Target Demographic?

Grand Theft Auto IV was released today. For those unfamiliar with the GTA series, here's how IGN described the game action: you "blow up cop cars, run down innocent civilians, bang hookers, assist drug dealers and lowlifes and do many, many other bad deeds." I've never actually played the game, but apparently it has inspired gameplay—inspiring, at least, reviewers to describe it in glowing terms, such as a "thoroughly compelling work of cultural satire disguised as fun."

Nonetheless, I think that Rockstar Games might have overreached their target demographic with the ad buy I noticed this morning:


In case you can't make them out, some of the headlines on the page are:
Consumer Confidence Slips as Home Prices Drop;
China Jails 30 Tibetans for Riots; and
Clinton Seeks Gas Tax Break; Obama Says No.

Future Antebellum?

A super luxe building is going up at the corner of West End & 86^th Street. 535 West End Avenue will apparently have 21^st Century Pre-War Residences.

21^st Century Pre-War Residences? I know what they're selling – crown mouldings, high ceilings & that certain look – but I just can't help but wonder: Do they know something that we don't?

Of course, in the eyes of the Bush Administration, this building developer has already missed the pre-war boat.

On a Purely Parochial Note...

...I wish the Stanford Women's Basketball Team would hurry up and win the national title so that ESPN can get back to telling me how AWESOME the women's teams are from Tennessee, Connecticut, and Rutgers.

It's almost rude for Stanford to interrupt ESPN's adoration of women's basketball teams east of the Mississippi.

The Fifth Stage of Relegation Grief

Twice within the pages of this blog I have praised the European system of relegation and promotion in professional sports.

Last June, I cited relegation as one of the reasons that the English Premier League ("EPL") of soccer/football was interesting. At the time, I said that relegation was the "awesome Shiva of sports, destroyer and transformer." Last September, in one of the more heavily commented posts on this blog, I argued that adding relegation and promotion to major league baseball would result in a more dynamic and interesting league.

Well, these chickens have come home to roost. With today's embarrassing 1-3 home loss to Sunderland, it looks like all but a mathematical certainty that Fulham, the EPL team that I root for, is going to get relegated.

A quick review for those of you who don't know what relegation means. Here's the relevant bit from my post in June on the topic:

England (like many a soccer-addled country) has multiple professional soccer leagues. Relegation means that the bottom 3 EPL teams are sent to the 2nd flight league, the Championship, and the top Championship teams rise to the EPL. This happens serially, with each league sending their best teams up and their worst teams down.

The result is something like Darwinism for sports. Good teams are rewarded, bad teams are punished. You don't have the Milwaukee Brewers — a profitable team that will never, ever do anything meaningful in the top US baseball league. Since team owners are not monopolistically locked into their leagues, and since the lower league teams aren't farm teams, owners of EPL teams simply cannot field a mediocre product year-in-and-year-out and count on reaping profits from an over-loyal fanbase.

With 5 games left in the season, bottom-dwelling Derby County is a distant 20th place, mathematically assured of relegation (and is in hot competition with the 2002-03 Sunderland team for the worst point total in English football history). 18th place Bolton looks like it could close the gap with 17th place Birmingham. 19th place Fulham? Well, it's going to finish in 19th place.

Time and again this season, Fulham has seized defeat (or at least a draw) from the jaws of victory. They have given up a late goal to their opponent in the waning moments of the match more times than I care to recall. Although seven teams in the EPL lost the same number or more games than Fulham (17), it's Fulham that will be relegated knowing that it has a chance to lead the league in ties (12). Most of those ties could have been wins, but for the final 10 minutes.

So it's Fulham to the Champions League League Championship. What am I to do?

Well, I certainly can't pick a new EPL team — most certainly not yet, not one year after deciding to root for Fulham and not while Fulham has a chance to make a quick return to the top flight for the 2009-10 season. I'll go back to enjoying the EPL on Fox Soccer Channel in the same blasé, disinterested manner I did before I cheered for a single team. I'll simply go back to watching football because I like watching football, even when I don't know much or care much about who is playing whom.

And I'll be a Fulham fan in the way that all remote fans followed their favorite teams in the days before extensive television coverage. I'll follow the box score. (Although almost half the EPL games in a given week are televised in the US, it's impossible to get Champions League League Champsionship games on your TV without purchasing a separate and expensive channel.) I'll read about Fulham competing against a new round of names that sound strange to me. Just when I got used to the Hogwarts-esque Tottenham Hotspur and Aston Villa, the Champions League League Championship will bring me Fulham against Crystal Palace and Sheffield Wednesday.

And I'll hope that Fulham stays the Fulham I like: a team overloaded with Yankee players, owned and mismanaged Mohamed Al-Fayed, and a team that battles for survival and makes you cheer like a crazy person when they actually win the big one.

Go Fulham.
Update (5/14): How wrong I was.

Et Tu, Monty?

