GO PATS!



Remember, this is Super Bowl #42 -- The super bowl of life, the universe, and everything.

GAMING IS MY RELIGION

This article was originally written for a college writing course, the focus of the assignment being on Culture and Identity. I reprint it here because 1) it got a 98% and 2) it was a lot of fun to write. Enjoy.

Although I describe myself as an atheist, I don't really consider it a full enough description of who I am. Atheism describes what one is not: neither a believer in supernatural entities, nor a follower of religion. However, there is a certain force in my life that has filled the niche that most people find in the rote and ritual of faith: computer and video gaming. It might seem preposterous that an activity associated with slackers and geeks can take the place of a system of belief, but it's been something that's shaped my outlook on life.

For as long as I can remember I've been a gamer. My dad probably didn't intend for me to travel this path, but he was the one who first showed me the way. I was three when he showed me First Letters and Words on the Commodore Amiga he used to do work on at home. It captivated me enough to convince him to buy other games for me. From that led to more learning-oriented games, through Math Rescue and the Carmen Sandiego series, to the ones more purely for entertainment, the Commander Keens and Wolfensteins and Duke Nukems.

The early 1990s was the heyday of a relatively new concept in computer games: shareware. Rather than release the whole game, companies released part of it, which people could then do with as they pleased: either charge for it or give it away, either on diskette or on BBSes. This gave companies the ability to put out new games at a more rapid pace, since if no one was interested, companies could move on to other projects. If interest grew enough, companies could finish their shareware games, which people could then pay for. The company most responsible for popularizing this concept was Apogee Software. They had many disciples, of whom id Software, Epic Megagames, Microprose, and Psygnosis were but a few. They were my priests, and every few months, they had a new story to tell. Commander Keen! Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure! Major Stryker! Duke Nukem! Jill of the Jungle! X-Com! Novastorm! Each name holds a few memories, of moments wasted in the holy light of pixellated images on an old CRT.

While my parents never let me own a console, I had no shortage of friends that did. I must imagine that my friends never understood why, out of all their toys, the one I liked best was their Sega Genesis or their Super Nintendo. I never was very good at games that required a controller (and I'm still not very good with a gamepad), but I enjoyed watching them play. Better for me, since they usually were much more skilled. How boring, you might think, to watch someone else play video games! Not for me. There was a rush of excitement at finding out what lay just out of sight. What happens on the next level? and the next one? and the next? I didn't have to be the one at the controls; I just wanted a good view. It still excites me to explore somewhere new, in real life, as in games.

Since this was before the internet, I had little no no way to find like-minded gamers. When people asked me what I liked to so, and I told them I liked computer games, there was always a barely detectable odd look. I don't think they thought I was a weirdo, just that they didn't understand. I remember having what I can only fathom is a similar reaction when hearing from my 7- and 8-year-old friends that they had recently gotten their first communion. They knew exactly what it meant, but it was completely alien to me.

As a result, my social circle, which revolved around other people whose primary interest was gaming, remained small. My first and most stalwart companion in this regard was my own brother. My dad worked as a software engineer, and as the result of coming in contact with a lot of discarded tech, he had managed to get each of us a laptop. My brother and I played games via null-modem cable. What this meant was that we actually had to run a cable, several feet long, from my room, down the hall, to his, and plug it in to both our computers. The cable was just long enough that if we both moved our laptops a few inches to the side, we could connect them together without creating a tripwire across the bathroom door. Once we connected, we spent many an hour blasting the hell out of each other in Duke Nukem 3D and Worms 2. Neither of us had a big enough allowance to buy our own games, so we often pooled our money to get the requisite forty dollars. It created a feeling of kinship between us that I haven't been able to duplicate anywhere else. I've never felt a great attachment to many people, except for the few I've been able to sit down and play a game with. I can't even remember the names of most of the people I hung out with in middle school, but after playing a few rounds of Unreal Tournament with the guys in Intro to Programming Languages class in high school, their memories will always be with me.

It wasn't until late in high school that I felt like a part of a much larger community. I first became aware that there were a lot more people who played games, when my house started getting freebie issues of Computer Games Strategy Plus magazine. I also came to realize the sheer volume of it all--there are this many games, and all of them are this good? This magazine came with a monthly demo CD. Each of these CDs was my most prized possession until the next one arrived. I never felt like I needed something else to do with my spare time, because CGS+ delivered!

Through the games on this demo CD, I discovered games that could be played over the internet. At first I only dabbled with this, but once I reached college, my love for online gaming became so much deeper. It turns out that UMass Amherst's Computer Science Talent Advancement Program (CompSci TAP), to which I had been admitted, was a haven for gamers. I had talked briefly with people I had played online with, but now I was living with kindred spirits. Though I was living in a dorm I would move out of two years later, I felt like I was home. Home, where people understood. Home, where there were people I could talk to.

It was while I was in college, in this home environment of primarily gamers, that my vocabulary began to change. We would pepper our speech with AIM shorthand, pronouncing them as if they were words. Someone said something funny? You would hear someone say, between laughs, "lol" or "rofl."Someone acts like an idiot? He would be called a "noob." Someone gets defeated, outwitted, cut down to size, or one-upped? We would have said he got "owned." I still regularly use these last two in everyday speech.

The peak period of gaming for me was in those two years I spent at UMass Amherst. World of Warcraft was unleashed in November of 2004, and no one on the hall was left untouched by its wrath. If any one thing was responsible for making me leave Amherst, Warcraft was it. I spent hours every day exploring a vast world, gathering experience, fighting battles, and occasionally skipping classes. Some of my friends built up their characters and deleted them, as if they were disposable. I never quite saw it that way. I felt that Omni, my raven-haired, dark-skinned human priest of the light, was too much a part of my soul to callously throw away, or worse still, to sell on eBay, because he wasn't fun to play any more or because he wasn't powerful enough.

Unlike many other games I had played before, World of Warcraft kept track of how long I had been playing all of my characters. How addicted was I? In total, I have spent a total of over 125 days playing, out of two years. Taken all at once, if I had started playing on New Years' Day, and continued playing, all day and all night, without stopping to eat, drink, or sleep, I wouldn't take a break until around Cinco de Mayo. If I had been a religious person, attending a two-hour sermon once a week from birth until age 21, I would have only spent a total of 91 days in church. This is the length and breadth of my devotion, and that's only for one game. There were many that came before it, and there are still more yet to come. Gaming has given me a sense of wonder, many new friends, and a lot of memories, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

MA-5 SPECIAL ELECTION TODAY

WARCRAFT AND RELIGION (p.s. I'M BACK)

First, I apologize to anyone who has spent the last months waiting for another post. Recently I have been feeling something--not quite writers' block, the feeling that you have nothing to write about, but rather a feeling that what I was thinking at the time wasn't worth writing about. After all, I don't lead a very interesting life. I work, I take classes, I play games, I spend time with friends, I expand my mind by reading. I haven't felt a deep need for something more, and most of all the prior activity seemed to be something to divert myself from middle-class ennui, which is probably the only thing that really sucks about being a white, middle-class male.

I came home from UMass Amherst and gotten a job at UPS to pay for night-school classes at closer-to-home UMass Lowell. I will not elaborate on this much (maybe in a future post). I will say, that since I'm only working part-time, with shifts lasting only four or five hours, I have what might be considered too much free time. This I have spent on two things.

One, I started playing World of Warcraft again, after leaving my account dormant for months. Only a few months after installing Burning Crusade and restarting again, my level 60 priest, Omni, joined another guild and reached level 70. My original goal of having a top-level character of every class has now expanded slightly, since all of them now much reach 70 rather than 60, but at least now I won't have to crate a shaman on another server just because of the restriction of PvP servers to characters of one side.

Two, I read many more things that caused my dislike for organized religion to solidify. I have continued to read the Truth For Youth comics and had another half an article written (will finish it soon and post it next) but also started to read blogs such as Atheist in a Minivan, Daylight Atheism, and the NoGodBlog on American Atheists' website. I picked up Sam Harris' The End of Faith in paperback, and found it fascinating. I also hope to read Dawkins' The God Delusion and Hitchens' God is Not Great. Also, there is the simultaneous hilarity and horror of the many quotes, written by actual fundamentalists on the internet, collected daily, on the website Fundies Say The Darndest Things. It keeps my attention, as much with the sheer depths to which religious people can sink, as with the witty comments and rebuttals written by its regulars. Finally, I am seriously considering joining the Freedom From Religion Foundation, since news stories I have been reading about politicians and their f**th seem to threaten my laissez-faire view of religion.

