Suboptimist

A potential new direction.

June 16, 2008 – 1:41 pm

It seems I fell off the face of the earth. I’m sorry. I’ve returned. Let’s catch up.

First I want to talk briefly about a cultural quirk of Utah: alcohol, tobacco, (not firearms), coffee, and tea.

Actually, I’m talking more specifically about alcohol, more specifically commonly-held views about alcohol in Utah. For the out of state readers, Utah is known to have often silly laws governing the distribution of alcohol and the management of bars. For one, all alcoholic beverages with alcohol content of greater than 4.0% ABV must be sold in state-owned liquor stores at an 80% markup, in a restaurant only with food, or in a private club. The private club system requires that patrons buy a temporary or annual membership. The state is considering doing away with the private club membership requirement. Naturally, the Deseret News/Tribune comment boards are going crazy.

The Word of Wisdom is the dietary law followed by active Latter-day Saints. Certain parts (abstinence from alcohol, tobacco, coffee, and tea) were made mandatory for baptism in 1921. When the Word of Wisdom followed by active Mormons coupled with the tremendous political influence Church headquarters has in this state will almost certainly determine the fate of the private club membership. Additionally, the non-drinking Mormons in Utah tend to think in terms of the ‘evils of alcohol’ rather than the ‘risks of alcohol.’ There is a misunderstanding that the moment somebody drinks, they will immediately get drunk, drive home, run over a baby, and beat their wife. There is another misunderstanding that Utah’s strict liquor laws are the reason Utah’s DUI rate is so low, although looking at the DUI rates in areas with much stricter laws, say Pennsylvania and D.C., seems to indicate otherwise. Finally, some people have interesting ways of justifying their desire for even stricter laws when they are no longer secure with their original religious motivation:

When I look at the brain scans of a drinker. I feel that is enough proof to ban Alcohol let alone tighten some laws. If anything our liquor laws should get MUCH MUCH MUCH more strict. They are not enough as it is.

[…]

This brilliant neuroscientist seems to to on to something. Oh, wait, no. Yes, frequent binge drinking can reak havoc on the CNS, but common social drinking doesn’t. Moderate alcohol consumption doesn’t do enough damage to the brain to justify an all-out ban. Most of the world’s greatest intellectuals have been drinkers.

Anyway, I’m really tired of talking about that. I’ve been considering managing two blogs, and before you laugh and remind me that I can barely keep up with one, let me tell you the reason. I’d like to keep this blog academic and talk about linguistics and the kind of stuff I just talked about. I’d like to have another blog to talk about games, specifically MMOs. It’d be nice to get some ad revenue off of the blog to maybe put gas in my car. In the meantime, let me give you an MMO update:

LotRO: I’ve been moving slowly in LotRO, taking several nights off in favor of spending time with my non-gaming girlfriend. My minstrel is level 31, and I am traiting him out to be versatile enough in the endgame to be main healer or to provide AOE DPS, depending on the situation. I really enjoy playing the character, the game world remains compelling, and I now get to look forward to the game expansion, which opens up Lòrien, Moria, uses environement-aware AI, and creates a new ‘world-changing event’ mechanic. It seems Turbine is trying to show that it has the development gravitas to develop toward the core market and separate itself from WoW.

EVE Online: The Empyrean Age is interesting. Unfortunately, I’ve had more fun reading about it than I have had playing it. I just haven’t had the time to commit to EVE outside of skill training (I’m working toward a covert-ops/battlecruiser character to patrol low-sec belts and fight Caldari militia).

In other MMO news, I downloaded Vanguard and intend to play the free month to see if I like it. I remember looking forward to the game a long time ago, and promptly forgetting about it after I heard what a terrible launch it had. Apparently they’ve fixed the issues, and it’s a pretty fun game. Sort of like what Everquest was supposed to be. What originally induced me to try the game was the world size and the class system. The world is apparently FFXI big. If you’re familiar with FFXI, you know just how big that is. It can take two hours to get from a city on one continent to a city on another. This sounds really annoying, I know, but if you have the same kind of world-size fetish I do, you understand why that’s so exciting. As far as classes, I want to try something a little different thant what I usually play. I’m thinking of playing a Bard. Interestingly, the bard can open a can of whoop-ass.

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Stuff to write

June 11, 2008 – 1:46 pm

I honestly have, like, seven updates half written. I just can’t manage to complete any of them. Dammit.

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A belated fatwa.

June 4, 2008 – 2:55 pm

So, the Friday Fatwa didn’t last very long as a Friday-specific feature. Frankly, I’ve had too much to deal with the last week or so to bother writing in my blog. Get over it.

