The Ghost of Malthus

More not-a-joke-for-very-long from The Onion:

“I’m just going to level with you—the earth’s carrying capacity will no longer be able to keep up with population growth, and civilization will end unless large swaths of human beings are killed, so the question is: How do we want to do this?” Cambridge University ecologist Dr. Edwin Peters said. “Do we want to give everyone a number and implement a death lottery system? Incinerate the nation’s children? Kill off an entire race of people? Give everyone a shotgun and let them sort it out themselves?”

Turn the Corner, part 2

Started re-reading Abbott’s Flatland (1884) tonight.  I had forgotten that it contains in an early chapter the premise for many a twentieth-century dystopian science fiction.  Except for the reference to polygons, this passage might have been a thesis statement for Orwell’s 1984.

Had the acute-angled rabble been all, without exception, absolutely destitute of hope and of ambition, they might have found leaders in some of their many seditious outbreaks, so able as to render their superior numbers and strength too much even for the wisdom of the Circles.  [But] the Polygons and Circles are almost always able to stifle sedition in its very cradle, taking advantage of the irrepressible and boundless hopefulness of the human mind. Art also comes to the aid of Law and Order. It is generally found possible–by a little artificial compression or expansion on the part of the State physicians–to make some of the more intelligent leaders of a rebellion perfectly Regular, and to admit them at once into the privileged classes; a much larger number, who are still below the standard, allured by the prospect of being ultimately ennobled, are induced to enter the State Hospitals, where they are kept in honourable confinement for life; one or two alone of the most obstinate, foolish, and hopelessly irregular are led to execution.

Then the wretched rabble of the Isosceles, planless and leaderless, are ether transfixed without resistance by the small body of their brethren whom the Chief Circle keeps in pay for emergencies of this kind; or else more often, by means of jealousies and suspicious skillfully fomented among them by the Circular party, they are stirred to mutual warfare, and perish by one another’s angles. No less than one hundred and twenty rebellions are recorded in our annals, besides minor outbreaks numbered at two hundred and thirty-five; and they have all ended thus.

Turn the corner

From The Economist we learn that the United States has a rifle that shoots around corners*.  Like you, I worry how this will be handled by GURPS and other tactical games.  And if you thought computer FPSs were no fun now…

* OK, so the bullet doesn’t actually go around corners.  What happens is that the soldier or Marine points at where he thinks the enemy is, then aims at open space beyond the obstacle and fires.  A computer inside the bullet counts the appropriate number of revolutions in flight and then explodes the bullet, killing the target with shrapnel.  This isn’t a theory; the rifle is in use now and getting “rave reviews.”

Spot the theme

I enjoyed GQ‘s take-down of American Beauty, which I too found risible upon a second viewing.  But it’s surely not the worst recent film to win an Oscar.  Where are the articles excoriating Philadelphia and Schindler’s List?  Is it still too soon to admit that these were terrible films as well?

Here’s T.S. Eliot telling us why Hamlet is a terrible play, and Coriolanus is great.  I’ll take his word on the second point.

I’m beginning to hate the bicycle enthusiasts who flood the roads on fair-weather weekends, of which we’ve had an abundance lately.  They zip about in their Spandex unitards on thousand-dollar racing bikes slowing auto traffic; worse, they live elsewhere, so the parking lots and even the streets are chock-a-block with Jeeps and wagons bearing bicycle racks jutting out.  And they gather on the sidewalks to talk about God-knows-what while “rehydrating.”  Who has the time and money for healthy leisure?  Not my kind, surely.  Next time I see a fat slob ambling to the drugstore for a six-pack I’m giving him the brofist salute.

Half the fun

My Antipodean benefactor sent a clutch of science fiction paperbacks, among them Geston’s Lords of the Starship.  It recalled to me Pohl’s The Gold at the Starbow’s End, another book of early 70′s vintage that posits the launch of a spaceship for purposes more to do with the national psyche than with science or exploration.  Perhaps these authors were anticipating the Space Shuttle program?

I wonder what fool’s errand our current leadership will embark upon to sweeten the current mood?  We shall soon see.

A stretch

Now yoga is bad for you.  Next: jogging.  Remember when formula milk helped babies not to grow up queer?

For perspective, enjoy this article about the scientific cul-de-sac we’re in.  Upshot: you can only learn so much about a machine by looking at the pieces.

Times Crawl

The Times has given up on the video game beat for the moment.  Now it’s Dungeons & Dragons on the front page*:

Gamers bicker over Dungeons & Dragons rules. Some have left childhood pursuits behind. And others have spurned an old-fashioned, tabletop fantasy role-playing game for shiny electronic competitors like World of Warcraft and the Elder Scrolls.

But there might yet be hope for Dungeons & Dragons, known as D&D. On Monday, Wizards of the Coast, the Hasbro subsidiary that owns the game, announced that a new edition is under development, the first overhaul of the rules since the contentious fourth edition was released in 2008. And Dungeons & Dragons’ designers are also planning to undertake an exceedingly rare effort for the gaming industry over the next few months: asking hundreds of thousands of fans to tell them how exactly they should reboot the franchise.

I believe the term for this is “crowd-sourcing.”

It pains me to disappoint my retinue who depend upon me for insight but here I have none.  The game mystifies me.

Good Question

This American Life:

How often do we wish more things were hand made?  Oh, we talk about that all the time, don’t we?  I wish it was like the old days.  I wish things had that human touch.  But that’s not true.  There are more hand made things now than there have ever been in the history of the world.  Everything is hand made.  I know.  I have been there.  I have seen the workers laying in parts thinner than human hair one after another after another.  Everything is hand made.

In the near future, the machines themselves will organize for better working conditions.  Until then, give a listen and shed a useless tear for the human beings that assemble them.  I did.

Ain’t what she used to be

Greetings, 2012!  And to my readers, apologies in advance for the long post.  There was no time for a short one.

I’ve been reading things like this a lot lately:

Portable game consoles have traditionally have long life spans, enabling the vendors to build big consumer bases and churn out profitable software titles over a 5-7 year span.

And that is part of the problem. Portable consoles are now competing with phones and tablets, both of which are evolving at breakneck pace when it comes to processing power, display quality and things like video recording capabilities. Six years ago, the display quality of the Nintendo DS was clearly below the quality of best smartphones, but not distractingly so. Right now, the display quality of the brand new 3DS console is already miles away from the quality of iPhone 4S or Samsung Galaxy S2.

The consumer attention is shifting from the grand, 10- or 30-year old console game franchises to nimble new mobile game brands. Mobile games that do not require expensive hardware purchases. Mobile games that may be simple and small – but release new levels and characters every 2-3 months. Mobile games tailored to siphon off your time in 5-15 minute sips and your money in tiny, one dollar increments. Mobile games spreading from expensive smartphones to tablets, TV boxes, laptops and cheap, $150 basic phones.

Nintendo and Sony are fighting the old war while the guerrilla attacks from mobile and social game companies steal a few seconds more of the consumer leisure time with each passing day.

And this news makes me sad.  Why?  I don’t even own a portable game device.

Perhaps I’m like the proverbial Boomer who laments that the younger generation has no interest in baseball or Catcher in the Rye.  The idea of kids eschewing platform jumping and rupee collecting for Angry Birds triggers a snobbish disdain in my bosom.  It’s an unpleasant feeling.

Happy Xmas, All!

Once again, I failed to catch Santa Claus in the act of stuffing presents under our tree.  Christmas was happy just the same.  Adeste Fideles, Venite Adoremus Dominum.