Somehow, these two things came together recently. Being level 70, Omni tends to spend a lot of time wandering around Shattrath City, the only major city in the expansion-only realm of the Outlands. One day, while standing near the center of the city, I encountered a number of Draenei sitting, facing another Draenei, who was standing, about to make a speech. Apparently Grand Anchorite Almonen was about to deliver some kind of sermon. Perhaps out of some role-playing spirit within me, and because of the fact that I was playing a priest, Omni sat down and listened. For about five minutes, I listened in on how the light within us all leads us to do good things, and how those who embrace this are blessed, and whose who turn are condemned to wander blindly. As the sermon ended, each of the anchorites listening rose in turn and intoned, "May it be so." And in the same role-playing spirit that led me to sit down, I likewise rose, spoke, /clapped at the speaker, mounted up and left.

Someone reading might seem to think that I'm on my way to becoming a theist. I don't know who, but I'm sure some fundie must think that I have some innate desire to worship god that is manifesting in this way. Not at all. My belief in a powerful omnipresent controlling force in a game is in no way related to belief in an omnipresent controlling force in real life.

Primarily, my belief in the light does have some supporting evidence. It can be proven that not only does it exist, not only that it grants powers, but that these powers are measurable. It is clearly delineated in my spell book: Greater Heal, rank 7, costs 710 mana, and heals from 2414 to 2803 hit points to its target. It measures, in a sense, how much belief and focus will yield how much result. There is nothing even remotely comparable in organized religion. There is no measure of how many prayers, how many candles lit, how many days fasting, will result in the miracles the faithful are purported to be able to do. Most likely this is because there is no correlation, and because prayer has no real effect, as scientific studies have borne out.

But the larger point, the one most of you probably grasped, is that it's just a friggin' game. The rules of the world are intelligently designed, by programmers in Blizzard's development department in Irvine, California. And unlike the rules laid out in holy books, they are available from multiple credible sources, clear and unambiguous, measurable, and independently verifiable.

Hopefully, I will be back to writing something at least once a month from now on.

AND SO WE ZERG RUSH, IN THE NAME OF THE LORD

The Christians have done it again. They've gone a step creepier.

While perusing NoGodBlog, the blog for Atheists.org, I noticed a link to a Nation article. I get The Nation at home, and wondered why this particular article had slipped through the cracks. Rather than hunt down the magazine for its article, I did what any lazy netizen would and followed the link. The story, entitled "Red-Diaper Babies," detailed a new movement among evangelicals called the Quiverfull movement.

While it's nothing new that traditional christian doctrine is explicitly counter-feminist, this particular version of the "restore the role of head of household to the men" rhetoric added something new: an exhortation to women, "Have as many children as you possibly can!" The movement idolizes women who raise more than six kids, and the article mentions women who have eight, ten, thirteen children.

Again, nothing new; Christians have been anti-contraceptive since the Pill became widespread, and it's not uncommon to see Christian families who have many many kids. When our nighbors, the Clancys, moved in down the street from us, they had two children. It's been 10+ years, they have five kids, and will soon be moving into a bigger house.

What I read next was what freaked me out. The reason for all this breeding? To vastly increase the Christian population to create an army of Christian Soldiers. The movement's name, Quiverfull, comes from Psalm 127: "Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one's youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies in the gate."

And then my geek senses kicked in.

I'm not sure who reads this blog besides my brother, so an explanation is probably in order. In the massively popular computer game Starcraft, there is an alien race known as the Zerg. They are a voracious swarm of insectoid aliens, all of whom are controlled by a single entity, the Overmind. The Overmind drives the Zerg to find new species to assimilate and to increase their numbers. A person playing as the Zerg plays best by building in numbers. You may not have the advantage of weapons, but your numbers are unmatched. This strategy is epitomized in the most basic unit, the Zergling. For a minor expenditure of minerals, you get two of them. They can be spawned early, quickly, and in vast numbers. It's so effective, that, to play against a Zerg player, and not plan for the Zergling Rush, is tantmount to suicide.

Let's just quickly compare:

ZERG: Their minds are not their own. They are controlled by the Overmind.
QUIVERFULLS: Their bodies are not their own. Their reproduction is dictated by God.

ZERG: Can spawn as many as 400 zerglings on a single map (difficult, but possible).
QUIVERFULLS: If 8 million evangelicals have 6 children or more each, estimates say, there will be 550 million of them within a century, "assuming Christ does not return before then." (Riiiiight.)

ZERG: Instinct drives them to take over the known universe.
QUIVERFULLS: Jesus drives them to take over the known universe.

ZERG: "If ever your flesh should fail, that flesh shall be made anew." --The Overmind, Original Zerg Campaign, Mission 2, "Egression"
QUIVERFULLS: "Our bodies are meant to be a living sacrifice." --Rick and Jan Hess, A Full Quiver: Family Planning and the Lordship of Christ

ZERG: Took over the planets Char and Tarsonis, and ran rampant on Chau Sara, Mar Sara, Antiga Prime, and Shakuras before all four worlds were "cleansed" in various ways. Slaughtered what they could not assimilate.
QUIVERFULLS: We shall see.

And then I imagined Morpheus, from the movie The Matrix, explaining to Neo that all humans are nothing more than glorified batteries for the infernal machine. Except now, Neo was a quiverfull child. And instead of batteries, they were bullets in some Christian war against anything and everything that opposes them. How do you say that to a child? "You are nothing more than a 9mm in God's glorious Uzi."

And then I thought...of Muslim suicide bombers. They could also be thought of as little more than shells in the artillery of GodVsGod. "Kill yourself for the glory of Allah."

And then, strangely enough, my thoughts turned back to Starcraft. Another Zerg tactic is to infect a Command Center, built by the Terran faction, and use it to produce a horde of Infested Terrans, which can commit suicide for a lot of damage, across a small radius.

So, the key point? Christians are only slightly less bloodthirsty than Muslims. Okay, maybe not. I can't write any more. I hope I can actually dispel these thoughts enough to sleep tonight.

CONGRATULATIONS

My high has just ended. My hit of electoral MDMA has faded (lasted longer than I thought!), and now I must comment.

Congratulations to Deval Patrick, the second black governor in the country, and the first Democratic governor of my great blue state of Massachusetts in over 16 years.

Congratulations to newly-elected senators Brown, Cardin, Klobuchar, Casey Jr., Tester, Whitehouse, McCaskill, and Webb.

Congratulations to the woman in the commercials in Tennessee, who may or may not have been responsible for Harold Ford, Jr.'s loss at the hands of senator Bob Corker. (Call me.)

Congratulations to the over two dozen newly-elected Democratic representatives, and the many newly-elected Democratic governors.

Congratulations to Nancy Pelosi, who it seems all but certain will be the first female, and first Italian-American, Speaker of the House. Madam Speaker, don't let us down.

Congratulations to Donald Rumsfeld on your long-awaited retirement.

Congratulations to Robert Gates on your new job. Don't fuck up.

And of course, Congratulations to all who worked towards this fantastic outcome. See you all in 2008. Stay sharp!

NOR'EASTER 2006: INSIDER'S REPORT

I'm a little late in telling you about this, since it happened last weekend. Last week was Nor'Easter, a LAN party sponsored by Intel and various other companies.

For the uninitiated, a LAN party is where a bunch of people pack up their computers, bring them to some room large enough to accomodate a few dozen Dell-wielding gamergeeks, network them all together, and play some games. And Nor'easter is not just any LAN party, it's run by the LAN Party Association of New England, or LPANE. It's the biggest lan party in New England, with total space for 250 preregistered gamers. And it lasted a total of 36 glorious hours, from 9 pm Friday to 9am Sunday morning.

Leading up to the party, I was a little concerned that I wouldn't have anything to play. According to LPANE's Polls, the top few games that people wanted to play were those I didn't have. Battlefield 2, for example. After finding it on sale at CompUSA for $10 cheaper than the WalMart near my house, I figured, "Why not?" and tossed it in the cart with the can of compressed air and the Cat6 cable that were the reason I had ventured to the store.

Looking back, I can conclusively say that I spent WAAY too much money in preparation for this one party. About $100 on games: Battlefield 2, Call of Duty 2, and DEFCON, none of which I ended up playing at the party. $200 on a new flatscreen monitor, since I didn't want to lug around my heavy 19" CRT. When I got there, I found out that someone there had the exact same model that I had just upgraded from. Incidentally, I had met this guy previously, working as a ski instructor at Nashoba Valley in nearby Westford. He got more of my hard-earned cash, as I bought $50 of computer memory from him. The 25-foot Cat6 networking cable was a bit of a waste too; although LPANE had recommended bringing a 25-foot cable, it turned out that I was seated right next to an ethernet switch, thus I wouldn't need a cable longer than 6 feet, something I could have taken from the Linux box in my room.

Oh, and as mentioned in the previous post, I was building a DDRHOMEPAD. Another $100 for supplies. I was naive to think I could possibly finish that thing before the party without using any power tools.

