Second-worst ad campaign ever:
Remember: “When your nose is running, it’s a marathon, not a sprint.”
(This may also be a test of the Facebook connector.)
‘Machigne’
Aside from being an excellently cromulent word, ‘machigne’ is what I often type when attempting to type ‘machine’. It seems to be because the ‘g’ allows for all of the transitions between letters to go from left hand to right hand and back:
machine: l,r,l,r,l,l,r*
machigne: l,r,l,r,l,r,l,r
*Note that this was really difficult to type, as it involved using one of the weakest fingers for two consecutive characters (‘l’, ‘,’).
Class Divisions
There are many computer games out there which have or purport to give the player the fighter/mage/thief* experience. The canonical examples for me are ‘Quest for Glory’ (Sierra) and ‘Keef the Thief’, probably because they were the first ones I played in the genre.
Most of these games will have different skills you can use to overcome the various obstacles the games throw your way. I’m interested in looking at these skills, and seeing how much each of the games actually lets you play a fighter, mage, or thief, and also how much each of the skills falls under one or more of these categories. But for this, well need some definitions…
The mage/non-mage division is probably the easiest to define, good canonical examples are ‘Ars Magica’ and the ‘Might and Magic’ series, where there are various types of magic users various types of non-magic users.
Mages:
– Basically, a mage is someone who can do things that are outside of what a human could do at a medieval tech. level**.
– They also have some sort of internal power reserve which they use to perform these feats, a power reserve which recharges over time or when they rest. This power reserve is sometimes the same as ‘stamina’ (GURPS), ans sometimes not (D&D, TES, etc…)
‘Fighters’ and ‘Thieves’ have skills that one could conceivably acquire as a very well-trained human. The main difference is in the techniques used to solve problems.
Fighters:
– Tend to use very straight-forward methods to solve problems, often involving combat.
– Fighters will tend to have more combat skills and options than others
Thieves:
– Thieves tend to use more stealth, trying to find an adversary’s weak points, and using more non-combat skills, many of which have less than legal uses.
– Thieves will tend to have a wider variety of skills than others
There are also various skills which any ‘adventurer’ would require to get by in a fantasy world. Depending on the particular game and its game balance, these skills may fall under any one of the ‘classes’ above.
*I’m stepping somewhat away from the D&D Fighter/Mage/Cleric/Thief paradigm, but may revisit this in the future. There are a large number of games which merge all magic users into one, and that’s what I want to explore. Also, the idea of a separate class of ‘healers’ is an interesting concept/conceit, and it may be interesting to see how this is reflective of a society where people damage themselves all the time, and rely on one member of the group to heal them, rather than doing things in a more sustainable/mindful manner…
**’Tech. levels’ were first codified (that I saw) by GURPS: http://gurps.wikia.com/wiki/Tech_Level. Most fantasy-type games feel like between 2 and 3 on this scale. Game balance wrt different ‘magic spells’ and their resepective tech. levels is a whole different interesting topic.
Personal Character Classes
Around the internet, you will find many quizzes which purport to tell you which archetypical ‘character class’ you most belong to. As you would expect, many of these quizzes are clickbait, and even if they weren’t, it’s relatively unlikely that the authors would have taken the time to poll some ‘gold standard*’ group of people to a statistically significant degree.
I’ve been (very slowly) taking a different tack. The plan was to write a story written from the perspective of a character falling into each each of each of the archetypes, to see which one(s) spoke to me the most**,***.
The first installment, ‘Druid’ currently has two parts available here:
*It does seem somewhat absurd to have a ‘gold standard’ of correctness for which fictional archetype one best fits into, but what can you do?
**The best analogy for this for me comes from the struggles of the protagonists in the Modesitt books ‘The Magic of Recluce’ and ‘The Magic Engineer’, where they say things out loud and see how their internal mental map/conscience twinges to see how true they are. Another analogy is presented by Paul Graham here: http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html where he talks about ‘essays’ being trying out ideas in written form to see how well they work.
***Note that this does not get into issues of differences between what you feel as a person vs. what type of character you would play in a game.
Wikipedia:Categories
So, you may know that the English-language Wikipedia has more than 5 million pages, with 10 edits/s and about 800 new articles per day.
