Living Vicariously Through Myself

Review of SWTOR

2012-01-05T02:11:00.003-07:00

I have never pre-ordered a game before, but I pre-ordered SWTOR back in September after much research and contemplation, and managed to get into the beta testing in November. Have been playing the full version since the early release; it has proven to be a pretty good pass time over the holidays, but now that I'm back to the work world five days a week I'm logging much less time in-game and I wanted to get a review written for those of you who might be interested in the game.

Before I begin, a few caveats worth knowing that may influence my review:
A) I'm currently at level 30 (out of the current cap of 50), so I have yet to play end-game content.
B) The last MMO I played was EVE, which is pretty unique among MMOs, particularly in contrast to MMO standards like WoW.

Since this is an MMO, I'm structuring this review to cover the various aspects of MMO gameplay.

Storyline
One of the main things SWTOR was marketed on, and not coincidentally one of the things Bioware is best known for, is story-driven gameplay. True to form, the game drops you straight into a storyline, en media res, and you take it and run. I've only played four of the available eight character classes, and of these I've played one class to 10 and another class to 30, and in both cases the storytelling has been convincing and the plots compelling. Character interactions are fully voiced, and the quality of the voice acting is above average; not on par with Red Dead Redemption and the like, but better than most IMHO. During character conversations you have decision trees available where different responses to the conversation will give you different results to the conversation, and often correspond to various consequences in-game. One thing Bioware really got right is humor; the dialogue in many of these conversations in outright hilarious, as well as true to character. The humor and the full voice acting really go a long way to engaging the player in the storyline, and in this category I think SWTOR is far ahead of competing games. Also, I am deeply grateful to Bioware for making most quest objectives story based, instead of the traditional mind-numbing "run here, get/kill 15 of these things, run back". True, there are quests like these, but they are typically bonus quests and don't need to be completed to advance the storyline (and are usually completed while completing the main story quests anyway).

General Character Progression
You start off on a homeworld, where you will be until approximately level 10. By that time you will have acquired your first companion character (more on these later), and you will have acquired your basic library of skills relative to your class. Once you leave your homeworld you will find a trainer who can train you in an advanced class. The selection of an advanced class gives you access to additional skills that further define your character's role in gameplay. Continued character growth from this point takes place in the form of skill upgrades purchased from a trainer and in the form of points applied to an ability tree like other MMOs/RPGs.

PvE
Generally, questing PvE occurs in two types; solo PvE and Heroic (group) PvE. As far as solo gameplay is concerned, the experience is pretty standard fare, though two items I find noteworthy enough to mention. First, I found early-game soloing to be somewhat inconsistent between the different classes that I've tried.
To explain; you begin with your basic low-level character and an incomplete library of skills your character will eventually acquire as he levels up; yet on the flip side, your beginning character by design has to conform to certain unique standards that will define your character's class and differentiate that class from the others throughout the game, particularly late in the game. I imagine that this causes a bit of headache for game designers trying to create an enjoyable yet challenging playing experience for players early in the game, yet at the same time the character has very few options to resolve challenges due to the limited skills available at start. I found that this phenomenon had less of an impact on the force-user classes, and more of an impact on the ranged classes, and with respect to the ranged classes, the trooper/bounty hunter classes were less affected, since they at least have access to heavy armor, while the smuggler/agent classes are probably the most tiresome to play at the beginning of the game since their survivability depends substantially on skills that just aren't available in the early game.
Second, I've found the AI for the various mobs I encountered to be fairly elementary. This is to be expected early in the game, but by level 30 I had expected to encounter more complexity. SWTOR's marketing material promoted the idea that the developers want the players to feel like a hero, taking on multiple opponents rather than ganging up on a single opponent, and my suspicion is that in their efforts to accomplish this they have reduced the complexity of the opposing AIs. I consistently find myself avoiding as many mobs as possible to try to get to the end bosses with the more challenging AIs, just because I find them more interesting. Ironically, this more or less defeats the SWTOR marketing pitch, the boss fights are often one-on-one.
The same goes for the Heroic (group) PvE areas. These areas are populated with more difficult mobs that usually come in two categories; individual heroic mobs that have a whole lot of HP/Armor, or groups of heroic mobs that have slightly less HP/Armor. In either case, the AIs for these mobs still tends to be very basic, the only real difference is that the mobs have stats that are high enough that you need a group of players to beat them.
Having said all this, I haven't played any of the end-game raids, and from the videos I've seen online it appears Bioware put a substantial amount of thought into the AIs and strategy being these raids. I only wish that the same effort went into the solo PvE experience.

PvP
SWTOR PvP servers have all the traditional venues for PvP that occur in modern MMOs, and arena mini-games called Warzones similar to battlegrounds in WoW. As far as open-world PvP is concerned, your enjoyment of that is most likely going to correspond to how well you can play your character class, how well your class lends itself to PvP, and how well you enjoy griefing, so I don't see what good it does rating this type of gameplay in a review. That being the case I'll limit my comments to class design, Resolve, and Warzones gameplay.
One of the aspects of SWTOR design that I really appreciate is that because of the multiple advanced class specializations, each of the classes in SWTOR has the opportunity to specialize as virtually any role, as opposed to typical class selection limiting you to one specific role in other MMOs. Of course this doesn't hold true across all classes/roles, probably the most notable exception being the traditional Rogue role which is basically only available to the Smuggler/Agent class in SWTOR (and to a lesser extent the Consular/Inquisitor classes). But overall you have a much wider variety of combinations than you would otherwise find in competing MMOs, and I think this makes for a richer PvP experience.
Resolve is SWTOR's method of managing Crowd Control. Crowd Control (or CC) is MMO lingo for a range of skills that involve stunning a target so that it can't take action. Naturally, these skills take place in a variety of ways, typically called a stun, mezz, or snare, which I won't go into here. There are also skills that break the effects of CC (called breaks). What bears mentioning is that SWTOR has developed a unique mechanic for CC in PvP called Resolve. Essentially, once a character has been CCed with a stun or mezz, a small white bar next to the avatar picture begins to fill up. Once the character has been CCed for a long enough time, the white bar maxes out and that character is immune from further CC for certain amount of time. This allows characters to save their breaks for future use (where as otherwise you might use your CC break only to be CCed again and have no further way to counter it). While I understand what Bioware was trying to do with the Resolve mechanic, my experience has been (and from what I see on forums and hear from other players, I'm not the only one) that by the time the Resolve bar has maxed out I have either died or am so close to dying as to make it almost useless. Additionally, since snares neither contribute to the Resolve bar, and are also not affected by Resolve once the bar has maxed out, the usefulness of Resolve is even further reduced. On the other hand, my main toon is a Bounty Hunter-Mercenary class, which is a class primarily designed for DPS/Healing and has few CC abilities or CC breaks, and what CCs/breaks I have typically have long cooldowns, so my experience may be different than that of other classes.
As far as Warzones is concerned, I have mixed feelings. There are currently three maps that are available to all characters beginning at level 10, and an additional map available to level 50s which I haven't played. SWTOR has developed a mechanic that scales the skills and equipment stats of lower level characters so that they can play competitively with high level characters in Warzones, though the high level characters do still have an advantage as they have access to skills and gear that the lower levels have not gotten yet. Overall I think this is a good feature as it allows easier access to PvP for lower level characters. Each game of Warzones carries a substantial reward in the form of cash and XP. Also, you can queue your character for warzones matches from anywhere in the SWTOR world, and when the match is over you'll resume right where you left off, which is very considerate of Bioware to do.
As far as map design is concerned, I must admit I'm not terribly impressed, particularly after playing FPS games where map design is an integral part of the game design, you get the feeling that SWTOR Warzones maps are very average. Two things about Warzones that I just don't understand; first, you can only queue for Warzones with a party of up to four players, even though each team in a Warzones match has eight players or more. Why they don't want people queueing with a full party of eight I don't understand. Second, Warzones matches are based around securing an objective, be it carrying a ball across a goal line, or planting bombs on doors, etc, however, the awards at the end of the match heavily favor players who deal damage or score kills, with comparatively little awards for players who heal allies, and laughably few awards for players who actually perform the objectives that "win" the game. I don't understand why Bioware has structured the awards this way; why not create team deathmatch maps instead of objective-based maps? SMH.

Art/Presentation
While SWTOR has somewhat kept to the toonish art style established by WoW, the graphics are well done, and in particular I would note that the clothing/armor artwork is excellent IMHO. Combat animations are exceptional, particularly the lightsaber combat which really stands out and represents the Star Wars movies very well. The various worlds I have visited so far are all uniquely themed, and are extremely polished visually. Add to this the full voicing and I would argue that the artwork is probably the best designed aspect of SWTOR.

Missile Anus
A few items that don't really fit in anywhere else:
1) Bugs: Most of the bugs I encountered were animation glitches, although there was a Warzones queueing bug that persisted for a while after launch. I attribute many of these to my early access, and most of them seem to have been resolved with patches.
2) SWTOR took the reigns on the concept of companion characters; a game mechanic which has been present in RPG games for some time now but which hasn't, to my knowledge, been integrated into an MMO. You get several of these throughout your storyline, and they contribute to the story telling, as well as in combat and with your gathering/crafting. As a storytelling aid I think the companion characters contribute substantially and are well integrated into the various storylines. As far as combat is concerned, while on the one hand your companion characters provide complimentary combat skills to your characters primary combat role, the number and quality of the opponents you face is also increased to compensate for your companion, so in the end the net benefit of having the companion is mostly nil. As far as gathering/crafting is concerned, your companions are advantageous in that you can queue tasks for them to accomplish while you continue questing, however, this is limited somewhat since you can only queue one gathering task or five crafting tasks per companion at a time, so you do have to micromanage them somewhat. This is probably less of a consideration late in the game since the gathering/crafting tasks take much longer to do. Though it is definitely better than having to do it all yourself, the queue limits seem pretty arbitrary to me; why not allow us players to queue more? What do we gain from stopping what we're doing just to queue more tasks?
3) Two niggles I have with SWTOR that are probably personal opinion but I'll mention them anyway. First, the Auction House equivalent in SWTOR is called the Galactic Market, and as such systems go the Galactic Market is probably the weakest point in SWTOR IMHO. The search functions are painfully limited, especially since I'm coming from EVE where you have a huge amount of buying/selling data available to you if you want to see it. Heck, even a drag-and-drop search function would make the GM a lot easier to search through and shouldn't be hard to implement at all, but it doesn't exist. When you sell an item in the GM, you will immediately get an email in your in-game mailbox saying your sale was successful, and your money will be available in one hour. One hour? Why not now? Can't think of a valid reason, but one hour it is. Also the selection of available equipment in the GM is typically rather limited most times I look. Don't know whether this is a result of the player styles on my server, or whether this is a result of the game being fairly new and most players aren't doing a lot of crafting yet, or whether it's the result of the crafting system as discussed next. Could be a combination of all three? Whatever the case, that's been my experience.
My second complaint has to do with the crafting. Going back to my experience playing FFXI, and more recently playing EVE, I've come to appreciate crafting systems where any item (or virtually any item) available in the game could be crafted if you had the right ingredients and knew the recipe. One of my biggest disappointments with WoW was when I discovered how comparably limited the crafting system was, and it seems SWTOR has followed along the same vein. I currently craft items at or above my level, but find I have a hard time selling at the GM for any substantial profit, particularly when you consider that you have to pay to send your companions out on gathering missions. This is further complicated by the fact that I can get equal or better gear through commendation and pvp rewards rather than having to bother with gathering and crafting, and I can make good enough money, and have more fun, running through warzones pvp rather than micromanaging my companions to collect ingredients and craft items. That said, I'm not crafting at level 50 yet, maybe the crafting starts to pay off in the late-game, but as it is my experience has been that the crafting is of marginal benefit to the in-game experience.

Overall I think Bioware has improved substantially on the MMO standard, I think SWTOR is the WoW killer, and there are probably a lot of themes and mechanics developed in SWTOR that will become industry standards for future MMOs. The game experience is very enjoyable, despite the few drawbacks I've outlined above.

Final Rating: 8.5/10

Review of "Towers of Midnight" by Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson

2011-01-09T12:43:00.011-07:00

As I've no doubt discussed in previous blogs, I'm a long-time fan of Robert Jordan and the Wheel of Time series, so the release of Towers of Midnight (hereafter ToM) was pretty exciting for me. This is the second book primarily authored by Brandon Sanderson, who was selected to finish the Wheel of Time series after Robert Jordan passed away in 2007. Sanderson previously released the Gathering Storm in October 2009, which I rated pretty highly (9/10), noting that while there were obvious differences between writing styles and characterization, Sanderson did an excellent job forwarding the overall narrative and multiple plot-lines. So I was pretty excited and optimistic buying Towers of Midnight on its release date in November of 2010.
Before I go a lot farther I need to acknowledge that Sanderson is finishing a series that's not his, and is a somewhat notorious series in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy world for in-depth plots and vast array of viewpoints, so I do sympathize that he more than has his work cut out for him.
That said, The Wheel of Time series, and similar series like GRRM's Song of Ice and Fire, are equally notorious for missing deadlines and stretching across more books than originally anticipated, and for good reason. There are times when it is much, much better to go back, rewrite, and make sure you're producing the same quality of content that is consistent with the rest of the series. Fans may whine about it, but when all is said and done it is a vastly superior option than rushing a sub-par product to market. Towers of Midnight, in my opinion, ought to have been one of these cases.

It's hard for me to say much in the way of summary without giving away any spoilers. The various plot lines do advance, and it is very obvious that the Last Battle (and series finale) is impending. However, the advancement occurs at a pace alternating between awkward, boring, and compelling. I'd estimate that roughly the first third of the book does nothing to advance the plots at all, there's simply a lot of re-hashing, emotions, and dialogue, with no real action.
Much of this I felt was quite unnecessary, seeing as how the vast majority of readers have already read the other books in the series. Meaning; we already know Perrin is wary of the wolf-dream, he has been for basically the entire series. We know he doesn't see himself as a leader, he hasn't for basically the entire series. We know Lan wants to die in the Blight, but doesn't want anyone to die with him, he has wanted that for basically the whole series. We know Galad and the Whitecloaks don't like Perrin, they haven't for basically the whole series. Readdressing these issues won't convince us further. Etc, etc, etc, yawn, etc, etc, etc.
There is a bit of action at the beginning as Sanderson follows up on the plotline following Ituralde and his actions in the Borderlands, but then his plotline abruptly disappears for the rest of the book. You also get some scheming from Graendal which appears to foreshadow some suspense and intrigue, but then she abruptly disappears and doesn't reappear until nearly the end. I fairly quickly resorted to something I almost never do; skimming. I probably skimmed 40% of ToM, which says something about how much I'm invested in the series, because under ordinary circumstances if I find myself skimming I figure I ought to put this book down and go read a book I'm actually interested in.
Now, just to be clear, that is not to say that nothing at all happens in ToM. There are some major plot advancements, including things that have been brewing for several books and have some very satisfying resolutions. In fact, I have very little disagreement with the continuing plot lines themselves, just that the plot advancement is so painfully clunky.

Other critiques, observations include:
1) No POV for Rand anywhere in the book. We see him at various points from other character's POVs, but that's it. It’s strange, and feels rather disengaging, seeing as how he's the central character of the series.
2) Very limited POV material for Mat, Tuon, Lan, Aviendha, and other major characters from the series. As I recall Tuon gets about one chapter, Mat and Aviendha get a few, especially towards the end, and Lan gets little segments here and there. I found this particularly disappointing since Mat and Lan got little in the way of content in the last book either, so basically for the last 2 books now they've more or less been cameo characters. This too is rather disappointing, since they go all the way back to the first book and are now pretty under-utilized.
3) Sanderson tends to have a habit of over-explaining plot developments, and it got to be a bit more annoying in this book than in the last one. A couple examples:

A) Chapter 48 describes Aviendha going through visions in Rhuidean. These visions aren’t the typical ones that occur in Rhuidean, and it became apparent to me what was different about them rather quickly, but on page 722 Sanderson comes right out and clarifies for us what’s different about them.

B) Chapter 50 describes Elayne executing a political ploy with some Cairheinin nobles. The ploy seemed pretty intelligent to me, and fairly self-explanatory as to how and why it was being done. But then on page 743 Birgitte bursts in with, “All right…what in the name of the Dark One’s bloody left hand just happened?” Which introduces another couple pages of dialogue explaining what just happened, even though we obviously just read what happened.

Other examples exist throughout the book, but you get the picture. One of the things I very much liked about Jordan’s writing style was that he doggedly left things for the reader to interpret, including ploys and plot developments much more complex than the examples above. It’s a challenge for readers to figure things out on their own, and when they get it figured out it’s a treat that contributes to the overall enjoyment of the book. That’s something Sanderson blatantly takes away from us each time he over-explains something.
4) ToM has multiple instances of stylistic no-nos, like repeated terms and so forth that don’t necessarily take away from the storytelling but ought to have been caught during the editing process. Probably the most glaring example I noticed reads like a bad Tom Swifty; page 668:

“I should think”, Elayne said thoughtfully, “that those in the best position for the throne…”

I see that and just shake my head.

As far as final thoughts, what can I say? People like myself who have invested so much into this series will probably keep reading it no matter what happens. I mean, we’ve been interested for over 20 years, 13 books, and the loss of a beloved author, what more could happen? I’ll still read the final book and see how the cards finally play out. But man oh man, does this most recent book not take full advantage of the potential that Jordan has built into the series. Naturally, as a fan I’ll wish for whatever I like. I wish the series had five more good books to go, I wish the diction was exactly to my liking, I wish I could get the books for free and at least one month before the release date. But that isn’t the reality and I have to take what I’m given.

I guess I really just wish that Robert Jordan were still alive.

