Rob's Disturbingly Open LJ

Rob's Disturbingly Open LJ

Rob

[	website	\|	My Website	]
[	userinfo	\|	livejournal userinfo	]
[	archive	\|	journal archive	]

Movie Review: The Dark Knight	[Jul. 21st, 2008\|05:00 pm]
This is gonna be a short review, since I don't have anything unique to say about this movie. I loved it, because it continued the Batman Begins tradition of sticking to the spirit of Batman if not the letter, which is exactly what movies are supposed to do. Granted, the palette was very black-and-grey, the movie was surprisingly dark, and it still felt like a movie-and-a-half, but the editing and plot were good enough that the suspense kept up through the whole 2:30 length. There are moments of genuine suspense, Heath Ledger is very good and felt like he was actually into the role, and the casting is excellent as usual. The movie isn't a perfect 10/10 though. The replacement for Rachel Dawes, our hero's secret crush, is unconvincing. The stakes are so high against the Joker that other threats to the city feel underwhelming no matter how dramatic the scene supposedly is. And the story is hardly without plot holes, most of them put there for special effects instead of genuine story purposes. (Wayne Enterprises apparently sells wires of infinite strength these days.) Overall, I recommend the movie if you like superhero movies, action movies, or cops-and-robbers movies. For the rest of you, Wall-E is still in theaters.
Link	1 comment\|Leave a comment

Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog	[Jul. 17th, 2008\|11:42 am]
It is very funny and you should watch it. The site was slashdotted when the first episode went up, but works fine for me so far. Essentially, it's a one-act musical with 3 characters and famous geek director Joss Whedon, doing some standard riffs on the superhero genre and using Whedon's trademark low-budget, high-sincerity aesthetics. This summer appears to be the year honesty is coming back into the movies - not just Dr. Horrible, but Wall-E and Iron Man also have a welcome degree of openness about what they're trying to accomplish. There's definitely the sense that everyone involved is enjoying their role and genuinely trying to provide good entertainment, as opposed to entertainment that fits a Market Segment. On the marketing side, Whedon and co. are using Hulu, the latest contender to YouTube's crown. The video still streams OK on my cable modem (but just barely) and the video quality is easily 300% as good as YouTube. They've also divided the thing up into 3 episodes, released every couple days, which suits my low attention span. I still get the excitement of wondering what will happen next, but I don't have to sit around for a week forgetting everything that happened last time around because the Market Segment is known to watch TV at that hour.
Link	3 comments\|Leave a comment

Demo Impressions: Too Human	[Jul. 15th, 2008\|04:04 pm]
The demo went live yesterday. I played it that night, slept for 6.5 hours, then woke up and played it again the next morning before work. I went to Gamestop today and almost bought it, but I was held back. Pros: Unique and interesting setting (sci-fi Norse mythology), encouraging premise (action-RPG where you can customize yourself down the Action or RPG paths), co-op single player campaign, and design lessons learned from MMOs to make things easier for you. Cons: The animation is embarrassingly awful. Normally I will overlook one bad area if the rest of the game has redeeming value (like Prince of Persia's chariot races, Devil May Cry's level design or Warrior Within's writing) but the lack of feedback actually impairs my ability to avoid enemy attacks, complete air combos, etc. I would feel bad being so enthusiastic about a fundamentally flawed product. Also, the menu system is kludgy and badly drawn. Lack of manual camera control is frustrating. A couple tutorials are missing. Debunking Myths: The graphics are just fine, on par with Halo 3. The controls are innovative and easy to learn. The game is not a massive disappointment. Closing Design Thought: The most exciting option in terms of inventory management is that when you're out of space, the game will automatically drop your least valuable items. Everybody does this anyway, it's not an interesting job, and so the automation is very welcome. What I'm wondering is, couldn't they have included an auto-equip function as well? Or at least sorted items by value? Paging through 5 different randomly generated sets of gloves to find the one with rating 18 instead of 17 spoils the immersion.
Link	Leave a comment