I do not like noncompete clauses in employment contracts. You see, I tend to agree with legal theorists who argue that the relative nonenforceability of noncompete clauses in California has helped create Silicon Valley, creating a legal competitive advantage over other tech clusters.

Still, I'm not exactly thrilled to see the Stanford's still-much-beloved former coach Mike Montgomery is slated to coach Stanford's rival Cal. I feel like an implied, purely emotional covenant not to compete has been violated.

In professional wrestling, when a Good Guy becomes a Bad Guy, they say he turns heel. Stanford basketball fans were already in a weakened state after hearing the (not too surprising) news that Robin Lopez would join his brother Brook in the NBA draft. Catching us dazed and stumbling around the wrestling ring, it now appears that Monty is ready to finish us off with a suplex.

The 99 Cents Store

The only logical conclusion is that everything at this 99 cents store is precisely 99 cents.

Kids These Days

I like blogging (yesterday's social media), but like Garfield, I find aspects of the current generation of social media – namely, Facebook & Twitter – to be baffling.

I have a Facebook profile, for despite its many faults, it's a great way of keeping a persistent contact list updated by your contacts. They change their email addresses, etc. so you don't have to.

The problem with Facebook is that it infantilizes adults. No, I don't want to be a zombie, or a pirate, or learn what Smurf I am, or play fake Scrabble with you. I'm 31. I have a baby. It just ain't worth my time.

Twitter's another matter entirely. I created a Twitter account for this blog weeks ago, but never bothered to update it because, well, Twitter is pointless. Twitter is a micro-blogging platform that broadcasts your status to people who care. This is a gigantic waste of time & attention.

Steph apparently discovered Twittering this morning. Her initial reaction sums up my feelings almost exactly:

What Emily Post Didn't Anticipate

I had planned to just keep my typing fingers still until the end of April (at which point the powers of academia will either fail me or pass me on to the next set of flaming hoops), but I am faced with an ethical dilemma to which I have no answer.

What do you do when you get a friend request from someone you don't know? Or worse yet, someone you know and just don't like all that much?

If I were a member of the 19th century landed gentry, I could invite the caller into my sitting room for cigars, and allow him no further and offer him sub-par sherry. That would have certainly driven home the message and no one would lose face or social grace.

Thoughts from the public are welcome.

Volunteers

When it comes to the Iraq War, I try to have sympathy for the Bush Administration.

Conspiracy theories aside, the planners of Iraq War – even if they are today dashing away from claiming responsibility for their actions – did not hope for a bungled war. These planners wanted a war where the U.S. would achieve quick victory, a war where our national self-interest would be improved. (I'll turn it back to the conspiracy theorists regarding what that self-interest was: Cheaper oil? Permanent U.S. military bases in the Middle East? The removal of Saddam Hussein and his WMDs?)

I try to have sympathy for these war planners, but then Dick Cheney – who appears to be the central figure of the entire Iraq War effort – starts talking, and my ability to have this sympathy is destroyed.

The recent public display of heartlessness by Dick Cheney concerning the pain that the Iraq War has wrought in the U.S. (...to say nothing of the much greater pain it has heaped upon the Iraqi people) literally takes my breath away. In a pair of interviews over the past week, Cheney provides a shocking window into his psyche.

So?
Last week, Cheney remarked "So?" when confronted by an interviewer with a poll indicating the public's broad current opposition to the Iraq War. Cheney claimed that it was important to not "be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls."

Of course, today's broad opposition to the Iraq War is hardly a "fluctuation." Polls on Iraq have indicated majority opposition against the war from late 2005 onward. A fluctuation? Maybe on a clock that is tracking time on a geologic scale.

Much as I hate this "So?" comment, our Constitution has set the bar for impeachment inadvisably high for people like Cheney. However strongly critics of the President and Vice President might argue for their impeachment, until Bush et al. do something that looks like "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes or Misdemeanors" in the eyes of today's Supreme Court, our best hope is to use the other machinery of the federal government to limit the executive branch's influence for the remainder of Bush's lame duck term.

In the end, I hate Cheney's "So?" attitude, but I understand where he's coming from. We elected them. Barring impeachment, we're stuck with them. Let's demand Congress exercise its power to limit their influence. Someone has to be the least popular Vice President ever, and Cheney appears content to play the role.

Yet, I was not compelled to write about "So?" It's Cheney's comment from today that compels me to write.

They Volunteered
Confronted in an interview with the fact that the U.S. has just passed the grim milestone of 4,000 Americans dead in the Iraq War, Cheney reminded his interviewer several times that these soldiers volunteered.

Reading the article, I'm simply awestruck by how jaw-droppingly heartless Cheney comes across. He rationalizes that whatever burden communities, spouses, relatives, friends, and children bear at the loss or injury of a family member, this burden is somehow greatly eased by the fact of our all-volunteer force.

This August, I will have been writing this blog for 5 years. Over the course of writing 800 or so blog posts during this time, I've tried to develop a tone that is less confrontational than when I started blogging. Writing in a manner that tries (and, of course, fails) to see issues in shades of gray has been a continual challenge, but it's worth it — especially in developing my ability to talk about issues with people with whom I strongly disagree.

