Different rules for different people

Should adults be able to buy adult rated games in Australia?

Currently Australia has no adult rating category for computer games. What this means in practice is that anything that would be rated adult is instead banned.

I think this is discriminatory. Adult movieogers are allowed to watch R18+ movies, adult drinkers are allowed to drink and adult smokers are allowed to smoke. Since when have Australians been happy to accept different ruels for different people?

One of the pillars of our legal system is that ruels should be consistent, and should apply equally to all people. Another is that the rights of the individual should only be restricted when failure to do so would either 1) harm the individual, other individuals, or the environment, or 2) impinge on the rights of other individuals.

How do these principals fit in with our current lack of R18+ category for computer games?

We currently accept that adults should be allowed to do some limited harm to themselves and other individuals: consumption of alcohol and smoking of cigarettes are detrimental to personal health, to an extent detrimental to the health of others, and also to an extent impinge on the rights of others (e.g., drunken public behaviour, loud music from pubs).

There is no convincing evidence that allowing adults to play adult rated games does them harm, or harms others, or impinges on the rights others to any large degree. There's certainly no evidence that playing vidoe games is more harmful to adults than drinking alcohol, smoking tobacco or watching R18+ movies.

I feel it's unjust to deny an R18+ category for games within Australia. What do you think, and why?

Gaming Demons

So I just bought a PS3 and have been 'thrashing' it out. By thrashing, I mean in the three weeks that I have had it I have spent approximately 8-10 days out of the 21 in about 4-6 hour chunks of time. Tops. Which I know that without other interests and commitments would be far more than that. But the point is that I tend to these other interests and commitments.

The thing is that I am living in a house with others who have not ever lived with a gamer. I have never really described myself as a gamer, but circumstances force this upon me. But reactions to my spending some time playing a variety of games and only just getting used to my first ever console have been just short of disdainful. Remember, if you can, the getting of a new toy and the novelty of the experience. The norm for those who have such a memory would concede that an acceptable thrashing period is probably 4-6 weeks before the novelty wears off and a diminished usage follows.

But why game? Here is a list of 'reasons' that I have pencilled.

1. First and foremost, it is fun.
2. Today, gaming isn't just gaming. It is arguably akin to watching a movie or reading a book in that a lot of them have plots and devices not dissimilar to the old and acceptable media. There are beginnings, middles and ends; the difference lies in the interactivity (though much to the derision of some of my folk, the way that I watch tv and movies is an interactive experience).
3. I have tried on previous occasions to get in on some GTA or GT action on other people's consoles but couldn't because I didn't start the game from scratch and go through the basic training. Now I can and it makes a lot more sense.
4. I have always played games of digital and 'analog' forms from cards and scrabble, sport (man, have I played a lot of sport in my time), arcade games such as Space Invaders and TMNT, Lode Runner on the 386 that I first got in the mid 80's, Pong on my mates Sinclair console, board games such as Risk and Monopoly… I could go on but I won't. The fact is, that have engaged on many, many levels on my own and with other people. 'Gaming' is just another one of those.
5. If you lose touch with the technology, it becomes harder to get back on board. I have never owned my own console and have essentially completely lost the ability to compete with my peers as the complexity and human interface devices have progressed without me. Thus, the more likely it is that I would not be able to interact with someone who has. Which leads me to my next couple of points.
6. The next generation will have full capacity with these forms of communication and I will be shut out. Which means that I will be an isolated dinosaur. The gap between myself and those who will be running the world will unnecessarily grow.
7. Previous generations go to dinner parties and discuss politics, movies and books. Mine discuss politics, movies, books, games, hardware and software and webcomics and blogs.
8. One of the reasons why I know how to put together systems ranging from AV, PC and WiFi networks is because I play with these things for fun as well as for work. All of these skills are necessary today and I get called upon regularly by people who have not kept touch with these things. "How did you know that you had to push that button for 3 seconds to get an alternate function from it?". Are you a person who has heard or asked this question before?
9. The paradigm of communication is changing. Games are at the forefront of this. Don't participate and you miss out on a language that is becoming more all pervasive.
10. Have an opinion on how much gaming is too much, or how much violence should be tolerated by your child before its brain turns to mush? Is it informed through experience, research or fear inducing articles on the Advertiser, or a combination of the three?
11. Need to buy a gift for a 5, 10, 15 25 year old? Wouldn't have a clue what to get, would you?

