Can’t trust anybody anymore

The local Boy Scout Troop puts on a pancake breakfast every 4th of July down at the Sam Bass Fire Station.  It’s quite a deal, actually:  for $3.50 ($3.00 in advance) you get all the pancakes, sausage, milk, coffee, and orange juice that you can eat.  Debra and I try to make it every year.

Advance tickets are sold by Scouts who travel door to door.  This afternoon I was being a slug–reading on the couch–when the doorbell rang.  I opened the door to find our neighborhood Scout hawking tickets for the breakfast.  So I invited him in while I went to find my wallet.  He didn’t budge so I invited him in again.  He started to stammer and get embarrassed and I finally figured out the problem (I’m dense at times).  What kind of idiot 12-year-old kid is going to step foot into a stranger’s house these days?  I apologized, got my wallet, and bought a ticket.

The kid was only being smart, which is a very sad commentary on our society.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

Lies, damn lies, and statistics.  This from the office’s Jokes mailing list:

Number of physicians in the US: 700,000.
Accidental deaths caused by physicians per year: 120,000.
Accidental deaths per physician…. 0.171 (U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services)

Number of gun owners in the US: 80,000,000.
Accidental gun deaths per year (all age groups): 1,500.
Accidental deaths per gun owner: 0.0000188

Statistically, doctors are approximately 9,000 times more dangerous than gun owners.

“FACT: Not everyone has a gun, but everyone has at least one Doctor.”

Please alert your friends to this alarming threat.  We must ban doctors before this gets out of hand.

What struck me as humorous about this little gem was that it illustrates a fairly typical type of argument that you can find on Internet news groups and such web sites as Plastic.com or slashdot.org.  The attacker presents two sets of seemingly related statistics (often made up on the spot), and then makes an outrageous statement based on a comparison of the statistics.  Replace “doctors and guns” with “nuclear plants and coal-fired plants,” or “blacks and whites,” or “Democrats and Republicans.”  The issues change but the arguments remain the same.  SOSBNB (see yesterday’s entry).

These kinds of messages are often referred as trolls (as in trolling for replies) or flame bait.  All too often, though, the person who posts such a message actually believes that it is a valid argument, and will defend it with increasingly shrill and incoherent messages.  It’s an interesting phenomenon to observe, but gets tiresome quickly.

Game review: Alpha Centauri

I discovered the addictive quality of turn-based strategy games in 1981 with a game called Santa Paravia and Fiumaccio on the TRS-80.  Not much of a game compared to today’s standards, back then it was captivating and I spent almost an entire week of my 3-week summer vacation playing it with a friend.  You can find a free Windows version of that game at http://www.jeffrey.henning.com/app/paravia/default.htm.  A couple of years ago I found a TRS-80 emulator for Windows, and was able to download the BASIC version of the game.  You can find anything on the Internet.

I avoided resource management games for the next 15 years, until I was hired by Microprose to work on their Civilization III project.  Figuring I’d better learn something about the genre, I immersed myself in Civilization II.  Fascinated at first, I quickly became bored with the game’s limitations.  I played Railroad Tycoon II for a while when it came out, but I prefer turn-based rather than real-time strategy games.  I burned out on gaming, and didn’t play much of anything for a couple of years.

I saw Sid Meier’s Alpha Centuari in the bargain bin ($9.99) at Best Buy last week, and picked up a copy.  This was being developed about the same time Microprose was killing Civilization III, and I remember looking forward to its release.  It looked like my dream game:  a follow-up to Civilization II with more unit types; unique personalities, strengths, and weaknesses for the different factions; and some automation to help relieve the drudgery.  I spent a few evenings last week and most of the weekend playing the game.

The game is beautiful.  The terrain is nicely rendered, the units look great, bases actually expand as their population grows, the menus look great, and the music and sound effects are wonderful.  Beyond that, though, there’s not much to differentiate it from Civilization II.  Each faction has strengths and weaknesses, but they’re not anything that other factions can’t acquire.  The game A.I. is still entirely too apt to start a war, and the automated city managers are mindless automatons that rarely guess correctly which improvement should be built next.  Automated transformer units seem to randomly transform terrain rather than take into account the needs of a base, and they often start transforming squares that aren’t even within any base’s perimeter.  Very little has been done to relieve the tedium of having to micro-manage bases.

