I Don't Watch Movies...

Married!

2008-03-29T09:11:00.001-07:00

I now present Chrystie and Chris Dickens!

The last few months have been a bit of a whirlwind for me. Chrystie and I had a lot going on in planning for our wedding on March 1st. All the planning paid off and we had an amazing event!

A huge thanks to our families and friends who made the trip to Seattle to celebrate the day with us. It was great to see you all in one place. My Dad mentioned something earlier that day, he said "One thing I remember about being married was how you're at this big party where you know everyone there." I think that was exactly right, it was strange to have all these people there, and to know everyone. I felt torn all night because I wanted to spend more time with them all, but I think both Chrystie and I did pretty well.

A few days after the wedding, we took off for a great honeymoon in Belize! We spent two weeks there, and one of these days I'll write up a nice long trip report. For now I'm still getting used to being back in the real world.

You can definitely check out the pictures:

Wedding: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cdickens/sets/72157604034470341/
Honeymoon: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cdickens/sets/72157604216614958/

Politics is Local

2008-02-09T17:21:00.001-08:00

Then based on who everyone supports we'll select our four delegates from the people assembled here

Today I participated in the Washington State Democratic Caucuses. This was a pretty interesting experience, and the first time I've even been to a caucus. I thought it was important to go, since this is one of the few times in my life when I'll have the chance to place a meaningful vote in a presidential primary (alas, I ended up not doing so, more on that later.)

My caucus was in an elementary school a few block away so I walked over there. When I arrived I found the school gym was totally packed - and my local state congressman was up in front of the group talking about the process and answering questions for the crowd, without amplification. The first step was to find my precinct. I used to live in a very high density neighborhood, and remember my precinct being very small. It turns out even where I live now my precinct is very small - just two blocks by three blocks. I waded through the crowd to find my group of neighbors.

The way caucuses work here is you group up by precinct and indicate a candidate preference when you sign in, then they do some math to determine how many delegates from that precinct each candidate gets (these are different from the delegates to the national convention, delegates bubble up and get weeded out at intermediate stages.) Then they are required to spend 30 minutes talking about stuff to get people to consider switching, or maybe to pull in undecided voters. After that they take final tallies and pick delegates from the group.

I went into the whole thing in a strange place, because I can't figure out who to support between Clinton and Obama. I really like Obama, but like Clinton's policy proposals more, and have doubts that there is room for consensus with much of the republican party (side note: I watched both democrat and republican debates during the primary season this year, and was astounded by how different the parties are. These differences aren't mild, they're like different bedrock foundations.) I'm skeptical of Obama's claims of ushering in a new era of bipartisanship. My gut tells me that the republicans have been running the show for eight years in the direction they want to go, and things haven't gone well for them. I think the way to get bipartisanship is to start out without it - and take the country in the other direction for a while, potentially kicking and screaming, and then hopefully things will get better and more people will start to get on board. An an historical example, this is how I think of the New Deal.

Anyway, I found my precinct, and signed in as uncommitted to a candidate. After a little waiting around, they did the counts for my precinct and then announced the numbers (to be clear, this was just a group of people huddled around a school cafeteria table scratching things out on paper and using cell phones as calculators - announced may imply too high a level or organization.) There were 33 people there, 22 for Obama, 8 for Clinton, and 3 uncommitted. Our precinct gets four delegates, so that broke down to 3 for Obama and 1 for Clinton.

Then the debate started. I think we were officially supposed to have short speeches by people, but instead we had a bit of a free form debate. It's important to remember the context here: We're 33 people gathered around a cafeteria table in a gym with hundreds of other people in other similar groups, trying to have a debate amongst ourselves. I proved to be quite the contrarian during this debate, challenging most of the points other people made - whether they were for Clinton or Obama. I have plenty of ammunition for these debates, since I've been arguing back and forth with myself about these points for the last month or so.

After we talked for a while, they sent the sign in sheets around to let people change their preference. This kind of bummed me out. I was hoping we'd all go stand in our groups and let people do some good old fashioned convincing. Alas, I should know better, Seattle residents are way to passive aggressive to do that. But the thing that really bummed me out was that even in our ultra-local politics situation, with only 33 voters deciding on four delegates, me changing my vote to one of the candidates wouldn't have made a difference in the delegate count. I kind of wanted to have to take a stand and pick a candidate, but the numbers let me off the hook.

Unsurprisingly, the numbers didn't change at all between the first and second round, which meant that my little six square block area and our 33 democrats who showed up on a Saturday afternoon sent 3 delegates for Obama and 1 for Clinton to the next round, the King County local caucuses. Then they'll bubble up to the state level, and then some of those people will head to the Democratic National Convention in August.

Even if my vote didn't count (at the smallest possible scale, every 8 people represented a delegate) and I wasn't forced to make a real decision, it was pretty cool to be involved in a meaningful presidential primary. It's the first time in my life that's happened, and I may not get another chance to do so for a long time. The good news is I like both Clinton and Obama, and I'll be thrilled to support either one in the general election.

Huckabee on Colbert

2008-02-08T20:28:00.000-08:00

Colbert: Why do you thik the people of Texas will go for your message?

Huckabee: Because I understand BBQ

I strongly disagree with Mike Huckabee on most of his politics, but I give him serious props for his various appearances on The Colbert Report. He's repeatedly asked Colbert to be his vice precidential running mate if he gets the nomination, and this week he played air hocky with the state of Texas on the air during an interview.

It's so important that people have the ability to not take themselves seriously, and to recognize the fun parts of satire. I wouldn't vote for him, but I greatly respect that Huckabee is able to do these things.

Storm Sold!

2008-01-08T13:01:00.001-08:00

This is something we wanted to be able to do for Storm fans and the community.

Great news today! The Seattle Storm, Seattle's professional women's basketball team, has been purchased by some Seattle locals. Last year an ownership group from Oklahoma City purchased both the Sonics and the Storm and was trying to move the teams out of Seattle to Oklahoma City. It's been looking like the there's no chance the Sonics will stay, and I had figured that this next Storm season would be the last. This sale means they should stay in Seattle for years to come.

