There's an article on 1up taking about a mysterious new MMO that LucasArts and BioWare have been secretly working on a major new MMO. No one knows what it is. However, I would like to go on record with my own personal speculation:
(a) It has been in development since 2005
(b) It has a tremendous amount of secrecy about it
(c) The involved parties will not say whether it is an original IP or an existing IP
Speculation has it as a KOTOR MMO, but they would not have that much reason to keep it so hush-hush. Also, that would not explain the "fantasy" term in the job descriptions.
I am going on record today to state that I feel they are working on a Harry Potter MMO. It is an IP that could most definitely apply itself to the MMO genre; the movies themselves are structured, in many ways, like an MMO. The series of books is complete, and the movie series is wrapping up. I think they will go public with this product at approximately the same time the PR for the last Harry Potter film ramps up. As far as I am concerned, it all fits together very well.
The New Big MMO
eEugenics
Thank you, mister president Bush. Take a good long look at the world you have created and ask yourself if it was all worth it.
No, you did not create Al Quaeda. You did not create Saddam Hussein, or Zaquari, or Osama bin Laden. But you sure used them, didn’t you? You used us too. You used their evil deeds and our righteous fury to justify channeling trillions of dollars to your cronies. You pursued a policy of aggressive military intervention against a sovereign state that posed no threat to America, based solely on personal emotional motives and justified by lies and mis-truths. You made deals with dictators to secure their cooperation in exchange for billions of American dollars, and they just took our money, turned around, and used the terrorists as an excuse to pursue their own despotic dreams. You radicalized the Muslim world with policies that created enemies faster than we could kill them. You wasted our anger, our patience, our money, and worst of all, the lives of our youth in wars that have no end and can not have an end, by their very nature. You leave us poorer, more frightened, and less safe than when you took office. You claim to know what is good for us better than we do, but everything you do just seems to make things worse. Have you done anything right in eight years? One single virtuous act? At this rate, I think I would prefer a philandering sax-player. He could not have handled the “war on terror” any worse, and might just have done better.
Don’t get me wrong; Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator who needed to go. But the world is full of evil dictators. Why throw away hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives on this particular one? He was marginalized, castrated, hamstrung. He was no longer a threat. And to use outright lies to hoodwink the American public and Congress into going along is unconscionable. Why did you not follow the example of JFK with Cuba, and simply marginalize and trivialize the dictator? Instead, you made him and his country a cause celebre for every would-be mujadeen in the world.
Yes, 9/11 was a horrible, despicable act by a megalomaniac and his cronies. Yes, they needed to be hunted down and executed like dogs. But they were in Afghanistan, not Iraq. By diluting our efforts and committing most of our troops to Iraq, you allowed Al Quaeda to melt away into the mountains of Pakistan, where your buddy Musharraf allowed them to live with impunity. And now they are back, stronger than ever. So strong that our buddy has seen fit to suspend the constitution, indefinitely delay elections, and arrest “activist judges” en masse. Hm, where have I heard that “activist judges” phrase before? Tell me, Mister President, when you see Musharraf filleting the Constitution of his country, don’t you get just a little bit jealous that he can get away with it?
Thank you, mister President. Thanks for creating the world in which I will be attempting to raise children. I will be thinking of you when I explain to them why we can’t afford a nice house, since the government went so far in debt that interest rates skyrocketed. I will be thinking of you when my children want to travel to a far away land, and I have to tell them that we cannot because the dollar is worthless in the global economy. I will be thinking of you when my child asks me why so many people around the world hate America.
The Tyrrany of Charlie Brown
Growing up in 1970’s California, Charlie Brown was everywhere. Every Sunday comics section was headlined by Peanuts; every holiday was highlighted by a Charlie Brown and the Gang cartoon special. Their antics were sweet, endearing, and harmless. But looking back across the sweep of my life, I see strange ties between myself, the round-headed kid, and his creator. A recently published biography of the cartoonist Charles Schultz caused me to re-examine certain aspects of my childhood and personality that I had not considered before.