What you may or may not know about is the intense and detailed structure that has grown up inside Wikipedia. Consider the following page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Battles_involving_England
”
This category includes historical battles in which unified Kingdom of England (10th century–1707) participated. Please see the category guidelines for more information.
See Category:Battles involving the Britons and Category:Battles involving the Anglo-Saxons for earlier battles.
See Category:Battles involving the United Kingdom for later battles.
Subcategories
This category has the following 19 subcategories, out of 19 total.
”
Think about what this means. Given the propensity for people to argue*, there were probably discussions about all aspects of this, such as which were the appropriate progentior and successor states, what qualifies as a battle, how to group categories and sub-categories, and that’s even before you argue about any one specific article. Of the many reasons I love Wikipedia, possibly the most useful is its ability to direct human arguing into something more useful.
Note that this is one category, and as of today, there are 361703 categories and sub-categories in English Wikipedia.
Also, I learned that ‘Deira’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deira was a real place, and possibly not just made up by David and Leigh Eddings. (Although, given how full namespaces currently are, it’s often difficult to know.)
*This is my favourite Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lamest_edit_wars
“That’s Not Funny!”
Scene: I’m in a conversation with two students, one male, one female, probably high school age.
The male student says: “How many feminists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”
Me, not missing a beat: “That’s not funny!”
Female student: “Yes!”
For those of who don’t see the joke, “That’s not funny!” is often the punchline to “How many feminists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?, playing on the perception of the sense of humour of feminists and feminism*.
As it turns out, both parties took my comment at face value (which was mostly what I intended), and it turned into a small teachable moment.
*This feels like a whole long discussion, mostly sad, about how people felt that making ‘punching down**’ jokes about women no longer socially acceptable was a ‘bad thing’. I feel like much has been said about this, and I have nothing useful to add.
**Perhaps more interestingly, it feels like this whole concept was aired and discussed long before the words ‘punching down’ (meaning making fun of those less fortunate or less privileged) entered the vernacular.
Tenagra, on the Ocean
“Yes, Piglet?” said Pooh.
“Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra,” said Piglet.
“Shaka, when the walls fell.” said Pooh.
Pic by Cathy Wappel
Words by Michael G Munz
The above pic came across my fb feed this morning.
Some random thoughts about this.
1) There exists this subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Tenagra/ which is, in the internet way, developing a similar-type language.
2) 
Hi, Abby. How are you?
Spock’s response to his mother’s question at the end of The Voyage Home.
Huh? What’s up with your communication skills today?
The aliens in “Darmok and Jalad.”
You’re… communicating only in obscure references to Star Trek.
Decker’s answer to Kirk saying “You saved the ship” in The Motion Picture.
And WHY exactly are you doing this?
The 74th Rule of Acquisition.
“Knowledge equals profit?” Okay, what the heck are you trying to build your knowledge for?
Kirk’s exclamation after Spock’s death.
Oh, that’s right. You’re going to a con.
MOUSEOVER TEXT: whenever I want to get laid, I just tell John ‘Spock in Amok Time’ and he knows EXACTLY what I mean
http://www.johnanderikaspeak.com/an/2012/05/12/1168/
3) The title of the post is somewhat ambiguous. It could be a reference to Dylan Thomas’ ‘A grief ago’, in its use of parts of speech, saying something deep about Tenagra, and the myths behind it leaving us behind on the seas of fleeting cultural memory… Or it could just be commenting that Tenagra was an island.
If you don’t understand the reference, this might help:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darmok
Regulatory Capture and NP-Completeness
A common conversation in our household:
S: “So, why do you think
Me: “Regulatory Capture.”
S: “Oh. Right. :(”
I like to sort this with my general wont to cut Gordian knots*, but perhaps it is also useful because it allows you to reduce the problem under discussion to a well-known problem, which is known to be insoluble in very specific ways.
Perhaps we will find that the solution to the P=?NP problem is the same as the problem of regulatory capture**. I think it’s more likely that P=?NP will be solved first.
*Or to be a troll.
**Regulatory capture I think was first described for me in ‘Yes, Prime Minister’, as the inevitable co-option of the body which regulates an industry by the industry which it regulates. This is generally because they talk to each other the most, combined with the huge financial incentives.