Fun Skills and Not Fun Skills	[Jul. 14th, 2008\|11:08 am]
Entertainment appeals to a subset of people determined by the skills it requires to consume. If you're not interested in developing / using that skill, you probably don't care about the item. (For example, Faulkner is "designed" to test your reading skill, while Eliot and Joyce test your education level.) Now, most media requires a very low skill level (TV comedies, for instance) so that they can reach to the broadest possible audience. But more ardent consumers tend to prefer more difficult material in their preferred medium/genre. TV shows with intricate plots and enormous cast lists like Lost or Heroes are quite popular, and Pokemon is a very durable brand precisely because it demands a higher level of familiarity than other products at that age group. Video games in particular are geared towards learning a skill, not using it like TV, books, music, etc. (It's possible are a to learn the music theory skill that classical music tests by listening to lots of Bach, but I wouldn't hold my breath.) I like to think of my own tastes as pretty cosmopolitan, but I also like to whine and criticize things I like. So an LJ post was inevitable. ( Read more... )
Link	2 comments\|Leave a comment

	[Jul. 10th, 2008\|10:46 am]
I've been rewatching Firefly recently with my roommate (the excellent and prodigal Matt Austin), which is a lot of fun. Three things struck me: 1. I'm usually very critical of things, people or ideas, even the ones I like. (Always have been - my family debates a lot, my childhood friends were very cynical, etc.) This gives people the wrong impression, and I didn't realize it could be demoralizing until I started looking for it elsewhere. Attending a pseudo-Bible study on Tim Keller's The Reason for God, Dr. Coffin (my pastor) will go out of his way to correct an omission or a bad choice of words. It sounds like he, like me, is having more fun cleaning up the parts that he finds lacking than he is going over the obvious but well-done parts. It's not always easy to listen to, though. Anybody who plays Halo (that is, virtually all my male friends) knows that I like to whine about it, but heck, I'll still play it. So it was odd that I have nary a bad thing to say about Firefly, and lots of little bits of praise. I don't have an unnatural attachment to Joss Whedon (his recent run on Astonishing X-Men is exciting but almost a betrayal, and I've never seen Buffy), but I can't help thinking that he writes some of the snappiest dialogue you'll ever hear. Why am I so thrilled? I think because everybody seems to be throwing their whole heart into the production, turning an absurd premise and an enormous ensemble cast into a manageable human drama (like Heroes, but better). I like seeing a pure expression of something. 2. I'm reevaluating the amount of time spent on various forms of entertainment. On the one hand, I have a TV series (10-20 hours) that I've already seen, but provides consistent value. On the other hand, I have a video game (30 hours) that I really should play, but doesn't excite me in any way. On the other other hand, I have a video game (50+ hours) that I really shouldn't play, but has an undeniable addictive appeal. At this point, it's hard to feel superior to TV watchers because my form of entertainment is more durable and flexible. If I'm just gonna be grinding in WOW, why not just watch TV? 3. In one early episode, disturbed wunderkind River attempts to "fix" Shepherd Book's Bible, tearing out pages that don't make sense, are filled with contradictions, etc. She admits that "Noah's Ark is a problem" because it couldn't hold 5000 species of mammals. Book's rejoinder is typical but tepid: "It isn't about making sense, it's about faith... You don't fix faith, it fixes you." Unfortunately, this is exactly how some people think about the Bible, but this position is untenable. River may be a super genius, but she isn't the first person to go all Thomas Jefferson on the Bible by attempting to excise the parts that she can't explain. But if the Bible can only be defended morally, it's worthless. (This actually came up in the Keller study recently.) To put it more clearly: Eastern religions claim that their myths will help you lead a good life and earn eternal rewards. Monotheistic religions claim that their myths actually occurred, and they had world-changing effects. If the Bible is a morass of contradictions out of which a moral message can be generated, it's no better than Buddhism or Nostradamus. The only reason to take Christianity seriously is if the Bible accurately records Jesus' life, death and resurrection. It IS "about making sense"; fortunately, the Bible does make sense. Noah's Ark, for instance, only has to carry 5000 mammals if you take "two of every kind" to mean "two of every species" according to a taxonomy developed millennia later. River says, "It's broken. It doesn't make sense." Instead of replying "It's not about making sense," Book should have responded, "Yes, it does."
Link	4 comments\|Leave a comment