A shy, insecure child, I never quite fit in with the crowd. In times of frustration, I was sometimes consoled by my parents. They would tell me that I was “Just like Charlie Brown, in that everyone likes him.” They left the second half of that coda unstated, but it was there nevertheless… “but no one respects him.”
Children learn to mimic what they see. They absorb values and attitudes from their environment the way oysters filter plankton from the water around them. After watching Lucy pull that football away from Charlie Brown enough times, I learned to sabotage myself in ways that ensured that I, too, would never quite connect with my goal. Every time I acquired a very cool or highly desirable object, I would somehow manage to lose or destroy it. Eventually, my parents, in frustration, bought me only the most inexpensive and most easily replaceable commodities.
I learned to expect disappointment, mediocrity, insecurity, failure, and rejection. The Great Pumpkin would never make an appearance; the baseball game would never be won; all romantic advances would be rebuffed.
And it all seemed so right. Life was supposed to be painful, frustrating, and humiliating. If you excelled at something, then that must not be valuable; better, then, to focus on your weaknesses, hammer away at them until they are smooth and even. If you enjoy writing, then it is clearly not a goal worth pursuing. Better to pursue math, for which you are only marginally inclined.
In reading Charles Schultz’s biography, it became clear to me that he lived his life by these principles. He was always insecure, never feeling himself to be as good as his fellow cartoonists, to the point of lashing out in a childlike manner against perceived threats. His romantic relationships were difficult, frequently due to his own acts. And even in the waning years of his life, he remained bitter and withdrawn, unable to move beyond his childhood insecurities.
Thankfully, after almost two decades in the realm of the adult, I have acquired enough insight and perspective to see these self-destructive behaviors and begin to wean myself from the self-sabotaging thought patterns that I held. Reading Schultz’ biography brought me to sympathize with this lonely, bitter man, and allowed me to recognize the lonely, bitter person I was, at one point in my life, in danger of becoming.
NaNoWriMo!
It's time once again for National Novel Writing Month! Each year, the folks at the Office of Letters and Light challenge us to write a complete 50,000 word novel in just 30 days. Are you up for it? I am giving it a go, we'll see how it turns out.
Now, back to writing my novel!
Dreams of Tomorrow, Dreams of the Past
On this All Hallow’s Eve, I would like to share what, for me, has been the spookiest incident of my life. I believe that I had a precognitive dream of 9/11. Now, many people claim they dreamed this the day before, or woke up that morning with a feeling of dread. However, I had this dream a full eighteen years before the event. That’s right… when I was twelve, I had a dream so clear, so detailed, so startling, that I wrote it down, and it stuck with me for decades. However, I did not realize that it was a 9/11 dream until months after the event.
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The dream begins with me starting a new job in a new office. It is the very beginning of my first workday. I am sitting at my desk, setting out a variety of office supplies: blotter, stapler, tape dispenser, putting pens in a pen holder. I am facing a window, and I can look out the window to see a vast cityscape spread out before me. (Note that at this point in my life, age twelve, I had never been in an office or spent much time in a big city).
Suddenly there is something that seems to be an earthquake. The building jumps around, there is a flash, a crash. The office begins filling with smoke; sparks are shooting out of the ceiling and walls. People are running around the office, screaming. I decide it is time to evacuate, and walk to the exit.
The next scene takes place in the lobby. There is shattered glass all around, and people are running and screaming. I am walking through the lobby towards the exit, when I realize that I have left my briefcase at my desk. I am about to turn around and go back for it, when I see a woman standing in the middle of the lobby, staring at me. In the chaos, she is perfectly calm; a middle-aged blonde woman. She is staring at me intently. Hesitating, I walk up to her. She looks at me as if she knows me, but I do not recognize her.
“Hello,” I say.
“Hello,” she says, nodding.
“I was just about to go back to my desk for my briefcase,” I tell her.