Final rating: 3/10

Review of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty

2010-12-31T15:41:00.004-07:00

It's been some time since I posted a review, and correspondingly it's been some time since I finished StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. The first installment of the big StarCraft sequel has been much anticipated - basically since the Brood War expansion for the original StarCraft was released in 1998. So that's been, what, 12 years? Dang long times for most things tech related, the gaming industry included. So suffice it to say, I purchased this most recent StarCraft with a lot of expectation.
Where should I begin? StarCraft II does not stray very far at all from the gameplay of the original StarCraft, or other RTS games like the WarCraft series, Age of Empires, etc. It's an intense blend of clicking, hot-keying, and developing strategy on the fly. There were some neat little developments in this game, for example, elevation factors into your range and visibility, and interactive map components, like periodic lava flows, add additional pressure to your strategy.
Four other components that add to the overall game experience include:
1) New units in additional to the old stand-bys from the original game.
2) A researchable tech tree in the campaign mode that allows for extensive customization of your units/buildings and hence overall strategy.
3) The ability to purchase mercenary units during campaign missions, with boosted combat specs typically well above you run-of-the-mill units.
4) Almost the entire campaign is played from the Terran point of view. There are Protoss missions you can uncover, and all three races are playable in multi-player, but the lions share of Wings of Liberty is played by the Terrans, and focuses on the Terran storyline. The expectation is that the other two races will have their own dedicated games forthcoming.
Aside from all this, the major change in the game experience offered by StarCraft II as compared to the original is the focus on storytelling. The original StarCraft featured a lot of, for lack of a better word, video conferencing; the plot advanced almost exclusively by conversations between floating heads between missions. With StarCraft II, instead of the video conferencing you get fully animated cut-scenes. These cut-scenes portray your characters in combat, arguing, or (primarily) video conferencing. Sometimes you even get cut-scenes of your characters arguing while video conferencing during combat. The plot itself picks up where Brood War leaves off and progresses about as expected, though it at least does not detract from gameplay.
This concludes the general summary section of this review. Generally the specific parts of StarCraft II gameplay I enjoyed most were the research trees, which IMHO were a very cool addition to the campaign mode. The voice work in the game was passable, and the animated cut-scenes, while presented in Blizzard's cartoony style, were well done artistically.
As far as critiques are concerned, well, let's see. First, I was disappointed that the customizations found in the campaign mode aren't accessible in the multi-player mode, and for no reason I can think of. They just aren't there.
Second, I found that the additional units added very little to the gameplay. Particularly when the campaign advanced to the latter stages and I had access to virtually the complete array of units, I found myself utilizing only the same few units in every mission. Likely, within the year some professional players in Korea will figure out exactly which units to produce en masse for optimal strategy, and it may not be the ones I used, but I can only review the gameplay I personally experienced.
Third, my observation was that the additional units presented in the game, including the Terran, Zerg, and Protoss units, actually detract from the game. It appears that for every unit in each race, the other races have a corresponding, or nearly corresponding, unit, allowing each race to implement virtually the same strategies. This was very much not the case with the original StarCraft iterations, where selection of race very much limited the array of strategies available. True, there are some variances in Wings of Liberty, but my finding was that far from being entirely distinct, the different races are essentially three flavors of the same juice. Some people may like the option to use whatever strategy they like with their favorite race, but my opinion is that from a strategic point of view this has watered the game down significantly.
I guess the thing I was most disappointed about was the fact that I could summarize the entire game in about 230 words. Frankly, after making fans wait for 12 years, I expected Blizzard to present us with A LOT more than was offered in the original game. Unfortunately this was just not the case. As I stated previously, gameplay is highly similar to, if not exactly like, the gameplay of the original StarCraft developed over 12 years ago, and available for less than $20. The mapping improvements were available with WarCraft III back in 2002, currently available for less than $30. So why should a consumer spend $60 when so little has been added to the overall gameplay? What has Blizzard been doing for the past 8 years, other than conceptualizing a handful of new units and animating cut-scenes of course?
With the first StarCraft, Blizzard didn't just hit the RTS nail directly on the head, it crushed that nail so hard that the series still has a dedicated following 12 years later. With StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, Blizzard essentially went and took another whack at the same nail. I don't blame them for doing it; Blizzard doesn't make any money if its fans play the same game for 12 years, and fans who have been dedicated to the series this long are likely to shell out big bucks for very little added content, just for the sake of experiencing a new campaign and watching the storyline progress. I guess I'm just disappointed that a design house like Blizzard with the potential and capital to actually go out and chart new territory has apparently become satisfied to recycle its best concepts in a manner sure to leave veteran gamers scratching their heads with the eerie feeling they've already played this game before.

Final ratings:

If you've never experienced the original StarCraft/WarCraft gameplay, or are a die-hard StarCraft/Blizzard/RTS fan: 9/10
Yes, it's a highly functional, well designed game, no denying.

If you've experienced the original StarCraft/WarCraft gameplay, and are a cynical gamer who feels like there's nothing new under the sun: 4/10
You're going to feel like you've spent $60 for roughly 15 campaign missions only slightly more improved than the campaign missions available 12 years ago.

Review of Samsung Epic (Sprint version of Galaxy S)

2010-09-23T09:08:00.004-06:00

My wife and I have had the Samsung Epic since it was released at the end of August. Prior to that we had been interested in the HTC EVO, and had actually been on the EVO waiting list for several weeks before the Epic release, and I've used the EVO fairly extensively in trips to local Sprint stores. I've been asked by several people what my opinion is of the two different phones, and I think I've used the EVO enough to feel confident in doing a side-by-side comparison of the two. Of course, I could do an industry-wide comparison and include the Droid phone line, and the iPhone 4, but I have only limited experience with the Droids and have never used an iPhone 4 at all, so I'm limiting my comparison to the two 4G phones from Sprint. First, if you want to familiarize yourself with the specs of both phones, wirefly has a pretty good comparison here.

Suffice it to say, both phones have the capability to be high-performing smart phones, and in fact differ from each other in only a few instances. I'll address those differences here, and also give a brief summary of my experience so far in owning the epic.

Interface: Both phones have a manufacturer-adapted version of the Android interface. My experience is that the interface for both phones is virtually identical. That said, I would recommend visiting your local Sprint store and playing with both phones for a solid 20 to 30 minutes. Try navigating through the interface to the various functions you think you will use most. See how easy they are to access, etc, and decide if you have a personal preference one way or the other. Though I believe the two interfaces are identical, you may prefer one over the other as your needs and expectations are different than mine.

Display: Both phones have a 480x800 display, though saying they are equivalent would be completely off base. First, the EVO has a 4.3 inch display, while the Epic has a 4 inch display. So while you do have a bit more visual real estate with the EVO, the large screen also implies that the individual pixels are larger - almost 10% larger in fact - given the screen a more "blocky" appearance. Having said that, without having the two phones side-by-side you will likely not notice the difference.
Where the Epic really stands out in this category is in the technology driving the display; while the EVO uses "standard" LCD technology, the Epic uses the new wave of display tech called AMOLED (active-matrix organic light-emitting diode). The technology is really too much to delve into with this blog, but in summary, the screen is made of electroluminescent organic compounds which emit their own "glow" when stimulated by electricity. This allows the AMOLED screen to be much brighter than an LCD screen, have a much higher contrast, with the added benefit of using less electricity, which is a significant factor with high-end smart phones that are chronically battery starved. Though slightly smaller, my conclusion is that the Epic screen is clearly superior to the EVO.

Camera: The EVO has an edge on the Epic in this category, offering a 8-megapixel, dual LED flash camera compared to the Epic's 5-megapixel, single LED flash camera. Like the screen resolution mentioned above, this is probably something you won't notice unless you take pictures side-by-side with the two phones and compare them. This is not to say the Epic phone is dysfunctional; I took pictures on my last property inspection with my Epic and they came out just fine. But if high-quality picture taking is going to be a primary function for your smart phone, you may prefer the EVO in this case.

HD Output: The EVO has a mini-HDMI output, while the Epic does not. This would imply that the EVO is superior in this category, but that's only if you can find a use for the HDMI output. I personally don't have a use for it. From a hardware point of view, you could theoretically plug your phone into a digital projector and run a presentation straight from your phone, no laptop needed. I say theoretically, however, because there is currently no Powerpoint support on Android. This is likely something will added in future iterations of Android or by third party developers, but at the same time, that's functionality you're paying for that you won't get to use until they do.
The only use I've actually heard for it came from a conversation with a Sprint store employee at the Cherry Creek Mall here in Denver. Cherry Creek is in one of the most upscale neighborhoods in the Denver area, and this employee said that rich people tend to prefer buying the EVO for their kids, because the kids can watch TV shows or movies on their phone in the car, for example, and when they get home they can plug the phone straight into their television and keep watching so they don't have to switch to a DVD or Tevo and look for the spot where they left off. No joke. Kids with EVOs.

Keyboard: The EVO only has a touch-screen keyboard, while the Epic has both the touch-screen and a full QWERTY slide-out keyboard. I suppose that if you are comfortable with a touch-screen keyboard this will be a non-issue, that is something you will have to decide for yourself. Personally I prefer having a phone with a keyboard, not only for texting but for web browsing and e-mails.

Battery Life: I have not had the opportunity to use an EVO to the point of battery exhaustion, but I researched the EVO significantly when I planned to buy it originally, and the general response of bloggers and community forum users is that the EVO tended to need a recharge around 3:30PM with moderate use. This was alleviated somewhat with system updates which optimized hardware and software performance, particularly when the EVO was upgraded to Android 2.2 (FROYO); you could say it is now roughly a 4:30 - 5:00 phone.
My experience with the Epic so far is that I typically do not have to charge it until I go to bed at night. Now, I don't leave Wifi or GPS on unless I'm using them, and I usually have my screen brightness turned down significantly, but with all that said, getting a full day's use out of a single charge is a substantial benefit in owning the Epic vs the EVO. Also note that this is from a phone that has only had two system updates, and is still running on Android 2.1 (Eclair). Samsung is scheduled to bring 2.2 to the Epic by the end of 2010, which should increase battery life even longer as it did with the EVO.

Android OS: As noted above, the EVO is now running Android 2.2, while the Epic is running Android 2.1, and is scheduled to update to 2.2 during 4Q 2010. However, Samsung added a lot of the functionality of 2.2 to their customized operating system which somewhat mitigates this drawback, such as voice dialing, tethering, and hotspot functionality. It does not have Flash 10.1 support or extended Exchange support, both of which are two things I would really like to have but can still live without for the next few months. If this is something you cannot live without, for example, if you need extended Exchange for your work use, you probably could not give up your blackberry just yet. If you're big into handheld gaming, the Epic does have support for 3D games, which is not scheduled to be integrated into Android proper until Android 2.6 (Gingerbread).

Price: The EVO is currently priced at $199.99 retail, while the Epic is priced at $249.99, so even if you prefer the Epic you will have to decide if you prefer it enough to cough up the extra $50. Another factor you should consider, whether you buy the EVO or the Epic, you will have to sign up for Sprint's "Premium Data" plan, which is an additional $10 per line, not per account. You will receive this charge whether you have 4G access in your area or not. Denver already has 4G in a very few locations around the metro area, and is reportedly scheduled to get 4G access metro-wide in November, so to me the extra charges were worth it. I recommend talking to your local Sprint store to see when you are scheduled to get 4G. If you are going to have to wait a year for example, it may not be worth the extra cost no matter how much you like the phone. General information about 4G availability can be found on Sprint's website here.

Specifics on the Epic: Being Sprint's newest smart phone, the Epic does have some advantages and disadvantages to be aware of. Obviously, the primary advantage is that you get all the newest technology in your phone. The primary drawback is that the operating system still needs some polish. For example, when I first got the Epic the Facebook app would not show my list of notifications; I always got an error message (all the other Facebook functionality was there, just not the notifications page). This past week Sprint released the most recent system update for the Epic which, among other things, resolved this problem. I used to occasionally get an unresponsive screen, which I have not gotten yet since the most recent system update. I was aware going into this purchase that I was buying brand new technology, so none of this surprised my much. But you will have to be willing to live with this for a few months while Sprint and Samsung iron out the wrinkles.
Another disadvantage of the Epic is that since it is so new, there are generally a lack of accessories for it. When we bought our phones, there was a brief selection of cases to choose from and that's it. Naturally, the longer the Epic is available a wider variety cases will probably be produced for it, but again, that's waiting that you'll have to be willing to do. Ditto with car holders/dash mounts, etc.
The same concept applies to the Android OS in general. It's a younger operating system than the iPhone OS for example, so it's operation is still not as flawless. It's the same reason why the iPhone has something like 400,000 applications available, while the Android Market has around 40,000 applications. Likewise, there are multiple magazines and books available targeted at the iPhone and how to get the most functionality out of it, while Android does not have this yet. One has to expect that as more Android phones are sold, more developers will develop applications for Android, increasing the functionality of your phone. The most recent sales figures for the smart phone industry show that the Android already beat iPhone sales for 2Q 2010. This is substantial, considering that Android was a nothing operating system in 3Q 2009. I'm particularly waiting for the end of September when 3Q 2010 sales figures come out, so I can see how well Android is competing against the iPhone 4. Whatever the case, Android appears to have established a solid market position for the foreseeable future, and continued development of the operating system and corresponding applications seems highly likely.
As far as my personal experience with the Epic is concerned, I am entirely satisfied with the phone. It syncs seamlessly with all the major google applications, including contacts from gmail which I use extensively. I love the voice search functionality, which you can use for regular google web searches as well as for google maps and navigation searches. To clarify, google navigation is a free GPS service layered on top of google maps, complete with voice directions. My wife and I used it extensively during a recent 8-hour layover in Miami, and it worked flawlessly. When I stop and think that 10 years ago I was using computers that didn't have the same performance capabilities of the phone I have today it just blows me away.
In summary, if you're choosing between the Epic and the EVO, my personal opinion is that the Epic is your best option, even considering the extra cost. Battery life in particular is a feature critical enough to me that I'm willing to pay for it. Think of it this way, just skip a trip or two to the restaurant, and you can pay for the extra battery life that you'll be taking advantage of over the next 2 or more years. As of right now, my view is that the Epic is the best thing Sprint has going. That said, if you are willing to wait 6 months there will almost certainly be more phones with 4G capability and AMOLED screens, giving you more selection to choose from. You will have to do your research, and figure out what decision will be best for you.

Review of "Seeker" by Jack McDevitt

2010-09-06T23:40:00.003-06:00

Though Jack McDevitt has been writing science fiction for several decades I must admit I've never read any of his work, and I don't know any of my personal acquaintances who have so I didn't know exactly what to expect when I picked up "Seeker". My rationale going into it was fairly straightforward; if this book won the Nebula Award, and McDevitt's been nominated for Nebulas and Hugos since 1983, it can't be all bad.
Seeker is set in the Milky Way galaxy thousands of years into the future, when humans are widespread throughout many systems and have consequently generated thousands of years worth of archeological sites. The story is told through a single POV character, a woman named Chase Kolpath, who works for one Alex Benedict, a premier finder and broker of antiques and artifacts left behind by the centuries of human expansion.
The main plot line is instigated by a mysterious cup (ironically, made of plastic), which falls into their hands by happenstance. Fortunately, Chase runs a perfunctory dating of the cup and finds that it originated way back in the 26th century. An inscription on the cup, in a long-extinct language known as "English", implies that it was from a colony ship of political idealists who evacuated an oppressive regime on earth and were subsequently never heard from again. In fact, their story became so clouded that most people think of it as a myth or urban legend.
Naturally the cup is worth a lot of money, and the implication that the colony ship may not only be real but may have actually been found, implies that there are whole boatloads of money to be made. The remainder of the story focuses on Chase's research into the history of the cup, and her attempts to unravel the story of the colony ship. As a mystery story, I can't say much more than that. The plot thickens, and thickens again, and again, and before too long Chase's health and wellbeing are being threatened.
The first thing that drew me into "Seeker was the setting and theme. People have done plenty of mystery stories in a sci-fi setting. But none that I've read have focused on archeology and historical research. As far as the setting is concerned, McDevitt has enough hard science available that the setting seems plausible, but not so much that it bogs the story down. However, if you haven't read a decent amount of hard sci-fi or haven't had at least an armchair interest in astronomy, there will be concepts presented in the book that you'll have to take at face value. I was grateful that McDevitt did not turn the book into a travelogue like so many sci-fi authors seem to do, though he had plenty of opportunity.
The plot moves fairly quickly, and often in directions I didn't anticipate. In many instances this was because he would introduce some new aspect of the science and technology of his setting, which the characters would go on to use in their research. At first it came across as deus ex machina, but I figured, of all the ways he has to introduce the various facets of his setting this is probably more appropriate then hammering the reader with it all at once. After I got past the initial turn-off, it actually became fun for me each time the plot progressed; not only would I get to see what happened next, I'd also get to see what kind of science he would introduce.
As you might expect from a fast-paced mystery novel, characterization took a bit of a backseat, though that's not to say the characters are cardboard cutouts. McDevitt is not shy about adding a dash of character throughout the book, but its really just seasoning, it's not the main dish. The diction is superb, appropriate to the theme, and in many cases hilarious. The main character has a dry, ironic sense of humor that I just loved.
Probably the part of the novel that sets it above the run-of-the-mill sci-fi, and probably the part that got it the Nebula nomination, is the number of ethical and philosophical questions presented to the reader. What is ownership? At what point must society be favored over the individual? What does it mean to be human? And many more. In no way is McDevitt preachy about this, and neither does he draw a conclusion for the reader; there are multiple characters with varying viewpoints on each subject, and each gets plenty of airtime to make their thoughts heard. It was tastefully done, and in no small way added to my enjoyment of the story.
The ending was very agreeable. I anticipated one aspect of the ending after a discovery the characters made, but by and large the final developments were clever and satisfyingly surprising.
I typically have critiques to present along with my review, but in this case I just don't have any, except to say that it's authors like Jack McDevitt who make me feel like I shouldn't bother trying to write anything if that's what I have to compete with. To put it simply, "Seeker" is just a damn good book.

Final Rating: 10/10

Review of "The Windup Girl" by Paolo Bacigalupi

2010-08-11T20:32:00.003-06:00

A couple days ago I finished reading "The Windup Girl" (hereafter TWG), which is the breakout novel for author and fellow Coloradoan Paolo Bacigalupi. From the outset The Windup Girl is stunning, the language and descriptions as beautiful and intriguing as the cover art. However, despite it's relatively short length it did take me some amount of time to finish for various reasons which I will explain later.
TWG is set in a not-too-distant future where the vast majority of fossil fuels have been extinguished and rising ocean levels have drowned most major coastal cities throughout the globe. The story takes place in and around Bangkok, which has managed to survive by building an extensive dike/levy system to keep the ocean at bay. To make matters worse, genetic experimentation has caused all sorts of mischief in the world. Countries have unleashed plagues against each other's food stocks, and these plagues have evolved to the point that scientists on both sides scramble to create new seeds that can survive a handful of plantings before new viruses render them useless. Aside from genetically engineered foods, a breed of super-cats, known as cheshires, have been wreaking havoc with bird populations and throwing the food chain out of balance.
With fossil fuels all but exhausted, most of humanity derives energy from kink springs; they power bicycles, boats, anything that might have once used a combustion engine. Computers still exist, though they are treadle-operated much like antique sewing machines. International trade is undertaken with future versions of clipper ships and dirigibles. These are just a few examples of the extensive world building that Bacigalupi has done. Along with this he weaves obvious examples of modern Asian cultures; Japanese, Thai, Chinese, etc, giving his setting a hyper-realistic feel. You could think of it as the modern version of Dune. Without a doubt, the setting is my favorite aspect of TWG.
The story follows a variety of POV characters throughout Bangkok who are all there for various reasons. The introductory character, Anderson Lake, is a secret operative from an American bio-engineering firm who is looking for new, untainted seed stocks while under the guise of operating a kink spring factory. His assistant, Hock Seng, is a Malay-Chinese refugee who is desperate to rebuild his fortune and help his people. An unrelated character, Jaidee, is a former muay thai champion who works for the conservative Environment Ministry, whose job is to police imports and exports and control disease. And finally, the titular character is Emiko, a Japanese bio-engineered windup girl whose bodily functions are powered by kink springs. These are all supported by a host of secondary characters who are well developed, and another thing I greatly enjoyed about this book is that each character is complete and unique to themselves, something that I find especially hard to come by in a lot of SF/F.
Of course, the most unique character is Emiko, given that she is a a bio-mechanical construct instead of being outright human. In the Japan of the future, a dwindling workforce has motivated scientists to design windup people to fill a variety of roles. While they appear and function as humans for the most part, they are in fact possessions, tools, owned by wealthy individuals to work as personal assistants and so forth. Emiko was owned by a Japanese businessman who took her with him to Thailand and, unfortunately for her, he left her there as it was more economically feasible to buy a newer model in Japan than to fly her home. The Thai of the future are highly conservative and isolationist, being afraid of plagues and so forth, and are not accepting of windups at all. Being unable to integrate herself into Thai society, Emiko is forced to survive by prostitution.
I don't want to get into the plots too much, but it is evident from the outset that the current political situation in Bangkok is becoming unsustainable, and throughout the course of the book the characters witness the government beginning to unravel while desperately trying to pursue their own ends before the hammer finally falls. Bacigalupi is fairly relentless in his pacing, with the plot steadily building tension like the springs in his conceived technology. I found the ultimate resolution of the different plotlines quite satisfying, particularly that not all of the protagonists achieve their ultimate goals.
I do have a few critiques of TWG. First, for a setting so well conceived and researched, Bacigalupi is surprisingly silent on the future of renewable energies. The obvious economic theory would be that renewable energy sources such as wind generators and solar farms would begin to replace fossil fuel energy sources as they neared expiration. Yet these are essentially non-existent in TWG. Second, while the diction in this book is by and large superb, I found myself increasingly disrupted by the repetitive use of certain words or phrases, which at least ought to have been taken out in the editing process. Third, though TWG did not feel as traveloguish as some of sci-fi tends to be, there was a major focus on the setting of this book, which at times took away from the plot. Fourth, I found that the characters were not quite pro-active enough for my taste, and events tended to happen TO them rather than be caused BY them. Though the plot is still compelling, this kept TWG from being a true page-turner for me, and I finished reading it in a much longer timespan than I originally thought I would.
One final point, and this is not meant to criticize the book specifically but rather to give fair warning to potential readers, there are a few sections of TWG that are painfully graphic, mostly revolving around Emiko and her profession. Though she is a prostitute, it is not so much a choice but rather a last resort, and some awful things happen to her that are a bit hard to stomach, particularly given the high quality of Bacigalupi's diction and the sympathy that he generates for his characters. It's not blatantly pornographic, but he does not hide brutal reality either.
I usually don't expound much on the "meaning" or "moral" of the stories I read, but Bacigalupi packs this book full of philosophical questions/challenges, a few a which really struck home to me. These include the ethical application of technology, ownership of property and what constitutes property, political manipulation of religion, the ethical use of political power, et al. Probably the two biggest thoughts that struck home to me were the portrayal of the two major political parties in Bangkok, the Environment Ministry and the Trade Ministry, the former being quite conservative and the latter being quite progressive. Throughout the course of the book you realize that these two entities are so busy trying to triumph over each other that they end up tearing their country apart. And not to spoil the plot for you, but in the end neither of them win, primarily because they never found a way to work together. It's a haunting allusion to the modern American situation, which brings up my second thought, which is quoted directly from the Bible, and which Bacigalupi outright says in the third chapter, "there is nothing new under the sun". All the problems that Bacigalupi presents in TWG are problems faced by modern societies, as well as historic societies going back to antiquity. It's just that in TWG they happen to have a pretty, futuristic window dressing. By and large, the underlying premise of The Windup Girl can be summarized exactly as Rudyard Kipling said in much fewer words:

