Science in the News

With all the bad science, mostly psychological, flying around these days, I figured I'd offer a collection of science stories that can inform, and possibly uplift as well, as knowledge so often can.

Superstitious beliefs linked to clicking pen three times before writing subject name
Dr. Julliet Burns and her team of PhD candidates spent months researching the origins of superstitions. Genetics were expected to play a role, but little was found. Instead, Dr. Burns found that the best predictor of the development of superstitious beliefs was whether she clicked her pen exactly three times before writing down the name of the subject being tested. The report has not yet passed peer review, but panel members did comment that papers submitted on Thursday afternoon usually get through.

Gravity under increasing skepticism
While most students are taught that gravity is a force that pulls objects together, a small but growing group of concerned parents, backed by equally skeptical scientists, have begun after-school programs to teach gravity skepticism. At the heart of the new skepticism are two persistent problems in gravitational theory. The first is a lack of explanation for gravity, with gravitons and other theorized particles remaining out of sight, despite millions of man-hours spent squinting at heavy objects. Second, alternative explanations have emerged, such as Tiny Spring theory which suggests that all objects are connected by very tiny springs, pulling them together.

"Going green" linked to cancer, controversy
Green 45, a popular pigment used in dyes and inks, and most commonly seen in advertisements and labels for "green" products, has been linked to higher incidence of skin and joint cancers. No causal mechanic has yet been suggested. The study has provoked controversy due to being funded by the Citizens Committee for a Greyer Future, a collection of ink manufacturers and coal power plant operators.

And to wrap it up, a few headlines:

Video games linked to behavior being blamed on video games

False studies mistakenly believed

Global warming thaws frozen ice market

Bold text draws attention

Better mechanics, worse everything else

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. There, I typed out all the damn periods. No more.

Okay, so here's Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl. It has a pretty cool story. You're the "Marked One", an amnesiac who just barely survived a big accident on a horrifying truck, and you have only one piece of information: a PDA that says "kill Strelok". Who is that and who am I?

So you do the only sensible thing: wander off completing tasks for the local trader, getting into fights with bandits, mutants, and the Ukrainian military. And for reasons I forget, you decide that the smart thing to do is to try to get to Chernobyl. You know, the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster. Except in this universe it's even worse, with a second disaster causing physics to stop doing what it is supposed to do, creating anomalies in space. Also, a strange device called the Brain Scorcher turns other Stalkers and soldiers into Monolith: aggressive, fanatical, brainwashed soldiers who kill anyone who comes near the plant. And because this chosen course wasn't sufficiently dangerous, you explore various abandoned, or less than entirely abandoned, laboratories which give you (by which I mean me) nightmares.

But along the way the biggest obstacle is the game. Strange bullet mechanics, weapons that wear out and break and cannot be repaired, no matter how much you liked a particular gun, weight limits, and the randomly scattered stashes of valuable artifacts, powerful items created by anomalies, but which are empty until you've found the correct randomly dropped PDA with the location. It's not a pretty game by any means.

In contrast is the third game in the series, a visually stunning and mechanically impressive game, Call of Pripyat. Guns can be upgraded, repaired, and customized to work just as you would want (putting bullets in scary things at various ranges). Stashes exist even if no one has told you the location. The inventory is easier to manage. Artifacts are more fun to acquire, being searched for between emissions (these are a once-a-day Everyone Outside Dies), rather than found purely by chance. On top of all that, there are far fewer loading screens, thanks to most of the outside world taking place in three maps rather than a dozen or so.

But the story...

It can be summed up as this: you're a soldier sent in to look at crashed helicopters and figure out why they crashed. Then you fight some monolith and get airlifted out. That's the main story. Did it sound a little lame? Well yes, it is. There are side-quests, and those add some flavor, but not much depth.

At the time I did not realize this, too busy being scared, or very happy, as I shot mutants and bandits. But after a bit of thought it struck me: Call of Pripyat has a pretty boring main story. Here, I'm going to spoil the big surprise for you, the mystery of the entire game, on why the helicopters crashed. Ready for it? Okay, here it is: the Ukrainian army made maps of the anomalies and the anomalies move after emissions. Wow. Big twist there! No conspiracies, no plots, no secrets to uncover, just "shit moved." Plus some open-ended "something may be going on but we're not going to tell you anything about it" bit concerning mercenaries.

