Solving the gay marriage issue in a way that satisfies both sides.

Having watched the gay marriage debate, it's become clear to me that neither side really understands freedom. I am part of a small (but hopefully growing) group who believes that the proper application of freedom yields a clear solution that both sides will be satisfied with.

What is freedom?

What freedom is:  It's the right to live as you want as long as you aren't infringing on other people or their property.

What freedom isn't: The right to have a government bureaucracy give you a certificate of approval and special benefits for the lifestyle you choose.

In the case of marriage, it is a voluntary cultural or religious activity and as such, having any law that changes how the government treats people because of their involvement in it is automatically a violation of freedom. Giving special treatment to somebody because of their religion or their involvement in a particular ceremony is just as much against the first amendment as banning it.

Imagine if the government decided to handle other religious and cultural matters the same way they do with marriage. Each religion would have to petition the government for approval of their baptism (and baptised people would be treated differently by the government than non-baptised). Then we'd have a big equality argument where non-christians would also want the benefits of being baptised but others would object because it would violate the sanctity of baptism.

Or perhaps the government should provide a tax break for Thanksgiving turkeys. After all, those are an important part of our culture, so there should be government support for them. However, it would have to be a bureaucrat-approved Thanksgiving turkey. We would then have our national argument about what constitutes a proper Thanksgiving turkey. Vegetarians would say "Hey, we're not getting equal treatment," while others would say "replacing a turkey with a block of tofu really demeans an important American tradition."

In both of the examples, it is probably clear to the reader that the answer isn't to make sure that government gives special recognition to all groups. The answer is that the government should just stay out of it completely. Why not apply the same to marriage?

So what would marriage be without government?

Marriage becomes a private contract between individuals. Terms about what people are expected to do, what the conditions are for divorce, and other such can be set by the people getting married instead of by the government.

For the LGBTQ community, they now have equal treatment. The government isn't setting one group above another or blocking anyone from doing what the others can.

For those who oppose gay marriage, the answer is a little more complicated. One of the strong objections they often bring up is that allowing gay marriage on its own isn't the problem, but that it's the first step toward criminalizing their religion. We can see examples in Europe where this issue results in the government violating free speech (for example: http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1057006.html). However, if the approach is to just avoid special treatment for any group, this is much less likely to happen than when we have government dictating our morals.

The other objection usually given against gay marriage is the belief that marriage comes from God and is supposed to be on his terms. If that's the case, then the last thing you should want is for the government to replace God's terms with their own. Get the government out entirely, and then your religion can determine marriage terms based on what you believe God wants them to be instead of what a bunch of congressmen says that they are.

Conclusion:

Like so many other problems, this one exists because of a lack of freedom. Implement freedom fully by removing the government from matters in which it doesn't belong, and the problem is solved.

Why third-party votes matter more than others

        When I tell people that I will probably vote third party, I typically get an eye-rolling or a "Okay, just throw away your vote" sort of response. To me, this is a very short-sighted perspective.
As with last election, the country finds itself asked to choose between candidates who are nearly identical on all important issues (though not comprehensive, this video gives a pretty good demonstration of the fact: http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/118098.html). 
When I raise this point and get at least partial agreement, there are three responses I hear:

1. Vote for the lesser of two evils: Basically, they say that if we can't get someone good, at least vote for the best candidate who has the chance.

2. Don't vote: This is advocated as a moral stand where you are not giving your consent to either of the big candidates. Even though several people that I otherwise respect advocate this view, I have never heard a convincing case as to why this will actually make any difference, so I don't support it, myself.

3. Vote third party: Yes, I am aware that this won't change who wins the current election, but does that mean it doesn't have any effect?

If you always vote for the big two, then your vote is taken for granted:
Democrats, will you ever vote Republican? Republicans, will you ever vote Democrat? I didn't think so. That means that your vote is free. That means that your party can do whatever it wants, break whatever promises it makes, and even follow the exact same plan as his predecessor from the other party (like our current president has done) because they're secure in knowing that you'll continue to vote for them.

A third party vote says "Neither of you are acceptable to me. This is what it would take to get my vote." Sure, if the Libertarian Party (or whatever group you like) only gets one percent of the vote, they can be mostly ignored, but what about when they get five percent. Many presidential elections could be turned with a five percent change in the vote, and suddenly, the Libertarian demographic would be one that the big two would start trying to appeal to. Instead of deciding whether to increase spending by 1.4 trillion or 1.6 trillion, they might actually discuss reducing spending. Instead of quietly ignoring the fact that when two countries are at war, we often provide money to both, the idea of giving money to neither might actually be raised.

Ultimately, no matter how you vote this election, the country will move in generally the same direction for the next four years. But with a third party vote, you just might be able to have a little influence in the years after that.
 

