Greg Sanders

Last Train Home

I've been stockpiling these for a while. Some probably merit their own blog posts, but my new years resolution for this year was 'no more backlogs.'

• Sara Robinson argues that we need to return to the 40 hour-week. Yes, techies too. She cites research that notes that we first adopted the forty hour limits for a mix of worker rights and productivity reasons. As a side note, I think it might make sense to extend the school day. However, teacher workloads and student homework assignments should be adjusted accordingly.
• Mike Mitchell cites great artistic advice from Ira Glass. The short version is that when you start on any artistic project your ambitions won't match your taste. However, by completing many projects you can start to close the gap.
• Fredrik DeBoer clips a bloggingheads.tv between Aaron Brady and Mike Konzcal arguing for keeping public universities public. This was in the context of the police crackdown against the occupy movement at UC Davis. This applied to a question at a Purple Line event this past year at the University of Maryland Campus. One of the student reporters had asked whether having the light rail on campus would allow non-students to access the campus at night (there's restrictions on those driving, but not walking, in). Fears about campus crime are not illegitimate, although there are real differences between having a car and coming in via transit such that at very least there's a transit driver that would likely see the riders. With that caveat out of the way, the question failed to recognize that public university campuses aren't a gated community, they are to serve the public.

Event: SIPRI military expenditure data 1988-2011

The briefing: The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) is well known for their military expenditure data which emphasizes consistent global coverage. Sam Perlo-Freeman went over the data. World spending is $1.7 trillion and for the first time since 1998 did not increase in real terms. That comes to $249 per person or 2.5% of world GDP. This leveling off was driven by the United States, although otherwise patterns from 2010 to 2011 I hard to discern. Russia and some developing world countries have been moving up on rankings and European countries have been down, although the U.S. is still dominant at 41% of global military spending. One regional point: Asia and Oceania has overtaken western and central Europe in the past few years.

SIPRUI puts the U.S. at $711 billion in outlays, which includes State department military age. That puts it at 4.7% of U.S. GDP, one of the higher rates in the world. They anticipate overall spending to fall given the end of the wars, assuming no new ones start, and if sequestration starts in January 2013 it will mean much steeper declines. By comparison, the total for Europe was fairly constant, but only thanks to increases from Russia and Azerbaijan (89%!). In central Europe the cuts started in 2009, spending in western Europe  ha been declining more recently although France, Germany, and the U.K. have been making smaller cuts so far. As you might expect, Greece, Spain, and Italy have all had fairly dramatic cuts.

Review: The Whiskey Rebels by David Liss

Post-Revolutionary War America isn't a setting I've read much about before, let alone as the basis for a novel that is in part a financial thriller. The Whiskey Rebels trades off between a disgraced Revolutionary War spy and an upcoming would-be novelist.  The former primarily stays in the great-ish east coast cities of the day while the latter travels with her husband into the wilds past Pittsburgh. The actual Whiskey Rebellion itself doesn't play that big a role, as the period is wrong, but that's no demerit to the story.

Both the leads are good characters, with a plausible mix of flaws that I felt the novel sometimes forgave but rarely whitewashed. The prominent supporting characters include a slave whose promised freedom was wrongly delayed, a lady whose high stature provides her little protection against her husband, and a vicious Jewish special agent working for Alexander Hamilton. As that list should show, the characters come from a variety of backgrounds which enriches the historical setting of the novel.

The story is a mix of conspiracy thriller and frontier adventure with the rise of the Bank of the United States, hated by the eventual Whiskey Rebels, being a core plot element. I rather liked this as it was a part of history I knew a bit about but was on the balance more ignorant than informed. At the same time, it was quite relevant to our modern era.

Almost to my surprise, the ending was particularly solid. I don't want to give anything away, but I'd say it managed to stay true to the values and cleverness common to the rest of the book. That can be particularly hard to pull when the main characters can be tricksters in their own right, which makes the successful implementation all the more satisfying.

Source: Moti, thanks Moti!

Review: Paolo's in Georgetown, D.C.

My mother and I got lunch at Paolo's on my birthday before heading over to Georgetown Hospital. It was a good choice for a nice day as there were a fair number of patio seats available. We shared one higher-end entrée, seared scallops, and one $13 grilled chicken pizza. Both were quite good as were the warm breadsticks and dipping sauce served at the outset.

I don't hit Georgetown often, but I'll definitely keep this place in mind for the future. It was a short hop from the closest Circulator stop and the range of menu items means it could esaily fit different occasions. As is, we took a fair amount of pizza with us as leftovers; we could probably have split just that and a salad and been satisfied.

Source: Mom's treat, thanks Mom! Priscilla's recommendation, thanks for that from both of us; well done!

Things other games should steal from 4th edition DnD

I've actually been playing some version or other of the venerable system since college. However, I'm not really the target demographic of the next edition as I'm not that into fantasy and quite like non-combat mechanics, and D&D Next aims to be the arch-typical version of the system rather than moving in a new direction. There will doubtless be modules of interest to me, but this seems like a good time to say my goodbyes. The points below are meant to be my favorite parts of the edition, not the best in any objective sense. 