Here's the thing to remember: I had fun playing both games. Sure, the second one had a rather lame story, but it was fun anyway. Does gameplay trump story? Almost certainly, since an unplayable game can never tell its story (which is what SoC was early on, before they fixed most of the really awful bugs). But can gameplay carry a game? Almost certainly, as most PvP can show. And PvE as well, since I doubt most raiders are lore nerds (I mean that affectionately) and most people aren't doing a whole lot of analysis of the quests that they're skimming for quest objectives.

And yet I still wish there were better stories.

I wonder if I'm on a terrorist watch list now

I'm on the train to the airport in Atlanta when I realize: I don't have my wallet. This could be a slight problem. But okay, let's not panic. Okay fine, first let's panic and have someone yell at me to search every single pocket of my bags, because clearly I have magically broken years of habit and sense and started putting my wallet in the middle of a suitcase where it would be completely useless. Step two, call my brother to tell him I left my wallet at his apartment, in his living room, and then wait for him to get home to search for it, also known as find it where I said it would be.

Maybe there's some small chance that he could get it back here in time for security and the flight. Or not. Okay, now what? Well let's see...

We could rush off in some random direction on our phone and book a replacement flight that the other person didn't ask for, leaving the other person (me, btw) to struggle after with both suitcases. In the process, run right past the AirTran counter and then insist that I point it out if I see it, which I would have normally done, if I had the slightest clue what was going on (all I knew is that two bags are hard to control, nothing else), and if I didn't expect to get a response indicating something along the lines of "What? I can't hear them now. Can you please repeat that?"

My brother calls with a useful suggestion: explain to TSA and see if I can prove my identity despite my lack of proof of identity. So I rush off, on my phone with my brother, toward the security area, still dragging both bags, while getting told that I need to be thinking about my options, while still on the phone, and wondering why the fuck she is telling me anything at all because none of what she says actually affects my situation or what I will be doing. If she's getting on the plane without me then she's getting on the plane without me; I don't need to know the various reasons why or what it will cost me to get another ticket. I'm trying to fix a problem here, not get a lecture on why it is a problem.

The TSA people were obnoxiously slow, but eventually I did manage to get by. I'm not sure what part of "I don't have my wallet or any ID" suggests that "do you have an ID?" is a useful question. They called someone, asked my name and address. Then asked my date of birth. Where I grew up. My parents' names. What is the nearest expressway, park, and hospital. That last one had me worried because I wasn't quite sure. Somehow they never asked for my place of birth or social security number. Nor did they look up a photo of me, which was surprising, since at the very least they should have a database of driver's licenses, but I guess not. Then I did the usual shoes off, bags through the x-ray, me through the metal detector. After that was a useless search of my suitcase, which would have been entirely ineffective if there had been anything hidden. My backpack was left alone.

At the end my mom was crying, which I found a bit stupid. What could possibly be worth crying about? It's not as if either of us were in trouble. Only when we got back did I learn that she had been sent through that creepy naked scanner machine, which makes the crying make a bit more sense. Somehow I didn't get sent through, despite being the suspicious one.

The entire thing left me not feeling particularly safe. Or like a whole lot of time and money is being wasted. Is it stereotyping to suggest that middle-class, middle-age white people aren't your typical terrorist and maybe shouldn't be regularly harassed? Yes. Of course it is. But maybe it makes some sense. On the other hand, I don't think it makes much sense to have a line for white/black people and a line for brown people and one of those lines gets searched and the other wanders right through.

I might suggest this though: it's not going to save anyone anyway. If I were a terrorist I'd not waste time with planes. At this point no plane can ever be highjacked again. You could smuggle on a machine gun that shoots nuclear bullets and the entire plane would still rush you. At best you could blow up a plane. And I would suggest that that was a stupid thing to do, because if the goal is fear or murder, there are much bigger numbers of people that can be killed by much easier methods. A terrorist with nail clippers is not a threat, but instead something we should be grateful for and encourage, as a way to safely identify and dispose of terrorists.