Questioning Motives

Suppose you walk into your living room one night to catch a man who just broke your window and was walking through the room with muddy feet. You ask what he is doing, and he responds, “I just came in to clean your carpet.”


Would you respond by saying, “Oh, I see that your intentions are good. However, you should have done a better job. Your muddy feet are a major oversight, and I see that you forgot to bring carpet shampoo.”

I hope you wouldn't respond that way (except maybe in sarcasm). If somebody does something harmful and claims an utterly absurd reason for doing so, typically we question whether the motivation they gave us is actually true.

Unless, that is, it's the government making the claims, in which case most people always assume that the officials are 100% truthful but maybe didn't do as good of a job as they should.

I am writing this after seeing two major examples of this flawed reasoning being applied. The first is with the Fast and Furious scandal, which is where the US government arranged to have 2000 guns sold to Mexican drug cartels.


Fast and Furious:
What they told the public once this was uncovered was, “We were going to track the guns as part of a plan to find and eliminate the heads of the drug cartels. We just lost track of most of the weapons.”

The response from most of the public, including many who are critical of the government was “Well, you didn't do a good job on this one. Shame on you.” What they should have done was say, “Wait, does this even make sense?”

First off, I can't get a clear picture of how exactly these guns were supposed to be tracked. It clearly wasn't by a carefully installed GPS system, or as soon as they started losing track, they would have realized that the plan had been figured out. Second, how the heck is this going to help you find the leaders of the gangs. Stop reading for a few minutes and really think about the specifics of that. Is it because they assumed that the guns were all being bought for a few leaders? (“When I go on a raid, I always carry at least 50 rifles. And as the leader, I like to risk my neck in dangerous operations that I could easily order my subordinates to do.”) I did some research trying to find any explanation of exactly how this strategy could possibly work, but as far as I could tell, nobody even addressed the question.

I don't claim to know what the motive was, but this follows the exact pattern of the theoretical example above. Somebody claims an intent that doesn't possibly work with their action and results in the exact opposite (because, of course, now the cartels are more powerful). We don't know if the criminal in the example above had intents to rob, kidnap, or murder. We don't know if he was just cold and wanted somewhere warm to sleep for the night. But we can be pretty confident that he wasn't in to clean your carpet.


Supreme Court's Obamacare Decision:
The sad thing is that there was another example this week with the Supreme Court's decision on Obamacare. For a moment, suspend your opinion on whether Obamacare is good or bad, as this is focused on the reasoning of people. Chief Justice Roberts voted in favor of the individual mandate, which angered some of Obamacare opponents, but then he got a lot of praise from other Obamacare opponents in articles such as this one: http://www.ijreview.com/2012/06/9398-why-chief-justice-roberts-made-the-right-long-term-decision-with-obamacare/

Why is he getting praise? Because he spun the penalty for not buying insurance and presented it as a tax instead of a fine. Thus, people are saying “Good job, Roberts, you managed to set a precedent where requiring citizens to buy stuff is still considered unconstitutional.” Do you want to know what would have been more effective in setting that precedent? Declaring the individual mandate unconstitutional like these people wanted him to do in the first place.

So, in other words, by putting a different spin on the definition of terms, he got praise from people who opposed his actions. And, of course, with a few more seconds of thinking, you realize that he said that it's constitutional for the government to tax you for not buying a consumer product. How exactly is that different from an individual mandate? If the government wants to force you to buy a GM car, it can just set the “tax” for not buying one so high that everyone will buy. So basically, the people that would have blasted him for saying that the individual mandate is constitutional are now praising him for providing a way for the government to get the exact same thing.

The obvious conclusion: Roberts supports the individual mandate. Please, people. Learn to question motives a little bit.

The Josh Theory of Awesomeness

Whether it's books, games, movies, plays, or any other kind of entertainment, how do you create something that's truly amazing and memorable? The key is to apply what I call the "Theory of Awesomeness".

To properly present it, I'll have to start by explaining the prevailing view: what I call "The Checklist Method". The checklist method is the idea that there are certain elements to a good piece of entertainment and to create a masterpiece, you try to include as many of these elements as possible. For a book or a movie, it would include items like good characters, detailed setting, surprise twist ending, humor, romance, tragedy, etc. For video games, it's more along the lines of solid gameplay, interesting story, good graphics, good sound effects, and so forth. These lists can get quite long, especially if you start discussing what works well in a particular genre. Even reviews are often based around the Checklist Method, rating each element separately then taking the average.

The Theory of Awesomeness takes a different approach: Each piece of work must start with an idea or a set of ideas that are really interesting or entertaining. The success of your work is based more on the execution of your few brilliant ideas than the presence or absence of the various checklist items. I'll use some examples.

I recently read a book (I won't name it, since my comments here aren't particularly favorable) that did a great job of hitting the items in the checklist method. Solid characters, interesting setting, a properly foreshadowed twist ending, violence (standard in Fantasy), romance, a range of emotions, etc. It was fairly enjoyable but not particularly memorable.

