Scientific Progress Goes *Boink*

What is the Singularity?

Actually, that's fully half of the answer. The Singularity (more correctly referred to as the technological singularity) was first introduced to me conceptually as a problem faced by science fiction writers. For the purposes of this post, let's pretend that that's not all it is.

Imagine a car driving down a winding country highway on a moonless night. The driver is able to see the road ahead, thanks to his headlights, and can thus navigate the twists and turns quite safely.

However, the distance his headlights can see ahead is fixed. If he were to gradually increase his speed, the amount of time the driver has to react to obstacles in the road would be diminished. This is not because his ability to see ahead has decreased, but because the amount of time between a point on the road coming into view of his headlights and the car reaching that point shortens the faster he travels. If he were to continually accelerate, the car would eventually reach a speed at which the driver could no longer react to an obstacle in the road.

Simply stated, the Singularity is the point at which humanity out-drives its headlights. Due to the ever-accelerating pace of technological advancement, there should in theory be a point at which our technology advances faster than we have time to predict its implications. Beyond such a point, it is impossible to predict the continued growth of humanity, though it will likely be radically different from life as we know it today.

I should probably stop and note that this all sounds very grim and perilous the way I've phrased it. Some people think it is - some of the changes that a post-Singularity society would undergo are at the very least unsettling and at worst nigh-unthinkable. But many people (including, I very much suspect, the author of Dresden Codak) view it as a good thing: advancements could hypothetically eliminate poverty, hunger, death...

In any event, there doesn't seem to be much point in speculating about the Singularity's effects on society as we know it (given that its, y'know, a Singularity and all...). We might all be downloaded into virtual-reality simulations. We could be cybernetically-enhanced superhumans fighting in wars between mega-corporations that rule what's left of the Earth. Maybe we'll live forever in unbroken bliss, looked after by our AI caretakers. Maybe we'll be eaten by grey goo.

The entire theory is based on examining certain trends in technological development which seem to exhibit logarithmic characteristics. Some of these trends seem to lead to positive feedback loops. For instance: Humans make fast computer -> Humans use fast computer to help design computers -> Humans make even faster computer. Moore's Law, which, when stated in 1965, predicted the number of transistors on an integrated circuit would double every two years for the next 50 years (it did), is (kind of) an example of this.

Whether this is valid is a fair question. Logarithmic functions always look scary from a certain point, but whether the ones in question reach an actual discontinuity or simply flatten out further down the line is up for debate.

Regardless, the general trend towards advancement is undeniable. However, for a true Singularity (I keep capitalizing that, and I'm not sure why) to occur, technology has to advance more quickly than our ability to understand its ramifications. Otherwise, for all your bionic eyes and downloadable consciousnesses, you're still just a transhuman.

We would be a very sorry species indeed if we did not either surpass our own limitations or create a species which did. After all, our biological ancestors gave rise to the more intelligent, capable human race, and even if it took many millions of years for that to happen, I don't see humans being that much different. At some point, life will be vastly different from what it is today.

However, whether that transition will occur under ethical oversight is up to us. Humanity must not out-drive its headlights, its ability to understand and evaluate the changes it forces on itself. Whether this requires us to slow down the car or simply buy brighter bulbs is yet to be determined.

Next Time: Freedom & The Allure of Piracy

[CopWednesday 3] Memento se Atbelti

First of all, I got transferred to a different group at work. I've left the Fugitive Unit behind, and am now an intern of the most hardcore, badass group in the entire police force: Records Section.

Yes, that was sarcasm. But to be fair, they're all really nice people to work with, and they do have a lot more for me to do. I'm still a little disappointed I won't be getting to hunt down fugitives, but such is life.

An upside of getting transferred is that I'm now also doing some work for the Crime Analysis Unit. Yes, just when I thought I was out of research, they drag me back in. Crime Analysis is a cool group. It turns out that the four ladies working in one big back office in the bowels of Headquarters actually wield a lot of political sway: They get to choose which numbers the police show the media, state senate, governor... Because they're a trusted source, their analysis is pretty much accepted as fact (and it is, but anyone who knows about journalism, or about research, knows there's always a slant). It's subtle, but significant.

It works both ways, though, since they have to answer the questions people actually ask. And lately, people in town hall meetings (those local government things you've been skipping because you thought they didn't matter) have been asking why so many people get run over by cars.

Enter the Crime Analysis Unit, who, overworked as it is, requires additional help to answer the County's burning pedestrian-accident questions.

Enter Me, head of the newly-formed Hendrix Pedestrian Collision Taskforce.

So basically, I've been going through the records and prioritizing (read: sorting) the pedestrian-related accidents for the last week. My preliminary conclusions: Don't Jaywalk, Idiot.

My weekly training seminar this week was about the CRU: Collision Reconstruction Unit. Essentially, this is a group of detectives who have been trained to analyze a car accident in order to determine what happened. They're sent out for any fatal or life-threatening accident, as well as any crash involving a government dignitary. And yes, they're the guys holding up traffic during rush hour, since any road someone dies on instantly becomes a crime scene.

This was an interesting presentation to me for three reasons:

1) There's actual physics involved! That'll get my mom to stop complaining about wasting my degree! Although, by his own admission, the detective giving the seminar was "never any good in school; never even took a physics class."* So just think how awesome I'd be at this!

2) I'd been reading accident reports all week, and recognized a lot of the things he was talking about. In fact, one of the case studies he presented I recognized from a report I'd entered into the database a few days before: Wet night, Subaru two-door comes across the double-yellow and gets cut in half by a Chevy; driver of Subaru killed instantly, Chevy driver walks away unharmed (mass beats airbags any day, Smartcar driver). It even happened only a couple miles from my house.

3) I'd been assured there'd be scenes of horrible carnage involved, and like all red-blooded American teenagers, I love me some carnage. Wait, I'm not 15 anymore, and should've outgrown that by now? Damnit...

I'm half joking about the third, of course. At some level, it's rather f-ed up to look at some of the gruesome crime scene photos they took and feel anything other than sadness. Yet I, and many other people (I hope? I'd hate to be the only one...) feel a sort of dread fascination with that kind of material. Part of you wants to look away, but the other part simply can't (I almost said "like a train wreck," but figured that'd've been too similar a simile).

I'm not going to try to blame this on our being desensitized to violence. In the medieval period, public executions were a common diversion, and while granted, those were pretty barbaric times, first-hand experience with violence is nothing new to society. If anything, we're probably less desensitized to violence than other generations, in that at least we have a television screen between us and the blood-splatters.

Kierkegaard (who I'm appreciating more and more these days) noted that, while humans witness death every day, and understand from an objective standpoint that everybody will one day die, few recognize subjectively (inwardly, via the emotions) that they themselves will die as well. In order to live passionately, humans need to embrace the fact that their own death is both "inevitable and temporally unpredictable."

According to some researchers somewhere (Skidmore College, the University of Arizona, and Colorado University at Colorado Springs, specifically) there are implicit emotional reactions associated with the existential knowledge of one's inevitable death. This trait may or may not be unique to humans; I surely haven't seen many dolphins writing morbid poetry, though perhaps they're trying.

But if there's anything photos of a car accident should remind us, it's that at any moment, we could abruptly cease to be alive. And if that doesn't bother you at least a little bit, you're not reading enough Poe.

Next Time: The Singularity, with Surprisingly Few Sci-Fi References!

Further Reading: The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker

*I've noticed something about cops: They will never, ever admit to being of even mildly-above-average intelligence. This despite the fact that at least one of the Fugitive Unit detectives is an attorney, and several are pursuing their Masters (admittedly, in Business...). The CRU guy today probably knows more practical physics than I do, but to hear him explain it, the entire operation runs on light and magic, and some computer program solves the whole thing for them. It probably has to do with maintaining a 'tough guy' image.

Postponed by a Combat Patrol

First off, USA WON MEGABOWL II!!

Or, to be more exact, Team USA beat Spain in the 2009 Confederations Cup, a sort of preview of the World Cup. Going into the knockout round, Team USA was down by 5 (goals, I assume?), meaning they would only advance if they beat their next opponent, Egypt, by 3, and Brazil beat Italy by 3. However, both these things happened, giving the US the chance to play against top-seeded Spain in the semi-finals.

Spain, as it happens, had just achieved a world-record 15-game winning streak, and had tied the famous Brazilian record of 35 games unbeaten. The US was widely regarded as being in the finals purely by chance, and a crushing victory was expected.

Crushing victory, indeed. 2-nil, to be exact, but it was the Americans doing the crushing. Thanks to Howard's impenetrable goalkeeping and two goals by Jozy and Dempsey (FIFA's "Man of the Match") , the USA shocked Europe by defeating Spain and earning the right to play in the final against either Brazil or South Africa. So that was pretty awesome.

That said, I messed up rather severly. Turns out the Intern Training thingy (Accident Reconstruction, hence the promise of death and seatbelts) is actually scheduled for tomorrow, not today. This lead to me wasting an afternoon hanging around Rockville. Also, I locked my keys in my car. Way to go, me.

So instead, tomorrow comes today. While I'm waiting for the new models I ordered, I'm putting together a 400 point 'Combat Patrol' army list to play Eyob's gradually-assembling Imperial Gourd. The Combat Patrol format has a few restrictions on it to ensure the game is still balanced at such a small points level, and like Rumsfeld I'll have to go to war with the army I have. So without further adieu, the list:

Troops (1 required for CP):

1 Firewarrior Team
-11x Shas'la (110 pts)
-Devilfish Transport w/Multitracker, Flechette Dischargers, Disruption Pod (105 pts)*

Elites:

2 XV-8 Battlesuits (2*47 pts)
- twin-linked missile pod, flamer**

3 XV-15 Stealthsuits (3*30 pts)***

Total 399 points

Notes:
*I've probably over-upgraded the transport here, especially since the Disruption Pods probably won't do anything all game (meltaguns are only 12" range anyway) and moving >6" per turn means assault is unlikely (so no chance to use the Flechette Dischargers, either). However, this is the transport I want to run in a full list, so I'd like to use them authentically.

