Transportation Issues

Today has turned out to be a rough day. And the worst part is that there was absolutely no reason for this to have happened.

When I have breaks and want to go home, I usually take Amtrak. Train travel is almost always superior to air travel in my opinion, mostly because of two reasons. First of all, the train system doesn't have the same odious, overly-invasive security that the airports do; that alone would be reason enough. On top of that, though, trains are usually more comfortable, providing a power outlet at every seat and much better food.

The downside is one that shouldn't even exist. The train takes considerably longer than an airplane does in transit, traveling much slower along a less direct route. Of course, if we had a functioning high-speed rail system (sorry Acela, you're not actually functional as a high-speed rail system, not like the Tokaido Shinkansen is), it would be a matter of an additional hour or two rather than the five or six is is today.

More importantly, though, trains have to be reliable and effective. The aforementioned Tokaido Shinkansen is a real competitor to air travel between Tokyo and Osaka specifically because it runs a metric fuckton of trains between the two cities (count them yourself) that are effectively always on time. The Acela cannot say the same, not even close. Not when they brag (!) about 10 weekday departures (and today is not a weekday), at least one of which, the Acela 2254, was quite severely late today.

They acknowledged it and apologized for the delay on the train, if nothing else, but that didn't help me catch the commuter rail I was planning on getting to. Had I made it, I could have been back two hours earlier than I actually managed. Looking back, I would probably have taken an earlier train anyway if I were to do today over, but the problem was and is that there weren't any other trains that went with my schedule.

The Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority, the people running the aforementioned commuter rail, did no better today. The commuter rail that I missed was at 8pm; the next available train? 11:30pm. Two trains in three and a half hours. I have the $4.75 in fares that I would have paid, and I would happily be giving that to the MBTA, but for the fact that there was simply no train available. And they still get the subway fare from me, for the privilege of riding on a two-car train that was overcrowded to rush-hour levels on a Sunday at nine in the evening.

It depresses me greatly that I know exactly why the MBTA or why Amtrak might be having budget problems. And everything I've laid out is not necessarily a strike against those companies themselves, who I honestly do believe are working as hard as they possibly can with the limited resources they are given. All I can say, though, is that until we work up the will as a society to properly fund transportation infrastructure, this crappy evening will repeat itself, both for me and the millions of other people that try to navigate the chaos that is American public transportation.

Reports from Anime Boston 2012

It's kind of interesting. Even when I go to a convention theoretically with a group of people, I end up going off and doing my own thing. Not sure if it's just an "introversion" thing or if it's a special case, given what I usually do at conventions...

Well anyway. Again, I didn't really cosplay, short of the black cloak and Hero of Space god tier T-shirt. Which was enough to get some people thinking I was cosplaying one of Andrew Hussie's appearances in the comic in which he wears a fairly similar outfit. So apparently, I was sort of cosplaying someone without even intending to? Some people assumed one or the other, while others asked if I was trying to go for the cosplay or not. For the record, I wasn't going for that.

The Anime Boston dealers room was surprisingly light on stuff that I actually wanted. For a convention focusing around Japanese stuff, there was a surprising lack of, well, actual Japanese stuff. Translations and English versions everywhere, which I imagine was nice for the majority of people there that couldn't speak Japanese, but for someone who actually wants to read the original Japanese manga, not so helpful. In short, every convention I go to ends up reminding me that there is no substitute for actually being in Japan.

Video gaming was less of a thing this time around too. Mostly because I was royally screwing up. I mean, okay, my definition of screwing up at DDR is getting B's and C's on songs where I'd otherwise be getting AA's, so it's not like I was failing anything, but still. I played one or two of my absolute favorite songs and then found other things to do.

Like karaoke for example. Anyone who was following my old study abroad blog while I was in Kyoto might have noticed how much I love to do karaoke. I took advantage of Anime Boston's karaoke room to fill that particular craving. Sang five songs over the course of two days, too. In order:

First up, the Sakura Taisen theme song. No, I did not do the dance, too. Yes, I should have. I'll try to learn the dance so that I can do it next time. I did, however, do the spoken portion, including the salute at the end, and it got about the same response at Anime Boston that it did in that live performance.