Special powers that can be used freely (encounter powers and at-wills): 4th edition made fairly heavy use of powers that could be used at will or once per scene. If I'm playing in an environment where supernatural abilities are in play, I like to be able to use them freely. The once per scene (or encounter to use the technical term) powers did this particularly well, because they could be substantial without being game breaking. This combined well with 4th edition's encouragement to freely reflavor things: the mechanical effect may be defined but it is easy enough to ascribe the source to anything you desire.

Mechanically meaningful non-attack powers (utility powers and themes): As I mentioned above, I'm not quite a stereotypical story gamer. While I enjoy challenge and conflict, I'm just more interested in confrontations that aren't violent, let alone lethal. 4th edition D&D offered two notable new sources for such abilities: utility powers, which came along every few levels, and themes, which help define how a character starts out. Good flavor and mechanical matches particularly matter here and D&D delivers with powers like allowing rangers to keep someone from falling over a ledge by catching them with an arrow or allowing those skilled in the ways of magic to use technobabble to help get them out of a social problem once a scene. This is a mechanical space that could in theory be filled by feats, a game element that sometimes involves prerequisite but is typically chosen from a vast list. The selection of utility powers is more limited; you have to qualify for them via class, theme, or skill. This encourages them to be more defined, easier to balance, and makes their numbers less overwhelming. Also critically, neither utility powers nor themes are charged with doing the heavy lifting of making a character effective, which gives more room for flavorful selections.

Digital tools: I think the character builder and online rules compendium has been rather game changing. I've paid the subscription fee happily and haven't even minded that much when the character builder went from desktop client to web tool.

Design that draws from a wide range of games: This is sometime mentioned as a knock against 4th edition, particularly in reference to video games. However, I'd say that video games and board games have both advanced greatly over the past decades. Not all changes have been for the best, but I think we have a much better idea of what it means to get the underlying math right. This matters to me as a player, because knowing that I've checked the box when it comes to effectiveness gives me freedom to be playful. This matters far more as a GM, as getting a solid balanced system should be one of the big perks of going to larger companies for games. Playtesting, R&D shops, and system updates all take hard work and are well worth paying for.

Things other games should steal from Mass Effect 2

I just finished the game with my femShep paragon sentinel. I enjoyed it, although I think its best thought of as a series of episodes rather the stronger mini-arcs and main arc of the first game. In keeping with my recent post on pop culture dominance, I'm not going to go with a full review or even a critique. Instead, I'll just emphasize those elements I'd like to see used in other games.

But first, here's my favorite character doing Gilbert and Sullivan:

1. Having a small number of well defined powers with clearly labeled interactions. Some people have complained that Mass Effect 2 was dumbed down; that may be true.  However, having a smaller number of powers and clearly labeling when they would be effective allowed for a wider range of mechanically distinct characters. In addition, I think I actually used all of the powers available in the game fairly often. Similarly, the original game was vastly improved upon by dramatically reducing the number of guns while making them actually feel different.
2. Evocative hacking mini-games: There were two hacking games: one involved selecting matching source code, the other involved linking circuits on a board. They were both quite simple and actually could have used a steeper difficulty curve. However, they were enough to make the hacking feel genuinely technical in no small part thanks to good visual design. The probe mini-game does fairly well too in that regard, but I disapprove of that form of resource gathering because it's ultimately a mechanic that lets you trade your time for more in-game resources.
3. The conversation interrupt mechanic: The alignment system is nothing spectacular: you get paragon or renegade points based on your choices, although nicely enough you often can get some of each from the same conversation. That said, I was pleased by the way the plot mandated that being a paragon required some standing up to your patron. In any event, those points are spent by allowing you to interrupt a conversation; for example, a paragon might convince someone not to do something stupid while a renegade might shoot them before they had a chance to draw. In Star Wars terms, Han Solo was able to shoot Greedo first thanks to all of the mouthing off he does elsewhere in the series.
4. Reasonable chance of a few support characters dying: I hope I'm not being too bloody-minded here, but people die in war and its important to remember that. One of the real strengths of the first two games of the series is that your choices directly impact who dies. I particularly regret the character who died in my playthrough; he might have had an important future, but I think some regret is appropriate for this sort of tale.

(Mild outcome spoilers on my playthrough: lost Grunt, dating Garrus)

Origin: Gift from Ryan, thanks Ryan!

Update: Noted origin and moved spoilers to the end to get them out of the google plus preview.

The overwhelming victory of popular culture

I read with interest a recent cultural piece by Fredrik deBoer in no small part because I was curious to see whether he'd cite Leigh Alexander (spoiler: he does.) His opening sentence does its job well, so while I 'd encourage reading the whole piece, I'll start by quoting it: "Pop culture has become inescapable."

Criticism as a form of writing and entertainment appears to have spread dramatically as a result of lowered barriers to entry. At the same time, traditional print bastions have been savaged by the rise of online alternatives. This reduces the positions and platforms available for high culture gatekeepers, particularly as they compete with mass-market friendly pop culture critics. Thus, as often as Roger Ebert might say that games aren't art or the like, pop-culture criticism has experienced a victorious rise. Thus, I agree with deBoer that the burden of magnanimity should be born by victors and obviously they should avoid self-pity.