We are the Little folk we!
Too little to love or to hate.
Leave us alone and you'll see
How we can drag down the State.

Final Rating: 9/10

Next Up: Nebula Award Winning "Seeker" by Jack McDevitt

Growing Pains of Italian Restaurants

2010-07-28T17:35:00.003-06:00

I visited Romano's Macaroni Grill recently, which was my first visit there in some time, and the experience triggered a few observations which, naturally, I felt I should incorporate into a blog for the whole world to see.

The life cycle of restaurants follows an observable pattern. It usually begins with a single location, where an overall concept is perfected and a following is established. Then this concept is expanded to a selection of locations, usually in the same metro area and under the same ownership. However, at a certain point either the original owners run out of capital for expansion, or a national restaurant operator picks up on the strength of the concept, but either way the result is the same; the company is bought by a national firm with the expertise and capital to expand the restaurant to a national scale. This growth can take place quite rapidly, since the company revenue base expands at a linear rate simply by adding new locations. This is the explanation for the rapid expansion of such well known food retailers as McDonalds, Chipotle, and Starbucks, et al. At some point this growth peaks as the market becomes "saturated", or in other words, additional stores cannot be added because potential new locations either A) do no have the local demographics to support continued expansion, or B) would cannibalize customers from already existing locations. Once this saturation point is reached some interesting things begin to happen as companies continue to try to generate additional revenue from their business units. Let me give you a few examples using some fairly well-known Italian restaurants:

I have a long and romantic history with Italian restaurants, hearkening back to the late 1980s - early 1990s when my family frequented our local Olive Garden in Minneapolis, MN. It was a natural choice for us because, with three boys with healthy appetites, features like unlimited bread sticks and salad are a critical feature. Olive Garden was somewhat unique in that it was started by General Mills which intended to turn it into a multi-location retailer from the outset, so it did not exactly follow the growth pattern I outlined above. Initially opened in 1982, my family began eating at Olive Garden during the glory years of its national expansion.
Then during the mid- to late-1990s we began to notice certain changes at our favorite Italian restaurant. The pasta began to lack the same quality it used to have, the sauces grew a bit more bland, and the bread sticks, for crying out loud, the bread sticks degenerated into what might occur if a lump of mushy white bread lost a decent fight with a salt shaker. We came to find out that Darden Restaurants (the now parent-company of Olive Garden) begun using pre-cooked foods that only needed to be reheated in order to be served. This accomplished three revenue-generating effects; A) less cooking activity in the kitchens allowed for a reduction in food-prep staff, reducing the cost of labor at each restaurant, B) reduced food preparation allows for faster table turnover, and C), the lower cost of the food allowed Darden to maintain lower menu prices, helping them to appeal to a larger customer base (and market saturation takes place at a higher level; there are currently over 700 Olive Garden locations throughout the US and Canada). The trade-off was in the quality of the food, and I correspondingly began decreasing my visits to Olive Garden. I haven't eaten there in years and generally consider it to be the McDonalds of the Italian restaurant chains (a cliche breakup; "it's not you, it's me). However, it is frequently romanced by less discerning people and is an important revenue stream for Darden Restaurants.

During the spring of 2003 my college buddies and I made an important discovery; Romano's Macaroni Grill. Romano's was founded in 1988 by a Texas restaurateur, and was nearing saturation when we began frequenting their location in Chattanooga, TN. My initial crush on Romano's was fostered by my former breakup with Olive Garden; it was everything I used to like about my former love, without all the detrimental aspects. They had the free bread (with olive oil for dipping!), and the portions were generous. I preferred the build-a-bowl, they'd let me mix and match my own pastas, sauces, and add-ins, which would come in an industrial-sized bowl. Plus the tables came with crayons, which allowed my buddies and me to entertain ourselves with all sorts of inappropriate creations while waiting for our food.
Beginning about 2 years ago Romano's began making their own set of revenue-generating changes. Since the low-cost niche was already filled by Olive Garden, Romano's has followed a different route. First, the portion size was reduced in the usual way; the older dinnerware was replaced with new dinnerware of the same general size, but with a wider rim and smaller bowl, allowing for smaller portions to be served well appearing to be the same size. This has continued to the point where they're blatantly not even filling the newer, smaller dinnerware. More recently, apparently only within the last couple of months, Romano's underwent an overall contraction of their menu. This usually takes place in two forms; A) lower profit margin items are eliminated and replaced with higher profit margin items, and B) lower volume items are eliminated entirely to increase company cash flow. Examples of both:

A) The new appetizer "Mediterranean Olives", which is essentially a small bowl of green olives dipped in olive oil. Cost: $3.99, which is insane seeing as how you can buy an entire jar of green olives for maybe $3 at your local grocery store. Or the "Roasted Vegetables" for $6.99, which is essentially a (very) small plate of garden veggies you could buy for $2 (full retail price, not even considering the bulk prices Romano's gets). Of course, appetizers are by design high-margin items for restaurants, but this is just blatant.

B) Low-volume menu items like risotto, of which they had several kinds, are completely eliminated from Romano's menu. They don't stock it; no way to order it whatsoever. Also, the order form for my old favorite, the build-a-bowl, has seen some considerable contraction:

http://www.macaronigrill.com/PDFs/FoodBev/SYS1009.pdf

Now, consider that in the old days this order form included 2 additional pastas (angel hair and linguini), pesto sauce, and some 6 add-ins including two different kinds of onions, all of which have been eliminated. As I mentioned earlier, this is a cash-flow enhancing technique; the company doesn't have to purchase and store this inventory while it sits on their shelves waiting to be sold, which increases the level of cash available to the company.

Romano's, which is primarily owned by Golden Gate Capital, has maintained regular price increases corresponding to inflation and ingredient costs. Coupled with their reduction in portion size, market saturation for them has occurred at a lower level than for Olive Garden, currently the company has less than 300 locations. Though they haven't compromised the overall quality of their food, my romance with Macaroni Grill has been cooling substantially; I went about a month ago and I don't see myself going again in the near future, maybe ever. For me it has become a lopsided relationship; I'm just not getting out of it what I'm putting into it.

Third in my triumvirate of Italian restaurants is Maggiano's Little Italy. Founded in 1991 in Chicago, Maggiano's is now owned by Brinker International, who coincidentally was the majority owner of Macaroni Grill. I've only eaten here a few times, mostly because their locations are a bit of a commute from anywhere I've lived (more on this later). However, the times I've been here have proved quite impressive. The portion sizes are huge, and the quality is comparable with, or even superior to, Macaroni Grill. Their menu is comprehensive, probably bigger than Macaroni Grill and Olive Garden combined.
Rather than compromising on quality or portion size, Maggiano's has chosen to differentiate itself purely on price point; you will pay, at minimum, $2 - $5 more per meal than at Macaroni Grill. Because this price point is so much higher than its competitors, Maggiano's appeals to a smaller number of potential customers, who also eat there less frequently. Consequently, Maggiano's can only compete in large metro areas with high-level demographics, and is nearing saturation at a very low level; there are currently 44 locations throughout the US with opportunity for maybe a handful more. With the recent changes taking place at Romano's, Maggiano's get's my current thumbs up for the best value-for-the-money Italian Restaurant; I've never eaten here without taking half my meal home, and if you have any idea how much I eat, that's saying something. However, given the relatively high price, I still don't think I will be frequenting here as much as I used to frequent Romano's (a common relationship complication, she's a great girl but she's high-maintenance).

Honorable mention: Carrabba's. I've never eaten here, since until recently I've always had Macaroni Grill. From what I hear, Carrabba's fills the gap between Macaroni Grill and Maggiano's Little Italy, being somewhat more expensive than the former, but not as expensive as the latter. They have the appropriate market saturation corresponding to this price point as well: at over 200 restaurants they have fewer than Macaroni Grill but more than Maggiano's. I've tracked down a location not too far from my house and will probably give them a go next time I'm looking for Italian. I've been hurt before, but maybe true love is waiting for me on the horizon.

This trend is observable with most major restaurant genres, as well as other types of MLR's. Feel free to share thoughts/opinions, I'm very interested in this sort of thing.

Monthly Review: July 11

2010-07-11T18:53:00.002-06:00

Meant to get to this last week but could not sort out the time to do it.

I've decided to post a monthly update on my various activities/interests, intended to start at the beginning of the month though I've been too busy the last few days to get this up before now.

Currently Reading:
Fiction: "The Windup Girl" by Paolo Bacigalupi. I'll give you a sneak preview of my upcoming review: I like this book A LOT.
Non-Fiction: "Medieval Warfare: Triumph & Domination In The Wars Of The Middle Ages" by Peter Reid. An analysis of English prowess at arms during the 14th-15th centuries (read here: longbow warfare). I was reading through this book last month until some rascal bought it from B&N. Ordered a new copy and am now back in business.

Writing:
No new work to report on my main project, though I got some small projects completed. Will probably be sending them to market this month.

Multimedia Entertainment:
TV: I've adopted "Lie to Me" as my summertime TV entertainment. Most of the episodes I've seen so far have been pretty strong showings. Seems like a cross between House and White Collar.

Last Film Seen: Despicable Me. I went in to this movie with high hopes and came out thoroughly entertained. Excellent script writing/acting. Animation was hilarious, particularly focused on character expressions.

Current video game: Red Dead Redemption. It'll probably be keeping me entertained until FFXIV comes out in the fall.

Games I'm tracking through production: "Elemental: War of Magic", "Test Drive Unlimited 2", "Final Fantasy XIV"

Sports:
Quite a bit happened in the last month of sports, despite the doldrums of baseball *yawn*. Lakers vs Celtics ended pretty much how everyone expected, though not how I hoped it would. For all the hype everyone gives to Lebron James, no one in the NBA can match Kobe Bryant for sheer determination/work ethic. I doubt if going to Miami will change that. It'll be interesting to see how that combination works after so many years of Lebron being a solo act.

The world cup this time around was entertaining, though my perception was that the reffing really put a taint on the game. Spain was favored by most unbiased observers, so I guess in the end the best team won. But really, futbol will have a hard time competing for fans in the US when most of our major sports (football, basketball, hockey) will allow refs to rely on instant replays to determine critical calls. It's especially impacting for a game where you might have one or two goals scored in an entire 90-minute match. It comes off a cheap or biased to the average american fan.

MMA had some interesting developments, all of them submissions. First you had Fedor Emelianenko with his first uncontroversial career loss to UFC-has-been and noted jiu jitsu competitor Fabricio Werdum. Frankly, no one is perfect; Fedor made a single mistake, and it happened to be against an opponent with a lightning-fast triangle so he paid the price.
Then came the match I've been looking forward to for a long time; Brock Lesnar vs. Shane Carwin. I've long believed that Carwin has superior technique to Brock, both in terms of execution and strategy, where as Brock's previous fights to me have basically looked brawling, with a strong reliance on his strength and bulk at the sacrifice of fighting ability. The first couple minutes of their fight more or less proved to me that I was right; Brock practically melted in front of Carwin hit the canvas...and then Carwin had a serious brain fart. Basically wasting 3 minutes of the round and exhausting himself on a barrage of in-accurate ground & pound. In the second round Brock looked incredibly smooth, working the take down and progressing straight to the submission. I really don't mind being proved wrong by a big guy with smooth jiu jitsu; so long as he keeps up with his technique I'll be a fan.

Day Jobbery:
Most recent appraisal: 9 apartment units in Denver's historic Baker neighborhood. Denver has a few pockets of these historic neighborhoods surrounding downtown; Capitol Hill/Cheesman Park is probably the best known example. Baker is a bit farther from downtown - about half-way to Cherry Creek - but it also has a lot of these small, historic apartments that investors like because they have strong appeal in their niche market. Most of the comps I found were selling at $60k-$70k per unit, with cap rates between 5.5% to 7%. There are some local ownership groups that specialize specifically in apartments within these neighborhoods because of their unique appeal and earning potential.

Current appraisal: An office/warehouse in Aurora.

Lifestyle:
Weight: Have gotten closer to 290 over the past few weeks, primarily because work has been pretty busy and I haven't been going to jiu jitsu. Fortunately, it looks like this bottleneck has disappeared for the time being so I can be more active again (also, when you weigh as much as I do gaining/losing 10 lbs is pretty easy to do).

Jiu Jitsu: I haven't been to class in two weeks, again because of work and also because a pulled my groin a week ago. Will be back at it again tomorrow night.

Traveling: We drove up to Walla Walla, WA to see my sister-in-law graduate. In a couple weeks I'll be driving to Portland, OR for a wedding. So I'll be getting my fare share of I-80/84 this summer.

Matt

Review of "Dune" by Frank Herbert

2010-06-30T15:30:00.003-06:00

So way back in...April I think it was, I picked up the sci-fi classic "Dune" for a read. I've never read it before (like Lord of the Rings, really, I'm terrible about reading the classics), but after much persuasion from several people, and given the dearth of other reading options at the time, I decided to give it a go.
Well, in that time I've read about 42% of the book, which, needless to say, is pretty slow going, even counting the fact that I took a week and half of that time to re-read ~500 pages of GRRM. Now, when I can read 500 pages of one author in about 1/10th the time it's taken me to read ~200 pages of another, I think that's a pretty loud and clear message. So to be blunt, I've just decided to declare victory and move on leaving the thing unfinished. That said, I don't know if I can really give it an actual review, but I'll share a few thoughts on here anyway.
First, the positives. I'm sure this has been said before, but just for the sake of being complete, I'll go ahead and mention that Herbert has gotten world-building down pat. I mean, if anyone has the nitty-gritty details figured out more than this guy, I haven't read them. Which is fitting, seeing as how Herbert spent years researching and developing the setting for the book. Also, the character of Gurney Halleck I liked quite well; I say anyone who can write a minstrel/warrior character and still be taken seriously can't be all bad.
Unfortunately, that's about as far as it goes. I didn't find any of the character's terribly interesting. Not to say that they're cardboard, but frankly, they just don't do much. They move to a new planet, fly in a 'thopter, throw a party, and generally have a lot of things explained to them (or explain things to each other). Other than that, there's really not much that happens. For a setting that is supposedly heavy on the intrigue, I did not feel much tension at all. And for characters who are supposedly hyper-intelligent/perceptive/cunning, overlooking Dr. Yueh just seemed too obvious to me. Honestly, you leave an obvious stone unturned, and that's what happens. And even after that, the remaining characters aren't able to effect their own escape without Yueh setting it up for them. This is compounded by Herbert's use of 'historic' commentary at the beginning of his chapters, which ends up leaving no doubt about how exactly the book is going to end. For most books I tend to assume the good guys will win, but when you're told "Not only does he win, he's also the messiah, and his dad dies, etc" within a few chapters of the beginning, it's really hard for me to maintain my interest.
Finally, I wanted to comment on Herbert's use of multiple POV characters within the same scene. It's a technique that I don't see frequently, and my conclusion was that it is mostly a two-edged sword in this book. In some instances it was interesting to see him weave two different characters and their reactions into the same scene. But probably more frequently, it just left me with a feeling that the scene was over-explained.
My overall impression of Dune is that it is the travelogue to beat all travelogues, which is good only so long as the reader really likes travelogues. I will admit that I'm probably spoiled in having read multiple authors who benefited from reading Dune for themselves and incorporated the best of Herbert into their own techniques. However, in the end, after 200-some pages I just was not hooked, and the way I figure, I've got the rest of my life ahead of me, and I'd rather spend it reading books I enjoy.

Next up: "The Windup Girl" by Paolo Bacigalupi, the 2009 Nebula winner for best novel, 2009 Hugo nominee, and 2010 Compton Crook award for best first novel.

