Nationstates

Once in a while, I'll remember this thing exists (usually by Kriss) and take five minutes to plunge my great nation further into depravity and lawlessness. NationStates is an online "nation simulation" game based on author Max Barry's novel Jennifer Government which is evidently a dystopian view of a government with too little power. I haven't read it, don't have any real inclination to read it and was surprised to learn what the novel itself is about, considering that I have been trying to see what happens if I ramp up civil liberties while having basically no economic restrictions in my little nation of Murphspot.

The gameplay is simple. You register a nation and its performance and well-being are determined by the government's (your) action on issues that are automatically generated. The solution to these issues is usually to pick one of a few very extreme positions, which makes the decision sometimes difficult, but it is good to see that both positives and negatives are acknowledged for every choice you make. To take an example from an issue I had recently:

Recent studies showing that the sources of Murphspot's most common street crimes (vandalism, muggings, joyriding, and witchcraft) are children under the age of criminal responsibility has prompted a national outcry for government action.

My options were to treat juveniles as adults and sentence them to long prison sentences (an option which did not define any age limits) which would stop a lot of the crime but would lead to a rise in taxes and could affect those who are caught up in petty crime and would not be likely to become dangerous if not incarcerated with violent criminals, to write it off as "childish mischief" which might be accurate and avoids a tax increase, but does nothing to solve the problem and to prosecute the parents of the offending children, which addresses the problem in an indirect way and might be unlikely to yield results.

As a result of trying to see what happens if I go with full on civil and economic libertarianism (a philosophy which, as the novel critiques a situation where the government is powerless), my nation is officially listed as an "Anarchy" with a street crime problem, but "superb" civil rights, a "strong" economy and "superb" political freedoms and is led by a "large, liberal, pro-business government" and peopled by citizens who pay a flat 16% income tax rate.

It's an interesting distraction. There's also a lot of activity on the associated forums and a very strong RPG aspect to participation, but I tend to stay away from that (partly because I'm not really all that good at role-playing) and stick with seeing how allowing me to pick a Supreme Court Justice would lead to the downfall of society.

If you'd like to see exactly how that's leading to the breakdown of everything, go to there and do a search for "Murphspot" and enjoy the ocelots, biker gangs and large private sector.

Woo! Things!

I've finally moved into my new place and gotten acquainted with the neighborhood, and so I'll try to be posting here a bit more regularly. Some topics.

1) I've capitulated and gotten Netflix, partially because it's a pretty good deal given how many movies I try to watch , but mostly because I've decided that, at least for now, cable is pointless. I'm not home enough to warrant spending $50 on television per month, and it was starting to make the fact that I have game consoles pointless. So far, I'm so-so on the service. The turnaround could be a bit quicker, but then that might not be something I should be blaming entirely on Netflix, given that the post-office does actually have to make sure they get to my door. So I'll give it a little while longer before I go about cancelling.

2) Can we go thirty seconds without a damn story about YouTube? I understand. YouTube's great. I use it probably every day, mostly because it's a bit of a way around the whole "illegally downloading songs" while (surely copyrighted) music videos are still up. Surely, the RIAA will be by shortly to slap the hell out of Darshana90 for posting the worst quality video of "Wonderboy" in existence. Still, it's like the media got the hint that the whole "blogging" thing it got all crazy about was kind of overblown and not really that interesting, and had to find something to grab on to. (Incidentally, "Wonderboy" was playing on the radio when I went to the NYC location of Forbidden Planet Comics, which is evidently surprising. I don't know. Ask Jenna.

Post script to that: I hope every single person who has some video of themselves lipsyncing to Bossy tries to run for office. Not because I'd want them in power, but more for the "What the Hell Was Going On In Your Basement" factor. Incidentally, the actual video for Kelis' Bossy is the most godawful thing I've ever seen. What's with the cake? The poodle? Too Short? I can't think this is how music is supposed to be.

3) I get angry at the CTA at times, despite the fact that it's damn convenient and no where near as expensive as owning a car and I would be lost without it, mostly because it's occasionally delayed. Usually, this is because of work on the tracks, but as a person who regularly drove on Rt. 28 outside of Pittsburgh, "delayed by construction" is almost a default for me. That said, I'm incredibly glad I'm in Chicago, land of the overcast recently, and not London where trains are stopped by happy, jolly, coercive rays of sunshine.