Anyway, The event was being held at the Intel campus in Hudson, Massachusetts. Although I had left at 8 PM and the drive is a half-hour at most, there was still a line as people were waiting to check their computers and start setting up. I hadn't reserved a seat, so as they checked me in, I was randomly assigned one. I headed inside, set up, and did what any gamer would do: compare rigs with the guy next to me. Then, I started showing off my collection of vintage games and interesting mods.

About 90 minutes into the party, I still hadn't played any games. I was perfectly capable of it; my connection was fine, my computer hadn't mysteriously died on the drive over, but...no one was really playing anything interesting.

There was, of course, Counter-Strike Source. An incidental acquisition included when I bought Half-Life 2. CS:S happened to be the second-most-voted game in LPANE's polls, so there should be no problem finding people to play that. My problem was, I had been playing for maybe a month or two. The game had been out for over a year, and it was the logical extension of the original Counter-Strike, which has been out even longer.

Ergo, everyone was better than I was at it.

That is, they knew not to waste time on body shots and go straight for the head. The server we played on would tell you how many shots you had fired had hit your opponents, where, and for how much. While I had hit with 6 bullets, for about 75-90 damage, often they would score over 100 damage with a single shot to the head. It's one thing to be sniped at, but quite another to be emptying an entire clip into a guy, and have 80% of those shots miss, only to have his one bullet go right where he wanted it.

About 15 minutes of that and I was bored again. So I tried some Warcraft III tower defense with the guys next to me. Fun, yes, but with only 3 people, it got boring quickly.

Later I tried SourceForts. Based on Half-Life 2's Deathmatch mod, it was Capture-the-flag with the added twist of having to build structures out of blocks to keep your flag protected and/or make entry into your opponents' base easier. It ept me occupied for a few hours, but again, It slowly fizzled from lack of players. Everyone else was busy playing Battlefield 2, which, after one game, I had decided was not to my liking.

And then I heard the laughter. Across the table, there were four guys laughing their asses off. At what? I watched in anticipation, hoping to find out. They saw I was watching and invited me to play. What was it? A card game, called Apples to Apples. The premise: There's a deck of green cards (descriptors) and a deck of red cards (nouns). On each player's turn, that player turns over the top green card, and each other player has to pick a red card in his hand that best fits the descriptor on the green card. Whoever revealed the green card decides which noun fits best, and the winner keeps the green card. Whoever has the most green cards at the end of the game wins. By itself, not much to speak of. But factor in that these four guys, Vince, Glenn (they started calling me Glenn #2), Ian, and Supreet, had a very sick, sarcastic, and tasteless sense of humor, and sooner or later, I was reeling with laughter, as we described "Ground Zero" as "deep," and "Falling Off A Cliff" as "graceful." Maybe you had to be there to enjoy it, but it was great. I ended up hanging with the 4chan Party Van (as they called themselves) for the rest of the party.

I ended up staying until 7am sunday morning. I was planning to stay the entire time, but by that point, almost everyone was starting to pack up and leave. I hadn't slept all that night, I probably shouldn't have been driving, and I missed work that day, but all I could think on the drive home was: It's worth it. It was worth everything.

PROJECTS

A few months ago I had the bright idea that I wanted to build something. And being a gamer, It had to have something to do with gaming. I only had two ideas, and I think I went with the worse one.

Which was that? I decided I wanted to go with D. Gee's instructions for building a DDRHOMEPAD. (No, the entire thing is not technically capitalized. Yes, I like it better that way.) The site had detailed instructions, photos, a parts list...a cinch, I thought last Tuesday, as I traveled to Home Depot to buy supplies. Unfortunately, parents were out of the house for the week, which means: no access to power tools. No table saw, no jigsaw, but I could use a hand saw. Cutting five squares of plywood could have taken 5 minutes, but due to my weak gamer arms, it took an hour.

No problems when I tried to cut the sheet metal that would cover the plywood, except that it ended up a little bit curved since it's not easy to cut a 12" piece of metal with inch-and-a-half tinsnips.

Then I tried to make the plates of clear plastic that would top off the buttons. In the interest of full disclosure, funny story. I had gone to the Home Depot in Nashua, NH to buy my materials. The plans called for lucite sheets. I asked the guy where I could find lucite, and he says: "What's a lucite?" In hindsight a perfectly reasonable response. He could have specialized in something else, like...bathroom fixtures. But it was funny at the time.

I went on to explain it was a clear glass substitute, like fiberglass, and he redirected me to Aisle 16. No lucite, but there were sheets of Lexan, the kind of material used in those Nalgene water bottles we see so often nowadays. Works for me.

I had not bothered to ask how the hell I was supposed to cut it. I checked the directions and they suggested repeatedly scoring the sheet of L[uciteexan] and then breaking it over a table. It seemed a bit crude. But, what the hell. I had forgotten, however, to remove the plastic wrap on both sides. <> Dammit.

Then I figured I could saw it if I used a light blade. Dumb move. I had not gotten an inch into the Lexan when it started to crack.

The real problem, I think, was that I was not breaking the Lexan evenly. By placing the Lexan between the table and what was left of my plywood, then applying pressure down with both hands while kneeling on the plywood, I could make a clean break. Unfortunately, by this time, I only had enough to make 4 panels -- this recipe used two per button, so I needed eight. And guess what? Out of all the items I had bought, the 2'x4' Lexan sheet I had bought was the most expensive.

It was at this point I decided to hold off until I could get some professional assistance. Besides, I needed to use Dad's drill press, and I couldn't figure out how to reconfigure that ShopSmith all-in-one thing he uses (it was set up as a table saw at the time).

I haven't even gotten to the interesting part, which involves soldering wires to a disassembled Playstation controller and to pieces of sheet metal which would act as the contacts.

The other project I was planning on building? A MAME cabinet. Get a cheap but relatively powerful computer, install MAME, then build an arcade-style cabinet to house it. Bit of a lofty undertaking, and probably harder than the DDR pad. But it wouldn't involve working with sheet metal or Lexan. Since I recently upgraded to a 19" flatscreen LCD, I now have a CRT lying around. Probably not as big as most arcade screens (27" on most 2-player standard cabinets) but a hell of a lot cheaper ($200 when I bought it, as compared to a Wells-Gardner K7300, which sells for $700--refurbished!-- from happcontrols.com.). Next, buy USB gamepads, take out the circuit board, solder the contacts to some arcade buttons and joysticks, insert the gamepads into the computer inside, and voila! You got yourself an arcade machine.

I thought this would actually be a better project than the DDRHOMEPAD, for various reasons:
* This would apply to many games. There are thousands of ROMS that I know exist, and probably more than that. Probably an infinite number. (It could be modified so the joysticks and various buttons applied to a PS2 or XBox controller instead of USB. Thus, console gaming in an arcade shell.) By contrast, the DDRHOMEPAD would work for but one game: Stepmania. (A game that arguably emulates around 15+ games, but games that are functionally indistinguishable.)
* Again, no sheet metal or Lexan. Maybe a sheet to cover the monitor. And the margins of error in measurement for the arcade cabinet are arguably larger than that for the DDRHOMEPAD.
* Even after I'd finished building the DDRHOMEPAD, I'd still go to the arcade to play DDR, because there is such a thing as being a Score Whore: It gives me pride to know that no one has beaten my only Machine Record #1 on the In The Groove machine at FunWorld in Nashua (Funk Factory, medium difficulty, 97.59%) for at least a few months.

As for the MAME cabinet, there aren't any arcades nearby that have the wide range of games I'd be able to emulate. All the fighters, shooters (with a USB light gun), and, if I decide to implement a racing wheel, drivers, designed between the rise of the age of arcade video games (late 70s, early 80s) and the point where everyone started switching to 3d systems with proprietary hardware (mid-90s or so). Just one example: At the Brunswick Zone in Lowell, there appeared one day a NeoGeo machine with a Double Dragon fighting game. My brother and I each played a few rounds, then we left the arcade. We never saw it or a similar machine again. I downloaded the ROM a while back, and found out just how much of a horrific piece of crap that game really was. But I'd still play it again once in a while. All arcade players have a game like this one. It's not very popular, but for some reason, you played it a lot and still will, for all the memories it brought back. For me, it's that Double Dragon game. And also Zero Point.

Why did I decide to build the DDRHOMEPAD, then? I was thinking that a DDRHOMEPAD might be an easier thing to bring for a LAN party than a MAME cabinet. (I've already begun thinking about some kind of wheel assembly involving a wooden base that can be removed when you need it to move, and put in place when it needs to be stationery, a base that can be folded up and placed in a small cabinet in the side...but I'm getting ahead of myself.) But I think bringing an arcade machine to a LAN party might be more fun. Which brings me to the topic of LAN parties, which I'll cover in my next post, probably later this week.