Review of "Red Dead Redemption" by Rockstar Games

2010-06-06T20:58:00.002-06:00

Red Dead Redemption is Rockstar's combination of ever single spaghetti western stereotype imaginable, plugged into a GTA-esque sandbox gaming platform that allows for a wide variety of open play in addition to following the events of the background story. My wife took one look at the portrait of the protagonist on the cover of the game and began calling it "Red Neck Redemption", which gave me a good long laugh, so from here after I'll refer to the game as "RNR". I've been tracking this game through production and originally intended to rent this game for sometime before deciding if I wanted to purchase it outright. However, after my local Blockbuster had all their copies rented out for a couple weeks straight I figured that was probably a sign and so I went ahead and made a blind purchase. Sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose. This time...
Set in the 1911 old west, RNR follows protagonist John Marston, a former outlaw who has his digital elbow twisted just enough to go out and hunt down his old associates in an attempt to clear his name. You start off with a few cut-scenes and tutorial missions, though I didn't find these to be too time consuming, and they're worked into the story well enough that they don't stick out overmuch. Soon enough the narrative backs off a bit and you can explore the game at your free will. There's a plethora of pastimes to keep you occupied while in game; everything from animal hunting to bounty hunting to blackjack. Essentially everything a budding young roughneck needs to keep himself entertained for hours. And hours. And hours.
A small caveat; I haven't actually finished this game, though I felt I had played it through to a point where I could give an accurate review. Honestly, at the rate I'm progressing through the game it'll probably be several months before I'm finished with it. So there is a small chance that something unexpected might happen that could completely reverse my impression of the game, but so far it seems unlikely.
First, a few items in particular I've really liked about the game:

A) One of the first things I noticed upon starting the game is the quality of the voice acting. I mean, it's noticeably good; dare I say, better than some movies I could mention. The animation during the cut-scenes is superb as well; they've captured nuances of gestures and emotion that most games I've played frankly lack. The story itself is compelling enough, but the focus on the storytelling really contributes to the overall game experience.
B) The various sandbox activities available in RNR are for the most part very well done. Rockstar has apparently packed as much creativity into this game as they could manage, and my impression was that they really took the time to make these side attractions entertaining and challenging. A few are a little simplistic - breaking horses for example - but most are up to the same caliber as the rest of the game. I've probably played the in-game poker tournaments for longer than I've spent following the actual narrative.
C) In a gaming generation where Borderlands has redefined variety, Rockstar has added a lot of content where it might normally be ignored, including a wide variety of horses, weapons, mini-quests, and clothing. Definitely not quite to the level the Borderlands has, but I think still better than most.
D) The range of motion for gaming animation is quite well done. Even awkward animations such as lassoing or diving off a moving stagecoach run flawlessly. If you happen to get mauled by a cougar, sure you'll die, but at least it'll look good while it's happening.
E) Humor. Rockstar puts just the right amount of funny stuff in RNR, not so much that you can't take it seriously, but not so little that it's bland and out of place.

These are just a few of the more outstanding aspects of RNR, and honestly, the fact that I'm taking time to comment on what would normally be more minute aspects of gaming should very much be read to imply that the overall game is very high quality. Of course, that is not to say that I don't have a few critiques.

A) Some of the mini-quests can be frustratingly vague. For example, one of the ones that I've particularly had trouble with is the stagecoach robbery. From time to time while traversing the expansive wilderness, you'll come across a stagecoach by the side of the road with someone flagging you down for help. The first time this happened to be, it turned out to be an ambush and I got shot. Lesson learned, or so I thought. So the second time this happened I was not about to be suckered, and rode in behind a hail of hot lead. Until it turned out that I had killed a lawman (?) and suddenly had a bounty on my head. After much trial and error, I've pretty much got the hang of which stagecoaches-in-need are which, but when all's said and done, it's almost not worth the hassle of pulling up close to see which type you're looking at, and in that sense, it doesn't really add anything to the game for me.
B) A few of the game mechanics are somewhat vague. Two in particular; dueling and cheating at cards. After significant experimentation, I really can't figure out what exactly makes one duelist faster than another. This holds true when dueling the same person: I've gotten various results with the same opponent and can't figure out why. The card cheating mechanic also gives varying results; the slight of hand is simulated by an arrow on a sliding scale and your goal is to keep the arrow landed at the center of the scale and not at the ends. Which seems simple enough, but I've gotten "caught" with the arrow sitting dead center of the scale with no explanation why. Compounding this, whenever you're caught at cheating, you automatically lose all your chips whether you win the ensuing duel or not. Considering the potential risk, and the quirks of the cheating and dueling mechanics, there is very little incentive for me to use either one, and in that sense they're mostly a waste to me.
C) I haven't been able to figure out how to tell what kind of horse I'm riding. Descriptions of the various horses are available in stores, and some are more obvious than others, but it seems an obvious tool to be lacking from the game. I can tell what kind of outfit I'm wearing and what kind of gun I'm using, but not what kind of horse I'm riding, and I can't think of a reason why.
D) Bounties seem to accrue for fairly arbitrary reasons. If I go out and shoot a sheriff or steal someone's horse, sure, I'd understand that. But there have been several circumstances (in town usually) where I'll take some fire, and retaliate in kind, only to get hit with a bounty. It becomes a hassle, and takes away from the overall gaming experience.

These few deficiencies really don't account for a whole lot considering the wide scope of the entire game. I'm enjoying the game quite a bit, and considering the extensive content available in RNR the relatively high price point is easily justified.

Overall rating: 9/10

Storytelling format and Avatar

2010-06-03T18:26:00.002-06:00

Despite the overwhelming box office evidence (aka revenue) generated by James Cameron's Avatar, there has been quite a bit of criticism about the blockbuster film, such as it's fairly straightforward plot, idealism of cultures, environmental soapboxing, and so forth. Another criticism I'll address here is the overall length of the movie.
Probably one of the first things I hear about Avatar from a detractor is that "it was so long". At 2 hours and 40 minutes, it is a bit longer than your run-of-the-mill Hollywood offering, however, I would point out that many other high-grossing and critically acclaimed movies, the Matrix trilogy, Lord of the Rings trilogy, Godfather trilogy, Titanic, et al, are just as long or longer, and typically don't receive complaints about length. It's king of a funny complaint in the first place, as if one were saying, "My time is so valuable I just could not stand to be in that theater for an extra 40 minutes". Anyway, my theory about this argument is that the movie isn't necessarily long, it simply feels long because of it's pacing and structure.
A little explanation. Going way back to the days of classical western storytelling (I'm talking ancient Greece here), stories have tended to follow a standard structuring pattern organized into three acts. In act 1, main characters are introduced, and the events that set the plot in motion are presented. In act 2, problems become more complicated, a few twists are taken, turns are negotiated, and the plot generally thickens like a hearty stew as the tension builds. Act 3 presents the climax, the final conflict, tension is released, and perhaps a bit of the aftermath is shown before the story comes to a close.
Now, Hollywood is perhaps notorious in sticking to this structure more than any other storytelling medium, and I mean ridiculously so, to the point where you can pretty much anticipate upcoming events in a movie simply by paying attention to how much time is left before the curtains close. In action movies in particular, a thumbnail technique to judge where you are in the story structure is simply by analyzing how much "action" is taking place, since directors will typically pour on additional levels of chases/bullets/explosions as the movie progresses. It's a tension-building methode, and though it's a fairly simple (dare I say obvious) method, Americans have been watching movies for so long that they're acclimatized to it.
The problem with Avatar is that it feels like it has two Act 3's. If Avatar were a typical action movie, Act 1 would have ended at the point of Jake Sully's acceptance by the tribe as a Navi-in-training, Act 2 would have ended with Jake being hauled back to base/the corporate decision to attack the home tree, and Act 3 would have culminated with the destruction of the home tree and the aftermath of the Navi running away. That is, of course, just judging by the intensity of the action. According to the plot, Act 2 doesn't end until Jake's speech to the tribe about defending their home land, and the Act 3 would carry on to the end of the movie. But American movie-goers are not used to having a huge, climactic action sequence, only to be followed by a lull in the action while a new goal is introduced and tension is rebuilt. We want the tension to hold tight until the very last 10 minutes of the movie. Otherwise we sit there saying, "What's happening? This movie feels like it should be over, but it's not over!" Popcorn is thrown, 3D glasses are smashed, and then we go and spew our dissatisfaction out at rottentomatoes.com.
Obviously, Cameron knew what he was doing and decided to take a chance on his structure anyway, and the gamble paid off, to the tune of $2.7B worldwide and counting, so you can criticize him all you like but frankly, James Cameron is rubber, while you appear to be a sticky, glue-like substance. Personally, the structuring/pacing issues didn't bother me much at all when I watched the movie. Probably too caught up with all that CG eye candy.

Monthly Review: June 3

2010-06-03T11:56:00.004-06:00

I've decided to post a monthly update on my various activities/interests, intended to start at the beginning of the month though I've been too busy the last few days to get this up before now.

Currently Reading:
Fiction: "Dune" by Frank Herbert
Non-Fiction: "Medieval Warfare: Triumph & Domination In The Wars Of The Middle Ages" by Peter Reid. An analysis of English prowess at arms during the 14th-15th centuries (read here: longbow warfare).

Writing:
Current WIP: 35,000 words

Multimedia Entertainment:
TV: Most of my favorite shows are gone for the summer. Still wrapping up the current season of TUF. Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz are both tremendous coaches, but Liddell has a strategic mindset that Tito just doesn't have. I'm liking Tavares to take it. Flory has been watching Drop Dead Diva, so I see some of that once in a while. For a chick show it's pretty good, it's a compelling concept and the writers do a great job. I just can't bring myself to devote time to it on my own initiative.

Last Film Seen: Prince of Persia. Don't watch it. Just don't watch it.

Current video game: Read Dead Redemption

Games I'm tracking through production: "Elemental: War of Magic", "Test Drive Unlimited 2", "Final Fantasy XIV"

Sports:
Probably the first time in years where I haven't watched the NHL playoffs and now it's the finals. I've thought for a while now that Chicago would take it, especially when the Sharks went out. Can't believe Ovie got eliminated in the first. Would have liked to see the Habs hang in there but they had a good showing.

Celtics vs Lakers should be a good series, each team has stars that are just on the verge of being old.

UFC 114 was a bit of a sleeper, particularly as far as the main event was concerned. Little Nog had a fun fight, but that was about as far as it went for me. UFC 113 was somewhat better, Machida v Rua was exciting, and who doesn't like to see Kimbo Slice get dropped one more time? Koscheck's fight was decent, I've seen better, also seen a lot worse. I really think he's not going to be the same caliber of coach as GSP in the next season of TUF, but we'll see.

Day Jobbery:
Most recent appraisal: 35-acre home site in southeast Arapahoe County. Colorado has a lot of these 35-acre sites in rural areas because Colorado state law allows sites of 35 acres or more to be improved with a single house serviced by a well/septic system (a part of Colorado state water laws). A lot of counties, including Arapahoe County, supplement this by allowing these 35-acre sites to be zoned "Agricultural" so the property owners get big tax breaks. Since these are future home sites, and existing homes are already so cheap because of the recession and foreclosures, 35-acre home sites are down about 20% to 40% in value depending on their location and so forth. This one was an interesting job, but driving around rural Arapahoe County was a bit on the boring side :D

Current appraisal: An RV/Boat storage facility in North Denver.

Lifestyle:
Weight: Consistently weighing in at 280 over the past week, which is down 20 lbs from Christmas. Want to drop another 20 by thanksgiving. Most of my weight loss is derived from relatively simple lifestyle changes; I walk for 2-3 miles about 4 times a week, go swimming about 2 times a week, and eat a lot of fruits in place of carbs and animal products.

Jiu Jitsu: I haven't been to class in a little over a week, mostly because of a tight schedule. For the past several months I've been focusing on my guard; working on sweeps and a couple submissions I'm still rusty at (straight armlocks and guillotines).

That's all for this month. I may add or drop items in upcoming months as I play around with the format.

Matt

Musings on Economics

2010-05-30T18:37:00.004-06:00

During most of the middle ages, the economies of the feudal system were sufficient to allow for for a relatively small aristocracy who specialized in warfare and political maneuvering. By the time of the renaissance, the increasingly mercantile economy allowed for an expanded aristocracy who were able to pursue a wide variety of activities, including business activities, music, the arts, and sciences, in addition to military and political specialties. In the modern times, after the industrial age and technological revolution, the only way for an individual to become rich is to become highly specialized in a narrow field. One caveat would be individuals who inherit their wealth and hence are able to pursue multiple activities, however, they benefit from the work of someone before them who undoubtedly specialized in a narrow field. It is extremely rare to find an individual in modern economic conditions who became wealthy by pursuing multiple interests.
My problem is that I enjoy pursuing multiple activities, and I have the ability to become good at just about anything I pursue, however, I don't have quite the ability to compete with people who only invest their time and energy into specializing in each of the individual fields. On the other hand, I'm at least capable of pursuing all my interests and maintaining my socio-economic position. What I have to decide is if I want to specialize and forego my other interest in the pursuit of economic rewards, or if I will be a renaissance man and decide to pursue self-actualization while foregoing economic rewards.

Review of "Flower" by thatgamecompany

2010-05-26T00:10:00.003-06:00

Flower is the brainchild of game developer Jenova Chen, who developed the predecessor game Flow. I haven't played Flow, and only learned about Flower after reading a short blurb on the game a few months ago. The concept of the game struck me as highly unique and therefore highly intriguing.
In practice Flower is incredibly simple. The player controls a single petal of a flower, directing the petal up, down, left, or right with the controller, and controlling the wind speed with the X button. You have free reign to explore a map, and can collect other petals to follow you by passing near other flowers. These petals spread out behind your petal in an increasingly long train, and due to the multitude of colors and creative ripple patters of the physics engine, the overall effect becomes quite breathtaking and oddly soothing. As you pass through and collect petals from different sections of the map, you are rewarded with added bursts of color from the surrounding terrain. The music changes with the speed and progress throughout the map. Other items throughout the map can be set in motion by your petal collecting. The entire game is comprised of six maps, each with its own distinct flavor and color scheme.
The game is highly unique to me in that stripping away virtually all skill elements of the game, the developer has narrowed the scope to become an entirely emotional experience centered around the development of beauty. By rewarding petal collecting activities with added bursts of color, music, and motion, the developer creates a growing spiral of beauty throughout each map. The overall result is relaxing, pleasant, and highly addictive. There is an obvious emotional storyline of sorts, which also enhances the experience.
The game is relatively short; probably playable within 1 hour - 1.5 hours. At a relatively low price point of $9.99 it is well worth the investment. Having played the game through I still play a level now and then over lunch break or after work, for no other reason than that it is pleasant and enjoyable. Highly recommended for everyone.

Final Rating: 9/10

Review of "Civilization 4: Colonization" by Firaxis

2010-05-25T21:52:00.004-06:00

I've been a fan of the Civilization series of games since circa 1995, when my 8th grade science teacher would let us play the original DOS version of Civ on his computer if we got our homework done before the bell. I've played every iteration of the game up through the most recent Civilization 4, which is appropriately named since you can play for four hours at a time before thinking of looking at a clock and realizing you do have to wake up for work in the morning. If pressed to pick my favorite series of games Civilization would probably be the winner. So when I noticed Civilization 4: Colonization (hereafter Civ4:C) at my local Best Buy a month or so back I purchased it with high expectations.
Civ4:C is a remake of Sid Meier's 1994 game "Colonization", a game which I never played. Reading summaries of the previous game, it seems that the gameplay of Civ4:C is quite similar. The player controls a colony of one of four european nations; the other three nations are played by an AI. The goal of the game is to develop your colony to the point where you can declare independence and defeat the resulting royal expeditionary force, all before the other competing colonies. In addition to the usual actions such as tile improvements and settlement founding, players can establish relationships with native nations, find treasures and ancient ruins, recruit "founding fathers" that provide special abilities, and engage in mercantilism to generate income. In fact, a significant portion of the gameplay revolves around trade, with the ability to build different types of merchant ships, and produce a variety of goods in your colonies to sell in the old world. More on that later.
The game mechanics are rather different than Civilization 4 or other iterations of the Civ games, in fact, I'd say the name of Civ4:C is rather misleading since the only real components of Civ used in the game are the map and unit graphics and corresponding engines. For instance, there's no technology tree, only limited unit production/building options, and only a single victory condition. It's all just as well, since the game time is also relatively short compared to other Civ games at a little less that 300 years (most Civ iterations have ~5,000 playable years). This leaves a very small window of time to create and implement a strategy, so the lack of strategic options isn't as noticeable.
Gameplay in Civ4:C also differs from the other Civs in that the population units, the colonists, serve a variety of roles, rather than each unit having a unit-specific role. Depending on how the colonist is equipped, he can serve as a pioneer, soldier, missionary, scout, etc, or he can be stationed in your colonies to produce food or other types of resources. Basic colonists can also be trained into specialist units to enhance their performance in a specific role. I found that this game mechanic shifted away a lot of the micro-managing required in the other Civ games, which was a nice change.
As mentioned previously, trade is a major factor in the gameplay of Civ4:C, I'd say probably 50% of the gameplay was devoted to trade, with the other 50% devoted to colonist management (which is itself mostly devoted to producing resources primarily for trade). The player has a small selection of trading ships with different cargo capacities which they send back and forth between their colonies and Europe (or to Indian settlements or AI colonies), selling and buying various resources. Colonists can also be recruited in Europe, and shipped to the New World. It is vital to keep a close eye on your various stocks of resources, as each city only has so much storage space, and if the threshold is exceeded your excess goods are sold at a steep discount. To me this game mechanic is an even trade. Whereas with most Civ games I spend most of my gameplay micromanaging units, I spent most of my gameplay in Civ4:C micromanaging trade.
In order to declare a revolution, "rebel sentiment" must exceed 50% throughout your colony. Rebel sentiment is measured in liberty bells and functions similarly to cultural production in Civ4. Liberty bells are produced exclusively by specialists stationed in your colony's City Hall, and can be boosted by other improvements. Your royal sovereign will increase the number of troops in his expeditionary force corresponding to your increases in rebel sentiment. Once independence is declared, the expeditionary force is sent to take back your colony.
Now, away from basic gameplay description and on to the critiques, for they are many. First, I found the lack of strategic depth very disappointing. The time constraint limits strategic variety, which is further compromised by the lack of unit and improvement options. Further challenging the strategic end is the fact that gameplay is highly dependent on developing specialists to work in your cities, and specialists are ultimately derived from only two sources. Certain specialist types can be trained in friendly Indian villages, but other types can only be trained in your schools and universities, which require you to have an existing specialist of that type stationed in your colony, and so must be recruited from Europe. The problem is that European immigrants are generated at random, and you have no assurance that you will find the specialist you need. For example, I played five games in a row that never produced the Statesman specialist (which enhances Liberty Bell production), and hence had a difficult time getting my sentiment rate high enough to declare independence before the time limit. For another example, the Master Carpenter specialist which enhances your colony's production is next to useless without a Master Lumberjack specialist, which increases your lumber production used by the Master Carpenter, and the game is very good at giving you one or the other, but not both.
Second, the function of diplomacy in the game is extremely limited, even for a Civ game. It's a good thing to have friendly Indians who are willing to train your colonists and occasionally send you gifts, but that's about as far as it goes. Indian warriors are generally too weak to be of much assistance during a war, and Indian villages and neighboring nations are usually too far away/slow responding to be of use in a fight anyway. Converting natives to join your colony is moderately useful early in the game, but becomes counter productive later on as each new native lowers your rebel sentiment rate. This is extremely impacting if you haven't had the luck to import a Statesman specialist; there were several games where I had to delete a good chunk of my population just to reach the required 50% rebel sentiment before time ran out.
Third, the game lacks the polish of other Civ games. One example; your resources are stored in stacks of 100, but the game lacks a simple counting mechanism for handling odd lots of cargo. It results in ridiculous swapping back and forth of cargo between your cargo slots which becomes a waste of time. For games as well developed as the other iterations of the Civ series you would think this would be an obvious fix.
In summary, Civilization 4: Colonization produced a widely varied experience for me. Occasionally the experience would be enjoyable; a nice, short strategy game easily playable in an evening or two. But more frequently the game produced a more frustrating result where I would invest several hours into gameplay only to realize I wouldn't be able to get what I needed before the clock ran out. Here's a more direct way of analyzing the game: Civ4:C provides less than half of the overall gaming experience provided by Civ4 (heck, even the original Civ for that matter), yet it's priced exactly the same. Personally, I'd rather save my money and invest my time into playing the better game.