Romancers' Neo, opening theme song to the Nanoha Gears of Destiny game. Asked the audience if there were any Nanoha fans; there was one. Don't know if she recognized the song or not though. (And I can't find a good video on YouTube for that one, sadly.)

Colorful Melody. Again, no dance. Again, I need to learn the dance. Also, I did this one solo, mostly because I could (it's supposed to be a duet), and I said as much before I started. I'm surprised by how well it turned out, actually; there's a section in the middle that's not in that video which I managed to make my way through without even knowing the full lyrics, and usually my attempts to sing songs this thoroughly out of my vocal range sound much worse than it ended up being.

Stardust Dreams. Hilarious because of the reaction from the group of Touhou cosplayers in the room at the time. Also hilarious because two people from that group did a different remix of that song's original right after I finished. They were different enough that if they hadn't said as much, I probably wouldn't have noticed right away.

Finally, No Need to Promise, the Escaflowne theme song. Which had gotten thoroughly stuck in my head since I started watching Escaflowne. I did it with the karaoke version (no vocals in the background) and did surprisingly well considering I don't know the song nearly well enough to have the cues memorized.

When not in the karaoke hall singing, I was also hanging out in the live gaming hall. Got to play a game of an anime-style tabletop RPG called Big Eyes, Small Mouth, which went pretty well. In case anyone was curious, I played the magical girl character. (And everyone who knows me nods along with a knowing look on their face.) She was awesome, especially when I blasted an entire room full of enemies with an AOE spell that could have probably leveled an entire city block had I used it at full power. Let's just say she was my style of magical girl.

I also got the chance to play Arkham Horror. I like board games, especially this kind of board game that's overly complicated and very strategic. We did fail to stop Cthulu's awakening, but it was fun while it lasted.

... Hmm, my priorities are obvious from the amount of stuff I wrote, huh? Damn I like karaoke. Well, that was Anime Boston 2012. If I'm still in the area next year, I'll probably end up going again.

Freedom to Cause Harm?

[Content note: Harassment]

One of the pervasive negative stereotypes of feminism and sometimes of the entire left wing in general is that we're all humorless jerks who scream "I'M OFFENDED" every time someone makes a joke. That we have no respect for free speech because we're always pushing for laws that restrict the rights of people to say even things that cause offense. This is a common criticism of both hate crimes laws and harassment laws; that we're restricting thought and expression in unacceptable ways. I thought I'd take a moment and address some examples of harassment laws.

The first is an interesting one, in that it concerns me directly. In point of fact, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has placed my school, Brandeis, on their list of the 12 Worst Colleges for Free Speech. Part of that has to do with a pair of cases that I am in all honesty not familiar enough with to comment on, and certainly I don't mean to whitewash or play up my own school - I have no doubt that Brandeis has made plenty of its own mistakes in dealing with speech on campus.

That said, I do want to look at their analysis of Brandeis rules and regulations that have an effect on speech. Two sections are marked with a red icon, indicative of clear and substantial restrictions on freedom of speech - information provided on sexual harassment (particularly the list of "what is sexual harassment") and an excerpt from the internet usage policies (particularly Section 11.4).

For the life of me I can't understand what is objectionable about either of those. The Internet usage policies are one thing (and something we'll come back to in another context), given that they call out "material that is explicitly sexual or offensive" (emphasis mine) as unacceptable. The list of what comprises sexual assault, though... Well, let's see.

What is Sexual Harassment?

For example:

* subtle pressure for sexual activity
* unnecessary touches or contact
* offensive sexual graffiti or cartoons
* inappropriate sexual innuendoes
* verbal sexual abuse disguised as humor
* whistling, cat-calls, obscene gestures

It may just be me, but I'm pretty sure all of that is unquestionably harmful. None of it should be protected speech!

Getting back to use of the Internet, I'll introduce topic number two, incidentally the reason I began writing this post in the first place: Kotaku addresses (and by that I mean reposts something from Gizmodo) an Arizona law which they claim makes trolling illegal. We've already discussed my stance on SOPA, of course, but there is a limit to how far I'm willing to take the "freedom of the Internet" card, and this article goes way past it. The law itself, of course...