**A two-man Deathrain team, equipped with flamers. These should (read: had better, or I'm screwed) take care of any transports he brings, and once that's done the flamers should help them maintain at least a little relevance in the end-game.

***Stealthsuits don't show up in my hypothetical 1000-point list, but I've always wished they did. The models (old pre-Tau Empire Codex XV-15s) are some of my favorites, and this is a great place to try them out. I've always had mixed feelings about their performance, but I'd like to give them another shot.

Basically, this list brings a heck of a lot of Str 5 AP 5 guns to the table (36 per turn), but not a lot else. Only the XV-8s have anything higher (Str 7 AP 4 missle pods), so if those can't pop transports, I'm kind of out. That said, they're twin-linked and brought in pairs, so its not exactly betting on a glass cannon.

Oh, but I guess I owe you more Archilochus. Unlike the others, I didn't translate this one myself (from Latin, of course - I only wish I knew Greek). If you were looking forward to some grimness this post, here it is:

When dead, no man finds respect or glory among the men
Of his town. Instead, we living hope for some small sort of
Favor. The dead are always mocked.
-Archilochus

Because real men are cynical bastards. You heard it here first.

Next Time: Car Crashes & Kierkegaard's Views on Death (for real this time)

Mind the Chasm

One of the over-arching questions of philosophy, and in particular metaphysics (my favorite branch, by the way, purely because of the name), is the problem of duality. Stated simply, it is this:

There seem to be two sorts of things: ideas, and objects. Ideas exist conceptually, within the mind, while objects exist physically, within the external world. But how is it that two unlike things can interact and effect one another, if they exist in fundamentally different spaces and possess entirely unlike qualities?

There are essentially two approaches to answering this question. The first, dualism, is to address the concerns raised and attempt to offer an explanation. Dualism is remarkably widespread; in addition to being found in Hindu texts and the teachings of Zarathushtra (the founder of Zoroastrianism, not the main character of Neitzche's Thus Spoke Zarathushtra), and in fact addressed in pretty much every religon ever, dualism was the general stance of Plato, Descartes, and Malebranch.

Plato, of course, had his theory of Forms. Remember, Plato contended that underlying the identification of physical objects (say, horses) is their reflection of a certain ideal Form (so, correctly capitalized, Horse). This Form has, to perfection, every trait which is fundamental to horsefulness, and no traits which are not. Therefore the physical horses we experience are but pale imitations, shadows and disstorted reflections, of the true Horse.

Dualism was also for Descartes. In fact, one of his first steps in formulating his philosophy was to realize that, while he could imagine existing without a body, he could not imagine existing without a thinking mind (the cogito in 'cogito ergo sum'). As he saw it, the body was an extended (that is, physically existant) and non-thinking thing, while the mind was a thinking, non-extended thing. Thus, two types of things, and therefore dualism.

Malebranche, a follower of Descartes, addressed the problem of how two unlike things, mind and body, can interact. Following the finest tenets of logical reasoning, he approached it with the classic Medieval approach: "God did it." Okay, that's not giving him enough credit, but that's what it boils down to. When Malebranche thinks to move his arm, he does not move it himself, but instead God provides the efficient cause for both the arm moving and for the thought itself.

The counter-point to all this, if you haven't guessed already, is Monism. According to monism, the problem of how entirely unrelated things interact is simply based on a mistaken belief that there are more than one type of thing. This is the stance of Spinoza and Berkeley, as well as Parmenides (the only pre-Socratic that ever beat Socrates), as well as the typically-non-philosophical principle of materialism.

Materialism, though many of its proponents would claim it to be simply a scientific conclusion devoid of philosophical significance (or just that philosophy itself is devoid of significance), is a deeply philosophical belief. In essence, materialism is the idea that absolutely everything is caused by the interactions of physical bodies. Thoughts and ideas, therefore, are identifiable electrical impulses within a person's brain, and nothing more. Interestingly, Spinoza thought much the same thing, though he also named the summation of all material 'God' (which is where things got confusing).

Berkeley (whose name, unlike the city in California named after him, is pronounced as three syllables) took the exact opposite approach: instead of saying that there is no such thing as ideas, he said there was no such thing as physical bodies. Instead, everything we percieve as physical is simply a projection within the mind of the viewer. Berkeley's Famous Latin Catchphrase was "Esse est percipi" - To be is to be perceived (look at me, rockin' those four years of high-school latin). While we're on the subject, Berkeley's Three Dialogues between Hylas & Philonous is a rather good read, and one of the best philosophical dialogues, period.

So if monism refutes dualism, then what refutes monism? The reasons are always a little fuzzy, but for some reason most people feel innately more comfortable with dualism than with strict materialism (and I'll freely admit to being one of them). Dualism addresses an inherently qualitative nature of perception in a way materialism does not. Materialism can tell you what a bat perceives and how it behaves, but it can never tell you what it's like to be a bat.

As for the argument against Berkeley's ideas-only view, most people are even more skeptical of that than an all-material world. Samuel Johnson countered it quite eloquently by shouting "I refute it thus!," punctuating the 'thus' by delivering a hard kick to a heavy rock.

Next Time: Death, Dying, & Why you should Always Wear your Seatbelt
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The Ghosts of Departed Quantities

Berkeley is also notable for writing the scathing The Analyst: A DISCOURSE to an Infidel Mathematician (yes, the all-caps is in the original). In it, he attacked the principles of calculus in a way that was both highly sarcastic and essentially correct. Bishop Berkeley believed the new math tended towards deism and away from the Catholic faith, and while that much is debatable, the flaws he pointed out in it were actually fairly sound. Partly because of such criticisms, calculus is now strictly defined in terms of limits, much to the chagrin of high school math students. Thanks a lot, Berk.

Purely for the sake of not breaking my streak

...I posted today! See? Go me, being all consistent and junk.

But frankly, I'm pretty exhausted. Elisa's party was fun, and there was surprisingly little drunkenness. We had a water-gun fight, sat around in the hot-tub, played Settlers of Catan (second place), played Apples to Apples (second place, again). Two new-ish strategies:

1) In Settlers, don't put your first two settlements next to each other and connected by a road. Especially in a four-player game, that little island fills up really fast, and its easy to get locked out with literally no legal place to build new settlements. It becomes significantly harder to win without getting all your settlements on the board, and by splitting your deployment, you might have to work harder to get Longest Road, but you're a lot harder to box off.

2) In Apples to Apples, it seems to be better to pick out cards that are just inherently useful for a specific person, and save them for when it's that person's turn. Maybe that's obvious to people who play a lot, but I never noticed how much easier it is to make winning selections when you've got at least one card to play 'on' each other person. Also, you're guaranteed that each person will come up, unlike picking red cards based on which green cards they would be good with.

Follow these iron-clad battle tactics, and you're sure to not quite win, every time.

Also: I traveled around the entire center of the state today, and I've realized 90% of what you need to know can be summarized down to 5 Interstates, which form an upside-down triangle (or... y'know).

I-270) Runs through the heart of MoCo, and connects Frederick to Washington D.C., forming the bottom-left edge of the triangle. Nearly anywhere in the county can be found by getting on 270 and then taking the right exit.

I-495) Also known as the Capital Beltway, this highway encircles the capital like a bracelet. If you're going anywhere in the suburbs of D.C., chances are you'll get on this and then circle around to your exit. 495 is the bottom vertex of the triangle.

I-95) I-95 connects Washington D.C. to Baltimore. Actually, it goes from Maine to Flo rida, but for our purposes its main function to to let you get to Baltimore from the southern part of the state. 95 is the bottom-right edge of the triangle.

I-695) Maybe you've guessed, but 695 is the Baltimore Beltway. Its the simplest way to get anywhere in the suburbs of Baltimore, including UMBC and BWI Airport. I-695 is the upper-right vertex, and connects I-95 to...

I-70) The top edge of the triangle. 70 runs through the northern part of Maryland from Baltimore to Frederick. If you live in northern Montgomery County (Germantown and up), its quicker to get to Baltimore by going up to I-70 rather than down 270, around 495, and back up 95.

I-70 meets I-270 in Frederick, completing the triangle without benefit of a beltway. Thus, only 5 vital interstates rather than 6. I'm pretty bad with directions (my car is littered with Google-maps; it's kind of ridiculous), but usually if I follow the 'get to the highway I need and find the right exit' method I do alright.

Okay, enough for now. I'm tired and I have work tomorrow.

Next Time: The Paradox of Duality & Half-Life 2

It's 12:43 AM. Do you know where your father is?

The older I get, the more I realize how normal my family is. I might even go so far as to say we're abnormally normal, but that'd just be intentionally confusing. Still, sometimes I feel a little bad about just how stable and supportive my home life has been.

A lot of it, I think, is thanks to my father. The stereotypical breadwinner-dad tends to run the risk of being disengaged from his children's lives, but even though my mom stayed home to raise us, Dad was always a part of my life. I probably didn't appreciate it back then, but no matter how tired he was from working long hours, he would always have time to play catch with me or chase me around in the backyard or just sit down and let me tell him about my day.

When I was a kid, my dad was the smartest person in the world. It didn't matter what I asked him, he knew the answer, and could explain it in a way that made sense, but still somehow left me with even more questions. He always encouraged me to learn as much as I could.

One time, we were hanging the laundry up in the backyard, and I was complaining about my 3rd grade geometery. Curves were a problem, you see, because I couldn't just count up the number of boxes inside them like I could with rectangles. He smiled and said I'd have to learn calculus before I could find the area under a curve. I asked if he needed calculus for his job, and he said he did, all the time. So of course, I immediately asked him to teach me calculus.