The team was purchased by four local women, one of which is Lisa Brummel, the senior vice president in charge of Microsoft HR. Since she's technically a coworker of mine, I wrote her the following email this afternoon:

I�ve been a Storm season ticket holder for several years and was dismayed about the possibility of them leaving Seattle. I was thrilled to read today that a local group purchased them � which includes one of my Microsoft coworkers. I believe in the importance of sport as a social and learning activity for both boys and girls, as well as men and women. It�s critical that we can offer women playing at the highest level as role models and a goal for young women � otherwise I feel we�re just paying lip service to gender equality.
In addition to the social importance of women�s professional sports, the games are a much better environment than their male counterparts. Not only are they much more affordable, but there�s a good natured vibe at Storm games that I really enjoy. Basketball isn�t my favorite sport, but I have far more fun at Storm games than I do at other sporting events. I don�t have kids yet, but this sale gives me hope that when I do I�ll be able to take them to Storm games throughout their childhood.
Thanks again, and I promise to do my part to help out. I�ll remain a season ticket holder for years to come, and I�ll even offer to get my hands dirty if you need some volunteer work getting the organization up and running.
You�ve done a great thing for our community. Though you�ve done such great things for our company, I�m hardly surprised.

While it's a bummer that the Sonics look to be headed out of town, I care much more about the Storm staying, and I've very happy with this result. There's some fun timing here too: tomorrow is my scheduled appointment to go down to Key Arena and pick out my seats for the 2008 season. It should be a fun day to interact with the Storm organization!

Summer popcorn movies

2008-01-05T20:14:00.000-08:00

Do you know what this is? It's a do what ever I want and get away with it badge!

Over the holidays I watched a pair of fluffy summer popcorn movies, Transformers and Spider-Man 3. My general reaction to each of them was pretty much the same, though for different reasons. I thought they were both pretty blah. They share the big reasons for that, a weak script and plot. Without a good script, plot or characters, it's hard to really get into a movie - no matter how flashy or fun it is. Even pure comedies at least need characters you can empathize with a bit.

I suppose there's some empathy for the characters in Spider-Man, but it gets ruined by the poor dialog and the giant goofy section in the middle - where we stop caring for them. In Transformers, true to Michael Bay fashion, they didn't even try. It was just a joyride from the start.

The Transformers did have one aspect that was very interesting; the effects were amazing. There were these giant talking robots interacting with people, and the whole time it just worked. Computer graphics have come a very long way. I remember when I saw Jurassic Park being struck by how real the dinosaurs looked, but you knew they were still fake, they looked both real and fake at the same time. We're past that now, things just look like they're actually there. It's a wonderful power to put in the hands of creative filmmakers. I love science fiction and fantasy, and to give filmmakers the ability put realistic looking visuals to the amazing things they can dream up is pretty cool.

Of course, sometimes they don't pair all that coolness with an intersting story, and then it's just an exercise is imaging cool things, instead of doing what great sci-fi and fantasy do: explore personal stories outside the constraints of our realistic world.

The Conscience of a Liberal

2008-01-03T17:45:00.000-08:00

Universal health care can be the cornerstone of a new New Deal.

I recently finished The Conscience of a Liberal by Paul Krugman. Krugman, a Princeton economics professor, is also a columnist for the New York Times. He's long been my favorite columnist, and I greatly enjoyed his book a few years ago: The Great Unraveling, which wasn't a traditional book but a collection of his columns. Krugman has a great ability to break down complex economic problems in 800 words or less and I always find his columns interesting. He rarely does purely political bits, the focus of a column is usually economic in nature (health care, China, and the sub prime mess have been popular recently) and there's a heavy dose of politics mixed in.

I really enjoyed The Conscience of a Liberal, but found it wasn't as tight as his columns. It just seemed to wander a little. Of course, there was a whole lot of content in it. The main take-away's that I remember:

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the big change that swung a lot of national power to the Republicans over the last 20 years was rooted in race, and the key was Southern Whites switching to the republican party.
We're currently in a period of out of control economic stratification, which is reminiscent of the gilded age at the end of the 18th and start of the 19th centuries.
The strong middle class, created in the 40's, 50's and 60's and disintegrating now, was created mainly through government and social involvement in the economy and with increased involvement now we could regain a strong middle class.
Universal health care is something we have to do, and should be a cornerstone of a new liberal movement that begins with the 2008 election.

Since he's mostly preaching to the choir with me, it's hard for me to judge how well he supports his points. I read it with a critical eye, but I'm pretty sure if I was theologically opposed to his views there wouldn't be enough supporting evidence to sway me. Of course, I chose the term theologically on purpose. I feel like our political climate is more and more about people believing in a certain system and structure of beliefs, and that's just how it is. It's clear to me that republicans and democrats just think about the world differently, and it's hard to find any middle ground.

Krugman recently wrote a column about this too. I guess if you start with the assumption that a whole bunch of people will never be open to your ideas then you can write to the people on your side of the fence and maybe a few of the undecided's in the middle and call that good enough. So I guess the verdict is if you thought those four take-away's are clearly totally ridiculous and only an inept socialist living in fantasy land could think they're true than this book isn't for you. But if you just read them and think that they don't seem right but could be plausible, then you should give this a read and see what you think.

If you're unsure, then go read his columns to get a feel for his style. The book is very similar.

My Year in Cities

2008-01-02T18:27:00.000-08:00

Do you know what the Mexicans say about the Pacific? They say it has no memory. That's where I want to live the rest of my life. Somewhere warm with no memory.

My friend Guy just posted his year in cities, which he stole from Justin Kottke. I thought it was a good idea so I'm passing it on. The idea is you can use the cities you visited in a year as a recap of that year. Here's my list, in order of first visit:

Seattle, WA*
Spokane, WA*
Priest River, ID*
Eugene, OR*
Bakersfield, CA
Cashmere, WA*
Carthage, MO
Virginia Beach, VA
San Francisco, CA
Burlingame, CA
San Luis Obispo, CA
Poipu, HI
Carlsbad, CA

I spend at least one night in each city, and cities with an asterisk were visited multiple times (multiple nights on one trip don't count.)

The biggest thing that stands out for me is I went a lot of places, but I didn't leave the country. I'm looking forward to travelling overseas in 2008 (Belize in March) and hope that I get a chance to use my passport at least once a year in the future.

Keeping the Faith

2007-12-21T23:25:00.001-08:00

You don't understand. I have a relationship with my phone, we have a chemistry together, I can't explain it.

I watched Keeping the Faith on comedy central last weekend on a lazy afternoon. I remember liking this movie when I saw it a few years ago (it was made in 2000.) I'd really forgotten the details of the movie, I knew it had to do with a priest and a rabbi falling for the same girl, but forgot about a lot of the religious overtones.

Some people would find this movie morally bankrupt, and if I think about it clearly is. You have people going against their religious faiths, their lifelong vows, and keeping major secrets from best friends. Those are the kinds of things that typically make you dislike characters. The movie somehow manages to be light hearted and cute so we don't start really disliking the characters, but also serious enough that there's some impact.

