tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-81886022907300068082024-03-05T21:10:06.462-05:00Reality and FantasyThoughts on real stuff, fake stuff, and the difference between them.Max Polunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11519783946536128217noreply@blogger.comBlogger37125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8188602290730006808.post-34117264225319559272009-10-26T14:11:00.000-04:002009-10-26T14:11:33.113-04:00a defence of organic milk and eggsSo I buy organic milk and eggs. I'm generally skeptical of organic stuff, I don't think the label means a whole lot. However, for some reason organic milk and eggs don't go bad for like a month and a half. It's crazy. Now some people may be like: "So what, I always use the milk and eggs before they're bad". Well, in that case, good for you, buy the cheapest milk you can find, however I use very little milk. It's a total waste for me to buy conventional milk, it always goes bad before I've had half of it. Eggs I can sometimes get away with, but sometimes I don't feel like eating a bunch of eggs, so organics give me a nice little time buffer.<br />
<br />
I'm convinced I save money by buying organic milk and eggs. But I haven't run the budget. I'm too damn lazy.Max Polunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11519783946536128217noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8188602290730006808.post-25154902470803794432009-09-10T09:23:00.000-04:002009-09-10T09:23:12.658-04:00thoughts on the president's health care planIt falls almost exactly in the point where I'm not sure if I like it or not. It has a public option, but a very weak one. It is almost certainly better than what we have now, but I'm not sure if it will help or hinder future legislation to strengthen the public option and improve health care more. I think that the one thing that would dramatically improve the plan is just to make the public option available to everyone, why should it be arbitrarily restricted to protect insurance company profits? Perhaps tactically the best thing to do is to pass this bill, create a weak public option and expand it's coverage over time, as conservatives see it's not evil. I'll have to learn more about the proposal to decide whether I think it's worth it, see what all of the implications are, and if there is a chance of passing a better plan.Max Polunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11519783946536128217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8188602290730006808.post-39690466502790748562009-07-14T11:05:00.000-04:002009-07-14T11:05:50.303-04:00The Atheism and Science Wars: It's good to be StridentRecently there has been a lot of discussion atheist scientists and their role in public outreach of science, largely catalyzed by a new <a href="http://www.unscientificamerica.com/index.php">book</a> by <a href="http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/">Mooney and Kirshenbaum</a>. Now besides the pointless trashing of <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/">PZ Myers</a> the thesis of the book seems to be (and I have not read it) that scientists do a piss-poor job out public outreach and need to be more respectful of religion. Now, since I haven't read the book, I'm not going to talk about it specifically, but the idea that scientists who don't make nice to religion will lead to the mainstream religious throwing away science. I think this is a dumb idea on a number of levels:<br />
<br />
<ul><li><br />
The mainstream of religion <a href="http://pewresearch.org/pubs/578/how-the-public-resolves-conflicts-between-faith-and-science">largely <b>does</b> throw away inconvenient facts from science</a>.<br />
</li>
<li><br />
Compromising science to appease religion is a seriously bad idea (I know that few specifically argue for this, though some do, but many proposals do this in practice)<br />
</li>
<li><br />
Even religions that are not explicitly anti-science usually only give lip service to science (for example the catholic church's silly standards for miracles)<br />
</li>
</ul><br />
All of these ideas have been played out before, but my own contribution is this thought: in the modern media cycle interesting debates and ideas are much more powerful than bland ones. People live for arguments, it's the entire reason for existence of reality tv. This is not always a good thing (the entire history of the Republican party after Nixon is based on the idea of interesting but bad ideas), but it is a fact. An exciting debate between science and religion is going to get a lot more attention, and probably people interested in science, than mealy-mouthed accommodation. Now, this will certainly lead to a lot of people coming down against science, but I view it as similar to the story of the civil rights movement (and gay rights movement): there was a lot of abstract argument about equality and justice, but there was very little progress in the public realm until there were those who were unafraid of being called strident or militant (and came out of the closet). <br />
<br />
Now, science outreach is a very different thing from the (gay) civil rights, so I could be totally wrong about this, there probably is no research on it. But I do tend to think that it's impossible to make much progress on an issue without a strong viewpoint. People may be ignorant, but they are smart enough to tell when you are pandering to them, and they don't like it.Max Polunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11519783946536128217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8188602290730006808.post-13962406083359659842009-06-29T10:49:00.000-04:002009-06-29T10:49:55.282-04:00Movin'So I moved into a new apartment over the weekend. Compared to previous times I've moved, the lack of internet at home isn't too bad at all due to several factors:<br />
<ol><li>Internet at work</li>
<li>Googlephone with internet</li>
<li>Maybe I'm just less addicted (not likely)</li></ol><br />
Anyways, I'm enjoying my new bachelor pad. As is traditional the only things in the fridge at the moment are beer, pizza, and condiments.Max Polunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11519783946536128217noreply@blogger.com0201 Wert Ave, Trenton, NJ 08610, USA40.2056355 -74.719285840.2015385 -74.726581299999992 40.2097325 -74.7119903tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8188602290730006808.post-42987835678008257322009-05-29T11:47:00.000-04:002009-05-29T11:47:36.007-04:00Finally I can say "I liked them before they were cool"<a href="http://kotaku.com/5272206/the-chiptunes-band-that-just-might-break-through">Some people are saying</a> that the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiptune">chiptune</a> band <a href="http://www.myspace.com/anamanaguchi">Anamanaguchi</a> is going to get big and escape the chiptune scene ghetto. This would, I think, be pretty great. Not only do I like chiptunes in general, but Anamanaguchi is clearly one of the best chip groups out there. As mentioned int he first linked article, chiptunes really make people strip the song down to it's bare essentials, and the most popular soundchips (those that were in the NES and Gameboy) also need very short songs, so the best chiptunes end up being 2 minute explosions of pure melody. As also mentioned, chiptunes are one of the easiest genres of music to get involved with: you can use a free program like <a href="http://famitracker.shoodot.net/">FamiTracker</a> to write songs. You don't need expensive instruments, or sample libraries (though those help).<br />
<br />