GASEOUS GAMES, or A PLACE FOR MY DIGITAL STUFF

When I first started playing games, way back in 1990 on my Dad's Commodore-Amiga 2000, every game fit on only one or two 3.5" disks. These disks, you may recall, hold only 1.44MB of data, so these games were all simple games: Solitaire Royale, a clone of Atari's Missile Command, and perhaps my favorite at the time, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? And as he switched over to to a Windows 3.0 and then 3.1 system, not much changed. A lot of shareware games I had found came on no more than 3 disks, with full versions being not much bigger.

Commander Keen, ca. 1990: 3 disks, 2.37 MB

I don't remember when it was that the shift was made, but once CD-ROMs became more than just a luxury item for the home user and games switched over to the CD as the medium of choice, the games, like gases, expanded to fill all available space in the container, which started at 600MB then expanded to 660 and then 700MB.

Warcraft I: Orcs and Humans, ca. 1994: 1 CD, ~70 MB

Some game companies stayed within the limits of one CD, and offered the game both as a CD version and a floppy disk version.

Quake, bootlegged beta version, ca. 1996: 16 disks

Others went to more than one disc, although this wasn't necessary. We were no longer constrained by the miniscule space constraints of those pissant floppies anymore.

Total Annihilation, ca. 1997: 2 CDs, ~600 MB

Now that it's hard to find a new computer without a DVD-ROM drive, and that said drives sell for as low as $20, games are now expanding to fill entire DVDs, a whopping 4.7 GB for single-layer and 9.4 GB for dual-layer.

Command and Conquer: The First Decade, 2006: 1 Dual-Layer DVD, 7.7 GB

Some companies must be a bit hesitant about offering games on DVD, since they have increased the number of CDs to nearing-unwieldy numbers.

Half-Life 2: Game of the Year Edition: 5 CDs

And some have offered both.

Unreal Tournament 2004: 6 CDs or 1 DVD

Bearing all this in mind, here are a few predictions of the milestones we will eventually reach:

No game will ever require is 7 CDs. All games that need that much space (7 x 700 MB ~= 4.9 GB) will likely be DVD-only. We might already have games on two DVDs; I'm not sure if we have or not. With the development of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray technology, we might not even need to move beyond more than one disc for a game. By the time we've reached the 9.4GB limit of dual-layer DVDs for one game, we'll likely have hard drives of more than one terabyte, and Blu-ray technology could offer 50 GB on one disc.

Science fiction writer Neal Stephenson wrote in his essay In The Beginning There Was The Command Line about how his Linux system doesn't boot directly into a windowing environment, but to a text shell, to remind him how far Linux has come in development.

Likewise, my current computer, and the next one I plan to build, has a utility I don't often use, but have for the sake of reminder: A floppy disk drive. It used to be that I would load the latest, coolest shareware from these discs. How long will it be until these drives too fall into disuse, like their floppier, wider older brothers, the 5.25" diskettes? Most computer manufacturers don't offer the option any more.

Staples, so I have heard, now sells 64MB flash drives for around $8 at the checkout counters, to fill the niche floppies are slowly leaving empty. I now have a flash drive that is 2GB in size, large enough to contain several full games: the complete Doom series, Commander Keen, OpenTTD. I could play these on any windows PC, and probably any linux PC if I decide to download the linux versions of ZDoom and DosBox. Good for destroying productivity anywhere.

As long as we're talking about virtual space, here's a comparison: My computer before the one I currently own had one 60GB hard drive. The one I currently own has two 160GB drives. The one I plan to build next will have a 36GB 10kRPM drive for operating systems, and a 400GB (or maybe even 500GB) drive for everything else.

RELICS OF A RECENT PAST

Several years ago, I was looking for something unique to decorate my walls with. Up until that point, my walls had been plastered with the free posters that came with issues of Sports Illustrated For Kids. Having outgrown that magazine, I was now looking for something different. I had recently bought Command and Conquer: Worldwide Warfare, a computer game collection. The box was just collecting dust, since I didn't feel like throwing it out. Inspiration struck, and a few strips of clear packaging tape later, I had a wall decoration deserving of a gamer.

Since then, my collection has grown to include Diablo, Diablo II, Lord of Destruction, Starcraft: Brood War, Warcraft III, The Frozen Throne, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri and Alien Crossfire, Halo, Unreal Tournament 2004, Doom 3, World of Warcraft, Command and Conquer: The First Decade, and H!Zone, a crappy expansion pack for Hexen and Heretic that I picked off a clearance rack for 99 cents. I also have the box that my GeForce 6600GT graphics card came in, mounted above my window.

If you were to look at the boxes in chronological order of release, a pattern begins to emerge. Computer game boxes used to be big. Nine inches wide, ten tall, two deep. Somewhere along the line, game packaging experts realized that you could fit more games on the shelf if you reduced the size. After all, there's mostly air in those boxes anyway. Now they're seven and a half tall, five wide, one and a half deep. Just enough room for a jewel case and a miniature manual that seems way too small for all the information it's supposed to hold.

Recently, I made an impulse purchase that made me realize just where we are now. As a gamer, it seems odd that I haven't played, much less owned a copy of, one of the greatest games of recent times: Half-Life 2. So one day at Target, I picked up the Game of the Year edition (which came boxed with Half-Life:Source, HL2 Deathmatch and Counter-Strike:Source...all this for $40). And as I went to install it, I realized there was no box.

The packaging of computer games have gone the way of packaging for console video games. Now instead of a box with a jewel case, you get a black plastic Nexpak case. It's like a DVD case, but to accomodate for an extra long spindle to hold 5 or 6 CDs, it's about twice as deep. I could mount this on my wall, but then where would I keep the CDs?

We've gained space efficiency, but at the cost of the coolness factor. Less filling, but lost taste. We've reached the end of a seemingly insignificant era.

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

WHERE WE CAME FROM AND WHERE WE'RE GOING

I've been meaning to write something about Intelligent Design for some time. I had been against it all along, but it wasn't until I saw an episode of Penn & Teller: Bullshit! on YouTube that showed me exactly what was wrong about it. Maybe I shouldn't put a lot of stock in what a ponytailed atheist magician and his mute partner have to say (or make gestures about, in Teller's case) regarding an issue almost entirely based on religion. Oh well. I guess this has something to do with my ability to seek the truth of life almost entirely from jaded Jewish comedians, such as Al Franken, David Cross, and the bespectacled rageaholic Lewis Black. It just seems to make a lot of sense.

Anyway, there are many reasons I oppose Intelligent Design, which for purposes of brevity, I will br referring to as I-D. First of all, the episode of Bullshit stated that in Cobb County, Georgia, all science textbooks now carry a message in the inside cover, warning that the book contains information about evolution, that evolution is only a theory, and (one could infer) that it should not taken seriously. Well, it is just a theory. The difference lies almost entirely in semantics. When average people use the word "theory" they're actually talking about something a scientist would call a hypothesis. It's a guess. When scientists talk about theories, they're referring to something that has stood up in the face of several attempts to find fault with it and come out intact.

Fundamentalist Christians want to teach I-D in Science class. This can't possibly work. What kind of laboratory experiments can we do about this? There aren't any, because
I-D is not science. It doesn't rely on the scientific method. Just as a reminder, the scientific method goes like this: You observe something, and ask "Why does that happen the way it does?" You then make a guess as to why, and then find some way to test your guess. If it turns out your guess was wrong, you make a new guess and repeat from there. Or maybe, you might even consider asking a new question.

1. Observation: We exist.
2. Question: Where did we come from?
3. Guess: We evolved from apes.
4. Test: Dig for bones.
5. Result: We found fragments of skeletons that seem to be partway between apes and humans. Maybe we did evolve.

Okay, that's a bit oversimplified. But it shows that the connection has been made.

Now try following the intelligent design line of reasoning.
1. Observation: We exist.
2. Question: Where did we come from?
3. Guess: God created the heavens and the earth and all the living things on it.
4. Test: ...um...

Now at this point the argument breaks down, because there is no possible way to test this. Christian fundamentalists believe there need be no testing, because the whole concept should be accepted on something that has absolutely no place in science--FAITH. (This is what I consider to be the true f-word, because I always start feeling more negative about a person whenever they direct it at me.) It has no place in science because faith by definition is belief in something without proof. And when you throw out the requirement of proof, all other rules break down.

Here's one metaphor I thought up: It's as if you're cooking a soup with a delicate flavor, and some asshole friend of yours thinks the soup would taste better if you added chocolate syrup. Not because he thinks it would improve the soup, but because he likes chocolate syrup. The fundamentalists don't really care about science. They're trying to throw in something that doesn't work because they'd like it to be that way. They want to turn Science class into another place to pick up new converts.

Some day I'm going to be an old man, and if my tax dollars are going to teaching kids that God created everything, I'm going to believe that my tax dollars are better spent paying for my insulin and heart prescription (after all the soda I drink and fast food I eat turns me into a diabetic with heart disease) rather than on our schools. I don't want to take money away from public schools, because they gave me an education that I truly value and plan to use well. I owe it to them.