Final Rating: 4/10

Review of "A Game of Thrones" by George R. R. Martin

2010-05-20T16:07:00.003-06:00

Following my previous literary review, I initially set out to read/review the sci-fi classic "Dune" by Frank Herbert. After slogging through it for a few weeks and not feeling very engaged, I happend to be re-shelving some books and stumbled across my copy of "A Game of Thrones" (hereafter AGoT) by sci-fi/fantasy titan George R. R. Martin. AGoT is Martin's inaugural book of the much acclaimed series "A Song of Ice and Fire". First released in 1996, this series has gone the way of Robert Jordan and dragged out over a decade-and-a-half without completion. I read the currently-released four books in 2006 and haven't looked at them since, so there was a lot I hadn't remembered as I re-read this book.
The series takes places in the fantastical realm of Westeros, which bears a strong resemblance to late medieval Europe, not only in terms of technology but also politics. The series is somewhat unique among epic fantasy series in that magic does not play a large role; there are hints of it, but part of the back story of the world is that magical ability died in the distant past. So while the series does lack an extensive magical element to explore, Martin instead focuses on exploring non-magical elements often neglected in fantasy, specifically politics.
Reading AGoT is like reading a case study of Nicollo Machiavelli. Every POV character faces a multitude of decisions, and they either improve or weaken their position by the decisions they make. Some of the characters face decisions that apply more to a macro-political scale (Eddard, Tyrion), while others apply more to a micro-political scale (Arya, Sansa, Jon), but the underlying subject matter of each of the plotlines is political/interpersonal relationships. This may be read to imply that Martin's realm leaves no room for idealism. I would argue that this is not true; Martin simply presents his plotlines from the very pragmatic approach that idealism is irrelevant without political/interpersonal execution. Martin does not coddle his characters; if his characters make a mistake, they suffer for it.
AGoT is further Machiavellian in its presentation of warfare as a natural extension of politics. Whereas warfare in many (most?) fantasy novels can be easily boiled down to "these people are evil, let's kill them", Martin presents a cornucopia of political viewpoints, each with positive and negative aspects, and he presents no distinction as to which viewpoint is correct. This aspect carries to the character level as well; AGoT (as well as the rest of the series) is full of 'grey' characters, with their own strengths and shortcomings. Each receives their own wounds, physical and mental, and each has to make decisions they will regret one way or the other. True there are a few characters that are obviously evil, and another few that strive to be righteous, but the vast majority of the characters are painted in shades of grey, with the ultimate choice of morality left to the reader.
Aside from all this, every other aspect of the book is excellent, and I don't mean that lightly. The characters presented are all unique and fully developed. The plot is rich with intrigue and well paced, and the multi-POV structure is well utilized to support the plot. The diction is everything you would expect from a master craftsman. Symbolism and foreshadowing are beautifully and extensively used. I gave an honest and sincere effort to identify critiques of the book while I read so as not to appear as a gushing GRRM groupie, but honestly, I could only identify one, and a rather minor one at that; in one scene Martin utilized parentheses in his diction to construct a sentence which isn't necessarily bad english, but I found it to be a more informal style of diction inconsistent with the rest of the book.
In summary, "A Game of Thrones" is an incredible read. In my mind this book sets GRRM apart as peerless within the sci-fi/fantasy community, the only possible exception being Robert Jordan.

Final Rating: 10/10

Review of "Borderlands" by Gearbox

2010-04-29T18:22:00.003-06:00

I've never written a gaming review before, though I did write a small hype segment about the upcoming FFXIV, so maybe that counts. Anyway, I just finished my first solo playthrough of Borderlands, the FPS/RPG hybrid released by Gearbox in October 2009. I'd been tracking Borderlands through development and bought it the day after it released, and have been working my way through it ever since. As you can tell, it's taken me a while to get through it. More on that later.
What initially attracted me to Borderlands was the style of their game art. The game art is designed to look like a graphic novel, complete with blackline object borders, cell shading, and heavily themed/styled character art. Frankly, I've never encountered a computer game that has taken such a bold step art-wise. Reading articles in gaming magazines prior to the release, and reading reviews after the release, it's clear that this unique presentation style was quite a point of contention for gamers. Probably one of those things that you either love or hate. As for me, I love it. I find it to be a refreshing change from the usual array of FPS's that go out of their way to be the most realistic. The unique artistic style says "We here to have fun", and to me the concept works.
I also found that the style of gameplay falls in line with the "here to have fun" concept. The AI's for the various opponents are not overly complex, in fact it's nowhere near as complex as other new shooters such as Modern Warfare 2. But I'd argue that the game isn't trying to promote the most realistic combat experience, but rather to provide an entertaining FPS environment, and I think the programming, coupled with the underlying Unreal 3 engine, achieve this goal very well. Map design is also well done, I enjoyed a few of them very much (Krom's Canyon, Trash Coast) and other's not so much (most of the "dungeon" levels).
That's not to say that I don't have a few critiques. Probably the biggest problem I have with the game is that killed enemies respawn awful quickly, or in some instances, constantly. It's extra annoying early on when you can't carry as much ammunition and the constant respawn becomes an ammo sink. The problem is made worse by another annoyance; that you end up hanging around the starting map (Arid Badlands) too long. At one point I got so tired of the Badlands that I just stopped playing the game for a few weeks. The respawn problem is especially noticeable here, since many of the places you frequent in this area have baddies either on the way or, in the case of Fyrestone, hanging around just outside of town. The whole ordeal results in just too many SMH moments. A third critique involves the vehicle that you get to cruise around in during the game. I think the vehicle idea is a good concept in general, but with almost no modifications whatsoever, and a tendency to get stuck on-or-over laughably small objects, it's a hassle to use unless you're in a big, open map.
My forth and final criticism of Borderlands gameplay involves the much vaunted weapons system. Instead of simply designing a fixed arsenal of weapons, Borderlands game designers instead created a design program that generated millions of weapons based on different variables and parameters. This in and of itself is an awesome development, I frankly wish more designers would take the time to do this as it added a huge new element to the game; you get so excited to open a new treasure box so you can see what new goodies are inside since no two weapons you find are ever the same. The umbrage I have with the weapons system is twofold. First, I found that certain types of weapons were next to useless, these being the Repeater and Launcher. I can't tell you how many times I would be so happy to find a shiny new rocket launcher only to discover it hardly dented the enemies it was pointed at. I more or less ignored launchers for the second half of the game saving my backpack space for weapons that actually worked. To a lesser extent this also applied to the sniper rifles. How useful is a sniper rifle if you can't get one kill with one shot (and not to beat a dead horse, but ditto with a rocket launcher). My second point of contention surprisingly has to do with variety. I found that the immense volume of weapons really only made a difference to my arsenal during the first 2/3 of the game or so. For about my last 10 levels of game play (I ended at lvl 35 though you can max out at lvl 50) my regular arsenal changed very little. It was even worse for shields, I used only two different shields from between level 17 to level 35, and the second one I only found at about level 32 or 33. It's an underwhelming experience when you've come to expect to swap out your arsenal every few levels.
Finally, I want to comment on the overall storyline. Where most FPS's I've played mostly have a storyline as a backdrop for a combat experience, Borderlands actually has a fairly involved plot, with a couple nice twists at the end. I enjoyed the story very much. Probably the only FPS I can think of with better story involvement is the old Marathon shooter produced by Bungie some 15 years ago.
In summary, I found Borderlands to be at best an enjoyable passtime, something I could play for maybe an hour or two at at time before getting bored and moving on to something else. In all honesty, I didn't expect it to become more of an obsession for me, since I've always been more of a fan of strategy and RPG genres than FPS's, so I can't lay all the blame on Gearbox. Overall there's definitely more that I liked about the game than that I disliked about the game, and it's given me a solid 6 months of entertainment. When I compare that to maybe taking my wife to see two movies for the same price, that's a significant bargain.

Overall Rating: 8/10.

Review of "The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms" by N.K. Jemisin

2010-04-11T12:25:00.007-06:00

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (hereafter 100kK) is the inagural novel by up and coming author Nora Jemisin. It was a blind buy for me; having never heard of Nora before and under no recommendations from anyone, I happened to pick it up while perusing my local B&N and read the back cover summary. I subsequently read the first chapter and decided to give it a go. After all is said and done, 100kK has turned out to be quite a singular experience, unlike any other book I've read to date.
As I said previously, what initially attracted me to the book was the back page summary:
"Yeine Darr is an outcast from the barbarian north. But when her mother dies under mysterious circumstances, she is summoned to the majestic city of Sky. There, to her shock, Yeine is named an heiress to the king. But the throne of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is not easily won, and Yeine is thrust into a vicious power struggle."
At first glance it seemed like the kind of book I would be interested in; intrigue, politics, treachery, etc. So I was somewhat perplexed when half way through the book I hadn't felt much tension or political intrigue at all, almost as if the summary describes a different book altogether.
To begin with, while Yeine's mother has in fact died, and Yeine is, in fact, named heir to the throne, there are actually two other heirs in much better established political positions than Yeine. I figured I'll get to watch them battle it out to be the last man standing. But that doesn't happen either, and after 200-some pages of a 400 page book Yeine's life hasn't hardly been threatened at all. She spends most of her time dialogging with fallen gods and tracking down information about her mother, which is ok, but since it doesn't have any bearing on the succession plotline she appears to be a somewhat ineffectual protagonist. Soon after we discover that Yeine is slated to die during the succession ceremony, which explains why no one has made any real threats against her. At one point one of the other two heirs makes a power play against Yeine's former homeland; there's a bit of a struggle, and I thought the intrigue might start to develop. But it ends fairly quickly, and turned out to be not so intriguing at all, especially if you're used to fantasy intrigues along the lines of Robert Jordan and GRRM. Throughout the second half of the book Yeine comes to terms with her death and explores/experiences a bit more. Action is almost nonexistent in the book; I'd say the only real action takes place in the last 40 pages or so. The ending pans out how I thought it probably would, however, with a nice twist that I did not anticipate. So much for the critiques.
Now allow me to rebut my own critiques. What I didn't realize until maybe half way through the book is that it was not structured to be a political intrigue at all. I would say it's rather more like a travelogue, except in this case the protagonist isn't so much exploring a fantasy realm as exploring a political structure and a pantheon of gods. Once I made this realization and transitioned my expectations about the book, the read was very enjoyable. Along with the story the author poses some very compelling concepts and questions about immortality, balance of power, and right and wrong.
The casual observer might argue that these concepts and questions have all been covered in other works, but I would say that the author addresses them in ways I have not seen. Likewise the pantheon of gods that the author creates incorporates concepts used elsewhere, some even thousands of years old, though she manifests these concepts in unique ways I have not previously encountered.
The final category I would say really sets this book apart from others is the style of diction that the author employs. It is very poetic, both in pacing and style and word choice, and she uses it very effectively to create emotional sensations corresponding to the events taking place in the book. I was incredibly impressed - considering this is Nora's inaugural novel - that she employs this technique better than any other fantasy author I've read. I would go so far as to say that 100kK was not so much a story as it was an emotional experience. The only other artistic piece that I know of that I could compare it to is the video game "Flower", which is not so much a video game as it is an emotional experience, the difference being Flower uses the video game medium where as 100kK uses literature. A rougher analogy might be the recent blockbuster "Avatar", but with less emphasis on action and plot and much more emphasis on beauty and conceptuality. This diction, though rich throughout, crescendos at the end, providing a powerful and satisfying finale.
In summary, while 100kK was not what I originally expected, I found it to be a very enjoyable read, though I imagine it might not appeal to all types of readers. If you appreciate a wide variety of literature and don't mind the travelogue style of storytelling, this book is packed with interesting concepts and beautiful, moving language that are definitely worth the money and time investment. I look forward to the sequels.

Final rating: 8/10

Review of "Red Seas Under Red Skies" by Scott Lynch

2010-03-26T14:42:00.004-06:00

As I was wrapping up with "Fallen Dragon" about a month ago I was at a bit of a loss for what to read next. I did a bit of poking around and asking around, recommendations for longstanding epics like "Wizard's First Rule" were bandied around. Then I happened upon an entry in GRRM's blog where he suggest several new authors. I dutifully looked them up on my local bookstore and found exactly three of the recommended nine. One of which was Scott Lynch. So my journey began.
The only book of Lynch's that my local Barnes had in stock was "Red Seas Under Red Skies", which is apparently the second book of a series he is writing that follows the adventures of protagonists Locke Lamora and Jean Tannen, thieves and grifters extraordinaire. I was hooked from the very first line of the first chapter, "The Game was Carousel Hazard, the stakes were roughly half of all the wealth they commanded in the entire world, and the plain truth was that Locke Lamora and Jean Tannen were getting beaten like a pair of dusty carpets." That's actually a pretty good study for opening lines in general; introduces the characters, immediately puts them in peril, sets the tone for the story, all that good stuff. So I kept reading and for several chapters, maybe a good quarter of the book, the pace keeps up, the characters get put even more squarely under the hammer, and the witty diction had me laughing all the way.
Then Lynch made a very interesting plot twist, and by interesting I mean unfortunate. Locke and Jean are captured by one of the primary antagonists and coerced to perform a task for him. All well and good. Except that this task is something with which Locke and Jean had no skill whatsoever, and would be a long shot to begin with. No matter, of course, this antagonist has someone who happens to be skilled in that area and can teach them. Also, I should mention that this antagonist is supposedly a great military leader of a city, which would imply that he is quite a smart person. So I can't help but think to myself, "well, if this guy is so desperate, why doesn't he just send out his own man who knows what he's doing, instead of two guys who don't have a clue?" Serious suspension of disbelief moment for me, but I figured, so long as I have money and time invested in this book I may as well finish it.
So I kept reading, hoping that maybe Lynch had something up his sleeve that could redeem the plot. It didn't happen. In fact, from a plot point of view, the book actually got worse, not from a believability standpoint but because they get captured by pirates and then for most of the rest of the book they are no longer the ones calling the shots and their skills are even less useful, and their story correspondingly becomes less interesting.
The book also suffers from other, non-plot-related shortcomings. I found that Lynch has a tendency to over explain things. For example; in one part of the book the characters steal into a house using a classic thieving tool to open a window, which Lynch nicknames a "breadwinner". He then goes on to explain WHY this tool is nicknamed a breadwinner, even though the WHY is very obvious. If this only happened once or twice I probably wouldn't have noticed. But when it happens frequently, to the point where you're explaining your characters actions, it comes across as if you don't trust your audience to be able to figure things out for themselves. Also, the wit in the earlier diction of the book slowly disappears. I'm guessing it had to do with the introduction of the pirates; who of course need to be more coarse than witty. Lynch also relies extensively on having his characters issue threats to people, either the protagonists, or supporting cast, or whoever. I know it's a tension building technique, but it's counter productive when it's overused, and you have to keep coming up with more and more outrageous threats to make your threats sound threatening. Eventually I just started reading these section as "insert threat here". Lynch also borrows a scene from actual pirate Thomas Anstis in holding a mock trial, which probably won't bother anyone unless you're a fan of pirate history. Finally, a lot of the ending plot sequence; who lives, who dies, what actually gets stolen from who, is pretty predictable, made so much the worse because Lynch devotes a section of a chapter explaining how the ending caper was pulled off when it was obvious to me already how it had been pulled off.
On the plus side the book was well paced, and structured appropriate to the plot, and Lynch did manage to set up some funny lines for his characters. Sadly, this was not quite enough to make up for the other short-comings. My guess from what I could infer about the first book of the series was that it was probably a better book, since it would have featured thieves in a city, where they could actually dictate the terms of their own story and use their skills like they are supposed to. It's only a rough assumption, and to be honest, I'm probably not likely to find out if I'm right.

Final Rating: 4/10

Next up: "The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms" by N. K. Jemisin

Health Care, Obama, and what the Republicans are doing Right

2010-03-24T21:32:00.003-06:00

Every presidential campaign sees presidential hopefuls making promises about what they will do once they're in office, and millions of voters (theoretically) voting for their preferred candidate based on the promises they make. And if you've been voting long enough you're probably savvy to the fact that once presidents get in office they don't follow up on all their promises, however, they do have to at least attempt to accomplish SOME of their promises or they risk losing face come next election time. So while it's not surprising to me that Obama has pushed a health care agenda, I do have some questions about the when and how of it.
First of all, pushing health care as a first term project, especially in the first year, especially during two wars and an economic recession, seems like a bad case of timing to me. Sure Obama had the benefit of high public opinion and growing numbers of unemployed to help sway voters, and I'm guessing the logic of the strategy went something along the lines of "well, we have majorities in both houses and a 60 seat majority in the senate, so better now than later". OK, fine, I can roll with that for a now, but keep in mind that the argument assumes that congressional seats would be in danger of being lost to Republicans in the future, or more simply, Democrats were planning to lose popularity. Hmmm...
Second point; I remember reading a very eye-opening statement in the SAS Mental Endurance Handbook that explained that the most destructive force in warfare is actually not killing but rather chaos. If you can inflict enough chaos you don't have to do all the work of killing. A similar concept applies to politics, and unfortunately government health care is a relatively politically dangerous agenda to push, as there are multiple ways to attack it. You can attack the technical aspect of the health care itself, or the financing side, the expansion of government/constitutionalist side, personal rights, etc. Heck, it's how the whole "death panel" issue even got any airtime, it's a chaos attack, and unfortunately chaos works on many people. Contrast that to other issues Obama could have focused on. Everyone wants the economy to improve. Everyone wants to finish the conflicts in the middle east and bring our troops the hell home. Staking a presidential term on a relatively vulnerable legislation seems questionable to me.
Third point; execution. Along with health care, Obama made other campaign promises, among them being transparency in government. Yet, this bill couldn't get passed without closed congressional sessions and controversial voting procedures. Now, Obama supporters could argue that basically the last year or so has been about transparency, an attempt to find bi-partisanship, etc etc etc, which is all fine and good, but in the end, so what? Did they really expect Republicans to capitulate to an obviously Democratic agenda? If this is what it was going to take to pass this bill, why not do it months ago and save everyone so much hassle?
Which brings me to my forth and final point: propaganda and public opinion. By dragging a debate about an arguable topic like health care on for months the Democrats effectively handed Republicans a soap box which they've used to a very good advantage. Obama's popularity has dropped significantly, careers have been solidified for Sean Hannity, Glen Beck and Sarah Palin (and Keith Olbermann is no longer a blip on anyone's radar screen), and in a little over a year no one remembers that Republicans ate away at the personal liberties of Americans, ruined our international reputation, raised the national deficit, and poured hundreds of billions of dollars into a giant hole called Iraq. In the end, this has been a legislative victory for Democrats, but a big PR boost for Republicans.
In my mind, though both parties have their hard core bases, a large percentage of Americans, possibly even a majority of Americans, simply want a government that will keep them safe and able to pursue life as usual. If Obama had stayed out of health care for his first term, and simply focused on the economy and bringing our military home, he probably would have maintained a relatively high popularity level, not only for himself but for fellow Democrats, and would have had favorable election results in 2010 and 2012, and he could have pursued health care during the second term. At the very least he could have pursued health care this term with less PR damage to himself and his party. Now I'm afraid he's tied his success of his political career to the success of our new health care system. I hope, not so much for his sake but for ours, that this health care reform really works.