"It is unlawful for any person, with intent to terrify, intimidate, threaten, harass, annoy or offend, to use any electronic or digital device and use any obscene, lewd or profane language or suggest any lewd or lascivious act, or threaten to inflict physical harm to the person or property of any person."

... is much the same as Brandeis's Internet usage policy in a lot of ways. Again, we see that language appear about annoying or offending.

I've written before about how maybe there shouldn't be a law against simply causing offense (and even that isn't quite the point, since I mostly was trying to say that intentionally causing offense is being a jerk regardless of the law), but all the same I'm inclined to walk that back a little. The legal definition of harassment is a consistent pattern of action that serves only to: "alarm or seriously annoy" (Maryland), or "which seriously alarms that person and would cause a reasonable person to suffer substantial emotional distress" (Massachusetts).

I think it is clearly recognized in both cases that annoyance or offense constitutes a kind of real emotional harm to the victim. Calling a consistent pattern of offense "harassment" does nothing to change the fact that causing that offense can in itself be harmful, although not in ways that are outwardly visible. I believe that that in particular is something that I have some measure of personal experience with; my middle and high school days were comparatively mild, and yet I still believe that they affected the way I act around people quite thoroughly - not in positive ways, either.

And unless we want the freedom of speech to become the freedom to cause harm, it's high time we stopped attacking the laws that prevent that kind of thing.

UPDATE: Well, Think Progress is also covering the situation in Arizona, and their opinions seem to be in line with the Kotaku/Gizmodo argument as well. I can't remember the last time I disagreed with Think Progress on something, and I am very much open to argument on this one, because for me disagreeing with people or groups that you usually agree with is a sign that you need to carefully go back over the situation. That said, I believe that the points I made above stand on their own as a response to concerns over the Arizona law.

Human Costs

And Maid in America joins the very short list of movies that have brought me to the verge of tears. Grave of the Fireflies is the only other movie I remember which has managed to do that. (There might be more such examples from my childhood, but those are the only two recent examples.) I mean, a lot of movies try to get you to empathize with the main characters, so it's not like those two movies are special in that regard. Perhaps the best way to put it is that those two really succeeded.

Immigration policy, of course, has become one of the particular wedge issues in American politics. There's a large contingent of politicians, mostly those on the right wing, who argue quite passionately that we can't let people "get away" with entering this country illegally, and oppose any hint of measures that would open our doors wider or recognize any of the undocumented immigrants in this country today.

Likewise, foreign policy is and will almost certainly remain a major point of contention. There are those who want to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons by any means necessary, including military action, and would happily engage us in yet another undeclared war on a foreign country in support of that end.

If there is one thing that never seems to enter the discussion, at least not from those people who support hard-line stances on immigration or foreign policy, it is the human cost of the policies they advocate. What those two movies did, and did well enough to drive me almost to tears, was to illustrate that human cost in a way that is impossible to ignore.

What I remember from watching Grave of the Fireflies is a picture of two kids caught up in the bombing of the city of Kobe, who lost their family and were forced to survive on their own in the end. What I saw today watching Maid in America was a picture of families torn apart and people struggling to do right by themselves and their children, confronted with a system which offers them no protection and indeed constantly threatens them.

I have my own opinions, on immigration policy and on foreign policy. I have my own opinions on World War II. But in the end, none of those are truly relevant here. Whether you think we should or should not offer amnesty, whether you think we should or should not have firebombed Japanese cities in the Second World War, we cannot ignore the fact that these decisions will affect millions of people.

Argue what you will, and I will agree or disagree as I choose. All I ask is that you do not ignore this one simple fact: that these policies and decisions carry their own human costs, and will have a real effect on actual people.

A Conversation on Capitalism (with the Tea Party)

I keep track of the movements of my school's Tea Party club, for two reasons. One, because it's good to know what the other side is actually arguing, so as to avoid making strawman arguments, and two because my appetite for political debate has been growing recently. As a result, I ended up finding this article on the Tea Party Tribute website, about the morality of free market capitalism. If you'd rather not read the whole article, I think this about sums it up:

Free market capitalism is morally good because of its respect for freedom, hard work, perseverance, and creativity, in addition to preserving the property rights that are so vital to individual freedom. As a philosophy that denies limits, a free market optimistically grows the individual power of success and liberty to the benefit of the entire world.