I'll contrast it to Harry Potter (the books. Not the movies). The Harry Potter novels have numerous plot holes, tons of "Well, why didn't you just do this?" moments, and some of the worst deus ex machina I've ever read. And yet, I love them. They're far more flawed than the previously mentioned book, and they don't hit as many of the checkboxes on what supposedly makes a good story, and yet, they're far better overall.

The reason is because there are a few things that J.K. Rowling does masterfully. Though Potter's in a fantastic, magical world, most of his experiences are just enough like what the reader experiences that they can closely relate. Her characters strongly radiate their personalities to the point where the reader feels exactly how she wants them to about each person (i.e. how many people didn't have an overwhelming desire to strangle Dolores Umbridge during the fifth book?). There are a few things in those books that are done so well that most readers either forgive the flaws, or they don't even notice them.

If you want examples from other mediums, consider Tetris (Great story? No. Great graphics? No) or Monty Python (The only checklist item it hits is humor). Both are extremely well-known and well-liked, much more so than most works that have done a far better job hitting the checklist points.

Does that mean that the checklist theory has no merit or that once you've found your awesome points that you can just ignore everything else? No. The checklist items are common elements often contained in a great work, and generally, they should be analyzed for possible inclusion in your own piece. The deciding factor is how they affect the aspects of your work that make it really good. I've seen comedies with a good, emotional story where I felt that they were improved by it, but trying to do that with Monty Python and the Holy Grail would have just handicapped their ability to be funny. I love the fact that the Wheel of Time novels have a detailed, in-depth world where each nation has distinct culture, history, traditions, and even speech patterns, but trying to put the same into Harry Potter would have just added a lot of text that would distract from what made the books great. Even the fans who can't get enough would probably prefer that to all come through a separate volume, rather than being included in the main text.

The key is to identify your point(s) of awesomeness. If you go out with the idea of "I want to make an RTS game" or "I want to write an Urban Fantasy" and you just start working on the checklist, you might make something good, but I don't believe that you can ever create a masterpiece. Rather, your starting point should be "Here's my awesome idea. How can I make it work really well?" Most of the time the checklist items will work in your favor, but sometimes they'll undermine you or at least, bloat your work with stuff that the audience isn't all that interested in.

Girls' guide to dating

Common situations and the three appropriate responses for each:

Situation A:
A guy asks you out on a date.

1. If you like him, then say “Yes.” If you like him but happen to be busy at the requested time, help him reschedule immediately
2. If you dislike him or if he just isn't your type, say “No” or something with a synonymous meaning.
3. If you despise him and are looking for opportunities to make him suffer immensely, act really nice but tell him that you are busy. Continue putting him off until he quits asking.

Situation B:
Your phone shows that you are getting a call from a guy who recently took you out on a date.

1. If you want to go out again, answer the phone and when he asks, concur with his request.
2. If you don't want to go out again, answer the phone, and when he asks, say “No” or something with a synonymous meaning.
3. If you believe that he is a plague on mankind and you would like to crush his willingness to ask girls out so that he will never have children, don't answer the phone or return his call. Continue to repeat this until he quits calling, so that you can drag the suffering out as long as possible.

Situation C:
The date is ending, and the guy is walking you to your doorstep

1. If you would like to go on another date, say “I would like to go out again,” or something similar.
2. If you would not like another date, thank him politely, then enter your dwelling (reference Situation A if he asks you out again).
3. If you have joined a cult of Satan-worshipers whose goal is the emotional destruction of mankind, and you wish to be a devoted follower, then thank him profusely for the date. Tell him how much fun it was and give him an affectionate hug. For bonus points, invite him in and introduce him to your family. After that, when he calls for another date, act like you really want to go but continue putting him off until he gives up. If you're convincing enough, you can sometimes draw out the torture for a couple weeks.

Santa

There are a few well-known serious talks that parents have to have with their children. One that I've been wondering about lately is the "Santa isn't real" talk.

My siblings and I dodged that one simply because my parents never taught us that he existed, so we were enlightened from an early age. For those whose parental lying necessitates this kind of talk, I wonder if there needs to be a guidebook that handles the best way to approach the subject and how to deal with common questions or concerns. Here are a few excerpts from what I think those talks must usually be like:

Kid: Why didn't you tell me that it was you buying those gifts?
Parent: Because we believe that gratitude should be reserved for enigmatic fat men and not actually given to those who deserve it.


Parent: We told you about Santa to make you more excited for Christmas.
Kid: Yeah, but that just raised false hopes. Had I known that my Christmas presents would have been capped by your budget, I wouldn't have expected so much, and thus, wouldn't have been nearly as disappointed.
Parent: We're preparing you for the future. You'll constantly go through cycles of convincing yourself that life doesn't suck only to be proven wrong.
Kid: So you only told me about Santa to make the disappointment that much sharper when I didn't get what I wanted?
Parent: You'll thank us for it when you're older.


