Of all the Places to find a Symbol of the fight for American Freedoms….

Didn’t think I’d be writing two up this week, but every once in a while something happens that I feel obligated to respond to.

Last night, for those of you that haven’t watched the news today, well known animated comedy/satire show South Park aired the second part of a two part episode that involved the Muslim prophet Muhammad.  The premise of the episode was to, while making fun of virtually everyone the show had ever mocked (in celebration of 200 episodes), to make a stand against intimidation and exercise their first amendment rights.  Ironically, Comedy Central, when broadcasting the episode, edited it to completely censor our even the mere WORD Muhammad.  This is perhaps in direct response to threats made to the show from an extremist Muslim website a few days prior to its airing.

Aside from extremely painful irony that an episode that discusses standing up to intimidation in defense of our rights as Americans was in itself censored BECAUSE of intimidation, this whole fiasco just screams of ignorance on so many fronts.  I’m going to go out and state right here that I am NOT trying to say all Muslims feel the ways I’m about to discuss, I am instead talking specifically about the Muslims that DO feel these ways.  In fact, most of this I feel is directed at Comedy Central for censoring it in the first place.

Reason #1:  The system is extremely inconsistent, and its inconsistencies show it’s weakness.

From what I am reading in the Koran, idolatry (the worship of images) is condemned.  It is also considered a grave crime in Muslim societies to insult Muhammad.   Let’s go with the problem with the image bit.

What qualifies as an image of Muhammad? I can understand that, a realistically drawn interpretation of said prophet clearly qualifies.  However, what happens when someone draws a dot on a piece of paper, and then underneath writes “This is Muhammad from really far away?”  Does that count?  Where does the line get drawn?  I have a feeling that most of the Muslims that actually are upset about this whole South Park thing haven’t seen the show, let alone recognize the art style.  The art style originated as colored paper cutouts shaped into characters, hardly realistic.  I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know everything about Islam, but I’m pretty sure there isn’t a person on this planet that’s worshipping the colored paper cutout images on South Park.

Also anyone that actually watched the episode would notice that, of all the well known people in it, Muhammad was the one that wasn’t made fun of AT ALL.  They hid him in a mascot costume at one point yes, but that is not mocking Muhammad, it was in respect to the Muslim populations, as the town did not want to offend them (effectively breaking the 4^th wall).  And so, if Muhammad’s presence in the episode was entirely inoffensive to himself as a person and prophet, where does the problem lie?  He was included in the episode in such a way that, to American audiences at least, it was clear he was NOT the target of ridicule.  How he is dealt regarding images of course was, but not the prophet Muhammad himself.

Reason #2:  It’s a free country.

This applies more towards those that were upset about what happened, but aren’t actually extremists already bent on our destruction.  We have a good amount of freedom about what we’re allowed to say and do in this country, including freedoms of speech and religion.  While I respect another person’s religious beliefs, I am also allowed a certain degree of freedom to talk about their religious beliefs.  If you cannot respect the laws of the land here, then don’t live here.  In an episode where they show Jesus watching porn and Buddha snorting cocaine, the fact that Muslims are upset about the mere presence of their prophet is extremely childish.  Do you really think that Christians are any happier to see Jesus insulted?  Of course not, but they’re a bit more respectful of people’s rights to do it (in this case at least).

Reason #3:  How Dare they show Muhammad…..again.

The simple fact that anyone’s getting upset about this to begin with shows their lack of devotion to the topic.  Any Muslim that’s mad that South Park was potentially going to show Muhammad in episode 201 has apparently been really dropping the ball, and trying to make up for it by overcompensating here.

First, let me introduce you to episode 504, “Super Best Friends.”  In this episode, all of the religious leaders of major faiths are shown to be part of a religious crime fighting force.  This included Muhammad.  He was shown on 12 separate occasions in this episode.  And you know what?  Nobody cared.  But why?  I thought ANY appearance is a big deal.  I dislike inconsistency.

On top of that, anyone that is familiar with the show recognizes that all characters ever shown appear at the end of the opening song.  Since season 5, this has included Muhammad.  He’s been uncensored in the beginning of every episode since Season 5 (they’re now in 14), and nobody’s said anything until now?  Again, consistency.

Reason #4:  It’s offensive to every other demographic to censor this.

First off, it’s an episode where the entire point is that censorship because of intimidation is bad.  That in itself is enough of a reason standing alone from every other one I’ve stated.

Second, this is a show that is known for mocking everyone.  From the obvious to the undeserving nobody gets away from South Park unscathed.  By caving to the pressure Comedy Central has effectively come out and said “we’ll make fun of Catholics, we’ll make fun of Jews, but Muslims are special.”  Thinking of it another way, they’ve basically come out and said “If you don’t want us to make fun of you, threaten to kill us.”  It’s a terrible message, and it offends every single person that’s ever been upset with your shows, filed a complaint, and then was told in response to effectively suck it up.  If everyone else in the world (because believe me, South Park has pretty much made fun of everyone) can handle it, Muslims can too.

It’s not like Comedy Central even went and did what the extremists wanted, they went horribly overboard in bending over backwards for them.  Muhammad wasn’t shown in the episode, and apparently wasn’t going to be anyway.  So, in order to apparently show that they did SOMETHING, Comedy Central censored out the WORD “Muhammad”, and then completely bleeped out the ending speech by one of the characters where they talk about how important it is not to submit to intimidation.  Are you serious Comedy Central?  Are you so utterly terrified of this that you won’t even imply that you stand up for freedom of expression?  The station that airs shows explicitly to exercise that right?  So yes, as a Catholic viewer I was extremely offended.  I’d long since gotten used to the Jesus jokes because I recognized they make fun of everyone, but then you step in to protect some other faith?  Are they supposed to be better or something?  It’s all or none fellas.

So there you have it, everyone got upset over a character that’s been in the show over 100 times showing up again because a bunch of people that don’t respect our legal system scared some other people into burying their heads in the sand and pretend like they don’t know anything about freedom of speech.  Way to go all parties involved, you must feel proud.