I’m having trouble deciding which of the two local newspapers in Salt Lake frustrate me more. Not the newspapers themselves, really, but the the comment boards. The people who frequent the comment boards occupy the extremes only, though each board tends more toward one. The Tribune has more annoyingly angry liberals who think they’re funny and smart, while the Deseret News has more self-righteous gasbags who think they’re rational. Today, I am only giving one example from the Deseret News:

Hollywood’s morals are reflected in the works it produces, and it’s always been that way. That’s why law enforcement officers are often portrayed as idiots, family men as morons, and stay-at-home housewives as stupid subordinates, while sexually promiscuous and irresponsible characters are shown to be adventurous, open-minded, kind and virtuous. Many people locally were upset by the nudity in Titanic, while I think they should have been more upset by the unfaithfulness of the woman who ditched her fiance and bedded a shipmate during the journey. If you want to see Hollywood continue to spread its brand of morality, continue patronizing movies that show decadence as good and chastity as evil.

Rich

I’m going to leave the subtle misogyny aside. Are law enforcement officers portrayed as idiots? Probably no more than some already are, and they are often also portrayed as heroes. Just watch any crime drama or buddy-cop show. Family men are hardly portrayed as morons, housewives aren’t all portrayed as subordinate, and if you’ve seen Desperate Housewives, for example, sexually promiscuous, unfaithful people aren’t shown in the most positive light. I don’t understand the paranoia some people have about Hollywood. This is the kind of attitude you hear from people who hear a lot about the supposed moral degeneracy of Hollywood, but don’t actually watch much of its product.

Alright, time for less frustrating topics: cell phones.

I’m kind of a cell phone geek. I’m always interested in the newest phone out there (though I rarely have the money to blow on it). Currently I am using my dad’s old iPhone (he acquired an AT&T 8925). I intend to hang on to the iPhone until a viable Android-based handset is available and my current contract allows for an upgrade. Here are my preliminary views of the iPhone.

Pros: The interface is sleek and intuitive. It doesn’t beep at me for unknown reasons, and the phone syncs seemlessly with iTunes. Having a full HTML browser is a nice thing to have. The applications are all very well designed and thought out.

Cons: EDGE network. You would think that Apple’s revolutionary phone would operate on the revolutionary 3G network. If there are various Wi-Fi networks in the area, the phone gets confused about how to connect to the internet leading to very slow downloads. Also, the phone is black. WTF? Sorry, but tech manufacturers should be shot for making black devices. I have to clean my screen twice a day and every little scratch and smudge is noticeable. I ordered a Zagg invisible shield/screen guard for the phone, but now I have to find a free 12 hours to let the phone sit.

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No title this time.

May 28, 2008 – 2:13 pm

I’ve been listed as a coauthor on a paper my graduate advisor is presenting. I’m not sure whether to be thrilled or terrified. Basically, we’re trying to figure out the exact phonemic inventory of Shoshoni. I will give updates once I actually know for certain what’s going on.

I lost my phone down a storm drain last Friday, and have been without my phone since. I am literally losing my mind. Think about all the important calls and messages I may have missed. Anyway, I probably won’t have a phone until the end of today or tomorrow. Must last one day longer…

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Friday Fatwa, a spiritual successor

May 23, 2008 – 6:03 pm

I just finished upgrading my computer.

2 x GeForce 8800GT in SLI configuration
4gb DDR2 RAM

Yes.

Anyway, time for the Spiritual Successor to the Friday Fatwa. Once upon a time, this blog had a weekly feature where I would list whatever was irritating me over the last week and rant about it. In a sense, I’m doing the same thing here, but instead listing ridiculous letters to the editor and online comments on them in our two main local papers. I hope this will be a cathartic experience for all of us.

Let’s see now. We have the Sutherland think tank, the governor, the attorney general, the Deseret News, the Salt Lake Tribune, all of the Hispanic organizations and Doug Wright of KSL Radio for amnesty. One group is missing, and that’s against amnesty: the American taxpaying citizen.

Earl Morgan

Santa Clara

The American taxpaying citizen? Isn’t that a little presumptiuous to say all of us agree with you? I, an American taxpayer, am probably more liberal than most on this issue. I say open the damn borders.

This is in reply to Romm Jackson Jr. (Readers’ Forum, May 15). Jackson claims that Darwinism is a theory that has been widely tested and that creationism is not provable. I must admit that creationism might not have scientific proof, but I would like to point out that neither does Darwinism. There has never been any concrete evidence of Darwinism.