Movie Review: Wall-E	[Jul. 2nd, 2008\|10:31 am]
On an impulse, I went and saw Wall-E last night with the McCommas clan. We were practically the only people in the theater for a 10pm Tuesday G-rated movie, so I got to make lots of snide comments about the (generally awful) previews. This movie basically restored my faith in Pixar after their last couple of movies, which were like regular movies slowed down so that you would get every detail on the first showing. It's the first genuinely childlike movie I've seen in a long time, and as such it radiates wonder and charm. Basically, this blows all those postmodern, winking movies aimed at already-jaded kids out of the water, and I would easily see it again (although paying another $10 would be a stretch). Not many people remember Short Circuit, but it seems to be the major inspiration for Wall-E himself, although they've removed his eyelashes and replaced his voice with R2-D2 (Ben Burtt, sound designer, really makes this movie tick) and replaced his female sidekick with a capricious girl robot. These two characters basically carry the movie on their shoulders, and are amazingly able to support a predictable plot, an unsettling and weird premise, and a total disregard for physics. On the plus side, having HAL resort to fisticuffs is always good for a few laughs, and our hero is so likeable that we are willing to endue upwards of 30 minutes of romantic comedy awkwardness, plus the obligatory Zany Minor Characters.
Link	Leave a comment

World of Warcraft: Initial Thoughts

[Jun. 30th, 2008|10:55 am]

As part of my quest to break into game design, the two recurring pieces of advice are "Play all the best games" and "Make games/levels constantly." To that end, I signed up for the WOW week-long free trial, to see if I could "get" what an MMO had to offer. After about 8 hours of playtime (about how much I've spent on Grand Theft Auto!) here are my impressions.

Pluses:

The world is fully realized and awe-inspiring, if a bit depopulated. Entering a new place, there's a rush of excitement every time. Seeing other people around, passing them on the street, is also loads of fun, fueling both aspiration and envy.
Overall design is very good, and very deep. There are lots of things to do, with clear goals on both storyline and mechanical fronts. Many are crucial distractions from the basic grind. I never got the sense that I was being forced into a boring path.
Low system requirements mean I can play it at 1920x1200 to ease eyestrain, with nary a hiccup outside of towns. Blizzard's famed pixel artists really help in this regard.

Minuses:

The interface is frustrating and badly explained. (Fortunately, I knew to rely on the number keys from watching others play.) Inventory management is a big chore, as is using non-combat abilities. And where's my auto-run button?
It takes forever to get anywhere, especially after dying. (And I did a lot of dying.) After my fourth time walking back and forth along the same road for 90 seconds each way, facing the same random low-level enemies, I was ready to sign off and grab dinner.
My free trial account can't join groups. Unfortunately, I didn't figure that out until I was several hours into my first priest, a budding healer who now had all the compelling usefulness of a Victoria's Secret in Riyadh. Silly me, I should have been a hunter or paladin like everyone else!

I'll try it again later, now that I don't have lots and lots of rehearsals for FCS (the concert was Saturday night, and it was lots of fun and people liked it and I got to stand out in front in the small group) and see what I think. I'll probably have to start over as someone less terminally boring, since I'm not about to buy the game at this point.

