raiders. This makes me feel very old.

Hillary Clinton = Rush Limbaugh?

I’ve been amazed and appalled to see the extent to which the Clintons have copped their strategy and their language directly from the vast right-wing conspiracy she has always (rightfully in my view) complained about. From painting Obama as an effete elitist to the phony populist posing to James Carville’s questioning of Obama’s masculinity, Hillary Clinton has finally found her voice, and it’s Rush Limbaugh’s.

I hope she’s proud of herself.

“I mean, where are the real men in the Democratic Party? Where are the real men? Hillary Clinton’s one of them, but where are the others?” – Rush Limbaugh

“If she gave him one of her cojones, they’d both have two.” — Clinton consigliere James Carville.

Barack Obama = Jimmy Carter?

Facing the GOP heir to one of the most unpopular presidents in history, a president associated with an endless, needless war who abused his power and brought confidence in government to an all-time low, the Democrats nominate a light-on-experience Washington outsider who promises to bring a different way of doing business to Washington.

Barack Obama? Try Jimmy Carter.

Real Hardworking (white) Americans™

There’s one thing I really need to get off my chest: I am really tired of this working-class hero bullshit.

Let me start by saying that I realize there are many intelligent people who didn’t get the chance to go to college for financial reasons.  I know there are many people who chose not to go to college who are nonetheless well-educated. 

On the other hand, I also remember high school.  In particular, I remember who did and who did not go to college.  There were exceptions, but the ones who went to college were the ones who put some effort into their schooling.  The ones that did not were the slackers, the druggies, the dummies, and the borderline (or not-so-borderline) criminals.

I don’t bear any particular ill will towards any of these people.   Most of them eventually grew up and and turned out OK. But I draw the line when I start hearing about how these people are the Real Hardworking (white) Americans.™

Apparently in Hillaryland (which oddly resembles Red America in this respect), people who did what they were told — get an education and build a successful career — are suckers.  Only sissified dorks think for a living.  Real Hardworking (white) Americans™ haul things around, nail shit together and dig holes in the ground all day.  They deliver stuff in trucks and operate heavy machinery.  And they’re the only ones whose votes should actually count, because they’re Real Hardworking (white) Americans.™

Give me a break.