Enoch

Anyone else read the title and think it was going to be about a mash-up between U2's most recent album and their first?

I'd rather have Leonard Bernstein and Steven Sondheim adapting a work of William Shakespeare than Andrew Lloyd Webber, Charles Hart, and Richard Stilgoe adapting a work of Gaston Leroux any day of the week. I think the weight of critical opinion is with me on this one. Charles Mingus: Pithecanthropus Erectus

Did they not get the memo from NWC when they bought the franchise? M&M games have been in 1st person since about 1985. Anyhow, FPSs don't interest me.

I don't even know where to start on this one. Without even getting into the fact the Webber's music is ridiculously repetitive and his lyrics make a 14-year-old's love poetry look good, I'll just say: West Side Story? Fiddler on the Roof? Sweeney Todd? I'm no great fan of musical theatre, but there's certainly a lot out there better than Phantom. P.S. No music right now-- at work. Last night I was listening to Dexter Gordon's "Doin' Allright" (album), mostly for the title track.

My handle comes out to be rather cerebral: Electronic Networked Observation and Calculation Humanoid.

What the heck is a "bathtub toaster"? Unless you mean "don't use your toaster while in the bathtub," which I suppose is sound advice.

This might be too obvious to mention, but you need a gas range. There are no words to express how much electric ranges suck.

Toothpaste for Dinner It's a mite inconsistent (today's entry isn't great), but when it's on, its amazing. Scroll down to the 7/7 or 7/19 entries for some brilliance.

The reason that AO games sell badly isn't public perception, it's the policies of major retailers. It's the same with films-- studios will chop a film to pieces to avoid an NC-17 rating not because the sex will drive consumers away, but because theatres (led by the major chains) simply refuse to show NC-17 films (presumably to avoid the public perception that it's a "dirty" theatre). Retailers (led by Wal-Mart) similarly refuse to stock AO-rated games, and any game that wants commercial success simply has to be on the shelves at Wal-Mart. It'll be interesting to see where this leads, though. It's such a popular title that retailers might want to revise their policies (I doubt many video/game rental places will move it "behind the curtain").

I just got this album, and it is amazing. As a singer, Anka is a competent crooner (perhaps a bit too captive to the rythmic & melodic interpretations of the originals); where the album really shines is in the big band/orchestral arrangements of recent (last 25 years or so) rock tunes. I know it sounds gimmicky, but the tunes consistently work better than most genre-crossing covers I can think of. Van Halen's "Jump" and Bon Jovi's "It's My Life," for example, make damn fine big band standards. Even suspect tunes like Oasis' "Wonderwall" and Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger" actually work better with a little touch of Vegas crooner schmaltz. But the real highlights are the arrangements of unlikely subjects like Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun." First, simply being able to understand the lyrics is neat (and it's just plain fun to hear Anka belt out "a mosquito, MY LI-BI-DO!"). But the horn & string parts are really well done and fit the songs in an unexpectedly appropriate way. Definitely a

Everyone has the right to sue on anything, as long as they don't mind it being dismissed for failure to state a legitimate claim the next day. You could sue Obsidian for making lousy video games, but you'd lose because federal judges have no choice but to dismiss-- there is no grounds for suit based on poor-quality video games. If the SCOTUS were to give that claim a chance of success in federal court, then federal power would be expanded, even though you could technically bring a suit on those grounds before. The same is true for this issue. Public use cases aren't brought (this one was an exception-- a test case brought by interest groups to see if the Connecticut SC or the SCOTUS would change their stance; it won't be repeated) because the litigants and their lawyers know that they have no chance of winning. If the dissenters had their way, federal judges would have gained the authority to question the public use decisions of local governments. That means more authority than they had before, when they were bound by precedent to defer to local determinations of public use (I maintain that this case actually didn't change any law; there is precedent from the 1950's that says basically the same thing (some case from Hawaii, if I recall)). First, lack of access to court is a problem inherent in the American rule that all litigants pay their own expenses. Not much to be done about that here, except to note that legal aid groups exist and law firms will often take cases pro bono or on contingent fee arrangements. They also have the resource of public outrage. Complain enough and local media will give you some coverage (they love the government-screwing-the-little-guy story). As for 'poor people' who are sitting on land that has appreciated in value, well, they ain't poor any more, now are they? They should sell their land and use the $ to increase their standard of living. I have a tough time worrying about the well-being of people who are sitting on land that has tripled in value. (cue world's smallest violin)