Link

4 comments|Leave a comment

Fixing the Country, Democracy-style	[Jun. 13th, 2008\|11:40 am]
Whenever I have a chance, I try to get people to play the Democracy game, which does for national politics what Oregon Trail did for history class. You start off as George Bush in January 2001 (or the leader of several other countries, but America is more interesting), trying to fix your systemic national problems and get reelected, while only being able to force one item through Congress every 90 days. The simulation isn't perfect (foreign policy is totally absent, for instance, and your actions do not affect the global economy) but I always end up relying on the same basic strategy to put America on the right track. Take a look and see if it would work in reality: 1) Grants are key. Tech grants, small business grants, clean energy grants, university grants - they all boost GDP and put some valuable special interests on your side. 2) Cut corporate taxes, hard. Liberals get mad at me, but it always works. Tax evasion goes down, unemployment goes down, GDP goes up, and they end up paying for themselves while scoring me some more special interest dollars. 3) Cut defense spending and road building, to pay for all your shiny new social programs. My super-conservative friends are like "What are you doing?!?" when I downgrade our military to European levels, but you have to cut spending somewhere and you can't cut Medicare and get reelected. Besides, conservatives are really easy to appease with... 4) Outrageous social policies, season to taste. Once you've kicked GDP into the stratosphere and eliminated the budget deficit, feel free to appease whatever constituents your heart desires. In America, it's pitifully easy to put together a Karl Rove coalition, if you're feeling evil. From playing this game, I've come to realize that a lot of "The Issues" are way less important on a macro level than what neither Obama nor McCain is really willing to face: entitlement overspending, defense overspending, and the energy problem.
Link	2 comments\|Leave a comment

Dangers of Genre Fiction	[Jun. 10th, 2008\|03:53 pm]
While rethinking my personal brand of super heroes, I've been churning through a bunch of possible new ideas. Depressingly, most of them have been done before, by the Marvel/DC big guys in fact. I had originally thought I was subconsciously copying their riffs from my previous exposure to the material, but in at least one instance (Damien Tryp from X-Factor Investigations, a series of whose entire existence I was unaware until today) I appear to have independently evolved these ideas. This makes me feel better about myself. :-P The problem remains with superheroes that I am a big fan of teams, but they require such a vast quantity of interpersonal reactions that I am probably not good enough to write about them. As a result, I've started deleting minor characters until I get to a manageable number. :-P
Link	Leave a comment

Recent Presbyterian Controversies

[Jun. 6th, 2008|01:34 pm]

There appears to be considerable confusion, even among New Hope members, about what exactly the various Neo-Reformed groups say, and who (if any) are actually heretics. (Yes, heretics do exist; no, we don't burn 'em at the stake.)

In the last few years among the Reformed (i.e. theologically conservative, informal liturgy) churches, a new school of thought has emerged, called the Federal Vision.

Federal Vision One-Sentence Summary: Baptism confers regeneration, justification, adoption, sanctification and membership in the visible church, but NOT eschatological perseverance; to remain saved, one must do good works and remain a church member.

Federal Vision is a school of thought with the following beliefs:

Goal to establish a global Christianity, to usher in a postmillennial Second Coming
Freedom to redefine theological terms like "faith" and "justification" as necessary
Adam under a covenant of grace like the rest of us, not a covenant of works (yes, people actually argue about this)
Membership in the visible church required for salvation
Baptized children and adults can receive the Lord's Supper
Justification by faith alone, but faith is never alone (although they are vague on what that actually means)

Most Federal Vision-ers are now members of the CREC, which is basically the Articles of Confederation to the Presbyterian Church's Constitution. Not everyone agrees with all the bullet points.

The PCA General Assembly (ruling body of the Presbyterian Church in America, the conservative branch of the Presbyterians) released a report condemning the Federal Vision and declaring several things in a very blunt manner:

Rejecting the covenant of works / grace framework is bad
Election by membership in the visible church is bad
Christ's merits are imputed to those who believe
Baptism does not include Christ's saving work
Those who are saved always persevere in the faith

There was a lot of bad blood on both sides, and most of the Federal Vision proponents ended up leaving the PCA.

Auburn Avenue Theology is another name for the Federal Vision, because the conferences that created the movement were hosted by the Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church in Monroe, LA.

New Perspective on Paul is an academic movement stemming from N.T. Wright and others in the 1960s, that has been used to support the Federal Vision. I don't think anybody has explicitly condemned it yet, but it contains statements like "Justification is not about how I get saved but how I am declared to be a member of God’s people" that are rather troubling.