4) Slate has been showcasing the new 9/11 Commission Report Graphic Novel. I'm not quite sure about what I think about that, partially because it does, to an extent, trivialize the event by portraying it as more of a cartoon than ever (though I suppose it could be debated whether this is the first attempt which has actually made a cartoon out of 9/11). Still, I don't believe that the medium of graphic novels (or comic books) is inherently "comic," as many political graphic novels, historicals and hell even Doonesbury prove time and time again. It's more or less pictures of the event and aftermath set to excerpts from the committee report, and does do the service of putting the report in a format that people might actually read. Which is definitely a good thing.

5) If you happen to be in Chicago, here's a list that the Tribune put together of stuff to do before the summer ends. But then, if you're in Chicago, you ought to come out to Chicago's Jazz Festival. It'll be awesome.

Moved.

I've moved. Hooray for that. I've left my old residence in Edgewater (which is described here in Answers.com's copy of Wikipedia's article. Incidentally, concerning this article, I think the claim that Edgewater has the highest population density of any of the neighborhoods in Chicago is just a outright damn lie) to Lincoln Park (which has a zoo. More specific information about where I'll be living is not going to be posted here, because I think you're creepy.)

It's a much more lively area of Chicago, which is to say that the mechanic/sushi restaurant ratio is much lower than it was in my old neighborhood. I've got good feelings about the management, but that may just be due to the fact that I hated my old management, which seemed to be bent on making the time spent in their building unbearable what with the constant flooding and the never fixing things and the insects. Moreover, I've got a terrific view of the city, which I'm sure is costing me about $100 per month, but the move-in time was right so I'm not concerned about that so much. This, of course, means that I'm spending tonight at my old place with a pint of touch-up paint in a vain attempt to reclaim at least some of my deposit before leaving there forever, followed by not having a microwave yet at my new place because Jenna's bringing that up but won't be here until tomorrow.

So a night full of awesome.

Other things:

1) My commute is longer now, but that just means I'll be reading quite a bit more. The current endeavors are Clemente which I'm having trouble getting into not because it's not a well written biography or that the story is something I'm apathetic about, but because it's just more difficult to carry a hard-cover book in my back pocket, Bearing an Hourglass, having just finished On A Pale Horse after it was recommended to me, which I'm enjoying in an odd kind of way, and Blinded by the Right, which is moderately interesting if only for the Amazon reviews written by people in their best go-go team apparel. Whatever.

2) Matt Betush sent me a link to this, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to cry for days.

The Cream City

Which is evidently Milwaukee. How about that. Having lived in Chicago for one year, I finally got up and went somewhere else (that isn't Pittsburgh). I've been kind of limited on that front by two complications. The first is that I don't have a car. Living in Chicago, I don't actually need one, as the CTA runs everywhere that I've needed to go in the first year of living here, however slowly it does it. The second, of course, is that there aren't many places I'd want to go in the Midwest. Perhaps that will change and Des Moines will become impossible to resist. The trip to Milwaukee allowed me to try out Megabus, which takes the same amount of time as an Amtrak train but at one quarter of the price. The catch, it seems, is that while Amtrak trains depart Chicago at Union station at defined points and are affiliated with a truckload of information personnel who will gladly point you to the proper platform, Megabus shows up on Jackson Street with no sign to indicate that it's going to do so. Fortunately, if you just walk around Union Station long enough, you catch on to the fact that the forty-ish people standing outside against the wall are seasoned Megabus veterans (or were bright enough to click on the link that explains precisely where the bus actually shows up) are waiting for exactly the same big blue vehicle that goes to Milwaukee (or Cincinnati, Minneapolis and St. Louis, among others.)

Following the erratic boarding procedure (more commonly known as shoving one's way the hell on to the bus) and the two hour trip (much of which was spent trying to stay awake long enough to finish this damned Fountainhead thing), I arrived at the beautiful Milwaukee Amtrak station, complete with some seats, a vending machine and lots and lots of construction. I eventually found Internet Person #1 (Heidi, a forum member and moderator at Rum and Monkey,) who was heading out to try to meet Internet Person #2 and had offered a ride.

Problematically, Internet Person #2 had not actually gotten around to contacting either of us with the address at which he was staying in Eagle, WI (which is evidently a town containing a village by the same name, according to Wikipedia), leaving us to look for a "trailer" (which turned out to be an actual trailer, not a trailer home, which was in the driveway of a very nice residence) or happening upon a bearded Australian man either on a motorcycle or holding a kitten. As those were the only things we knew him to do.

