Awhile back, the Democratic Governors Association made this ad:
Color me unmotivated. This, however, might do the trick.
Motivational speeches.
Posts
If you don’t vote, the economists win!
From a 2005 New York Times article by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt:
“Why would an economist be embarrassed to be seen at the voting booth? Because voting exacts a cost – in time, effort, lost productivity – with no discernible payoff except perhaps some vague sense of having done your ‘civic duty.’ As the economist Patricia Funk wrote in a recent paper, ‘A rational individual should abstain from voting.’ The odds that your vote will actually affect the outcome of a given election are very, very, very slim.”
Well, the hell with that stuff. Vote anyway. But it is true that voting is not the most effective way to make your voice heard. If only there were some means of freely distributing your political opinion to many people at once in order to influence them…
I blame Poltergeists!
So, I was all set to put up some posts on Saturday afternoon when my internet connection died. It didn’t come back till late yesterday. As a result, many of the Halloween-related posts I was working on, including the one mentioned in this post, could not be put up.
Maybe I’ll post them anyway, but right now I’m thinking I’ll save them for next year.
I’m just glad that on Saturday morning I bothered to set this post to go up automatically.
Violent Video Games
[NOTE: I am not a lawyer or a constitutional scholar. What follows is merely my opinion as a player of video games.]
Our beloved Republic stands at a crossroads. Tomorrow is a momentous occasion in the history of America.
I am speaking, of course, of the case before the Supreme Court, challenging a California law that would ban the sale of violent video games to minors.
One problem with the coverage of this issue is that they’re talking primarily about the question of violence in games. The real issue is not just “violence”. This is mistake people often make. The real question raised by the case involves its definition of violence, which deems a game violent if, among other things, it doesn’t have: “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors”.
This seems to me to require an answer to the question: which violent games have artistic merit and which do not?
Consider: The most violent video games are rated “M” for “ages 17+” by the ESRB. But not all “M” games are alike. Most of them fall into the category of being mindless shooters, like Doom, Call of Duty, Gears of War and so on. These are the games that usually grab people’s attention for excessive violence.
But then there are those other games, which are not merely endless levels of cannon fodder enemies, but instead present real, gritty fighting, disturbing scenes of violence, and most of all, show the consequences of that violence and its impact on the characters. Games like Black Isle’s Fallout series and Planescape: Torment and Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear series. These attempt to deal with violence in a realistic and adult manner–not merely a cartoon-ish shoot-’em-up.
The question is, which is worse for a kid to see: a game where wave after wave of nameless enemies are gunned down without consequence, or a game which depicts violent acts, but also the physical and psychological after-effects of violence on the victims and the perpetrators?
There are two classes of “M” games: those which use violence because they think it’s awesome when the guy’s head explodes and those who are using it to serve some artistic purpose. The former kind kids will enjoy, the latter kind they may learn something from.
The trouble here is that the law concerns whether or not the games have artistic value to minors. “Minors” is a big range. For example, Sniper Wolf’s death scene in Metal Gear Solid is poignant if you have the maturity to grasp it, which many people have by the age of fifteen, but which few people have by the age of nine.
Of course, we face the same issue with movies. There are seven Saw films, there is only one Natural Born Killers. (And even its artistic merit is disputable.) It must be understood that violence is not the real–or at least, the only–issue; there is also a question of artistic value. I believe that video games, as an art form, deserve exactly the same treatment as movies, books, and all other art forms in this area.
Halloween.
“When the night wind howls in the chimney cowls,
And the bat in the moonlight flies,
And inky clouds, like funeral shrouds,
And inky clouds, like funeral shrouds,
Sail over the midnight skies –
When the footpads quail at the night-bird’s wail,
When the footpads quail at the night-bird’s wail,
And black dogs bay at the moon,
Then is the spectres’ holiday – then is the Ghosts’ High-Noon!”
Then is the spectres’ holiday – then is the Ghosts’ High-Noon!”
The Liberal Gene.
“The boys are all ready;
They’ve laid out the plan,
They’re setting the stage
For the man-made man.
They’ve laid out the plan,
They’re setting the stage
For the man-made man.
We’ve worked out the kinks
In your DNA
So sayonara, kid
Have a nice day.”