Link

4 comments|Leave a comment

I am excited	[May. 30th, 2008\|03:35 pm]
about the new Prince of Persia game. This interview really reassures me that the guys responsible for one of the greatest games ever made (Sands of Time) are trying to recapture that magic. Colorful and unique visual style, name-dropping "art-house" games like Okami, Mirror's Edge and Street Fighter 4? Check. Best-in-class underlying technology, the Assassin's Creed engine? Check. Not losing sight of the basic Fun Factor (making awesome choreographed jumps) in a sea of open-world buzzword nonsense? Check. Refreshing honesty about the series' past failings? Check: "[We] eventually moved towards a pretty cool system, then God of War came along and, basically, just kicked our ass." Best of all, this quote: "One of the first movies we watched when researching the combat system was The Princess Bride." As you may know, the Prince of Persia series is one of my all-time favorites. I've been hankerin' for my fix in that genre for some time now; here's hoping that they'll reclaim that magical, storybook feel that made their previous efforts so enticing. And, of course, the snappy dialog with your female sidekick (Farah, daughter of the Maharajah who's always there to burst your bubble and/or not make out with you).
Link	Leave a comment

Why I Don't Read the LA Times	[May. 27th, 2008\|03:33 pm]
Via Slate, I found this article detailing how two of America's most liberal newspapers, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, reported the same event. Just after the California courts made gay marriage legal, they took a poll to see if Californians support the decision, or the constitutional amendment to invalidate the decision that's up for a vote this November. Californians, it turns out, oppose gay marriage by 54% to 35%. The New York Times noted, "Californians Still Oppose Gay Marriage." The LA Times instead leads with, "Californians narrowly reject gay marriage, poll finds." 19 percent isn't narrow by any stretch of the imagination, and in fact they are prepared to call Obama's 14% victories "handily won". See a difference? Oh right, the LA Times supports gay marriage and wants to report that other people do too, even when it means ignoring the facts. The writer itself isn't necessarily to blame, as the article calls attention to the genuinely "slim majority" of 54% over the 50% necessary to pass the ballot initiative. The editors writing the headline, on the other hand, saw something they liked - a close poll on a hot issue! - and ran with it, leaving them to be lampooned by conservative bloggers for no good reason. P.S. The fact that Californians oppose gay marriage by 19% is the best evidence yet for McCain's grandiose plan to take California back for the Republicans.
Link	3 comments\|Leave a comment

Mystic Crystal Revelations	[May. 23rd, 2008\|08:53 am]
and the mind's true liberaaaaation I was reading the voluminous and under-edited Secret History of Star Wars, both because it's great to see a glimpse of a writer's mind at work (most works of similar quality don't have anywhere near this level of visibility into multiple drafts), and because I always wondered how George Lucas could create such wonderful movies but never recapture the magic. I knew the solution must be someone else in the picture. In Episode I, nobody could tell him 'No' and it was awful, so the original movies must have had somebody to rescue the script and the directing. As it turns out, I was right - Lucas had some of his filmmaker friends revise the Star Wars script to add the snappy one-liners and cut out some of the banal exposition. Darth Vader, one of the most iconic villains ever, was a bit character right up until the time of filming when the breathing sound was added by sound man Ben Burtt. (He has only 9 minutes of screen time in the first film, and was originally supposed to take off the mask when not in space combat.) For Empire Strikes Back, I knew Lawrence Kasdan was the writer behind all the snappy one-liners and copious opportunities to act (he also did Raiders of the Lost Ark, another movie much better than later Lucasian additions). Listen to this quote from Kasdan: "There were portions of the script which, when I read them, made me say to myself, 'I can't believe George wrote this scene. It's terrible.'" Little did he know that for the prequels, when he had Total Control, all those scenes would make it straight into the final movie. In fact, with the help of Gary Kurtz and Irvin Kershner, basically all the most compelling parts of the movie were added to Lucas' action-packed, character-light story. Like any good idea man, George let his core ideas (Vader as Luke's father, Leia in a Gone-with-the-Wind story, Luke struggling against the dark side, trouble on an ice planet) get interpreted in a much better way. I'm also encouraged by the awful early drafts, which feature a Force-amplifying Kiber crystal, Luke's father as a human version of Yoda, attempts to cut Han and/or Leia out of the script entirely, and no fewer than five planets for our heroes to run to. Even the original Lucasian dialog of Empire Strikes Back features screaming dialog like Han telling Leia, "Don't worry, I'm not going to kiss you here... It wouldn't be much fun for me now." If George Lucas can take this kind of half-plagiaristic mishmash and turn it into a cohesive storyline, then I can do the same. :)
Link	1 comment\|Leave a comment