Darwinism is the rebirth of medieval science when people believed that living things — like maggots — were born from nonliving things like rotten meat. These beliefs were put to rest after Louis Pasteur discovered that maggots came not from rotten meat but were attracted to it. Darwinism, on the other hand, believes that for living things to exist, they must have come from nonliving things. I guess the medieval scientists were right after all.

Tyler Thomas

South Weber

I’m not going to address this issue head on. Everyone who reads this knows that I believe in deity and evolution without perceiving any conflicts. I’m only listing this letter to show how an issue that was once never on the radar in Utah, one which was largely confined to the southern United States, has become a big debate here. I’m really in shock.

This is a comment from an article addressing California’s legalization of same-sex marriage.

Although I am opposed to gay marriage by my own principles I that is not what disturbs me about this whole issue. What bothers me is the fact that the people of California had their vote neutralized by activist judges. Again if a State chooses to pass legislation that allows for gay marriage that is the right of it’s citizens to choose. To have a vote nulified for political expediency is the death of democracy.

I’m willing to bet that if you polled people in California, they would overwhelmingly agree with the court’s decision. The fact that CA’s supreme court did something you disagree with does not signal the end of democracy.

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My God. It’s full of block quotes.

May 12, 2008 – 2:39 pm

I smell a long post. Do you smell it? Yes, it smells good.

I’m touching on two things today, both of them stories in today’s issue of of the Deseret News. The first is a story about a movement to rename a few Utah landmarks so they no longer contain the term offensive to many American Indians: squaw. The second is a report that a rare genetic haplotype commonly found in Jews has been found in South American groups.

Let’s start with the first story. I don’t really want to touch or give my position on the issue itself, but in the interest of truth in advertising, yes, I believe we should change Squaw Peak in Provo Canyon to something else. Maybe Awesome Mountain. Maybe Robanddan Peak. When I spoke to my mom about this, she mentioned a town in Kentucky when she was younger called Nigger Creek (which from what I can tell has been renamed). It’s the same kind of thing. Whatever the history of the word, it’s a white-man’s word to which many Indians take great offense. Now, what I really want to do is bitch about the comments on the online comment board the fact that the DNews obviously didn’t consult a linguist.

Let’s look at a few gems from the comment board first (there are way too many of these to address individually):

…Personally, I think we should abolish the name “willow creek” from all maps because my wicked stepmother used to beat me with a willow, and whenever I hear the term “willow” it conjures up vivid memories of the psychological damage done to me in my poor, unfortunate childhood!

–Note

Not even remotely similar. Squaw is an ethnic slur, like the n-word, chink, kike, etc. You’re just being a dick.

Let’s just rename it “Honky” peak. Or maybe “Cracker” peak. I don’t think caucasians will cry about it. People need to get over themselves.

–New Name

White people (in general) don’t have a history of racial persecution in this country. That probably has something to do with most of us not being offended by the words honky and cracker.

Did anyone else giggle about Squaw Gulch in Beaver County? I sure did.

–Smirk

Yes.

…George Washington was a slave owner - should we abolish his name from the history books and landmarks? Should we just assign a number to everything e.g. -”valley 14″? That we would be a colorful world.

–pc police ride again

Again, different matter entirely. “George Washington” isn’t an ethnic slur.

Are there any “Native Americans?” If you watch the history channel they say that the first people came to this land from some other continent. That means there are no “Native Americans.” We are all emigrants.

–I wonder

Let’s disregard using the History Channel as a source for now. This one I hear a lot. This likely plays into why “American Indian” is preferred. Another common term is “First Nations.” Regardless of what we call them, they were here before us (and anyone else), and had been here for millenia.

This part native american isn’t offended even a little bit by the word squaw. It just reminds me of my heritage and the fact that my ancestors played a big part in the history of the state of Utah.

What is next? Renaming our entire state? Deseret? Yeah right…

–Anonymous

Pardon me for casting aspersions, but I don’t buy this one for a second. How much part American Indian? 1/8? Sorry.

Now, let’s address the shortcomings of the article itself.

Some linguists say squaw is a corruption of a Algonquian word that merely means woman. But a competing claim asserts that squaw actually comes from the Mohawk word “ojiskwa” — a derogatory term referring to female genitalia.

Frankly, no linguist would call any new linguistic form a corruption of anything.

Kathryn MacKay, a professor of history at Weber State University, used to study the history and culture of the West for the American West Center at University of Utah. She said the term squaw isn’t derogatory in the original language, but it has become pejorative in English, which is “reflective of our own misogynistic language.”