“All right,” she says. She sounds sad; a disappointed look comes across her face.
I turn to go, but then a realization strikes me. I turn back to the woman. “If I go back to my desk, I’ll never make it out, will I?”
“That’s right,” she says, nodding.
“Well, all right, then,” I tell her, “in that case, I guess I’ll just leave.”
“All right, then,” she says, smiling now.
“I’ll see you later.”
“Yes,” she says, staring at me intently, “I will see you later.”
I walk past her out the doors of the lobby and out onto the street. I continue walking down the street, away from the building. The point-of-view of the dream switches to third-person (something that never happened before or since in my dreams) and I see myself walking away from the building, with the building visible behind me. There are flashes of light and smoke coming out of the building. Then, suddenly, there is one tremendous flash, and the building disappears.
I continue walking. Now I realize that it is still dark; I find it odd that it is still dark at eleven AM. (Only at this point in my dream is time referenced explicitly). Now, suddenly, the sun begins to rise. Within a few minutes it is high in the sky, revealing a painted landscape reminiscent of Arizona or Utah. I look out over a deep valley and think, “Now I can start my new day.”
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For many years, I felt this dream to be largely symbolic. A few months after 9/11, I was going through my old journals and I discovered this; it hit me like a ton of bricks. It was so clearly a 9/11 dream. It was a warning, something to remind me what to do on that day.
However, on the day itself, I was nowhere near New York City. I was 2000 miles away, in California. Perhaps I was destined to be in NYC on that day, but something changed between age 12 and age 30 to put me on a different path. I cannot help but wonder what decision I made that altered my destiny, and whether I was “supposed to” be there.
Meet the Ex-Laws
A recent article on CNN.com celebrated the rise of the “ex-law” phenomenon, where divorcees remain in touch with their former in-laws out of friendship, an attempt to provide continuity for the children, or other motives. This article stirred up a whole hornet’s nest of emotions with me, mostly unpleasant.
It disturbed me on several levels. Let us get past the first level quickly. Being Catholic, I look down on the culture of divorce that has arisen in this country. It is part-and-parcel with the late-twentieth-century disposable society, where inconveniences are to be discarded without a second thought. When I see the rise in popularity of re-useable canvas grocery bags, a part of me hopes our newfound willingness to keep things around longer than is convenient extends someday to spouses as well as shopping. I am not a “good” Catholic (by the Vatican’s standards, at least), and can understand how, in certain extreme cases of abusive relationships, it would be better for two people to go their separate ways. However, the casual nature people assign the institution of marriage gives me reason to pause.
Another area of discomfort is regarding the intimacy. One woman still discusses daily topics on the phone with her ex-mother,-in-law, “everything from sex to NASCAR.” Auto-racing seems rather harmless, but what about sex? If I discovered my ex was talking to my mother about her having sex with someone else, I would be rather upset. If she was talking to my mother about our former peccadilloes, I would be downright livid. No, this is not “all right.” This is not your Sex-and-the-City girlfriends discussing their exploits over crabcakes Benedict. This is someone who you at one point let into your life, promised a partnership to, and had children with; and then, at some point, they hurt you so deeply that you felt forced to sever the ties that bind. While I am a big supporter of forgiveness, it does not mean you need to or should share the intimate details of your new-old life with them.
The next level of despair is a less philosophical, more personal one. In 2001 I was very much in love with a woman, and wished to build a life with her. She was a divorcee, with two wonderful young boys from a previous marriage. Despite my misgivings for her divorced state, I was able to see beyond that to the wonderful person she was. I uprooted my life and moved 300 miles to be closer to her in early 2002. That, however, was when the trouble began.
She and I had spent many hours in deep conversation, where she had told me chilling tales of emotional abuse at the hands of her ex-spouse. Even taken with the understanding that I was hearing one side of the story, I could understand her need to get out of the relationship and away from the ex-spouse. However, her former in-laws were a different story.