Timing is Everything

For those of you that have been keeping up with some of my earlier posts, you may have noticed my tentative approval of what the Tea Party movement as a whole stands for: fiscal responsibility.  However, the movement had yet to really offer up a clear idea of how they planned to accomplish said goal.  That is, until now.  A Mr. Phillip Dennis, founder of the Dallas Tea Party and a member of the Board of Directors, wrote a piece that CNN published last Friday that outlines what the Tea Party would like to see happen in order to meet their goals for fiscal responsibility.  Sadly, I find myself disappointed.  It would be wise of you to read the letter, found here before continuing, but I shall quote the parts I’m referring to as I speak about them.  As a whole I find the plan ill conceived given the economic hardships our country is facing, but let’s break it down further than that, analyzing each of the points he makes as a means to be fiscally responsible.  If you care little about the meat of it, skip to my conclusion at the bottom.

“Abolish the Departments of Education and Agriculture, and the EPA”:

Abolishing branches of the federal government is a pretty standard request as a means to cut costs, but let’s be realistic.  The DoE is the organization that, as any family with a child in college will tell you, offers out student loans.  Abolishing the DoE makes secondary education for 14 million American children much harder, and even primary education for another 56 million less fulfilling.  Only about four thousand people actually work for the DoE, so almost all of it’s money goes to building our children a better learning environment.  Abolishing it really only hurts them.

The Department of Agriculture probably sounds more familiar to people as the USDA.  The USDA, with a budget of about $100 billion a year, goes largely to three different things.  The largest is probably the food stamp program, which with our current economic and unemployment problems, is more important than ever.  Next up is a combination of rural development and foreign agriculture services.  These focus on American farmers, subsidizing and helping an already struggling industry pay for utilities and other costs, and then promoting their products on the foreign markets.  Killing this off hurts an industry already so close to collapse.  Third and finally are the 100,000+ employees that are currently employed with them.  Yeah, now’s a great time to be throwing an extra 100k into unemployment.

The EPA is a little trickier, as a lot of what they do falls into what the DEP could do instead.  Also for the sake of article length I’ll leave this one for now in that, again by abolishing the EPA, you throw another 17,000 people into unemployment.

“Repeal the Stimulus Bill and Government Pork Spending“:

Hoo boy where to start.  First off, a good portion of the stimulus money is already in the system, keeping (for now) 600,000 Americans employed.  If you were to cancel the projects and return what money you could, you just threw them all into unemployment.  Again, during a recession with record unemployment already.  On top of that, the Stimulus Bill offers over $500 BILLION in tax benefits and loans to American citizens and businesses.  If you want another phrase to use to describe this portion of the bill (most of it), think of it as an emergency tax cut.  You know, those things your movement is constantly asking for.

As for pork spending, how do you propose we repeal it?  Pork Spending isn’t something the federal government actively tries to do, it’s the state senators and representatives trying to help out their districts and states in projects that would otherwise be extremely difficult for the state to fund.  If you somehow managed to cut pork entirely from federal government, your state taxes would likely skyrocket.  Either way, if you want to cut pork, you are doing the correct thing in writing to your congressmen, but you should also speak to your neighbors and local governments about cutting back on funding requests to the feds.  The federal government isn’t just giving areas money because they feel like it, those areas are asking for it.

“Government Jobs should be substantially cut”:

The Federal Government is a truly massive machine, employing over 2 million Americans.  I approve of trying to trim jobs from this monster when it’s safe to, but SUBSTANTIALLY cutting jobs during a recession isn’t going to help anybody.  I don’t know how many you mean by substantially, but even 1% is 20,000 people.

“Fraud and Welfare Waste must be eliminated”:

I don’t think it’s feasible to eliminate it completely, but we can certainly try.  Ironically in order to do this, we would need to hire or divert federal employees and funding, two things that you’ve already stated you want to do away with.  On the bright side President Obama has already stated on several occasions that he aligns with you on this endeavor, so there’s that at least.  I don’t think there’s anyone in government that WANTS to waste money.

“Welfare and Unemployment Benefits must be drastically cut”:

Timing is everything on this one.  With 10.4% Unemployment, cutting off what help these people have would not help the system one bit.  I understand your concern that some people effectively live on government handouts, but we’re in a recession right now, it is pretty obvious to everyone that a majority of these people were laid off for reasons outside of their control.

“Welfare, Health, and Education services for illegal immigrants must be eliminated”:

As illegal immigrants are ineligible for welfare, I am happy to say you’re upset about nothing.  As for health services, illegal immigrants tend to overwhelmingly take advantage of clinics, as opposed to emergency rooms, which is where the serious costs come up.  Education is a touchier subject that is generally controlled by the state governments, so I’m not sure what you expect the Fed to do, especially if the only organization that COULD do anything, the Department of Education, gets removed like you want it to.

“The Center for Immigration Studies recently reported that 33 percent of immigrant households use some kind of “welfare.” Again, who pays? The American taxpayer!”

I’m intrigued how this statistic regarding legal immigrants within our country, is any sort of proof as to why we should eliminate the aforementioned systems for illegal immigrants.  After all, the 33% of immigrant households pay all the same taxes the rest of us do.

“Government must get completely out of the private sector…. Government control… is a sure recipe for disaster”:

If you look back in time you will find that history proves you wrong.  The Great Depression in the 1930’s was largely contributed to the complete lack of regulation of the financial market by Coolidge, leading to an overinflated market that eventually crashed back down to reality.  A prior depression in 1893 was caused by the unregulated railroad industry that caused unregulated banks to crash.  It has been found in Europe, and was generally agreed as the best solution to our current situation by Economists, that nationalizing the banks would significantly help with the current recession.  However that’s a bit too “socialistic” for some people, and so instead we set the market up to crash all over again.  Government control has proven to be the stabilizing factor that keeps the market in check enough that it doesn’t crash, and history is on my side.