Someone who was seriously religious might think differently, since both of the main characters are religious leaders and don't really act like it at all. It's like a movie made by secular people about what they imaging being a religious leader might be like. As a secular viewer, I thought it was cute, but I can image a religious viewer being a little insulted.

I liked it because I it has some wit, Jenna Elfman's character is lots of fun, and it includes a few struggles about interfaith relationships - something I have some personal experience with.

The Biggest Loser

2007-12-19T00:28:00.001-08:00

After living my entire adult life obese, this place has given me the strength and the knowledge to know that I can do it.

I watched The Biggest Loser finale tonight. The show is really amazing, and seeing people make these changes in their lives. Sure, it suffers from many of the classic reality TV problems (forced competition and votes, engineered drama, lots of filler content, etc) but it has one special thing going for it. Most reality competitions are just about people competing against each other in some fabricated format, but this one has them competing against each other to improve themselves in a measurable and unequivocal way.

Compare The Biggest Loser to two other reality heavyweights, Survivor and The Amazing Race. Survivor is just purely putting people in a controlled environment and watching them fight it out under contrived rules. Sure, it's entertaining, but there isn't a lot of self improvement going on. The Amazing Race is a little better, because at least the contestants get a sense of the largeness and diversity of the world and its population. Plus they get to work through the competition with someone close to them in real life, that often strengthens that relationship and lets them grow.

But they both pale in comparison to The Biggest Loser, which teaches people to change their lives. To those that don't know, Loser is a show where they take a group of obese people to a special campus where they're taught about nutrition and work with trainers to try to lose weight. The people who lose the most weight, by percentage of their starting weight, win. As is normal for reality shows, people get kicked off each week, until there are only four left who are in the finals.

Here the show has two more cool twists. First, all the people who got kicked off before the final four get to compete for a second tier prize. Second, the winners aren't declared at the end of their time on campus, they have to go home and continue what they learned in their regular lives complete with all the distractions that brings. After a few months at home they all get together for a live weigh in at the finale. That first twist, where they're all still competing, gave everyone an excuse to keep working and the show an excuse to show them all off.

And in that final weigh in is where we see the true uniqueness of the series. You'll never see people so happy to lose. They didn't lose enough to win the competition, but they were so thrilled with the changes they made. It's really inspirational.

As someone who went through a pretty intensive weight loss program, I'm reminded of my personal struggles (that continue to this day.) I continue my long standing recommendation around this stuff. It's hard. A lot of people try on their own and aren't successful, that was my story. The problem wasn't my motivation, I just didn't have the tools. I didn't know how to eat right, I didn't know how to exercise in the right ways (even though I was very active.) I needed professional guidance. It's the same on the show, the contestants provide the motivation, the trainers provide the guidance.

If you've been struggling with weight loss and are ready to really commit, I can't recommend enough finding a complete, intensive program to work with. Yes, it's expensive, but if you ask any of the contestants on that show, or me, we'd all tell you it's totally worth it. The cost pales in comparison to the benefits you get every day of your life after a change like that. I can't recommend it enough.

As for the show: for all it's flaws, I love that it's able to remind people that change is always possible. That's it's biggest value, as a tool for inspiration.

Notes:

By far, this show's biggest downside is it's running length. Most episodes are 2 hours long, which means the classic reality filler stuff is over the top. There's a lot going on in this show with a lot of contestants so I can see breaking out of the 60 minute time slot, but you'd think they could keep it to 90 at the most and some more editing would really help out. Thankfully, DVR's provide a fast forward button, so I can do my own editing!
While the changes people make on the show are inspiring, the pace of those changes shouldn't be your goal. If you're on your own and focusing on weight loss a good, general goal is to lose 1% of your body weight per week. If you're working with professionals (nutritionists, trainers, and doctors like in one of the programs I recommend) you can probably expect more than that, but they'll help you set goals for their program.
Doing these intensive programs is just that, intensive. It's hard and takes a lot of work. You just have to be willing to go into and give up all your old habits and expectations. Trust in the pro's helping you, and do everything they ask you no matter how hard it is. It really works, and if the program is any good they'll help you build new habits and norms so when you're done it won't feel like quite so much work or quite so hard. Alas, the nature of those of us with weight issues is it will always be at least a little hard and some work to stay healthy.

Rendition

2007-12-15T18:58:00.000-08:00

Why don't you ask your boss how badly he wants to stick his neck out for a terrorist

Warning: Some spoilers

It's been about a month since I saw Rendition, but I've been lazy about writing. It's a movie about a despicable practice by the US Government called Extraordinary Rendition where we kidnap suspected terrorists and send them abroad to avoid any pesky issues with things like due process, constitutional rights, or laws that govern how you treat captives.

The movie is all about congratulating liberals over being disgusted by this practice, and true to form I felt mighty congratulated while I watched it. I found it to be easy to watch (except some of the torture bits) with interesting characters and a good flow. It wasn't until after the movie when I started to think about it, and realized this movie really missed the boat.

The problem is they didn't really even try. The suspected terrorist here is so clearly not a terrorist. He's lived in the US for most of his life, is a highly paid professional, and has pregnant wife and son. Then to play on some audience prejudices he speaks excellent English and is married to a cute white girl (Reese Witherspoon.) This means you're watching the whole movie thinking this is despicable and ridiculous, because this guy is clearly innocent. The problem is that when the guy is clearly innocent there is zero moral gray area to explore.

It's easy to think extraordinary rendition is terrible when the victim is innocent. The tougher thing is how do you feel about it when it's an honest to goodness terrorist, or maybe just someone who is heavily involved with terrorists. Now there's some meaty morality stuff to consider.

A large part of our justice system is based on treating guilty people with humanity and respect, not presuming people are guilty until they're convicted, and error on the side of innocence if you're not sure. The idea here is even guilty people are people, and it's better to let some guilty people go free than to wrongly convict some innocent people.

If you start digging into those questions I think you'd have the capacity for a much better film. Show some extraordinary rendition with a victim the audience doesn't like. Then challenge them to think about if it's right or wrong in that case. I'll also claim this will get further in a quest to change people's minds about the practice too. In Rendition the guy is so clearly innocent and likable, unless you're already a liberal government cynic it's hard to believe this could actually happen. But it's easy to believe it could happen with an unlikable guy who is actually involved with terrorism. Show people that situation, get them to understand it's wrong even in those circumstances, and then you'll get them on your side for real.

Kauai Trip

2007-11-12T23:22:00.001-08:00

Can we go back? That was too short!

Last weekend Chrystie and I took advantage of some great introductory fares to Hawaii from Alaska Airlines. We had to buy the tickets way back in June, but it sure was worth it.