Read about and download their music, and that of other chiptune artists, at <a href="http://www.8bitpeoples.com/discography/by/anamanaguchi">8bitpeoples</a>. Be sure to checkout nullsleep and Random if you head over there too.Max Polunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11519783946536128217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8188602290730006808.post-61239954642423260832009-05-27T13:07:00.000-04:002009-05-27T13:07:20.084-04:00And I thought it seemed so immatureI am highly amused. This blog has been declared "Adult" by my work's filter. Reminds me I need to post here more often. Now that I have googlephone perhaps I'll look into posting via phone...Max Polunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11519783946536128217noreply@blogger.com0300 Phillips Blvd, Ewing, NJ 08618, USA40.2835631 -74.792951140.2794706 -74.8002466 40.2876556 -74.7856556tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8188602290730006808.post-22808465739597942582009-03-01T17:51:00.000-05:002009-03-01T17:51:27.331-05:00Newsflash: economists have seriously fucked up<a href="http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/papers/Dahlem_Report_EconCrisis021809.pdf">This</a> is interesting, especially in light of reading <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Shock-Doctrine-Rise-Disaster-Capitalism/dp/0805079831">The Shock Doctrine</a>. One of the things that keeps coming up in The Shock Doctrine is how free market fundamentalist economists (called the Chicago School after where Milton Friedman taught) always claim that their economic prescriptions are purely scientific in an effort to justify putting in place their programs over objections and without political controls. There are several problems with this (I, for one, always thought that science did not tell us what to do, only what is, and we can use this knowledge to help us get the results we want. In other words science never tells you to cut taxes, it can only say what will happen if you cut taxes.) but it seems that the biggest problem is that it was bad science. Results from models mostly untouched by empirical results are not science, but philosophy. Now economic systems are hard to test in a controlled manner, so a certain amount of reliance on theory and models is perhaps understandable, but all models need to be tested, and it seems that many economists have just assumed their models work for the last ~30 years and proceeded to calibrate their models.<br />
<br />
So read that paper, they have many problems with modern academic economics, but the one that I, as someone with a background in physics, found most telling was the lack of empirical support for their assertions.Max Polunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11519783946536128217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8188602290730006808.post-73264789596071027132009-02-02T15:18:00.003-05:002009-02-02T17:08:22.480-05:00Music reviews: Blood Ceremony<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6jdTsVulUSYWCnAbjAY0_C5daSxYylIrxeccjfHzWQS5LCybv3AAx3Q9NEcGbYpgnzMCqgf4qZ8mH2cjfsGqAQU-25dyXRB1N03fpmqb_XxHg65cnvuNgh-uXbAHRuDH10M7iSxURdhw/s1600-h/209539.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6jdTsVulUSYWCnAbjAY0_C5daSxYylIrxeccjfHzWQS5LCybv3AAx3Q9NEcGbYpgnzMCqgf4qZ8mH2cjfsGqAQU-25dyXRB1N03fpmqb_XxHg65cnvuNgh-uXbAHRuDH10M7iSxURdhw/s320/209539.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5298299859749804418" border="0" /></a><br />Hey, I'm actually busy with job interviews this week so... I thought I'd review an interesting album I found online. Now I usually don't bother with reviewing well know stuff because I rarely have anything to add to something everyone has heard, but I'd never heard of this band before s I figured I might have something to say.<br /><br />So the band is <a href="http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=54091737">Blood Ceremony</a> and this is their first, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001EC6JKI?ie=UTF8&tag=encymetatheme-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B001EC6JKI">self-titled album</a>. They are extremely old-school. The inevitable references are Black Sabbath and Jethro Tull, the Tull reference is mainly because they've got a flute player, and the guitar sound like it was ripped out of a Sabbath record. At first I thought that the singer sounded like Neal Peart (of Rush) before I realized it was a woman, she doesn't sound like Neal for most of this album, just the first song. Everything about this album is retro, including the cover art and the synthesizers, which I think works well for this band. Retro revivals are happening all over the place, but this is a new take on an old sound.<br /><br />So how's the music? It's basic sound is moody early 70's metal, but it keeps things pretty varied throughout. It may be metal, but it doesn't have the overwhelming distortion that dominates that genre nowadays. As a matter of fact the sound is pretty clean, sometimes even folksy. The lyrics are pretty ridiculous, but I don't listen for the lyrics. Take a look at these lyrics off of the song "Return to Forever": <blockquote><br />The master magician tunes a casket-shaped lung<br />In his ritual chamber they pray to the dawn<br /><br />Sipping cosmic nectar<br />hearing Magus lecture<br /><br />Now Astaroth's ship sets sail across the sky<br />Through Saturn's yawning hail, and into the eye<br />Black magic rites profane<br />Wizards are oft' to blame</blockquote><br />Unless you're at a D&D session or a Pagan ritual these are just a little silly. There is nothing here that hasn't been done before musically, but it's of consistently high quality. The one bad point is that there's really only one tempo for the entire album, but there are a number of different sounds and textures, the main one being the Sabbathean hard rock, but also relatively light-hearted folkish songs and and at one point sounding like a Gypsy dance song (the intro to Hop Toad). I'm guessing that this will be a big hit with the stoner crowd, it's good even without chemical enhancement.<br /><br />So a word about the rating system I use: I like the one from <a href="http://www.soundopinions.org">Sound Opinions</a>. The ratings are buy it (if you like this genre of music, you will definitely enjoy it), burn it (try before you buy), and trash it (don't even bother). I'm going to give this a buy it: if you like hard rock/metal, especially from the 1970's, you will enjoy this. The only people who may be disappointed are hardcore doom metallers, since this is classified as doom metal, but sounds nothing like the usual doom metal album (which is a lot slower, louder, and more distorted). I mean, top 40 types won't like it, but they're not going to expect to like it.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.soundopinions.org/?refid=9"><img src="http://americanpublicmedia.publicradio.org/standard/images/apm001/programs/soundopinions/soundopinions_buyit.gif" width="61" height="66" border="0" /></a>Max Polunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11519783946536128217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8188602290730006808.post-63999000245663675912009-01-28T19:56:00.001-05:002009-01-28T19:58:34.689-05:00Saddlebacking defined<div id="definition"> <strong>Saddlebacking</strong>: sad•dle•back•ing \ˈsa-dəl-ˈba-kiŋ\ vb [fr. Saddleback Church] (2009): the phenomenon of Christian teens engaging in unprotected anal sex in order to preserve their virginities<br /><br /><small><em>After attending the Purity Ball, Heather and Bill saddlebacked all night because she’s saving herself for marriage.</em></small> </div><br /><br />From <a style="border-bottom: 1px solid orange;" class="autolink autolink-plain-text-link" title="Link added by AutoLink filter: Plain text link" href="http://www.saddlebacking.com/">http://www.saddlebacking.com/</a>Max Polunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11519783946536128217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8188602290730006808.post-66717187117328356802009-01-27T12:17:00.085-05:002009-01-27T13:13:11.258-05:00Sex, Women, and PerversitySo it's been a while since I posted, but I saw <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/magazine/25desire-t.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1">this</a> article and had to post on it. Short summary for those who can't get through the NYT paywall: sex researchers are finally doing research on women, when for a long time it was all about men. There are some interesting results and some hypotheses to try to explain them.<br />