Kid: So it turns out that I would have gotten all of those gifts regardless of if I was bad. That means I no longer have any motivation to do good, right?
Parent: Well we might not get you gifts if you behave too badly.
Kid: Should I use your past regard for the truth as my means to analyze that statement?


Kid: Now exactly why did you lie to me about Santa?
Parent: Well, we believed that it was important for you to be excited about Jesus' birth, but we decided that Jesus was too boring, so we fed you some BS about a magical philanthropist so that you would be excited about the holiday.
Kid: So Santa was just a mask for the much less exciting Jesus.
Parent: That is right.
Kid: Can you just skip to the end and tell me about the really boring person that Jesus is masking?


Kid: Once you decided to lie to make me excited about something, why did you choose Santa? Telling me that Star Wars or Lord of the Rings was real would have been much cooler and not been so easy to disprove.
Parent: Santa is a major part of our culture.
Kid: Wait a minute. Your behavior has nothing to do with what is intelligent, makes sense, or will improve your life or relationships? It's just blindly following your culture?
Parent: Well, I guess when you put it that way...
Narrator: And with a sudden depressing insight, the child now understands the cause of so many of the world's problems.

Waiters

Holding to my values can be an exceedingly difficult task. One value I'd like to call my own is "vote with your money". Purveyors of this phrase suggest that if you dislike the behavior of a business, you can facilitate its failure by not spending your money there.

To understand why I have difficulty holding to my values, the fact must be understood that I find food to be extraordinarily pleasing. Gluttony is such a major part of my life that if the Lord hadn't blessed me with high metabolism, my personal gravitational pull would have disrupted the earth's orbit by now.

Many years ago, some brilliant chap devised a scheme to make a business that appeals directly to people like me. He called his creation a "restaurant" and he themed it entirely around food. The finest chefs in the land were brought forth and spent their days concocting substances designed to provide maximum happiness to any human who inserted them into his mouth and proceeded to consume them. Truly there never was a greater source of joy among all the people.
As with all good things, though, these restaurants began to be corrupted. For when the unwashed plebeians entered, they came bearing disturbing ideas. The heretical notion was put forth that the experience surrounding the eating was of greater importance than the eating itself, and fearing the wrath of the masses, the restaurants succumbed.

One of the proclivities among these miscreants was laziness: another--inefficiency. The real horror came when they combined the two.

"Why should we get our own drinks," they asked, "when another person can get them for us."
"Is it truly necessary that we order our food when we're ready? Or should we wait for a person who isn't even sharing our meal?"

And worst of all. "I really hate having to make the decision on when to leave. Wouldn't it be best if some uninterested party made that decision for us?"

And thus the waiter was conceived.

The purpose of this waiter is to force those who come seeking delicious nourishment to wait. Would you like a drink? You'd better wait for the waiter to come inquire of you which liquid you covet. Even though you could reach the drink dispenser yourself with a single-digit number of steps. Have you beheld the food that you would like to order? Well, you'd better wait for that superfluous human to come by and ask you.

What if you would prefer a fork for your sushi because you've found yourself to be incompetent in the ways of chop sticks. Instead of surreptitiously slipping over to the fork area and acquiring one of the aforementioned devices, you have sit dejectedly until the waiter walks by and inform him that you wish to offend the culture of the restaurant and use American utensils.

Eventually, these inconveniences are set aside as you have both the glorious vittles and the instruments with which to eat them. The next fifteen minutes are splendid, apart from the minor bout of dehydration because your cup is empty and you aren't allowed to refill it. At the close of this part of the process, the restaurant has fulfilled the measure of its creation, and your most appropriate activity would be to vacate it.

But, alas, the waiting isn't over yet. You are once again forced to wait for the waiter to bring you the bill, at which point you cast your credit card at him and wait another five minutes before he returns with a receipt to sign. And here is the part where things get truly abominable: You are expected to pay extra money to this person who lengthened your visit. They call it a 'tip', and if the waiter has only mildly damaged your eating experience instead of utterly destroying it, you are expected to make it's value 15% of your food purchase. It is, after all, much more difficult for this person to carry a twenty dollar steak than a three dollar plate of mashed potatoes, so the tip must be inflated appropriately.

It is here that my values are challenged. "Vote with your money" is my theory. By bestowing my hard-earned lucre on this person, I uphold their position. Clearly then, it's vitally important that I give no tip. In fact, to ensure that a revolution succeeds as I desire, I should eat out as often as possible, always withholding my tip.

But then I have a realization: it goes something like this: "Josh, you make video games for a living. You go to a nice office full of cool people who treat you well. Here is a poor sap who spends his days dealing with annoying people like you. He's probably struggling to make ends meet. He works evenings which has brutal effects on his social life. In addition, the restaurant pays him roughly the amount it costs to buy the gas to drive home. Give him some frikkin' cash, you incorrigible miser."