My Conclusion:

Some of what you suggest has merit as a means to cut back on government spending.  However, with the economy as it is right now, it would be extremely reckless to implement said ideas.  You would be throwing a MINIMUM of 725 THOUSAND people into unemployment, and that’s not including ANY federal employees that you wish to substantially cut.  If we cut just 1%, we’re up to around 750k, or .2% MORE unemployment nationally.  This isn’t even taking into account the farmers and teachers that would lose their jobs due to the sudden inefficiency of their respective areas, or the children that can’t afford to further their educations.

Economists agree that the best way to get through a serious market crash is to artificially inflate the market until the real numbers can hold it up on their own.  In fact a large majority of Economists agree that the Stimulus package was the bare MINIMUM of what should be done.

So in the end, timing is everything.  If you want to push for changes in government spending, do it when the American people can afford said changes.  Watching that national debt clock slow down a little bit isn’t worth seeing our country plunge further into unemployment.  Jobs and aid to those that don’t have them are more important right now.

If anything, you should have been protesting during previous administrations that also invoked runaway spending, and they were during periods when unemployment was down and the market could have more easily dealt with your demands.  Granted, those presidents would be Ronald Reagan (1.7 trillion), George H W Bush (1.4 trillion), and George W Bush (4.3 trillion).  In fact the only president in the last 30 years to be fiscally responsible was also the only democrat, Bill Clinton.  So much for the GOP being more fiscally responsible.

Random Thoughts

Was going through an old notebook today for a class and came across a bunch of random notes I apparently made a couple years back.  Some are humerous, other more insightful.  Either way I got a kick out of them, so here they are for your entertainment:

Three elderly men sit on their porches and look to the stars.
The family man regrets not spending more time with his children
The god fearing man regrets not doing more to ensure his place in heaven
The  physicist regrets not being born later, so that he might have travelled to those stars.

Guilt is a farce brought upon oneself when something is done wrong, as if feeling bad about it somehow excuses or lessens the original mistake.

Admitting that you’re a hypocrite doesn’t make it ok that you are one.  However thinking you aren’t one is far far worse.

The greatest insult you can inflict on another is to tell them how they should live because you care about them.  Children will resent it for hindering their desired development, and adults will tell you to mind your own business.

We get closer and closer to a moment in time where humanity develops it’s own immortality.  We could well be the last of the mortals, doomed men developing the technology so that our children can roam the stars.

Any true person of the faith should never worry or concern for the actions of others.  Everything that happens is part of God’s plan, and He will be the judge of our souls, not you.

Don’t ever argue with a woman.  Regardless of who is right, the man will regret it.

Ever see a cat worry?  Ever see a cat write poetry or do calculus?  Gotta take the good with the bad.

English is my favorite language.  No other language allows emphasis to utterly rewrite a sentence without changing a word.
-My leftovers would be very much appreciated by starving children in Africa.
:Starving children in africa would like to eat my leftovers OR
:If I starve children in Africa, my leftovers would be appreciated
Well dammit, I want my food to feel special.

The best thing about grenades is that you can only hold one for too long once.  Twice if you’re really lucky and stupid.

“Almost only counts in horse shoes and hand grenades” really doesn’t hold up in court.

You know society is jaded when they war with another country for a reason that turns out to be completely false, and nobody gets in trouble.  I got fined a month’s salary on top of community service for giving alcohol to a girl that can legally drink it at home, but completely destroying a country for no justifiable reason for a few years is completely forgivable?

Sometimes I like to pretend that conditional words are static in meaning.  Yes, last Thursday I told you I’d pay you back tomorrow.  It’s not tomorrow yet now is it?

Next time someone tells you that they think clowns are creepy, explain to them that they’re just poor schlubs like the rest of us trying to make a living.  Except for that one right behind them.

People that defend tradition as a reason to continue doing something are either liars or living in caves wearing animal fur.  We don’t have electricity, computers, cars, books, music, democracy, or just about anything else developed since the dawn of man because of tradition.

Deficit spending sucks, but underfunded federal, state, and county programs suck more.  Oh boo hoo, they had to add a column to the national debt clock, at least our schools, roads, and emergency services still work.  Priorities people.

Pretty sure my Catholic Church at home has gone rogue.  Monseignor talks about how the most important thing we can do for others is respect their differences, love, and support them.  It scares me that hearing that makes me think my church is bucking authority.

According to each religion there are a number of specific things you must do to get into heaven.  Each religion understandably feels that they have the correct idea, which means that, according to at least one religion, no matter what you think, you’re going to hell.  If those little differences are insignificant and don’t really matter, then why bother forming a religion around them?

Always try to avoid getting a first floor apartment.  Sure you have to lug your furniture upstairs but you’re infinitely more prepared for zombies and/or raptor attacks.

You don’t need a gun to protect your home from burglary, you just need a tape player with the sound of a shotgun being cocked recorded on it.  Hell if you actually shot the guy he’d sue your ass off and win anyway.

I never really understood the phrase “getting caught with your pants down.”  Depending on the situation that can be exactly what you want.
-On the toilet?  Good call!
-With the significant other?  Kinky
—When their parents walk in?  Very bad
—-Because you’re giving birth at the hospital?  Standard procedure, akin to toilet situation
—–But you’re the guy?  I think what the phrase means is the least of your worries then

Anyone that wants to get into politics isn’t fit for the job.  Public service doesn’t mean the public serves you.

People say the devil’s greatest achievement was convincing the world he didn’t exist.  Honestly I think his solo in The Devil Went Down to Georgia was pretty epic, but to each their own I suppose.

Worrying and missing your significant other isn’t a sign of problems in your relationship.  You worry about and miss them because you care about them.  It’s when you stop doing these things that you should be concerned.

Every page has two sides, no matter how thin it is.  And then some jerk had to go and create the Mobius Strip.  Fuck you guy, my analogy still stands.