<br />
Empirical findings:<br />
<ol><li>Men's physical response to sexual images (aka an erection) matches their psychological response pretty closely, whereas womens did not match very well</li>
<li>Men tended to have a response very similar to their stated orientation (straight men were turned on by women, and gay men by men), but women were all over the map. I'll quote here: <br />
<blockquote>All was different with the women. No matter what their self-proclaimed sexual orientation, they showed, on the whole, strong and swift genital arousal when the screen offered men with men, women with women and women with men. They responded objectively much more to the exercising woman than to the strolling man, and their blood flow rose quickly — and markedly, though to a lesser degree than during all the human scenes except the footage of the ambling, strapping man — as they watched the apes. And with the women, especially the straight women, mind and genitals seemed scarcely to belong to the same person. The readings from the plethysmograph [device to measure physical sexual response] and the keypad [to rate their subjective response] weren’t in much accord. During shots of lesbian coupling, heterosexual women reported less excitement than their vaginas indicated; watching gay men, they reported a great deal less; and viewing heterosexual intercourse, they reported much more. Among the lesbian volunteers, the two readings converged when women appeared on the screen. But when the films featured only men, the lesbians reported less engagement than the plethysmograph recorded. Whether straight or gay, the women claimed almost no arousal whatsoever while staring at the bonobos.</blockquote></li>
</ol><br />
Interesting, no? Well there are a few ideas to explain these findings:<br />
<ol><li>Women become wet in any sexual situation to avoid suffering physical damage from sex to their vaginas.</li>
<li>Women are turned on by someone being attracted to them, not another person in of themselves</li>
</ol><br />
Now the first hypothesis makes some sense, evolution would tend to work that way (though it does not explain the high response to women with women), but it does not explain why their physical and mental responses to sexual imagery are so different. hypothesis 2 seems to me like someone talking out their ass. Everyone is turned on by someone being attracted to them, that isn't something that can explain the difference between men and women's sexuality.<br />
<br />
There are several ways to explain the differences that I can think of. First of all, are the differences biological or cultural? The article touches on how hard those things are to separate. We really don't know the answers to this one yet, but it is probably some sort of combination of the two, it's just a question of how much of each. Now if it's primarily biological (aka men and women are fundamentally different sexually) then we basically know why: it evolved that way, we just don't know why it evolved that way, and I don't think anyone can seriously present a good idea why it evolved that way at this point while we are still trying to decide what exactly "natural" sexuality is. Now if it's primarily cultural (aka men and women are essentially the same) then we can go two ways: either men are repressing physical responses that don't fit their psychological makeup, or women getting wet for things that don't actually turn them on.<br />
<br />
There is another interesting possibility that I favor; Women and men could have fundamentally different physical sexual responses, but women have been forced by culture to fit into the male sexuality boxes. I certainly think that the language used to describe sexuality is very male centric. Men are usually either basically straight or basically gay (though the boundaries are to some extend fluid), whereas women have basically fluid sexuality (though they do have to some extent a sexual orientation). As a science nerd the best way to illustrate this is with a graph.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_AvJrEfCgsdeWICEOl9mHVJbWnenOabYDAwwY4ULrKAnruQVPc91JWT4TB8G79B8NrgxWlhTb9E7mlSNMUda3QQHQ3gmzlbrawniXu_369zKHiE2062Ny_RaMpVDABiQZZpHbQuZ5ngg/s1600-h/women-vs-men.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_AvJrEfCgsdeWICEOl9mHVJbWnenOabYDAwwY4ULrKAnruQVPc91JWT4TB8G79B8NrgxWlhTb9E7mlSNMUda3QQHQ3gmzlbrawniXu_369zKHiE2062Ny_RaMpVDABiQZZpHbQuZ5ngg/s320/women-vs-men.png" /></a></div><br />
Ok, so I'm not good at making fake graphs. But the point is: in my experience women who have sort of thrown out societies expectations of them match their states desires very well with the physical one in the study. Which, in a totally unscientific manner, says to me that women are naturally* something along the lines of pansexual and it's our society that has forced them into straight or gay.<br />
<br />
* by natually I mean that if all there was was biology. I'm a great advocate of natural != good, and the other thing is that that this is all based on distributions of people with many outliers.Max Polunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11519783946536128217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8188602290730006808.post-59759296034344088722008-12-01T13:00:00.003-05:002008-12-01T14:09:14.174-05:00Some thoughts on free willI'm still reading the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Einstein-Life-Universe-Walter-Isaacson/dp/0743264738">Einstein biography</a> (I read another book in the middle of it), and one thing it discussed was Einstein's beliefs about free will. This got me to thinking, I don't think I've ever seen my exact beliefs published anywhere (though some have similar ones), so I figure I'll lay them out here. I think it nicely balances scientific evidence with philosophy, as well as practical considerations, though I don't make any particular claims of perfection.<br /><br />I've got a few assumptions I start from:<br /><ol><li>The universe is fundamentally stochastic (probability of events can be predicted deterministically, but not events themselves) on a small scale, but acts mostly determinisically at normal scales.</li><li>Specifically the human brain is mostly deterministic, and the nondeterministic elements are not particularly coordinated (meaning no quantum computer in the brain, not that that would alter my conclusions much)</li><li>The mind exists totally within the brain (I don't believe in a soul for example)<br /></li><li>Free Will means one thing in philosophy and another in normal language.<br /></li></ol><br />So, what do we mean by free will? Philosophically it can be defined in many ways (and usually the views of philosophers depend on their definitions is my impression), but they all get at the idea of making a decision independent of outside influence. This idea has some problems: for one thing, we know that outside influences can affect decisions, and not just by altering the consequences of actions either, for example people act differently under the effect of drugs than normally. My assumptions above force me to take the position that free will does not really exist in the philosophical sense.