He chuckled, and told me I'd need to learn algebra first. But for some reason, that flipped a switch in me. "Calculus," "algebra," very foreign terms, but suddenly I wanted to know as much about them as I could. In fact, that was probably the moment when I stopped thinking of school as something I had to do between breakfast and playtime and started thinking of it as something that was making me more like my dad. Making me a better person.

Psycologically, the 'ideal' caregiver for a developing child is one who is responsive to the child's needs and interests while still providing firm guidelines of appropriate behavior. This falls somewhere between two extremes: the permissive parent who lets their child get away with anything and immediately gives in to any request, and the dictatorial parent who decides every aspect of the child's life themselves.

And that's the way my dad was. He always let me make my own mistakes, but if I asked for advice he would always give me his honest opinion. When I messed up, he never got angry, but he did get disappointed, and in some ways that was worse for me. Most importantly, I always knew (still know, now) my father loved me completely, and no matter what I did I wouldn't change that.

I'm probably biased, but I can't think of a better way to be raised, and if I ever have kids, I hope I'll be half as good a father to them as my dad was to me. I was planning to go into a big discussion of developmental psychology and Piaget, Erikson, and Kohlberg, but honestly I'm not sure any of that stuff can help me explain it any better than I already have.

Anyway, it's Father's Day. Go give your responsible-male-guardian a hug.

Next Time: Probably nothing, since it's Elisa's birthday party. But I'll owe you one.

The Peirce Memorial Hyperspace Bypass

In epistemology (the branch of philosophy that asks "What is knowledge and how do we know it?"), the two main theories developed during the Modern period were Rationalism (Descartes, Kant, via Plato), which says that knowledge is gained through internal reasoning and introspection, and Empiricism (Locke, Hume, via Aristotle), which says the knowledge is gained through external analysis and experimentation.

I took a course a few semesters ago on Pragmatism (taught by famed parapsychologist Stephan Braude, no less), where it was billed as a sort of 'third option' to rationalism and empiricism. It isn't, really - pragmatism is in most respects a form of empiricism, with a small twist. Still, pragmatism has a different enough approach that it's worth tackling on its own.

Pragmatism was first founded by Charles Peirce (pronounced 'purse', not 'pierce'), who defined it by way of the Pragmatic Maxim. He gives a few different formulations, but the earliest one is this:

"Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive of the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object."

Peirce was reasonably proud of this maxim, but he never got the sort of recognition for it he felt like he deserved. Instead, later pragmatists (notably William James) got most of the accolades, mainly by clarifying and expanding Peirce's ideas. No one really cared that Peirce disagreed with a lot of what James said; James was a better (and more accessible) writer, and soon Peirce was roundly ignored by the very school of thought he invented. Keep this in mind if you're ever thinking about starting your own branch of philosophy.

Anyway, the pragmatic maxim. In essence, what it says is that your understanding of an object should consist of your understanding of the effects that object has on you. If you know what effect a thing has on you, then for all practical purposes, you understand that thing. I ran into an excellent example of this principle in one of the many trashy sci-fi novels I have littering my bookshelves.

Specifically, it was an old Star Wars paperback, of the sort I read constantly through most of middle school. Luke & Han were on the Millennium Falcon, as usual. They were discussing how to fix the ship's hyperdrive. For anyone who somehow managed to not watch the most popular series of science fiction movies ever (which is more people than I'd've expected - both a friend of mine's roomate & my little brother's girlfriend had apparently never seen a Star Wars movie), the hyperdrive is the aparatus that lets the spaceship travel faster than light. For anyone who doesn't know any physics, faster-than-light travel is flatly impossible.

Which is the problem they run into, of course. No one, including the writers, including George Lucas himself, seems to understand how these hyperdrives work. It may or may not involve entering some alternate dimension, but for the most part, characters don't dwell on the technology behind it, as long as it lets them race around the galaxy visiting a variety of single-climate planets with a minimum of hassle.

Which is, shockingly, exactly what Han tells Luke. He explains that he doesn't know how the hyperdrive works, and that furthermore, even the engineers that they'll pay to fix it probably don't know how it works. Basically, only the highest-ranking scientists at whichever company makes the hyperdrives (Incom, Sienar Fleet Systems, etc.)

But to Han, it doesn't matter: He knows that, when he presses this button and pulls that lever, a hyperdrive transports him to whichever planet he specified. He knows that an Imperial Interdictor-class cruiser will stop him from entering hyperspace; he knows how to pick which course will take less time; he knows that if he drops the hyperdrive on his foot, it'll hurt. Which, for Han at least, makes an understanding of the hyperdrive's inner workings irrelevant.

I'll go ahead and point out that this example is needlessly geeky. There are plenty of things we use every day without understanding. The engine of your car is a fine example; sure, I might get that there's gas being burned in a bunch of cylinders that provide the energy that turns the wheels, but really? Car engines are reasonably complicated things, though I'm certain any auto mechanic wouldn't think its a big deal. I know I couldn't build one, and if something serious broke I wouldn't be able to fix it 95% of the time.

The same goes for Han, and of course, Luke, the Jedi, isn't exactly happy about this, but it's something he has to accept. For a pragmatist, knowing what something does isn't just as good as knowing what it is; they're the exact same thing.

The main problem I have with pragmatism is that its doesn't set very good definitions of how much you have to know about a thing's effects until you know the thing. It wouldn't make sense to claim you understand a certain small-plastic-cylinder-with-button, only to have someone else click the button in and start writing with it. At the same time, requiring that something be completely investigated not only removes much of the utility of a pragmatic approach, but sets a standard that is arguably impossible.

Also, it seems like there's something acedemically dishonest about only learning as much about something as can effect you. Its like that annoying kid in class who's always raising his hand to ask if such-and-such is going to be on the final exam.

Of course, that's also probably the guy who gets the best grade in the class. In any event, I still wouldn't want him fixing my hyperdrive.

Next Time: Father's Day

Sikhs vs. Klingons vs. Nietzcheans! Fight!

If there's one thing you can depend on in any Sci-Fi action/adventure, its this: Somewhere out there, there's an entire race that's devoted itself to pride, honor, and killing each other. In fact, odds are good that one member of the rag-tag crew of misfits is a member of this race, and in between acting macho and shooting his way out of every problem, he'll probably spend a fair amount of time explaining just how superior the warriors of his race are compared to us puny humans.

(Two notable subversions: In Firefly, the Tough Guy is basically a thug, albeit with excellent comic relief value, and is notable for having even less pride and honor than the rest of the smuggler/space pirate crew. Also, in Alan Dean Foster's The Damned trilogy, humanity itself is the proud warrior race, and are the only species not shocked and repulsed by the prospect o killing other sentient beings.)

Three examples spring immediatly to (my) mind: Worf, a Klingon from Star Trek; Teal'c, a Jaffa from Stargate SG-1; and Tyr, a Nietzchean(!!)* from Andromeda. They all serve essentially the same role: criticize the main hero for not using enough violence, then act surprised when he manages to out-violence them when the need arises.

The typical basis for such militarily-minded cultures is, of course, human. Spartans are the classic warrior race, though feudal Japan runs a close second. Another favorite is the Viking/Indian Brave, for a more barbaric feel.

Proud warrior races are standard fare in sci-fi because they're one of the few one-dimensional cultures that might actually have a chance. Usually, they have about the same level of technology as the humans, meaning that epic space battles between the two are evenly matched. A victory usually leads to the humans noting how important free thought and innovation are to survival; the rare loss is probably a chance to inflict a Pyrrhic victory and go down in a blaze of glory.

Needless to say, the PWR and the humans will join forces against that invasion of world-eating bugs/robots, possibly with a "we're not so different after all" thrown in for good measure.

My roomate last year was a Sikh. The Sikh are one of those culture/religon combos, and come from the Punjab region of northern India. A fairly new religon (as far as religons go; it was founded around 1498), it is the fifth-largest organized religon in the world, though the majority of its adherents are clustered in Punjab. It's actually fairly interesting; they're monotheistic, but believe in a non-anthropomorphic god.

Because of a history of conflict with the Muslims of that region (which borders Pakistan), the Sikhs have a long military tradition. Sikh units are among the most decorated in the Indian Army, and are famed for fighting to the last man at the Battle of Saragarhi (the Indian equivalent of Thermopylae).

And my roomate was quite proud of this. Having recently gotten back in touch with his tradition, he is possibly the most Sikh Sikh on campus. He practices gatka (a Sikh martial art that apparently revolves around spinning swords - get it?) twice a week for three hours, leads the Sikh Student Association, etc, etc...

And of course, his grades were trash this semester. And due to some weird vagarities of the registration system (wherby you can only repeat a course once), he's probably not going to graduate on time. Which goes to show, maybe, the problem with being a Proud Warrior Race: sooner or later, that war's gonna end, and then you'll wish you knew a bit more about farming and industry and calculus.

And when the British East Indian Company (yep, those guys) shows up on your shores with more cannons than you have swords, maybe it'd be nice to have a plan that doesn't involve dying to the last man.**

Next Time: Hyperdrives & the Pragmatic Maxim
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Footnoted:

*The Nietzcheans claim to follow the philosophies of Friedrich Nietzche, but even a cursory understanding of his school of thought will tell you that somewhere along the line, they got it very, very wrong. Nevertheless, Tyr still manages to be some sort of Ubermensch, and if I ever download the two non-crappy seasons of Andromeda, I'll definitely talk about that.

**Alright, that's not exactly how the First Anglo-Sikh War went down, but its pretty close. Yes, the East Indian Company were a great example of how true capitalism involves being a douche to absolutely everyone.