But this is why I truly hate I-D. I believe that where you come from influences where you're going. It doesn't completely control it, but it plays a major part. Let me give you an example. When I started applying to colleges in January of 2004, These were my 6 choices:

University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA
Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, Needham, MA

Why each of these? Each had a great computer science program. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do yet, but I knew computers were involved. Three were in Massachusetts, because I wanted to be close enough to home to occasionally visit, but far enough that I'd have to live on campus. Masachusetts and New York were both very liberal states, and since I had been raised in a liberal state, I wanted to remain in a liberal place. (Kinda like how a lot of Deep Southerners rarely leave the South.) Michigan was an option only because my grandparents on my father's side lived there, and I could stay with them. All of these decisions based on "Where you've been influences where you will go."

What does this have to do with I-D and Evolution? Simple. If evolution is correct that Mankind came from something lesser, it means that in the future we will continue to evolve new features. We can't really say how the homo sapiens will improve, but one of my guesses is that we'll develop psychic powers. Or maybe if humans continue to move into space, we'll evolve in such a way that we can withstand the vacuum of space without suits. Humans are a step above apes. Where you've been influences where you're going. Somehow, few seem to have noticed the possibility that this step is not the last.

If I-D is right, then that means we are as good as we will ever get. God created us, this is how we are, and this is how we will be for-fucking-ever. What would happen if the Rapture occurs, and there are those who don't get in? It's the end of hope. We who are left on Earth missed the last lifeboat off a sinking ship, and sooner or later, we're going to be sucked under, and all because we refused to stop using our sense of reason and accept on blind faith the existence of God. The birth rate will slowly decline to zero, for what point is there to bearing a child destined for Hell anyway? And then we will all die, and maybe God will decide to create something else.

Even if we eliminate the possibility of the Christian prophesy of the apocalypse causing the end of everything, that means that ultimately humanity can't improve its condition. We will eventually discover everything that remains to be discovered in the universe, explain everything that can be perceived with our limited senses, and after processing it all, come up with no answer to the meaning of life, what then?

Maybe the Meaning of Life is something we're not evolved enough to understand as it is.

BROKEN DOWN

First a quick parody of a Sgt. Pepper lyric:

I'm fixing a hole
Where the light's bashed in
because my mind was wandering
on the long rooooooaaaaad....

So I'm without a car for a while. I blame the people of New Hampshire. If you people didn't have such a fondness for vanity license plates, I wouldn't have been staring at them trying to count how many I could see, and I would have noticed the car in front of me was stopped and waiting to turn. SMASH.

Judging by the fact that I'm still here making up lyrics that essentially laugh at the situation, you can tell that I was exceedingly lucky. No one was hurt, and the car still runs. And last weekend, I went to pick up a replacement headlight and parking light from a used auto parts store in Lowell. Total cost of repairs thus far: $60. I can probably defray any additional costs if I can get the hood flattened and the front crossbar straightened out. Major thanks to my dad, who's been described as "the king of kludge." Your handyman skills know no bounds.

Somehow I just can't focus on the fact that I now can't work anywhere I can't bike to, unless I get the goddamn car fixed. So I've been spending my days loafing about the house, reacquainting myself with an old obsession, Microprose's Transport Tycoon Deluxe, perhaps the only game truly worthy of bearing the Tycoon name. And in the evenings when the sun dips below the houses across the street, then, and only then, do I get out the socket wrench.

Maybe my priorities aren't quite straight. The real reason I want to get the car fixed isn't necessarily so I can get back to work (although that certainly plays a part). I want to get back to FunWorld to do some more DDR. The $20 MadCatz PS2 pad I bought as an impulse buy is truly the embodiment of the phrase "you get what you pay for." You can't get home DDR pads that are even close to the arcade quality unless you build them yourself (I'm considering it) or pay $200 for high-quality ones like the metal pads offered by Red Octane and CobaltFlux. So I want to get back to the arcade, and I want to go spend some money at Borders, and waste an afternoon lounging around the mall and eating Ms Fields cookies and Auntie Anne pretzels.

When I first started driving, I hated it. I wouldn't drive anywhere I could walk to, and most of the time I still walk to a lot of places around town. I guess I've taken having a car for granted, since I never really missed it till it was gone. At least, I can get this back.

S.Y.I.H. KENNETH LAY, 1942-2006

It now appears that Kenneth Lay will not face any jail time at all. He died today of heart disease. This is just further proof, it seems, that the universe is not fair.

You will note the letters I have written rather than the traditional R.I.P. in front of the memorial. What it stands for should be fairly obvious. And fitting.

In recognition of this event, I present to you a poem, in the style of The Nation writer Calvin Trillin.

AN EXPLANATION AS TO WHY KENNETH LAY DIED BEFORE HIS SENTENCE WAS CARRIED OUT

A fingernail as black as night
on skin of crimson hue.
The prince of darkness sat and watched,
debating what to do.

"True, earthly hell Ken Lay will face,
as fits that son-of-a-bitch,"
Intoned the pondering devil, finger
hovering o'er a switch.

Twas known that Lay would go to jail,
or so the law defined,
But Satan was a-watching and
had other plans in mind.

"But should I take him from the earth,
to meet his mortal fate?"
A smirk criscrossed his scarlet lips,
"Ah hell. I just can't wait!

TALKING ABOUT WORK AND WAGES OVER THE WEEKEND

Before I Begin, let me say Happy Canada Day.

In a comment on a previous post, I mentioned that I would buy my brother and fellow blogger JnvReno lunch.

So yesterday we went out to Brick House Pizza.

And we had a wonderful time. (In case there's any ambiguity, I'm the one with the gray hat.)

And now the topic at hand.

Rather than spend a few days driving between numerous stores and restaurants asking for job applications, filling them out, and then returning them, I took the same path I took last summer, and went straight to a job placement agency, Diamond Staffing, and was able to get a job for my brother and I before the day was over.

We've been working there for about three weeks now. The place is a factory in Milford, New Hampshire, run by Saint-Gobain, a French-owned corporation with factories in many nations across the world. This particular factory is part of their ceramics division, and produces igniters for use in appliances made by such companies as Whirlpool, Amana, and Maytag.

My job is fairly simple. After the ceramic igniter has been cemented in place inside a larger ceramic block and sent through the oven to dry, I take the blocks off of racks, put on a metal shield over the delicate igniter part, and pass them on, a bin at a time, to the next part of the assembly line.

I'm not going to gloss over it; the job is mind-numbing. Between that and my inability to force myself to go to sleep at a reasonable hour, I'm having a hard time keeping my eyes open until lunch at 11:30. I can't really have an interesting conversation with anyone, since all the people I work with are southeast Asian immigrants, most likely living in Lowell, which has a large Cambodian and Vietnamese population. Most of them only know enough English for the bosses to be able to relay orders. Almost all the signs are written in both English and Vietnamese/Cambodian (again, not sure which).

At least at lunch, I can sit with my brother and we can talk. Since we both needed a job this summer, but we only have one car between us, we decided we'd work at the same place. We're going to try to work there all summer.

I think it's important for everyone in the country to work a blue collar job like this one. It makes you ask yourself a question: "Do I want to do this for the rest of my life?" It's motivation to get a good education, so you won't have to work blue collar. But also, it reminds you that there are people who have to do things like this. I think this is important because it could have an effect on white-collar crime: if a businessman understood what his workers have to worry about, he might not be as inclined to outsource people or cut wages, and we might prevent another Enron.
I think our president's failure to create ONE new job stems from his inability to understand that not everyone has had an education that includes prestigious names like Phillips Andover, Yale, and Harvard Business School. He just doesn't get the fact that they don't work at these places making minimum wage because they chose to.

And there's another thing: The minimum wage bill, proposed by Senator Ted Kennedy, failed 52 to 46. It would have raised the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour in three increments. We haven't gotten an increase to the federal minimum wage since 1998, and with gas prices rising to unimaginable levels, I think we need it. I don't specifically, since Massachusetts' state minimum is $6.75, with increases of $1.00 scheduled for september 2006 and September 2007. And the job at Saint-Gobain pays $9.25/hour anyway.

But I'm sure there's a family who's barely making rent right now, for whom an extra $84 dollars a week would be a godsend. Were those who voted against the bill thinking of them? I think they were thinking more of the businessmen whose votes they needed, for whom an increase in wages would constitute a decrease in the bottom line. One reason mentioned in an article
was that businesses would be more reluctant to hire people because of the prospect of increased cost of labor. I'm going to come out and say this now: Anyone who would not hire someone they need because the rest of their workforce is overloaded...is an asshole. I could come up with a more elegant way of putting it, but it's late and I want to get this post finished. If the company's bottom line is the motivation for denying someone a job, you're an asshole and you're going to lose more workers in the future.