I tried to post a comment on the article, but the Tea Party Tribune admins have their site set up so that comments have to be approved before they appear publicly, and given the fact that my comment has since vanished from their site, I'm assuming that that approval was denied.

I bear them no grudge for that. Certainly, I cannot claim the right to control this space without also acknowledging their right to control theirs. Of course, as I do control this space, I can do things like post the comment I created here on my blog, so that people can judge for themselves whether or not it was worthy of deletion and possibly start a conversation on the merits and disadvantages of free market capitalism here, instead.

So, without further ado! Keeping in mind that the following text is a direct response to this article, so it might not make a whole lot of sense out of context. The last paragraph of my response (the one that starts with "in a more general sense") relies much less on that context, so you might want to skip to it if you haven't read the Tea Party Tribune article.

Your examples are an interesting commentary on capitalism's advantages versus disadvantages. Particularly, I find it highly interesting that you talk about transportation, especially given that railroads are a particular pet peeve of mine, and because I think transportation is a field in which capitalism is particularly ineffective and indeed potentially harmful. What happened in 1873 is one thing, and it makes the perfectly valid point that government-run systems are more vulnerable to waste (although, that doesn't mean they're always more wasteful).

If we look at the situation today, though, I would argue that capitalism is not going to be promoting any collective good as far as efficient and cheaper public transportation is concerned. What the U.S. railroad system needs today is damn near a complete overhaul - new tracks laid, among other things, to support the full effectiveness of a true high-speed system. Despite the public good that such a rail system could provide, I seriously doubt any private company would be able to provide one, given the massive amounts of start-up funding required and the lack of any immediate return. In this case, public funding is likely going to be necessary to at least kick-start that, just as public funding is necessary to maintain the highway system and the air traffic control grid.

In a more general sense, capitalism does not directly promote the benefit of the entire world. Capitalism rewards behavior that creates profit. When behavior that creates profit ends up benefiting the entire world, capitalism produces a positive result. When behavior that creates profit ends up harming the general good, though, or when behavior that promotes the general good doesn’t create profit (as I addressed above with transportation), capitalism ends up harming society as a whole. For that reason, I believe that capitalism is best when tempered by reasonable regulation and when accompanied by public programs that provide valuable public services that a purely capitalistic system would never support.

Framing the Health Care Debate

So Paul Krugman recently wrote about the health care reform enacted by Obama that's become such a major issue. Given that Krugman specializes in economics, of course, this particular editorial is more about the costs and the effectiveness of health care, both as it was and as it now is under the reform (for however long that lasts). Particularly, it addresses the inability of reform's opponents to make a solid economic case against the reform. I won't even bother quoting it, because you should just read the whole thing.

When I saw that on my Reader page, I was actually excited, particularly because of the timing. I had just gotten into an argument over health care reform over the weekend, and here's a Monday editorial on the issue, what luck! As I read the argument, though, I realized that it wasn't actually going to be of much help. You see, my earlier discussion on the matter hadn't framed it as an economic problem.

That is one way to frame the debate, of course - as a matter of economic policy, in terms of costs and benefits. That's the way a lot of issues have been framed lately by the right-wing, too: dear god, government spending is increasing so much! (It's actually not. As an aside.) And if that's how you want to discuss the matter, I direct you back to that editorial that I opened this post with; certainly I do not have the ability or the knowledge to competently make an argument on those terms.

Another way to frame the debate, though, and the version I encountered last weekend, is as a question of personal freedom. This is the genesis of the court cases making their way through the system, challenging the constitutionality of the individual mandate. This is the question that challenged me: don't I have the right not to buy health insurance? It was one that I was honestly unable to answer... well, until now anyway. We all know how it is about coming up with the perfect response long after the discussion's ended, right?

