Enoch

The definitive consideration of the ethics of the cooking and eating of lobster, by the recently departed (and fantastically talented) David Foster Wallace: Consider the Lobster Edit: The pagination on Gormet's site makes the footnotes a pain to read, so here's a .pdf of the original magazine pages.

The annual AP All-Pro team has been announced. Link. The voters consistently do a better job with these selections than the popularity contest that is the Pro Bowl.

Are you going to have to go in on inauguration day? I would think all of North Va and Southern MD and everything in between will be at a standstill this time. Bonus holiday! 5 U.S.C. 6103(c ): It's going to be nuts. They're closing pretty much all of the bridges, and the Metro is going to be absolutely flooded with people. Personally, I have no desire to stand out in a crowd in the cold for 8 hours just so that I can say I was there. I can understand the emotional involvment that a lot of people have, but for my part, there's nothing wrong with the high-def view from my living room.

That's bloody interesting. At least to me. I was working on a logistics problem last year and I got SO CLOSE to this realisation. But of course it's obvious. You stockpile where transportation changes. You change transportation where transport mediums change. I said as much, but didn't make the connections. I'd feel more stupid, but I'm not a logistics expert. I'm hardly an expert either. The concept was covered in a college course I took on American economic history. We talked a bit about the settlement patterns in the colonial period, and the professor pointed out that all the early cities were founded either on natural harbors or on the fall line of navigable waterways. Because the economy at the time was largely based on agricultural production (mostly of grain and tobacco), and because transportation by boat was far far more efficient than any kind of land transportation, the settlement patterns pushed inward as far as they possibly could up every waterway, to minimize the shipping distance that had to be covered by wagon. Once that light went on in my brain, I started noticing it everywhere. Anyhow, speaking of transportation, this is now the second straight day that I have had a significant subway delay in getting to work. I am not looking forward to the delays that will inevitably result once all the crowds start getting to town for the inauguration in 2 weeks.

I have always found settlement patterns interesting, in terms of where cities grow. The key factor in most cases is a break in means of transportation. New Orleans, for example, had to arise where it did, because that's really the only place where you can switch cargo between Mississippi River-going vessels and sea-going vessels. In many ways, the economic development of much of the central U.S. depended on New Orleans being where it is. Another common location for cities is at the "fall line" of major rivers-- the point where falls or rapids or whatever make the river non-navigable to boats of any reasonable size. Thus, goods could be shipped up the river on boats, but had to transition to land transportation (or different boats on canals) at that point. Washington, DC is at such a location on the Potomac, as is Albany on the Hudson, and Philadelphia on the Delaware.

BAL over TEN. First team to 11 points wins! The two teams played very close early in the season (in Baltimore), with the Titans mounting a comeback win after a 3rd-quarter injury put the mediocre Frank Walker into a starting CB spot. CAR over ARI. The Cardinals' defensive resurgence last week was impressive, but I still don't think they have the D and the run game necessary to hold any lead that their passing game gets them. Plus, Julius Peppers. NYG over PHI. The last time these two teams played, Philly had a lot more motivation (NY had already clinched the division), extra time to rest and prepare (having played on Thanksgiving the week prior), the Giants were just going through the Plaxico mess, and Brandon Jacobs left the game with an injury in the 2nd quarter. This time, the Giants' are coming in healthy after a week off, the motivation is equivalent on both sides, and the offense has shown some life, post-Plax (see: Week 16 v. CAR). Giants should win (but I'm still very nervous). PIT over SD. A warm-weather team at Pittsburgh in January. Also, is it just me, or does Phil Rivers throw more spineless "toss the ball to an assistant coach because the guy I want is covered" passes than any other good QB in the league? To get anything going against a well-rested Steelers D, at Pittsburgh in January, he's going to have to take more risks.

I don't really see the poignancy in popping a few pills to instantly cure radiation sickness or in charging up the Highwayman with a fusion power cell. What poignancy Fallout had came from personal interactions (e.g., the Vault Dweller's exile at the close of FO1) and from human nature in general. (It was "War never changes," not "Nuclear power never changes.")

So I have finally gotten around to trying to find my house in FO3. Judging by relative distance from the ruins of downtown Bethesda, I found nothing but rocks in my neighborhood. But just a little further outside of town, I came across this homey little dwelling: It's not much, but the grill is a nice touch, and it comes with a sweet car. (If only I knew where to find a fuel cell controller...)

It was an interesting weekend. The big surprise to me was Arizona's defense. Their pass rush won the game for them, and I wasn't expecting that. Towards the beginning of the season, their rush looked strong, but it had really tailed off in the weeks since then. So it's a bit of a surprise to see the effectiveness with which they were able to tear up the Atlanta OL.