There's more to this, and I encourage adding to it and/or arguing over these points. Most people who don't get gaming will be deficient in more that one of the points I have made. Yes, I agree that most games are at their core juvenile with few games being anything more that shoot'emups and fantasy, but this is on the mend with more creativity and thought going into them. With turnovers like Assassin's Creed II and WoW, the old market is finding itself having to shift its ideology and infrastructure to be able to accommodate these changes. As this occurs, the potential for gaming to transform itself and the world around it will result in something that is more than a 'time wasting game'. And by Jove, I want to be able to develop an informed opinion on it and possibly shape it. And I'll have fun doing it.

Created by OnlineEducation.net

Debt

Instead of buying a house, I think it would be a far more rewarding experience spending the same amount of money on THIS. Sure, you might say that it provides no returns. But you'd be wrong!! Judging success with assets was a small glitch in our history. It'd be nice to have one provided it caused me no significant stress like so many of my contemporaries who have somehow bought in on the idea that a primary goal of humanity is to 'own' a piece of land, regardless of the overall real and opportunity costs. But that is a rant I'll save for another day.

On the original topic. I already have the soundtrack selected for the moment I see the sun coming up over the earth. Sure, it's cheesy. That's the kinda guy I am. But it captures my imagination. It's a convergence of the past and the future and of fiction and it's realisation. Star Wars may be realisable, but you're an idiot for hoping so (as much for wishing for an intergalactic empire as it's demise at the hands of pathetic upstart).

There have been a few moments in my life where, as I approach and enter them, I have felt a convergence of the desires that made it happen with what I did to get there. Not an expression of the end overriding the means, but of that moment compressing time, energy and experiences, giving it gravity. And it sticks with you. And it is seeps into everything you do from that point on.

Obscure

In the context of attempting to be obscure, the norm is ultimate

Go Abbott!!

I think it's a blessing that the Liberals held things back for another stint. Two reasons:

1. The ETS had been watered down so much it resembled a homoeopathic remedy. It would prove to be not only ineffectual, but dangerous. Maybe it would have been nice to go to Copenhagen with something. On the other hand, it would have been an example of how you could get some cuddly legislation passed with a hotlink posted in wiktionary's definition for compromise (transitive). Look it up.

2. It means that if Labor are at all serious about getting something up and running, they get a better hit at the ball providing the Greens can capitalise on this debacle. But I really can't see the former happenning, considering the seriously negligent way in which Rudd and his team have promoted the scheme. Rudd has been having fun using the ETS to let the Libs tear themselves apart. ... See More

There is very little in the scheme that allows Garnaut to be happy about (c.f. exemption of Agriculture?!!! Massive concessions to intensive producers?!!) Seriously, the only thing that will come out of a scheme like that is that once it is passed, the heavy emitters will claim that they're price hikes are due to the ETS, whilst not actually having to pay any real compensation, resulting in record profits? Who are these people in bed with?!!

The Sweeds know how to host a LAN

Recycled from Kotaku via the "What's hot on Google" RSS:

I've always said it, but damn those Sweeds know how to throw a LAN party.

I blog therefore I am

Let's face it. The subject is an untruth. Bloggers have been running around telling people that blogging is a huge phenomenon. It's like the coal industry running around telling people that you can't get baseload from renewables. Take them seriously? No. Why? Because as a person who reads blogs, you already know that all information from a source is never to be taken at face value. This is what we've learnt on the internet. Another important lesson we've learnt about the internet is that unless the stuff we read on the internet supports our world view, it is to be taken with rampant cynicism.