In the late stages of a game, it’s not unreasonable to have dozens of cities, many of which will build new improvements or military units at any given turn.  If you’re waging a military campaign, you’ll want to move those new units to a base that has a transport so you can get the units across the ocean.  With dozens of bases, it’s difficult to remember where the new units are and where the transport is.  Rather than present you with a list of new or active units and their associated locations so you can batch select and order them to the transport base, the game activates each unit in turn and expects you to tell it where to go.  The result is a tedious and frustrating game.  I can understand micro-managing a handful of bases and units, but the game’s automation facilities should grow as your civilization grows and becomes more advanced.  I want to manage an empire, not single-handedly construct every building and fight every battle.

It’s as if they took the core Civilization II code (a nightmare, believe me–I’ve seen it), wrapped it in a new user interface, added some units and other cool stuff (build your own unit types, big freaking deal), and called it a new game.  They concentrated on flash rather than game play.  SOSBNB (same old shit in a brand new box).  Don’t waste your money on this turkey, even if you find it in the bargain bin.

The computer speed limit

I saw this item on Slashdot the other day.  arstechnica.com has published an article that discusses the theoretical ultimate limit of processor speed.  Using a hypothetical 1 kg computer, the author computes the available energy (E=mc^2), and the amount of energy needed to effect a state change in the computer.  It’s a fascinating article.  The math is approachable, but not entirely necessary to understand the article.  Note that this is a theoretical article that doesn’t concern itself with manufacturing processes, heat dissipation, or even the problem of where to get the energy to drive the thing.  On the contrary, if you converted the entire mass to energy in order to effect a state change, there’d be no more matter left to change state.  So the practical limit is surely much lower than the theoretical limit.

This is the first article I’ve seen that approaches the problem from a strictly theoretical standpoint.  All of the other articles I’ve read discuss limits of the current manufacturing processes or materials.  Good stuff, and well worth the read.

Taking a break / Stephen King’s “On Writing”

Well I apologize for the missing entries.  Call it vacation.  I’ve had a very bad week:  aggravated an old back injury, serious insomnia, and a general reevaluation of my current situation have left me with little inclination to sit down and write.  Except for last night and this morning when, due to the aforementioned sleeping problems, I was able to get started on what I hope to be my first ever piece of fiction.  Why?  Why the heck not?  Fiction is fascinating to read, and I’ve long tossed around the idea writing it.  I’m not attempting the Great American Novel or anything–just a medium-length short story.

Speaking of writing fiction, I recently picked Stephen King’s book On Writing.  I’ve always liked King’s work (his short stories and early novels are the best, in my opinion), and this book ranks right up there with the best.  The first part of the book is a memoir or short autobiography, and the second part gets into some of the mechanics of writing.  The second part could stand on its own, but I think it’s much better when viewed through the knowledge gained by reading the first part.  Apart from the writing advice (which rings true to me, but then I don’t know much about writing fiction), the best part about the book is the presentation.  King writes as though you’re having a little after-dinner discussion, and speaks as a peer rather than some high mucky-muck who knows everything.  He writes in a no-bullshit style with a fair amount of humor and no pretension.  Very enjoyable. 

Linux on the business desktop

Is Linux a viable desktop solution?  It certainly is not a viable general desktop solution for the average computer user.  I say this for two reasons.  There is still limited user-oriented software available for Linux, and It is still difficult for a non-technical computer user to install new programs on a Linux system.  Let’s face it, if installation requires the user to log in as the superuser, at least half of the audience will be unable to install it.  And if they have to do anything other than click on the “install” icon (like run multiple make files or download new libraries), you’ve lost the vast majority of users.  No, Linux is still too difficult for the general non-technical user.

But.  There is a growing population of home and business users whose use is limited to a small handful of applications.  Many home users, for example, just want to check their email, browse the web, and maybe write a letter or two.  Many business users are very similar:  email, word processing, spreadsheets, web browsing, and maybe a vertical market application.  With a little work in documentation and training, Linux and Open Source software could make huge inroads in those two markets.  The market is ripe for a “business desktop” Linux distribution–something that dispenses with all the flexibility that general distributions like SuSE, RedHat, Mandrake, Debian, etc. provide, and instead has an easy to use installer that provides the operating system, X Window system, a standard application suite, and comprehensive documentation.

I’ll have to ponder this one a bit more.