Review of "Fallen Dragon" by Peter F. Hamilton

2010-02-19T16:56:00.003-07:00

Over Christmas I picked up a copy of "Fallen Dragon" by Peter F. Hamilton on the recommendation of my brother. It's the first of Hamilton's books I've read, though I did read his short story "Blessed by an Angel" in The New Space Opera. This purchase was made all the more auspicious since it was the first book I've ever bought from Portland's storied Powell's Books. Anyway, I digress...
I read the first chapter in the Powell's coffee shop and immediately knew I was going to enjoy the book. The story follows a series of POV characters (which is apparently typical for Hamilton), mostly centered around main protagonist Lawrence Newton. Once I got a bit of Newton's background I almost wonder if the story line was a bit of a tongue-in-cheek satire of so much teenage SF fan-fiction out there; Newton was a full fledged nerd...until he gets laid...and becomes a commerce raider. Anyway, the background plot is window-dressed nicely, though there are a few plot twists which you'll probably be able to anticipate, or at least I did (but I'm giving no plot spoilers, you'll just have to read and find out). Not to say that the beginning was at all weak, but in my experience the book really begins to hit home after the background stuff is mostly taken care of and the main action on Thallspring picks up.
Hamilton uses an easy style of diction to follow; not every line is poetry but frankly I think the simple, often vernacular style does a lot to present the mood of the story. The dialogue is enjoyable, and occasionally hilarious. I found the plot to be a bit jumpy, the Thallspring plot line particularly seems to bog down for a bit and then jumps forward quite rapidly. Nothing too distracting though. What I probably enjoyed the most about the story overall was the richness of the universe. Hamilton has an explanation for everything, from the economics to the technology, sociology, the whole lot. He also manages to explain it all without the book becoming an encyclopedia or travelogue, so the end product was very enjoyable to read. Hamilton also works quite a bit of philosophy into the book, going beyond just your basic "big corporate society vs. the romanticized individualist". It would be hard to summarize all the hit points, but you do get the effects of corporations on society, the ethical use of power, ethical distribution of wealth and technology in society, genetic/biological engineering, etc. He incorporates very believable packages of philosophy to his characters, and it's a nice treat for people who like to see more than just you basic action-centric space opera. The ending was very satisfying; there were a few ending plot twists that I anticipated and a few that I didn't which is probably the way it should be.
Ending critiques; I found the Simon Roderick characters to be a little bit weak. For highly developed beings, there were some things I thought they should have picked up on a little bit faster. Also, the use of the muscle suits seemed inconsistent at times; mostly at one point where Lawrence's platoon is ambushed, and somehow half the men die as if their armor did not exist. Additionally, for someone with access to software as powerful as Prime, Lawrence doesn't seem to use it very effectively, including during said ambush. Also, there a a very few parts, though one part at the end particularly stands out, where the pacing gets bogged down by multi-paragraph dialogue, which is mostly the characters discussion their viewpoints. I thought that for the most part these viewpoints were either already demonstrated or could have been pared down quite a bit to improve the pacing.
Overall still a very enjoyable read, it has kept my evenings entertaining for well over a month.

Final Rating: 8/10

Next Up: "Red Seas Under Read Skies" by Scott Lynch

Review of "The Gathering Storm" by Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson

2009-12-17T17:14:00.003-07:00

Well, the long dry spell finally ended this November with the next installment of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series entitled "The Gathering Storm" (TGS). Of course, this is a bittersweet moment for fans of the series, as it is another reminder that the great Jordan died in September 2007. The series is being completed by Brandon Sanderson, though supposedly Jordan had written bits and pieces of the remaining content before his passing. These portions, if there were any, were not immediately obvious to me, and TGS definitely read like a Sanderson piece, which in my humble opinion is a good thing, because I would feel somewhat pretentious offing a review of a Robert Jordan book. I mean really, what can you say other than 'it was really long, and really good'. Anyway, on to the review.
Sanderson noted in the forward to TGS that he would never be able to mimic Jordan's style, and did not try to, instead trying to apply his style to Jordan's story as best he could. This was one of the main aspects of TGS that I was anticipating (dreading?) when cracking it open for the first time. I mean, this guy has to bring the story home for us, right? So hopefully he can at least do a serviceable job. I think Sanderson handled the transition very well, definitely better than 'serviceable' though not necessarily 'stellar'. I got hung up on a few things; Siuan loads up on the fishing metaphors a good deal more than in previous books, the characters all get full visual descriptions as if we haven't already read 11 previous books and know exactly what they look like already, and, I found the character of Matrim Cauthon the least true-to-character of all involved, which is most unfortunately for me as he was my favorite character in the previous books. Sanderson also seems to have a style that ends up explaining situations to a greater degree where as Jordan tended to imply, and let readers make the connections themselves, even to a point where at times I wondered if Sanderson was intending to write for a YA audience. These are probably my biggest critiques, however, and Sanderson does do an outright excellent job in many circumstances; in particular the characters of Rand, Egwene and Cadsuane I think he hit spot on.
One thing that Sanderson did which Jordan was not known for doing is he narrowed the scope of the book to the more central characters, and I think it really turned out well, especially if the series is to end in two more books. Of course, this is not without its drawbacks, as some primary characters (read here Perrin, Faile, et al) make little more than cameo appearances, and others (Lan and Elayne in particular) do not appear directly at all. I'm guessing that was a trade off Sanderson had to make when structuring the book, and though as a fan I would have liked to keep up with all the characters, I ultimately think this was the correct decision for plot progression and pacing.
What is there to say about the plot except that it continues. Jordan himself admitted in several interviews that one of his underlying themes in the series is that his characters must make decisions with incomplete or faulty data, and as a result, sometimes they make the wrong decision. This is especially obvious in this book, where story lines that have been accumulating for a while, in some cases for several books, have come to a head and we get to observe the results of character decisions. I don't know if Sanderson considered this or not, but he got a huge benefit in having 11 previous books to build momentum for him, and in my opinion he really capitalizes on this. Frankly, if a reader sticks with the Wheel of Time series after 11 books, he/she probably cares a good deal for the characters in the story, and Sanderson really hits the emotional side of the story home in a way that most series cannot do simply because they don't last as long.
In short, The Gathering Storm is not that hyper-addictive page turner that previous books in the series were, though that is not meant to knock Brandon Sanderson at all. I know of very few people in the history of F&SF lit that had the level of craft that Robert Jordan had, and all things considered Sanderson did a great job. It was very satisfying to see some characters get their just deserts, especially a couple that have been a long time coming now (though don't jump to any conclusions if you haven't read the book yet). As with many books, the second half of TGS was a good deal better than the first half, and the closing few chapters were absolute dynamite. Definitely worth the buy.

Final Rating: 9/10

Review of "Gardens of the Moon" by Steven Erikson

2009-11-04T16:30:00.002-07:00

This is the second book of the Malaz world I have read, the first being "Night of Knives" by Ian C. Esslemont which I've reviewed previously. As I noted before, I was initially drawn to the Malaz series of books by the reportedly extensive world building that these two authors put into the stories, apparently over the course of some 20 years.

"Gardens of the Moon" (hereafter GotM) is the first book written by Erikson in the Malaz world, which I did not know at the time I selected it but which proved fortunate as I probably would have been lost otherwise. Since the Malaz world encompasses such an extensive history and the underlying story arcs of the various characters span much more material than the average novel, the scope of Malaz books is quite enormous, GotM all the more so because it was the first book to be written. Because of this scope, Erikson certainly faced challenges with structuring GotM, and though I think he handles the challenge well the unconventional structure is still obvious to the reader. I've read and seen interviews with Erikson in which he fully admits he has lost readers because they have become too bogged down in GotM and never returned to book (or the series). To me, these challenges were most manifested in two ways:
1) The first 25%-30% of the book is relatively heavy on backstory vs. plot progression. Though there is still action during this portion of the book, it is not always obvious at first glance why the character act the way they do/make the decisions they make. By the end of the book everything does make sense, though the average reader may not wait that long to find out. Additionally, the remaining 75%-70% of the book does focus more on plot movement, though overall the backstory element definitely consumes more content than the average novel. Personally, I enjoyed this; I enjoy seeing how other authors create their worlds, and I found the introductory section of the novel to be more interesting than confusing. However, I'm also probably not the average F/SF reader, so take this with a grain of salt.
2) Erikson first introduces the reader to a group of characters in or near the city of Pale, and spends some time establishing their plot lines. Then he abruptly transitions to an entirely different group of unrelated characters in the city of Darujistan, and spends a good amount of time establishing their plot lines. Structurally, this makes beginning of the novel seem disjointed. Naturally, I think most readers will assume that the two groups of characters will meet each other at some point, and of course they do, however, it does require of the reader a lot of patience for the plot to really get into gear. Personally, I don't particularly appreciate character growth, story arc, backstory, or whatever element, any more than another, so this did not bother me too much. Also, having finished the novel, I don't think Erikson could have structured it differently to achieve a more readable result. Again, this is grain of salt time.
To be frank, the plot does not become fully developed until about halfway through the book, but it makes up for lost time throughout the remainder, and by the end the plot is moving quite rapidly and laying on the tension and suspense in heavy doses; more than I actually anticipated and probably more than the average F/SF novel in general. The ending was very satisfying, at one point I was wondering how Erikson would tie everything together but he manages beautifully. The diction reads well and is quite poetic throughout.
A few criticisms:
1) As far as world building is concerned, Erikson seems to focus on the world as a series of events, where as Esslemont offered more of an economic/military backstory. Given the previously mentioned challenges regarding the scope of the project, Erikson may not have found a way to squeeze these aspects in. This is only my personal preference, I don't think this affected the readability of the book, I only wish there had been more variety in the presented backstory.
2) The settings did not seem terribly unique to me, especially given the volume of world building supposedly done for this setting. This is not to say that the setting felt like any other fantasy novel; the world of Malaz does have a distinct feel which I quite enjoy, however, I thought the various cities ought to have had a more distinct flavor and culture that presented in the book.
3) The characters by and large seemed to lack a level of uniqueness I would have hoped for, particularly since the characters are supposedly drawn from multiple cultures around the fictional world. By and large, I found the characters had similar mindsets, logical thought processes, emotions, etc. There are a few exceptions; Kruppe is a delightfully refreshing and funny character, Crokus is definitely portrayed as a younger character, Hairlock becomes obviously insane, but by and large I found this aspect of the novel to be lacking, especially when compared to such literary titans like George R. R. Martin.

Overall, the GotM was an excellent read, so much so that I purchased one of the sequels (Memories of Ice) as my next read. I would offer one caveat; given the extensive backstory involved, I would given this book more of a recommendation if you are looking for a new series to read, since the backstory will pay dividends over the duration of the sequels. If you are only looking for a stand alone novel, there are probably better options since you won't need to assimilate so much backstory and can enjoy more plot-relevant content.

Final Rating: 8.5/10

Hilarity and Randomness During my Morning Blizzard Commute

2009-10-28T21:43:00.004-06:00

Well, I'm assuming you're reading this because you're looking for some hilarity and randomness, so do I have a story for you! It all started yesterday night, when a low pressure system moved in over the Rockies and started dumping snow on us. It was still going this morning (and is in fact, STILL ongoing as I write this) which I noticed when I cleverly looked through my bedroom window upon waking up.
The first order of business was to put on some wool socks, and I don't mean my Goldtoes; I mean my thick wool rag socks, the kind that weigh about 10 pounds when they get wet. I also put on some gloves for the first time this year, and stepped outside to do battle with my weapon of choice; my ice scrapper. That's right kids, a credit card just doesn't hack it when you have 6 inches of accumulation to contend with! So I set to it, wielding my scraper and feeling much like Napoleon must have felt with his baton, and muttering the usual over-embellished comparisons about the great snowstorm of '91 that all Minnesotans do when they encounter a winter anywhere else except for maybe Northern Alaska or Siberia, but that's just a guess since I've never been to those places and it just might happen there regardless. In short order I got my car cleared off and began sliding my way to work (it seems Denver has this belief against plowing snow).
You'd think people here would be used to driving in the snow, but they're not (probably because half of them moved here from California). So I'm driving to work at about half the speed of smell, meaning it took me nearly half an hour to drive the length of two intersections, from Florida and Leetsdale, to Quebec and Leetsdale, and it was there that a certain epic bout of randomness occurred. The stretch of Leetsdale between Mississippi and Quebec is 5 lanes of traffic going down a slight grade, just enough to keep things interesting when you brake. Which was the fist problem; I noticed that the cars in front of me were braking, even though the cars in front of them were proceeding on down the hill. I managed to keep all my 190 Japanese horses under control and then I glanced around, trying to spot the source of all the hullabaloo, saying something calm and collected like, "I wonder what's the source of all this hullabaloo." About that time I see a red knit cap darting past the hood of the car in front of me across three lanes of traffic to the median. At which point I said something else very calm and collected, like, "WHAT THE HELL, THAT KID'S GOING TO KILL HIMSELF!"
Thanks to the stopped cars, however, he made it just fine, and when he reached the median and I got a clear view of him I realized he was not a kid at all. He was a midget. Yes, that's right, a midget. Not a dwarf, a midget, I know the difference. Upon reaching the median, he demonstrated for me his technique; he leaned OUT INTO TRAFFIC, and held up his right hand. The oncoming drivers, recognizing the gesture of authority, stopped, and the midget hustled his way to the far side of the road, never to be seen (by me) again. Now, I'll tell you, I've seen midgets before, but never a wonder-midget like this guy, faster than a speeding turtle, able to stop five lanes of traffic with a single hand. I laughed about that all the way to the office, and have written this blog to say; thank you Mr. Wonder-midget, you made my day.

Frank Thoughts on the Recession

2009-10-23T16:32:00.005-06:00

Let me be frank; I am actually quite excited to be alive and living in the United States today. When you're living in an economic era that people call the biggest/worst/sharpest "since the Great Depression", that sort of gives a perspective on the magnitude of our current challenges. And it's fascinating to me to be around to witness it, to see the effects on every day life, to see the major players making the moves and deducing why. Maybe it's because I have a longstanding interest in economics. Maybe it's because I work in an industry where there's work to be had so long as property values are changing, irrespective of direction. Whatever the case may be, I believe that this will be a landmark moment in the history of our nation and I guess in some morbid way I'm excited to be around to witness it. And in all frankness, I think it might even be good for our country. Yes, that's exactly what I said; I think this recession may very well be a good thing, and yes I will explain.
I think my generation and the generations that sandwich mine have grown up with an unhealthy sense of irresponsibility for most aspects of live, including finance. Where ever possible, it seems like it's always someone else's job to fix our problems, not ours. That's not meant to be a knock to the concept of cooperation; for any great society to function a high degree of cooperation is required, but there is a fine line between cooperation and irresponsibility and geez, that line has been drawn much too far on the wrong side for some time now. I come from a family where all four of my grandparents lived through the Great Depression, and not surprisingly, they're all very frugal people. I'm not sure how familiar they are with macroeconomics, but they're very very familiar with the activities that macroeconomics describes and because of their past experiences they have developed a healthy respect for it. That is something my generation seriously lacks. I'm probably unique in that my parents started a savings account for me when I was about 5 years old which I've had one ever since, and though I did not always use it like a savings account the principle of saving is a lot more instilled in me than in many others of my generation. When you have millions of voters with low financial inhibitions, it is much too easy for governments and corporations to allow and foster a culture of consumerism and irresponsibility.
I hope my generation comes out of this recession with the understanding of the value of a savings account and of understanding personal finance. I hope we learn that having a credit card is no substitute for developing the ability of living within our means. I hope we require realistic P/E ratios on our stocks. I hope we become a generation that values conserving wealth just as much as creating it. Frankly, it's easy to complain about our current President raising our deficit and worries about inflation, and it's easy to blame the last President for pouring billions of dollars down a giant hole named Iraq, or Alan Greenspan for deregulation, or our banker for offering us an ARM and 0% down, or what have you. And I think that's what we like about it; it's easy. We assume no responsibility when we blame somebody else for our problems. Frankly, I hope we become a generation that decides to man up and take charge of our own financial destiny, otherwise we're only setting the stage for this economy to happen all over again.

Quick questionaire: reading preferances

2009-09-30T21:03:00.003-06:00

I'm currently working through Steven Erikson's "Gardens of the Moon" (and thoroughly enjoying it I might add), and it brought up a question that I've thought of before and figured I'd get some opinion on it.

In most novels, and especially in SF/F novels which I tend to read, the author spends some time in the beginning of the book building the setting. One aspect in particular, which I'm focusing on for this blog, is the "beginning state" of things. There seems to be two primary routes that authors go with this. Many (most?), such as Tolkien, Robert Jordan, Terry Brooks, etc, start their worlds in a peaceful state in which some evil has set things awry. The characters must resolve this evil, and then they can return to their peaceful state. Other authors, such as George R. R. Martin and Steven Erikson, do not assume very pretty settings for their stories. Sure, some of the characters may have a more benevolent bent than others, but overall their settings are decidedly neutral, if not outright malicious.

I have mixed feelings about this. The former option seems inherently appealing; everyone likes a happy ending, a pretty picture, wrongs righted, etc, but you can only write that so many times before it becomes cliche. On the other hand, I find there's a limit to how much adversity I can slog through as a reader before I start to wonder "what's the point if there's no light at the end of the tunnel?". There's only so much of a body count you can go through before your war seems pointless.

Which type of book do you find you enjoy more, and for what reasons?

Poem for the day

2009-09-23T15:26:00.002-06:00

I don't think of myself as much of a poet, but a few lines came to mind while I was sitting in the hot tub today...

for three days the clouds shed silver
and the ground below
was dim
for a moment the sun broke through
to show the trees
held diamonds

Review of Escapement by Jay Lake

2009-09-21T12:39:00.002-06:00

Escapement is the second installment in Jay Lake’s clockpunk world, the sequel to Mainspring which I’ve reviewed previously. This was actually the first book of Lake’s that I’ve ever started reading, and stopped about midway to read Mainspring, which I won in one of Lake’s enjoyable (and appreciated) contests which he hosts from time to time on his blog. I’ve really been looking forward to getting back to Escapement after having Mainspring fill in the back-story and setting for me. This is not to say that Escapement could not be read as a standalone book. I got halfway through it and would have finished it just fine without the help of Mainspring, however, I needed to infer quite a bit to get up to speed (sweet, there’s a wall around the equator, I wonder what that’s about…).

Escapement follows the paths of three protagonists as they engage in various adventures throughout the Northern Hemisphere including two characters noted in Mainspring (Al-Wazir and Childress) and a brand new character native to the wall (Paolina). During their travels Escapement fleshes out the setting put forth in Mainspring, particularly the super powers of the Northern Hemisphere, and various secret societies and the strings they try to pull. It also presents questions about power and the proper (ethical?) use of power, both on the micro and macro scale. Lake ties the various components of the story together very well, and at a price point of $7.99 USD it’s a steal.