What about if you apply this idea to the mass media. Oops, you already do. Now, instead of one source of information you use with little to no faith in its reliability, you have two. Take note of the fact that even if you have no faith in it, as a source of information, you still use it. No wonder kids are turning into vacuuous, hypersexualised zombies. At least, that's what I saw on Today Tonight and read on this

The 10 Geek laws

The awesome GeekDad blog has a list of 10 Geek laws, or axioms, akin to Poe's law.

These laws aren't like the natural laws, which describe the universe in elegantly concise equations. Rather, these laws capture ideas essential to the lives of present-day humans (i.e., Geeks) in tiny nuggets of wisdom.

My favourite is:

"4. Somers [sic] and McCarthy’s Law: There is no dangerous unscientific theory so preposterous that no celebrity will espouse and advocate it."

Click through for the other nine.

When dowsing wands attack!

When dowsers said they could detect underground water with their rods, or wands or magical fairy pendulums we said "no you can't." But most people didn't listen.

In fact, most dowsers are genuinely convinced they really can detect water, or gold, or whatever they want. If only they understood how confirmation bias worked...

But that's a story for another day.

Usually I live and let live. Most of the time dowsers aren't hurting anyone very much... unless you consider taking advantage of a trust hurtful. However, this is outrageous.

A UK company is making millions selling dowsing 'bomb detection wands' to the Iraqi military, who are abandoning proven methods.

Just think about that. People are going to be blown to pieces because a group of ignorant, money grubbing, credulous dowsers in the UK either 1) can't be bothered educating themselves about basic science, or 2) understand that they're selling fraudulent products, and don't care that they will result in violent painful maiming and death.

I'm irate, and you should be too.

Should Claire be worried?

In a moment of introspection this morning, I noticed I was doing something odd, and thought I'd share it with you.

I have to take medication every morning (no, it's not anti-insanity pills), and I've got a memory like a ... well... a thing with a really bad memory. Problem is, I forget take my pill regularly, well that's not accurate, more like randomly, but on a regular basis... lets say regulandomly.

Anyway, due to my regulandomly pill forgetting I set a daily reminder on my iPhone. Now, and here we get to the possibly worrying bit, every morning at 7:05 my iPhone chimes and a message pops up. I've begun responding to my iPhone by saying something like "sound advice Mr iPhone", or "thankyou iPhone."

So... am I talking to my phone? Or since I set the reminder, am I merely having a one-way conversation with myself in the past? Or should I possibly start taking the anti-insanity pills as well?

So obvious now...

In what might become a trend... or not, you'll have to wait and see... here's some geek news. Well, not news per se, since it's from 2003, but in a way it's kind of timeless.

Anyway, getting on with it, have you ever played Sim City? Go on. I won't tell anyone... yes, I knew you had. Anyway, why did this never occur to us?

What's that, it did occur to you? Oh, well, then you're a little weird. But in the same direction as the Penny Arcade boys. And that's a compliment. See what I did there, it looked like I was insulting you, but it was actually a compliment. Witty, witty stuff.

OMG Want!

Playing Dungeons and Dragons on the new MS surface? Yes please!

If only they'd improve the speed of the dice rolls... or improve the dice physics for that matter... or let you roll real dice on the MS surface!

Surfacescapes Demo Walkthrough from Visual Story TAs on Vimeo.

Why the apocalypse won't suck: boobs.

This is the kind of research that makes the future, even the darkest scariest bits of our potential the future, brighter. A bra that converts to a gas mask! ... or more accurately, two gas masks.

Think of the implications people! Not only will we survive thanks to this invention but our quality of life will be significantly improved when we’re most at need. During the most dispiriting first days, when the sky is a reddish brown and fallout rains down, we will be cheered by our wives, girl friends and SOs bra-less boobs.

Inspiring work people. Inspiring.

At this point some of you are probably thinking “he’s kinda’ an ass”, or “if there was an apocalypse I wouldn’t give him MY gasmask bra”. So I’d like to say this: women are much more than their boobs, they are our equals in every way. I just really like boobs. I think this audio essay by Tim Minchin sums it up better than I ever could.

Why Stardust is awesome

NASA has just revealed that the Stardust spacecraft has found glycine in the tail of a comet!