So I do. Perhaps one day, I'll develop the skills necessary to be a jerk, but until then, waiters, you'll get your tip.

Optimizing Politeness

So we have this little thing called 'The Golden Rule' which saith: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

For some things, it's a pretty good policy. I'd prefer not to have people eviscerate or defenestrate me, so I figure it's appropriate that I don't do those things to them, either. In some cases, though, it doesn't work as well.

One of the best examples of this is holding the door open. Now, I understand, if you're closely tailing some chap that it may be nice for him to perform this behavior, lest it fly shut into your face and give you justification for saying "Ouch!". However, this is usually not the case.

Often, when I am a significant distance from the aforementioned door, the human who is traveling through it decides that it's expedient to hold it open for me, anyway. I'll use math to demonstrate why this is bad:

If my current velocity and trajectory causes the door-opener to perceive that I would like to emulate him in traveling through the opening created when this door is ajar, he could run a rough mental calculation and determine the approximate time before I reached the door. If he, for example, estimated that it would take me 5.47 seconds to reach him, yet it would only delay my journey for 1.2 seconds for me to open the door myself, then we have a net loss of 4.27 seconds.

However, there are other complications. It is possible that I'm not actually heading for the door. Further, he has removed from me control over my environment. Last of all, common politeness obligates me to thank him, and the combination of all of these has far more power to derail my train of thought (which is always going somewhere weird like when I come up with these posts) than the instinctive act of opening the door.

Now, don't get me wrong, there are cases where this door-holding obsession that people have can actually be helpful. If I'm carrying a live salmon or have my hands glued together, the difficulty of opening a door is increased tremendously, and I'm grateful when somebody relieves me of this arduous activity. However, when somebody's thoughts are, "Hi, I'm going to burn 5 seconds and interrupt your train of thought because it will save you 1 second if I am correctly prognosticating your destination," I do find it slightly annoying.

Some day, I'll learn to be a jerk and make progress in optimizing the world. For now, I just thank them and move on.

My Conversations With Search Engines

First:

Me: Hello, Google, I would like to know how to open a file using JScript.

Google: Here are thousands of webpages telling you how to open a file in JavaScript

Me: Yes, but I want to know how to do it in JScript

Google: Since JScript and Javascript are the same thing, I have happily given you all the links with either one.

Me: Actually, they're not the same thing, and I need to do it with JScript

Google: To help you out, I've even put every instance of "JavaScript" in bold so that you'll know which websites you want to visit first.

Me: Okay, look, these links aren't helpful. You've buried the ones that actually reference JScript 50 pages in. Can you only show what I'm searching for.

Google: The best thing about about assuming equivalence between JScript and JavaScript is that if I only returned the 800,000 pages that only say JScript, you might run out of stuff to look at. Now, you'll have to opportunity to go through millions of pages before you reach the end of my wisdom.

Me: Yes, but can you please just give me the pages that say JScript.

Google: Aren't you glad I understand what you want even better than you do?

Second:

Me: Hello, Google, my friend Marc wanted me to look at his web page, but I can't remember the address. So I'm just going to put his name into the search engine and see if I can find it.

Google: Fortunately for you, there are many people named Mark who have the same last name. Aren't you excited about how many pages you have to look at?

Me: Yes, but his name is "Marc", not "Mark".

Google: The great thing about the name "Mark" is that it is also a commonly used noun and verb. For example, here is a page where somebody referred to somebody else by their last name only and said that they were going to "mark" them. In fact, I've found hundreds of pages with something similar, and I just know that you want to look at every one of them.

Me: No, I don't want that many pages. I only want the ones that say "Marc"

Google: The thing I've learned about humans is that they never know what they want. I'm pretty sure I'll have far more success guessing the intent behind the search rather than actually looking for the terms they entered.

Note: In both of the above cases, I fixed the problem by using msn search (now called Bing, though it wasn't during my first experience). To some degree, it does the same thing; it's just not nearly as bad.

Third:

Me: Hello, Youtube, my friend recommended a band called Valkyre. I'd like to hear a few of their songs.

Youtube: That's wonderful! Here's a link to the game Valkyrie Profile, and here's a video somebody made involving the Starcraft Valkyrie unit. It gets better, though, many songs, both old and modern use the term Valkyrie, and I'm going to give you every one of them.

Me: No, you don't understand. The band is "Valkyre", not "Valkyrie". That way you can narrow down the videos to only the ones I want.

Youtube: I have a dream...Some day, correct spelling will truly be a thing of the past. The Internet has made great strides in making sure that every word has at least three valid misspellings, and I'm proud to say that I'm now contributing.