The War of Apples and Oranges

This past week, two of the newer FPS’s on the market released content patches, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2.  Releasing their content patches on the same day, BF:BC2’s developer DICE (who announced the date second) has effectively made a declaration of war on the Infinity Ward juggernaut behind Modern Warfare 2.  Even more surprising, after this last patch, they are clearly winning.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is the successor to the wildly successful original by the same name.  Originally nothing more than an offshoot project from the original CoD series, it did so well that it has dominated the name.  The original had an extremely gripping and cinematic campaign that seldom took the control away from the player, letting you feel every gripping moment from escaping a sinking freighter to invading a nuclear missile silo to stop the entire east coast from going Fallout 3.  On top of that it introduced a multiplayer level system that, as you played more and more, you opened up more weapons, weapon modifications, and even player perks that added a level of customization not regularly seen at the time in online shooters.  It was fast paced with relatively close combat, regularly referred to as a “twitch” shooter, as often times the only thing that determines who lives and dies is reaction time.  The leveling system and addictive gameplay brought Modern Warfare into the spotlight, pulling in so much money Infinity Ward would have been crazy NOT to make a sequel.

And a sequel they made.  The campaign picked up where the first one left off, and multiplayer was clearly an extension off of the first’s.  However, considering how many serious steps forward the first game took, it’s sequel felt underwhelming.  While the old adage of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” has some merit, the games had multiplayer that was so identical, the only way you could tell which game you were watching was if you knew the maps.  On top of that, multiplayer was notoriously buggy for several months after release, frustrating new and veteran players alike.  After dying to some little prick using the javelin glitch for the 10^th time in a single map, the multiplayer takes a horrifying turn from amazing to frustrating.  And while they did eventually fix most of their bugs, it was too late for many players.  Word on the street that the most recent map pack actually re-introduces a number of glitches, further emphasizing how absurd it is that a company that hosts millions of players a day lets problems like these arise.  On top of that, this content patch (released last week), introduced five maps.  Two were carbon copies of maps from the original game, and one of the remaining three featured a terrible glitch with the sky box that left the map painful to play on.  All of this came at the unusually high price of $15, which was a punch to the gut, further exacerbated by their competition.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is yet another successor, but not of quite the same sort of fame that Modern Warfare had.  It’s original introduced the game mechanic of destructible environments to mainstream online multiplayer, and large scale tactical battles focused more heavily on teamwork than who reacted faster.  Sadly its campaign fell woefully short of MW’s, but was amusing to play through nonetheless.  Also incorporating land, air, and sea vehicles the game felt more like an actual battle, as opposed to the counterstrike-esque feel that Modern Warfare brought to the table. It wasn’t really in direct competition with MW because it wasn’t really the same sort of game, and so it thrived in its own quiet way.

It’s sequel on the other hand managed to deliver on everything that was great about the first game.  Still not really in direct competition with the MW line, BF:BC2 ramped up the team play and map destruction.  Entire buildings can now collapse, and the animations are smooth and realistic.  One could make the argument that it didn’t introduce any more new content to it’s formula than MW2, and honestly they would be right.  However, there are two extremely big factors where this is not the case.

BF:BC2 is an almost completely bug free multiplayer playground.  The closest things I could possibly call glitches are really just creative player ingenuity and teamwork.  There is nothing unfeasible about strapping C4 to one of your off-roaders, driving it straight into the enemy building, and then detonating it, whereas the idea of a player exploding automatically upon death in MW2 is absurd and unfair.  On top of that, BC2’s content patch was completely free for anyone that purchased the game new (which to be honest, is everyone that I know that plays it).  By choosing to release a FREE content patch on the same date as Infinity Ward’s $15 dollar bugfest, DICE effectively challenged MW2’s supremacy.

As I said earlier, these games really don’t fit into the same category of play, and there is no reason you cannot enjoy both of them.  MW2 is a fast paced shooter while BC2 is a team based battle simulator.  However, they are close enough in style that, if Infinity Ward doesn’t pull themselves together and fix their game, their customers (myself included) will give up entirely in favor of the much smoother, enjoyable, and cheaper experience that is BC2.  Infinity Ward got sloppy, and DICE is more than happy to take advantage of that.  If MW2 manages to clean up its act and Infinity Ward stops gouging their customers, then perhaps BC2 will find itself in hot water some day.  But either way, with these two developers attempting to best each other with a better game, the players win.

Newer != Better

So it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, and I admit it was because I made an error in judgment. I picked up Final Fantasy XIII two weeks back, and wanted to beat it in time to do a blog post.  As you can tell, it took a bit longer than I expected it to, so here we are, a week and a day late, finally writing about it.  I don’t intend to be very spoilish, but if you plan to play through the game without even an inkling of what will happen next, it would probably be best if you don’t read my post today.

First, a bit of info about me before I get into this.  I have always loved RPG’s, both Japanese and western.  However, as I don’t own either a PS 1, 2, or 3, the Final Fantasy series had been lost to me for quite a while.  3/6 was my favorite, and I played 7 on my PC.  This means that a lot of what I found in 13 here that I will talk about as being new or different, may not be different at all for those of you that have played 8-12.  However, that doesn’t make my opinion on the matter necessarily worth less.  What felt like smaller changes towards an end goal for most of you I got hit with all at once, and so the direction that they’re taking the series felt more prevalent to me.  On the other hand, my expectations are perhaps a bit outdated, so maybe I should just get with the times.  Anyway:

The Cast:

The game starts out notably cinematic, and you get introduced to almost all of the characters within the first few hours.  I wasn’t particularly keen on this fact when it dawned on me, but it allowed the story to play out differently than I’m used to.  With everyone in the spotlight from the get-go it allows more time for them to develop individually and with each other.  There were notably two characters that drove me up the wall early game, yet later on grew on me so much that one was essentially my favorite.