We spent a long weekend in Kauai (I know, rough life!) that included some hiking, some beach time, and even some scuba diving with our new, spiffy certifications.

Read all about it on my Kauai Trip Report.

Scuba Certification

2007-10-17T22:16:00.001-07:00

Warm Water Sucks
Seattle Scuba Schools

I love water. I've always been drawn to it. I swim, surf, snorkel, raft, kayak and more. If I'm near a new body of water I always end up ignoring other things going on and scope it out, to see if it would be a good place to play (this often bugs Chrystie, but she's very good about it.)

Given all of this, I've always wanted to learn to Scuba Dive, I thought it would be really neat to experience water in a different way, where I could dive down into and not have to come back up right away. Alas, it was one of those things that was perpetually on my to-do list but never got done; I've even used it as an example of such things when talking about priorities.

But now things are different. Chrystie and I have scheduled our honeymoon and we're going to Belize, an area with warm water and world class diving. I now had a partner to take the class and dive with and a place I was going where I would really want to dive. That was the motivation I needed to get over the hump and schedule some training. So we signed up for classes with Seattle Scuba Schools.

The way they structure training is pretty cool. You do all the classroom work at home with a DVD they send you, and then they have one single long pool session for the skills and the four required open water dives over a weekend. That meant we did some studying at home and then pounded out the pool and open water sessions in one week. At first I was skeptical that doing everything quickly like that would lead to less repetition or learning of the skills, but now that I've been through the program I feel like I know the stuff pretty well, and that breaking it up over several sessions wouldn't have increased my comprehension of it all.

Part of certification is doing four dives in open water, and in Seattle that means you're in Puget Sound. Last weekend the water was a balmy 52 degrees. Even though we were wearing super thick wetsuits with hoods and gloves, this was cold. Especially since a lot of the certification dives is just laying on the bottom of the ocean waiting to perform some skills for the instructor that is moving down the line one person at a time (there were 8 people in my class.) I'm not gonna lie, laying down there was cold, but then when we finished with the skills we'd always swim around a bit which was cool. There was lots of sea life and our visibility was excellent. We saw starfish, several kinds of fish, crabs, and even a small harbor seal that cruised in to check us out.

Chrystie was really worried about the cold water but she was a trooper all weekend. But here I have to give a shout out to the Seattle Scuba crew. They brought an enclosed tent thing, a heater, and their trump card: a cooler full of hot water. Those things really helped us warm up between dives. Both of us felt like we made a great choice in doing our training with them, and I highly recommend them for any scuba training. We're already talking about going back for other courses.

And I just booked our first dive. We're going to Kauai for a short jaunt in November and we're scheduled on a few dives one afternoon. I can't wait to try diving in some warmer water, and when the whole point is to see stuff!

Fortress Forever vs Team Fortress 2

2007-09-23T22:43:00.001-07:00

Your team has dropped the enemy flag

Last time I talked a little about the long history that caused Fortress Forever (FF) and Team Fortress 2 (TF2), both essentially sequels to the same game, to be released within a week of each other. As a connoisseur of Team Fortress Classic (TFC), that original game, I've played both and have found the differences between the two to be very interesting (it's likely that you'll find them boring though.)

First, I'll clarify why I enjoyed TFC so much. TFC differentiated itself from most first person shooter games by three things:

A heavy emphasis on teamwork.
The player would select a class which dramatically impacted game play.
A unique pace among other games in the genre.

The first is pretty basic. Every map and every game had an overall objective that was not to kill the people on the other team. Instead it was to capture a flag, or defend an area, or something like that - and these objectives were always team based. This is fairly common now, but back in the day most games just put everyone in a building and had you go kill each other.

The second is cool because by choosing a class you change how the game plays. With nine classes, that's a lot of different looks. Each class has strengths and weaknesses, and depending on what the other team is doing you can gain a big advantage by using a specific class and strategy.

The third was really my favorite thing about TFC. TFC pacing was the goldilocks pacing for me, not as slow and drawn and out as Counter-Strike but not fast paced and hectic as pure deathmatch games. Another thing I really like is because your class comes with all the weapons and equipment you need, every time you enter into the game after dying you're ready to go. You don't have to spend time running around getting a better gun or something.

Of the two new games Fortress Forever really sticks closest to the vision of TFC. The visual style is the same, the classes mostly play the same, and the game feels very familiar to me. They did make some significant updates and changed the balance around. For example, the Spy changed a lot, and it is now much easier to infiltrate the enemy team as well as disrupt their automated defenses. There were a bunch of changes to some geeky stuff, like computing extremely time sensitive events on the user's machine instead of on the server, making them more predictable for the player. Add in some welcome UI polish (map guides, grenade visual and audio timers, improved menus for spy and engineer functions, etc.) and all in all FF feels like a more polished and improved version of TFC.

Note: There is one big exception to that for me. I feel that in un-organized games the spy is now too powerful because of the improved disguise features. However, the old spy was nearly useless in organized games (like when it's a match between two teams.) My guess is this new version will greatly increase spy utility in those matches, but it means that, for now, they're super powerful in un-organized games.

Team Fortress 2 took the game is a completely separate direction. Valve is marketing this as part of a package deal, but this is more than just a little thing they threw in. A lot of work was put into this game. First of all the visual style is quite different. It's full of cartoony animation that is very reminiscent of the Pixar movie The Incredible's. Also, much of the core objectives are different. TFC had a clear focus on capture the flag, but TF2 has very few capture the flag maps. Most of the maps are instead a mode where your team surges forward and has to control a small space for a little bit of time. This means victories need to be more convincing. If you just have to pick up a flag out of the enemy base sometimes you can whip in and out real fast and get away with it before they know what happened. If you have to stand around in a small circle for 15 seconds you need some back up.

Clearly the biggest change is to the classes. The same nine classes are there, but they are totally different. The medic is the best example here. Due to some quirks in the game design the TFC medic was one of the primary offensive classes, and spent almost no time healing anyone. The TF2 designers clearly thought this was wrong and the TF2 medic is practically useless doing anything besides healing, but they're now very valuable when healing (before they were practically useless healing.) In general the TF2 classes have been specializes by removing most of their general utility. In TFC your class would dictate your play, but every class (except the scout) still had a bunch of tools to play with to do lots of different things. In TF2 all those tools are gone and classes are very one-dimensional.

This is both good and bad. The bad piece is if you end up in the wrong situation for your class you're screwed. You have to die, change class, and come back. The good news is the lack of all that utility means there's a lot less craziness going on. One of the main things that reduces utility is everyone has a lot less explosives to play with now. In TFC (or FF) there are choke points in maps where it's like the Fourth of July show climax all the time. That doesn't happen in TF2. Also, a fixture in TFC game play is firing explosives at your feet to fling your own character around the map - you get hurt, but when done at the right places the movement advantage outweighs the health drawbacks. The ability for most classes to weapon-jump went away with all that utility. This really changes the feel of the game for most classes.