Wielding the Mathammer

For anyone following my travails in Warhammer 40k list building, I recently had an change of heart and decided to alter my list somewhat. If you recall, the previous list had about five skimmer chasis on the table at 1000 pts, and three of them were Hammerhead grav-tanks. First let me point out that I don't think there's anything wrong with this: Hammerheads are great tanks, rather tough, and can serve in a variety of roles.

That said, suddenly my Force Organization chart was looking very skewed. I had 1 HQ, 2 Troops, and all 3 allowed Heavy Support options filled up. And while 2 Railheads (Hammerhead with railguns, you might've guessed) are plenty of anti-tank for 1000 pts, they're only putting out 1 shot each turn, and at a BS of 4 (2/3 chance to hit), that's not going to be enough to stop Landraider-spam at 1500 points and up. With all three Heavy Support slots already filled, I also can't just take a fourth tank when I expand the list (and before you ask, I'm not dropping the Ionhead; those things are excellent).

The only real way to get enough anti-tank is to play a Broadside team. Three twin-linked railguns in one slot outshoots as many Railheads as I could bring, and any unit that measures firepower in Monoliths-per-turn is a unit I'd like to field. They're a little more fragile than tanks (or more exactly, they're 'differently fragile') and a lot less manuverable, but that's the price you pay.

That decision didn't really require any statistics, but now that I'm limited to only two tanks, I had to find something else to take up the slack in my 1000 point list. I decided on a team of XV-8 battlesuits, another Tau signature unit.

However, its not as simple as choosing to take suits. An XV-8 costs 25 points, and can come in teams of 1-3. Each suit has three hardpoints, and you must select a weapon or support system to fill each of these slots. There are 5 different weapons systems and 6 support systems, meaning there's somewhere around 990 (11*10*9) different combinations for any given suit.

That's a little daunting, but fortunately only about 20 or so of those are actually useful builds. Also, thanks to a semi-fanatical fanbase, most of these builds have both well-defined abilities and spiffy names. I was dropping one Railhead, which freed up exactly 175 points for my XV-8 unit, another constraint.

Also, I presumably wanted a unit that would take up the slack left without my tank, and then some. At the 1000-point level, heavy AV14 vehicles are pretty uncommon, but thinner-skinned transports are in good supply. Thus, something with good anti-transport capabilities would be a good addition to the list.

The build I ultimately plan to go with is the classic 'Deathrain' suit (hey, its the grim darkness of the 41st millenium, remember?). This is a battlesuit with twin-linked Missile Pods (and one additional slot with something else; I'm torn between targetting arrays and flamethrowers...).

"But wait!" you say. "Deathrains statistically kill fewer Space Marines than Fireknifes or Helios, by a margin of 0.83 MEqs, and aren't as good against vehicles either. Don't you know math?"

And the answer is yes, I do (sort of...). I'm not going to bore you (too late for that) with the number-crunching, but suffice to say that yes, all those things are true. However, that only tells half the story.

First, compare the ranges of the weapons in question. For the missile pod, it's 36", while the fusion blaster is only 12", and is also a Melta weapon (extra armour-pierciness at under 6"). On any given round of shooting, the fusion blaster is more likely to score a piercing hit against any armor about AV10 (at AV10, they tie). However, remember that the missile pod (assuming the fusion blaster suit approachs the target at full speed) can fire three times before the fusion blaster gets even one shot.

Also note that the longer range of the Deathrain means it doesn't need to close the distance with its target, keeping it out of range for return fire and giving it significantly more durability. It will also be more likely to have a target to fire at every turn of the game, unlike dedicated fusion blaster suits.

While deep-striking Sunforges might be spectacular and game-changing, there's also a chance they'll miss their one shot and get cut down by return fire, accomplishing nothing. In statistician's terms, they have a much larger standard deviation in their expected effectiveness, and don't have an evenly-distributed curve (they'll either suck or be great). Deathrains have a far lower standard deviation, and are also roughly normally distributed, so their performance is predictable in any given situation.

In layman's terms, Deathrains are a clutch unit, good for when you absolutely have to get that last wound on a Carnifex or take down that transport before it claims an objective. They might not be statistically high-performers, but you can count on them to get the hits you need, when you need them. And considering I've already got one all-or-nothing railgun shot, my list is more in need of a solid anchor-man than it is a team that will scatter into dangerous terrain right when you need them most.

Also, Deathrains are slightly cheaper.

Ah but because I spent all post talking about 40k stuff that no-one understands, I'll finish off with another poem by Archilocus, that manliest of men.

Ahem.

Feeble now, are the muscles in my mushroom.
-Archilochus

Because only a real man writes about erectile dysfunction.

Next Time: Thoughts on the Proud Warrior Race Guy

[CopWednesday 2] 1.66e10 kg^2/s^3

I recently found out my internship allows me to participate in weekly training seminars. These are mostly aimed at providing a 'first taste' of some of the different specialized units in the police force. Since these things come up every Wednesday, and they're pretty interesting, I'll probably this be a regular weekly segment. So, for the first (or second, let's say) episode of Cop Wednesday: The K-9 Unit!

Yes, K-9 is exactly what it says: the unit with dogs in it. I still haven't figured out if the alphanumeric designation is actually warranted or is just an extremely lazy pun.

In any event, K-9 units are a vital resource to any department, and one of the most sought-after positions in the police force. Talk to anyone on patrol, and chances are they'd jump at the chance to be in K-9. The reasons for this are manifold: it's a pay bump, dogs are fun, and you'll never have to chase a guy down on foot ever again.

The MoCo PD uses mostly German Shepherds, with a few Belgian Malinois thrown in for good measure. They are all imported from Europe, where the popularity of Schutzhund (a dog-sport that is scored based on a dog's ability to obey commands through gunfire and attack human opponents, I kid you not) has led to a derth of excellent working dogs. The analogy the officer giving the demonstration used was football: If a dog isn't quite good enough to compete in Europe, they send him over to the American leagues.

Once purchased, dogs are trained alongside their handlers (the K-9 officers) in a 14-week course designed to acclimate them to the police environment. They are also trained in either drug- or bomb-detection (Bloodhounds are also employed as specialist trackers, but don't handle routine police work).

The primary motivator in a dog's training is positive reinforcement. More punishment-centric training methods have been phased out, upon evidence that they lead to shorter useful careers and a less enthusiastic police dog. Nowadays, when the dog does follows a command, it is given a reward (usually food or a favorite toy and some affection; dogs are remarkably easy to please). As the K-9 officer explained, it's all a game to the dog, and they're excited for the opportunity to sniff out your hiding place and gnaw on your arm.

Dogs are valuable because they can do things a human simply could not. No one (or almost no one), however well trained, can sniff out trace amounts of cocaine without even leaving their car. No one can run 35 miles per hour and take down an armed suspect. There's something uniquely intimidating about an 85 lbs. seeking missile with a 4,000 psi bite (police dogs are only considered non-lethal force because they are very carefully trained not to attack vital areas). And while the dogs aren't exactly expendable, having one killed is much less of a blow than losing a human officer.

Dogs have been Man's Best Friend since time immemorial (which, fun fact, English law declared to be September 3rd, 1189) for exactly this reason. Humans and dogs complement each other such that they can accomplish more together than on their own.

No one person can do all things, and as such we are naturally incomplete. In fact, a fundamental part of the human psyche is devoted to managing our interactions with others, and without those others our lives are lacking one of the basic essentials to satisfied living. By finding others who complement ourselves, and by simultaneously fitting into the empty gaps in their lives, we form a mosaic of sappy, artsy, touchy-feely completeness.

Okay, maybe that's overstating it, but you have to admit there's something nice about being part of a team. And even if that team is just you and your partner (in Bokononism, the duprass), its a lot better than being on your own.

Next Time: XV-8 Battlesuit Builds & The Standard Deviation

This was a Triumph

I've noticed that ever since I started going to college, I've been playing far fewer video games. For the time being, I'm choosing to attribute that to lack of time and TV set, rather than, say, an increase in maturity level...

That said, I finally got to sit down and play through Portal from start to finish (I'd started it before but only got about an hour in). I played the Xbox 360 version, which came packaged as part of "The Orange Box" along with Half-Life 2 (and the first two sequel 'episodes') and Team Fortress 2, all for the low low price of $20 at Gamestop. Seriously, that's quite a steal.

So, Portal. It's a rather odd game, for several reasons. First, it has First-Person Shooter (FPS) controls, but is essentially a puzzle game rather than a run-and-gun. While the gameplay is fast-paced at times, and even has some frantic moments (particularly towards the end of the game), it clearly favors a "think, then act" mentality that other shooters have attempted but never quite pulled off.

The 'weapon' that makes this game unique is the portal-gun. Simply put, this device allows you to create two holes (orange and blue, though they are essentially identical), where when you enter one, you emerge out of the other. This allows you to reach areas that would normally be inaccessible (for example, fire one hole onto a high ledge and walk through the other at ground level). There are far more elaborate tricks to be pulled, though, and over the course of the game you learn to use the portal gun to jump great distances, redirect energy balls, and dodge rocket attacks.

Second, Portal is rather short (I finished in just over two hours). This is a good thing; the portal-gun is nifty, and I won't go so far as to say you use up its potential, but by the end of the game you've pretty much figured out how it's useful. By keeping itself short, Portal manages to fully utilize its one gimmick-weapon without having to introduce others (and risk dilution of niftiness). Being short has several other advantages: its not a huge investment of time, which can appeal to more casual gamers; it tells a complete story without becoming some epic saga; if you don't like it, you don't feel like you wasted (much of) your time.

Finally, Portal had an engaging yet simplistic plot. The characters are kept to a minimum; there's you (a remarkably unsexualized female test subject), and there's GLaDOS (an AI that administers the testing). In brilliant dark-comedy fashion, GLaDOS's instructions become increasingly more bizarre ("At the conclusion of the experiment, cake and grief-counseling will be provided."), and as paranoia sets in, you start to wonder why exactly the testing has gotten so... lethal...