<br /><br />So can we make choices in my view? Well, it all comes down to definitions. I would say that our actions are determined by both internal and external states of the universe, so a choice in the usual sense is impossible, but the sensation of choice corresponds with a state transition in the higher functioning parts of the brain. When I say "I want to do X", I mean "my memories, beliefs, values, and reasoning ability inclines me to actions that I believe will lead to X", and when I say "I chose to do X" I mean "I did X because of a variety of reasons, mainly because of my memories, beliefs, values and ability to reason, as opposed to instinct, outside chemicals or orders".<br /><br />In everyday life free will means something more like the idea of actions being endogenous (coming from internal states of the brain, rather than direct outside influence). An easy way to see how this differs from philosophy would be the case of a drunk driver: they would normally know not to drive drunk, but once drunk, and knowing they are drunk, drive nonetheless with no other outside influence on them to drive other than alcohol. If you accept my premises above that the brain is the seat of all human consciousness and is (mostly) deterministic, then clearly the alcohol caused the drunk driver to drive. In an everyday sense, even if you believe that I do, most people would hold the drunk driver responsible if he hit anyone. This bring me to a good way to sum up the common sense idea of free will (at least as I see it): responsibility. People are responsible for their actions even if there are outside influences on them. <br /><br />Most people view strict determinism (or even my "everything on the scale of daily life is deterministic for the most part") as morally repugnant because they feel that people are not responsible for their actions in such as worldview. This is not necessarily the case, we can hold people responsible for their actions if we like, no matter our philosophical views. I would hold everybody responsible for their actions, and then we as society can choose what actions we want to support, and which to punish. <br /><br />Some argue that in a deterministic (or mostly deterministic) world there is no place for ethics. This seems like a poorly thought out objection to me, if outside influences affect people's actions than surely ethics and laws affect people's actions, in a way that we want.<br /><br />Well looking over Wikipedia's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism">Compatibilism</a> article, it seems I'm on well treaded ground; this is not particularly surprising, but I nonetheless like my views as recorded here. I will note that my view are somewhat different from compatibilism in that I believe that we don't have free will but that are nonetheless responsible for our actions, but in the end that becomes a matter of definition and language.Max Polunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11519783946536128217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8188602290730006808.post-66484022108428736302008-11-30T13:12:00.000-05:002008-11-30T13:13:09.990-05:00News to meApparently <a href="http://www.genderanalyzer.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Frealisy.blogspot.com">I am a woman</a>.Max Polunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11519783946536128217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8188602290730006808.post-49471238203941004112008-11-13T18:43:00.001-05:002008-11-13T19:08:39.709-05:00Despite what you hear on the internet circumcision is not the HolocaustSo PalMD of Denialism blog <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2008/11/why_male_circumcision_and_fema.php">riled up the hardcore anti-circumcision types</a> with a post about why male circumcision and female genital mutilation (FGM, aka female circumcision) are not equivalent, as any right thinking person can see (at least the form of circumcision practiced today is different from FGM as practiced today, some of the historical forms of circumcision were if not equivalent, at least of similar severity). I would like to make a broader point: those who think circumcision is some great terrible crime are dumb. Sure there are arguments against it (if I had a son I would probably not get him circumcised), but the anti-circ militia are just making stupid, provably false arguments. What I want to know is how does this become such a huge issue for them? I was circumcised and I may (or may not) have lost some minor feeling. This is not a big deal, I can (and do) still enjoy sex-- and the best parts aren't the raw physical sensations (why do people seek out a partner, the sensations aren't much different for solo and partnered sex? Hint: the brain is the main sexual organ of the body). So maybe it is a tradition that we should drop, but making the argument for that by comparing a relatively harmless procedure to one in which people die every year, and the ones who don't are often unable to feel any sexual pleasure, is just absurd.Max Polunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11519783946536128217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8188602290730006808.post-26308660499532798472008-11-04T15:09:00.003-05:002008-11-04T15:58:45.939-05:00A few thoughts on intelligenceSo I read Gino Segre's book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Faust-Copenhagen-Struggle-Soul-Physics/dp/067003858X">Faust in Copenhagen</a> (which I quite like) a while back, and now I'm reading Walter Isaacson's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Einstein-Life-Universe-Walter-Isaacson/dp/0743264746/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_c">biography of Einstein</a>. Both are about the doings of geniuses, Einstain being the obvious one, but Faust in Copenhagen is about people almost as revered in physics: Bohr, Pauli, Dirac, Heisenberg and Schrödinger among others. What separates these people from regular folks like me? I'm pretty smart, but by no means a genius. Obviously these people have accomplished far more than I probably ever will (at least in terms of physics), but what traits did they have that made these advances possible? Obviously a large amount of intelligence, but what is intelligence? Many people (and almost all game designers) think of intelligence as a single value, measured by IQ, and known by some social science researchers as "g" (for general intelligence). What is this "g", however? What traits do people with high "g" have? I've made a list of ones I can think of right now (it's by no means exhaustive). Also note that not everyone with a high intelligence has all of these traits (as a hint to where I'm going, I'm trying to figure out what one of these traits all geniuses have, and is in some sense true intelligence).<br /><br /><ul><li>Education: This is more than knowing just a lot of facts, but understanding what they mean.</li><li>Memory: ability to learn quickly.</li><li>Computational ability: ability to do mental computations quickly. This mostly means math, but can also include other types of computation like finding anagrams, etc.</li><li>Creativity: ability to come up with new ideas.</li><li>Mental Quickness: ability to think on one's feet.</li><li>Mental Clarity: ability to reduce a problem to it's essentials, as well as to separate what one wants to be true, from what is true.