Personally I found Escapement to be a superior book to Mainspring, though that is not to belittle Mainspring by any means. I found it more character-driven than Mainspring, and I think it correspondingly draws the reader in much faster. I found the characters to be more multi-dimensional than I found Hethor in Mainspring, again contributing to the quality of the book. The character of Paolina in particular has a very interesting challenge to overcome, and her abilities make for an interesting premise that impacts not only her path but the paths of the other characters whether they realize it or not. The ending is exciting and satisfying, and it looks like Lake left himself a loophole for a direct sequel.

I did find two critiques, though this may be as much or more my personal preference rather than a reflection of Jay’s writing prowess:

1) I noted previously that I found Mainspring to be an exploratory novel rather than a character-centric novel, and therefore relied heavily on its unique setting. Although Escapement is much more of a character-centric novel, it does still rely on the unique setting, and would not be the same story or have the same quality if it were purely historical fiction and lacked the clockpunk setting. The problem is that I found a section of the middle of Escapement where none of the POV characters were actively engaged in the most clockpunkish aspects of the setting. Paolina ends up in Europe for a time, Childress is in a submarine/in China, and Al-Wazir strikes off across Africa. I found myself thinking, “Jay, I’m reading this book for the Wall. I want to know more about the Southern Hemisphere. Why are you giving me Europe, China, and Africa? We’ve already got those in the real world.” Fortunately, Al-Wazir gets back onto the Wall and into a neat little subquest, and the situation resolves itself.

2) I had a bit of a problem with Childress’ story line. Not that it didn't make sense, or that I had problems with her character. In fact it was the opposite; she’s a very smart lady thrust into a situation that lays the intrigue on pretty think. At the beginning of the book I was pretty excited to see where that plotline would go. Unfortunately, most of her storyline revolves around Childress being on a submarine. At first it’s alright (hey, a submarine!), but eventually I lost the sense of tension. It’s kind of hard to generate intrigue on a submarine without a Russian captain, a caterpillar device, and Jack Ryan. That’s not to say that her plotline is pointless, it certainly has instances of intrigue and excitement, but too many times I found myself reading Childress just because I knew Paolina’s POV was coming up, not because I wanted to find out what would happen to Childress next.

Final Rating: 8/10

Review of "Night of Knives" by Ian C. Esslemont

2009-09-10T12:39:00.003-06:00

I realize that in my last book review I promised a review of Jay Lake's "Escapement". However, since I am currently undertaking a fairly extensive world building project, I decided to put "Escapement" on hold and pick up "Night of Knives" (from now on, NoK). Reason being that author Ian C. Esslemont created the fictional world of Malaz with friend (and fellow author) Stephen Erikson over the course of 20-some years beginning in 1982. They have education backgrounds in anthropology and archeology, so I picked up NoK with pretty high expectations.

First off, I should note that upon reading NoK and looking over several other Malaz books in the bookstore, it seems that the Malaz series (if you can call it that...anthology?) spans several generations of characters and events, which would be appropriate given the extensive history the two authors concocted for the world. However, given that NoK is not the first book of the Malaz world to be written, there's an awful lot of backstory that you'll need to infer or research for yourself. Even now, after finishing the book, I feel like there's quite a bit about the setting that wasn't explained (particularly with the Warren's, the magical element in the world of Malaz). I don't think this keeps NoK from being a stand alone book. But if you think you'd like to get into this series it might be worth your while to try them in the chronological order they were written.

NoK takes place entirely in one night in the city of Malaz, which is apparently a somewhat backwater city of a much larger empire. The story primarily follows two POV characters as they first observe, and then participate in, the events that happen on this particular night. The book opens somewhat like a who-done-it, because the main characters don't know what is going on, and they have to figure it out (while their lives are in danger and their realities become more twisted, of course). Esslemont does a good job of building the suspense and doling out the information in small doses, and it is not until quite a ways into the book that you actually realize what is going on (of course, if you've read other Malaz books you might realize it a lot sooner than I did). There's also a neat little subplot about one of the main characters, who apparently has a hidden identity which is slowly revealed during the course of the book (again, virgin Malaz reader here). Esslemont does not disappoint me with his worldbuilding; he has a lot of nice little tidbits added to the narrative that really do a nice job of rounding out the story, in addition to the already mentioned extensive backstory/world history.

A few critiques:

A) The main characters suffer a bit from being too reactive as opposed to proactive. One in particular has this problem more than the other. I get that they don't know what's going on at first, but even after they figure it out they still lack the proactivity I would expect.

B) The other main character has motivation problems with me, or more specifically, I don't get what motivates the character to participate in the events of the evening.

C) I had a few suspension of reality moments during the book. Both characters seem to get knocked out/mortally wounded quite a bit, and yet, in the next scene they're up and at it again. Sure, the magic element can be used to explain away just about any kind of injury, but you'd think after a while the characters would become a little more pain averse. Also the cards seem to be stacked pretty highly in favor of characters with magical ability as opposed to those without. This may be the reality of the world the author has created, but it threw off the balance of the story for me.

D) One of the main characters is portrayed to be very stealthy/sneaky, yet this character ends up getting caught several times throughout the book. Would have thought this talent would be supported a bit better.

E) The author seems to enjoy the term "sough", and uses it quite a few times thoughout the book. Probably wouldn't have noticed it if the term wasn't as atypical. This is really just me being anal, and I don't think it detracts from the book at all, I'm just saying, throw in a synonym or two.

Overall very fun and entertaining read. I'll probably check out one of Erikson's Malaz books to combare with Esslemont and get a bigger view of their worldbuilding.

Final Rating: 8/10

Happy reading.

Firearms at Conventions/Townhalls

2009-08-18T14:33:00.001-06:00

Recently I've been seeing (and I'm guessing you've been seeing as well) a lot of press coverage on a few individuals who decide to carry firearms in public. Normally I don't think this would be such a big deal, but it just so happens they choose to do it when the President is giving a speech somewhere in the vacinity. Yesterday a fellow in Arizona carried an AR-15 outside the convention center where Obama was giving a speech.

My take: If they're not breaking any law, so what? They're apparently within their rights, and if they're not breaking the law, I'm sure they'd appreciate being left alone just like anybody else who isn't breaking the law.
Is this an accident waiting to happen? Seriously doubt it:
1) These people, at least in the reports I've seen so far, are OUTSIDE the buildings where the president is speaking. If you don't have line-of-sight, it's awful hard to shoot the president.
2) In addition, the reports I've seen have the individuals saying they're carrying the firearms as a demonstration. So long as they care about their firearms rights, I think they're pretty motivated to show that they can carry their firearms without risk to other people. It would be pretty self-defeating to do otherwise, don't you think?
3) As far as shooting the president by accident goes, that's ridiculous for several reasons:
A) If they're carrying their guns properly, they won't be pointed at anybody.
B) As said before, they don't have line of sight to the president.
C) Statistically speaking, firearms are responsible for about 31,000 deaths in the US per year (including intentional homicides), while motor vehicle accidents account for over 45,000 deaths. So if you're not worried about all the cars within the vicinity of the president , then you shouldn't be worried about one or two firearms.
4) If their intention was to kill the president I'm pretty sure these folks would be more concerned with concealing their firearm, rather than carrying it out in the open as their local laws dictate.

Is this an effective form of demonstration? I don't know. I'm guessing it's probably pretty alienating to some people, and I'd probably choose a different route to draw attention to my cause. But so long as it's legal for them to do it, leave them alone.

Now, could some nut who is NOT concerned with firearms rights pose as a firearms demonstrator to try to get to the President? Possibly. But you have to realize, this person would first have to get line of sight to the President at an effective range for his firearm. Then he would have to draw the gun, in plain view of everybody because it wouldn't be concealed, and he would have to aim the gun, again, in plain view of everybody, before he could pull the trigger. Add that to the fact that, in the reports I've read, each of these demonstrators is almost immediately identified by local police and monitored during the course of the demonstration, I highly doubt anybody would be able to use this "disguise" effectively.

I understand that these situations are interesting to people and that the media, as a news source, should report on them. But please, before you choose hysteria, give the situation a moment's thought and decide if it's really worth the panic.

Townhall Meetings: A Perspective

2009-08-12T11:20:00.000-06:00

A quick observation while my reports are generating. The current wave of "townhall meetings" is getting a lot of coverage, especially when the yelling gets going, ohhh, the camera just loves that. And of course, you have Democrat politicians pointing fingers at the Republicans for fostering these outbursts. That's all good and well, but it's not primarily what I'm interested in. The observation I want to make is that both political parties have used these tactics. It's not news. Anyone remember the Iraq War? Remember those demonstrations and the Republicans taking the "high road"? This is nothing new, it's all part of the game, and it's in both party's playbooks. Heck, you could even see Hilary using these tactics a bit toward the end of the Democratic primaries (and Palin toward the end of the election).

These loud, brash outbursts have a two-pronged effect; on the one hand they stir your base, and on the other you try to rattle the opposition and hope they slip and make a mistake you can use. It's very polarizing, and for that reason, these tactics are usually used when one side perceives they have a severe disadvantage/is desperate/has nothing to lose.

Now we get to the part that interests me. I don't really care so much about what people are shouting about, but rather is the tactic being used properly and to what effect. The timing of this seems a bit strange. For the first time in his Presidency, Obama has actually run into a pretty tough legislative battle over this health care deal. It would seem that the Republicans shouldn't be so concerned, and yet these tactics seem to indicate that they are. Is this simply because this is Obama's first blatantly-left legislation that he's tried to push (I mean really, who's going to protest efforts to "fix" the economy)? Is it because Republicans are trying to stop the steady stream of legislation that Obama has been passing? Is this basically political posturing, essentially telling the Democrats that this is as far left as they had better try to go? Some combination? None of the above? What do you think?

Review of Mainspring by Jay Lake

2009-08-07T13:55:00.001-06:00

Just finished reading Mainspring by Jay Lake and figured I'd hop on here and put in my two cents about the book. Should be interesting, since it's technically my first book review of all time (aside from cracking open a new book, reading the first chapter, and subsequently hurling it at the wall, or cracking open a new book, reading the first chapter, and subsequently hurling it at the cash register). I also happened to be about half-way through Escapement (the sequel) before I started on Mainspring, so there was a lot of backstory I had already deduced before reading the book. But I digress...

General overview: The book is an alternate history of the world set in a Victorian steampunk/clockpunk setting. The main character, Hethor, is sent on a mission by the archangel Gabriel to save the world. Events unfold, adventures ensue. By far the aspect of the novel I appreciated most was the setting. Jay goes into fairly intricate detail in explaining the mechanics of the world, and describing the cultures/societies, both on the traditional continents and on the equatorial wall. If you could juice that creativity and inject it intravenously, there would be hoards of would-be authors lining up to buy it. The voice/diction of the novel is definitely bourgeois, almost poetic at times, to the point where Jay occasionally throws in a serious vocabulary word or three. I personally found this to be part of the presentation style, and only rarely distracting, though I could see why some people might have a harder time with it. The resolution was satisfactory, though not the explosive boom-pow ending that Hollywood usually goes for.

If you read any other reviews of Mainspring, such as on Amazon or so forth, the main criticisms you'll probably find fall with the central character (he's flat, little character development, etc). This introduces my first caution of the book. It's probably very important for you to understand what kind of a reader you are before purchasing this book. It does not read like your typical run-of-the-mill SF/F. I find that a lot of novels/tv shows/movies/etc nowadays are very character centric. Don't know if there's a sociological or artistic reason for this, but that's apparently what audiences expect. And while Mainspring is written from the point of view of a central character (because the target audience is human and understands events from a human point of view), the story is not a character centric story. The story, at least as I found it, is an exploration of a theoretical world (and an awesome theoretical world at that). Yes there are challenges/obstacles for the character to overcome, but if this is the only part of a book that you appreciate than you will probably feel short-changed. Since I enjoy geofiction and writing in general on a personal level, you can see why I might not feel this way.

My second caution of the book: If you have very strong religious beliefs/are easily offended by religious subjects, you may want to take care when reading this book. Jay does a thorough alternate world history, Christianity included. I didn't find the book offensive in the least, but I can see how some might.Critically, my biggest complaints are that I found Hethor's character progression a bit slow (as far as him learning to take control of his own life), and I found the post-wall portion of the book less substantial for the most part than pre-wall.

My rating: 7/10.

If you're a character-centric reader: 4/10.

A review of the sequel Escapement will be forthcoming.

Happy reading.

FFXIV, MMO's, gaming in general

2009-08-04T12:26:00.001-06:00

Finally a non-political blog...

I'm a bit stoked about the reported development of FFXIV. The clips and stills that have been released so far look, what's the word I'm looking for...awesome? Of course, that's usually to be expected with a FF game. I enjoyed FFXI when it first came out, and am really looking forward to this sequel.

One criticism I keep seeing a lot runs along the lines of "just a repackaging of FFXI". I'm not sure what exactly this means, since it can be taken in several ways. If repackaging means it has the same gaming elements that every other MMO has, then sure, I agree, but that's not really much of a comment is it? Or if it means same game, better graphics, then I guess we will have to see, but from what the game developers say, it shouldn't be that way, and I sure hope they're right.

I don't consider myself a hardcore gamer by any means, though I enjoy an occasional game, and I'd say MMO's are probably my 2nd favorite genre of gaming just after strategy games (the Civilization series of games is easily my all-time favorite series). Even among MMO's I haven't played extensively; I've played FFXI the most, followed by WoW, EVE, and a (very) brief stint on Galaxies. Of all of the MMO's I've played, I think FFXI came the closest to what I think would be the ultimate MMO.One problem I find with MMO's is that the bulk of the game's content is mostly inaccessible unless you intend to build your life around the game. FFXI and WoW both require an inordinate amount of mass killing to access new content. EVE doesn't require a lot of killing, or even leveling per se (since you level even when you're logged off), but to access the primary gaming experience you need to join a corporation of somekind, and to make yourself valuable to the corporation you make a significant time commitment. For someone like me, who can really only offer 30-40 minutes of gameplay on the average day, or maybe 2-3 hours max on the occasional weekend, that makes for very slow progress. I consistently end up with gaming experiences that can basically be summarized as, "OK, killing that mob was fun the first time, alright the second time, but after killing about 500 of them I'm pretty bored." You get to see pretty neat screenshots of game content, and hear about players in the game doing fun stuff, but you can't do it because you don't invest 6 hours+ per day to leveling so that you can get there too.

On the other hand, I also see the problem from the game designers point of view. If you design a good game, you'll find a certain market of people who want to invest loads of time into it, and if you don't provide them with enough difficulty you run out of content very fast. And where do you think you'll get more revenue from: these hardcore gamers, or casual gamers like me? That's self explanitory. This would probably explain why I've never subscribed to an MMO longer than two months. I either find that I don't enjoy the game or that it's taking up too much of my time.

From what I've read about FFXIV (which is mostly speculation, since the developers have said very little about the specifics of the game), the content, leveling system, and overall gaming experience should be accessible to a wider gaming audience than FFXI. My opinion is that this is a good direction to go, but not knowing any more specifics there's not a lot more I can say about this. Additionally, I hope they don't take it too far. Some things, like waiting forever to find a party, then waiting forever to find MOBs because everyone camps in the same spots, just plain detract from the game. On the other hand, the overall level of difficulty and teamwork required for FFXI maintained a certain level of player intelligence that you just don't find on the average WoW server. Sure that means less people played the game, but those that did enjoyed it a lot more (which is probably why the game still exists after 7 years). The teamwork element also fostered a much more close knit gaming community than is generally found in WoW (I realize that this varies from guild to guild, I'm just speaking generally for the two overall gaming experiences). Another example: the difficulties and failure rates of crafting in FFXI presented barriers to entry on the front end, but led to higher revenues, making crafting a viable profession/money maker in the game even at beginners levels, where as in WoW the bulk of recipies you learn are mostly marginal or worthless altogether.

I think if FFXIV can protect the qualities that made FFXI unique, while at the same time increasing accessability for the casual gamer (and adding obvious realism aspects like range of motion, jumping, emotes, etc), it will probably take the place of my new favorite MMO.

Some thoughts on Healthcare

2009-07-29T16:27:00.003-06:00

A few thoughts on the current healthcare issue. You know the drill; read and reply.

1. According to the CIA World Factbook, which lists information for more entities than the IMF or World Bank, there are 16 countries that generated GDP per capita at a higher rate than the US in 2008. Ignoring oil rich middle eastern countries and European microstates, there are 10 European countries with a higher GDP per capita than the US, all of which have health care systems primarily facilitated by their central government (Australia is also listed, and also has government facilitated health care). In addition, many of these countries, particularly Scandinavian countries, consistently rank highest on independent studies of health care quality. Obviously this is just a thumbnail observation of a lot of complex data, people make whole careers off of studying the data involved in this observation and making a comprehensive study of this subject alone is well beyond the scope of a simple blog. However, these facts do go a long way in debunking what you might say are typical healthcare myths: universal healthcare can only be afforded with a) decreased levels of quality, b) decreased economy, or c) both.

2. My conclusion above makes an obvious assumption: that the economies of these 10 European nations wouldn’t be that much higher if they did not have universal health care. There is a definite possibility that they would be higher, though I’m not sure that bears on the topic. The fact of the matter is that the majority of citizens in these countries prefer to have universal healthcare, so their governments provide it for them. The citizens made the choice, whether consciously or unconsciously, that providing healthcare for everyone in their country was more preferable to earning ‘that’ much more money, and this is what I think is the crux of the issue; the concept of having “enough”. Many people in the world never get the ability to decide whether or not they have enough because they live at extreme poverty levels. However history has plenty of examples of individuals deciding that they have “enough”; recent examples include Bill Gates and Warren Buffet to name a few. This is the concept of “enough” on a micro scale. The history of European healthcare is an example of “enough” on the macro scale. I think that sooner or later, Americans will eventually realize that having incredible amounts of national wealth is not worth anything unless we’re willing to spend it.

3. Whenever that day comes, there is always a further argument that expecting wealthier taxpayers to shoulder a disproportionate burden of healthcare is unjust/unconstitutional/et

c. Naturally, the rightness or wrongness of this argument depends on your point of view. My view is that the voting majority has the right to demand whatever they want. That is what is called ‘government by the people’; we, the voters, can make our constitution say whatever we want through the process of our government. It is a fairly safe assumption that if you are a wealthy taxpaying entity in America it is either because you make a profit from a) providing goods and services to American citizens, or b) providing goods and services to other entities that provide goods and services to American citizens. Either way, you are earning your wealth from American citizens, and the citizenry is perfectly within their rights to vote in favor of reciprocity. In other words, if you want access to the single largest economy in the world, this will be part of your cost of doing business.

4. This all being said, I won't make a blanket generalization that universal healthcare is the end all of healthcare problems. These are complex issues, with a high level of planning and execution required if some success is to be expected, and I'm not opposed to a high level of constructive criticism in this legislation as part of the checks and balances process.

5. Final point not dealing specifically with the issue itself but rather with politics behind it; I find it interesting that Obama would choose this point in his administration to press this issue. You'd think he already has enough on his plate with the economy. But obviously, with an eye to the future, he has to deliver on platform-specific campaign promises that he can refer back to 3 years from now, and ‘fixing the economy’, though desirable, is not platform-specific. With many individuals in the marketplace feeling conservatively optimistic about the economy in 2010, I think Obama needed to push this legislation now while unemployment levels are still high. Additionally, he’s still riding his post-election popularity, though it has diminished somewhat, and what good is an approval rating if you don’t use it. My guess is that from a strategic point of view, Obama is going to push his most left-leaning legislation first, and then spend the next three years becoming more moderate in preparation for 2012. It’s not only what I would do, it’s what Machiavelli would do (when assuming control of a new state, inflict all the pain you need to inflict immediately instead of dribbling it out in small doses over time).