At the same time, I can’t help but feel that too many of the characters just didn’t feel fleshed out.  Having just beaten it I still can’t quite put my finger on what exactly about it didn’t feel right, but the characters never really struck me as real.  Perhaps it was their determination to stick to their time tested formula, with a stoic ex-soldier main character (Lightning), a determined yet easygoing brawler (Snow), and a stereotype spewing black man (Sahz), but they just didn’t feel like anything beyond that.  After a certain point every single one of them is stuck on this tone of “we can do anything so long as we never give up” like a broken record, and I begin to feel like I’m not dealing with individuals with individual emotions.  That’s the closest I can come to pinning why I felt said disconnect with them, and I’m not even very confident I’m right about it.

Overall I enjoyed the cast.  While the bad guys were notably faceless for a while, they fit right into the story as they should have and didn’t feel overblown.  There was so much character development that I was disappointed to see how little it actually mattered in the end (not going to give it away, but let’s just say it has almost nothing to do with anything we’d seen up until that point).  There was also something of what may have been Square’s first lesbian couple, but it’s never overtly confirmed or talked about, so if anything it’s merely implied.

The Plot:

Very different than what I’m used to for plots, this game takes the outsider approach.  While it’s not uncommon for our heroes to be hunted by some government or military or giant monster thingies, it’s NOT normal for them to be hated by virtually everyone.  There are no friendly towns in this game, and they spend the entirety of it on the run, looking for any means of escaping their predetermined fate.  The characters are all tied into each other nicely, and besides a completely confusing ending that frustrates me to even think about (why would they go and do exactly what the bad guy wants them to do, when they know what it will cause?!), it was a relatively solid plot.

The Game World:

The first thing I noticed as I began playing was the blatant linearity of the game.  I had no choices as to where I went until the third disk (of 3 mind you), and even then the plot only advanced linearly when I went to a specific location.  The lack of an overworld utterly devastated me, but from what I’m told that’s pretty standard for FF nowadays outside of the MMO.  Once I accepted that I was going to do exactly what they wanted me to do next, I was able to take in the surroundings and enjoy the extremely detailed environments and music.  While musically I definitely liked 7 better, the soundtrack was still very good, and their art and cinematics top notch.

Combat:

This was easily the most frustrating part of the game for me (beyond the “wtf are they doing” ending).  I appreciate trying to advance the turn based system that they originally developed, but the way that they chose to do it just led to frustration for me.  They took the original system, where each character has an energy gauge that, when filled up, they can attack.  However, in order to make it “real time” they set it up so that enemies and allies will automatically fight when their gauges fill up.  However, the one character you can control in fights waits on your commands, which if you actually try to assign them will mean you stand there for a while long after you bar is filled, and the enemies are wailing on you.  And yes, you read that right, you only control one party member during a fight, merely issuing roles to your two other teammates.  This means that, no matter how much you want your healer to cleanse you of your debuffs, you just have to sit there and grit your teeth until the AI in control of them decides to actually do it.  You also can’t actively move your characters around, which often means they’ll stand right next to each other, eating cleaves and AOE’s like they’re candy out of a piñata. It sure as hell doesn’t help that regular fights in the latter half of the game all feel like boss fights, and the tiniest oopsie sets you back 10-15 minutes.

Despite these problems the AI is relatively well programmed.  There is blatantly a priority system in play, and your allies will be very good at knowing what they should be doing and what they should be using.  So for 95% of the enemies you encounter things will go quite well, it’s those last 5% that will drive you to such frustration with the system that you right angry blog posts about how you wish you controlled the entire party.

Games like Tales of Vesperia and a few other recent titles gave me the ability to program for myself the strategies of my teammates, why can’t I do it in this?  Why do I have to trust the extremely bad positioning system built into the game?  Is it that hard to include an option in the menu that allows me to tell my healer “stand apart from others”?  I genuinely prefer turn based games to a combat system that offers me so little control of my own team.

Overall:

The game frustrated me, and there were numerous points towards the beginning where I wanted to just turn the thing off.  However, as the characters stopped annoying me, and the free roam aspect finally opened up, I managed to trudge my way through and finally finish it, 60 hours later.  The ending was appropriately emotional, and tied together almost everything I was curious about (sans one particular father figure), but I’m not entirely sure I feel it was worth it.  It was certainly MORE worth it than Star Ocean 4, which I beat solely so that I never have to pick up that huge hunk of crap ever again, but it wasn’t fantastic.  I liked both 6 and 7 far more than this one, and Tales of Vesperia even beats it out in combat and for having a damned overworld.  All this game had over the others was better graphics.  Just goes to show you that, if combat/characters/overworld isn’t broke, don’t fix it.

Despite this, it is still an above average JRPG, and if you are into that sort of thing, it’s certainly worth your time to pick it up.  Be warned though, it’s a bit too long to be a one time rental.

I can’t let you do that, Dave

Of all of the developments that have happened during my lifetime, perhaps the most prolific of them would be the communication explosion that is the internet.    From a simple network for exchanging research data and military information, to a social and information network sporting over a billion users a day, it has shaped the world in every way imaginable.

One development that has become something expected on the internet, has been the ability to become anonymous.  Be it something as simple as posting a comment to an article or blog, or creating entirely new personas for yourself in games or forums.  People have used this ability to say and do things that they would never do as themselves, creating entire internet organizations and class system (damn trolls).  However, anonymity was never a goal of the internet, merely a side effect that people found use for, and it’s starting to show.

The most regularly occuring example is probably the least surprising.  People are constantly getting in trouble on facebook for things that they post.  Of course, this shouldn’t come as a surprise, as facebook is hardly anonymous (neither are many places people think they’re safe), but the problem derives from the mindset so many internet users have.  On the internet, they’re safe to say or do what they want, and while some places are safer to do that than others, these areas are slowly dwindling.

Sure, recent court appearances of the topic have gone in the internet’s favor, but numerous countries already track their internet users, China being the largest.  There have already been numerous court cases as well where evidence has been brought to light against a user that they thought safe from by being incognito as well.

