Steaming Turd

Here’s an interesting article.

I honestly don’t know enough about this particular situation to come up with a fully-informed opinion. I suspect there’s more to this story than the news reports are indicating - probably a lot of boring details that most news readers aren’t interested in.

However, I respect Lawrence Krauss enough that I can’t simply dismiss his actions. Not to mention that the University rebranding project (among other things) has indeed been a phenomenal waste of money. In fact, there are only two things off-hand I can come up with as positives during Hundert’s reign: his crisis management during the shooting at the PBL Building, and his bringing the VP debate to Case in 2004.

One other thing I’d note is that, when you spend money you have in savings, you should realize that you’re actually spending more than that - you’re spending the interest revenue you would have taken in had you kept the principal rather than spend it. That’s really the rub here - it took (according to the article) 30 years to build up the university’s $165M cash reserves, which has now been cut down to a third of its peak. That means that there’s at least $5M per year, for years to come, that the university won’t get because the capital was frittered away.

Finally, I dislike the Trustees as an organization. (The late) Al Lerner used his pull as a Trustee to sell the university’s undergraduate phone records to his MBNA Corporation, allowing them to directly market credit cards to students. PBL claims to be satisfied that they’ve cleaned up their act, but I have my doubts. They also signed on to the deficit spending plan that Hundert provided.

So I guess I’ve got a negative vibe about Hundert’s performance so far, but maybe there’s another point of view I’m not seeing here. Any thoughts on this?

No, it’s not Dance Dance Orangutan. It’s D&D Online.

Anyway, Marcus! (hey, that’s the way I put his name in my cell phone) and I have picked up DDO as our next time-wasting MMOG adventure. Age of Warcraft has lost its luster, and I’ve been retired from EverCrack for years. (I’ve also played Dark Age of Camelot, Star Wars Galaxies, Puzzle Pirates, Planetside, and A Tale in the Desert at one time or another, though only in the short term, and none of them recently. But back to the point…)

I wouldn’t say DDO is revolutionary. It uses the D&D license to good effect (though it isn’t incredibly faithful to the pencil-and-paper rules), the graphics are very nice, and the dungeon design is absolutely excellent. Still, there are so many MMOGs out there now that it’s hard to do something fantastically new with the genre.

The strength of the game is, as mentioned before, the dungeon design. Every adventure is instanced (meaning you get to go into the dungeon with just your group, with no interference from outsiders), and they are designed to take anywhere from 5 minutes to maybe an hour or two to complete. In other words, you don’t have to devote hours upon hours to the game - you can log on with your friends a couple or three evenings out of the week and explore a dungeon in about as much time as watching a movie takes.

The biggest weakness of the game, on the other hand, is that it’s practically impossible to solo. Grouping with others is required. This isn’t a problem, of course, if you know other people who play the game also

And that brings me to sort of the reason for this post: If any of my paltry few readers are interested in playing DDO, Marcus! and I are playing it, and we’d be happy to (a) show you the ropes and (b) group up with you. It actually is a lot of fun, and I think it does a good job of capturing the essence of the dungeon crawl from the original RPG (perhaps not so much the vast epic campaign, but that’s a stumbling block for a lot of MMOGs). Just let me know, and I’ll answer your questions and/or help you get set up.

Hey, I know it’s wishful thinking, but there’s no harm in trying, eh?

A few months ago, I made this post about racism in general and my own personal attitudes toward race. Well, I’m revisiting the topic because last night I watched the movie Crash, which explores issues of race in everyday life. If you haven’t seen this movie yet, I highly recommend it.

Note: there are spoilers in part of my post below.

With social commentary pieces, there are really two things you’re supposed to get. One is what you get while you’re watching the movie: entertainment. In this case, the movie was entertaining (not in the ha-ha way, mind you). The other is what you take with you when you finish watching.

As a white guy/cracker/honky, I think it was pretty easy to take with me what the filmmakers intended: that racism is bad, and that I should want not to be like the characters in the story. We’re not talking about overt, cross-burning, Klan rally racism here, by the way. This is the subtle stuff, the stuff that affects the judgment of people like you and me on a near-daily basis. In any case, taking this message with me was easy, because I really don’t want to be like those people.

I dislike some of the things about my own attitudes toward race. I grew up in West Virginia in a community where the furthest that diversity went was whether a person was Protestant or Catholic. I knew three black people during my entire time there, and all of them were good people, just like the rest of us. And really, I don’t think most of the kids in my school thought of them as being a particular race. I know I can’t speak for their perspectives on being in a practically all-white school generally, but I do know that a tiny minority of whites in the school made life hell for them. The FBI and the NAACP both conducted investigations after a few racists put a dead cat on the porch of one of the black families, and our entire school was tarnished because of the actions of these few people. The student council (myself included, though I didn’t say anything on-air) went on the local news to condemn their actions, and I can only hope that people realized how heartbroken we were that those racist idiots were able to chase off one of our friends.