I've played more TF2 than FF. I think that's because my feeling is that FF will be better for organized games and TF2 is better for casual games. I know I've enjoyed my un-organized games of TF2 much more than my games of FF. I think the focus on area-capture maps and the lack of general class requires that people work together as a team to be successful. As such, I've seen much better team work from random public server players in TF2 in the first week than I remember ever seeing in TFC or my games of FF. Of course, that also means if your team can't get it's act together and the other team can is no fun at all - and I experienced that side of the coin to. But in those cases, there are tons of servers out there to join.

Either way I think both games are a fantastic effort, and thank each development team for advancing my favorite gaming franchise.

Team Fortress Sequels

2007-09-19T21:12:00.001-07:00

Your team has the enemy flag.

I'm going to take a break from movies today to spend some time on video games. I've been playing online first person shooter games for a long time, all the way back to playing Quake on the internet back in high school. One of my favorites mods to Quake was Team Fortress (TF), a game that expanded the deathmatch Quake game style to actually have some team play. Since I'm all about being a part of a team this was a big win.

Then a few years later Valve Software hired the whole team of guys who made TF with the intention of making Team Fortress 2 (TF2) as a full blown, stand alone game. They thought this would take a little while and in the meantime published a nice and polished version of Team Fortress in the Half Life game engine called Team Fortress Classic (TFC). TFC was very similar to TF but with nicer graphics.

Valve then set off to develop TF2 and had all kinds of big plans for it. It has since entered into the halls of vaporware greats as this video jokes about. In the meantime TFC was a very popular game and I played it quite a bit in college. I was even on an organize team (called a clan) that played scheduled matches against other clans. Yes, this means that I have played video games competitively (as a side note, I've also won money in prizes for video game tournaments.)

TFC started to lose steam as the years went by. The game aged a bit, and the player base drifted away to newer and better games. Way back in 2004 some community members, including a guy from my old clan, decided to bring Team Fortress to the new, fancy Half-Life 2 engine. They didn't want to just do a straight port, instead they would add some polish and some new features they felt were lacking. Their mod is Fortress Forever (FF).

No one had really heard anything about TF2 until Valve re-announced it last year. They had totally changed gears from a gritty realistic looking game to a 50's retro look that is very reminiscent of the Pixar movie The Incredible's. While their original theories for TF2 pretty dramatically departed from TFC, this new vision seemed much more in line with the previous games in the series.

All of this really came together in the last week, when both of these games that had been under development for years, were introduced to the public with a few days ago. The Fortress Forever team officially released their mod on Thursday, and then on Monday Valve opened up Team Fortress 2 to everyone who pre-ordered their new Half Life expansion.

I've spent a few hours playing each game. It's strange to play these two new games, at the same time, which are new visions from the same source material. This post is getting long enough as it is, so over the next few days I intend to do a little compare/contrast between the two. If you're totally uninterested in video games you may want to tune out for a bit. :)

I'm on a schedule too! I need to compose my thoughts about these two before Halo 3 comes along next week and totally messes with my impressions.

Shooter

2007-09-18T21:35:00.000-07:00

It seems we may have underestimated the Gunnery Sergeant

Shooter is one of these paint by numbers action movies. It's like the producers went to the well of script cliche's and drank heartily. This isn't always bad, cliche's can work, that's how they ended up being cliche's. But in this case the movie really doesn't bring them together.

It passes one of my key tests for action movies; we get to watch someone who is really, really good at something do his thing. In this case that's shooting people, ideally from a long way away. Unfortunately it fails by making the bad guys one dimensional and idiots. The whole movie boils down to watching Marky Mark outwit and shoot people that, at least some times, should know better. Then the plot totally falls apart in the third act when it seems like the screen-writer just stopped trying (my actual theory is whatever they wrote originally tested poorly with focus groups so they cobbled something together with a little more vengeance. The whole scene at the justice department was just silly.)

I watched it when I wasn't feeling well and just wanted to lay on the couch and not be bored. I will say it was pretty good for those circumstances.

Control Room

2007-09-12T16:44:00.001-07:00

It seems to me that it's up to all of us to try to tell the truth, to say what we know, to say what we don't know, and recognize that we're dealing with people that are perfectly willing to lie to the world to attempt to further their case. And To the extent that people lie, ultimately they are caught lying and they lose their credibility. And one would think it wouldn't take very long for that to happen dealing with people like this.

- Donald Rumsfeld speaking about the Al Jazeera news network.

I watched Control Room this weekend, which was a fantastic documentary about the Arabic news channel Al Jazeera in the early stages of the Iraq war. I'm sure many of us have different views about the war and about the channel, but I feel like this movie is valuable no matter what your views.

Partially it's interesting because I realize I didn't know much about Al Jazeera and watching their news guys run around and do their reporting was great. In addition we got to see some scenes inside their broadcasts which showed both their bias and their efforts to avoid bias (depending on the person.) It was also neat to see interactions with the military PR officers and the other news agencies at the US Middle East command building.

I think the most important lesson is that the truth is a very complicated thing, that often depends a lot on your personal background and perceptions. This is why people different people can watch Fox News and Al Jazeera and both come away thinking that they were just presented with reality. But reality is a nuanced thing, and we're not really all that capable of discerning it, especially if we just use one source.

For the next section we can take inspiration for the philosophy of Star Wars:

You're going to find many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.

This is an important lesson outside of just the news and political events as well. I find that a huge amount of conflict in our society comes down to people not getting that we don't really grasp what's going on around us, and that all sources aren't trustworthy (exception: If you somehow managed to get an untainted connection to an omnipotent being, like a God, then you might get It, but as suggested in Dogma I'd guess your head would explode or otherwise melt down.) This is why we see so many people misinformed yet so sure about so many things in the science or political realm. Some study finds some small bit of information, then makes some claims that are somewhat supported by their find. By the time most people read about it they're just reading the broad conclusions, which are typically just hypothesis about causes, instead of the small findings the study started with which make the finding seem less interesting and less broad.

I don't think there's a good solution to the education problem. There's a lot of complicated stuff out there that only experts in the field can understand. I think we could make some gains by being good citizens about reporting that stuff, instead of sensationalizing it, but I'm not holding out much hope. (Side note: Scott Adams, author of Dilbert, has written some related content on his blog.)