Oh yes. IP2 (Gregor) is Australian, in the States initially for covering the World Series of Poker for ZOO Weekly Australia, which appears to be analogous to, say, FHM or Maxim, so beware that that link is probably NSFW. He's also the Gregor of this link that's been on the side of my blog for ages. This all complicated things, as you can't just dial an Australian number on a Verizon cell phone. You need to buy a phone card. So Gregor, if you read this, you owe us each $5.

Following the trip out, a genuinely weird experience of hanging out with people I know from a forum who were both actually very cool people, eating a delicious dip provided by Gregor's sister (who lives in Eagle, which explains why one would go to Wisconsin after spending one's time in Vegas for a few days), being attacked by bees, learning how to perform a tracheotomy on Gregor should he be stung by the bees and heading home in the early evening as the last mode of transportation that goes from Milwaukee to Chicago does so at 7:30pm. However, finding out that the trip is this simple, I now have no excuse not to make it to a Brewers game.

The Chin

At this point, Chuck Norris jokes are somewhat old hat. All the rage for a while, they seem to have died off a bit. I could be completely wrong on that account, as I spend very little of my time keeping up with what you hip young kids do these days, but from my perspective, they've gone down a bit. Feel free to slam me here if I'm wrong. This dearth of "Wow, that celebrity's a real bad ass" comedy has left me no other choice on whether or not to present this link.

I give you the genius of some guy: Bruce Campbell Facts

I appreciate it more explicitly because it's minorly concerning zombie horror. But mostly because Bruce Campbell is good times. Yes, a number of the facts are based on Chuck Norris facts, but that's irrelevant.

Because I said so.

Spyware as it pertains to All Star Festivities

Do you leave your computer for hours at a time, and like leaving enormous representations of your baseball loyalties on your monitor so that the fellows in your office can know in no uncertain terms that you live and die by every pitch thrown by Josh Fogg? Well, you should stop that. Being obsessed with Josh Fogg, that is. In addition to being a criterion used by many leading psychologists as evidence of dangerous psychosis, looking for screensavers of Fogg will probably wreck up your computer.

McAfee has ranked the teams of Major League Baseball and some select players in terms of how likely you are to stumble across a sketchy site that will probably include some lovely spyware with your screensaver download. Number One? The New York Yankees (though Steinbrenner has said that he will put the spyware purveyors out of business by attacking them with sacks of cash). Dead last? Your Pittsburgh Pirates. Yeah, you could look at that as being the best (at something, finally), but it's just better to think of it as another category in which we're behind everyone. Hell, the Royals (whose winning percentage has squeaked past ours lately) share 15th place on this list with the Cubs and Reds.

Top player name search resulting in malevolent websites? Josh Fogg with three of four results being untrustworthy. The most dangerous Pirate on the list is Kip Wells (imagine that!) with 46.2% of sites returning something that will probably be better if you just avoid.

While not actually useful (unless you were just about to run out and download some screensavers to express your love for the Yankees and Josh Fogg), I find it moderately amusing.

I'm actually pretty sure they contain threads.

When you're a graduate student at Northwestern, you tend to really rake in the cash. Trust me. That's not despair and anger at being convinced to spend 5-or-more years of your life chained to a lab bench you're swimming in. It's cold hard cash. And so you're given another post about possessions I've acquired.

Because when you're pulling in the dough like I am, frivolously throwing down a few Jacksons is the kind of thing that warrants its own blog post.

I recently ordered (but have not yet received) my first three Threadless shirts. This would have happened quite some time ago, but for the fact that the actual shirts I wanted have been out of print for some time, and have not been selected for reprinting. If you're not familiar with the concept, Threadless is a t-shirt store run out of Chicago (though I'm sure that my order will for some reason be shipped from their warehouse at the center of the Earth! or something, just because of my last name) that takes submissions from artists (professional or amateur) and puts them on shirts. Then you buy the shirts. Listen, it's all very complicated, and I'm sure you've got better things to do with your time, like eating beef jerky, so I'll just continue on without further explanation.

Purchases:

A criticism of pickles, which is appropriate, as I've never liked eating pickles, avoid them whenever possible and find the so-named comic strip tedious. Actually, I don't have that much of a problem with the strip, but overstatement is a valuable tool to the blogger.

Zombie Donkey, as I don't have many zombie shirts (the one was my halloween costume last year, and I'm not sure how many people are going to get the "Bach's Arco, Pitcairn" reference anyway, without knowing what Arco or Pitcairn have to do with softball or the Living Dead. They still haven't printed the shirt that's the entire reason I keep going to threadless' catalog anyway.

And yes, sometimes I can be a sucker for things that remind me of childhood. Quit judging me.

