Camp NaNoWriMo!

So there's this thing, on the Web. Something called National Novel Writing Month, in November, where the challenge is to write a fifty thousand word novel in a month. I would not go so far as to call myself a writer, but I have enjoyed this particular challenge for two years now.

Imagine my joy to discover that there's now a "summer camp" version of NaNoWriMo that's starting this summer, calling itself Camp NaNoWriMo. Same challenge, different month, as far as I can tell. And it's starting... well, in less than an hour. (From when I posted this, that is. "Already started" might be better to use.)

How could I resist? I'll be taking a shot at this, because writing is a fun and enjoyable challenge, and I'd like to believe mine is at least passable. I'll probably post excerpts and other info about the story that I'm writing throughout the month, too.

And I'm given to believe this will happen all over again in August...

Blog Notes

So I've added the Disqus comment system to this blog. Mostly because I've seen it in use on other blogs and (from what little I can see) it seems to work well. I am also letting anyone post comments, not just those with a Disqus account (for the moment), and I trust that this particular system will make controlling those comments easy enough, not that I expect to receive comments in enough volume to make that difficult in any case. Although now would be a good time to remind people that I expect civility and respect in comments on this blog.

I also added Site Meter. They track statistics for this blog, and collect information (namely extraordinarily unspecific location, technical details about your browser, and data about your visit) from anyone visiting it. More details can be found on their site about the specifics. Mostly I want to know where people are coming from and what they're looking at when they come. I believe you can tell your browser (although I admit I don't know how) not to run the kinds of scripts that Site Meter uses to get its information, if you're concerned about that aforementioned information becoming public.

That's really it. Just two changes that I figured I'd mention.

California Video Game Law Overturned: The First Amendment Consequences Thereof

According to kotaku.com, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday that California's recent law restricting the sale of violent video games to minors was unconstitutional, by a 7-2 vote.

The Supreme Court sided with the video game industry today, declaring a victor in the six-year legal match between the industry and the California lawmakers who wanted to make it a crime for anyone in the state to sell extremely violent games to kids.

In a 7-2 ruling Justice Antonin Scalia said the law does not comport with the First Amendment. He was joined by Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts, who had seemed sympathetic to California's concerns last year. Justices Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer, traditionally members of the court's right and left wings, respectively, joined in dissent.

With this decision, the Court establishes as precedent that video games should not be treated differently from other forms of media, despite their (usually) more interactive nature. This comes as a result of an opinion that represents a plurality of the court, authored by Justice Scalia. Justices Roberts and Alito argued in a separate, concurrent opinion that the restrictions laid out in the California law were unacceptably vague.

I can't say I'm entirely displeased with this, despite the note of pain it causes for me to have to agree with anything Justice Scalia's authored. I do think it is worthwhile to have that down on paper that video games are not different from everything that has come before them in terms of protected speech, although as a gamer myself I suspect I am slightly biased on the issue. And, as it happens, I also agree that some of the restrictions in the California law were too vague to be legally defensible.

But, I also think that we should be thinking very carefully about the messages we're sending. Of course there is no clear line of cause and effect between violent imagery and actions in video games and actual violence in the real world, at least not one that's widely accepted. It's just as true that acts of violence in the real world do not take place in a void, absent all connections to the culture that surrounds them. And perhaps it is time, or even past time, to start taking a more serious look at any connections that might exist.

... Hmm, that comes out a little too vague for even my preferences. Here it is then:

I agree with this particular ruling of the Supreme Court. I think it sets a valuable First Amendment precedent to have, equating video games with the media that's come before. And I think that nothing, perhaps short of direct divine intervention, will stop regular people from condemning whatever they please, for whatever reasons they care to name... including the possible harm that a pervasive acceptance of violence could have on our culture.

And they are welcome to do so. Freedom of expression protects you from the government's excesses, but it does not protect you from me. It's long past time that that was part of our First Amendment discussions.

Monterey Chronicles - Return Flight

Seriously, never fly Delta.