Don’t get me wrong, it never bothered me that people can effectively interact with others behind a mask, because to be honest, that’s all it is.  It’s not a first amendment issue to me either way, as the issue isn’t about prohibiting what people say, merely identifying them as they say it.

What I am trying to say, is that I don’t expect anonymity to last.  One of two things will have to happen at some point.  Either internet users that choose to act anonymously will have to develop something of an inherent honor code that keeps the entire concept out of the spotlight, or enough people in important places will get peeved by what those people are doing and shut it down.  I really don’t see any sort of honor code developing that meets the standards and scrutiny that the legal system would expect of it.

As it stands people need to be educated as to where they are not in fact anonymous, so they don’t make utter asses out of themselves or get themselves into trouble.  A good rule of thumb tends to be that you are always identifiable unless the website explicitly tells you that you are not.

The moral of this post, what I really am trying to get to, is that at some point a level of personal responsibility will exist on the internet.  Whether it develops amongst the users naturally, or is forced down from admins and ISPs, is yet to be seen.

A Painting In a Museum…

… hears more ridiculous opinions than anything else in the world.

-Edmond de Goncourt, Some year clearly before the creation of Xbox Live

Roger Ebert once said that video games will never be considered high art.  On a formal level I completely agree with his assessment.  Video games are a form of entertainment in my opinion that artistically rival movies.  As the medium gets more and more advanced this becomes more and more true  (Metal Gear Solid had over 10 hours of cinematic cutscenes on top of game play).  Ebert argues that the reason video games can never resemble high art is that they contain choices by the player, thereby giving them some input into the artistic process.  The Mona Lisa is a work of high art because it is exactly what it was meant to be, and always will be.  Video games can be different depending on who is playing it, changing the medium and blurring the solid image that the creator had in mind.  I don’t particularly agree with Mr. Ebert’s reasoning however.  Some games are so linear that playing through them offers about as much choice as deciding when to use the restroom during a movie premier.  Linearity doesn’t necessarily mean bad either (Portal was extremely linear and equally fantastic for example), and so I fail to see what is preventing video games from eventually meeting the requirements that Mr. Ebert sets for high art, or why they even have to.  Something so well programmed that it is able to simulate every conceivable choice and action a player would make would indisputably be a work of art, just not the sort that Ebert is used to seeing.

But this is all beside the point.  I write this entry because I find that video games are capable of eliciting the same feelings for me that “art” can.  I’m a sap for plot and character development, which in retrospect is great because it means I’m usually happy with whatever game I am playing.  However there’s been a serious drought of original titles that have really snagged me.  Sure, games like Modern Warfare 2 and Assassins Creed 2 are fun, but they don’t fit in the same category as the games I feel artistically compete with movies.  I may as well preemptively mention that yes, I know both of my examples have more intricate plots than many movies, but as I mentioned before the quality I look for that earns it the big shiny “artistic” sticker is it’s ability to elicit an emotional response from me, the player.  It could be something as simple as wonderment to the world around me, or sympathy regarding a character.  I don’t really consider things designed to shock me as emotional, despite how amazingly cinematic Modern Warfare was.  Two titles that I have just recently played that do in fact qualify as artistic in my book would be Mass Effect 2, and Brutal Legend.

Mass Effect 2, produced by Bioware, is a role playing game set some time in the distant future.  The company is known for producing games that tend to craft themselves around the decisions of the player, and Mass Effect 2 is no exception.  On top of that, all of the characters felt real to me.  Real enough in fact, that when a few of them died because of my poor decisions on my first play through, I immediately started a new one so as to do everything I could to save them all.  Keep in mind this game takes about 20 hours to play through once, and I was willing to burn off an extra 20 just because Bioware had so successfully hooked me into the principles that A) the characters are real, and B) my decisions mattered.  I was genuinely upset on a number of occasions because the decisions I made would often lead to consequences I was not prepared for or happy with.  But that’s all part of what made the game great.  Even more damaging to my free time, the game carried over decisions I had made in the first game, so people that I saved were still alive, and people that were dead were still dead.

Despite all of this choice and interaction, the game was extremely linear.  Yes you chose what order and whether or not you did each section, but beating the game resulted in the same thing happening no matter how you played through it.  It became depressing as I realized that in most situations I merely had the illusion of choice, and that no matter what option I took the result was the same.  As this is the second game of a trilogy I can understand why this is the case, as everyone needs to be roughly on the same page at the beginning of the third for it to go anywhere.  My excitement lies in now in seeing just how far they will allow things to deviate in the final installment, as it need not all end at the same place.

Brutal Legend was artistic in a way very different from Mass Effect 2.  It is a game comprised of a completely unique fantasy world made up entirely of heavy metal references.  When I say made up of references, I don’t mean that they make references, I mean that the environments are almost all based off of heavy metal cover art, the characters are based off of heavy metal musicians, and all the music is heavy metal.  Created by Double Fine Productions, the real creative driving force behind this game is Tim Schafer.  He’s been creating extremely unique settings for his games since the days of Grim Fandango and Day of the Tentacle, and it’s clear he hasn’t slowed down any.  The production and choice of music absolutely pulled me into this world, and somewhere between escaping armageddon while listening to Dragonforce, and watching an eerily dark parallel (exactly 4 minutes in) to the Aerith funeral scene in Final Fantasy 7 to Ozzie, I realized I was in love with this game.  The greatest tragedy was how utterly short it was (about 5 hours without any side quests), and I can only hope for a sequel, or equally creative (and longer) game from them in the near future.

Are they art? Maybe, maybe not.  Honestly, I don’t care.  There were both at least interesting games that sucked me in and got me wanting more.  I have never been so devastated by flaws in games before.  On one hand I was absorbed into the characters and environments and didn’t want to leave.  On the other I wanted to play an amazing game.  Every little flaw was exacerbated by the fact I wanted the game to be as perfect as the world it existed in. No movie has every done that for me, and no painting or sculpture could keep me entertained for an hour, let alone twenty, and that has to mean something.

