Elizabeth Warren kicks ass

Elizabeth Warren: "Well, let me put it this way: If you don't fight for it, the chances are zero."

I wish more Democrats thought like that!

And here she is talking about student loans:

How black people get away with everything

Racists claim that blacks, unlike whites, can get away with anything. Oh, we poor, poor white people, huh? (Frankly, that whining gets really embarrassing for most of us.)

And yes, Zimmerman supporters are actually claiming that he wouldn't have been charged at all if he'd been black. Can you believe that? How can they say something like that with a straight face? They have to know they're lying, don't they?

Or are they just that stupid? I know that faith-based people can believe anything if they really want to believe it, but aren't there any limits at all?

Forget about the anecdotes here. Anecdotal evidence isn't really evidence at all. But even without that research Ana Kasparian mentions, how could you be dumb enough to believe that black people are advantaged in a majority white nation?

Here's how Fox puts it:

The Colbert Report
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I had to post that, just because it's Fox 'News.' But I've seen that here in Nebraska, too. The media are just desperate to show rioting black people. Yes, they have a narrative they're trying to push, but also, sensationalism sells. Fear sells.

Fox 'News' makes loads of money pushing irrational fear. Do you think that other media companies - corporations all - don't notice that? It's not just the NRA making money - from the gun and ammo manufacturers who back them - by pushing fear. Fear is very, very lucrative for many people.

And it's very useful for right-wing politicians, too - especially when we have a black president. Note that this isn't a conspiracy, because you don't need a conspiracy when everyone can see the benefits of pushing fear for themselves.

Tweeting your way out of Purgatory

(Jesus and Mo)

Jesus and Mo has really been on a roll lately,... but you can't make this stuff up. Here's Ophelia Benson with the background on this:

Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Vatican offers ‘time off purgatory’ to followers of Pope Francis tweets

[gasp] On the one hand purgatory, on the other hand tweets.

HahahahahahahahahahahahahaHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

In its latest attempt to keep up with the times the Vatican has married one of its oldest traditions to the world of social media by offering “indulgences” to followers of Pope Francis’ tweets.

The church’s granted indulgences reduce the time Catholics believe they will have to spend in purgatory after they have confessed and been absolved of their sins.

Reduce the time Catholics believe they will have to spend in purgatory? What good is that?? Surely the believers want the indulgences to reduce the actual time Catholics have to spend in purgatory. I wonder if that’s the actual deal, or if it’s just the reporter’s clumsy attempt to say that some people don’t believe in purgatory. ...

Oh dear god, how can anyone take them seriously? It makes as much sense as taking Sylvia Browne seriously.

No kidding! Indulgences? I remember reading about them in history class, but I thought that ended with the Middle Ages (as the Catholic Church should have ended then, too).

But I guess you can believe in anything when you've been raised to believe it, huh? The sad thing is that non-Catholics will eagerly laugh at this, while believing similarly insane things when it's their own religion.

George Zimmerman... acquitted

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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I wasn't greatly surprised by this verdict, given Florida's loony, NRA-sponsored gun laws. As long as you make sure to kill the person you're shooting, so there are no eye-witnesses, you can claim anything you want.

And sure, George Zimmerman might have been scared. So what? Trayvon Martin was probably scared, too - with a lot more reason, as it turned out.

Zimmerman tracked down an unarmed teenager who was minding his own business (or, as it's called in the criminal world, 'walking while black'), got out of his vehicle, accosted the unarmed kid and shot him dead.

Without a gun, Zimmerman would never have done any of this. Without a gun, he would have obeyed police orders. Without a gun, he would have stayed in his vehicle and never confronted Martin at all.

But if he'd still done all that, without a gun, no one would have died.

And now that an innocent teenager is dead for no reason, now that his killer has been acquitted - because he claimed to have been scared - that killer can get his gun back and continue to confront unarmed kids again, if he wants.

This is absolutely incredible, isn't it? It's just mind-blowing!

Well, I suspect that Trayvon Martin will be the last black teenager to walk Florida sidewalks without a gun of his own, don't you? Then, you'll just have to make sure you get scared before the other guy does! (Of course, as the NRA always tells us, that will just make us all safer.)

But note, as John Oliver points out, when you're in Florida and you pull a gun, make sure you kill the person who scares you, even if he's unarmed. Because if you just shoot to scare him, you're going to be in big, big trouble!

Viscera Cleanup Detail

Sorry I haven't been posting lately. As you can see, I've been busy. :)

Nah, that's not me. In fact, that makes most of the jobs I've had seem pretty good (not all of them, but most).

But, sometimes, all jobs get to feel like that, don't they? And, sometimes, we all get a little crazy. I can sympathize with this janitor, I really can.

But he's definitely going to get fired. No doubt about that.

PS. Here's the game. It's still in 'early alpha,' apparently, and I don't know what they've got planned. It's pretty funny as is, though - at least, if you're a gamer.

Why can't you leave religion alone?