I'm going to go to bed now. If you'd like to buy something from there, do me the favor of going through the link on the side there. It makes things cheaper for me. While I realize it's shameless, I also don't care. Hooray!

People that are actually somewhat creative.

While I link to Lore Sjöberg's blog on this, something tells me that the few of you that read this don't actually use the links on the side of this deal. Not that people who are actually very well known, were part of a notable internet comedy team and are writers for Wired need a hack such as myself to link to them, but because why not. Because I got a kick out of it, I'll link to it in the actual body of the blog just now. Lore's latest project is up, and is amusing. Go. Enjoy.

The Northwestern Soccer thing.

I tend not to get around to posting about news stories until they've been thoroughly gutted by the press, and the backlash has already occurred. That's not purposefully done to try to somehow get the last word on a subject, as I'd much rather blog about this kind of stuff when it's still going on, but because I'm trying to get these syntheses to work and because I've got the attention span of something with almost no attentions span, it's somewhat difficult to get around to typing something out.

But here we go anyway.

As most of you know (as the people that read this blog tend to be people that know me personally), I'm doing my thing at Northwestern University, which has been, if you hadn't seen, in the news a bit lately for the actions of one of the sports teams. Namely, the girls soccer team. During some form of event about a week back, the girls soccer team apparently blindfolded and bound the hands of the freshman players, drew things on them in marker and evidently had them do vaguely sexual things while remaining clothed. Someone posted those pictures on the web, and since then have been the subject of most of the coverage of Northwestern sports. Said photos have sinced moved elsewhere, and the entire soccer team has been suspended.

My opinion:

Sure, no one got hurt, and, according to at least one player in an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, no one was forced to do anything and in the pictures everyone's smiling and happiness was never borne out quite so perfectly as when one is trashed and has phalluses written on their cheek. Or something. The problem here is twofold, for me. First, they know there are hazing regulations that the University enforces. It enforces them for a reason and by agreeing to be a member of the sports team, they're agreeing to abide by the University's policies. So I honestly don't understand the shock at being suspended for this. If the policies had been voted on and never announced, or if they hadn't existed but the University decided to come down on everyone anyway, then maybe some shock. As it stands, they should have known at least not to post pictures of what they were doing where people that might care and punish them could find them.

The second bit is that i disagree with hazing across the board, and support zero-tolerance policies where hazing is concerned. Was anyone forced to get drunk and have stuff written on them against their will? Probably not. But hazing tends to have a way of forcing people to conform to what everyone's doing without saying much at all. It could even take the form of an event in which the participants are told they can sit out. People being hazed are simply more likely to go along with it to avoid looking like someone that couldn't handle the task in front of their friends and people they respect enough to be in a situation where they could be getting hazed in the first place. While in this case the hazing appears to be relatively innocuous enough to the point that yes, the hazed were probably fine with being given free alcohol, the practice itself has a way of transforming into something that not all of the potentially hazed are okay with over time. While that would seem to constitute a slippery slope fallacy, caution, in the case of enforcement, must be the rule. Some may contend that this is about political correctness. Not wanting to make anyone feel bad, and so banning the practice of hazing outright, while it still may serve a function of binding the hazed together as a result of their ordeal. I do think that organizations that make a big deal about having to be humiliated or beaten to gain entrance to things should be held accountable for beating people, this is something that's much easier to have be a self policing kind of thing. That is, either the organization can elect not to do it on their own and use that as a selling point (in the case of Fraternities, who are competing for members), or kids can wake up and realize that getting beaten up/running around naked in the cold is something they don't have to go through, and that the organization that's going to do that to them may not have their best interests in mind. Let me then personalize this, move it away from the realm of policy enforcement and get to why I disagree with hazing.

For those of you who don't know me but are reading this blog and haven't been able to piece together from the links on the left side there that I was in a Fraternity in college, I was. It was good times and, if you can find a chapter that's worthy of having you as a member, I highly recommend it. And yet, because of the strict anti-hazing policy the Fraternity took, I never felt as though I was being pressured to do something against my will or in any way separate from anything that was being done by the seniors in the Fraternity. Bonds and brotherhood were formed, in the case of my class and those that preceeded and will follow (hopefully, that stance won't change) was necessarily left to discussion and the way any other friendship is formed, rather than through unification to get through an ordeal. I could never understand why, as a new member, being beaten with a stick or made to drink in a dark room (or whatever these kids are doing now) was something I would elect to go through to join a group. That is, possibly, a relic of the fact that my chapter had been recently reformed, and so there was a lot more pressure on the Fraternity to sell itself to prospectives, but I just can't understand why I'd elect to run around naked with a bucket of gasoline or something when I could just as easily tell this group of people that want my money or athletic skill to eat it.