A Question of Identity

Just a short inquiry for the day, as the topic has always irked me.  I stumbled across this article earlier documenting a recent devolution in Virginia’s justice system.  For those short on time Governor McDonnell recently signed an executive order that prohibits workplace discrimination of the usual demographics (gender, race, etc) but intentionally left out sexual orientation.  This effectively removes the legal protection the LGBT community had previously received in the state.  Now as the article points out, the governor followed it up saying that the government will not tolerate discrimination of ANY sort, but then it leads to why he specifically left out sexual orientation in the executive order.

Regardless of all of that, I wanted to pose a question to you, the amusingly few people that actually read these ramblings of mine (thanks by the way).  I have always had a hard time differentiating discrimination by gender, and discrimination by sexual orientation.  Isn’t sexual orientation determined by gender?  If I’m attracted to women, as a man, that’s that.  However, if I am a woman as well suddenly I fall into a different category.  The only thing that changed in that scenario was my gender, so isn’t that gender discrimination?

My point as to how this relates to the article, is this:  if a gay man is being discriminated against in a state that does not recognize discrimination along the lines of sexual orientation, what’s to stop him from bringing it to court as gender discrimination? Were he a she the discrimination would not have happened, and that sounds exactly like gender discrimination.

I genuinely want to hear your thoughts on the matter.  While I feel my thought progression is sound, I also feel it would have been tried already were it viable.

Choose Your Friends Carefully, Your Enemies Will Choose You

“Choose Your Friends Carefully, Your Enemies Will Choose You”
-Yassir Arafat

Once upon a time I used to consider myself a moderate.  Realistically I still do, but with the polarization of the parties coupled with the GOP’s recent purity test mantra I find myself being labeled a liberal, so we’ll just go with that for now.  Regardless of where the system tries to tell me I sit on the political spectrum, one thing will always bother me no matter where it originates, spin.

Now I know, you’re sitting there shaking your head saying, “Zack you nimrod, there’s spin everywhere,” and you’d be right.  But there are many levels of spin.  If I can read or listen to a bit of news and feel about the subject the way I should feel had I researched the information on my own, then I am content to deal with whatever particular wording the media chose to use.  However if I have to go back and fact check everything I just read because the article did everything it could to convince me of something completely irrational, it has crossed a line.  There are many examples of this throughout our media, but the particular piece that spawned this article belongs to repeat offender Fox News and can be found here.

This particular interview appeared on Fox and Friends, and tries to convince the viewer that a recent study proves college educations A) dumb kids down and B) make them liberal.  The interviewee, Tucker Carlson, is a regular consultant on the network.  Take a a few minutes to watch the clip if you’d like.  If you have even more time on your hands, read the study that the article is about as well.  You’ll find quite a few things out of line.

As the survey itself is a bit wordy, I’m going to approach this from the points made in the interview.

“A college degree is more likely to skew a person’s political beliefs to the liberal side of the spectrum“

Surveys and statistics are funny things.  The study does in fact show that, of the 14 thousand students surveyed, the seniors tended to express more liberal opinions than the freshmen.  However, correlation does not equal causation.  The very same data also shows the correlation that as you get older (from freshman to senior) you become more liberal, but you don’t hear the report or Fox making THAT assumption.  At first I thought Fox was responsible for making this logic leap of faith, but I was surprised to find that the report actually does it itself, prompting me to take a look at The Intercollegiate Studies Institute, who conducted the survey.  It didn’t take me long to find this little gem, right on their website’s opening page:

“It is no wonder this country is currently on a slippery slope to socialism.”

For those of you that keep up with politics, this is a default GOP line.  Tack that onto the following quote from their “About Us” page:

“Founded in 1953, ISI works “to educate for liberty” — to identify the best and the brightest college students and to nurture in these future leaders the American ideal of ordered liberty. To accomplish this goal, ISI seeks to enhance the rising generation’s knowledge of our nation’s founding principles — limited government, individual liberty, personal responsibility, the rule of law, market economy, and moral norms.”

The words of importance in this quote are limited government and moral norms.  Limited government is a notably republican idea, and while everyone has their own standards of morality, “moral norms” implies to me morals as they have been traditionally, which is about as conservative as it gets.

Verdict: The data is accurate, but indicates at best correlation.  The ISI makes an inaccurate leap of logic and indicates causation.

“College actually dumbs kids down when it comes to questions about civic literacy”

This statement, compounded on the statistics later mentioned intended to show college students as inherently bad at civics, are horrendously guilty of lies by omission.  The only conclusive fact that the study found regarding civics is that college only increased the surveyed student’s scores on the topic by 2%.  They say nothing whatsoever that indicates that college graduates are in fact, worse regarding civic knowledge than people that have not graduated college.  One of the few statistics in the report on this topic actually states that, while college grads averaged at 57%, Americans in general failed with a 49%, indicating that the college grads were in fact better versed in civics than the average American.

One of the other statements was that only over a third of college grads could identify the three branches of government.  Apparently Fox News feels that 49% (as stated in the report) is best characterized as “over a third,” which ironically enough is still more than average America, which according to one of our Supreme Court Justices actually is 1/3.

Verdict: An outright lie.  Nowhere in the report does it state that college makes students dumber, only that it does little to help them regarding civics.  The only statistics in the report regarding this show a tendency of students knowing more than the average American, the exact opposite of what Fox News claimed.

“18% of College Graduates Can’t name a single freedom guaranteed by our first amendment.”

I have absolutely no idea where Carlson got this number.  While this was a question used in the survey the report is based on, at no point does the report break down the numbers of right/wrong on individual questions.  A cursory glance at other sources indicates numbers far higher, and unless he cites somewhere else I expect his data to be from the report they are talking about.

Verdict: Cite it or you made it up.

“14 Thousand People, any flaws in this study?”