So, in that sense, I know I’m not racist. But like I said earlier, there’s a subtlety to racism sometimes.

I do my best not to let race alter my attitudes toward the people I interact with each day. But watching Crash, sometimes the things that happened just hit close to home. I think the biggest one was a scene near the beginning where a white couple (Sandra Bullock and Brendan Fraser) were walking from a nice restaurant to their Lincoln Navigator. As they were walking, she moves a bit closer to his side and takes hold of his arm. Cut over to two black men (Ludacris and Larenz Tate) were walking down the same street, one of them complaining about the lousy service they got from a black waitress at another nearby restaurant, and he blamed it on racism:

Anthony: That waitress sized us up in two seconds. We’re black and black people don’t tip. So she wasn’t gonna waste her time. Now somebody like that? Nothing you can do to change their mind.
Peter: So, uh… how much did you leave?
Anthony: You expect me to pay for that kind of service?

At that moment, they see the white woman move closer to her husband, and the man who was complaining about the racist service notices it. He starts complaining to his friend that the woman’s fear of them was solely because of their race:

Anthony: Look around! You couldn’t find a whiter, safer or better lit part of this city. But this white woman sees two black guys, who look like UCLA students, strolling down the sidewalk and her reaction is blind fear. I mean, look at us! Are we dressed like gangbangers? Do we look threatening? No. Fact, if anybody should be scared, it’s us, the only two black faces surrounded by a sea of over-caffeinated white people, patrolled by the trigger-happy LAPD. So, why aren’t we scared?
Peter: Because we have guns?
Anthony: You could be right.

And then they carjack the white couple.

Later that night comes this line from the woman:

Jean: I just had a gun pointed in my face … and it was my fault because I knew it was gonna happen. But if a white person sees two black men walking towards her and she turns and walks away, she’s a racist, right? Well I got scared and I didn’t do anything and ten seconds later I had a gun in my face.

And that’s the trouble, for me anyway. I admit that, in certain circumstances, I look at young black males wearing urban fashion and tattoos with more suspicion than I would a white person in the same situation. I don’t mean like in class, or in a restaurant, or at the airport. But on the street, or in a bad neighborhood, sure, I’ll admit it. I hate myself for it, too. But then I see the campus crime reports or just the local news in general, and it reads over and over again like “black male, 20-25 years, robbed a student at gunpoint”, and that certainly doesn’t improve my confidence.

But the even more disturbing theme in the movie is the idea that people see racism even when there isn’t any malice. And when that’s true, what hope is there for normal people who actually do struggle with their unwanted prejudices?

Before I wrap this post up, though, here’s one more quote, probably the best in the movie from my perspective as a white guy:

Anthony: It’s just black people demeaning other black people, using that word over and over. You ever hear white people callin’ each other “honky” all the time? “Hey, honky, how’s work?” “Not bad, cracker, we’re diversifying!”

And I’m sure I could write another entire post on that topic, but in lieu of that, here’s a post on another weblog that talks about “the N-word” in another great piece of social commentary: “The Boondocks”, an animated series on Cartoon Network/Adult Swim.

No, no, this isn’t a post about creation/intelligent design/evolution. Actually, it’s about patents. By the end of my post, I should have convinced you through logical argument that the Religious Right should be staunchly opposed to patents of any kind.

Given the following statements:
- God exists and is omnipotent. (This will come readily to all Christians, Muslims, and Jews as fact, and for the purposes of this argument, we can hold it to be an axiom rather than an assumption.)
- Patents are issued to whoever invents something first. (This is generally true by law, at least in the US.)

Assume the following:
- Bob invented the dietary supplement. (Could be anyone inventing anything, and I know Bob probably isn’t the actual person who invented the dietary supplement. Doesn’t matter. But I was thinking about the phrase, “That’s why God invented the dietary supplement,” when this whole argument struck me.)

Now, since God is omnipotent, he can do anything (by definition of omnipotent). So, he could, if he wanted, invent the dietary supplement.

But if Bob invented the dietary supplement, then God cannot also invent it, which is a contradiction of the statement that God is omnipotent. This means our assumption - that Bob invented the dietary supplement - is false.

If God didn’t invent the dietary supplement, then Bob did, which we now know is false. Therefore, God did invent the dietary supplement.

Finally, as mentioned above, “Bob” and “dietary supplement” are actually unbound variables over the entire domains of “people” and “inventions”. This means that for all people and all inventions, God invented that invention. In other words, God invented everything.