i think the reason i differ on this, however, is that the concept would not have been specifically addressed in the consitution had the framers wanted local governments to make this decision. i.e. they said this is a right that is borne into citizens, not something that could be interpreted away... hence, my view that the SC blew it. Fair point, although I would argue that the "public use" requirement is really only mentioned in passing. The 5th Amendment says "...nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." The emphasis is clearly on the "just compensation"-- the "public use" bit just serves to distinguish it from the "private property" bit. I disagree. If the dissenters had won, it creates a new right for individuals to sue in federal court and invalidate an action by a state or local government. It places federal oversight on a state/local action that previously had none. This is normally the type of thing that the conservative justices seek to avoid. Furthermore, if they had prevailed, it creates an incentive to build more government bureaucracies. If a city wants to, say, revitalize a community by building a new convention center, the dissent's argument would force them to build, own, and manage it (assuming that they need to use their eminent domain power to buy up some holdout landowners) while the majority leaves to door open for a more efficient private company to run the show. It seems to me that the latter alternative is more in tune with traditional conservative principles. Wrong. You can always get a competent appraisal and challenge the compensation as insufficiently "just"-- most Takings Clause litigation centers on exactly this issue. Landowners are entitled to what a willing buyer would pay a willing seller on the open market, and if you can prove in court that the government's offer is less than this, you will win. Amount of compensation is a non-issue here; the litigants can still challenge that in court if they want to. he's the only one close either way. i've already been reading he wants to stay on for a while. I've heard a few rumors that O'Connor might step down, but that might just be wishful thinking by some conservatives.

Just a note: If AMD wins this case, Intel does not get broken up. This is a civil anti-trust suit, not a criminal one. AMD would just win $ damages (which, as a punitive measure, are triple the damages that AMD can demonstrate it suffered), and maybe an injunction against some of Intel's actions. If you want to break up a company, you've got to get the Dep't of Justice or the Federal Trade Commission to take them on.

The file sharing ruling was MGM v. Grokster. It simply held (unanimously) that, if a company sets up its product or service intentionally to help people distribute material in violation of copyright laes, that company can be liable for the resulting damages to the holders of the copyrights. This sounds like a victory for the record companies, but it actually makes it pretty easy for the file-sharing services to protect themselves (i.e., put up prominent copyright warnings, don't advertise as a place to DL illegal music, etc.). The key precedent was a case from the 1980s holding that VHS recorders were OK, even though people could (and often did) use them to violate copyrights, because Sony didn't intend VCRs to be a copyright-evasion device.

Not necessarily. The Kelo case (Kelo v. New London) was really about federalism. The government has always been able to take property (this goes back long before independence), and the Constitution affirms that it still can (but requires "just compensation," which earlier legal systems didn't necessarily do). The Constitution requires that the takings be for a "public use." The question that the majority answered isn't "What is a public use?", it's "Who gets to decide what a public use is?" They concluded (correctly, I think) that local governments should make this call rather than federal courts, and that a taking that is turned over to a private developer isn't per se unreasonable. Although the taking in question in this case might be a bad policy (it probably is), the Supremes don't want to get the federal courts involved every time a local government does something dumb. I'm actually surprised that so many conservatives want such a large expansion of federal judicial authority. The bottom line here is that this case really didn't change anything. If landowners object to a taking of their property, they can resort to the political process, and even if that fails, they're still going to be paid the fair market value of their land. Oh, and the speculation is that C.J. Rehnquist will announce his retirement soon. He's 80, and he actually missed a good portion of this past term getting treatment for thyroid cancer. But, the speculation might be wrong; he could decide to hang on another year, and there's nothing anyone can do about it short of impeachment. (edit = added link to decision)

This isn't really a capitalism-socialism debate. Taks aside, American libertarians mostly like the idea of anti-trust law. They trust classical economics (to a fault), and neoclassical economics acknowledges that market power (monopoly, oligopoly, collusion, etc.) is a legitimate failure that certain free markets tend towards. They have issues with the specific language and the history of enforcement of American anti-trust law (rightfully so), but they acknowledge that the state can legitimately intervene to protect the free market from unfair competition. The problem with suits like this is that, unless there is direct evidence of collusion or the like, it is really hard to prove in court. The law has also evolved and recognized the influence of economics. I don't know the facts of this case, but it seems to me that this is more of a warning shot fired at Intel to watch itself and maybe dial-back the arm-twisting sales methods a notch.

I prefer the grey over the orange. How many other pistols can you take duck hunting?!