In your DNA
So sayonara, kid
Have a nice day.”
So, some researchers did a study and found out that there is a gene that predisposes people towards a “liberal” political stance. James Fowler, the lead researcher, said:
“The way openness is measured, it’s really about receptivity to different lifestyles, for example, or different norms or customs… we hypothesize that individuals with a genetic predisposition toward seeking out new experiences will tend to be more liberal.”
This is kind of what I mean when I talk about Cosmopolitan thought vs. Nationalist thought. As I said here: “nationalism places far higher importance upon symbols and traditions than does… cosmopolitanism.” So, Liberalism, or what I call “Cosmopolitanism”, is much more willing to experiment with different customs, symbols and societal norms.
Interestingly, however, I am politically what people consider a “Liberal” on most issues, yet I don’t particularly enjoy “seeking out new experiences” in my personal life. I very much enjoy having a routine and sticking to it.
I am suffering much from "blogger’s block" lately.
It’s very strange. I start out on a post, have it almost finished, then decide the damn thing is no good and leave it to languish in the “drafts” file.
Part of it, I think, is that this is my favorite time of year, and I’d rather be outside enjoying the Fall weather than writing. (I hope that doesn’t offend you, dear readers.)
Hopefully, it is only a passing thing like it was last time. There are only so many times I can pull this trick of dealing with it by writing about it.
Don’t know if anyone cares
…But about twenty minutes or so ago, a post went up that I didn’t mean to put up yet, (it’s still a work in progress) so I removed it just now.
I hate the idea of removing posts, but I hate the idea of publishing an unfinished one more. I’m also experimenting with posting at a particular time set in advance, so you might see some test posts go up for a bit.
I think I see a pattern…
I wonder if people will start to learn anything from seeing what usually seems to happen with jobs that Halliburton is given.
Probably not.
What I think the Tea Party is, continued.
George Monbiot writes in The Guardian:
“The Tea Party… is mostly composed of passionate, well-meaning people who think they are fighting elite power, unaware that they have been organised by the very interests they believe they are confronting.”
To which Alex Knepper responds:
“Ideologues don’t see opposing ideas as possessing any real legitimacy. Instead of honest disagreement, they see men behind the curtain deceiving helpless fools. Anyone who disagrees with them is manipulated, conned. Dissent from the beliefs of an ideologue, and he doesn’t treat you as an opponent worthy of sparring with. Instead, he condescends; he treats you like a helpless sap who’s been suckered into furthering the villainous motives of malicious sociopaths. The ideologue is the hero, motivated by kindness, while his enemies are bad guys who obstruct virtue and goodness.”
This is much the same phenomenon I examined in this post, and after reading these articles, I think it’s worth examining a bit more in depth. First, Monbiot’s claim that the Tea Party people are simply being tricked is not quite right; they may not be aware precisely of who the Koch brothers are, but I am sure that they wouldn’t care if they did. Monbiot is indeed oversimplifying the situation to fit his ideology.
To this extent, Knepper’s rebuttal is correct, but where it falls short is in deciding to simply treat this discrepancy between the philosophy of the party’s backers and its members like it is completely unimportant. The Koch brothers really do spend money on these things–which is hardly surprising when you think about it. After all, someone has to pay to fund all these efforts.
Knepper appears to prefer to simply conclude that, for some reason, the small-government ideals resonate with people nowadays; Tea Party has diverse viewpoints, etc. etc. etc., end of story. I would prefer to think of it in a rather different way.
There are three major groups here: the Nationalist Conservatives, the Materialistic Libertarians and the Cosmopolitan (the philosophy, not the magazine) Liberals. The Tea Party rank-and-file is mostly Conservative, but it is funded mostly by Libertarians. I don’t think this is a case of the one manipulating the other; rather, it is simply a strategic alliance. The Libertarians say to the Conservatives: we will help you get the Liberals out of office if you’ll help us with our small government initiatives. It’s a compromise.
And, as I’ve said before, this seems to me to make intuitive sense because it’s the exact same alliance that has defined the Republican party for almost fifty years.
That’s how I see it, anyway. As always, if you disagree with my analysis, I encourage you to speak up.
(Hat Tip to Andrew Sullivan)