The Affairs of Men

[May. 21st, 2008|03:54 pm]

New York magazine's latest headline-grabbing article details the author's longing for commitment-free, casual sex while his wife is at home doing the dishes. Full of anecdotal evidence, it seems to be a genuinely questioning essay until he looks outside of his 50-year-old-men comfort zone and asks his wife about the whole thing:

When I got back from the Kinsey Institute, I told my wife all about the evolutionary data and Erick Janssen’s questionnaire, and she got agitated. “Okay. Let’s have an open marriage. And I have to be out Wednesday night.”

I said, No thanks.

Whoops! Guess you aren't the vanguard of sexual liberation anymore! He ends on this 'happy note':

A relationship is a myth you create with each other. It isn’t necessarily true, but it’s meaningful. The key to that myth is that the other person is enough for you. You know in your head that another person isn’t enough for you. But if you don’t honor the myth, then it crumbles.

Sounds like a great plan... if your relationship is a myth. Those of us in happy, fulfilled relationships beg to differ. The author is on a long, wordy quest to find out why he has these contradictory sexual desires. Because he can't stand taking advice from anyone who doesn't support his hypothesis, he ends up wandering in the wilderness, unable to find any real answers.

The comments provide an extremely varied range of opinions, in the same way that the South is extremely diverse. From one commenter, responding to the "You made a promise to be monogamous when you married her!" argument: "I don't think a promise not to sleep with other people is morally binding. I don't think promises and agreements that obstruct basic personal freedoms are valid."

From the very next commenter: "To think one can guarantee a sexual relationship will not become emotional, you're fooling yourself."

The comment I found most damning was a man who had been in a "polyamorous" marriage for years, then eventually found the woman of his dreams and is now happily monogamous. Guess what? He no longer has an uncontrollable desire to sleep with random babes, just like athletes can easily control their desires to eat a quart of ice cream. Imagine that!

Link

3 comments|Leave a comment

Two Great Links on Gaming	[May. 19th, 2008\|04:43 pm]
First, a roundtable discussion between the directors of Mass Effect, Rock Band and Bioshock, three extremely successful games of 2007 in three totally different spheres. It's fascinating to see that they have a very divergent approach to creating these wonderful experiences, and they often disagree on what to do. Really, these games are representing 3 of the 4 core markets for the Xbox 360: 1) Hardcore gamers who want a complex, meaty, big-budget experience 2) Casual gamers who want to play games with their friends after a few beers 3) Mature gamers who want an intelligent, cinematic game and low difficulty 4) Teenagers with headsets and a copy of Halo (not represented in this article) Second, a rant on a subject I've covered here before: how modern video games are WAY too confusing for newcomers. (Hence Nintendo's dominance: they have dialed back the Million Buttons to Spastic Hand-Waving.) Although N'Gai mentions one of the two big factors in having too many buttons (Street Fighter 2's six face buttons) he doesn't analyze whether competition was a force, whether bragging rights could attach to having more buttons or some new control gimmick. For reference, the Xbox 360 controller has the following buttons: 0) Two analog sticks to control movement and position (necessary but ugly) 1) Xbox Guide button (again, necessary but ugly) 2) Two tiny menu buttons (the second one is useless) 4) Four obvious face buttons (mostly for backwards compatibility; most games get by with 2-3 necessary ones) 8) Two analog triggers (necessary; even your car has 2-3 of these) 10) Two shoulder buttons (elegant but NOT user-friendly) 12) Two buttons inside the analog sticks (awkward, counterintuitive and efficient, like a command line) 14) One tiny, hidden "reset wireless connection" button (useless; probably easier to code though) That's two buttons we could cut right off the bat (Select and Y). A good start.
Link	Leave a comment

