Games, Politics

Sarah Palin wins the U.S. Presidency

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Or she does in my game of The Political Machine 2008 Express anyway. I recently discovered that Stardock had made available a stripped down version of TPM 2008 as a free download when I was moving all of my Stardock-published games from the no longer supported Stardock Central to the shiny new Impulse platform. I’ve never played any version of The Political Machine before, but I’ve heard plenty about them, so I went ahead to download and play this demo version. This version only allows you to play the 2008 campaign lasting 21 weeks long with a choice of only four candidates: John McCain or Sarah Palin for the Republicans or Barack Obama or Joe Biden for the Democrats.

As a contrarian, I picked Palin for my candidate. I’d expected to lose horribly even at beginner difficulty, but surprisingly managed to eke out a win by two electoral votes while losing the popular votes. I immediately restarted at normal difficulty and with a much better understanding of the game now, managed to win a landslide victory against Obama. I next tried playing as Obama, expecting an even easier victory, and promptly got whupped by McCain. I call shenanigans (especially since Brad Wardell of Stardock is fairly well known among gaming circles as a Republican supporter).

As a strategy game, I wasn’t really impressed enough with the demo to be interested in buying the full game. It’s novel for a while, but I’d much rather be playing a more traditional strategy game that’s about killing and conquering your enemies, rather than trying to be more persuasive than them. What’s really interesting about this is how useful it is an educational and visualization tool for understanding the U.S. presidential elections. You’ll understand how winning the election is all about maximizing your electoral votes. It’s far better to have a solid majority in a state worth a whole lot of votes than be moderately popular in a smattering of smaller ones.  Just like real life, winnning means concentrating all your time and money in key states even if it means you’ll be hated in others.

Check the demo out by downloading Impulse for free if you’re interested.

News & Politics

Protectionism is bad, period.

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One blog that I’ve recently added to my regular reading list is De Minimis. I have no idea who the blog author is, but on general business and economic matters, I happily concede that he (I assume that the author is a “he”) is far more learned and well read that I am. He even appears to be a Star Trek fan, what a nice coincidence!

I’m pretty unhapppy about a post he made however. It’s an interview with PBB group chairman Datuk Oh Siew Nam about what measures Malaysia should take in the face of the current economic downturn. What upsets me is that in addition to the expected suggestion of a generously funded and carefully targeted stimulus plan, there are also two proposals that are explicitly protectionist in nature, and De Minimis appears to agree with both of them.

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Games

A Game: Mercenaries 2

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There’s really only one word to describe Pandemic Studios’ Mercenaries 2: World in Flames: explosions. Just about every gripe that you might have about this game can be rebutted with that one word. Are your eyes bleeding from the crappy graphics? Blow some stuff up and enjoy all the pretty explosions. Do you find the AI-controlled soldiers comically stupid? Fire a rocket-propelled grenade into their midst and watch the explosions toss them every which way. Are you cringing from the lame story and dialog? Call down a few airstrikes randomly to make yourself feel better.

Like its predecessor, Mercenaries 2 is a Grand Theft Auto clone, except that you’re not a two-bit hood but a grizzled mercenary and the open-world environment you’ll be gallivanting around in isn’t a metropolis, but a warzone. The game is set in a near future Venezuela (a fact which pisses off Hugo Chavez to no end) that is being fought over by various factions for its oil resources. Early on, the player is brought in to help a businessman mount a coup to take control of the country but is subsequently betrayed without being paid. This sets the stage for the player to exact his revenge, while earning a tidy profit by performing missions for the various factions vying for control of the country of course.

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Politics

Why unity through enforced assimilation doesn’t work

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My wife and I are currently working our way through all five seasons of Babylon 5. It’s one of the most highly acclaimed science-fiction shows ever produced for television, so not having watched it was seriously hurting my street cred as an sci-fi geek. Anyway, in one of the first season episodes, The Geometry of Shadows, the command crew of the station is presented with an odd problem.

Members of one the minor races, the Drazi, have begun fighting one another for no apparent reason, and the escalating level of violence is threatening the security of the station, so the newly promoted Commander Ivanova needs to find a solution to the problem. To do that, she needs to find out why they are fighting. As it turns out, every once in a while, the Drazis put a number of sashes in a gigantic barrel, one for each Drazi. Half of the sashes are dyed purple, the other half green, so whichever colour of sash a Drazi draws out of the barrel determines which group he belongs in. As the Drazis explain, “Where there was one Drazi people, now there are two. The two fight until there are one.”

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Films & Television, Science Fiction

Aliens watch Hollywood film for free

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The latest Hollywood blockbuster right now is this year’s remake of the science-fiction classic The Day the Earth Stood Still starring Keanu Reeves. In one of the odder publicity moves, the producers have decided to beam the film into outer space just in case any extraterrestrials want to watch it. The transmission is being directed at the star system closest to our own, Alpha Centauri, which is about 4.37 light years away from our Sun, though the studio notes that it is a wide beam transmission so that any aliens who happen to be travelling within the cone of the transmission or even beyond Alpha Centauri should be able to tune in as well.

More seriously, it’s pretty unlikely that any aliens will be close enough to catch it, and it’s a big question whether or not the signal will remain coherent enough to be watchable at any reasonable quality 4.37 light years away. In any case, since Earth has been leaking radio transmissions into space for decades by now, if any aliens are in Alpha Centauri and wanted to send a reply, we’d have heard from them by now.

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The unexamined life is a life not worth living