"But Ken", you say, "so what?"

Well, I'll tell you what! Glycine is a fundamental building block of life, which is a fancy way of saying that glycine is one of the 20 amino acids that ALL of our cells are built from. Finding glycine in space adds further weight to the panspermia theory that I was on about recently.

Breifly, panspermia is the theory that life on earth was "seeded from space". Panspermia argues that either life, or the building blocks of life, were transported to earth from somewhere else by some mechanism.

Before we could consider the panspermia theory to be plausible (which is the lowest level of theory) we'd need to know two things:

1. that stuff can be transported from planet to planet (either within or between solar systems), and
   
2. that life or the building blocks of life exist elsewhere.

Now, point one is cool, we already know that it's happened in our very own solar system: we've found Meteorites from Mars on Earth... well, we don't know it in any absolutist positivist sense, but you know what I mean, there are multiple converging lines of evidence and a Martian origin is the strongest theory explaining their origins.

Moving on, the discovery of glycene in a comet in our own solar system is strong evidence for point two. I say strong evidence because there's already some evidence of amino acids in space, although it's somwehat equivocal (i.e., not 100 % convincing, could be caused by other things).

So, Stardust discoverd glycene in a comets tail, and life might have come from the void between stars. Stardust is awesome.

Q.E.D

P.S. Ha, I get it! Stardust! D'you see why they named it that?

Of Toxic Tim Tams and Feather-laden Bread

Amongst my work colleagues I am generally referred to as “one of those... skeptics”, said with the tone that implies that I over analyse everything and ruin everyone’s fun. Which pretty much sums up the title of this blog. I am, apparently, a killjoy.

But wait.

Recently a colleague asked “Is there anything on snopes about Tim Tams containing toxins?”
Apparently said colleague’s neighbour had refused to touch those chocolate covered bits of chocolate with chocolate sandwiched between them, because they apparently contain toxins and it’s illegal to sell them in America for this very reason and that’s why you can’t buy them in America.

My response was, of course:

• What on earth do you mean by “toxins”? You’re going to have to be more specific if you’re making such claims

• What specific ingredient on the following list is the supposed “toxin”? (Milk solids, cocoa, salt, raising agent (E500), emulsifier (E322: soy) and flavoring, colours (E102, E110, E129, E133, E150). May contain traces of peanut, other nut, egg or seed).

• Why would you assume the food quality regulations in the United States are far more stringent than those in Australia?

• Why would you assume toxins are the reason Tim Tams are not available in the USA, rather than the fact that Tim Tams are an Australian branded product, just like several USA products not available here?

• If Tim Tams are so toxic, I should have died years ago.

I don’t pretend to have the answers to these questions. The toxic Tim Tam theory may be correct. But the person claiming such is going to have to provide some evidence to the fact.

In response to my ranting another colleague started in on the “The local Vietnamese bakery puts ground up chicken feathers in their bread, so you shouldn’t eat it”.

I love this one because it’s almost not quite like the McDonalds worm meat burgers or chicken feather shakes.
Which, I suspect, has the same indicators of unlikelyhood:

• Ground up chicken feathers don’t sound to me like a cost-effective filler compared to plain old flour

• Chicken feathers do not appear on the ingredient list

• Failure to declare this ingredient could get them in a world of trouble according to Australian Food labelling laws

• Surely, even finely ground chicken feathers will make the bread taste funny

My arguments which, of course, in addition to not changing this person’s opinion one bit, caused another colleague to comment on the smarties I was eating as “having all those bad artificial colours in them”.
I told her I was lucky that I wasn’t sensitive to artificial food colourings so I was fine, and anyway, Smarties now have “natural” colourings. Her argument was that even if I’m not sensitive, they still must be bad for me because they are made of chemicals.

Sure. So is water, salt, and, I don’t know, EVERYTHING.

Nope, natural things are always better for us, she insisted. Yep. I’d happily consume the following natural things:

• Arsenic

• Cyanide

• Deadly night shade

• Mercury

... need I go on? I won’t. I failed to convince her either.