Movie Review: Speed Racer	[May. 16th, 2008\|02:12 pm]
This movie is like watching C-SPAN inside an arcade: a movie where the immaculate CG background, a vertiginous retro-future wonderland, is roughly ten times better than the tepid live-action foreground featuring B-list actors doing their best to make the movie campy instead of awful. It's difficult to recommend a movie with 45 minutes of pure, andrenaline-filled awesomeness (the speedy races) and 90 minutes of the worst script since Attack of the Clones. It's exactly the kind of movie my dad loves: memorable and even thrilling moments, plus plenty of opportunities to take a nap. Where Iron Man takes a boring franchise and makes it postmodern and thought-provoking, while preserving the cool parts, Speed Racer takes a boring franchise and makes it awkward and cryptic, while preserving the cool parts. There is one circumstance in which watching this movie is encouraged: on a home theater system. Powerful speakers and a big screen are necessary for some of the amazing spectacle and gripping action moments, and the DVD remote is necessary to prevent all 5(!) occurrences of Mom saying "I'm proud of you." Theoretically, winning EVERY RACE IN THE MOVIE should be its own reward.
Link	3 comments\|Leave a comment

Addendum: Wishful Thinking in Psychology	[May. 16th, 2008\|11:58 am]
Golombok, S., Tasker, F. L., & Murray, C. (1997). Children raised in fatherless families from infancy: Family relationships and the socioemotional development of children of lesbian and single heterosexual mothers. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 38, 783-791. Investigated family functioning and the psychological development of children (aged 3-9 yrs.) raised in fatherless families since their first year of life. Thirty lesbian mother families and 42 families headed by a single heterosexual mother were compared with 41 two-parent heterosexual families using standardized interview and questionnaire measures of the quality of parenting and the socioemotional development of the child. Results show that children raised in fatherless families from infancy experienced greater warmth and interaction with their mother and were more securely attached to her, although they perceived themselves to be less cognitively and physically competent than their peers from father-present families. No differences were identified between families headed by lesbian and single heterosexual mothers, except for greater mother-child interaction in lesbian mother families. It seems that children raised in fatherless families from birth or early infancy are not disadvantaged in terms of either the quality of their relationship with their mother or their emotional well-being. (PsycINFO Database Record. Copyright © 2002 by the American Psychological Association. All rights reserved.) The actual results of the study? Children without fathers were more attached to their mother, but had a lower self-image. The conclusion of the abstract? "Children raised in fatherless families... are not disadvantaged." Doesn't sound like that to me. ( Further studies )
Link	Leave a comment

Gay Marriage in California	[May. 16th, 2008\|10:47 am]
was court-mandated today. Now, it should come as no surprise that I disagree with this decision. Not only am I against gay marriage, but I'm against judicial activism on a topic where the other two branches of government are engaging in a real and unresolved debate. Sorry if this is long, guys. It's a complex issue and I try not to dwell on any one topic too long. However, it's difficult to disagree with the judge's conclusion here considering the facts on the ground. This ain't the mayor of San Francisco blatantly violating the law, this is a state with a very strong civil unions law that basically put gays on a "separate but equal" marriage track. Once they already have all the state benefits, the state gains nothing from distinguishing them verbally and it's an invitation to discriminate against them. The proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage is a bad idea - the last time we tried to enshrine social policy into the Constitution, we got Prohibition. The mayor of San Francisco's executive decision to allow gay marriage was just wrong. He was clearly violating the law and overreaching his authority. That was abuse of power on a level with President Bush and I'm glad that the voters and the courts wouldn't stand for it. Having these decisions handed down from the bench is also wrong. The Supreme Court, the most revered part of government, also has a notoriously spotty record on social policy - remember, these are the guys who produced both Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education. The closest recent analogy I can see is Roe v. Wade, a decision that STILL divides the public 30 years later. Since we shouldn't adjudicate gay marriage, or nationally legislate it, or decree it from on high, the remaining option for a contentious social issue of national import is for "the states and the people" to decide. From where I sit, the states are doing just that, with some (like California) deciding they want civil unions and some (like Virginia) deciding they don't. The role of the federal government here should be to clarify exactly what happens when these marriages cross the state line. More importantly, I'm beginning to think that my fellow evangelicals and I have been going about this fight all wrong. Yes, historically, marriage is one of the most important parts of the social fabric, and one that the state has a duty to protect and encourage. Yes, having parents of both genders is better for kids than other options, and so the state should give powerful incentives for doing so. But having the religious ceremony of marriage rely on the state for legitimacy may be building your house on the sand. Maybe we should decouple the religious ceremony of marriage from the social contract of a civil union. This way, you can legislate about who exactly gets to have a civil union and what it should entail, while simultaneously fending off Pat Robertson and the "separate and prejudicial" ADA-style gay activists. P.S. There are cogent arguments both for and against gay marriage, but "these people love each other!" is not one of them. Marriage is not a fundamental right, it is a license open to a specific set of people who are expected to form "family units" (of 2+ people) and provide tangible benefits to society. It also happens to be a sacred rite in every religion, for the same reasons. A good number of the FLDS cultists in Texas were happy to be living in a polygamous marriage where child abuse was the norm.
Link	3 comments\|Leave a comment