Me: No, no. That's BAD. People should spell things correctly, and you should actually pay attention to what I'm writing.

Youtube: Sadly, a few backward-minded people still care about spelling, so I'm going to swallow my pride and put a link that says "Did you mean Valkyrie" below the search bar. But I'm going to assume that you did, even if you don't click on the link, and I'll send my results accordingly.

Me: Can you please just give me the results for Valkyre?

Youtube: I'm so happy. This poor man misspelled Valkyrie, but I quietly brushed his error under the rug and pretended that he didn't. It will make his life so much better.

These are all actual events, though I've simplified them and anthropomorphized the search engines. Note that if you try to recreate this problem, you need more than just the name given. You also have to have other words to narrow down the search. If it returns a lot of irrelevant pages, it's happy, but if it would only return a few pages, it starts doing stuff like I describe above so that it still can return a lot of irrelevant pages.

For example: If you only search for the term "Valkyre" in youtube, it complies because it can return a lot of pages where the video submitter misspelled "Valkyrie". However, if you search for "Valkyre music", it's horrified that it can't pile thousands of results onto you, so it commences with the egregious violation above.

I understand that there are actually benefits to these features, but the user may not always want them. Here's a recommended UI for future search engines:

The "Google Search" button is for people who know that the search engine understands their intent better than they do, and the "Actual search" button is for people who really want what they entered.

Basically, search engines are a little like people on forums. They'd be a lot more useful if there was an option to make them actually read what was typed.

How to Comprehend Women

Understanding women can be a great challenge--one that I've found requires skills to exceed my own. Thus, I decided that I would try to take an indirect route and seek this understanding through analogy. I figured that I could state some characteristics of women, find something else that shares those characteristics, and acquire an understanding of the more attractive half of the world's humans by studying that which carries the same characteristics.

So, I'll commence by describing a few traits of women. They are beautiful and fascinating. They are vitally important to the way the world works. However, I also find them to be quite irrational.

The question, then, is what else exhibits these same characteristics. The answer, of course, is the square root of 2:
Beautiful? Certainly to those who see the beauty of logic and physics.
Fascinating? Undoubtedly. It has all kinds of purposes, such as multiplying by the length of a leg to find the length of the hypotenuse of an isosceles right triangle.
Vitally important to the way the world works? All math is.
Irrational? Yes, the square root of 2 is an irrational number (look it up if you don't know what this means).
Thus, we conclude beyond doubt that women are like the square root of 2.

This is where we encounter a problem. See, the approximate value of the square root of 2 is 1.414, but this is not exact. In fact, if you continue to try calculating it, you will find that it goes on forever, adding additional numbers beyond the decimal point. No matter how long you study, how long you calculate, you can never have the joy of putting the precise value of the square root of 2 in decimal form. The digits go on into infinity.

This is the enlightening part, for when one understands infinity, they can thus understand the power of the square root of 2 as an analogy to women. Infinity has some unusual characteristics, most notably that any finite number, no matter how vast, when divided by infinity, will result in a number that is basically zero (essentially as close to zero as a number could possibly become without actually reaching it).

Therefore, no matter how many digits of the square root of 2 you have calculated, you are, for all practical purposes, 0% of the way toward finding the exact value.

Thus it is as trying to understand women. There are books, conversations, and other such that will teach you more about them, and it's perfectly reasonable for men to double, triple, or even ten times their amount of knowledge of women. However, as with finding the exact value of the square root of 2, whatever numerical value could be attached to your knowledge of women, it would always be divided by infinity.

We can therefore conclude that after any finite amount of studying and experience, a man will always have a 0% understanding of women.

Okay, going for weekly posts

So, I cast my thoughts about and decided that I'm going to try for weekly entertaining/informative (hopefully both) posts. I plan to pack each one with a significant amount of awesomeness, so be prepared.

EDIT: Okay, the weekly thing failed, but at least they're better than semi-annually.

Dual-wielding blogs

"Oh great! Now Josh is doing two blogs when we already have to put the number of days between updates in scientific notation"

The reason I'm running a second blog is because it's hosted on gamasutra.com, which means that it gets read by other game developers. Therefore, if I'm going to do a long, well-thought-out blog on game development, I will post it here: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JoshuaMcDonald/2936/

Anything else I blog will remain on the website that thou art currently gazing upon.

And for my final bit, I will now link to one of the funniest things I have ever read: http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html

Farewell and enjoy being a human.

Battleforge: The amazing game that nobody has ever heard of

So a few years ago, EA decided to work on shedding their image as a money-grubbing corporation or fund some titles that were unique and interesting. The most often mentioned of these are Mirror's Edge and Dead Space, but the best one by far is a game that nobody ever seems to even know about.