So I left this group of merry people, muttering about my negative skeptical attitude. They remained convinced that they can’t eat yummy Tim Tams, or delicious Smarties, or fluffy bread.
I returned to my desk and savoured the chocolatey goodness of my Smarties. I pondered the feeling eating a really good Tim Tam can bring. I was happy.

But apparently, I’m the negative killjoy.

Kenny reviews District 9

Last night I had the privilege of seeing District 9, the movie that we get instead of Halo... but I digress before I've even started. (there are only mild spoilers in this review, and sections are clearly labled so you won't accidentally read them).

Setting the scene:
District 9 has an interesting premise: aliens turn up on our doorstep, park their ship over Johannesburg and then promptly do nothing. Turns out they're refugees, and don't have anything tangible to offer us, no weapons, no metaphysical insights into the meaning of life, not even really cool steak knives that can cut through hammers. Not surprisingly we treat them the same way we treat present-day refugees: poorly.

How it starts:
The aliens are placed in a ghetto near Johannesburg and forgotten. Not surprisingly they descend into squalor, crime increases and eventually the people of Johannesburg decide they want the aliens moved away. It's at this point that the movie starts, with the protagonist presiding over the operation to evict the aliens.

Broad overview (mild spoilers):
In overview District 9 is like one of those great stories by the Brothers Grimm. On one level it's simple gory fun told on a personal level but with a grand backdrop. On a deeper level, and continuing the reference the the Grim brothers, it shows some of the worst of human behaviour. At times the protagonist is petty minded, thoughtlessly inhuman, selfish and cowardly. In these moments it's painful to watch, not because of any failing of execution, but because the behaviour is too believably human. However, this is of course so that the protagonist canovercome their baser instinct, see the error of their ways and be more heroic for it.

Finally, and non-too subtly there's a moral to the story: that wallowing in our ignorance and not taking the time to understanding and empathise with others leads to our worst failings. I like this message. Empathy is important, it allows us to build relationships, and love. The flip side is that when we fail to-, or choose not to apply empathy we commit the worst atrocities of history (e.g., the Holocaust , the firebombing of Dresden, or the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki)

The science (some spoilers):
Hollywood often portrays several scientific impossibilities: bullets striking sparks as they ricochet (they don't); things changing size and or mass in blatant contravention of the laws of conservation of mass/energy (they can't... *cough* hulk *cough*); or blatant contraventions of Newtons third law of motion, that every action has an equal and opposite re-action (e.g., Optimus Prime wouldn't have saved Sam Witwicky from falling, he would have had a fist full of splattered Sam).

In comparison, District 9 had relatively little of that bad-science, nothing in the movie too obviously contravenes any laws of nature (i.e., physics, chemistry or biology). The weapon effects are awesome, but still realistic (well... as realistic as you can expect of super advanced technology). The conversion of a human to alien isn't impossible (radical retroviruses could plausibly), but does raise some interesting questions, like why does earthly and alien life use the same genetic language... unless they share a common origin? Maybe the screenplay writer is of the seeded from space (Panspermia) school of thought on the origin of life on earth?

The two moments most straining the suspension of disbeliefe involve tractor beams and starship engines.

The tractor beam was used to lift a small shuttle from the Earth's surface to the hovering mothership. It seems conceivable that a suitably advanced alien civilisation might manipulate local gravitational fields to achieve the same result: lifting things into the air with no visible physical lifting device.

The starship engines were on the hovering mothership, a vessle as large as a medium sized city. Throughout most of the movie the main engines had been doormant, with the mothership hovering by some other mechanism. At the end the engines fire up, and they look freaking hot (plasma hot, not awesome hot). Tens of thousands of human spectators under the mothership simply look up in awe as these engines power up... seemingly un-concerned about the consequences of being under a star-faring vessle as it prepares for the energy intensive task of exiting a gravity well... but nothing un-toward happens. Apparently the alein engines just look big and hot, but don't fry people.

The verdict:
One of the best sci-fi movies of recent, and even not-so recent years.