The real thing we need to do is be a bit more skeptic and a bit less sensational as a population. Ask questions. Seek out different sources of information. I routinely read columnists and people I totally disagree with as long as they're not just spouting propaganda (I severely dislike propaganda even when I agree with it.) I believe the more we absorb and consider these different points of view the closer we come to reality.

Go Ducks!

2007-09-08T23:29:00.001-07:00

The Wolverines were handed their most-lopsided loss in 39 years as Dennis Dixon and the Ducks cruised 39-7 on Saturday. Dixon accounted for 368 yards and a career-high four touchdowns.

Wow, Go Ducks! I had a great time watching Oregon totally dismantle Michigan at Michigan today. The Ducks played a very complete game against a team that is supposed to be pretty good, but haven't really shown it the last two weeks. Last weekend Michigan made headlines by losing to a lower division team, and then this weekend the game looked like everyone figured last week's would - but in reverse. Oregon made Michigan look like the team up from the lower division. It was like a lot of the fluff early season games schools tend to schedule to tune up.

Also for fun, check out this video of the Oregon Mascot beating up on the Houston mascot from the game last week. There are actually two fights that are cut together a bit here and it was two different students in the Duck suit for them. They've both been suspended for the next home game - ouch!

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Spoiler Free)

2007-08-28T23:09:00.000-07:00

Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?

-- Spoiler Free --

A few weeks ago I borrowed a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows from a co-worker and read through it because I was worried that if I went any longer I'd inadvertently come across a spoiler (at some point people stop being careful about spoilers.) I'm not there yet with Harry Potter so I'll avoid any spoilers here.

Overall, I wasn't that impressed. The first 500 pages or so were pretty dull. There was a lot of characters sitting around waiting for something to happen. That meant a lot of me reading and waiting on them. That section definitely conveyed the general melancholy of the characters by causing the same emotion in the reader, which was impressive from a literary standpoint, but it sure wasn't fun.

But after that the book picked up quite a bit and was great. It cooked along and all kinds of interesting things happened. My only complaint was a scene at the end that instantly reminded me of The Matrix Reloaded (or more accurately, it's abridged script.) There scene in question is with the explainer in the script, when Neo needs the complex plot explained to him by an external character so the audience knows what the hell is going on.

But hey, like all the Harry Potter books it was a fun ride and a great exploration into an alternate and amazing world. Rowling has imagined a great setting for this series, and they should be considered classics already.

Summer TV

2007-08-26T22:36:00.000-07:00

A great security system is very hard to break. Fortunately, it's easy to make them think you've broken it.

Summer time used to be just the purview of movies, and TV really took a break from anything interesting. But now there's all kinds of new and interesting TV that plays in the summer. For a while it was just cable channels that ran their new shows - but networks do a little bit too (though they stay in the reality space quite a bit.) Here's a sampling of some things I've watched this summer.

Burn Notice: My favorite new show. It's an action/comedy about a former spy who does freelance jobs in Miami. It's not especially well done and the characters are pretty shallow, but it's a lot of fun. The show is witty and clever and it continues my tradition of liking to watch a certain kind of character - someone who is really, really good at what he/she does. On USA Thursdays.

Mad Men: I read some good reviews of this drama about the Ad industry in the 50's in New York, but gave up on it after 1.5 episodes. The style was amazing, and I thought the period stuff was good, but I didn't really get attached to the characters - a major negative in a drama. Also, I got distracted by different social mores of the time. I kept wondering if it was really like that or if the show was exaggerating.

Entourage: I've always loved this comedy about four guys over their head in Hollywood. This season has been solid, but not fantastic. If you've never seen Entourage don't start now, go find the DVD's for the first two seasons - they were great.

Rescue Me: Rescue Me's first few seasons were great, but I feel like the New York firefighter drama has lost it's way this season. There's something about it that just isn't clicking. I've actually lost interest and have a few recorded episodes stores up - I may or may not get to them eventually.

Traveller: Chrystie and I both enjoyed this episodic action/drama about a big conspiracy and the people framed in the middle of it. I was skeptical that it would actually be able to sustain itself for more than a season and the studio was too; they cancelled it after the eight episode first season.

Soon enough the Fall season proper will start with the return of the full network schedule (minus some gems that won't run until January like Lost and Battlestar Gallactica.)

The Bourne Ultimatum

2007-08-24T21:15:00.000-07:00

I need you to do exactly what I tell you.

I really enjoyed The Bourne Ultimatum. It's the best kind of action/adventure movie where everyone gets to be smart. Too often movies get lazy with their plot and setups (the most recent Die Hard movie comes to mind.) With their laziness the plot requires that someone, typically the bad guys, do stupid things. The problem is that it's way more enjoyable to watch people be smart.

Then there's the trap movies fall into where everyone is smart, but the movie adds suspense by hiding what those smart people are doing. Then you get the big reveal at the end (Ocean's 11, while a great movie, used this crutch.)

The Bourne Ultimatum manages to avoid each of these. The movie manages to make everyone smart and just take the audience along for the ride, and I had all kinds of fun.

By far my favorite scene is early on when Bourne leads a civilian through a train station in London. At this point the spooks don't know they're dealing with Bourne, and so he's able to make them look silly without them acting dumb (if they'd known he was around they'd do different things - and Bourne wouldn't have been able to have his fun.)

The only time I remember being a bit skeptical was when Bourne breaks into an office undected - I don't think they did a good job of setting up how he did that. Plus of course the inhuman amount of physical punishment he takes and keeps going, but action movies always get liberties in that space.

This movie was smart, lean, and a great ride all the way though. It's one of the best action movies I've seen in a long time.

Knocked Up

2007-06-27T10:31:00.001-07:00

I wish I liked anything as much as my kids like bubbles.

Chrystie and I saw Knocked Up a few weeks ago. It's very juvenile but I thought it was quite funny. Chrystie made a good point afterwards though, it's very much a guy movie. It's one of these movies that could have easily gone into romantic comedy land, but the big difference is the main character is the slacker Ben, instead of the pregnant girl Alison.

Most of the story focuses around how Ben is a huge slacker and how he's dealing with the whole situation. There is some focus on Alison and her sister as the only two women in the movie with significant roles, but they are very much side characters. There wasn't much in their role that would make you connect with them. There are definitely reasons to be sympathetic for them, but they serve as a counterpoint to the guys in the movie.

One thing I did find especially enjoyable is all the fun and off the cuff movie references. Since Ben lives in a house with a bunch of other slackers that are all movie nerds, there's lots of dialog where they pull out quick movie references.

Three Documentaries

2007-04-03T16:47:00.000-07:00

You see that pale, blue dot? That's us. Everything that has ever happened in all of human history, has happened on that pixel. All the triumphs and all the tragedies, all the wars all the famines, all the major advances.....it's our only home.

