Films & Television, Science Fiction

Star Trek is dead. Long live the new Star Trek

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Inevitably, I went to see the newest Star Trek film with my wife on Sunday. Now, I’ve always thought of myself as a Star Trek fan, even though I’m too young for The Original Series and it’s The Next Generation that is the most memorable for me. I never did get around to watching Deep Space Nine, only watched bits and pieces of Voyager and made a deliberate effort to avoid watching Enterprise.

Still, I’m reasonably up to snuff on the best parts of TOS and combined with the best parts of TNG, I have a very firm idea of what it is that makes Star Trek great: as a mainstream platform on which to tell high-brow science-fiction. After all, it’s not a coincidence that many of the very best episodes were written by the most notable writers of print-based science-fiction, for example, City on the Edge of Forever (TOS) by Harlan Ellison, The Measure of a Man (TNG) by Melinda Snodgrass, The Doomsday Machine (TOS) by Norman Spinrad etc. Plus, there’s the fact that Star Trek always had a single very clear vision: creator Gene Roddenberry’s dream of a unified and noble humanity venturing out to do good amongst the stars.

Continue reading Star Trek is dead. Long live the new Star Trek →

Politics

Just who is an African-American?

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I’ve done my share of railing against political correctness in this blog, so here’s another. As this news article from abc News relates, Paulo Serodio, a naturalized American citizen, is suing a New Jersey medical school, claiming that he had been harassed and ultimately suspended. His crime: for self-identifying as an African-American. The thing is, Mr. Serodio was indeed born and raised in Mozambique, but he happpens to be white, not black. From the article:

After Serodio labeled himself as a white African-American, another student said she was offended by his comments and that, because of his white skin, was not an African-American.

According to the lawsuit, Serodio was summoned to Duncan’s office where he was instructed “never to define himself as an African-American … because it was offensive to others and to people of color for him to do so.”

“It’s crazy,” Serodio’s attorney Gregg Zeff told ABCNews.com. “Because that’s what he is.”

The problem of course is that the term African-American doesn’t really mean an American citizen of African ancestry. Instead it’s a code-word for being black, but due to political correctness, actually calling someone black is considered offensive these days. In the US, being labelled African-American opens the possibility of being eligible for affirmative action programs and other forms of assistance that specifically target minorities, but the unstated assumption is that the aid is supposed to be directed to blacks, so things get ugly when a white guy calls himself an African-American.

More generally, this case represents yet another example of why special assistance directed towards specific groups based on their culture or ethnicity always run into problems of defining just who is a valid member of the targeted group. It just makes more sense to qualify aid using objective criteria, such as poverty, scholarly excellence etc. It’s just another case of trying to shoehorn people into pre-defined groups, instead of seeing them for the individuals that they are.

Games

A Game: Fall from Heaven 2

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One of the most important lessons any aspiring designer can learn is to heed Sid Meier’s dictum that a good game is a series of interesting decisions. This is precisely what the dark fantasy-themed Fall from Heaven 2 is all about. There is no point in the game where a particular path of action becomes so overbearingly obvious as to make the choice a non-decision. While the ultimate objective remains, as in any 4X game, to achieve complete dominance over the other factions, there are many different paths to this end and countless means within each path to advance along it.

Fall from Heaven 2 of course benefits from being a mod of Civilization 4 which provides it with a sound base to work on, but the new mechanics, factions, units, religions and events it adds makes it a worthy game more than capable of standing on its own. The cornucopia of choices begins with choosing one of a total of 21 available factions. Each faction generally has two different leaders available. Then there’s a total of 7 religions to pick from, each of which offers synergies different enough to drastically alter your playstyle. Next, you’ll want to think about which victory condition to shoot for. In addition to the ones already in Civilization 4, the Alpha Centauri victory is replaced by the Tower of Mastery victory inspired by the venerable Master of Magic game and there’s a religious Altar of Luonnatar victory condition.

Continue reading A Game: Fall from Heaven 2 →

Politics

BN politician compares himself to Mandela and Gandhi

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I admit that I’ve been a bit too apathetic of late to pay much attention to Malaysian politics. This means that most of the subtleties and intricacies of what’s going on in the power struggle over the state of Perak has gone way over my head. Still, when a politician from the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition is oblivious enough to compare his struggles with those of Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi, even I have to sit up and take notice. An excerpt from an article from The Star that’s looks like it should have appeared in a Malaysian version of The Onion, but sadly isn’t:

He said a person did not need to hold a post in his struggle to uphold the truth, and likened the recent struggles faced by him and his “comrades from the Barisan Nasional” to those endured by politicians like Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi.

“Nelson Mandela sacrificed his freedom for 27 years in order to free South Africans from the grip of ‘apartheid.’