What Canadians want from their Government
Apparently, the new PM’s office thinks it’s:
– Recalls & Safety Alerts
– Weather
– Find A Job
– Write to the Troops
Which is actually probably not a bad top four, given what people care about and the time of year.
Digging a little deeper, I had no idea that there were Canadian soldiers involved in so many overseas missions:
http://www.forces.gc.ca/en/write-to-the-troops/mailing-instructions.page
OP CALUMET- Sinai, Egypte
OP CROCODILE – Democratic Republic of the Congo
OP FOUNDATION or IMPACT – Qatar
OP FOUNDATION (Bahrain)
OP FOUNDATION – Jordan
OP HAMLET – Port-au-Prince, Haïti
OP JADE – Middle East
OP KOBOLD – Pristina, Kosovo
OP PROTEUS – Jerusalem
OP SATURN and SOPRANO – Sudan
OP SNOWGOOSE – Cyprus
OP IMPACT – Kuwait
OP IMPACT – Baghdad, Iraq
Operational Support (OS) Detachment – Kuwait
CFS Alert – Alert, Nunavut, Canada
Canadian Ships
OP ADDENDA – Kabul, Afghanistan
OP REASSURANCE – Land Component
OP SIRONA (Sierra Leone)
OP UNIFIER (Ukraine)
It also seems to me that Justin Trudeau emphasizes his support and mention of Canadian Soldiers, perhaps to defray the (generally incorrect) notion that Conservative governments are better for the military. But perhaps this is just me being oversensitive.
”
“It’s the responsibility of government not to put soldiers into harm’s way except as a last resort, when it’s absolutely necessary to do so,” he said. “When we do send them into harm’s way we have to ensure that we’ve done everything in our power to find other methods to reach our objectives.”
”
http://www.nationalobserver.com/2015/11/04/opinion/you-have-no-idea-how-badass-trudeaus-defence-minister-really
http://www.pm.gc.ca/eng
Canadian Election, 2015
It was an interesting campaign. People seem to always talk about the length of it, but my favourite article talked about how it allowed each of the issues to come out one at a time, and actually receive some due consideration.
Anyways, a few random thoughts:
It felt at the start of the campaign that it was Mulcair’s election to lose. It felt like for whatever reason he didn’t seem to connect well with the electorate, definitely not like Jack Layton had been able to. Interestingly, it felt (at least from the few speeches I heard) like Justin Trudeau was the spiritual successor to Jack’s legacy, at least in the triumph of hope and science over fear.
There were also comments about ‘strategic voting’…My definition of strategic voting is for the rational voter to look at the possible outcomes, rank order them by desirability, and choose one of the choices they have within their power to push things along that track as far as possible. In Canada, this generally currently seems to mean voting for the person most likely to defeat the Conservative candidate in their riding. In Alberta, that’s probably a Liberal candidate, downtown*, much more likely an NDP candidate.
But for many people, the definition** of ‘strategic voting’ seems to be different, meaning ‘vote for the Liberals so the Conservatives don’t win, no matter how much you like the Liberals’. There were many ‘safe’ downtown non-Conservative seats, where people were ‘free to vote their conscience’, but it seems that those ridings went solidly Liberal as people took ‘strategic voting’ to mean ‘vote for the Liberals’. Or perhaps they were all voting for the Liberals. We may never know.
*I originally put ‘Quebec’ here, but that was before I saw this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Canada_2015_Federal_Election.svg, which shows the Liberal party with a plurality of votes and majority of seats in Quebec in 2015.
**There is a secondary, more subtle option here, which only takes place when there’s a minority. After the 2008 election, the Conservatives were able to control parliament with only 124 out of 308 seats. Had the Liberals or NDP had all of the 132 seats between them, there would not have been the constitutional crisis of 2008-9: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80%9309_Canadian_parliamentary_dispute Recently, it seems that the party with the most seats governs, and there do not seem to be stable coalitions between the 2nd and 3rd parties. This may have been a result of the Bloc Quebecois.
Interestingly, coalition governments seem to be much less common than one might think… This article suggests it may be because the leader of the party is no longer elected by backbenchers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_government#Canada