Personally, I thought Portal was great, and it definitely gets my full recomendation as a game that anyone could play and enjoy, and probably come out of a little bit smarter than they were going into it. Portal doesn't make you think; it tricks you into thinking while distracting you with a clever gun and a psychotic AI. There's really no excuse not to play this game (unless you're a highly-sensitive epileptic, and even then you might want to risk it).

Also, its maybe the only game Yahtzee ever gave a completely positive review of: Zero Punctuation

Next Time: Fundamental Loneliness & Why Dogs are Awesome
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Good news. I figured out what that thing you just incinerated did. It was a Morality Core they installed after I flooded the enrichment center with a deadly neurotoxin to make me stop flooding the enichment center with a deadly neurotoxin.

Nice job breaking it, hero.

The Score is Still Q to 12

The great sport of Calvinball is governed by only one rule: You can never play the same way twice (there is some debate as to whether the second 'rule', "No one can question the masks," is an actual rule or merely a point of etiquette). To give a brief description, taken from some encyclopedia somewhere:

"Equipment includes a volleyball (the eponymous "Calvinball"), a soccer ball, a croquet set, a badminton set, assorted flags, bags, signs, and a hobby horse. Other things are included as needed, such as a bucket of ice-cold water, a water balloon, and various songs and poetry. Players also wear masks that resemble blindfolds with holes for the eyes. When asked how to play, Watterson states, "It's pretty simple: you make up the rules as you go." Calvinball is essentially a game of wits and creativity rather than stamina or athletic skill, a prominent nomic game, and one where Hobbes (and on one occasion, Calvin's sadistic baby-sitter, Rosalyn) usually outwits Calvin himself, although he seems to take it in stride, in contrast to his bad sportsmanship when he loses other games or sports."

That term used there, 'nomic', means a self-modifying game. If you've ever played a game of Mao around the lunch table, you're familiar with the concept. As an aside, apparently at Blair we played it wrong - instead of the Mao changing rules whenever he feels like it, he may only change one rule once per round, but changes carry over to every subsequent round, even over a period of several days (but then, maybe someone changed that rule previously - in the end, there's no real way to play a nomic completely wrong...).

Its important to note that in a sense, every game is subject to rules changes, usually in the form of a set of House Rules. These rules are in place because, for whatever reason, the people playing tend to have more fun that way. When we play Apples to Apples, for instance, the Helen Keller card is always an instant win - I don't know why. Some House Rules are so widespread they are essentially part of the main rules set. I know very few people who play Monopoly without Free Parking being the equivalent of a jackpot - in the original rules, it is simply an empty space.

An interesting facet of the nomic game system is that it tends to mimic the governmental process. In other words, the only real limit on enacting rules changes is the ability to convince the other players to abide by them. It therefore makes sense that Calvinball (traditionally played by only two players) has a fairly relaxed system for changing the rules; namely, shout out the new rule.

A more complex and widely-played game is much more difficult to change. An example that comes to mind is Magic: The Gathering. For the record, I don't play MTG, but my roomate last year did, rather a lot, so if I make any blatant errors, I apologize. In Magic, new sets of cards are released every few months, both to keep the game interesting and, I suspect, to keep revenue from card sales at a profitable level.

The new sets, neccesarily, contain cards with different abilities than previous sets. This can not only alter how combinations of cards behave together, but can create new combos which did not previously exist. More noticeably, new sets usually come with their own group of new special abilities (the Lorwyn set, for instance, introduced Deathtouch, Championing, and the Changeling creature type), each of which adds to the complexity of an already-complex game.

However, these rules changes are not made wily-nily (or at least, we'd like to think not). Extensive playtesting goes into each new set produced, and while fans may feel disconnected from the process, it's important to remember that the ultimate goal is to (make money by) make the game more enjoyable.

Like I said before, governments function the same way. Whether by vote or by iron-fisted rule, a successful government is one which convinces its citizens to acknowledge its laws. Among small groups, anarchy and tribal self-governance are effective, but larger groups require increasingly more powerful law-creating entities, like the Supreme Court or Our Glorious Leader.

To further analyze the effects of mutable rules systems in a competitive environment, here's a link to an excellent nomic card game: 1000 Blank White Cards. It may or may not be more fun as a drinking game. It likewise may or may not involve removing one's clothing (there's a certain danger in games that allow anyone to change the rules...).

Next Time: Thoughts on Portal (discussion of a computer game, I promise, this time!)
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Appended:

Speaking of MTG and Rules Changes, I would be remiss to fail to note that 2010 will feature a sweeping change to the official rules, accompanying the arrival of the new Core Set. Okay, sweeping might be the wrong word, but there are a few major changes that those hard-core Magic guys are probably going to complain about.

1) All Mulligans are now taken simultaneously. I (like many people) always thought this was the way they were supposed to be taken, so in a sense this is just the rules coming into line with the players.

2) Various changes in terminology. Some I like, some I don't. These are:
a) "in-play-zone" is now referred to as "battlefield," mostly to be more flavorful.
b) "play" is now "cast," removing the confusion between "play" and "put into play."
c) "remove from the game" is now "place in Exile." I like it, since card that are "removed from the game" currently have a strange habit of finding their way back into the game, so the new term is less misleading.
d) "at end of turn" is now "at the beginning of the end step," pointing out the difference between this and "until end of turn."

3) Mana pools work slightly differently. Specifically:
a) Mana pools now empty between each phase or step, rather than just each phase. For the most part, there shouldn't be major gameplay change associated with this, since there's rarely a reason to float mana between steps anyway.
b)Mana burn is completely gone. Unspent mana simply vanishes. This will completely screw over some clever combos, but its really a pretty minor rule. I expect people will be more upset by other things...

4) Tokens are now owned by "the player under whose control it entered the battlefield" rather than "the controller of the effect that put it into play". This messes up even fewer combos than the Mana burn change, and those combos were even more BS, so I don't have any complaints.

5) This one is the biggy: Combat damage no longer uses the stack. This is the most major change out of any of them, but its fairly complicated to explain why. Suffice to say that a lot of creatures just lost a lot of their usefulness (Mogg Fanatic, you have my apologies), all in the interests of making the game more beginner friendly. Of course, anyone who's been playing more than a month already understands the elegance of the stack, so I'm not very much in favor of this.

6) The Deathtouch ability is being reworked somewhat, mostly so that it continues to work despite changes to the Combat Damage system noted above (5). This was probably needed, and its better than letting the ability, which was at least mildly neat, become useless.

7) The Lifelink ability is similarly being reworked, for the same reasons as Deathtouch. It's a fair change - things should work the way they're meant to work, after all.

Teenage Kierkegaard

Soren Kierkegaard (and yes, that o should be an o-with-a-slash, but I'm not sure of how to type that) was an influential philosopher of the Modern period, and one of the few whose name still invokes disagreement as to the nature of its pronunciation. For the record, it's /ˈkɪərkəɡɑrd/, though in conversation, I usually say "Keer-ken-guard."

More importantly, Kierkegaard is widely recognized as the Father of Existentialism, and was an early proponent of the importance of subjectivity over objectivity. He was influenced indirectly by Immanuel Kant, and more directly by the desire to completely disagree with Georg Hegel.

A brief aside: perhaps to illustrate his belief in the importance of subjectivity, the majority of Kierkegaard's work is written under pseudonyms, with different pseudonyms holding different points of view. Some of his pseudonyms even disagreed with one another (his atheist Johannes Climacus and the ultra-Christian Anti-Climacus are the most obvious example of this). It gets confusing.

Kierkegaard wrote extensively on the subjects of despair, dread, alienation, and angst, which you might think ought to make him popular reading for all those emo middle-school philosophy students. In fact, Kierkegaard easily out-emos any of them, and yet still comes off as a fairly positive guy.

For instance, in Begrebet Angest (translated as The Concept of Dread) Kierkegaard defines 'dread' as a sort of unfocused fear. The German 'angest', that is, dread or angst, is a seperate concept from 'furcht,' fear of a particular threat. According to Kierkegaard, dread is the natural result of the recognition of our free will. In recognizing a choice, we also must recognize the possibility of making the wrong one, and because this threat is internal rather than external, little can be done to alleviate this anxiety.

His example is of a man standing at the top of a tall building. Looking over the edge, he feels a direct fear of falling, but also a strange impulse to throw himself over the edge. This sounds silly in text, but I've stood on top of my fair share of tall buildings, and I always, always get this feeling. The fact that we have the decision of whether to stand or jump inherently holds the possibility we will jump, and the fear of this leap is the essence of dread.

It should be noted that the fear associated with pirate attacks would be classified as 'furcht' rather than 'angest'; that is, your fear is of the direct threat of being pillaged, rather than any internal threat posed by free will. Thus, the Dread Pirate Roberts would more accurately be called the Frightening Pirate Roberts, though I suspect an exception to percise usage should be made in this instance.

In this way, the feeling of dread is an unconcious reminder of our ability to make decisions. An animal (according to Kierkegaard, or more accurately to his pseudonym for that book, Haufniensis) does not experience dread, since it always acts in accordance with its instincts, which, while not infallable, are at least always in accordance with the animals understanding of its own best interest. A human being, on the other hand, does experience dread, and this indicates that a freedom of choice exists to make self-destructive decisions.

Thus, it is only through the experience of our own dread that we can come to grips with our potential as freely-acting beings. Even though I won't ever jump off a building, I can recognize the possibility that I could, and the fact that I don't is a reflection of my ability to make good decisions.

So the next time you have to deal with some angst-filled teenager's drama, just try to think of it as an expression of that person's inherent free will. Given the rapid increase in personal freedoms around that period of life, a little angstiness is probably excusable.