“Gandhi also sacrificed his life for the sake of India’s independence and so his people would be able to live without caste or religious boundaries,” he said.

Dr Zambry said however that it was lucky for him that his struggles had not caused him physical harm or loss of freedom.

“I only had to withstand the negative perceptions that Nizar and his people have created of me and the Barisan’s image.

This is a truly a wtf moment of mindblowing proportions. The Barisan Nasional, which has ruled the country uninterrupted since its independence, being cast in the role of the poor underdog. Let’s just say that some people have really thick skins.

Games

Greatest strategy game ever?

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My copy of Grand Theft Auto IV still hasn’t arrived yet but I’m not unhappy because I’m fully occupied with Fall from Heaven 2 at the moment. This may have started life as a mere “mod” for Civilization 4, but it’s so complete and fully featured that I wouldn’t hesitate to call it a full game in its own right. Builds of it has been circulating since 2006 but the development team only announced it as being feature complete in December 2008 so I’m not feeling too guilty about waiting until now to invest time into it. Hey, if I’m going to put dozens of hours into it, I want the finished and polished package!

For players already used to Civilization 4, a simple glance at the screen reveals how much work has gone into this project: new models and artwork for the different units and buildings of the 21 factions, new terrain types and effects with associated art and sound assets, a revamped UI to incorporate the additional gameplay elements and even a detailed card mini-game within the game! By far the greatest accomplishment however is that while a faction in Civilization 4 is differentiated from its peers only by its leader traits and a unique unit and building, all of the factions in Fall from Heaven 2 are so different that it’s like playing a new game with each of them.

Not only do each of the factions have numerous unique units and buildings, they also incorporate unique gameplay mechanics. The Grigori faction for example, can produce Adventurers as Great Persons, effectively powerful heroes that can be customized according to your needs. The Calabim faction stands out by being the only one able to field vampires, and, yes, these really are as powerful as one would imagine them to be and can feed on your cities’ excess population. In addition to all that, the choice of religion also opens up new units, buildings, spells and civics.

All of this makes for a combination of rich and interesting choices that I’ve never seen since Alpha Centauri. Plenty of people have already named Civilization 4 as one of the greatest strategy games of all time, but I can confidently say that Fall from Heaven 2 improves upon it in every conceivable way. Watch this blog for updates as I explore the myriad possibilities of this amazing game.

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Religion

U.S. Army attempting to spread Christianity in Afghanistan?

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For a blog that’s supposedly about atheism, I’m aware that I’ve done precious little writing on it of late. So here’s an article that, if true, makes for a great example of why government should always be separate from religion. It’s from Al Jazeera, admittedly not the most reliable of news sources especially on subject like this, and alleges that elements of the U.S. military are surreptitiously trying to proselytize to the local populace in Afghanistan.

From the article:

In one recorded sermon, Lieutenant-Colonel Gary Hensley, the chief of the US military chaplains in Afghanistan, tells soldiers that, as followers of Jesus Christ, they all have a responsibility “to be witnesses for him”.

“The special forces guys – they hunt men basically. We do the same things as Christians, we hunt people for Jesus. We do, we hunt them down,” he says.

“Get the hound of heaven after them, so we get them into the kingdom. That’s what we do, that’s our business.”

The good news is that this is already against the U.S. military’s own rules. The bad news is that it’s not certain how far up this goes and how widespread this is. From my reading of the discussion thread on QT3 where this popped up, it seems that this is a relatively new thing and might well be another one of George W. Bush’s unfortunate legacies. To be sure, it is not the proselytization of Christianity that I oppose, even if it is illegal according to Afghan law, but the fact that it is being done by a government agency and that this clearly undermines the very mission the U.S. is performing in Afghanistan.

Science

Recent Interesting Science Articles (April ’09)

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Just three articles this month, all of them related to biology in one way or another. The first one concerns what looks like an evolutionary adaptation in humans to living in the tropics. As this article from BBC News explains, scientists have long known that the birth rates of boys and girls vary across the world and that one of the factors that determine this variance is environmental stress. Biologically, males are considered more fragile than females and since having children is a huge investment, it makes sense that in a harsh environment, women tend to give birth to more girls since they would be likelier to survive.

According to research by Dr. Kristen Navara published in Biology Letters, people who live in the tropics produce more girls than boys compared to more temperate regions, even after adjusting for differences in lifestyle and socio-economic status. As Dr. Navara explains, this could simply be because male sperm works in a different way closer to the equator or that miscarriage rates might be affected somehow, but it could also be interpreted to more generally mean that living in the tropics is itself a form of environmental stress on the human organism.

Continue reading Recent Interesting Science Articles (April ’09) →

The unexamined life is a life not worth living