Cheney's words erase these shades of gray: Vice President Cheney, you have said and felt a horrible thing. You (and those around you?) have created a rationalization that helps you sleep at night. You've shared this rationalization with us, and it is disgusting.

As with "So?", Cheney's words carry a kernel of truth. We have an all-volunteer army. The military interests of our nation are protected by volunteers in a way that they weren't at Antietam, at Cold Harbor, on Omaha Beach, or in the Ardennes.

And let's ignore that our military draws heavily on disadvantaged populations and minorities to fill its ranks. Let's grant Cheney that, yes, we have a "volunteer" force.

Being a conscript is not the same thing as being a volunteer; however, the military requires that ALL soldiers follow orders. When rank and file soldiers confront death, even certain death, they do so at the order of another. It doesn't matter whether they're a volunteer or a draftee. An ordered military presumes – it demands – that a soldier abandon a significant portion of his or her free will in the name of achieving an objective. They must trust the system and the objective.

Iraq is a failed objective, and our continued project in Iraq is driven as much by the well-understood theory of Irrational Escalation as it by an effort to achieve ever-shifting military and geopolitical objectives.

Our soldiers volunteered to join the military. And then they were asked to do the impossible in Iraq, all the while staying in theater longer than any other soldiers in US history. They have obeyed orders and fought bravely.

That they fight and die as volunteers should do nothing to help us sleep better at night.

Volunteers & Conscripts. Side By Side.

The 4 Steps of Irresponsible Science Reporting

It's easy to forget during an election year, but mass media doesn't limit its oversimplifications and distortions to political news. Media outlets are just as good at improperly framing science news as they are at skewing political news. Today's top science story provides a great example of their ability to confuse.

Step 1: Something Science-y Happens.
The first step in distorting science news is to report on something that is interesting to people who have even a passing curiosity regarding the world around them. Such an event happened on Wednesday morning.

At 2:12 am EDT on Wednesday, the effects of a star explosion arrived at our planet. The visible effects of the explosion could be seen by the naked eye for about a minute. This celestial event was made all the more exceptional due to the astonishing distance between the Earth and the star: More than 7 billion light years — about halfway across the universe.

Normally, naked eye visibility is limited to about 1500-2000 stars. The most distant object or structure generally visible to the naked eye is the Triangulum Galaxy, about 3 million light years away (1/2500^th of the distance to Wednesday's explosion). Being able to see something more than 7 billion light years away? That's cool. Let's write a story.

Step 2: A Story is Written.
Never-happened-before astronomy stories make for good sound bite-length stories, so it's unsurprising that major news websites all featured this story during the week. The NY Times pointed out in its story that this explosion was a gamma ray burst, which "might mark the implosion of a massive star into a black hole, or the collision of a pair of dense neutron stars." CNN.com left the gamma ray details of its story, noting that the story involved an "aging star."

Step 3: A Thoughtless Reader Poll is Created.
It's someone's job at CNN.com to create reader polls on the basis of the stories of the day. As minor political controversies of this election season have illustrated, the raison d'être of CNN.com's online reader polls appears to be to inflame reader opinion and heighten their interest in the news — even if that means leading them astray.

Before looking at the CNN.com poll below, let's remember what this story is about. According to the NY Times, we're talking about "the implosion of a massive star into a black hole, or the collision of a pair of dense neutron stars." With that in mind, here's the CNN.com Quickvote reader poll:Of course, it's all but a truism that our planet's eventual fate is to be consumed by our dying star. 900 million years from now, our sun's hydrogen will be on its way to depletion. The resulting expansion of our star into a red giant will make our planet inhospitable. Billions of years later, the sun will expand enough to consume the Earth — but we certainly won't be around to complain.

Current supernovae models indicate that our sun is nowhere near massive enough to explode in a supernova. Even less likely is that our star could experience the kind of core collapse supernova that may be the cause of the massive gamma ray burst in the article.

Step 4: Poll Participants Leave More Misinformed Than They Came.
As of this morning, 72% of Quickvote respondents think it's possible that our star will explode and vaporize our planet.
Of course, some of the "yes" folks are those who know something about our star's life cycle and our planet's eventual demise. However, others of these folks are just babes in the woods, alarmed that our star might explode at any moment — just like that star in the article!

An appropriate follow-on to this poll would be a story like What Is Our Government Doing to Prevent the Sun From Exploding? They could even accept responses from readers. I might propose a system of gigantic belts that would prevent the Sun from expanding. No, wait! How about a giant fire extinguisher so we could partially hose down the Sun, should it get too hot?!

(If you like curmudgeon-y blog posts complaining about CNN.com's absurd astronomy coverage, you might enjoy this old Sauntering post, where we look at the some of the ridiculous images that CNN.com pairs with any story about a potential meteor/asteroid/comet impact.)