Re: Religion in the '04 presidential race: As mentioned above, the difference between the candidates in the '04 race wasn't so much that Bush was religious and Kerry was not. It's that Bush is very good at talking about religion and Kerry is not. Kerry has the understated New England manner, steeped in the idea that religion is not something you talk about in polite company. Bush, although his background is remarkably similar to Kerry's, is very comfortable in a more open Southern-style religiosity where it is commonplace to refer publicly to one's relationship with Christ. The result of all this is that, when Kerry talked about religion (as I'm sure his aides and polls told him to), it came off as very forced and disingenuous. He wasn't completely comfortable with it, and that can seem dishonest. Clinton, of course, was quite comfortable talking faith, which is one major reason for his electoral success. (The veracity of that faith in light of his personal life is another matter...) Anyhow, I find it interesting that Europeans think of American politics as very faith-based, yet most countries in Western Europe have nothing close to the blanket ban on establishment of religion that is in the American constitution. Many European nations have explicit institutional ties between the government and the major religion(s). I'm wondering which system better lends itself to freedom of (or from) religion: institutionalized religious organizations but little discussion of faith in policy debates, or a strict ban on establishment but with frequent discussions regarding religion and political candidates?

You don't want the answers to these questions... This post is satisfying your curiousity... Move along... But, seriously, there was one other continuity error that I thought of. It was pretty clear in ep 5 that Obi Wan didn't know that Luke had a twin (OW: "That boy is our last hope" Yoda: "No, there is another."), yet in ep. 3, he's in on the whole birth.

I agree. Pollution wasn't so bad but that corruption that limits you to 30 or so cities that can do something beyond just enlarging your cultural border was annoying. I ended up changing some values so that you can get a much larger amount of cities before have to worry about crippling corruption because of your number of cities. Distance corupption was fine though. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I think that, from a game design standpoint, pollution is the worse of the two. The "whack-a-mole" approach they took was just conceptually weak. You shouldn't be able to fix pollution problems just by recruiting more workers-- there should be noticeable side effects to using 'dirty' production methods. I think they're doing this by having factories, et al., affect public health (and thus production, pop growth, etc). This is a vast improvement-- more realistic and more fun to play. The corruption approach in Civ3 was, I think, more sound. There has to be way of enforcing a diminishing return to empire size (i.e., you should benefit less from gaining your 12th city than you did from gaining your 2nd). Without something filling this role, a large empire will always dominate a small one. Diminishing returns gives the underdogs a chance. The corruption stat isn't a perfect way to do this, but it's a decent attempt. I'm not sure how they'll accomplish this in the sequel.

Just a note on "moral values": It's a misnomer that the right is in favor of moral values, and the left is not. Both sides see their views as motivated by deeply moral beliefs. The difference is what the morality is based upon. The problem is that, in public opinion polls, "moral values" is often read as code for "Evangelical Christian moral values." The more conservative morality is a morality based on service to some higher purpose. Generally, this means religion of some kind. For adherents to this view, a particular act is defined a "moral" or "immoral" depending on existing dogma based on interpretations of some historically-revealed truth. (disclaimer: yes, there are deeply religious liberals who find support for their political views in ancient texts. As anyone else describing populations as "liberal" or "conservative," I am generalizing a bit.) The more liberal morality is a morality based upon fulfillment of ones inner potential. Thus, there is strong liberal support for public education, family planning, aid to the poor (since economic realities often prevent self-fulfillment), etc. "The Joy of Sex," for example, is a very moral book, according to this view-- it helps people lead happy, fulfilling lives, and society as a whole is bettered. This is, of course, entirely separate from analysis of the efficacy of recent domestic and foreign policy decision, and the political-economy questions regarding how involved government should be in the rest of the society...

Bane of the Cosmic Forge was #6. Its probably the one that I've spent the most time with. Got stuck towards the end, though. I've played 6-8. #7 (Crusaders of the Dark Savant) was frustrating in that there were hidden timers in the game (and, as Feargus mentioned, a huge world to explore). If you didn't get to quest item X before an unknown amount of time, one of the other factions in the game is assumed to have found it first. This got me frustrated enough to quit halfway through. #8, as mentioned above, had its problems, but was mostly fun. The strongpoint of the whole series has to be the huge variety of well-balanced character classes & races. This made party construction and development particularly entertaining.

I ran through Zelda 2 again a couple of years ago on an emulator. I was never among those criticizing that game for departures from the original. Rather, I fault it for being far too ridiculously difficult at the end. The climb up death mountain always consumed all of my lives and patience. Up to that point, though, I agree that it was a great and underappreciated game. As for SP and Tanu, thanks for the input. I'll look into those titles-- any further info on them would be helpful!

So, I recieved a GBA a couple of months ago. It's been fun so far-- a nice distraction for sitting on the can or biding time while my girlfriend has the remote control. But I've finished a Link to the Past, and am bored with Mario 3. What else is out there that I should try?

But good luck getting them to play properly on a modern machine. The soundcard settings are particularly difficult to get right.