</li></ul>All of these are parts of intelligence. I would say that computation and memory are becoming less important as computers get more ubiquitous and powerful. Mental quickness is helpful in many situations, but not for making true breakthroughs. Of the remaining three Education is necessary but not sufficient: a thorough understanding of the topic is important to advancing it, but many people understand things and are not geniuses, also education is not inherent to a person and does not correspond to what we often think of as intelligence. It seems that a combination of creativity and mental clarity is the key condition of genius. Someone who is otherwise intelligent and is creative, but not mentally clear will become a crank. Someone who is mentally clear, but not creative would make a good critic or regular working person in their field, but not a genius. The combination is what makes genius.<br /><br />Now different geniuses have had different relative strengths: for example Einstein is almost the poster by for creativity above all, whereas Pauli was known as the Scourge of God because he was able to see the flaws in an idea so quickly and is the perfect example of Mental Clarity.Max Polunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11519783946536128217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8188602290730006808.post-18614954751180462972008-11-04T15:07:00.002-05:002008-11-04T15:09:45.107-05:00I votedIt was pretty easy, there were almost no people at the voting place, but then I am living in a quite well off area full of white people. Hopefully things aren't crazy in, say, Philadelphia.Max Polunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11519783946536128217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8188602290730006808.post-21933706640758525982008-10-18T12:25:00.002-04:002008-10-18T12:28:33.997-04:00NANOWRIMOSo I always get excited by <a href="http://www.nanowrimo.org/">National novel writing month</a> even though I never seem to get it together to do it. I'll try it again this year, and to help encourage me, I'll have a progress widget on the side of my blog.<br /><br />Also, I've got several books I want to post reviews of, I'll do that before too long.Max Polunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11519783946536128217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8188602290730006808.post-65277144341897448142008-09-24T12:27:00.001-04:002008-10-03T11:33:00.130-04:00Why I am unsatisfied by job search websitesSo, I'm currently unemployed. The current economy being totally shit does not help this matter, but I am not here to discuss that today. Rather I am here to trash all the job search sites I have used. Specifically I am going to say how bad the sites that are only job search fail at their tasks. I will discuss the sites I have used one by one.<br />
<ol><li><a href="http://craigslist.org">Craigslist</a>: This site actually works well for what it is. It does not claim to be a full featured job search site, it is free, you don't need an account, there is no screening of employers or prospective employees. The search actually works well, it's easy to check different locations, job types, and narrow the search. Unfortunately there is no saved search or anything like that (it would actually be pretty useful for craigslist as a whole), but for doing period searches by hand it is pretty good.</li>
<li><a href="http://monster.com">Monster.com</a>: This site is a dedicated job search site, and to apply for a job you have to sign up for the site. However, rather than being more convenient than say, craigslist, it is much less. There are a great variety of annoyances, but the one that impacts my finding a job the most is that the search function is terrible. It has a bad interface, and once you spend 10 minutes configuring it right it does not save properly. I graduated from college in June, and it keeps sending me senior developer positions. There are also a lot of adds, including obtrusive ones for the university of phoenix (I've got a BS, I don't need another). Overall the site feels like it was written in '98 and could seriously use a refresh. </li>
<li><a href="http://careerbuilder.com">Career builder</a>: This place is on average about the same as Monster.com, but has different annoynaces. The save search still is crap, but there is a "jobs similar to ones you have applied for" search that works decently. On the other hand it was a huge pain to sign up for, I had to put in my info at least 3 times because it kept going to the next page of questions before I was done, and then when I went back to edit it everything was wiped out.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.usajobs.opm.gov/">Usajobs</a>: This is the official US government job search site. It works ok it's self, but the jobs are posted here in a very annoying way. Not only is the language of the posting strange government legalese, but there are huge numbers of the same posting repeated again and again. Also to apply to many of these you have to go to another site which brings me to my next section...</li>
<li>Company or agency specific sites: These are by nature hugely varied. The worst are government sites, one of these I could literally find no way to apply. Boeing has a good one (the saved search actually works).</li>
</ol>Someone should make a website that aggregates the search results from a variety of sources and consolidates them so that you don't need to sign up for all of these places just to search, and also so they can have better search features. Maybe I should...Max Polunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11519783946536128217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8188602290730006808.post-68554062996765079962008-09-17T13:36:00.005-04:002008-09-17T14:07:59.560-04:00The ginger beer ChroniclesSo I've been trying to make home made ginger beer. First I tried <a href="http://biology.clc.uc.edu/Fankhauser/Cheese/Ginger_Ale_Ag0.htm">this</a> recipe with added ginger, but it didn't ferment enough (probably my fault), and it just tasted like ginger ale. I was looking for a stronger flavor especially after trying some Jamaican style ginger beer. It was incredibly strong and spicy. So I looked around and formulated my own recipe:<br /><div style="background: rgb(141, 206, 246) none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;"><ul><li>Ginger to taste, grated, juiced or sliced. I used most of one root</li><li>2 allspice berries</li><li>1 cassia (cinnamon) stick</li><li>1 star anise</li><li>1 bay leaf</li><li>1 cup brown sugar</li><li>juice and zest of 1/2 lemon or whole lime</li><li>1/4 tsp bakers yeast<br /></li><li>2 liters water (to fit the container, double the recipe for a gallon container )</li></ul><br /><table style="width: auto;"><tbody><tr><td><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/1hLGXnFCkK4h_HafOPsk4A"><img src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/orrerey/SNE7d5pc7KI/AAAAAAAAAFA/J4mTJo1Rx7A/s288/IMG_0031.JPG" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: right;">From <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/orrerey/GingerBeerRecipe2">Ginger Beer Recipe 2</a></td></tr></tbody></table>Put the ginger, sugar, and spices in a large pot<br /><br /><table style="width: auto;"><tbody><tr><td><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/gTohIs8kBft6wi5jK4wMPg"><img src="http://lh3.ggpht.com/orrerey/SNE7fVrwnfI/AAAAAAAAAFQ/U8QHWW8junA/s288/IMG_0033.JPG" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: right;">From <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/orrerey/GingerBeerRecipe2">Ginger Beer Recipe 2</a></td></tr></tbody></table>Add water and boil. Let steep for ~10 min.