She would regularly chat with them on the phone, discussing the day’s events. She kept photos of them on her mantel. The worst part, however, were the holidays. With depressing regularity, she would take her two boys and drive to Arizona to visit her ex-laws, spending the holidays with them. While I was never invited, her former spouse was. So here we have the odd picture of her former family reunited around the Thanksgiving table, years after a bitter divorce and custody fight. Even odder, they would all bed down together in the same house. She insisted to me that she and her ex-husband stayed in different rooms of the house, but one can understand my discomfort in this matter. This situation also led to several uncomfortable conversations along the following lines:
Co-worker: “Hey, man, happy Thanksgiving. What did you do for the holiday? “
Me: “I went to visit my parents.”
Co-worker: “What about J?”
Me: “Oh she’s in Arizona, staying with her former in-laws. And her ex.”
Co-worker: (uncomfortable silence) “Oh. Right. Well, happy Thanksgiving.”
She claimed she did it for the children, so they would know their grandparents. And that was, in my opinion, a perfectly understandable reason. So I never protested this practice. But as these occasions rolled around again and again, I found that this was a very insular circle. Something about the chumminess seemed almost incestuous.
Eventually I realized what the problem was. She was emotionally stuck. Her ex would always be the father figure in the family, no matter how many strippers he dated, no matter how far in arrears he was on child support. They needed this, so everyone else in the family played along. I was an interloper, someone to be kept in the shadows. I would never be a true equal emotional partner with her, I would never be “the dad” to her boys. As Greg Kinnear said in Thank You for Smoking, “I’m the dad. I will always be the dad. You’re just the guy who’s screwing his mom.”
And so, contrary to the article’s advice for newcomers to “swallow it,” I did the opposite. I ended the relationship, and focused on finding someone who I could enter into a truly equitable partnership with. While everyone brings baggage to a relationship, I decided that there were limits to what I would tolerate. And I did find a wonderful woman who, while having her share of former relationships, was not stuck in the past. This one, I hung on to with all my might, and am proud to say that we are now happily married.
The most charitable assessment I can give this article is that it is an example of sensationalist journalism cloaked in the guise of normalcy. It shocks people by saying, in effect, “See this weird relationship structure? Well, get used to it, this is the way things are nowadays.” But perhaps this is how we, as a society, got into this situation in the first place. Like the frog in the pot of boiling water, we were tricked into accepting environments that wound up hurting us. Now we have Britney shaving her head and abandoning her children; Paris having her exploits splashed across the internet; and, of course, the tableau of celebrities discarding their spouses without a second thought. And when this all percolates down to the personal level, to the “everyone is doing it” level, we are supposed to “swallow it” and enjoy our new, weird world. I would rather buy some canvas tote-bags.
The Season of Foreclosure
The thread of destiny draws us back to the core over and over. I look back on my old blogs and cringe at their amateurishness. Yet, something stays my hand as I hover the cursor over the “edit” button. When you start from a low point, it is easy to show progress. Therefore I will leave my cringe-worthy early blogs intact, and instead press onwards towards a (hopefully) more enlightened future.
For those of you who are, for whatever reason, interested in my life, it has undergone some significant changes since I started blogging. Now thirty-six, I am happily married to a wonderful woman, back to living in San Francisco, and, after a prodigal period away, have returned to the nest of the employer I was working for just before my first posting in 2002. My life has been a series of recursive loops bringing me back to the center. Yet, with each iteration I feel as if I have managed ever-so-slightly to elevate myself on an internal level.
So… enough navel-gazing (as I promised to refrain from, so long ago). On to writing something topical.
The media is filled with talk of the “housing meltdown.” More sassy wags have flagged it as the “foreclosure explosion.” Yes, it is terrible to lose one’s primary residence. There are quiet, desperate tragedies playing out all around us now. But one must wonder what these people were thinking when they signed on the dotted line. A family with six children and a household income under sixty thousand decides they want to buy a nice house in the San Francisco Bay Area. To do so, they must agree to terms that seem alien: 5/1 ARM, interest-only, 80/20 piggyback, mortgage insurance, balloon. Surely, they reckon, the loan agent would have their best interests in mind, and would not sell them a loan they could not reasonably be expected to pay back?