Next Time: Calvinball & Magic: The Gathering

No, not even a Clever Title today

Sadly, I was once again unable to procure the game I wanted, so no review of The World Ends With You. I've heard its a rather good non-traditional RPG for the Nintendo DS, and if the title is any indication, it has something to do with solipsism to boot. Also on the stack: No More Heroes, a similarly oddly-titled game with its own set of implications.

However, I got about 4 hours of sleep last night, its late, and I'm remarkably uninspired as to a topic to write anything about, which is disappointing, since so far this summer I've been doing pretty well. Many apologies, but today'll have to be a pass.

To make it up to you, here's a weird little web-comic you might not have heard of: minus.

Yes, that's her name, and yes, it's never capitalized. So, a little girl with magic powers: Surrealist fantasy or dark comedy?

I rather enjoyed it, and it's not too long, so rather than read one of my essays, go archive-binge for a few minutes, and in exchange I promise I'll figure out what the comic means and write about it later. Deal?

This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things

Imagine for a moment a group of English shepherds. Each has his own flock, lives in his own home, and in general looks after his own affairs. However, all the shepherds graze their flocks on the same piece of land, the Commons. In this way, they are are all members of the same community.

Suppose the Commons can comfortably support about 5,000 sheep, and any more will result in a gradual degradation of the pasture's productivity. Even if this limit is already reached (say, by 100 shepherds with 50 sheep each), it is still in the individual shepherds' best interest to purchase more sheep. This is because the cost (in penalty to pasture fertility) will be divided evenly among the five shepherds, while the profit (increased wool production) belongs entirely to the shepherd.

This is true for each of the shepherds, and thus, the best strategy for them is to acquire more sheep. Because this strategy should continue to be used regardless of the other participants' strategy (since it always results in greater profit than loss), it effectively constitutes a Nash Equilibrium.

Thus, despite their actions turning the Commons into a barren wasteland, the shepherd virtually have to, just to avoid someone else doing the same thing first. This individually rational decision results in the group as a whole suffering.

Another example is the classic 'splitting the check' problem. Suppose you go out to dinner, and rather than paying separately, your group of five friends agrees to just divide the bill by the number of people and have each pay that much (another formulation, the 'business card method', involves drawing a business card from a hat and having that one person pay the entire bill, but it is mathematically the same as splitting the check). How much should you spend on your meal?

As much as possible, of course (or at least, up until the point where $1 more of cost is at least $0.20 of value). Whoever has the most expensive meal is getting a bargain, while anyone with a lower-than-average cost is getting shafted. Now the question: Why aren't these two problems the same?

The answer (besides the obvious ones about this not involving sheep nor being a thinly-guised plea for greater ecological regulation) is that in the 'splitting the check' problem, the people you're dining with are your friends. At some level, you don't want to screw them over.

So why can't the shepherds be friends, too? Well, there's nothing inherently jerkish about herding sheep, but the truth is that they can't all be friends for psychological reasons.

According to observations by Robin Dunbar on the size of primate societal groupings compared to primate brain size, humans (supposing we follow the same trends as other primates) should have an optimal group size of around 150. This is known as Dunbar's Number. Simply put, you can only really think of about 150 other individuals as actual people, while the rest are simply part of the background of everyday life. A far more detailed and humorous explanation appears in this article: What is the Monkeysphere?

A possible way around this limitation is through the use of organizations. Namely, I suspect one may have a specific organization (Christianity, Communism, NAMBLA...) as part of their 'monkeysphere', separate from any members to whom that person feels close. Thus, instead of considering another person's well-being to be of value, you may consider the advancement of the organization's goals to be of value.

This ability to concieve of abstract ideals may well be what permits humans to form larger, organized societies, while less conceptual creatures are limited to only other creatures. Though the evidence supporting Dunbar's Number is essentially anecdotal, the theory goes a long way towards explaining many sociological issues.

Next Time: The World Ends With You (fingers crossed)

Alert: Americans to be Nerfed in next Expansion

It is often noted that the American government spends an inordinate proportion of its funds on the maintainence and improvement of the armed forces. To the socially conscious, this seems like money better spent providing health care and food to the needy. I respectfully disagree.

Let us begin with the Great War. From 1914 until 1918, much of Europe, along with parts of Africa and Western Asia, was embroiled in what in retrospect would come to be called World War I. My former roommate is a History major, and is of the opinion that everything about the situation of the world today can be traced back to World War II, but if that is true, then everything about World War II can be traced back to World War I. In general, it was a gruesome, bloody, and generally grimdark affair, fought in mud-filled trenches surrounded in barbed wire and filled with corpses.

However, several new military applications of technology saw their first use in WWI. The military aircraft, first used for reconnaissance in 1911 during the Italo-Turkish War (a war which I'm willing to bet you didn't even know happened), was fitted with machine guns and given the role of controlling enemy airspace, both to obtain surveillance and to protect bombers. The first tanks were used to cross no-man's land through withering hails of machine-gun fire and break the enemy's lines (also notice how the British Mark I tank looks exactly like a Space Marine Landraider...). German U-boats terrorized the British shipping fleet, and the HMS Furious was the first aircraft carrier.

Likewise, these technologies came into the fore in World War II. The Battle of Britain consisted of weeks-long aerial dogfights to protect London from the German Luftwaffe. The German Tiger Tank allowed the German blitzkrieg to sweep through France. And American aircraft carriers proved the deciding factor in the defeat of Japan in the Pacific. Submarine warfare would not truly come into its own until the 1950s, with the advent of the nuclear sub, but it too was advanced greatly during WWII.

During the Cold War, both American and Soviet weapons designers raced to develope better and better military technology, in preparation for the inevitable Russo-American War-to-End-All-Wars. But rather than nuclear armageddon, the Soviet Union collapsed (a mere eight months after my birth; coincidence?). Nevertheless, though we no longer had our old foes to compete with, we still had our impressive military technology, and development of new tech continued on pure momentum.

The result is that we now have weapons so advanced they render warfare against us not only costly and unattractive, but downright impossible. Take, for instance, the M1A2 Abrams battle tank. During the Iraq invasion, a single Abrams found itself surrounded at point-blank range by 7 T-72s (Russian battle-tanks). It destroyed the opposition one after another while taking numerous hits, which were deflected by the Abrams' armor. There was no American loss of life.

It has reactive armor in addition to its 1500 mm RHAe (rolled homogeneous armor equivalent - basically, its as tough as a meter and a half of steel plate), and an automatic internal fire suppression system to immediately douse any fire which may occur. The main gun, a smoothbore 120mm, can fire, in addition to standard HEAT rounds capable of defeating any known opposing armor, tungsten canister rounds that produce a shotgun-like effect for anti-personal use, and cannon-launched seeking missiles. And the gun can traverse fast enough to shoot down helicopters.

Speaking of helicopters, the Apache Longbow is the best attack helicopter in the world (though the Russian Ka-50 Blackshark is also notable). The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier is the largest and most dominant warship on the planet. The Seawolf attack submarine can defeat any sub currently deployed or in development, and the fleet of 14 Ohio-class nuclear subs can launch around half of the USA's nuclear arsenal anywhere on the planet in a matter of hours. And don't even start me on the F-22.

I don't mean to say that the United States military is invincible, or even unbeatable, but we are rapidly moving towards an age (if not are already in an age) where a military conflict involving the US is simply a non-starter. The Gulf War was prehaps the first example of this; wheras Saddam invisioned a second Vietnam, the conflict was over practically before it began, with unprecedentedly few American casualties. This against an army that was, for all its Middle-East-ness, was one of the largest (1.2 million troops) and most well-armed (with Russian technology only a few decades old) in the world.

The result of all this is a world where only an asymetric combatant has any chance of doing us harm. Gone are the days of dueling air-superiority fighters. No naval battle will ever again consist of two battlefleets raking each other with fire. And for all the carnage of the Iraqi Occupation, compare the death toll to that of Vietnam. Thanks to our superior technology, the American warfighter is currently the safest in the world, and the mere threat of US involvment is enough to end many conflicts before they begin.

Simply put, American military dominace will (has already?) usher in a new era of peace on the global scale. Similar to the Pax Romana and the Pax Mongolica, the Pax Americana has saved and will save countless lives. This more than anything else seems should justify our current military budget.

Next Time: Dunbar's Number & the Tragedy of the Commons

P.S.
I had intended to use the F-22 as my example for a completely dominant military device, but ended up ranting about the Abrams instead. Alas. However, expect it to come up again at some point, as strictly speaking it's a far better example.

"And I'll look down, and whisper, 'yeah, okay, why not?'"

Today was a great day at work. I got in at about the usual time, sat down at my desk, and began my normal work. There was a stack of old warrants that needed going through, both to check the defendants for other convictions and to suspend their licenses. But that daily routine was broken when the unit's Corporal* stuck his head in with a look of urgency on his face.

"Hendrix!" he bellowed, "Let's roll!"

Of course, he was mostly joking around. He'd already agreed yesterday to take me down to Central Processing and show me what goes on there. Essentially, when someone is taken into custody, they're moved to Central Processing, where they are prepped to go before a Police Commissioner (a sort of half-cop, half-judge who sets bail and assesses flight risk). For today, we were taking people who were turning themselves in (by policy, they have to be brought into CPU by an officer; no one is allowed to Go Directly To Jail).

So after a short ride over to the Rockville Station, we were ready to take our first defendant** into custody. He was wanted for FTA (failure to appear in court) over a drunk driving accident. He'd been in contact with the Cpl. for about a month, who had given him time to turn himself in on his own terms. He'd wanted to postpone the process until after his first child was born, and now that she had, he'd scheduled to turn himself.