In a nutshell, Battleforge is what you get when you cross Warcraft (the RTS, not the MMO) with Magic: The Gathering...except better. Instead of being tied to a few strict faction choices, you have interesting and dynamic decks that you build yourself. Almost all of the conventions of RTS's have been dropped, and the mechanics that were built up provide an amazing amount of tactical depth, even if you're just using the free-to-play starter cards.

It is, in fact, the only RTS where I've ever been able to get into PvP. All of the others simply have a narrow range of "best" strategies that everybody uses, to the point where you get more variety playing skirmishes against the computer than fighting other people. Battleforge, on the other hand, has a deck building system and low-tier tactics that keep PvP games varied. Every time you think you have a feel for what you'll be up against, somebody else will come out with some bizarre tactic that completely throws you off and makes you reconsider what is possible in the game.

Really, everybody reading this should try it. The free to play game is well worth the time, and after spending a bit of cash on the game ($40-$60), you'll really have something amazing.

Why shooter survival modes are so successful (and how to apply the principle to other games)

I'm not sure who started it, but over the past few couple years, every shooter adds in a survival mode, and player response tends to be extremely positive. In my own case, I'm a huge fan of Gears of War 2, but I've never touched the campaign: I just play horde mode.

If you analyze these against prevailing viewpoints on what makes a game good, you would expect them to be generally uninteresting: No story, no character development, no puzzles, unchanging landscape, etc. So how is it that you can cut most of a game out and find something that many people like even better than what you originally created?

First, survival mode is pure core gameplay. All of the things I listed above can be fun, but they can also be a distraction from the fun (if the core game is good enough). If you want to sit down and shoot some stuff, you don't have to wait for cutscenes or play "Simon Says". Further, instead of trying to learn new landscape, you're focusing on developing tactics for an environment that you're already familiar with. Basically, survival mode just focuses on the best part of the game and tosses out the rest.

Second, survival mode is less scripted. Many of us don't feel much satisfaction from following the pre-planned track that the designers came up with. In campaigns, vehicles, weapons, cover placement, and many other things are carefully placed so that each player runs through roughly the same experience. In survival mode, sure there's careful placement, but there isn't a clear path or much of a "best" method. It falls on the player's shoulders to find the method that works best for him in a given situation.

Finally, survival mode has unlimited (or at least absurdly high) difficulty potential. Shooters tend to do a better job of implementing high difficulties than most games do (though you always have that crowd who wants something harder), but even in those, the situation is often so scripted that there's not much room to formulate new strategies (i.e. if you can't get headshots off faster, this part will always be impossible on top difficulty).

With that in mind, there's no reason that similar gameplay modes couldn't be made for different genres. Viewtiful Joe could have had an amazingly cool survival mode for a minuscule amount of development time. Zelda could have a carefully crafted room that allowed you to make use of all of your gadgets in some wild, long-term fights.

Finally, this would be an awesome feature to add to RPGs, particularly those with a higher tactical potential. In games like Baldur's Gate, Final Fantasy, or Fire Emblem, I'm constantly working to develop the perfect, super-powered group, but the only thing I can do with it is play out the script (with the occasional side-quest thrown in). In fact, if I'm successful in making my super-party, the game becomes really easy.

When you've finished carrying your party through a 40+ hour scenario, it would be cool to have a gameplay mode simply designed to test how awesome you managed to make them. Heck, I'd probably replay some RPG's in their entirety with my entire focus devoted to making a group that could get as far in this special mode as possible.

Overall, I believe that in nearly all games (at least good games), there can be a lot of added value for little cost by adding in a pure gameplay mode. I just hope that more designers start to see the potential.

Study: A Ford Escort will accelerate at more than twice the speed of a Ferrari F-50

According to a study performed by the Michigan Institute of Engineering last fall, a Ford Escort's acceleration capability exceeds that of many expensive sports cars. A few key phrases from the study follow:
1. "Despite conventional wisdom, the Ferrari took 2.34 times longer to reach 30 MPH than the Escort and a shocking 3.45 times longer in the quarter mile race."
2. "Beyond those stats, drivers consistently said that the Escort also handled better at every speed."
3. "It's clear to us that a Ford Escort with 4 wheels is a much better buy for a customer seeking performance than a Ferrari F-50 with 2."

Okay, yes, I made this study up (I'm not even sure if the Michigan Institute of Engineering exists). However, studies of this style are disturbingly common. In fact, I just read one today: Study: Single Parents May Do as Well as Two

The headline is effective in making people believe that the study showed that a stable, two-parent household isn't significantly superior to a single-parent house, in defiance of common sense.

However, if you actually read the article, the comparison is between a single parent who stays single vs. one who starts single but starts shacking up or going through failed marriages. In other words, the study started with a headline that's meant to surprise people but moves to actual details that anybody with half a brain already knew. Basically, it follows the exact same format as my car study above.