Unfortunately, the days of community lending are long gone. The friendly neighborhood savings and loan agent who you chat with at the drugstore on Friday afternoons is long gone, just like milk delivery and full-service gas stations. If you do not make an effort to fully understand the terms of a commitment you are legally binding yourself to, you are asking for trouble. Likewise if you do not sit down with pencil, paper, and calculator and make a hard-nosed assessment (no dreaming allowed, at least for the purposes of this exercise) of just how much you can afford. And if that assessment tells you that you cannot afford the purchase, then you simply do not make it.
Oh, but they assumed the market would keep rising, and they would be able to sell their house for a profit before it resets, I hear you say. For the moment I will put aside my suspicion that most signatories for such mortgages are not nearly savvy enough or farsighted enough to think in those terms. But one must look at the historical record. A rising tide may lift all boats, but no tide rises forever. There is a risk that conditions will change. The concept of risk assessment supposes that one can determine their tolerance for risk and make decisions appropriately. Risking your children’s future for the possibility of a future payoff does not seem wise.
And so we have foreclosures. This is, in the dismal science of economics, a normal process; downright Darwinian. Those who cannot keep up their end of the bargain fall into the trash heap of history, and the creditors repossess the property to minimize their loss. But unfortunately, along with full-service gas stations, another casualty of the millennial rollover has been personal responsibility. The people who rolled the dice on a 5/1 interest-only ARM and came up with snake-eyes are now looking for an out, claming they were duped, cajoled, or otherwise coerced into signing the contract. This may be, but such cases should be investigated on a case-by-case basis. Instead, however, some organizations are calling for a blanket forgiveness on subprime loans and a moratorium on foreclosures. Such wholesale discharging of responsibility would be disastrous for our society. What lending organization in its right mind would continue to extend mortgages to homeowners in the future, knowing there is a very real possibility that they may lose the entire value of the loan with no possibility of recovering even a portion of the balance? The difficulty of securing a mortgage, even for people with verifiable incomes and good credit histories, would become astronomical.
People who speculated on dangerous ARMS and drew the short straw need to suck it up and either sell the house for a loss or mail the keys back to the bank, and then move somewhere where they can afford to live (I hear the Midwest is still quite reasonable). With any luck, their bankruptcy will disappear off of their credit report before they have to apply for their children’s college loans.
EDIT 11/5/2007: This article on CNN.com validates my point of view, and tells me that I'm not the only person annoyed by this bailout. But just like the S&L bailout of over a decade ago, those making risky, unscrupulous decisions will walk away unscathed, because to allow them to go down in flames would damage the economy too much. Which tells me that it's better to prevent this kind of behavior up front than have to clean up the mess later (q.v., Enron). It's playing chicken with the economy, holding the responsible people hostage to demand a bailout.
A paralell can be made to helmet laws. As an avid motorcyclist myself, I would not dream of going out on the road without a Snell-approved helmet. However there are plenty of people out there who feel no compunction against riding down the highway at high speeds with nothing protecting their brain except a quarter-inch of bone. Their point of view is that if they want to risk serious head trauma or death, that is their decision. However, in the modern world, who will be paying for their extensive rehabilitation? Most likely, the taxpayer. No man is an island, and every decision we make has ripple effects throughout society. Acting irresponsibly has a societal cost, like it or not. And unless we somehow transform into a Libertarian paradise, this is not going to change anytime soon.
(The following is a theoretical news story)
February 25th, 2006
ALLIED FORCES CONTINUE THEIR BUILDUP
Tijuana, Mexico
Allied forces continued their buildup on the American border, as UN secretary/general Kofi Annan declared "President Bush is throwing away his last chance at resolving this situation peacefully."