If there had been free Wi-Fi in the Twin Cities airport, I would have posted this from there last night. There was not, and so I couldn’t. I certainly had the time for it though. You see, our return flight had one layover at the Twin Cities, in Minnesota, that was supposed to be about an hour long. Thanks to a slight delay in our leg out from San Jose, that had been shortened to about 40 minutes by the time we were on the ground.

Once we got to the gate, the trouble began: the listed departure time was a full hour after what we were expecting. A prior flight had been delayed or something, thus meaning they wouldn’t have the plane for us to board until an hour later than they had been planning. And that was bad enough, but at least it gave us the time to get dinner or something and relax a little.

Then our gate changed, because the prior flight in our gate had some kind of mechanical problem that necessitated a 2-hour repair. (Take note: Delta is screwing up more than one flight today!) They had already been waiting for something like two hours already when they got this news, so… yeah. Well, we picked up and bounced on over to the new gate.

Where we discovered that the flight we were waiting on wasn’t going to be getting anywhere until 15 minutes before the new (delayed) departure time. Let’s see, cleaning, crew change, and boarding in 15 minutes…? Yeah, no. So now we were going to be delayed an hour and a half, factoring in a reasonable turnaround time.

And then? Then the announcement came on… somehow we no longer had a crew. They had been delayed out of La Guardia in New York, apparently. So they weren’t going to be here until over two hours after the scheduled departure time, and we couldn’t do anything to board or prepare the plane until we had a crew. End result: a delay of two and a half hours, a flight that was supposed to take off at 1919 finally getting out of the gate at 2249.

Anyone else want to know why I hate flying?

(Note: there are more Monterey Chronicles coming; I still have stories to tell about the vacation. I just had to rant about this.)

Unwarranted Assumptions

... You know, it's kind of a shame. I really do like Dilbert. What I can't stand anymore is the strip's creator.

Yes, Scott Adams, champion of men's rights, is at it yet again. Let's be clear: that is not a new blog post. It's been up for just over a week now, detailing how much it sucks to be a man in today's world. Apparently society takes us round-peg men and forces us to try and fit into square holes all our lives. And apparently our natural instincts are shameful and criminal on top of that, thus forcing us into a state of repressed urges and unhappiness.

I mean, I could detail all the reasons why this is just beyond ridiculous, but there are far more capable blogs that have done this already. I trust that anything I could say on the subject would just be rehashing things said on one of those three sites. (And I'm sure there are more people that have discussed the subject; that's not a comprehensive list.)

So what I'll take issue with instead is Scott Adams's chosen response to the criticism. You see, he argued that he's just been misunderstood, and challenged several websites to a debate on the matter. He got responses, which are worth reading in their entirety if only to see all the fails coming from a (admittedly self-proclaimed) "certified genius". Although perhaps he's right and I am just misunderstanding him. Well, go draw your own conclusions, right?

First, from the Jezebel debate...

"I think we can skip the question of whether I offended men, since that is not what is bothering Jezebel or Salon, just to name two. And most men correctly interpreted the post as saying that male sexual urges manifest differently in different men."

Um, I'm almost dead certain that's not what you actually said, which was something about the "natural instincts of men are shameful and criminal" in today's society. I would imagine you're trying to bank off of the one comment in the original post: "To be fair, if a man meets and marries the right woman, and she fulfills his needs, he might have no desire to tweet his meat to strangers. Everyone is different."

There's only one problem with that: that still assumes that all men have a desire for sex with women, and that women have to fulfill that supposedly natural instinct which all men share. I'm sure all of those men that have no desire for sex at all, or desire sex with other men, will thank you for that ridiculous assertion. Moving on...

"I have a higher opinion of women than you do, in the sense that I think men are genetically more prone to bad behavior."

Thanks ever so, I'll log your beliefs regarding my tendencies to bad behavior in the file. As it happens, I have a higher opinion of humanity than you do, in that I think that no one is "genetically" prone to bad behavior. Can you honestly show me proof otherwise?