Springsteen -- Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street?

Ooh... Flying Dog. I love their Porter, and I'm not normally a big porter fan. One of these days, I'm going to have to drive out to Frederick for the tour of their brewery.

Lol They have no control over who is in their division and who they play. Records are as meaningless as stats. As long as you get to the dance, it don't matter how you get there. A whole new season starts this weekend, lets see who wants it more. Well, sure, you don't get bonus points in playoff games for having strong stats, or having a better record, or having played a stronger schedule, so it certainly doesn't matter to the teams and players involved. But as fans and as rational analysts, all of those things are bits of evidence that we should use to set our expectations for playoff teams. I really really hate the kind of sports analysis that attributes success in hindsight to meaningless concepts like "wanting it more," "momentum," and "swagger." They're all shorthand for lazy analysis that looks accurate in hindsight, but that actually fails to provide any kind of predictive insight to games that haven't been played yet. Sure, emotional and motivational factors have great effects on NFL games, but unless they're hanging out in the locker rooms of both teams for the entirety of the week leading up to the game, nobody has anywhere close to enough information upon which to base a prediction on the relative emotional states of the teams. Two caveats: First, real analysis of NFL games is very hard to do. The gap between the understanding of the sport that coaches, players, and management personnel have and the understanding that fans and sportswriters have is larger in the NFL than it is in any other sport. (Sadly, most sportswriters covering NFL football are not interested in brigding this gap with study of their own when they can simply crank out ill-informed columns on how Team A will win because it has Swagger.) So, unless we want to devote all of our free time to charting play-by-play results like NFL scouts do, we're left with educated guesses, aided by a few useful tools like DVOA. Second, all the analysis in the world is only going to get you 3/4ths of the way there. A heck of a lot of what goes on in a football game is attributable to nothing but dumb luck. Given a couple random bounces of an oblong ball, a few a random trips over divots in the turf, or a few gusts of wind at the wrong time, and you can see teams that are clearly inferior by any objective or subjective assessment pull off an upset victory. You won't hear many analysts, coaches, or players say it openly because it sounds like a cop-out, but random chance plays a huge role in who ends up the champion of a single-elimination playoff.

R.E.M. -- I Believe

Ha! The agency I work for made it into the game a little bit! In an undifferentiated office building involved in a minor quest, there is an active computer terminal that that has a little message from an employee at the time the bombs were dropped. Under her name, it indicates that she worked for the same agency I do. They moved our offices from DC to the VA side of the river, though...

Well, Kelv is a SD fan, and I did say that I thought it would be the most competitive (i.e., hard to predict) game of the weekend. The Colts have looked strong lately, but their streak to end the season has mostly come against lousy opposition (plus the meaningless backup-on-backup battle with Tennessee last week). The last good team they played was, oddly enough, at San Diego in week 12, and they needed a last-second 51-yard FG to win that one. I saw it as a 50/50 shot, and decided that I needed some variety after picking all the other road teams. I do think that whichever team wins that game has a meaningful chance of knocking off one of the top seeds next week. (Baltimore does too.)

Yeah, Volo is right that Philly's offense seems to disappear entirely for 1 game out of every 3. (And, as a Giants fan, I'd really prefer not to see the Eagles-- the only team to beat NYG at home this season-- in the second round.) But I just don't see how the Minnesota offense is going to do much of anything against Jim Johnson's D. As for ATL-ARI, Ryan has faded a little down the stretch, but Warner hasn't been so hot either (when he's playing teams besides the dregs that make up the remainder of the NFC West). The Cards might have a middle-of-the-pack run defense on the aggregate, but their performance in that aspect of the game has generally declined as the season wore on. I could see them winning in a shootout, but I'm betting that Atlanta will be able to control the ball effectively enough to prevent that. Oh, and Michael Turner is officially the next victim of the dreaded "Curse of 370." In short, running backs who get more than 370 carries in one NFL season either get hurt, have their effectiveness decrease substantially the following year, or are named "Eric Dickerson." Recent victims include Larry Johnson in 2006, Shaun Alexander in 2005, Ricky Williams in 2003, Eddie George in 2000, and both Terrell Davis and Jamal Anderson in 1998.

This thread needs a bump. It slipped when Kelv stopped his regular news wire updates, which is OK. But it's the Playoffs now! So, who you got in the first round? Saturday: 4:30 EST Atlanta Falcons at Arizona Cardinals 8:00 EST Indianapolis Colts at San Diego Chargers Sunday: 1:00 EST Baltimore Ravens at Miami Dolphins 4:30 EST Philadelphia Eagles at Minnesota Vikings I really like 3 of the road teams-- Atlanta, Baltimore, and Philly. The Cardinals have looked awful lately. The Ravens should be able to shut down Miami's offense and run the ball effectively. Minnesota has Tavaris Jackson at QB. Colts-Bolts is a tougher call. I think Indy is a slightly stronger squad right now, but based on past meetings SD matches up with them better than most teams do. I'll take San Diego to win, but I'm not at all confident in this one.