<br /><br /><table style="width: auto;"><tbody><tr><td><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/Zy2M62GIveQlqmhNK23fvA"><img src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/orrerey/SNE7gao-wnI/AAAAAAAAAFY/7Lf_WjI6bE8/s288/IMG_0034.JPG" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: right;">From <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/orrerey/GingerBeerRecipe2">Ginger Beer Recipe 2</a></td></tr></tbody></table>Cool to prevent over-steeping. Add citrus.<br /><br /><table style="width: auto;"><tbody><tr><td><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/yUwZbhoHc0SwGPadDjzSew"><img src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/orrerey/SNE7ieS7TqI/AAAAAAAAAFw/7G7RGZMB-Fo/s288/IMG_0037.JPG" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: right;">From <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/orrerey/GingerBeerRecipe2">Ginger Beer Recipe 2</a></td></tr></tbody></table>Put yeast in bottle and pour liquid into bottle.<br /><br />Ferment for 24-48 hours until plastic bottle is firm when squeezed. Refrigerate to stop fermentation.</div><br />I accidentally watered it down a little when cooling it. On the plus side I now have 2 bottles of it. My initial taste says that it's tasty with spices, but is not particularly gingery. We'll see how it is when it's done.Max Polunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11519783946536128217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8188602290730006808.post-53381480559139058332008-09-09T23:53:00.000-04:002008-09-10T00:08:33.188-04:00Sara Palin: petty dictatorSo according to <a href="http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/sliming_palin.html">FactCheck.org</a> Sara Palin did not try to get books banned, but rather asked the librarian what she (the librarian) would do if asked to remove books, and then what she would do if there were pickets. This seems pretty threatening to me, and reveals that she is a petty dictator: the kind who has to constantly remind those under her that she has power over them. Of course this is only one of many situations where she has revealed that aspect of her personality.<br />
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as an aside, I would mention that everyone should visit factcheck.org to confirm your stuff before getting into a political debate, it's pretty reliable politics would be much better in this country if everybody had to stay within the bounds of facts.Max Polunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11519783946536128217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8188602290730006808.post-2294453093493977772008-08-12T22:15:00.000-04:002008-08-12T22:57:36.164-04:00Review of really old stuff: Neil Gaiman's SandmanInspired by <a href="http://realisy.blogspot.com/2008/07/reading-comics-and-some-comics-i-read.html">Reading Comics</a>, I decided to read some comics that I know are well thought of. One comic that even I've heard of is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandman_(Vertigo)"> Sandman</a> written by Neil Gaiman and drawn by a series of artists. Wikipedia has a good basic summary of the character and setting, but basically it follows the activities of Dream of the Endless, a group of beings that govern aspects of the natural world (they are, in order of oldest to youngest, Destiny, Death, Dream, Destruction, Desire, Despair, and Delerium), aka Morpheus. The only other "mainstream" (meaning DC or Marvel) comic I have read is Watchmen (as I mentioned in the other review), and I think it would be useful to contrast the two:<br />
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<ul><li>Watchmen is about superheros, even if they are unusual and fucked up superheros; Sandman is not about superheros (though they exist in the background and make a few cameos), it takes place in a fantasy world of Gaiman's design and is more strongly influenced by mythology than comics themselves</li>
<li>Relatedly Watchmen is very meta, and is really about superhero stories specifically in the form of comics, Sandman is about more general metaphysical questions-- the one I really picked up on was how to deal with death and change. One of the things that comes up is can/if Morpheus has changed, and that really becomes central to the end of the series. Sandman does get meta, but about stories, not comics. </li>
<li>Watchmen is action packed, full of violence and exciting activities; Sandman has almost no conventional action -- Morpheus is a force of nature, and after the first few issues he faces very few dangers he can fight. This leads to a very different sort of story, and often Morpheus does not seem to really be a major player, but the theme of dreams always comes through</li>
<li>Finally there are a few format differences: Watchmen is very short, it essentially is a graphic novel, whereas Sandman is just to long to be a single body of work, but must be a series of some sort. There are also several artists who work with Neil Gaiman, and some of them I like more than others, whereas Watchmen has the same two people for the whole series, and the quality is always consistent.</li></ul><br />
What I really loved about Sandman is that it is so tied to mythology, it doesn't just use the characters' names and attributes, it uses the storytelling style of myth, and has many of the same characteristics. Neil Gaiman knows his mythology better than anyone else (that I know of) writing nowadays. The flaws are all in the use of comics as a medium, though they are mostly just not using it so perfectly well as Watchmen does (and I don't know if they could have kept that up for 75 issues), and my not liking the art style of a few of the comics. Definitely a good read, and one I would recommend for fans of fantasy, regardless of their thoughts on comics.Max Polunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11519783946536128217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8188602290730006808.post-58114200676078406272008-08-08T00:47:00.000-04:002008-08-08T01:02:57.184-04:00History of my fantasy worldOne of the important things to think about in any fantasy world is it's history. This affects the conflicts that drive the story, as well as inspiring the cosmology of the world. The most important element to explain in this world is the source of the large church that is tied with the old magic, and how the new magic came about. The belief of the Anogrian church is that it was founded by refugees of a currently depopulated continent, where some sort of magical catastrophe took place. The society in that place was very magically advanced, and so the refugees were able to become conquerers and enforce the worship of their last king (who was tied up in the catastrophe somehow). It gained direct political control over the West for some time, but lost it due to multiple uprisings. While it held political control of the West, the church built universities to try and spread the teachings of the church, as well as the official form of magic practiced by the church. These universities started as religious in nature, but slowly became secularized (just as the universities of Europe did). These universities were the incubators of the new form of magic, and thus began the conflict that characterizes this world. The ideas (and smart people) coming out of the universities often ended up working for a small kingdom, which has built it's wealth and power on ideas from the new way of things, and liberal use of the new magic. It also has profited from the slave trade.<br />