A wedding and a theory

My next door neighbors’ daughter got married today, and I was honored to attend.  She had invited both Debra and me, of course, but Debra’s in Phoenix helping out a friend who is ill.  As I was watching the ceremony I realized something:  in every wedding I’ve attended and every wedding picture I see (mine most definitely included), the bride looks like she belongs in that dress and the groom looks like a deer caught in the headlights.  I got to wondering why that is.  Here’s my theory.

From the moment a man proposes marriage to a woman, she’s thinking constantly about the wedding.  Where will it be?  Who’s going to attend?  What will they wear?  What will I wear?  The woman plans the wedding.  By the time the wedding rolls around, she’s entirely comfortable with the idea.  Sure, there are some minor jitters on the wedding day, but she’s got it under control.  Men, on the other hand, propose and then promptly forget all about it until they’re reminded from time to time to take care of some small detail.  When the wedding day rolls around, the man finally realizes “this is the day,” and finds that he’s totally unprepared for the major change that is about to occur in his life.  That deer in the headlights look is the outward expression of “what the heck have I done?”

Hey, it’s a theory.  Anybody have a better idea?

Snickers Cruncher candy bar

So this afternoon I got craving a candy bar and headed upstairs to the snack machine.  I was only half paying attention when I dropped my 35 cents into the coin slot and pressed the button for a SNICKERS bar.  Ripped it open, took a bite, and promptly spat it out.  Ugh!  It was one of those new SNICKERS CRUNCHER bars, the wrapper of which is deceptively similar to the traditional SNICKERS that I’ve grown to love.  Why’d they do that?

The Cruncher bar has chocolate and peanuts, sure.  But they’ve replaced the nougat with crispy rice.  The result is a semi-dry slightly crunchy bar that tastes like Rice Krispies smothered in stale peanut butter.  Ick.

What’s in my pool?

One of the disadvantages of having a pool is that I often find dead animals floating in the traps.  Sometimes I get lucky and am able to get them out while they’re still alive.  When I went outside yesterday morning I found a little critter trying to get out of the pool.  The little thing was dog paddling against the side but was unable to get a grip on the tile surface.  So I grabbed a landscape timber and put it in front of the little guy so he could climb out.  It was still shivering on the log when I left for work 30 minutes later.

So what is it?  At first I thought it was a baby ‘possum (I was only half awake), but after looking at the picture (and after seeing another ‘possum this evening), I’m not so sure.  It might be a relatively large rat.  As long as it stays out of the house, I’ll leave it alone like I do the other animals in the area.

Maybe I should put some water bowls around the pool so that animals will drink out of those rather than fall in the pool.

Update 04/08/2005: Yes, almost four years later.  Isn’t the Internet a wonderful thing?  A helpful reader sent me a message saying that he thinks this is most likely a nutria rat.  I knew there were large rodents in Central and South America, but I didn’t realize we had them in abundance here.

Various book reviews

Caught up on my reading again on the trip.  On the way out to D.C., I picked up and read Randall Wallace’s Pearl Harbor, from which the recent movie was made.  The book is a fairly typical sappy love story wrapped up in a war novel, and not terribly interesting.  Both the love story and the war novel are poorly done.  Reading it certainly didn’t make me want to see the movie.  The book has a number of inconsistencies that are indicative of poor proofreading, poor editing, or a can’t-miss deadline.  For example,  when describing Doolittle’s raid on Tokyo the author refers to the B-25 as a four-engine bomber.  Anybody with even a passing knowledge of WWII aircraft–and certainly the author of this book–should know that the B-25 is a twin engine light bomber.  Somebody should have caught that one before it went to press.  Other inconsistencies are similarly jarring.

David Morrell’s Burnt Sienna is another fairly typical book:  exactly what I’ve come to expect from him.  Warrior turns peaceful man, gets screwed and gets even.  I guess I need to start reading different authors because all of my previous favorite authors are just turning out the same old story wrapped in a new title with a few odd twists.  The names and places change, but the situations remain the same.  Yawn.

Every once in a while, though, I’m surprised.  I picked up the English translation of Pierre Boulle’s Planet of the Apes; the 1963 novel that spawned the movie with Charlton Heston, along with the three or more sequels.  The book was prominently displayed because the new Planet of the Apes movie is set to release in a few weeks.  What a fantastic book!  The original movie shares little in common with it, and entirely fails to capture the book’s feeling.  This book is an absolute must-read for science fiction fans, especially if you don’t like the Planet of the Apes movies.