Reference for point #1, the countries mentioned are (in descending order from highest GDP/Capita):
4. Norway
5. Ireland
6. Denmark
7. Switzerland
8. Iceland
11. Sweden
12. Netherlands
13. Finland
14. Austria
15. Australia
16. Belgium

Economic/Political Potpourri (Another Facebook Repost)

2009-07-24T17:19:00.001-06:00

I've had a couple of thoughts I figured I'd type up since I've been dormant for a while. No overlying theme; some economics, George W, Prop 8, waterboarding... Give it 'em a once over and tell me what you think.

1. There's no such thing as fiat money in a fractional reserve banking system. By this I mean there's no such thing as money that is not backed by "something". True, America no longer has a gold or silver standard. But in the absence of a commodity standard, users of the dollar (or whatever currency) will peg their demand for most dollars to the value of bank assets. I say "most" dollars, because not all dollars are created equal. Most dollars are imaginary. Tangible paper dollars and coinage make up only a fraction of the money supply of the United States (tangible money is referred to as M0 money supply). As money is deposited and re-loaned through the banking system, new money is created via the money multiplier (this new money is categorized into M1 - M3 money depending on the type of transaction). This system works fine until consumers lose faith in the stability of their banking system. This would happen when consumers begin to doubt the value of the assets held by their bank (or in other words, they doubt the value of where the bank put their money). This includes the value of mortgages, consumer loans, and so forth. When consumers doubt the value of bank assets, they begin to desire M0 money over M1, M2, or M3 money, and correspondingly withdraw their deposits from their banks in the form of physical cash. On a macro scale, this decreases the overall supply of money via the inverse action of the money multiplier, which in turn jeopardizes GDP (the economy). This is one of the factors that contributed to and prolonged the great depression. In summary, in the absence of a gold or silver standard, the value of the American dollar is instead tied to bank assets.

2. Given number one above, the American economy will always be at risk of another recession similar to the current one so long as banks remain unregulated. In essence, money supply in regulated banking systems is managed by people who have a greater likelihood of managing in the best interests of the nation. Unregulated banking systems have their money supply managed by people who have a lesser likelihood of managing in the best interests of the nation. They come in two groups, I'll discuss them both.
Borrowers: There is an economic theory that the individual can maximize their own economic utility better than anyone else. In the micro scale, and in many macro situations, I believe this is true. I don't want someone to offer me apples when I want oranges. I don't want someone giving me a car loan when I want a mortgage. However, in other macro situations, this theory begins to break down. To pick a recent example, when a market such as the housing market has a long-term growth trend borrowers begin to borrow money under the (conscious or unconscious) assumption that the trend will continue, which history (and basic investing logic) dictates cannot continue indefinitely. In such circumstances, borrowing neither maximizes long-term utility for the borrower, nor is it in the best interest of the nation.
Lenders: Alan Greenspan supported bank deregulation on the assumption that bank's own self interest would keep them from making poor lending decisions (and hence protect the nation's money supply). Unfortunately, when you have a situation where you have a long term housing bubble coupled with low interest rates, lenders have a lot of incentive to make loans on unsustainable terms. Some banks were able to avoid this, however, these tend to be small-to-medium sized banks that where privately owned by individuals or entities that were willing to forgo short-term profit margin embellishment for long-term stability. Large publicly owned banks had to cater to shareholders who viewed the bank as a stock with a p/e ratio, and if managers at bank X couldn't deliver the same profit margins as those at bank Y, then they were in danger of losing their jobs. So in our situation, Alan Greenspan's theory was trumped by a greater theory; agency theory.
Under normal circumstances, either the borrower or lender will likely have the sense to make a good decision, but this doesn't hold true in all cases as we have recently experienced. Without some form of regulation to restrain bad decision making, the American economy will always be at risk of repeating the exact same thing we just went though.

3. George W. Bush. I have mixed feelings about this guy. At the beginning of his presidency and up until about 2003-04 I considered myself a Republican because, despite what my notes may look like, I actually tend to agree with a lot of their platform, examples including gun control, military, economy, etc. Unfortunately W has really done his party no favors. Forget about whether there were actually WMD's in Iraq, Bush had no reliable fallback contingency plan for the event that there weren't WMD's. Changing the war to "helping the Iraqi people" has apparently failed to convince voters in the long term. At best, that puts Bush's decision as a win-lose scenario, which is better than lose-lose, but is far inferior to win-win, which I'll talk about later. Economically, Bush raised the national debt (as a percent of GDP) for 8 years after Clinton busily lowered it for 8 years. In fact, Bush raised national debt to the highest levels since 1953 (75.5% of GDP when he left office). A big chunk of that money went to a foreign country (Iraq) where we will never ever get it back. When your original stalwarts like John Ashcroft and Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld start bailing ship, things don't look so good for your administration. When you have video footage of your own VP explaining 10 years ago why it would be a bad idea to invade Iraq, and then you go and run into the very same pitfalls that he predicted, it doesn't look very good for you. When your former VP goes on to defend your own national security policies after you leave office, it looks a lot like they're actually his policies and not yours. When you have several notable republicans during your term exposed for all sorts of indecencies like tax evasion, gay solicitation, etc, it reflects badly on you. I also disagree with his biggest claim that he "kept America safe". Aside from the one huge exception, he failed in a large aspect of all great leaders, which is to prepare the way for someone else to take your place after you're gone. Instead W apparently prepared the way for one of the single greatest Democrat victories in history (Presidency, house, and senate). I think Bush seems like a nice guy, if I ever met him we might even become friends, and I don't doubt that he's a sincere American. But he is at best a modest president, with a lot to be modest about.

4. Barack Obama has not been in office long enough to make a truly effective judge of his abilities, but he's set himself up for several win-win situations that I quite like:
A. Hilary Clinton as SoS. After listening to her crow about her foreign experience during the nominations, he put her in the position to prove it. Either he can ride the wave of her success, or discredit her and force her into retirement. Either way he eliminates his most serious contender within his party.
B. Several "failed" nominees for cabinet positions. After seeing several Republicans embarrassed during the Bush administration, Obama does a bit of house cleaning right off the bat. Either his nominees pass the vetting process and get into office, or they become an example and warning for the rest of the party: keep your nose clean or we'll vet you too. He's establishing himself in his position and getting his party under control. Small downside is that he has to make a small public statement taking responsibility for nominating them, which doesn't give Republicans any advantage since they already had members of their party get caught (and ultimately, no one is talking about this anymore anyway).
C. Bailout. Either he succeeds and stabilizes the economy, or he gets the ammunition he needs to nationalize banks and stabilize them for good (as in, we tried equity injection and it didn't work).
D. Cuba. This one is a no brainer. He makes himself look charitable, he begins the process of eliminating an adversary in Latin America, and he appeals to Hispanic voters. The amazing thing about this one is that this was just waiting, WAITING to happen. Any president since the fall of the USSR could have done this.

5. Proposition 8. I do not consider myself anti-gay. However, I agree with the court ruling in this instance. The voters voted. I don't know how much more obvious it gets than that.

6. Gay Marriage. That being said, I think gay marriage is a serious issue for the U.S. First of all, my position is that "gay marriage" is a contradiction in terms. Marriage is a biblical institution defined by various religions. The concept of a government recognizing a marriage is a holdover from the days when the vast majority of citizens in the U.S. held similar beliefs about marriage and there was no issue. These circumstances have changed, and I see the concept of governments recognizing marriages as a serious separation of church and state issue. Marriage should be in the realm of religions. Governments should recognize civil unions only, for taxation and legal purposes. Marriages can be a form of civil union, but not all civil unions must be marriages. So long as the government is involved in religiously charged issues this will only get worse.

7. Waterboarding. The irony of this is that the Christian church was originally persecuted when it was founded, and now Christian neo-conservatives are supporting this. This issue also goes to show a striking weakness in our national security system. Our military has clear rules about who is supposed to question orders and who isn't (officers are supposed to think critically and have the abilities to question orders, while enlisted men are supposed to follow orders if they do not conflict with the military code of conduct). This distinction does not exist in the CIA, and thus you have men "in the trenches" getting orders under one president, and then facing prosecution from the next one. It's very demoralizing, and this needs to be remedied.

That's all for now. Let me know what you think on any or all of the above, all comments welcome. I'm off to spend some time with my heterosexual life partner.

Conservative Fiscal Policy (Repost from Facebook)

2009-07-24T17:12:00.001-06:00

This topic has been rumbling around in my head for a while, finally decided to put these thoughts together and get them out there.
I often hear many of my friends and acquaintances, et al refer to themselves as “fiscal conservatives”. This term tends to appear most frequently in politically oriented discussions, along with other terms such as “bailout”, “economy”, “recession”, “tax”, “big government”, and of course, “Obama”. More specifically, I’m addressing the position that bailout plans are not fiscally conservative and are therefore bad fiscal policy, particularly in the case of the U.S. where the bailout plans increase the level of budget deficit, and therefore increase the level of national debt.
It is generally undisputed now that the U.S. is in an economic recession, and I take this view for purposes of this note. It is my opinion that from the macro perspective of the U.S. as a nation, the “cost” or “impact” of the recession should be viewed as a “sunk cost”, or in other words, the costs are inevitable, and the important question then becomes not IF the costs WILL be borne but rather HOW the costs SHOULD be borne. All other dialogue is pointless. The position that I frequently hear is that the economic impact should not be handled with the use of bailout money, since this is not a “fiscally conservative” policy. Assuming no government interaction, the alternative is that the “free market” should dictate who bears the economic impact of the recession. I differ from this opinion for several reasons.
1) I understand the term “conservative” as it has to do with risk. A “fiscal conservative” seeks to budget money for uses that minimize risk. Under normal circumstances, if any such exist, governments are widely understood to be more “inefficient” or “wasteful” in handling money as compared to the private or corporate sector, and therefore governments present the larger risk of wasting money. This is assumed for a number of reasons, which I won’t get into at this point but which shouldn’t be hard to imagine. Therefore, minimizing government spending minimizes risk of inefficient, ineffective, or wasteful use of money in a national economy. It’s a very basic thumbnail use of conservative fiscal policy, and under normal circumstances, I agree with this standpoint.
2) Today’s economy is anything but normal circumstances, and this is where the theory or policy begins to break down. According to the U.S. Department of Treasury Bureau of Economic Analysis, the current recession cost America -0.5% of its GDP in 3Q 08, and a further -6.3% of its economy in 4Q 08 (http://www.bea.gov/national/nipaweb/TableView.asp?SelectedTable=1&FirstYear=2007&LastYear=2008&Freq=Qtr). If I save myself a small math exercise, that’s approximately a -6.8% total contraction of American GDP.
3) As far as how much money the government has tried to inject into the economy, that is somewhat more difficult to estimate. First we had the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008, then the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (the original bailout plan), and now we have the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. All of these acts were designed to pump hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy using various methods. Of course, there’s also the argument that these programs have not necessarily spent out all the money they were designed to spend. All of these Acts occurred under deficit government spending, to the tune of approximate $400 billion in 2008, and another $400 billion in 2009 (http://www.gpoaccess.gov/USbudget/fy09/sheets/hist_xls.zip). Even these are not solid numbers as government budgets constantly fluctuate (as you should know if you pay attention to Obama’s budget proposals). It’s fairly safe to say that between 08 and 09 the government has spent at least $800 billion if not much more on the economy. For the purposes of this note I’ll use $1 trillion ($1tril).
4) American GDP was estimated to be $14.2 trillion as of 4Q 08 by the U.S. Department of Treasury Bureau of Economic Analysis (http://www.bea.gov/national/xls/gdplev.xls). $1tril is 7% of $14.2 trillion. By injecting $1tril into the economy, the government is essentially trying to bundle the economic impact of the recession (6.8% of GDP) under a government umbrella instead of letting it float in the free market. Furthermore, since this $1tril was financed primarily by deficit spending, the government is in essence selling the economic burden of our recession to investors and foreign countries to be paid back at a later date (with interest of course). This strategy has several advantages:
A) By bundling the effects of the recession under a government umbrella, the government can decide, via income tax policy, who pays how much for the effects of the recession. If the effects of the recession were allowed to float in the free market, they would distribute indiscriminately, and the brunt of the recession would likely be borne by those who could least afford it (not necessarily by dollar volume, but by severity). This would include: small businesses, single parents, the recently unemployed, limited income individuals, the elderly, handicapped, or others prone to sudden medical expense, etc. That’s not to say that wealthy people or the middle-income individuals would not feel an impact, just that they are better able to afford it.
B) The government can also decide when and how the debt may be repaid. Ideally, this debt may be paid off years down the road when the economy is good, instead of stomached right now when the economy is bad.
C) The government already has a long established system in place for paying off the bundled burden of the economy. It’s called income tax. Much as citizens may not like it, it’s a well established system that is quite streamlined and efficient for a governmental system. This results in less government waste. Deficit spending is also quite streamlined. Furthermore, two primary components of bailouts, tax reduction and equity injection into banking systems, are also relatively easy to do, and therefore less wasteful. Compare this to the alternative where the free market determines how and when and who is affected by the recession, and the government, or perhaps local charity groups, react and try to support those effected. Such a support effort would be much more difficult to organize, and hence more wasteful. More on waste later.
D) On a basic political level, executing a stimulus/bailout/whatever term you want to use gives the public the appearance of leaders doing “something”. Many members of the public may not be aware what exactly that “something” is, much less what it does, but a number like $400 billion or $800 billion or $1 trillion sounds very big and impressive, and if the leaders are doing “something” that sounds very big and impressive, it can have a comforting effect. It increases the chances of the public going out and spending money, or investing, basically the kind of activities that are needed to stimulate the economy. The same public is much less inclined to say, “Oh goody, the federal government is letting the free market decide who will bear the impact of the recession. What a great policy. I think I’ll go out and spend/invest”. I’m guessing the more likely scenario would be more along the lines of, “I’m losing my business/job/retirement account and the government is doing nothing about it. I’d better hoard the money I have left.” Exactly the wrong kind of activity needed to stimulate the economy.
5) Due to the reasons listed above, it is my position that bailing out our current economy with the use of deficit spending is not contrary to fiscal conservative principles, but in fact IS the most fiscally conservative of the two alternatives. It allows for greater government control of the economic burden of recession, offers greater protection for the most at-risk income demographics in the nation, it allows the government to choose when to shoulder the burden, it takes advantage of less wasteful processes, and it stimulates a higher level of consumer confidence. I will also address two further arguments I’ve heard regarding this argument.
6) “I don’t want my kids and grandkids to be paying for this bailout.” First of all, we’re already spending our kids and grandkids futures, and have been for decades. The current level of federal debt is approximately $11.2 trillion, or about 79% of our GDP (as of April 23, 2009, http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np ). Essentially our country has a 21% net worth. That’s not even bad. The first world country with the highest national debt, Japan, had an estimated national debt to GDP ratio of 194% in 2008. In the late 1940s our federal debt was over 120% of our GDP, and was subsequently reduced by every president until Jimmy Carter left office in 1981, when it was a paltry 32.6% of GDP. These levels have since increased under the administration of every president thereafter, with one exception (Bill Clinton). To be frank, now is hardly the time to suddenly become concerned with deficit spending. Americans need to get educated on the subject and create a long term voting trend if this type of spending is going to be effectively reversed. Furthermore, if having your kids face the alternative (you might lose your job, they might lose their health insurance, you might end up standing in a bread line, etc), I’m sure the choice is pretty easy to make.
7) The second argument, and one that I find much more valid, is the argument that a bailout itself is not necessarily non-fiscally conservative, but rather WHAT the bailout money is spent ON. Arguments of this type typically come in two forms; citing pet peeve projects funded by bailout money, or questioning the effectiveness of the various spending components of the bailout.
A) Regarding pet peeve projects/earmarks, I have a few points. One is that the opposing political parties both play a vital role in this type of legislation as they keep each other honest. In this case particularly, since the Democratic Party has such a strong hold on congress, the Republicans play a very very vital role in criticizing Democratic spending, since this critique pares out a lot of wasteful spending. Inevitably some waste will occur, this is true of any human effort on any scale and governments are no different. In business, waste is chalked up to “overhead” or “cost of doing business”. I view bailout waste as the “cost of stimulating the economy”.
B) Regarding the effectiveness of the various spending components, I cannot speak on them as a whole, each must be considered in its own right. However, I will discuss two components of economic relief; taxes and bank stabilization, because 70% of the total price tags of the three previously listed bills have gone towards these two things.
Tax relief is generally seen to be a fiscally conservative policy because it leaves the nation’s money supply in the hands of taxpayers (individuals and corporations) who, as discussed previously, are generally considered to be the most efficient users of money. Americans saw tax relief in the form of stimulus money last summer, and got another helping to the tune of $288 billion under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (or 37% of the total $787 billion of the Act). The problem with tax relief is that it is only effective to the extent that individuals are actually taxed. To give a quick example, I generated more income in 2008 than I ever have in any other year of my entire life, and yet with the various tax deductions and credits allowed me my effective tax rate for 2008 is a big fat 0%. In fact, my tax rate would technically be negative, as I purchased my first home that the government will be giving me $8,000 for, and I’ll essentially be getting more money back than what was withheld from me this past year. Where did this $8,000 come from? Well, if you paid taxes this year, a tiny portion of it came from you (and I heartily thank you). In essence, the government can’t offer me any more tax relief than it already does, or they’re just giving other tax payer’s money away for free (that's wealth shifting, not tax relief, and definitely not a fiscally conservative policy).
Bank stabilization, either through the rescue of troubled assets, the injection of equity, or the outright purchase of stock, is paramount to maintaining a stable economy during a recession as bank assets have a direct impact on the money supply of a nation via the money multiplier. The perils of failing to stabilize banks were demonstrated in the Great Depression. I’ve discussed all this in greater detail in a previous note (http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/note.php?note_id=51193559559). The U.S. Government is currently attempting bank stabilization methods on a scale of dollar volume previously unheard of. We also have two historic examples of bank stabilization efforts; the U.S. S&L crisis and Resolution Trust Corporation of the late 1980s and early 1990s and the Swedish credit crunch of the early 1990s. In both cases the stabilization efforts worked; the RTC via the use of government funds to purchase troubled assets, and the Swedish government via the direct transfer of stock ownership from troubled banks to the government. I won’t assume that history will always repeat itself, but, given prior observable experience and the demonstrated detrimental aspects of the alternative, I certainly believe that applying government deficit spending towards bank stabilization is justifiable as fiscally conservative.
One final caveat; I do not particularly consider Obama a genius for making what I believe to be the right decision. I believe that any capable leader ought to be able to make the right decision if presented with the proper information. However, Obama does benefit us in two specific ways that McCain would not if the election had gone differently:
A) Since the Democratic Party has somehow been labeled as the “big government” party, they can attempt large-scale bailouts with less political backlash from their constituency.
B) Since Obama has a high level of popularity, his decisions are more likely to appear as correct, and if consumers believe Obama is making the right decision, they are more likely to spend or invest and hence stimulate the economy. The same level of popularity could not be assumed of McCain, even if he made the exact same decisions that Obama has made (you decide for yourself how likely that is), because congressional Democrats would be dogging him as George W. Round 3 (not to mention the media).