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That is, I think, enough for now. I have a headache tonight.Max Polunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11519783946536128217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8188602290730006808.post-74167792989976729952008-08-07T01:31:00.000-04:002008-08-07T01:43:37.334-04:00Quick creating a fantasy worldOne thing that most fantasy writers don't really put enough emphasis on is the importance of religion. This is largely understandable, since we now live in very secular times, and most fantasy writers are not particularly religious. However, in every pre-modern society religion is hugely important. Religious wars are the bloodiest and longest lasting before the 20th century. So I'm going to talk about the religion of the little world I've been creating (I need to give this world a name, but I often put that off, it's not my greatest skill). Since we are focused on the West, I think that there should be a strong centrally organized religion. It's tenants are strongly tied up with the old magic, and the traditional ideology that it is allied with. Much like the medieval Catholic Church, the church of this world will have temporal power in addition to it's spiritual power, and be quite corrupt. To come up with some specifics I will name the church the Anogrian, after it's chief prophet Anogre (pronounced ann-ogh). It once directly ruled the Anogrian Empire, but now only has some small lands under it's direct rule. It still holds vast powers, and is the main religion of the West.<br />
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The followers of the new magics are mostly secular, though rarely atheist. They tend to believe in rationalized versions of the Anogrian religion, much like most people do today, and intellectuals did in the enlightenment (replacing the Anogrian religion with Christianity, obviously.)Max Polunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11519783946536128217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8188602290730006808.post-67805410549238779862008-08-04T22:58:00.000-04:002008-08-04T23:45:53.455-04:00Back here and more creating a fantasy worldSo I was visiting my parent's last week unexpectedly, and I was lazy with my creating a fantasy world series. I'll post on it every day this week.<br />
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So when we left off I had basically worked out the way that magic works in this fantasy world. To recap: the basic concept is an analogy to the enlightenment, there is new and old magic, with the new magic acting somewhat like technology, and old magic being more like what we would consider magic.<br />
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I was going to move onto the biggest part of creating a fantasy world: making the social structures. These play a much bigger part than say the mechanisms of how magic works.<br />
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One thing I want to do with this setting is have a social conflict between the new way of things and the old way, much like the two types of magic, and indeed the types of magic are allied with their respective social movements. Even though I am sympathetic to one side of the conflict between new and old in the real enlightenment, I don't want things to be so clear cut in this setting. This means that each side should have some good, and some bad traits.<br />
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The social movement aligned with the new magic is, like in the analogy to real life, strongly supported by the middle class and has a capitalist agenda. The dark side of this is that one of the major reasons why this new capitalism is so profitable is because of slavery. Again, this is much like in real life -- the new economies of England and the Netherlands were based largely on slavery, and the slower economies of Germany, France, and Eastern Europe were based on traditional forms of labor (which were certainly exploitative to varying degrees, but were not the total affront to humanity that racial slavery was). Spain was a bit of a border case, with wealth based on military hegemony over important natural resources (gold and silver mines). The ideological agenda for new ways of thinking is similar to modern America: equality of opportunity, if not success, with a way of thinking that people get what they deserve. Politically the ideal government is thought to be a Mageocracy: a rule by the top mages. This is sort of related to Plato's <i>Republic</i> where he envisions a society ruled by philosopher kings. On the other hand the new way of thinking is very strongly in favor of social mobility, even if it believes that society does need stratification.<br />
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The traditional way of things is less extreme. It basically holds that there is a place for everyone in the world, and that they should not move from those places, but that things should be made comfortable and humane for people even in the lowest places. Most traditionalists are opposed to slavery, not just because of it's inhumanity, but also partially because the slavery system has allowed a large number of peasants to rise above their natural position. Unsurprisingly traditional forces believe in a monarchy with a strict social order.Max Polunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11519783946536128217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8188602290730006808.post-66670327295604475992008-07-30T15:39:00.005-04:002008-07-30T17:06:38.957-04:00Reading comics, and some comics I read<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0306815095/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-link"><img style="width: 240px; height: 239px;" onload="if (typeof uet == 'function') { uet('af'); }" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/417is2I3IOL._SL500_BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_OU01_AA240_SH20_.jpg" id="prodImage" onmouseover="sitb_showLayer('bookpopover'); return false;" onmouseout="sitb_doHide('bookpopover'); return false;" alt="Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean" border="0" /></a>So I decided to read the book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Comics-Graphic-Novels-Work/dp/0306815095">Reading Comics</a>, by Douglas Wolk, and inspired by that decided to read a couple of comics. First of all lets look at the book. I'm not really a comic book reader, and so this book gave a good background on what types of comics there are, the differences between them. It was fairly focused in scope on comics with a narrative, so no single panel cartoons or anything, from the west (so no manga). The book was well written, and I plowed though it quite quickly. One of the main things it tries to do is to make people read comics as a form of literature, or fine art, some strange cross between movies and books. It defends this pretty well, pointing out that comics seem to be unfairly judged by the equivalent of the romance-novel serials that make huge amounts of money for book publishers, but that so one really would try to defend the artistic value of, rather than the best that comics have to offer.<br /><br />There are two types of comics according to this book: Art comics and mainstream (or superhero) comics. The label art comics has to do with the goal of being a work of rather than a signifier of quality, one of the surprising things about this book is that the author goes through a lot of trouble to defend superhero comics, even though there are a lot of very bad mainstream comics. Apparently the watershed decade in comics was the 80s: art comics first appeared and superhero comics sort of grew up since they started selling to a more mature, more stable audience (and some good writers were allowed more freedom).