I've been on a bit of a documentary kick, and recently watched three of them. They were An Inconvenient Truth, Shut Up and Sing, and Jesus Camp. I didn't feel any of them were truly excellent documentaries. For me a great documentary informs the user, tells a personal story, and has some kind of narrative input. I thought each of these documentaries was lacking in at least one of these areas.

I thought be best of the bunch was An Inconvenient Truth, which did great at informing the user and having narrative input, but I didn't find the focus around Al Gore to be a compelling personal story. I found the data interesting, but also a bit hand wavy. Lots of "the scientists tell us this" kinds of statements without much backup, citation, or other information. The official site has a little more but still not an extensive review. I think this is a slight fault for two reasons. One, people like me who are naturally skeptical and inquisitive always want more data and explanations, but more importantly you're not going to convince people who think you're wrong without providing a little more substance. Though, I suppose that you're never going to get that kind of detail in a movie and still have something remotely interesting to most people - so it's ok.

My biggest problem with it was I felt the personal story aspect was weak, and that most of the filler stuff the cut in to build the personal story really didn't help the overall movie. I think it would have been a better to just show Al doing his presentation. Have it be like a lecture on tape.

For more see the notes at the bottom.

While some people will say that An Inconvenient Truth is about extremists, the other two movies are definitely about extremists. Shut Up and Sing takes us into the lives of The Dixie Chicks after they made a not so friendly comment about President Bush during the leadup to the Iraqi war. It was:

We're ashamed that the president of the United States is from Texas.

To me that seems kind of innocuous. I guess it's a little worse when you say something like that overseas, but still isn't this the whole point of living in a society where there is room for disagreement. But alas, many people decided that it was a bad enough thing to have said that they boycotted the chicks, destroyed all their Dixie Chick CD's, boycotted any radio stations that played them, and one person even sent in a death threat. Seriously, this was is of control. For me, that's the scariest part of extremism. It wasn't that people just disagreed with what the band said. They decided that they could no longer associate or have any contact with someone who they disagree with. That's just downright scary.

These are all things we know just from reading the news. The movie added some more personal impact by showing us what was actually going on with the Dixie Chicks. I thought it was interesting, but didn't really add much to what we already knew. In general I thought this documentary lacked most in informing the audience. We got to see a little bit of the extremist reaction, but there wasn't a lot of extra information given. The personal story was good, and the narrative was mostly supplied by the girls in the clips. But overall I didn't really get sucked into this. It was a story I already knew, and watching the chicks' reaction to it was interesting but not captivating.

Lastly was Jesus Camp, another movie clearly about extremists. Jesus Camp tells the story of an Evangelical Christian kid's camp, but it more tells the story of the extreme Evangelical movement. This one had lots of good info, and some good personal stories, but I felt it lacked a narrative. The movie bounced between the evangelicals and this radio host who was a Christian but spoke out against the extremists. But then there was no larger commentary about the differences between these views, or how the extremism in the movie relates to other types of extremism (namely Islamic.) The people in the movie had things to say about this, and actually compared themselves to Islamic suicide bombers - saying they would like to be more like the bombers. It's a bit scary.

But in general the movie forces users to draw their own connections and determine their how they feel about it all. I think this is an admiral thing, but not where movies should live. Movies are such a visual and emotional medium, and how things are cut together and presented makes a huge difference. There's clearly some editorial work going on, and I think there should be some editorial narration that happens over the top of it.

The movie was also interesting because it relates to some of my recent investigation into religion. While I've never talked with people who are as extreme as the ones in the movie, the whole thing is a sliding scale and I have a much better understanding of that culture than before. I think this movie would be most valuable for people who have no insight into the evangelical movement. It's an interesting and scary thing. But like Shut Up and Sing, I found this movie to be interesting but not compelling.

There you have it, three different documentaries, with three different weak points.

Note 1: Global warming is incredibly complicated. Not just that, but there are apparently some pretty bright people out there (who are fairly credible) who believe it's all hogwash. I'm not sure how to deal with this, as what I'd like to do is dig in and figure it out - but that would take way more time than I have (unless I quit my job or something.) Instead I have to use the classic sniff test of people's arguments. But regardless of everything else I think we can agree on the following: (1) temperatures are rising in a meaningful way and (2) it would be better for us to pollute the planet less. Item 1 forces us to recognize the impacts this may have on our modern civilisation, things like the Greenland ice sheet melting would be very bad no matter whether we caused it or not and we should deal with that potential. Item 2 means we should work to reduce pollution, CO2 and otherwise. I think whether Global Warming is a human caused event or our current climate change is part of a global cycle really only changes the relative priorities of those two goals. But in general I'd say what's probably correct is a blend of the different viewpoints - the world is naturally getting warmer (see note part 2) and human activity is causing it to be a bigger swing than it would otherwise be.

Note 2: Remember that our perception of time is totally disconnected with any other meaningful measure of time. Most of An Inconvenient Truth talked about time in the standards of human time - the last 6-10 thousand years. The reality is our modern world is a giant interdependent system, and is much more impacted by small climate changes than humanity has been at any time in the past. For example, a linear increase in hurricanes and cyclones isn't something that would have been noted 500-1000 years ago in the way it is today with a global communication system and understanding of what's really going on all over the world. We're in uncharted territory in lots of ways: not only our ability to impact the global climate, but also our sensitivity to it. Because of that increased sensitivity we need to recognize what could be a natural swing and what our impact to that swing is.

Engaged

2007-03-17T22:52:00.000-07:00

What my baby wants, my baby gets.
But I wanted twelve lemons, baby wanted twelve lemons.

Big news - I'm getting married!

Last week Chrystie and I got engaged! We'd been talking about engagement a bit so I figured I'd need to surprise her, and didn't want to just go out to a fancy dinner or something. That would seem a bit contrived. So I figured out a way to make it special to us, and a surprise to her.

She had been away for the week in Chicago at a work conference - which was more like a pep rally and 3 day party than something resembling work. I was house and pet sitting while she was gone and decided to surprise her when she got back. I figured she'd be tired and a little grumpy from the long flight and would like a special greeting at home.

I went a bit all out (as I often do.) I got a nice bouquet of flowers, some desert, some candles (she loves candles) and a nice bottle of wine. I had the place all setup with candles going, the lights down, dessert, wine and flowers on the table. She called from the airport to tell me she was back and was heading to the car. "Ok, I'm just here watching TV" I say. Little did she know.