As heavy armor and attack aircraft continued to be positioned in preparation for a possible attack on the US, posturing continued in the UN, with China continuing to push for a new resolution calling for "regine change" in the United States.
"Over the last half-century the United States has proven itself to be a belligerent, aggresive, imperialistic power who will not listen to reason. From Korea to Vietnam, Panama, Grenada, Jamacia, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Korea again, and then Venezuela, the United States has a history of invading smaller nations, destroying their infrastructure, then abandoning them to poverty when it no longer suits their political agenda. This practice must be stopped one way or another," said UN secretary-general Kofi Annan.
In San Diego, the city most likely to bear the brunt of any attack, residents laid in supplies of batteries, canned food, and bottled water. But the atmosphere seemed strangely calm. Perhaps even more surprisingly, there was plenty of evident support, with American flags flying from every street corner.
"Of course there are plenty of flags," replied General Al-Aqquia Saladin, commander of the 16th Saudi infantry regiment. "Since any American suspected of terrorism is immediately detained, the best way to show your loyalty is through outward signs such as flags."
Elements of the 23rd German PsyOps squadron continued beaming messages into the United states via television and radio frequencies. "People of the United States of America," one recent broadcast went, "Our conflict is not with you. For too long you have been oppressed by your totalitarian regime. Are you not tired of the continuous detainment of individuals for no legally justified reason? Are you not tired of the censorship of opposing points of view? Are you not tired of the oppressive scrutiny by your law enforcement agencies, the random wiretaps, the e-mail scans, the random searches in public places? Your government has lied to you by telling you this is for your safety. Do not oppose any effort at regieme change and you will not be hurt."
Meanwhile, negotiations continued between France and Canada regarding the potential basing of French military units there for a possible northern attack on the United States. French President Jack Chirak and Canadian Prime Minister George Mignault conferreed yesterday, working out the details of any agreement, but would not release any details. However, an anonymous source indicated that France's offer of B$5 Euros in financial grants and B$10 Euros in loan guarantees had been rebuffed by Canada, who was asking for twice as much to offset potential harm to Canada's economy from any potential war with the United States.
Meanwhile, UN inspectors at several locations continued to discover additional proscribed weapons. At the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapon complex, lead UN inspector Hans Blix reported discovering almost five kilograms of fissile material in a secured storage locker deep underground that had not been reported in the US's previous weapons declaration from last year. US officials stated that the material was "inconsequential." "We declared over 5000 tons of fissile material in our declaration last year; an additional five kilograms is inconsequential," said Newt Gingritch, US special representative to the UN.
However, in the UN the discovery only added fules to the fires of criticism. "The US has been evasive all along and this is just additional proof of their duplicity," declared Joshka Fischer, president of Germany, in an address to the UN Thursday. "This just goes to show that the US will never cooperate with the international community in full good faith towards cataloguing and isolating all their weapons of mass destruction."
Meanwhile, US president George W Bush called for all American citizens to rally to the cause, saying "America is strong, America is right, and God willing, we will survive this test. Our right to self-determination is under assault by members of the world community who wish to remove our ability to defend ourselves from terrorists and rogue states. This action is totally unjustified and we will resist to the last man. "
UN resolution 2334, approved in 2005, called for all members of the UN to declare all WMDs and "render them beyond accessible use" by isolating them in sealed cement bunkers monitored by closed-circuit camera and with live video feed available to the world community 24/7 via the Internet. The US never agreed to this resolution and voted against it in the UN Security Council. However since the US lost their permanent seat on the Security Council in 2004, being relegated to a rotating member, they were unable to veto the resolution. The resolution and the demotion were both in response to the US's large-scale nuclear strike on North Korea in February 2004. Citing "national security concerns" and "priveledged intelligence sources," the US launched sixteen nuclear weapons against North Korean military and industrial sites, claiming that the country was preparing a strike against the continental United States. No proof has ever been found that this was the case, though any proof was most likely vaporized in the strike.