<br /><br />The book concludes with a series of discussions about different comics, chosen for their discussion value, rather tan just quality. I'm going to talk about a couple that I read below, but the main thing I got out of the discussed comics is the huge level of diversity in comics, and that I probably am more interested in art comics, since most mainstream comics require a huge amount of background, and I hate starting in the middle of a story. I would have to start with the originals from the 40s, or stick only to new characters and settings (which is what I plan to do), or else go crazy.<br /><br />One thing I thought was funny was the author was discussing how superhero comics are usually a metaphor for some sort of larger struggle or moral dilemma, and he seemed unsure what wonder woman was a metaphor for: it' obviously female domination: what with the rope and everything.<br /><br /><br />So I recommend the book to comics newbies like me, but I don't know how people who already are into comics will feel about it.<br /><br />So I read two comics, both discussed in the book, after reading the book. Both I had heard about before and wanted to read, and both are held up as top superhero and art comics respectively. These comics are <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Watchmen-Alan-Moore/dp/0930289234">Watchmen</a> written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons, and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Fun-Home-Tragicomic-Alison-Bechdel/dp/0618477942">Fun Home</a> by Alison Bechtel.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0930289234/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-link"><img onload="if (typeof uet == 'function') { uet('af'); }" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41X4da1CRbL._SL500_BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_OU01_AA240_SH20_.jpg" id="prodImage" onmouseover="sitb_showLayer('bookpopover'); return false;" onmouseout="sitb_doHide('bookpopover'); return false;" alt="Watchmen" border="0" height="240" width="240" /></a>Watchmen is really well put together, you can tell by reading it, even without having much in the way of other comics to compare with. I'm not going to discuss much of the plot or the setting, since one of the joys of the comic is discovering how the setting and characters are tied together. It has multiple intertwined storylines, moral ambiguity, and an interesting, mostly plausible, backstory. The only thing I didn't like is the ending, which I felt like was a "Philosophy 101" moral dilemma that did not seem natural. I just hope the upcoming movie doesn't suck.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0618477942/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-link"><img onload="if (typeof uet == 'function') { uet('af'); }" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/5136KMDH0EL._SL500_BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_OU01_AA240_SH20_.jpg" id="prodImage" onmouseover="sitb_showLayer('bookpopover'); return false;" onmouseout="sitb_doHide('bookpopover'); return false;" alt="Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic" border="0" height="240" width="240" /></a>Fun Home also approaches ambiguity, but rather than grand moral dilemmas, it's more an ambiguity about identity. It's basically about her father who died in 1980 shortly after she came out as a lesbian. The ambiguity is everywhere and fully acknowledged: her father had sex with young men, but it's unknown whether he was truly gay or just bi or some sort of other label. He died being hit by a truck, but was he distracted when he jumped in front of it, or was it suicide? There is a lot to this comic, and it's extremely "literary", not just for comic book geeks, but since it's full of literary allusions, those best able to appreciate the comic may be literature geeks. Highly recommended. I also like Alison Bechtel's running comic strip <a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=8188602290730006808">"Dykes to Watch Out For"</a>, which is currently on hiatus, even though I can't look all the way to the beginning.Max Polunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11519783946536128217noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8188602290730006808.post-47956727571825771682008-07-25T14:43:00.000-04:002008-07-25T15:17:00.292-04:00Creating a fantasy world: Fleshing out the conceptSo when we <a href="http://realisy.blogspot.com/2008/07/creating-fantasy-world-part-1.html">last looked</a> at this unnamed fantasy world we had decided that there would be 2 forms of magic: an old form, and a new form. The central conflict of this setting will be between these two concepts so they need a good bit of thought. <br />
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Since the new magic is supposed to be analogous to the emergence of science during the enlightenment, it would follow that the new magic should be based on formalism, math and laws. Since the new magic is well... new, it follows that it should be mostly undeveloped, with a lot not understood. On the other hand, in order for the conflict to be one worth worrying about new and old magic should be able to compete, so there has to be some advantage to the new magic. It makes sense from the central analogy again that the main advantage would be repeatability and universality: new magic is just another physical principle that can be manipulated by anyone who understands it. Thus it's much easier to train someone to be a new mage, but they are much less powerful.<br />
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Now if the new magic is all about repeatability and formalism, then old magic should be about tradition, but what are these traditions? It's not that the old mages were pure empiricists, just knowing that when you chant these tree words and wave a wand you make a fireball, rather they had their own ideas about how magic works, they just are much less formal, and rooted in tradition, religion, and mysticism. Now since there are as many traditions as there are societies, I'm going to focus on one region that for now we'll call "the west". The western tradition of magic is going to be modeled on medieval Catholicism, and is basically based on the idea that by sacrificing to the god of the western religion you can get miracles on demand. This leads to the idea of what sort of sacrifices could be made. These could be anything from material goods to personal health, to abstract things like your conscious humanity, and obviously the bigger the sacrifice the bigger the magical effect.<br />
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[as a side note, if I wanted to make this into a game (a tabletop RPG perhaps) it would make sense to spell out the different sacrifices possible, and possibly have different groups that specialize in different types of sacrifice]<br />
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Now we can start to put together the theory of new magic: there is invisible flows of mana all around us, and these flows are affected by the human mind. Things that people value become saturated with mana, and can be released by destroying the thing of value. New magic has found a way to store these flows of magic artificially, providing a good supply of low-level magic, but they cannot get the densities of mana that the old magic can, and this artificially stored mana is not as easy to control as "natural" mana. This means that most new magic ends up being more like engineering than magic as usually thought of, however it is magic not science, and has a whole other set of rules.<br />
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Next time I'll talk about politics and such of the new magic vs. old magic dynamic.Max Polunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11519783946536128217noreply@blogger.com0