Tomorrow I'll try to talk about something with gaming. I have plenty of them. But being away from a good computer for 5 days makes them hard to play.

The Lord Works in Mysterious Ways

Sin and Mystery, these were always the answers. The question was why bad things happen. An earthquake kills a thousand people. A fire burns down a city. A war, and another, and another. All manner of pain and suffering.

Some is obviously our own faults. World War I was no act of God or Nature, but pure human stupidity and arrogance. We cannot blame anything but these strange ape-brains of ours.

But let's go back to the mystery. A flood wipes out half of Pakistan and we ask why. One preacher blames their faith, usually the same one who blamed gays, sex, and the most recent type of music for the second most recent disaster. Another cannot even give us lies and hate, but can only shrug and suggest that the Lord works in Mysterious Ways. A hand wave. A Wizard Did it.

It's the perfect answer for the lazy or those who don't want any new questions. It reminds me of another answer given by the faithful: "that's the free market."

A town loses the factory and everyone loses their job. One man starves while another lives in a palace. Why? A thousand economists and philosophers rally to the call, offering their answers. The Marxist says it is capitalist oppression and urges action. The bureaucrat says it is a lack of regulation and asks for more power. The politician says it is China and mentions terrorism, saying we must replace the factory with a munitions plant. And the voice is always there, steadily repeating the mantra: it is the free market, and he urges nothing at all.

How strange, this natural force or entity which cannot be controlled, contained, channeled, or even charmed. It does what it does and we are helpless before it, so helpless that we are not even permitted to predict it or wish anything to be any other way. "As it is, so it must be", they say. How convenient, an answer of inaction.

If there were a flood would we simply be washed away? Or would we build levies? Launch weather satellites to predict it? Install pumps and ready boats? Even against that which we cannot quite stop, we still take action and we make things a little less bad. But the market, do not question it, do not oppose it, bow before it.

Why does it do what it does? Obviously it works in mysterious ways.

Now let us close our hands and give praise, as we would to any other mysterious god dictating our fates, that it might show mercy, but never think to change it or order it.

Amen.

Atlanta: Take Two

Today I'm flying down to Atlanta. My brother is having a sort of second wedding, a chance for all the sides of the family to meet, since many missed the previous two chances. Hopefully it will be cooler there than here in Chicago.

So probably no posts Friday or Tuesday. Or the days between.

In the meantime, consider this thought: I have too many games to play now. Finally getting a decent video card (by my low low standards) means that I have about a half-dozen more games to play: Portal 2, Civ V, Dragon Age: Origins, Bioshock (1 and 2), Just Cause, and probably some more Splinter Cell games as well. It's overwhelming, like a kid wandering into a candy store with a hundred dollars and realizing he can only shove so much in his face at once.

Civ V is pretty fun. I like how they've changed resources and units. But it runs terribly. Randomly it pauses for 30-60 seconds. Loading a saved game is an invitation to go buy ingredients for, cook, eat, and clean up after a multi-course meal. And then get a glass of water while I wait a bit longer.

My life as a metaphor for WoW

Or should it be the other way around?

Here's the picture: across the street from my home is a park. Down the block is a school. They are linked by more park and a playground, dominating the area. A couple years ago there were four houses on our side of the alley. Then two of them emptied, the park district bought them, and now there is a field of grass next to our house. And a tall fence that they were kind enough to install. The couple next door are past the point of tip-toeing around it: they are old. We don't know how long they'll be there, but I doubt more than a few years.

That would leave my parents' house in the middle of the block, surrounded on three sides by the grass of the park. Someday, that house will be sold and torn down.

This leaves the children of the area with a large park to play in, bigger than before, with more room for soccer and baseball, with no windows nearby to worry about. For them, it is absolutely better.