To summarize, if you want to be in a Greek organization or soccer team or something, that's cool. You shouldn't have to jump through any crazy hoops to get there. Testing devotion of new members is pointless through hazing, I think, as it can be done in much more efficient ways that don't isolate the new members and beat up on them.

Then again, I must be missing something, as a lot of these kids seem very willing to undergo bodily harm for the organization of their choice.

Oh, addendum.

When are people going to learn to stop putting up pictures of being general schmucks up on the internet? I can't read a news site anymore without hearing about how so-and-so hazed their freshmen/did massive amounts of drugs/burnt down buildings/whatever, took pictures of it and then posted the incriminating evidence on their damn Myspace. Here's a tip kids. Just because you're posting something on your own private computer, in your own private dorm room with your private door shut or, alternatively, in your own private basement/apartment/account on an computer in a library doesn't mean that that content is somehow not available to the entire world now. Don't want to get caught for having thirty pounds of marijuana? Don't post pictures of it on your Myspace now that it's common knowledge that law enforcement officials browse it to find idiots that post pictures of things they shouldn't.?

Acid ate through my glove.

As I sit here waiting for my Reaction that Will Not Finish to come to an end, I get these incessant little popups on the lower right hand corner of my screen. I'm down with that, as they're mail alerts and let me know when to check this thing to see who we're holding a Meet the Speaker for (this week, it's K. Barry Sharpless, who won the Nobel Prize in 2001 and, incidentally, who I'm sitting down with tomorrow to chat about chemistry) or when I should respond to a comment that Rory's left on my blog. So that's all well and good. Except for the several emails a day that get through the gmail filters. Cutting the spam I actually see down to about ten a day is a pretty good feat, and it's mostly taking care of things that go on about the wonderful medicinal benefits of "V1@gr@" and "\/\/|-|@73\/3R D@mn Th!ng" they're trying to get me to buy, but I do have to register a complaint.

Dear Filthy Spammers,

Having a subject informing me that you've "acquired" my email does not make me want to open your email. It makes me want to break your things.

It's not so much the fact that the spam's getting in the way (as hitting the "Report Spam" button is easy enough), but that it's incredible the lack of creativity that's going into these things. Perhaps it's just that in order to get around the filter, it's better to have an email that actually seems like it could be related to some kind of business venture, or whatever the hell the good people at Google Labs think I do.

In other: My intramural Softball team "BSalsa" (playing in Northwestern's "White League", which is evidently a little more competitive than the Co-Rec league but less than the "Purple League") beat the No. 1 seed in the second round of the playoffs today. They were a team that was undefeated through the four game regular season and had not won a game by less than ten runs. So, though not expecting much, it was incredibly nice to be able to put them down, 14-8. Props to third baseman Jim on a spectacular unassisted double play in a bases loaded, no outs situation after two runs had scored in the inning. We'll be proceeding along to play in the third round, Sunday.

Blogging as a Writing Block

Those of you who write on blogs, whether you've started in the more recent explosion of blogging (this one started in Spring of 2005, and is by far the longest lived of my attempts at blogging) or you've been doing this for years and have amassed an empire of loyal readers (think BoingBoing), will be familiar with the problems that go along with them. It, I think, is an extension of pure vanity to check counter statistics, try to keep semi-regular updates to keep what little audience you (you = I in this case) have managed to gain, to make sure the words you type correspond with what you're actually trying to say, and to worry about being at least marginally witty or, if all attempt at wit is being abandoned, to at least get across your point.

Recently, a blogger who'd evidently been doing such for five years shut down her blog and wrote a happy little Slate article about it. It's an interesting perspective, and probably worth at least a quick glance. I have no intention of finishing Murphspot in the near future, but it's interesting to consider the mortality of these things once in a while.

The Worst Franchise?

ESPN.com's Page 2 is searching for a new punchline to fill the place of the L. A. Clippers, and as such are conducting a reader poll to determine the Worst Franchise in Sports. The Bucs get a mention that's painful to read if only because it emphasizes the fact that we've just extended Littlefield's contract, but I doubt they'll make it as the worst franchise after the poll is concluded. For some reason, I think "Royals" sticks out in the minds of the general populace more readily, and that with the remainder of the sports added in, the Pirates will finish out of the top five. In the top ten, certainly, but not the top five.