My final thought on this issue: Democrats running for congress have a campaign issue now. "Such Andsuch voted against the minimum wage. Do you want him representing you in the Senate?"

TRUTH VERSUS REALITY: PART III...and also LISTENING TO MUSIC: PART II

Another criticism of TruthForYouth and its youth-proselytizing comics. But this comic brings up another topic I haven't covered for a while. So it's a double-title day today; let's not waste any more time!

COMIC TITLE: "Wasted Words"
ISSUE: Music
SUMMARY OF THE COMIC:
Jason is regretting his decision to go to a concert performed by Madonna Dahmer and the Death Squad. The comic flashes back to earlier, when he had explained his plans to take his younger brother Benny to the concert, to his bible-study group. They objected and Jason ignored them. Flash forward to the concert, where he realizes that Madonna Dahmer's music is antagonistic to godliness because of the objectionable lyrics in his songs. He struggles with the conflict between admitting to Benny he was wrong to come to the concert and leaving, and staying amidst the ungodly music, until he realizes Benny is gone. He leaves to find Benny and eventually finds him back with the bible-study group. They enjoy a laugh, then pray. Jason's faith is restored.

ANALYSIS:
First thing: With regards to the name "Madonna Dahmer and the Death Squad," Can you say, veiled Marilyn Manson reference? The whole comic seems to be a direct response to the Columbine High School shooting, based on the semi-conventional yet not-entirely-true knowledge that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were driven to violence by Marilyn Manson music.

I hold no sympathy for Jason, because he didn't do his research. He went to the concert without having heard any of Madonna Dahmer's music. If I were going to any concert where I didn't know anything about the performers, first thing I would do would be to get on AllMusic.com or Wikipedia to look for some information. I would ask friends for some MP3s. I would search i2Hub, or iMesh, or iTunes. But he did none of these, and has the audacity to be completely surprised when he finds out exactly what kind of music he's witnessing.

If the Christian right thinks this is going to influence people's musical tastes, they have to be out of their minds. "You can change a man, but you can't change what he likes." Those who listen to secular music aren't going to listen to people who say their music is sinful. Those who don't listen to secular music don't need convincing. No one's opinion changes. The religious right wastes energy.

But what music do you listen to, Glenn? I can hear some of you asking. I listen primarily to instrumental Trance. It is completely neutral. There are no lyrics. Which is a boon to me, since I like writing music but I have neither enough poetic sense to put together some good lines, nor a good enough microphone to hide my mediocre singing voice.

It's a bit of an inconvenience for the moment, since I've discovered that other bloggers, including my brother, are playing a game where you set a music player on random, post the first line of the first 30 songs it picks, then wait and see who guesses them. Imagine a post filled with 30 blanks. This is the only conceivable downside I can think of.

But Trance is more than an a creative outlet for me. Trance is musical catharsis.

Some people read the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and I listen to the mixes of Tiesto, Oakenfold, Sasha, and Armin Van Buuren.

Some people write sermons; I, under the names DJ Bad Axe, Red Supergiant, and ANWR, write synth symphonies in my room. If I dare say so myself, I'm pretty damn good at it too.

Some shout out loud at church their love for Jesus, some light candles. I crack a pair of glowsticks and dance, or I head to the arcade and play DDR.

Some people faint at a powerful revival, and there are songs that give me chills. If you've ever heard "The Wilderness" by Jurgen Vries, you know what I mean.

Somewhere along the line it ceases to be music and becomes a force of indescribable joy and solace. I'm sure many religious people feel the same about their beliefs. Trance is perhaps the closest thing I have to a religion. There are no gods, but there are saints, and there are people who can harness and understand its power. How else can I explain the feeling of renewal I feel when my Discman shuts off after the final crash cymbal fades?

I realize I've gone WAAAY off message here. To summarize: you can't change what people like just by calling it ungodly or sinful, which is why the comic will never work.

TRUTH VERSUS REALITY, PART II

Remember my blog post a while back wherein I showed how much bullshit the Tim Todd Ministries could pack into a 6-page comic extolling evangelical Christian virtues? Well, I was just scratching the surface. Let's analyze another comic or two, shall we?

And be sure to read the original first, if you haven't.
Follow the yellow-brick hyperlink: http://mrbadaxe.blogspot.com/2006/03/truth-versus-reality-theres-something.html

COMIC TITLE: "Bibles not Bullets"
ISSUE: School Violence/School Prayer
SUMMARY OF THE COMIC:
Tommy is facing down a student with a gun, trying to calm him down, while the voices in the student's head are telling him to shoot. The student is subdued by a SWAT team, and Tommy is safe. Mr. Witski, a teacher, calls Tommy's actions foolish and dangerous, but the principal praises his boldness. The next day, Tommy is telling other students about his new school bible-study group when Mr. Witski interrupts him and gives his disapproval. Tommy makes the argument that "now instead of bibles, we have bullets!" Mr. Witski continues to hound Tommy, eventually taking his complaint to the principal. Unbeknownst to Mr. Witski, the principal has already approved their action, and the bible-study group continues as planned. At the first meeting, a student asks, what if Mr. Witski sues us? Tommy informs them that there's a number they can call for a lawyer who will take their case free of charge, but then adds that their enemy isn't Mr. Witski. "You took your best shot, Satan! Now the youth of America are fighting back! With god's help, we are legally smuggling bibles into public schools to stop the violence!"

ANALYSIS:
On the first page of this comic, we see the student with the gun. What really stood out was that the student in question is using what appears to be a hunting rifle. Now, don't get me wrong: I do not condone school shooting. I do not support school shooting. I have never handled a loaded gun (once I got the opportunity to hold an unloaded M-16). But I know this much: IF you plan on shooting people in a school...you should bring something that can be CONCEALED better.

A hunting rifle is not only nearly impossible to hide (school uniforms video scene in Bowling for Columbine notwithstanding), it's not easy to shoot multiple students with, especially if you have to reload after every shot. I personally would have used Derringers. They may only be able to carry two bullets, but I bet you that I could hide three of them in each shoe, one in each of the rear pants pockets, three or four in the front pockets, a few in the knee pockets if I was wearing cargo pants, and one in each of the dozen or so pockets in my ski jacket (if I decided to shoot up the school in the winter). While you're firing two shots from one, you can be reaching for the next. Now you're talking armed and dangerous.

Now back to the message behind the comic. This can actually probably be split into two points: One, If there is prayer in schools, there will be no violence. Two, the inverse of the first point, If there is no prayer in the schools, there WILL be violence.

Point number one might be true. My high school, Chelmsford High School in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, had the Mustard Seeds Christian Club. I have no idea if it still exists now. Their picture wasn't in the yearbook in 2004, the year I graduated, but they could have just missed the cutoff for yearbook pictures. My brother, who is a senior there, says he's never heard of them, which makes me believe they're gone. While I was a student at CHS, there were no school shootings there. But I can't attribute that to a high membership in the Christian club; according to their yearbook pictures in previous years, there were maybe six members at any one time out of a student body of about 1500. Ultimately, all we've found is a correlation, not a case of cause and effect.

But that no prayer in the schools CAUSES violence? This is absurd. Violence in schools is caused my many things, some we'll never know, but lack of prayer isn't one of them. No student ever shot another because we just wouldn't say the Our Father every morning. As far as I can tell, most school violence revolves around social acceptance or lack thereof.

And I thought that when people advocated "prayer in schools," I always thought they were talking about mandatory prayer as the school day started, say, just after the Pledge of Allegiance. (That became a schoolwide event after 9/11 at the insistence of our principal.) I don't advocate that because it's not fair to the Jewish and Atheist students, of which there were many. But if the right to form a club like this is all they want, fine, they can have it. I wouldn't have gone, but I'm not stopping you from meeting.

But it was bad enough having to think of something to fill the space where "under god" would have been in the Pledge of Allegiance, so having to think of some way to occupy my time while the student body recites a Hail Mary would have been even more annoying. And if someone saw me sitting there silently, I'd suddenly have several new friends sitting with me at lunch. Friends that tell me, "You know, Jesus died for your sins..." and I'd be forced to pull out this great line paraphrased from Jules Feiffer: "Well, it would make his death meaningless if I didn't commit them." And they'd begin bombarding me with bible quotes. I wouldn't be listening. I'd actually be thinking of shooting up the school, so that these Jesus fanboys would leave me alone so I could eat my government-issued reheated chicken parmesan sandwich in peace. (Those sandwiches were real good. Not great, but about the best a public school cafeteria could get.)

And that's it for that comic. More coming!

SEMESTER #4 AT UMASS

It's just today that I realized that every single class I'm taking this semester is useless.

Linguistics 101? I think the reason I thought I might like this class is my moderate interest in constructed languages, like Esperanto and Klingon. I made an effort to learn Esperanto from a book, but absorbed very little of the vocabulary. Mostly just grammatical rules.