Okay, so readers of this blog might wonder: "How does that apply to programming or game development?" Well, this is kind of a stretch, but it applies to everything. The point of this post is to tell people: "Think", "Use your brain", and "Don't blindly trust the 'experts'". The world around you is teaching you to shut off your brain as movies get stupider, schools replace problem solving with rote memorization, and people who dare question the 'experts' are ridiculed.

Take a little time every day to shut off all of your machines and think. Make a point of reading material that challenges your current points of view. Learn to listen and understand before you even begin forming your response. That way lies wisdom, and we can all use more of that.

Quotation marks: Why the English rules are Wrong.

For those of you familiar with the English language rules regarding quotes, you know that you are supposed to put punctuation inside of the quotes. This is bad.

I'll start with a simple sentence; consider this example: Did you read the article "How David Beat Goliath?"

The meaning of the question mark at the end is ambiguous. Is the sentence a question, or does the article have a question as its title? In the English language, these are punctuated the same way.

What if you put that question mark on the outside of the quotes like this: Did you read the article "How David Beat Goliath"? Here, we've made it clear to the reader that the sentence is a question and the article title is not. According to the English language, that's wrong. According to me, the English language is wrong.

Where this gets messy is in nested questions. Try this sentence: The teacher just asked, "Which students read the article 'Why do we forget things?'"

I'm not even sure how that should be punctuated. The article and the teacher's statement are both questions, but that isn't clear from the punctuation. Given the choice, I'd use two question marks (one for each), but I'm pretty sure that doing so violates the language rules.

"So what?" you think. "I can still tell what's being said."

Yes, you can in this example. Let's modify it a little bit with a shortened quote: "You read 'Why do we forget things?'" Is the speaker informing the listener that they read the article, or are they saying it with a questioning tone? When writing dialogue, punctuation such as question or exclamation marks empower the writer to show the tone in which something was said. When the language makes it ambiguous what your punctuation belongs to, the writer's hands are tied.

It gets even better, though, when you get into the fine rules for quotes because not all punctuation is supposed to go inside of the quotes. A semicolon, for example, is supposed to go outside of the quotes. Why? What is accomplished by making arbitrary rules on what goes inside and what goes outside for people to remember?

All of the rules about quote punctuation placement could be entirely encompassed by a single rule: "If it's part of the quote, place it inside of the quotation marks. Otherwise, place it outside of them."

Thus, I've chosen to do all of my writing according to that rule, unless it's absolutely necessary for me to please some English professor. Join me, and perhaps we can turn the English rules into something more sensible.

Blog, which art my creation: I command thee to live!

Well, this brings forth the existence of my first blog. Basically, my nefarious scheme is to use this to post my latest thoughts on the creation of entertainment (books and video games, primarily).

Essentially, writing books and designing games of all sorts have been my lifelong hobbies since I was a young warthog, and I'm highly opinionated on both. I'm also highly opinionated on politics(libertarian), religion (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints), education (homeschooling), finances (live cheaply and stay out of debt), food (sushi, though that one tends to conflict with my previously mentioned finances theory), and water (definitely H2O). However, this blog will be primarily devoted to my hobbies of writing and game programming/design.

So, onto my first game-related post:

XNA is (almost) awesome.

For the uninitiated, XNA (stands for XNA's Not Acronymed) is a programmer's framework that allows them to create game for the Xbox 360. The philosophy behind XNA is to let the game's creators focus more on designing their game and less on the exact behavior of the hardware. Thus, a lot of long and difficult tasks that are normally part of game programming are basically done for you or at least made a lot simpler. The trade-off is that you lose performance, so the XNA games are never going to be as visually impressive as their C/C++ counterparts.

Now that that's out of the way, the question is "How good is it?" First, the positive:

XNA code is written in C#, which I find to be more sensible, easy, and straightforward to code in than most other languages. On top of that, XNA itself is fairly straightforward (at least, as much as it is possible to be in game programming, which is inherently quite difficult). I got more done in a few hours on XNA than a week on DirectX. On top of that, most of the same code will run on both Windows and the Xbox 360, which is quite pleasing.

So what are the negatives? First off, 3d animation. While trying to create my first meaningful 3d game, things were going fairly well for the most part. I had my objects in the game, my physics, my collision detection, etc. Then I tried to animate one of the models...

Instead of finding a nice Animation class that could look into your 3ds max files, find animation data, and convert it to something XNAish, I discovered that animation was practically a cut feature (at least as far as any web searches went). I found occasional third party libraries that were confusing as heck and even more confusing when I tried to understand what they were actually doing, but the whole theory of "Let the programmer focus on creating his game" seemed to be completely lost. The code samples I found seemed to be re-creating in code what the artist had already done in his modeling program. If you're making a 3d space shooter or puzzle game, I guess you don't really need animation, but otherwise...Well, animation is actually the reason that I shelved my 3d game and started on a 2d one. I'm actually making progress, now.

Well, there's my wall of text for the day. Fare thee all well