When she got home she was greeted by one of our inside jokes. We've always liked the exchange in The Break Up where Jennifer and Vince are going back and forth about the lemons. It speaks to paying attention to what the other person wants, even if it doesn't make sense to you. Anyway, I had 12 lemons hanging on the door, with a little sign noting what they were.

Then she came in to the whole setup. Surprisingly (to me!) she still just thought I was being a nice, romantic boyfriend. She claims that the thought that I was about to propose went through her head, but then she pushed it out as she didn't want to get her hopes up and be disappointed. Since she wasn't hopping and down expecting a proposal I took it easy. We sat down and had dessert. She told me about her trip and all the hijinks from partying in Chicago. Then after a bit I stood her up.

I told her some nice romantic things, then got down on one knee, presented her with a ring, and asked her to marry me. She immediately accepted, and we were engaged!

But the fun wasn't over yet. I had a few more surprises for her too. The next day I had booked her for a nice manicure at a salon downtown (since she would be showing off her ring a bunch she needed to have a nice manicure) and had some fantastic flowers delivered to her office the next day. She had fun at work, because she got to trump every one's drunken conference stories with her story of what happened when she got back.

We've been living the dream now for a bit, but already the fun (read, stress) of planning a wedding is starting up. We're looking at something in February or March 2008, so we have lots of time - but we'd like to find a place and set a date. Then we can let all the other stuff fall into place. We've already been out looking at places some, and we're working hard to keep to a smaller budget - even though we keep being tempted by nicer things (we both have that "tempted by nicer things weakness...")

Side Note: You all know we've been dealing with some tough issues related to religion recently. More on that later, but the short version is we've come to peace with our differences.

Two Books on Religion and Science

2007-03-05T22:20:00.000-08:00

As seekers, we may well discover from science many interesting answers to the question 'How does life work?' What we cannot discover, through science alone, are the answers to the questions 'Why is there life anyway?' and 'Why am I here?

One of the stickiest issues in learning about religion for me is the way science and religion interact (especially Christianity.) I've always found a certain peace in science, and I view the scientific process as the key way that we advance human knowledge. Unfortunately, many people in who are religious discount science. And to be honest, many people involved in science tend to discount religion. That was me too. I was happy to go on letting people believe what they wanted to believe, but deep down I thought they were a bit kooky.

As I started thinking more seriously about religion I looked for ways to bridge this gap. And not just for me, but for Chrystie too. She fell into that category of a religious person who sort of discounted science (to be fair, it's more that it just doesn't interest her all that much.) I read a bunch of things, but in the end I settled on two books I like quite a bit.

The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence For Belief by Francis Collins and Coming to Peace With Science: Bridging the Worlds Between Faith and Biology by Darrel Falk are both similar books. They're both about explaining how science and faith can co-exist. Neither title talks about Christian Faith, but that's what each of them mean. The difference is in thier audiences. Falk is trying to get to the believer who is a skeptical of science, showing them how science can fit into their religious beliefs and providing lots arguements for why science is right about many controversial topics. Collins is aimed at people who believe in science but are skeptical about religion. He shows how religion can fit into science and spends a lot of time presenting arguements for the existence of a God.

Both books have a big focus on evolution, which makes sense given it's current standing in our society these days. Falk shows how you can read genesis in a figurative way where it keeps it's meaning but doesn't act as a science textbook, then shows how God could be involved in evolution. Collins talks about why intelligent design is not really a scientific theory but does show how a God outside of nature (including space and time) could be behind the process of evolution and humanity.

As someone solidly in the science camp of this devide I found Collin's book to be much more interesting. But I gave Falk's book to Chrystie for her to read and while she thought it was a little dry she got through the whole thing and did find it quite interesting. I think the key for each of them is they're trying to address what has become a critical devide in our society.

Many of us who belive in science look at a large portion of the population and just think they're crazy and ignorant. How can people not trust the process of scientific discovery? Don't people understand that the same reasons they're able to fly, and talk on their phones, get X-Rays, get MRI's and turn on the lights are the same as the things that teach us the universe is 14 billion years old, life on earth is 4 billion years old, and that humanity is about 200,000 years old. These are fundamental pieces of understanding that inform so many areas of human knowledge that if you don't accept them you're challenging pretty much everything.

Similarly, many people who believe in religion look at a large portion of the population and think we're crazy for not feeling the intense peace and purpose that they feel in their relationship with God. They wonder how we can have meaning in our lives and view us as confused and lost, searching for truth when all we need is God.

The problem is that these two camps don't have to be this way. It's tough, becuase scientists are typically hesitant to accept things they can see and measure. Because many religious organizations base their faith on scripture being infallible, and containing all the important things they need to know God. I think both of these books are admirably trying to close this gap, and if nothing else to help us all understand where the other side is coming from. Help us understand that maybe there's something for us in the other camp, and they're not all wackos.

If you fall into either of these two groups (most of us do) I highly encourage you to read one of these books with an open mind. You don't have to believe what they're saying, but I think the subject deserves some looking into.

Note: I do think it's pertinent that each book was written by a believer who is also an accomplished scientist. And each book also takes as a baseline that the science of evolution is accurate (there really is very little debate in this space amongst scientists.) I thought I'd include two more fun quotes, the first by Collins and the second from the wonderful wisdon of South Park (of course, it's a popular sentiment on not something they came up with on their own...)

But it is not science that suffers most here. Young Earth Creationism does even more damage to faith, by demanding that belief in God requires assent to fundamentally flawed claims about the natural world

Why can't evolution be the how and religion be the why?

Math really is important

2007-02-19T11:07:00.000-08:00

I don't know, I'm not a mathematician.

All you kids out there, Math is important in the real world.

Wow. I just listened to something that was both hilarious and depressing. This guy, George, got quoted a data usage rate from Verizon of .002 cents per kilobyte. But then when his bill came he was charged .002 dollars per kilobyte. That sucks, but it seems like something you could resovle, except then he calls up and spends a long time talking to customer service supervisors and managers who have no concept that .002 cents and .002 dollars are different amounts. The most amazing thing is they continually quote the rate as .002 cents, which calculating it as .002 dollars. The recording is 22 minutes long, but depressingly worth it. If you want to shorten it up I recommend the end over the beggining, it gets really good when the manager gets on the call at 14:48 (or 8:06 remaining) so if you only listen to part of it listen from then on.

Note: For better control over the time, or if you're in a news reader, see the video on YouTube.

The original posting for this is on Consumerist.com, a website that mostly pokes fun at companies and calls them on BS moves. The good news is after posting the recording on the internet the guy eventually got a refund.

If I were a math teacher I would totally consider playing this to my students to show them a "real world" example of why they need to pay attention. Otherwise they might look like idiots on the internet.