At the same, I think his middle-brow vs. high-brow lens misses one important explanation behind pop culture critics' defensiveness. Many of these critics are engaged in the hard work of standard-raising: attempting to weed out misogyny,  homophobia, racism, and other more traditional forms of bad writing. Tough criticism, constructive and not, is common even towards series that a critic may love (i.e. the epilogue of Harry Potter book 7). One of the most common defenses against this criticism is to defame pop culture as mere entertainment and that to analyze it is to miss the point or maliciously ruin it.

Quoting deBoer's post:

I know that people really want it to mean something that they love Community rather than Two and a Half Men. But I’m afraid such a distinction cannot say anything meaningful about you. People cling to that idea because they feel divorced from traditional means of creating personal meaning and identity; naturally, people so committed lash out, unfairly, at those who make different choices in the consumption of art and media.

I am a Community fan, but if I am being fair, I must certainly accept that it is no vice not to like the show and that there are many valid ways to criticize it. Even more so, I think it is safe to say that any discussion of good pop culture art easily drowns out discussion of difficult or high culture art. Part of the definition of a good critic is finding and popularizing lesser-known high quality material and there is a real risk for pop culture critics that they will ignore that part of culture that has not yet hit some threshold of popularity. However, I think this description doesn't leave room for the critic as standard-raiser (see, for example, Alyssa Rosenberg championing diversity in response to comments the creator of Two and Half Men). To be clear, deBoer may not put much weight on this standard-raising function or may understand it differently. This would not be hypocritical on his part; he was not trashing pop culture but instead was saying that the high/difficult art that he loves was underserved.

Finally, I think deBoer may be overlooking the participatory aspect of popular culture consumption. From fanfiction.net, to fan art, to cosplay, to merely discussing one's thoughts on a piece with friends. Having a common frame of reference lowers the barriers to artistic participation. Such work is, by definition, somewhat derivative but I would argue that it still allows some to create who otherwise would not and for others acts as gateway drug into original works. This sort of participation is partially explains why fans may feel so committed to a particularly series: because they have invested some of their own creative output into the product. I think deBoer would argue that it is a mistake to do so, but I would also say that participatory derivative art is as old as sing-a-longs and may have some of the same benefits.

To close, I reserve the right to do political analysis blogging of Legend of Korra, but I think I'll try harder to make sure I write up my experiences with the obscure. I would also glad subscribe to a feed of a blog that recommends difficult or high culture works based on tastes in popular culture. Going from say, Rowling's Harry Potter to Grossman's The Magicians is a fairly well known way to experiment with working one's way up the cultural food chain. However, I'm not aware of many other such connections. Right now, the closest thing I have are the more widely-ranging Washington Post book reviews and my friend Moti's Platform #5 livejournal reviews.

Reminder: Maryland primary elections are today

If you would like to see candidates responses to questionnaires about key issues in the race check out Vote411.org. There's no endorsement and no fact checking or the like, but for many of the minor races this is one of the easiest ways to see all the candidates on one page.

As a reminder, Maryland runs closed primary elections, so you will only have a chance to select candidates for whatever party you are registered with. However, independents and third party members can still vote for nonpartisan elections, like school board.

Unlike the League of Women Voters, I do endorsements. However, a lot of local races relevant to transportation aren't in play this year, so I'll just endorse Sen. Cardin. He's done a fairly good job and his main challenger isn't especially liberal, at least on social issues.

Review: Ticket to Ride

If you are a regular reader, it should come as no surprise that my family enjoys train-themed games. Ticket to Ride's premise is a trifle silly: it involves a competition to travel across America (or presumably whatever alternate continental version you're playing with) to win a bet. The method is gathering matching cards representing freight cars, passenger cars, coal cars, and the like, to lay down connections between various cities. I'm not sure how the non-passenger cars fit with the premise, but that's nothing that couldn't be fixed by adding hobos to the setup.

The gameplay is pretty fun for a few reasons. First, turns are quick; you have three actions among which to choose and none of them take long. Second, I like the card draw mechanic: you draw twice and can choose from five face up cars or take a random draw. This reduces the luck element, although if you draw a face-up wild card (the engine) you only get to draw once; however every time you draw from the random deck there's a chance of a wild card. Finally, while routes are worth points based on their length, there's bonus points available based on multi-route cards that mandate connecting two cities. These routes are randomly drawn, with some opportunity to discard, which does add variety from game to game and incentives vast interconnected rail networks.

All and all, a solid simple game that I'm glad I got for my parents a few years back, although sadly I just got one game in with my father. I think the thematic element could use some work (and is amusingly mocked by Dork Tower), but I'm a sucker for trains and placing little plastic cars on a map is a lot of fun. That said, as a Marylander, I feel somewhat offended that Baltimore, origin point of the B&O, didn't make the map.

Players for review: First game, Mom and Dad, second game, Mom and Kate.