(Jesus and Mo)

Jesus and Mo offers a hat tip to The Thinking Atheist, who notes, in part:

It's everywhere. Religion is a pounding drum that has gone mostly unanswered for a long, long time. And religion is not satisfied with merely existing quietly in the homes and hearts of the faithful. Its very nature compels the believer to proselytize, preach, promote, convince, convert and prevail. If you play on the team of the religious, your game plan is to stay, always, on offense.

Throughout our history, those who raise a simple hand of protest against these advances have been portrayed as the real problem. Religion has attempted to marginalize and defeat legitimate questions and concerns by indignantly portraying any resistors as misguided, immoral, rudderless, angry, miserable, lost and alone.

And when skepticism challenges wildly improbable (or impossible) stories found in the bible, the Qur'an and other holy books, the religious wail, "Why can't you just leave us alone?"

The irony is thick.

PS. And lest you think it's just Christianity and Islam which are the problem, check this out:

In 2009 Hindu extremists attacked women in a fashionable bar in the nearby city of Mangalore, accusing them of “debauched behaviour” for drinking and smoking.

They followed up with a warning that any couples courting on Valentine’s Day risked being frog-marched to the nearest temple and forced to marry.

Of course, it's the extremists in every religion who are the big problem. But moderates, who also believe by faith, provide cover for the crazies - those people who really believe, instead of just giving it lip service.

Don't get me wrong. We can live with religious believers who strongly support freedom of religion and the separation of church and state. Absolutely!

But faith is still a vice, not a virtue. And faith-based thinking is a terrible way to determine the truth of anything.

We're social animals, and most of what we do affects other people. So accepting reality, and trying to make sure our beliefs are actually true, has a big impact on society, not just on our own lives. That may be especially the case in democracies, but it's true everywhere.

This is why we can't leave religion alone. Certainly, religion won't leave us alone, especially when it gets the political power to do what it wants.

Non-Belief, Pt. 12: Proving God through Philosophy

I commonly ask religious believers if they have a good reason to believe that their god - or any god - actually exists. I'm a skeptic, so by "reason," I normally mean evidence. And by "evidence," I mean something which can't easily be explained as delusion or wishful-thinking.

So far, the answer has been "no." But I keep asking, because I'm always interested in the replies I get.

Frequently, I'll get an argument from ignorance: "Well, where did everything come from, if not from God?" But just because we don't know everything, that doesn't mean you can just make up your own explanation.

Centuries ago, we didn't know what the Sun was, so people decided that it must be a god - perhaps driving a golden chariot across the skies. The big theological question back then was, "Where does the Sun go at night?" Yes, that was a... burning theological question (if you'll excuse the pun) for centuries.

Well, if the Sun wasn't a god, what was it, then? Proto-scientists couldn't explain it, therefore it must be a god, right? Wrong. That's an argument from ignorance.

Often, I'll get 'evidence' that's not really evidence at all. The Bible, for example, isn't evidence. Nor is the Koran, or any other 'holy book.' If you think that one of them is evidence, do you think that all of them are evidence? I doubt it.

Feelings aren't evidence, either. Feelings exist, certainly, but they can be easily explained as delusion or wishful-thinking (and simply as human nature, since believers of all religions feel that their religion must be true).

Unusual events aren't necessarily evidence, either, even if they can be documented and independently verified (which is rare). In a world of 7 billion people, with uncounted numbers of events happening every second, unusual events are the norm. Learn statistics.

So if you can't use evidence - because you don't have any - to back up your beliefs, what can you use? Well, there's always philosophy, right?

(Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal)

OK, you can probably see what I think about philosophy. :)  I tend to agree with PZ Myers when he says this:

What’s missing in philosophy is that anvil of reality — that something to push against that allows us to test our conclusions against something other than internal consistency. It means philosophy is excellent at solving imaginary problems (which may be essential for understanding more mundane concerns), while science is excellent at solving the narrower domain of real problems. Science has something philosophy lacks: a solid foundation in empiricism. That’s a strength, not a weakness.

Science is evidence-based, which keeps it grounded in the real world. That's why science advances. That's why we've seen such incredible progress in science, because each step is built on a firm foundation of evidence.

Philosophy doesn't have that. Philosophy can build an imposing logical structure, but if it's all built on sand, it's just imaginary, not real. Sure, if you want to admit that your god is just imaginary, you'll get no argument from me. But if you want to claim that he's real, that's different.

I'll admit right from the start that I don't know much about philosophy, so that's not going to be my main argument here. However, when people tell you that they can prove God exists, they're normally talking about philosophical proofs.

Science is about evidence, not proof. In science, nothing can be "proved" to the extent that contrary evidence would be disregarded. In science, everything is open to further investigation.

I go further and claim that we can't actually "prove" anything when it comes to the real world. Can we prove that the Earth is round? How do you know that the Earth exists at all? We could all be living in a computer simulation. Or you could be a brain in a bottle, just hallucinating all this.