Fourteen thousand people, freshman and seniors, were given civics surveys during the 2006-2007 school years. An additional group of 2,508 Americans were surveyed for comparative data in 2008.  The same size is appropriate, as is the sampling method, and the data itself.  However as already established ISI presented it improperly, and Fox is propagating their assumptions.

Verdict: It’s somewhat underhanded to imply that the sample size indicates some sort of authenticity, although it does give credence to the survey methods, regardless of the erroneous report.

“If Bachelors Degrees are making people more likely to support same-sex marriages, how do we fix this?”

I’m not even going to dignify that with a response.

Tucker’s closing statements about diversifying professor’s ideologies:

This really is just his opinion, and there’s no real mention of it in the report, so it can’t really be wrong or right.  From my personal experiences as a student however, I have found that I have absolutely no idea what the political affiliations of my professors are.  In fact, I have an easier time with that process regarding my high school teachers than I do my professors.  How exactly are my professors influencing my political beliefs if I can’t even tell what theirs are?  They aren’t doing it subliminally, unless you are trying to imply that the problem solving skills I develop as I work towards my BS in Electrical Engineering somehow work against the conservative agenda.  On top of that, I didn’t come to college to learn civics, I came here to get a bachelors in EE so I could get a better paying job.  I am mad enough as it is that I have to take as many unnecessary courses as I do, I’m not going to pay more just so that you can teach me about what YOU think I should know.  If it were illegal to be ignorant of certain topics far more average Americans would be in trouble than college students anyway.  The entire clip was completely backwards.

So there you have it.  It sickens me that this sort of thing can get passed off as news to any degree.  If I have to go about and fact check a news organization then they aren’t doing their job, let alone fact check the organization that they’re holding as a viable source.  As I stated in the beginning, I always saw myself as a moderate, but have been labeled a liberal.  If expecting an organization that tags itself as a “fair and balanced” news organization to be fair, balanced, or even actual news (as opposed to something they decided to make up) makes me a liberal, then I will be more than happy to vote against your candidates.  You cannot completely disrespect me as a viewer, and then expect me do what you think I should.

There Aint No Such Thing As A Free Lunch

I didn’t plan to post twice in such quick succession, but when something irks me enough it’s hard for me not to write it down.  Earlier this week, one of my state’s Representatives, John Murtha passed away.  While reading a local article regarding his history in the House I noticed a very different spin than I’m used to hearing about on the national stage, a discrepancy that I think the public as a majority is unaware even exists.  For the purposes of this article I shall call it SIPUIFM.  Bear with me on this one.

We will start with a concept that is familiar at least in principle to everyone, NIMBY.  NIMBY stands for “Not In My Back Yard”, a dominant social reflex where the public is often in support of new projects, so long as they don’t interfere with their personal space.  A school board may get unanimous approval to put in a new baseball field, for example, but when determining a location find that nobody wants the field and it’s bright lighting next to their neighborhood.

SIPUIFM (sip wiffum?) runs along a similar vein.  Unless you have been living in a cave you have probably at least heard of the Tea Party movement, a group of Americans concerned with fiscal irresponsibility in government.  Yes, some are a bit crazy, or in it for the wrong reasons, but you cannot dismiss the movement as a whole because of a few bad apples.  There is nothing wrong (quite the contrary in fact) to wanting our government to be responsible with it’s spending.  The government as a whole is spending entirely more money than it has at it’s disposal on hundreds of projects and bills.

Here is where Rep.  Murtha and my morning paper come into the picture.  Rep. Murtha was reknowned for his mastery of Pork Barrel Spending.  His district contains the once gigantic Pennsylvania steel industry.  When the industry fell apart, Rep. Murtha managed to wrangle millions and millions of dollars from the federal government to keep his district functioning economically.  This sort of spending, where a congressman’s pet projects get tacked onto larger bills, funnels large amounts of federal money into very localized regions.  On a national level this practice is absolutely hated.  Lists are published every year showing what congressmen rake in the most pork, so that the public as a whole can glare angrily at them and write strongly worded letters.

However, what Rep. Murtha did, and what many of these congressmen do, is they represent the interests of their district.  As a matter of fact, and I may be remembering my high school Government class incorrectly here; that’s what our congressmen are supposed to do.  My morning article painted a glowing picture of his ability to funnel so much money into his districts, because they needed it.  It is much easier to appreciate badly needed money when you are the one that receives it.  However, when the money is going elsewhere, it’s much easier to see it as wasteful spending.  This leads to a second social reflex, “Spending Is Pork Unless It’s For Me”.

Is what Rep. Murtha has done for his district the right thing to do?  He was elected to represent the people of that area, and they needed help after their local economy crumbled.  Calling for federal aid to assist his constituents he added to the debt to ease the transition from collapsed steel district to a functioning one.   The people in his district owe him a great deal for everything he has done for them.  However, if every congressman represents their district, we suddenly find ourselves spending billions every year on what look almost entirely as pet projects, despite their impact on their corresponding districts.

It’s time that people recognize that in order to truly see the big picture, they have to see every detail that makes it up.  It may not appear to be fiscally responsible to throw billions every year into pork, but somewhere somebody gets to keep their job because of it.  America isn’t about us vs. them, we’re all on the same team.  Sometimes, the responsible thing to do is spend irresponsibly.

It’s this contradiction that so many people nowadays don’t seem to grasp, and I am very guilty of it myself.  Yes, in some cases lobbyists pull the attention of our congressmen away from us, but even in many of those cases, the lobbyists represent companies within the district, and therefor the people that live there.

With our congressmen all functioning with their district’s interests at heart, the congress as a whole has everyone covered.  The more idealistic of us look to our Congress to make decisions for the benefit of our nation as a whole, and indeed when the national media looks at their spending that’s generally what they look for.  However sometimes our congressmen put their foot down for their district, for the people that elected them.  I’m not saying every time it’s a noble cause, but that you can’t just throw a blanket statement over all of them.  Sometimes you have people like Representative John Murtha, who wanted nothing more than to preserve the wellbeing of his district when they needed him the most.