But for me, it's my childhood home vanishing. I don't need to live there anymore and in many ways do not want to. That doesn't make it feel much better to imagine it gone, forever. No more ability to go back and see it. Instead I'll be left trying to remember exactly where the sidewalk was and when the stairs started, with nothing but memories left, and left with a ridiculous desire to see it again, just to know what it was, to point out the windows my brother broke, the low roof I slept under, the red curtains that left the light filtering into the basement looking like a submarine movie.

It is, of course, progress, but that doesn't mean there isn't loss.

Cataclysm makes me sad. I hope the children are happy.

P.S. My use of children is not meant to be a literal "kids are taking over WoW", but instead "the next generation." If anything, I'd bet that the audience is older, no longer being so skewed by college students with way too much time.

No one would play gearless PvP

I offer this question: Would PvP in WoW be more or less active (note that I am specifically not using the words popular or fun) if players used a standardized set of gear?

On one hand, removing gear as a factor would allow players to jump right in at any time, with no grinds to get in their way.

But I suspect this benefit would be outweighed by the costs. For one, gear serves as a scapegoat. How good/bad are you? Who knows! Your gear is a factor, and a convenient excuse, allowing bad players to avoid being discouraged and quitting, since they can get better gear and think that will fix the problem.

WoW on the PvE side is driven heavily by gear. I don't think it's a stretch to say that PvE is the dominant element in WoW. It levels us, it trains us. Note the training part: follow the gear, always, if there is no gear, ignore it. Even if PvP gear was completely useless in PvE, the ability to gain gear attracts players, and keeps them going. The hamster wheel may keep more players on than it keeps off.

Meaningful decisions must be permanent, for a short time

Why would any ever level up that class? It's terrible! All the other classes beat it at its main role. I feel sorry for anyone who plays that class. But it won't last, because I bet next month they'll be overpowered again.

It's pretty hard to pick a class when balance is a factor.

But good news! I found this great game where you can reroll in only a few minutes. A few clicks can change your "race" and from there you can customize extensively. If you screw up, you'll get a new opportunity in a short while.

But don't confuse this for some trivial game of throwaway decisions! What you do matters. How you specialize will affect how you play and how your enemy must react. Of course there are some cookie-cutter specializations, but variety is critical, because standard specs can only take you so far. Eventually you're going to need to mix it up, or at least play especially well. Yep, there's also a skill element to it, and no matter how well you follow the formula, you still need to be able to think and adapt, quickly.

What is this wonderful game of specialization and skill? World of Warcraft? Don't make me laugh. EVE? Please. LotRO? More like LOL! Also, not league of legends.

This game is Starcraft 2.

Yes, I did just say that. It has meaningful decisions, that last a very short time.

Will you go for a mechanical army? Then you'd better have the resources to support it. And the upgrades. And structures. If you change your mind halfway in and decide you want infantry instead, go for it, but you're not getting a refund.

Maybe your enemy is going heavy air. Well then anti-air units would be handy. So I hope you've not specialized in something ground-oriented like siege tanks and marauders. I guess you should have kept some marines around. But don't spam them, lest a colossus or ten show up in a few minutes.

After so long feeling stuck on one character and one class, it's liberating to choose, choose, and choose, different every time if I want, trying new things without forking over gold or whatever other currency (time) the developers demand. One day I might go with a lot of marine-marauder drops, the next I'm working on reaper harassment, and then I'm using ground-heavy mixes for the fight after that. Maybe I even mix them all together, taking advantage of each unit as it becomes available and discarding it when it wears out, dipping into upgrades here and there without committing 100% to any one thing, as a jack of trades who can outmaneuver the master of one.

But again, these aren't meaningless, trivial decisions. There are consequences. Victory or defeat. So I want to learn and I want to do better. But for all the permanence of the decisions, they only last a short time, so I can move on from failures rather than be burdened by them. That's not something you can easily do if you find yourself playing the wrong class this month.

However I don't think simple class-switching is the solution, since then everything becomes meaningless. The genre is slower, with days or weeks as the scale, rather than minutes. To shorten the effect of a decision could weaken it too much, destroy the meaning, the need to plan it out or think it through.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go regret attempting to make a sneaky-type character in Dragon Age: Origins. And if anyone is interested in a three year old game, I'm sure I'll have more to say about it in a few days.