Grand Theft Auto 4: Initial Thoughts	[May. 12th, 2008\|12:24 pm]
I haven't finished the game, and to be frank, I haven't really put much effort into finishing it. Why not, since apparently it's the second coming of Gamer Jesus? 1. It's too long. Epic milieu-focused games like this must be played in chunks of at least an hour, preferably 2+. I have six such opportunities per week, and some of them are going to involve friends, chores, other media, Rock Band, etc. I just don't have the luxury of dropping all my other commitments for a week and playing the heck out of a single video game. 2. It's too repetitive. Against a game with more theoretical variety than a schizophrenic chameleon, this is a strange allegation, but after a half-dozen "drive over here, shoot these specific dudes, don't get killed, drive to various shops, repeat" missions, the charm wears off. I didn't pay $60 to be forced to make my own entertainment all the time, although I do appreciate the ability to do so. Plus, a lot of the missions are too difficult for me, since I've never played a GTA game before and the controls are very frustrating. (Where are my checkpoints?) 3. It's too dark. Unlike most hardcore gamers, I haven't become totally numb to the horrors of running over pedestrians, I like humor that isn't despairing satirical commentary straight out of The Colbert Report sometimes, and I'd like to be able to spend some of my near-infinite blood money on a pretty apartment or something. After a few hours of play, I need to take a break and look at cute puppies for a while. 4. I've been rereading X-Men instead. Chris Claremont has his faults - our heroes basically have everything and the kitchen sink thrown at them, to the point where their normal lives in regular ol' New York seem out of character - but the power of character development and regular opportunities to test our heroes' moral mettle cannot be denied. The level of drama and pacing is about 2 minutes of X-Men to 1 hour of Dragonball Z. And I thought Lost and Heroes had big casts and copious twists!
Link	Leave a comment

Science Marches On	[May. 12th, 2008\|10:12 am]
Science News has a study saying that a country's efficiency is inversely proportional to its number of cabinet members. In a classic example of heavy induction, they started with this tiny, Economist-style "that's pretty neat" graph, then found some way to represent it in more repeatable terms (graph theory, with each minister as one node). Intuitively, this makes sense: any small group can reach consensus pretty quickly, and any group of 20+ needs to have its own leadership. An odd number also really helps. (One manager usually has 10 or less underlings, the Supreme Court has 9 members, etc.) However, it's not exactly an open-and-shut case, as the researchers mention: Canada, Australia and New Zealand all have big cabinets and high efficiency. I suspect this is more because they have fewer powerful ethnic groups, reducing the need to have shared oversight of crucial government functions. (Iraq, for instance, is bloated with 3 positions for every 1 real position, so that everyone can be appeased.)
Link	1 comment\|Leave a comment

navigation

[	viewing	\|	most recent entries	]
[	go	\|	earlier	]