So I thought, might be an interesting subject to learn about. And it is. But I can't think of a single place I'd use it.

Math 235, Linear Algebra. Again, I thought, "well, it deals with number matrixes, and those are kind of cool..." in that pseudo-math-nerd kind of way. I think some of these things are cool IF I can understand them. Most of these, I get right away. And when I can't figure it out, I start to ask if it could be used later in life. So far, the teacher (not a professor, mind you, unless Ms. Mairead Greene has become a professor in the one short year in between this class and my first semester here when, as a grad student, she taught me Calculus II) has done nothing -- absolutely nothing! -- to make me believe it is. Usually, with other branches of mathematics, like Algebra, or Trigonometry, or even the first parts of Calculus, you can at least fool me into thinking there's a practical use by giving me Word Problems. No such thing here.

Physics 152. This course covers electricity, magnetism, and the ideal gas law. All things that make great science fair projects, but don't really come in handy in the kind of office-setting job I'd eventually end up in.

I'd love to see a first-person shooter computer game incorporate these kind of concepts into the game engine. Wouldn't you? Imagine, you're using your flamethrower to heat up a tank of gas to increase the pressure inside so that the tank explodes and the gas suffocates everyone except you, who has a gas mask. BLAM! too slow. Your opponent, who only kept in mind the basics of mechanics and kinematics, just grabbed the nearest rocket launcher and went for the head shot. Now we get to see "rag doll" physics in action. Using s = s0 + v0t + 1/2gt^2, we can tell exactly where your severed head will land. Fun!

Computer Science 287, Programming Language Paradigms -- now hold on, you said you were going for a CS degree. Surely you must care? Negatory, nicht, nein, non, and not as such. The course is taught in a language called Scheme, which is a derivative of another language called LISP. I had previous experience with Scheme when I took a summer course with the Johns Hopkins University's CTY program. I didn't understand then. But then again, I was in eighth grade and knew only a fraction of the knowledge of computer programming I do now. I understand most of that now. And we managed to cover all of that in the first week of class here.

But more importantly, how many programs do you know of that are written in Scheme? Probably none. And you wouldn't be alone in your left-in-the-dark-edness. (New word! Let's get it into Oxford!) I knew of none when I came in to the class, and I can only name ONE major program that uses it now, three weeks or so from the final exam. Audacity, the open-source audio editing tool, supposedly uses a dialect of Scheme to do...something. Yeah, well, the rest of the program is written in C++, as are THE VAST MAJORITY OF ALL OTHER PROGRAMS OUT THERE! And yet, how many courses have I taken in C++? Zero. Not a one. 0x00000000. CS132 I skipped because of AP credit, CS187 was taught in Java, and CS201 was taught in Assembly language for the ARM processor.

Well, if not C++, why not more Java? I like Java. I want to learn to do something fun in Java, like...write my own messaging program, like AIM. Just because I can. But no, apparently it's necessary to the major that we understand what snippets of code rife with "cons" and "lambda" do. Why bother learning about this shit when I calready know how to do this in another language? And not just any language, but an object-oriented, platform-independent one, named after a variety of coffee?

A semester wasted. Gotta get my mind off this. I need sleep.

JUST A QUICK THOUGHT

Today in Linguistics 101, I learned that there's a special part of the human brain that keeps track of "emotive" words, which includes, among other things, ethnic and racial slurs and profanities. Even after someone has undergone a left hemispherectomy, which would otherwise remove their ability to speak, they still have the ability to use these words.

Now the first thought I had upon learning that will really show you my sick sense of humor. I envisioned Terry Schiavo, lying in bed, moaning, interspersed with the occasional "FUCK!" As if she's not only braindead, but also suffering from Tourette's.

and that's the thought for the day.

TRUTH VERSUS REALITY

There's something seriously wrong with TruthForYouth.com.

For those unfamiliar, The Truth For Youth is a program run by Tim Todd Ministries which specializes in youth evangelism, specifically high-school students. Their modus operandi involves distribution of booklets, aptly named "The Truth for Youth, which, as the site endorses, is "the entire new testament along with powerful, full-color comics...packed with the absolute truth regarding moral issues young people are faced with every day." The centerpiece of its aforementioned website is a collection of comics, the artistic style of which could be considered looking kind of like Japanese anime/manga. They tell the story of some good Christian high-school students in what some might consider compromising situations, and how they overcome these situations with their unwavering faith in Jesus. I assume that these comics are just a sampling of what appears in the booklet.

While reading, the only thought I had about the content of these comics was "This is pure bullshit. No one's going to believe this." and I'd like to spend this post explaining exactly what I found fault with.

Before I begin, It would probably be a good idea to explain my religious background. My mother was raised Catholic and sent to a Catholic school, largely because her mother was Catholic. I can't remember my grandfather ever going to church with my mother, so I can only assume he wasn't. My father's parents, to the best of my knowledge, never went to church, and so neither did he. I have never attended religious service. I attempted to read the Bible for literary purposes, but lost interest after Exodus; parts of it seem to be based solely around genealogy, which just bored the hell out of me.

My current position on religion is as follows: I am atheist-agnostic. I respect your right to have your religion; it's part of the First Amendment. But don't bother trying to get me to join yours. I'm not interested. I've looked over all the Big Three of western civilization, and I can't say I could possibly believe in any of them. Blame it on my math teachers. They were the ones who taught me that in order for anything to count, you have to show how you reached your conclusion. Religion can't tell me why I should believe that god exists, other than the infantile argument "He just DOES!" Science, on the other hand, can tell me why I should believe gravity exists: It has been studied, documented, experimented with, etc. for centuries. Religion has tried for MILLENIA to prove that God exists and has still come up with nothing.

Keeping all that in mind, let's begin our analysis of these comics, beginning with the one on:

COMIC TITLE: "Parental Controls"
ISSUE: Pornography
SUMMARY OF THE COMIC:
Jesse is over at Marty's house. Marty is showing Jesse some porno pages he found on the internet. Jesse tells Marty he doesn't want to look. When Marty's dad, Hugh, enters the room, Jesse expects him to be mad, but to his surprise, he encourages Marty to browse as much porn as he wants. "It's good education for a young man!" Hugh explains, before letting the boys know he's leaving for a hot date. Marty sends him off with a "Just try to stay out of jail!" and then explains that his father hsan't had much luck with women, including being accused of date-rape. Trying to change the subject, Marty shifts Jesse's attention back to the porn sites. Jesse refuses to look, explaining the parallel between Eve and the fruit of Eden. He compares Lust to drug addiction: "Just a little bit to start, then--wham!--you're needing more and more." Then he recants the tale of David lusting after Bathsheba and how David's lust "messed up his family for years." Jesse and Marty start fighting verbally, which ends with Marty demanding that Jesse leave. Just then Hugh returns, with a black eye. "That lousy little bimbo said I was too rough! called me a sleazeball! The stupid cow!" Jesse returns home to his parents, informs them of what's transpired, and then they pray for their son's soul. Jesse feels relieved.

ANALYSIS:
First off, this comic made me question whether my assessment of the target of this comic was accurate. Jesse and Marty appear to be just slightly too young for high school. My guess is eighth grade. For the moment, I'll dispel my misgivings and move on.

The title is "Parental Controls." Just what every high-school student wants more of. High school is time when a person casts off parental control and learns to make his own decisions.

Unrelated note: Marty appears to be looking at porn, not watching porn. For those who don't understand the distinction, I'm talking about still images rather than video clips.

The ultimate message that the comic seems to convey is: Pornography will alter your perception of how women are to be treated which can have very negative consequences.

And I thought...doesn't the Bible condone--no, encourage!--beating women who refuses to do what their husbands say? Maybe it wasn't beating, maybe it was stoning. I'm too lazy to look this up; can someone tell me which passage this is?

Regarding Jesse's refusal to look, this seems completely unrealistic. Comedian Lewis Black, when he talked about the Janet Jackson controversy, had this to say:
"There is no child who, when a breast is exposed to them accidentally, has suffered a moral epileptic seizure: OH NO! THE TIT! AAAAAAGH! MOMMY MOMMY!" and detailed the youth of America's most likely response to seeing Janet's breast: "'Son of a bitch, I can't wait to see the other one.'"

I can probably guess your reaction or your son's likely reaction to seeing your first picture of a woman naked: Wide-eyed ogling. 99% of you probably said yes. Jesse's reaction seems completely out of touch with common consensus. Which means that Jesse has already seen a pair of tits, and had it drilled into him that it was wrong by the priest that feeds him his weekly sermon. If this were the case, his reaction seems a bit more logical. It saddens me to see the level of brainwashing he's gone through, but there's nothing I can do. I'm just a college student, after all.