Wow. I could go on forever about this. Dr. MacKay has a background in gender studies, which by my book is the worst place to go if you want to learn about human language. No language is intrinsically misogynistic. Without going into too much unnecessary detail, I could use the standard she is probably using to determine that English is misogynistic and show how numerous Indian languages are as well. With that, I could demonstrate that Dr. MacKay needs to get off of her pop-whorfian soap box. Okay, enough venting.

The other story.

Was Hebrew DNA recently found in American Indian populations in South America? According to Scott R. Woodward, executive director of Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation, a DNA marker, called the “Cohen modal haplotype,” sometimes associated with Hebrew people, has been found in Colombia, Brazil and Bolivia.

I find this story kind of silly on several levels. First, “Hebrew people” is a rather awkward, quaint thing to say. Second, this story is going to cause an uproar of reaction insisting that this is proof of the Book of Mormon’s historical accuracy, even though the director of the Sorensen Molecular Genealogy outfit himself is hedging: he says it’s remarkably weak evidence of nothing in particular.

Additionally, since it’s only a few South American tribesmen, there is probably something else responsible. The article itself mentions it: Jews in Spain intermarried with the Spaniards, who ultimately conquered most of the continent. Okay, actually, I’m really tired. Let’s just look at more comments.

I would not have had a problem had the marker never been found for the following reason.

The lamanites were changed to have a darker skin. This change would have had to be a change in DNA. Once a change in DNA takes place, then it will be different and not necessarily the same as it was in the past.

Therefore if the looked for markers are not found, there are now two possible explanations, not just one.

1. The markers were never there.
2. The markers were there but were erased.

Le sigh.

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Well, this ought to be different.

May 11, 2008 – 8:24 pm

I sat down to work on this post and had to decide whether to write about linguistics or LotRO. I written enough about LotRO the last little bit. I write about linguistics most the year. I am about to write about something usually reserved for blogs of this caliber. I am writing a post about television.

I don’t watch a lot of TV. The only shows I watch in-season are Battlestar Galactica and The Office. I watch a lot of shows on DVD well after the fact. Currently I’m watching the first season of Supernatural on DVD. More on that in a minute. From here on out, there are potential spoilers.

Battlestar Galactica continues to impress me. While there is plenty of discussion on the Internet bemoaning the downfall of BSG due to the lack of gunfighting, I’m really enjoying its evolution into a mystical, political character drama. The most recent episode went full throttle with the mysticism, revaling its influences from Zen, Mormonism, and Sufism. I don’t know. I like it that way. I also like the cylons are becoming potential allies to the humans. The BSG reimagining doesn’t operate in a universe of absolutes. The bad guys aren’t really “bad” and the good guys can be pretty despicable. The cylons have evolved and become more enlightened in the series than the humans have in their history. The cylons recognized they were wrong, and half of them went so far as to recognize that they may need the humans to survive. Let’s see what the humans do.

The Office continues to try my patience with the recent love-triangle drama of Jim, Pam, and Toby. If anything happens with Toby, I will kill my television (or my computer, which is where I usually watch it). I’ve been watching this show this long so I could see Jim and Pam get married, not Pam and Toby. Watch yourself, NBC. Watch yourself.

Supernatural is something else. Like most things found on the WB, I’d like to classify it as geek chic (where BSG is something like nu-gïïk). It’s supposed to be scary, yet it revels in it’s soapiness. It’s a show I should hate, yet I find it engrossing. I’m watching the show notwithstanding the bloody mary episode that blatantly rips off The Ring and the original Grudge. I don’t know. Maybe I have bad taste.

Alright, I have nothing more to say to your people, though since I’ve already ripped off Mike’s style in this post:

“Is that enough human justice for you?”

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Letter’s from Middle-earth.

May 7, 2008 – 11:06 am

It turns out that unlike, say, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online is a bitch and a half to theorycraft. An entire cottage industrycottage industry, where people research and cite eachother’s research, has formed to figure out on our own what Turbine, Inc won’t tell us: the numbers behind the gameplay/damage/healing mechanics. I haven’t finished reading through all of it, but it’s easy to glean that at least at this point in the game’s existence, damage is tied to player-character “initial stats,” i.e. agility, might, etc., as opposed to gear-based stats like +damage and +crit. Where the game system really shines, however, is in the stat buffs the party gains from skill chains. I’ll shut up about that now. Even I’m not sure what I just said.

I guess the gist of what I’m trying to say is that I like Lord of the Rings Online. It’s an interesting take on the MMO genre. Mechanically, it’s nothing new, but the quest-driven gameplay and the incentives given throughout the game for players to stop and smell the frakking roses rather than race to the level cap is a nice change. I’m playing two characters: a hobbit minstrel and a man hunter.