The baby, by the way, was quite adorable, and had accompanied her mother in dropping off her father at the station. We waited until they were out of sight to handcuff the defendant, search him, and drive him up to CPU. Two codes are required to enter the main building; one to get past the razor-wire fence and one to get into the building proper.

Once inside, the Cpl. checked his gun into a locker (firearms are generally kept out of reach of inmates) and lead the defendant to a small room, where we filled out paperwork transfering him into the custody of the Department of Corrections. Meanwhile, a DOC employee photographed and re-searched him, placing all personal effects and shoes into plastic bags, which would be returned upon his release. We dropped the paperwork at a nearby desk, where the staffer entered its information into the system and filed the papers. After that, the defendant was officially 'their problem'.

The entire process took about a half hour. Throughout the whole thing, the mood was light, but procedure was followed strictly, or at least consistently. Joking with the defendant was interspersed with sharp commands: "Hands on the wall," "Sit down and take off your shoes," etc.

We then returned to the station and handled two other defendants, both female. The first was a young woman, attractive, except for the cocaine-thinness and smoker's wrinkles. She was wanted for Grand Larceny, and was turning herself in at the insistence of her mother and uncle. As a criminal case (the previous was just a traffic case), this one took a bit longer; fingerprinting and DNA swabs also had to be taken, but overall the process was the same.

The last defendant of the day was a habitual drug user, who had been dropped off by her rehab group to turn herself in for two warrants. The first was a fairly vanilla possession charge (non-marijuana; probably crack or heroine, given the needle-marks). The second was for shoplifting from a K-Mart, attempting to escape, and second-degree assault once cornered.

The defendant was clearly emotional through the entire process. She displayed signs of paranoia, repeatedly requesting to keep a list of phone numbers in the belief she would not be given back her possesions upon release. She also insisted the Cpl. remove the "Escape Risk" caution notice from the transfer sheet, stating that she had only stood up, and had accidentally scratched the arresting officer with her nails when grabbed. The Cpl. assured her he'd see about removing the caution; Commisioner consider all factors when assigning bail, and escape risks tend to recieve higher amounts.

On the ride to CPU, the Cpl. asked her, "So why're you back here again, huh?" She replied that she was trying to make this her last time, to get a clean start. There was a tangible pause.

"Stop doing crack, would help," he suggested, monotone. She said she was trying.

Processing was essentially the same as before, except that the woman was obviously familiar with the system, and the employees were obviously familiar with her. When we turned over the paperwork, the desk staffer commented that the defendant had been in there multiple times before.

After that, we were done for the day. As we rode back to Headquarters, the Cpl. asked me if I felt like I'd learned anything. I replied that I had, and he nodded, and then said something I almost couldn't believe.

"Yeah, that last one especially. Some people are total shit."

Older police officers often become embittered and detached from their work, both because it becomes routine and because they do not see tangible positive effects from their caring. For this reason, I won't be too hard on the Cpl. For my own part, however, his statement is fundamentally wrong, at a purely logical level.

People are not shit. People are people. All of them.

And maybe this woman isn't sincere in her attempt to reform her life. More likely, she is, but will fail anyway, due to a combination of societal pressure, gnawing addiction, and plain old force of habit. It is fully possible that she is beyond any sort of redemption that I could offer her.

But she's still a person.

One day, maybe I'll be as jaded and cynical as the Corporal. I hope not, but as much as I'd like to think I'm better than that I know I'm not. For the most part, I hope I can keep some perspective on the matter, maintain a youthful idealism, and manage to care about everyone I work with. Ultimately, that's what has an effect on people.
...
*The Corporal ranks just below a Sergeant, and is thus the second-in-command in our unit. I've intentionally avoided using his name, because cops in general hate it when people use their names, and also because this might not be totally flattering. To be fair, the Corporal is easily the most fun guy in the unit, is exceedingly friendly, and has been incredibly patient with me as an intern.

**The term 'defendant' is used basically to the exclusion of everything else in my unit, rather than terms like 'perp' or 'suspect'. This is because of the subtle distinction between the meanings of these words. A 'suspect' is any peron who is believed to have committed a crime, but has not been found guilty by a judge. A 'defendant' is someone who is the subject of a criminal trial (or traffic, I presume), and because I work with warrants, all the people I deal with are defendants. A 'perp', or perpetrator, is the hypothetical person who has committed a crime, and is properly used only in a theoretical sense. Thus, investigators may look for clues left by the perp, but the person they believe committed the crime is their suspect.

Next Time: The F-22 & The War on War

Lovecraft : Not what it says on the tin.

Nihilism, from the Latin nihil, meaning 'nothing' (hurrah for 4 years of high school!), is the philosophy that values are false creations of humanity, and therefore meaningless. While the basis for other philosophies is usually on the assignment and justification of valuations, nihilism holds that any value is intrinsically flawed. As such, it has ramifications in numerous fields of philosophy.

One common example of this is moral nihilism; that is, nihilism applied to ethics. A standard ethical system assigns values to different actions, therby allowing an individual to choose the correct course of action. Because nihilism fundamentally rejects this form of valuation, under a nihilistic ethical system all actions are equally moral. Thus, there is no (philosophical) difference between slaughtering a village and eating a bagel; a nihilist would feel no moral compulsion to choose one over the other. Note that this does not mean the nihilist would prefer homicide over breakfast, but simply that he recognizes no appreciable ethical difference.

Another example is epistemological nihilism. Epistemically (remember, epistemology is the study of knowledge), a nihilist approach is one of absolute doubt. Because there is no meaningful value associated with knowledge being true or false, and no inherently trustworthy source of said knowledge, a nihilist is incapable of seperating which subjects of knowledge are preferable (not that a nihilist would care, of course...).

The most wide-spread (and angsty) form, however, is the dreaded existential nihilism. Under this system, your existence (yes, yours) is entirely meaningless. Life has no intrinsic value. This is actually a fairly common reaction to scientific evidence showing that humanity came into existence purely as the result of physical laws. Thus, in the scope of the universe, your own existence, or even that of the entire human race, is both without purpose and incapable of enacting any actual change.

H.P. Lovecraft, an American author who wished he was British, is noted for developing an entire sub-genre of horror based entirely on this concept. Recognized as one of the most influencial horror writers since Edgar Allan Poe, Lovecraft's tales describe a universe populated by beings so powerful they are not only unthreatened by humankind, but in many cases unaware of its very existence. The universe itself is incomprehensible to mere human minds; those who look beyond the thin veneer of life as we know it are typically so horrified they go irreversibly insane.

To quote his pivotal short story The Call of Cthulhu: "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."

Lovecraft's heroes, of course, are these same scientists, piecing together knowledge and gradually removing the ignorance that protects us from madness. I'd always found this particularly eerie, given my background in the physical sciences.

Still, ultimately nihilism is a self-defeating philosophy, and one of many (alongside solipsism) that are held more as wards against actual understanding than as beliefs in themselves. Simply put, any truely nihilist philosopher is lazy, listless, and closed-minded (Nietzsche is an exception, in that he started with nihilism and built meaningful valuations).

To quote Socrates in Meno:
"I shouldn’t like to take my oath on the whole story, but one thing I am ready to fight for as long as I can, in word and act—that is, that we shall be better men, braver and more active, if we believe it right to look for what we don’t know..."

Next Time: Field Trip to Jail & The Ethics of Imprisonment
___________________________________________
Appended: Know your Great Old Ones!

To those of you who're still confused by the Lovecraft Mythos, here's a quick summary: The gods are really extraterrestrial beings of unimaginable power. So essentially, like gods, but more indifferent. There are two basic tiers, and its worth noting that while Cthulhu is the most well-known (and probably the most influencial on Earth), he (it?) actually occupies the weaker level of diety.

The Great Old Ones - Fairly reasonably-sized gods. These exert influence on Earth, and have at least some stake in the fate of the planet, though naturally none whatsoever in humanity's continued existence. Think Godzilla, if looking at (or even thinking about) Godzilla could land you in a mental hospital with froth coming from your mouth. Note that only the more important ones are listed here; many others exist.

Cthulhu - A being of immense power and squid-facedness, Cthulhu lies trapped in the sunken city of R'lyeh, "dead but dreaming." Despite this, he commands numerous cults throughout the world to do his evil bidding. One day, presumably when the stars are right, the sunken city will rise and Cthulhu will once more awaken to sow terror across the Earth.

Hastur - Originally a benevolent god of shepherds, Hastur is vaguely associated with a certain sigil called the Yellow Sign. He takes the form of a black, shrivelled, flying beast, who siphons out victims' brains with his talon-tipped tentacles. Speaking his name aloud is said to risk summoning him (with inherently disasterous consequences). Cthulhu's half-brother.

Ithaqua - A gigantic humanoid, Ithaqua is active and alive, and prowls the Arctic wastes. Probably one of the least-powerful (but most active) Great Old Ones, Ithaqua is described as the basis for the Yeti myths. Alaskan and Siberia tribes leave him sacrifices in appeasement.

Y'golonac - Appearing as an obese, headless man with mouths in his palms, Y'golonac is the god of depravity. Not just human depravity, but any concievable depravity. He is imprisoned deep in unidentified ruins, behind a wall of bricks.

Of course, many others exist as well. Some other time, I'll list the Outer Gods, who are beyond comprehension even to the Great Old Ones. In the meantime, C'thulhu fhtagn!

Socrates Counters the Four Pawns Attack

My New Year's resolution for 2009 was to play a game of chess every day. The theory behind this was that chess is something us intellectual-types are supposed to be good at, and I'd hate to let down the team with my horrible chess skills. It's like, if you say you're a physics major, people are going to ask you about their homework, and you'll look a little silly if you can't help them. In the same way, if people are expecting me to be an engaged, intelligent individual, they're going to be disappointed unless you can beat them at chess.