COMIC TITLE: "Passes and Plays"
ISSUE: Safe Sex
SUMMARY OF THE COMIC:
The setting is a football game in progress. Marcy, one of the cheerleaders, asks the scorekeeper, nicknamed Stats, about her chances of getting lucky with the quarterback, Skip. Skip, having overheard the question, says yes, he wants to have sex with her that night. Reggie, the wide reciever, warns Marcy about what she's getting into, but Skip cuts him off, accusing him of ruining his fun. Reggie warns, "If unplanned pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases are your idea of fun, yes I am!" They verbally spar for a moment before the coach tells them they need to get back on the field. Marcy isn't worried, since "everybody uses condoms now! nobody gets diseases any more!" Stats starts rattling off statistics about the true efficiency of condoms, and the number of new cases per year of various STDs. Reggie then states that the real reason to avoid casual sex is because "God wants you to abstain from marriage until you're married and then to be totally committed to that marriage! That's the real 'safe sex' plan--the onlyone that works!" At this point, Marcy laments the fact that she's already been sleeping around, but Reggie comforts her by saying that accepting Jesus, she can be forgiven. Reggie gives her a Truth for Youth bible. They all pray.

ANALYSIS:
This comic is not nearly as outrageous as "Parental Controls," partially because 1) the characters involved at least appear to be high-school age this time and 2) they use real-world statistics rather than just biblical quotes to back up their arguments. Their argument is easier to grasp than in Parental Controls as well: Abstinence until marriage because God said so.

Side note: You never see anyone named "Skip" any more. I live on a campus of thousands of students and not ONE, to my knowledge, is named Skip. Which is why I think this comic was written by someone who grew up in the 1950s, which is where I think the name was last seen. Someone who wants to retrogress this country culturally to that time.

Where did Stats' stats come from? All he mentions sourcewise is that "The major government agencies report there is no clinical proof of condom effectiveness for any of these STDs!" referring specifically to gonorrhea, herpes, and HPV, also known as genital warts.

So I collected some statistics of my own. According to World Health Organization(http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs243/en/):

"Laboratory studies have found that viruses (including HIV) do not pass through intact latex condoms even when devices are stretched or stressed."

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said(http://www.cdc.gov/std/):
"Latex condoms, when used consistently and correctly, can reduce the risk of transmission of gonorrhea."
"Correct and consistent use of latex condoms can reduce the risk of genital herpes only when the infected area or site of potential exposure is protected."
"HPV infection can occur in both male and female genital areas that are covered or protected by a latex condom, as well as in areas that are not covered. While the effect of condoms in preventing HPV infection is unknown, condom use has been associated with a lower rate of cervical cancer, an HPV-associated disease."

And the National Institute of Health:
"Using barriers such as condoms during sexual activity may decrease transmission [of genital herpes], but transmission can occur even if condoms are used correctly."
"By using latex condoms correctly and consistently during vaginal or rectal sexual activity, you can reduce your risk of getting gonorrhea and its complications."
"Research studies have not confirmed that male latex condoms prevent transmission of HPV, but studies do suggest that using condoms may reduce your risk of developing diseases linked to HPV, such as genital warts and cervical cancer."

So there you have it: Stats said that government agencies said there's no proof that condoms are effective, but here we have statements from two US government agencies and one agency funded by the UN, saying that condoms can help to prevent these diseases. Stats is full of shit.

Now, as for pregnancy, Stats mentioned that the pregnancy rate after a year of intercourse was 13% among people who used condoms. WHO had this to say:

"Estimated pregnancy rates during perfect use of condoms, that is for those who report using the method exactly as it should be used (correctly) and at every act of intercourse (consistently), is 3 percent at 12 months."

Three percent? That's a hell of a lot better than TFY's figure! Oh wait, WHO also said:

"The most frequently cited condom effectiveness rate is for typical use, which includes perfect and imperfect use (i.e. not used at every act of intercourse, or used incorrectly). The pregnancy rate during typical use can be much higher (10-14%) than for perfect use, but this is due primarily to inconsistent and incorrect use, not to condom failure."

Ah. So their estimate is accurate assuming the man doesn't always use a condom, or uses it wrong. And why would they not use a condom every time or not use it correctly? Because the church doesn't support access to birth control. They don't support access to comprehensive sex education, so people don't know how to use a condom correctly.

So, as a public service, I'm gonna tell all of you male TFY readers the right way. Step one: wait until you're good and hard. Step two: open the condom package and unroll over your dick. Don't slip it on as if it were a sock. Step three: when you're done getting your rocks off, pull out immediately to avoid the possibility of it slipping off inside your lady. Get rid of it. Simple, right? Why does this need to be explained to people? Hell, I'm a VIRGIN and I know this shit. And if you can follow this every time you get laid, you also have a lesser chance of burning while you piss, and your chance of avoiding pregnancy rises to 97%. Which keeps you from needing to get an abortion, which leads me to our next comic...

COMIC TITLE: "Castaways"
ISSUE: Abortion
SUMMARY OF THE COMIC:
"It was the perfect romantic evening! Jackson Dawes III himself had escorted me to our junior prom cruise...we had shared an intimate encounter below deck -- he had told me he loved me -- and then --" The ship encounters a storm, capsizes, and Jack and Rosa believe themselves and Rosa's father to be the only survivors, having washed up on a desert island. As they tend to Rosa's father, who has either become fatally injured or terminally ill, Rosa reveals that she is pregnant. Jack is stunned, and, on the grounds that he has "hopes, dreams, political ambitions" and "need[s] a wife with better family connections," refuses to allow Rosa to continue having the child. He suggests that Rosa's father, a doctor who ran an abortion clinic, perform the abortion. When Rosa refuses, Jack storms off. Rosa's father regains consciousness, and wondering why he "didn't see or value the importance of life...until now...when I'm losing my own," begins to repent for all the abortions he's performed. He considers himself a murderer, doomed for hell, but Rosa assures him that Jesus can still save him. Rosa's father begs for forgiveness, then dies shortly after. Later, Jack returns, having signaled a passing ship. Jack offers to pay for Rosa's abortion, but Rosa insists that she's going to have the child. "The baby's life isn't mine to take, but it is my responsibility to raise him up and nurture him, and with the Lord's help, I'll do just that!"

ANALYSIS:
This one is reeeeallly stretching it. JUNIOR PROM CRUISE? You know what my junior prom involved? It was basically another school dance, where we cleared out our L-shaped cafeteria, set up a DJ booth, and sold bottled water to anyone who came. The only real difference was that we had to dress in formalwear. This particular comic seems oriented towards students who go to a private school for the upper class, who could afford to hold a junior prom cruise. But if that were the case, chances are, they're not going to attract any new born-again Christians, because everyone's already decided where they stand religion-wise.

Jack further loses credibility as a believable character when he says "The Dawes family is about Ship Building and Real Estate and Oil! Your father made that money running that--that abortion mill downtown!" and claims that he has "political ambitions". At that age? Who the hell do Truth for Youth think they're trying to reach? Again, my guess would be schools on par with Phillips Andover, where both of our major 2004 presidential candidates went to high school. There, Jack might be considered a character the students can identify with. Elsewhere, this comic may reach ONE student at any given public school in America. I can't believe I'm trying to help these bible-thumpers, but I just can't believe how BAD this comic is.

An interesting lack of continuity between this one and "Passes and Plays": they completely ignore the fact that Jack and Rosa shouldn't have been having sex in the first place. Perhaps, if you've sinned once, why not just keep going?

And by the way, Rosa's father, when told that Rosa's pregnant, says, quote: "That's wonderful, sweetheart." I mean, I can understand if the man's not paying attention, after all, he IS dying. But who, in their right mind, would think it's wonderful that their daughter, a junior in high school, is pregnant? If your daughter told you that she was pregnant, you'd be either extremely pissed or extremely terrified.

So let's go over the situation again: Father's money comes from abortion practice, which may or may not pay well, we know nothing about Rosa's mother, Rosa is pregnant, has no high school diploma, which means she can't get a GOOD job, the kind that would pay enough to raise a child on her own, she likely would HAVE to raise the child on her own because her father is dying. If you let the child into this world, the child will grow up poor, and poverty leads to crime. I wouldn't want to raise a child in those circumstances. If it were me, I'd go for the abortion.

I think this comic was intended for the purpose of beginning, as early as possible, the litany that abortion is wrong. I'm not going to say it's wrong or right. Why? Because my opinion doesn't count. And neither does theirs. Here's how I see it: If you have never taken a pregnancy test, your opinion on whether women should have access to abortions doesn't count. This covers not only all men, but also women who have deliberately decided to remain celibate for life. If you don't have a womb, or if you do but you're not going to use yours, you don't get to say what others should do with theirs. Jack can demand, "You can not bear my child!" but what he has to say matters not. So ultimately it's only Rosa's decision. PERIOD.

There's a handful more comics on the site, but those will be discussed in my next post.