Last night I managed to get a pick-up-group together to explore the Hobbit lowbie zone, the Shire. The Shire is a pretty neat zone. The zone layout is right out of Tolkien’s descriptions. There a bunch of little villages throughout that in typical Turbine fashion have nothing to do game content. A bunch of stuff is there to encourage exploration. Pictures below.

In other, non MMO-related news, I have been hired to work at the Center for American Indian Languages on the Shoshoni documentation/maintenance project. It’s only a few hours a week, but I will probably supplement it with the work at my dad’s firm.

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Edumacation.

May 4, 2008 – 4:03 pm

I graduated college on Friday.  It would be much more exciting if it were for good, but instead I’ll be at the same school in the same department all over again.  The only difference is that I’ll be taken seriously, and therefore expected to produce better work.  Also, I think this time they’ll be paying me to go to school.

Also, I’m not gonna lie, I can’t think of anything else to say right now.  If I find some pictures or something, I’ll post them.

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I hope you like text.

April 27, 2008 – 7:17 pm

Let me lead into this post by saying that Baldr, slain by Loki, has risen from the dead. The nations of North rejoice, for the long nights of winter are over. That means a post about gaming. Also, it means a freaking long post. Get ready

I am not sure what it is, but somehow whenever summer approaches World of Warcraft rears its ugly head to taunt me once more. Last summer I went and purchased the Burning Crusade expansion immediately following my last exam, despite swearing before God and Man that I would never, ever touch the filthy substance ever again.

I destroyed the discs last winter, or at least I thought I had. As I went through an old disc carrier, I found them. There they were taunting me, like a cold beer to a recovering alcoholic. I promptly destroyed them…for real this time. This leads to the subject matter of this post: my love affair with Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games.

I come to this having played several MMOs. I probably haven’t played any one for more than 9 months at a time, but I think the number is approaching five. I have come to some conclusions about the effect MMOs have had on my gaming tastes and why some MMOs have appealed to me more than others.

The Reverend and I have had this conversation many times. In his words, it has ruined the single-player gaming experience. While my own assessment is less dire, I see his point. Today I turned on Mass Effect to play through again. I did something awesome. I also had nobody to share it with. That is the beauty of the MMO. Your experiences are shared with others from around the world. When your guild (or linkshell or kinship or corporation…) are down, you’re down. People see the effect you’re having on the digital world, and they even benefit from it. The feeling of playing a game with others is hard to duplicate. Single-player games, while I still love them, aren’t designed this way.

In an aside, yesterday the Reverend and I walked into a game store to realize how disconnected we are with today’s gaming community. The store was filled with kids half our age buying Madden and Halo 3. I have only completed a few titles since I started with MMOs. The Reverend has completed less than I have. There are games on the shelf he and I don’t even recognize. I can’t help but wonder if this disconnect is somehow associated with the rise of MMOs. Daedalus should get on that.

Moving on, certain MMOs have appealed to me more than others. Despite what I said at the beginning of this post, World of Warcraft was really an ideal game for a host of reasons:

· 1) I am familiar with the Warcraft backstory, having played all the single-player titles.

· 2) The backstory is deep and compelling. It’s not some chitzy, generic fantasy tale.

· 3) To a reasonable extent, the gameplay is relevant to the overall story.

Any game can meet points 2 and 3. No other game can (at this point) can meet 1. Now, let me draw a comparison between WoW and another MMO I played, EVE online. EVE is a fun game, no doubt. It has a rich, deep, compelling story. If you were to print all the available lore off the internet, it would probably fill a standard sized novel. That said, EVE doesn’t do anything with it. The game lacks context. Global PVP is unmotivated. Simply put, there is no reason for players to be fighting. In WoW, PVP (as well as PVE) is motivated by a larger storyline of a tenuous armistice between the Horde and the Alliance, with certain areas where things flare up.

People have told me that it’s not necessary for a game to connect everything into the backstory. Well, sure, but something like PVP should be. I mean, in real life, there are things that happen by themselves. But if you work in some military capacity, you’d expect, say, the war in Iraq to play some role in your day to day affairs. MMOs should operate in a similar manner.

So, the question is this: what will I play this summer? Vanguard? Lord of the Rings Online? EVE? RF Online? Just single player games? I don’t know. Right now, I am kicking around LotRO and thinking of maybe trying RF online. I have reservations though. First, LotRO is designed that, strategy aside, you constantly feel like you’re zerging the enemy. RF online? Well…Korean…

EDIT: I’ll be switching themes a lot until I find something I like and is modifiable.

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