The easiest way of looking like you know what you're doing, of course, is to know a few good openings by name. That way, you can stroke your chin and say "Caro-Kann defense...interesting..." after your opponent moves. It has a great psychological effect. (You can also announce your moves in dramatic anime-fight-scene style. "Scandinavian Variation! Hiiyah!"). The other advantage, of course, is that a good opening gives you a positional advantage, which gives you a leg up during the mid-game and improves your odds of building a winning attack.

The same, interestingly, can be said of philosophies. If you're debating a philosophical topic, the easiest way to 'win' is to know what your opponent's ideas are called and the most common refutations. That win is in single-quotes, you notice, because really debate is meaningless unless it leads you to further inquiry. On the flip-side, Socrates rose to prominence primarily by crushing his opponents in a series of intense, one-on-one, mano-a-mano philosophy debates, so I do feel there's something to be said for the practice.

And of course, there's always the chance that knowing some philosophy actually might make you a better philosopher...

The French Defense - The French is one of the simplest alternatives to 1.e4 e5. The idea behind this defense is, well, defense. From the get-go, Black focuses on building a solid pawn structure in the center, conceding white his first-move advantage. The variation here is the "advance variation" - White takes the same tact as Black, keeping his pawns in tight ranks and using his lead in development to secure space in the center, into which he hopes to later develope his pieces.

Descartes followed a method of the same nature. From his first steps, he is the total conservative, attempting to lay a rock-solid foundation that will prove impervious to later attack. Descartes tried to use only what he could be sure of: That he existed, that he could reason, that there was an omnipotent benevolent God... That last bit indicates the weakness of this method: Just because you take something as given is no guarantee everyone else does, and when they bring it up you're going to look pretty silly trying to explain yourself. The French Defense, as well, has its flaws: by taking a passive approach, the opponent can devote his full energies to the assault, and any fortress will eventually fall to a determined foe.

The Nimzo-Indian Defense - The Nimzo-Indian is just the opposite. Part of the Hypermodern School of Chess (and why there's no Hypermodern School of Philosophy is beyond me), the Nimzo-Indian is all about the counter-attack. Rather than controlling the center by advancing pawns into it, Black threatens it from the flanks, and later moves for a quick pin on White's knight. When hypermodernism first came to the fore, it went against the entirity of established chess theory, and won many shocking victories against older, more established styles.

Nietzsche used much the same method. His basic premise is not so much an attempt at formulating a new ethical system as it is an attack on the established moralities of the times. Nietzsche's main argument is essentially "Your beliefs are a needless constraint. Get rid of them, and make up your own." Like the Hypermodernists, Nietzsche was shocking in his time, but gradually older schools of thought adapted to these attacks, and their impact was reduced.

Guioco Piano - One of the oldest known openings, the "quiet game" (as it means in Italian) focuses on the development of White's pieces in the center, with Black developing symetrically. While the name suggests a slow, positional game, Guico Piano still threatens some dangerous attacks, like the infamous Fried Liver Attack (not even making this up). A good understanding of the Guioco Piano provides an interesting insight into chess' earlier days, and the opening is an excellent case to study given its long history.

Aristotle is much the same. His ideas were some of the earliest dominant examples of empirical philosophy, with endless tomes from the medieval period dedicated to his work. Even moreso than Plato, Aristotle formed the groundwork of Western philosophy. A fairly balanced system of thought, Aristotle pursued knowledge carefully but with purpose. While he seems somewhat dated today (his scientific theories are a bizarre mix of laughably wrong and jaw-droppingly right), knowing Aristotle provides an understanding both of philosophy's history and its growth.

Ruy Lopez - The Ruy Lopez is another well-established opening, played originally by a Spanish Catholic bishop of the same name. Initially, it resembles the Piano: the Knights are developed to the same positions, followed by White bringing out the bishop. In the Lopez, however, the bishop moves to threaten Black's knight. The threat here is to capture the knight, leaving the pawn on e5 undefended from the white knight, thereby winning a pawn and securing a dominant place in the center. The Ruy Lopez has dozens of variations, all based on applying indirect pressure to Black's center.

Ruy Lopez is to Guioco Piano as Plato is to Aristotle. While both seem to follow similar beginings, and in the end both have similar implications, the methods employed are completely different. Rather than codifying and studying like Aristotle, Plato advanced his concept of Forms, the ideas inherent in real-world objects. Aristotle's direct, empirical approach is the opposite of Plato's rationalism and focus on the ideal.

Alekhine's Defense - Which brings us to Socrates. The Socratic method, which consists of asking and answering questions to help understand or refute a certain position, is the basis for many of Plato's earlier dialogues, which more than likely bear at least some resemblence to Socrates' actual lessons. Over and over, Socrates plays the fool, seemingly going along with an opponent's arguments only to reveal a crucial contradiction, which causes the opponent's position to collapse.

The above is a variation of Alekhine's Defense called the Four Pawns Attack. Black seemingly allows his knight to be pushed all around the board, while White establishes an imposing pawn center. However, the center is over-reached to the point of being impossible to defend, and eventually Black hopes to counterattack, causing the pocket to collapse and leave White's king vulnerable. Like Socrates, Alekhine's Defense seeks to poke and prod an opponent into overstepping their limits.

In closing, I'll admit that I don't really understand any of these openings as well as I should (though I'm getting pretty good at Guioco Piano), and the same goes for the philosophies. There's an enormous complexity to even simple games, and to understand even a single school of thought completely can take a lifetime. More important is to know a little bit of everything; that way, you'll at least have a clue about how to counter a Richter-Veresov Attack.

Next Time: Nihilism & The Dread Cthulhu

50,000 Words from Armageddon

National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, is a creative writing project started by Chris Baty in 1999. 'Celebrated' every November by certain members of the more literary portion of the world, the challenge consists of writing 50,000 words of a novel, from scratch, by the end of the month. For reference, 50k words is around the length of The Great Gatsby; that is, not a long novel, but definitely more than a novella.

The purpose of this challenge, originally, was to overcome some of the creative difficulties associated with writing a novel. Many people (oh look, weasal-words!) assume that having a fixed deadline is detrimental to the creativity of the artist, but this is not always the case. Much of Jonathon Coulton's work, the Thing a Week series of albums, was written with the goal of completing (you guessed it!) one song per week. Some of it isn't very good, but much of it is, and this is a testament to how deadlines can, in certain contexts, facillitate the artistic process.

Burgeoning authors initially feel intimidated by the prospect of beginning to write a book, and once they do begin can find themselves stuck agonizing over what they've already written rather than pressing forward. Ultimately, this is destructive to the creative process, because it interupts the flow of ideas, and causes one to be overly-critical of the component pieces of the story rather than looking at the story as a completed whole.

NaNoWriMo cuts away this threat. Editing is officially suspended until December, and writers are guided by the challenge's motto: No Plot, No Problem. When in doubt, participents are encouraged to simply keep writing, and let the characters sort a plot out for themselves.

While 50k words in a month only requires writing about 1,666 (.66666...) words each day, making those words form a cohesive whole isn't easy. Many participents don't succeed - of 119,000 in 2008, only 21,720 reached the 50k word mark. Those who do (and even those who do not, I suppose) have gained both a valuable insight into the methods of fiction writing and a solid first-draft of their ideas, which a few go on to successfully publish.

I've one friend who is an English major, and a long-time NaNoWriMo participant. She's successfully completed the 50,000 words for the last four (I think?) years. Its a grueling process; by the end of the month, she's running on coffee and grim determination, and the novel has devolved into "John walked into the oh god why am i still doing this store and bought a something." Still, it's the effort that counts, and painful as it is, she's always satisfied by the results. Which is why last year, she made the rest of us do it, too.

If you were going to write a novel, what would it be about? Maybe a romantic tale of loss and longing, where the heroine's betroved is carried away by the winds of war to leave her pining on the docks? Or a dark-haired action-girl who battles mutant robo-zombie biker gangs across the barren wastelands of post-apocalyptic Japan? A hard-boiled detective thriller? Searing political allegory?

Before you ask, no, I didn't finish. I did, however, get to the halfway mark, a goal I adopted during the last week of November, when I realized I didn't want to fail out of Statistical Mechanics over a writting contest (regrettably, I did anyway).

I was still quite pleased, mostly because I beat everyone else among my friends who wasn't majoring in English, but also because it feels surprisingly good to take an idea that's been floating vaguely in your head for ages and turn it into a concrete product. And, while it might not be something anyone else could enjoy reading (I have a vague feeling that the plot is entirely too obscure for someone who doesn't already know how it ends), I can honestly say that I'm proud of what I wrote.

No, I will never let you read it.

The story could, I suppose, be called a pre-apocalyptic mystery novel. Someone is trying to bring about the End of the World, and its up to a plucky student journalist and her reluctant survivalist Teacher's Assistant to figure out who and stop them. There's math involved. And katanas. The grad-student may or may not have an evil twin. The journalist may or may not be from the future.

Told you no-one but me would read it.

In any event, my English-major friend just informed me a few days ago that, for lack of better things to do over the summer, there was a high probability of her participating in something she called 'JulNoWriMo'. It turns out, some people find writing one novel a year to be too easy, and so devote the month of July to writing a second novel, again of 50,000 words.

She then challenged me (more or less; I may or may not have suggested it in the first place...) to finish the novel I had started in November. Another month of writing, at 25k words per month, would put me at a single, complete version by the end of the summer. And naturally, I accepted her challenge.

So, this July, I'll be writing fiction. This is fair warning, then, to expect posts during that month to contain addendums on my progress ("Today Josh fought zombies, and Kim did something endearing!"). Posts might also get a great deal shorter. Still, I'd like to encourage anyone with a bit of a literary side to give the writing-a-novel-in-a-month thing a try, either in July or November.

Next Time: Five Essential Chess Openings & Five Essential Philosophies