Anyway, moving on to the (longer) Salon debate.

"I'm referring to the fact that men (gross generality alert) have hearts that want a relationship with one person and penises that want a thousand different women."

Rather than addressing (again!) the blatant assumption, I'll ask this instead: didn't the time it take you to type out "gross generality alert" clue you in to the fact that you were writing something a little questionable?

Making blanket assumptions like that is exactly the problem in the first place, and here we are, at it again. (Keeping in mind the fact that this is my interpretation of the matter; I speak for myself alone!) The point of progressivism in general is to leave those assumptions behind, in the past where they belong. The point of trying to establish a different society is to create one where people are people, each with their own identity and personality, rather than throwing everyone into one of two boxes, "men" and "women", and calling that useful. To create a society where "man" and "woman" can be aspects of identity rather than broad categories that justify such ridiculous assumptions about "natural instincts."

And hey, it'd be a society where we don't have to fit any round pegs into square holes. It'd be a world where we'd have round holes and square holes and star-shaped ones and ovals and so on and so forth to fit every possible meaning of the words "human being", in all its variable glory. If you prefer the society we have now, by all means keep reinforcing the narratives that preserve it.

Monterey Chronicles - Kayaking

Yesterday morning, I went on a kayaking tour of Monterey Bay, or at least the coastline from Fisherman's Wharf up to the Monterey Aquarium and back. For the people who have been there, you know what I'm talking about, and for the people who haven't, well, I think it was about a mile's worth of paddling, each way?

Really the distance wasn't the point. The point of this particular excursion was the wildlife. I can honestly say that I have not actually seen sea lions, harbor seals, or sea otters out in the wild (such as it is) before yesterday. Now I have. We got as close as all the relevant laws will allow, which is to say about 50 to 100 feet away. You see, if we get any closer, we'll disturb their natural activities, which could actually harm them in the end, so we're banned from doing so. The guide for our tour kept a careful watch on the tour (which was only five people, not counting him, so it wasn't exactly hard), but other kayakers out there had to be warned off at least once.

Probably the coolest part of the tour was right at the end, when we were paddling along a stone wall nicknamed the "Invertebrate Wall" by the tour guide. There were sea stars attached to the stone, which was pretty neat... but then the sea lion burst out of the water about 20 feet away. I was kind of worried about that whole distance thing, but they were busy feeding, and it's not like we could do anything about that. You could actually see fish jumping in every direction to try to get out of the way.

... Unfortunately, most of the allure here is visual, and I don't have any of the pictures on my computer. Well, if you're ever in Monterey, it's totally worth it to take a kayak out along the coastline and see what you can see. Trust me, I had fun with it.

Conditions for Citizenship

Some labels are harder to claim than others. I could not call myself a member of the U.S. military, for example, as that is a sharply defined organization, and one that I am demonstrably not a member of. However, thanks to the circumstances of my birth, I can call myself a citizen of the United States. But as I said in a certain introductory post a little while back, I would call myself a patriot. And I would think that should be far more important than where I was born.

Identity is in many ways something that you define yourself. Yet somehow, we've decided that paperwork should take precedence. That no matter how much of a patriot I (or more importantly, anyone else) may be, it's the passport that matters, not the spirit. No matter how much of a "good citizen" any one person is, if they didn't enter the country legally, they can't ever become one.

I think that might just be an injustice. If only because of the actual people that it simply vanishes. There's a story that was just published today on that, come to think of it. (Hat tip to Shakesville for letting me know about it.) The entire story's worth reading, but out of that entire saga, there's one thing I feel I need to really highlight here (emphasis mine):

I was paying state and federal taxes, but I was using an invalid Social Security card and writing false information on my employment forms. But that seemed better than depending on my grandparents or on Pat, Rich and Jim — or returning to a country I barely remembered. I convinced myself all would be O.K. if I lived up to the qualities of a “citizen”: hard work, self-reliance, love of my country.

It'd be nice if he was right, I think. But apparently, it doesn't matter how much you love your country. Perhaps it should.