Deus Ex took itself seriously? You mean the accents that everyone spoke with in the Hong Kong level weren't a joke? Ye gods! (Seriously, though, the thing worth copying from Deus Ex is the way that game supported lots of different methods of problem-solving. Other than the uncertainty coming from not knowing the true loyalties of the other characters, the atmosphere was negligible.)

... I miss college.

Oh so now your an esquire eh wals? I don't suppose you also do crab fishing in the alaskan seas and nail hot chicks in adult film on the weekends as well. What the hell is it you actually do becuase I'm confused. For high-end litigation, all manner of consultants are often retained to help make the client's case. I recall Wals' summary of his vocation as a kind of freelance scientist. When the object of the suit is overtly technical, it is not uncommon for experts in the field to be involved in litigation strategy discussions and the like. Anyhow, best of luck with the family issues, Walsy. (And with the likely hangover to come.)

I've been playing the game for a couple days now (9-ish hours, currently level 4 or 5). So far, I agree that the AI has been disappointing, particularly in the area of threat recognition. When the enemies actually do detect a threat, they do OK. I've had opponents use grenades appropriately (when I was behind cover), flee when a limb gets crippled, and fight in styles appropriate to their weapons (rifle users keep their distance, pistol users usually try to get closer, etc.) But how hard would it be to have enemies actually notice when guns are being fired nearby, or to go investigate when they find a comrade lying on the ground with their head in three pieces? I was creeping through a dungeon (Hamilton's Hideout?) in sneak mode, and saw two raiders in a room ahead of me. I went into VATS to figure out what kind of firepower they're packing-- the sitting one had an assault rifle, and the guy pacing around had a melee weapon of some kind. Then I manually tried to line up a headshot with my hunting rifle on target that presented the greater threat-- the rifle-packing seated fellow. The shot took his head clean off, and I switched to the combat shotgun, in anticipation of the pipe-weilding dude charging. Nope. Not only did he not respond in any realistic manner to the decapitation of his buddy, he actually went and sat down on the very same chair that was still occupied by 90% of the other raider's corpse. It was nice of him to sit so still and let me line up a second decapitation, but a less-"WTF?!"-inducing reaction would have been nicer still.

Go rent "Double Indemnity" and "The Big Sleep"

I think there might be some undetected sarcasm going on here. "it were obvious that folks (almost w/o exception) liked Durlag's Tower better than they liked any single location in bg." Not to threadjack, but I didn't particularly enjoy Durlag's Tower. It was indubitably more artfully designed than the rest of BG. But I never actually had the patience to finish it for a few reasons. First, creeping along 6 feet at a time and waiting to see if I detect a trap is not particularly enjoyable gameplay. Second, IIRC, the story didn't give much motivation besides "there's treasure there" and "you just payed $30 for this expansion so you might as well go play it." Third, my party hit the XP cap before I got far in there (I played BG1 after TotSC was released, and reached the TotSC XP cap either before or early on during Durlags), which makes it seem more pointless. And, finally, if you haven't set your party up to abuse the BG1-optimal "chokepoint, summoned meatshields, ranged weapons/spells" mechanic, a couple of the fights in the dungeon are difficult enough to make you quit in frustration. Otherwise, I agree with Grom. SoZ feels like BG in that there is too little entertaining content spread out over too great an area, with mostly boring filler combat in the gaps.

Fallout 3. Installed it on Saturday evening, and played for about 6 hours over the weekend. Already had 2 tech problems-- the game locked up when messing with the pipboy just after exiting the vault, and the lag upon entering VATS seems to increase as playtime does (memory leak?), eventually culminating in the program going all "Not Responging" on me. Walking to work this morning, I realized that I hadn't updated my video drivers in rather a long time, so I'll try that tonight and see if it helps. Anyhow, the game is enjoyable so far. I've been wandering around on the Virginia side of the Potomac, doing some Megaton-based quests and generally getting the lay of the land. I keep marching off with the intention of finding Bethesda to see if there is anything interesting at or around the location of my house, but obstacles and interesting distractions keep popping up. (I quit last night shortly after entering .) I eventually also want to see if there's anything cool near my office, but that's in downtown DC, which I gather would be a bit too tough for my Level 4 character.

Got home from visiting with family. Installed Fallout 3. Played until I left the vault, and the game hard-locked on me.