At any rate, my response is actually quite simple. Making it so that employers and insurance companies can deny certain types of coverage (or, as with the thankfully dead Blunt amendment, any coverage for any moral or religious reason) does not make me feel more free, it makes me feel more restrained. Making it so that I have to explain to employers why I need certain kinds of health care does not make me feel more free, it makes me feel more restrained. Making it so that I am at the mercy of insurance companies who can deny me coverage for whatever reason they damn well please does not make me feel more free, it makes me feel more restrained!

And the flip side? Telling me that I have to buy health insurance does not make me feel more restrained. It reassures me that, backed by the authority of the United States government, I will have health insurance, that I will be able to access those rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that I have been promised. It reassures me that the government is actually doing something about its charge to "promote the general welfare" instead of just punting the issue off to corporations that do not give a damn about my actual well-being, only the amount of money that I'm giving them.

In short? Perhaps there is a right not to buy health insurance. (It's worth noting that in the ACA, even though there is a fine for those who ignore the mandate, no criminal action or liens can be imposed on people who don't pay.) But there are no completely unrestricted rights. And the right not to buy health insurance cannot and should not take precedence when it will end up restricting others' access to the same.

A Weekend in the Old Republic

Since Star Wars: The Old Republic was running a free trial period over the weekend, I figured that there was very little for me to lose. Well, okay, there might be some financial cost involved if their marketing tactic does end up sucking me into the game, but that matters less than you might think. I mean, I played both KotOR games, and I'm actually kind of curious to see what exactly a story-driven MMO looks like.

Unfortunately for BioWare, the restrictions placed on the free trial are what I'm remembering right now. Could someone explain to me how I'm supposed to play a social game when I'm locked out of all the general chat channels and can only reply to other people's whispers rather than send my own?

I mean, there are specific quests that are designed to be undertaken by a group of people, which is kind of interesting. They could afford to make it a little clearer that "HEROIC 2+" means "group quest", because I feel like the game never bothered to try and explain that, but it wasn't too hard to determine. Thankfully I did so by realizing that the enemy corpses were higher level than I was (someone must have just recently cleared that area out), because if I had tried to fight it probably wouldn't have gone well.

Unfortunately, I then proceeded to turn around and ignore those quests for the rest of my time with the free trial. Mostly because I simply felt I had no way of effectively talking to people about possibly grouping up for those quests. I suppose "say" and "yell" weren't locked, but those are both location specific and not really used for group setup.

I mean, the game was fun. I like the conversation mechanics; obviously there are never enough options to precisely get across what I feel like my character wants to say, but that's always going to be a problem with this kind of game. As with any other Star Wars game, your choices affect your alignment as far as the light side or the dark side is concerned, although I think some of the choices are kind of strange.

It is possible to be light-aligned as an Empire player, and I presume the reverse (dark-aligned Republic) is also possible. Of course, this means that there have to be conversation options for that. In one quest, one character in particular appealed to me by saying that he was working for the Empire to ensure that they had sufficient medical supplies for the troops, in an effort to stop me from doing something, and I could tell him to screw it (dark side) or agree with him (light side). This presented a problem for my character, who is pretty strongly dark-aligned, but is that way because she believes in the Empire - she's patriotic, effectively. I found it interesting that the choice that would assist the Empire's military might - this is the Sith Empire, the evil horde of darkness we're talking about - ended up being tagged as a light side choice.

Anyway, combat itself was honestly nothing interesting. I've played MMOs before, and this didn't break any major ground there. It was interesting to have a cover mechanic that was pretty much central to the way my character fought, and it affected my actions mostly because I tried to sneak around and fight from cover... but in the end it boils down to slamming on the number keys as soon as abilities come off of cooldown.

Can't really say whether or not I'm going to buy into this or not, honestly. Since I stopped playing Dark Age of Camelot years ago, MMOs haven't really been a thing for me, and I think it's telling that the biggest lure for me in The Old Republic is the storyline - the one part of the game that relies the least on interacting with other players is what catches my attention. Everything that makes the game an MMO was either solidly average or effectively inaccessible to me... and if I want a single-player experience, there are plenty of options that don't involve handing money to BioWare every month.

It's a perfectly solid game, but with a game that I have to pay a monthly fee for, I don't know if that quite cuts it. We'll see whether or not being unable to play the game ends up being unendurable.