Note that for things that haven’t been invented by a person yet, the state of whether that thing has been invented by God yet or not is indeterminate. But by this argument, as soon as someone invents something, God has actually already invented it at least an infinitesimal amount of time sooner.

There you go. So, if you believe in the omnipotence of God, write or call your Congressman and tell them that the patent system is blasphemy.

No, I’m not talking about the Google/China debacle. Actually, I did a search for average tv size, and immediately regretted not putting quotes around it.

The EFF has an interesting story about the RIAA’s opinion and efforts to convince the government that the time- and space-shifting affirmed by the Betamax decision is actually a criminal act. If they are successful in achieving this goal, it means you’re a criminal if you back up your legally purchased media, rip your legally purchased media to mp3 format for personal use, rip your legally purchased media onto your iPod, or record television or radio for later viewing.

This is what I mean when I say that the ??AA’s efforts aren’t about piracy prevention - it’s all about control. Hopefully it’ll become obvious to the public that their rights are being taken away by the media industry before it’s too late.

I don’t have a whole lot to add to this besides what’s already been said a billion times over in the media, except that I’m glad that this madness isn’t happening in America.

I recently got my DVD copy of the second D&D movie: Wrath of the Dragon God. For those who haven’t seen it, it’s an attempt to do right where the first movie went wrong. It takes heavily from the (third edition) rules of the game, meaning that fans of the game can recognize a lot of game elements in the movie. I’m not recommending that everyone go out and buy the DVD, but if you like D&D, you should definitely watch the movie at least once - especially if you saw the first movie and were horrified by how much it sucked.

But a review of the movie/disc is not what this post is about.

On the disc, one of the special features includes (among other things) full D&D stats for the five heroes of the story, plus the stats of another heroic character who didn’t actually go on the story’s central quest. The writers worked closely with Wizards of the Coast to make sure that the story went along well with the rules of the game, and for the most part they did a good job - but they tipped their hand when they listed these stats.

When the movie first aired on SciFi several months ago, I sent my D&D buddies (who are likely also to be the only people reading this post, hehe) an e-mail with my guesses as to the levels of the characters. My estimation was that the cleric was at least level 14, the wizard was at least level 9, and the wizard that stayed in town was at least level 13. I therefore guessed that the whole party was in the level 14 or 15 range.

Apparently, I was wrong.

The characters in the adventuring party were apparently all level 7, with the exception of the wizard at level 9, while the wizard in town was actually a 4th-level wizard with an additional level of cleric. This level estimation works out okay for some of the characters - the rogue, fighter, and barbarian don’t have abilities that are as easy to categorize into level ranges, since they don’t cast spells. But for the spellcasters, there were some definite problems.

Let’s start with the wizard. She was level 9 in the movie, which works out okay - the highest level spell she cast was Teleport, which, as a 5th-level spell, is obtainable at level 9. But at one point in the movie, she mentions that she only has two teleport spells prepared (one to get into the BBEG’s fortress and one for the trip home). Now, wizards can only prepare one 5th-level spell per day at level 9 unless their intelligence is high enough - she needs an intelligence of 20 to get a bonus 5th-level spell. Sadly, the character stats indicated that her intelligence was only 19 instead. Not a huge problem - she could still have done most of what she did at level 9 as long as they bumped her intelligence up to 20. Update: After closer inspection, I noticed that they gave her a 5th-level pearl of power. She must have used it to cast one of the Teleport spells.

Next is the cleric. He was (like most of the party) level 7 in the movie. Unfortunately, he was also shown turning and destroying what were most likely spectres (or possibly wraiths, if one is feeling generous). Clerics can only destroy undead with half as many hit dice as the cleric has levels, meaning that the 7th-level cleric can only turn things with up to three hit dice. Unfortunately for him, wraiths are 5 HD undead, and spectres are 7 HD.

And finally, we have the wizard that stayed in town. She had four levels of wizard and one level of cleric. There are two things wrong here. One, she summons a magmin, apparently using Summon Monster II, which is level-appropriate, but magmins aren’t on the list of summonable monsters. This can be overlooked since magmins are in fact 2 HD outsiders. But what’s really bad is that she uses the spell Vision, which, at 7th level, requires her to have 13 levels of wizard in order to cast it. The writers cleverly (or perhaps not so) dodged this by giving her a Necklace of Visions. All those powerful mages waddling about in the tower, and she’s the one who ends up with an uber-powerful necklace.

Oh, well. All things considered, the writers and consultants were really close on most aspects of the movie. As far as a good adventure-style plot with heroic characters goes, it treated the D&D genre right. When you’re working backwards like this (from a story back into the rules, rather than starting with the rules as a foundation for growing the characters), you’re bound to overlook some things.