And if you accept the possibility of an omniscient, omnipotent god, he could do anything - by definition - including convincing all of humanity that the Earth is round, rather than flat. (Maybe God just has a weird sense of humor? At any rate, "God works in mysterious ways.")

No matter how much evidence we have, there are always other explanations which could be true. It's very unlike that they are true, though. And as a practical matter, if you expect to live any kind of rational life, we really need to go with the evidence.

So when religious apologists claim they can "prove" that their god exists, they're usually talking about philosophical proofs. Professional apologists produce slick videos and use clever patter in practiced debates, where they use arguments which sound very impressive to the uninformed. Well, how many of us know much about philosophy? Not me.

You can research the most common arguments - the ontological argument, the cosmological argument (and a variant, the Kalam cosmological argument), the transcendental argument, etc. - if you find that sort of thing interesting. Iron Chariots.org is a good resource for this.

As these arguments are refuted, they tend to get revised by apologists who simply believe what they believe and are desperate to convince you, too. If their arguments are proven wrong, they'll just find new arguments. But the old arguments never go away, because they remain useful to convince the ignorant. (They still sound impressive if you don't know where the logical fallacies lie.)

And believers - including anonymous commenters here - will often cut and paste arguments which they, themselves, don't understand. They've seen it elsewhere, and it sounded impressive. More to the point, it seemed to back up what they want to believe (almost always, what they were raised to believe).

Sure, you can check out Iron Chariots.org for reasons why a particular philosophical argument is wrong. You can even study philosophy yourself, if that's what you want. But I'm not particularly interested in philosophy, and it seems to me that there are easier ways to refute such nonsense.

As I noted, I prefer science, rather than philosophy, because science is evidence-based, and that keeps scientists grounded in the real world. One of the big results of that is that scientists regularly come to a consensus on scientific issues.

We don't see different conclusions depending on whether a scientist was born in India, in Italy, in Russia, or in Mississippi, but rather a consensus among scientists worldwide who've all been convinced by the evidence.

This doesn't mean that every single 'scientist' agrees (they're still human), and there's not a consensus on everything (if there were, we'd already know everything, so there'd be no need for further scientific research). But scientists do come to a consensus, because they're evidence-based.

So when it comes to questions of science, I don't have to be an expert in everything (which is impossible, anyway). I just have to understand the scientific method well enough to accept the scientific consensus, if there is one. (If there isn't, I simply reserve judgment.)

But what about questions of philosophy? Philosophy isn't evidence-based, so it's not grounded in the real world. And the result? Look at this poll of philosophers. Do you see a consensus on anything? They can't even get a simple majority to agree on many of those issues, and rarely much more than that.

So if you're going to 'prove' something using philosophy, you first need to explain why philosophers can't even agree among themselves, don't you think? Philosophers are the experts when it comes to philosophy. So what does it tell you when they can't even convince other philosophers?

And the really funny thing, when it comes to using philosophy to 'prove' God, is that one of the biggest areas of agreement among philosophers is that gods don't exist. That poll indicates that nearly 73% of philosophers are atheists (a very high percentage, compared to the lack of agreement among most other issues, don't you think?) versus only 15% who are theists. (Those theists, of course, include believers in all sorts of different gods, not just the Christian one, let alone the particular god of a particular Christian sect.)

So when a Christian apologist claims to be able to prove that God exists - his own god, of course - using a philosophical 'proof,' do you really need to refute that argument? Or can you just ask why, if what he's saying is true, that philosophers themselves overwhelmingly disagree?

Similarly, I'll frequently hear Creationists claim that they can disprove evolution. And if you don't know much about evolution yourself, maybe you'll believe them. But biologists - the experts in that particular field of expertise - overwhelmingly disagree.

When the people who know the most about a particular scientific issue are the least likely to agree with you, what are the rest of us to think? When you can mostly convince people who don't have a clue - people with little education and no background in that particular field - what does that say about your argument?

Well, this is the same way. Philosophers don't come to a consensus the way scientists do, and that's one reason to be wary of philosophical 'proofs' in the first place. But when you can supposedly 'prove' that God exists using philosophy, please explain why philosophers overwhelmingly disagree with you.

What you'll find is that these Christian apologists only convince the ignorant. Rather, they only convince people who already believe in that particular god. None of those people have been convinced by the argument itself, because they already believe for other reasons (normally, because they were raised to believe it, so they really, really want to believe it).

For the rest of us, it's hard to take a philosophical argument seriously when philosophers themselves overwhelmingly disagree. Until you can explain that, there's really no reason to investigate further, don't you think?

___
Note: the rest of my Non-Belief series is here.

Hitchens vs God (no contest)

This is from 2010, but... I still miss Christopher Hitchens.

Catholic Church shielded pedophile priests

Yeah, this certainly isn't a surprise, but it's always good to get additional documentation:

Roman Catholic Church officials in Milwaukee vigorously shielded pedophile priests and protected church funds from lawsuits during a decades-long sex abuse scandal, according to hundreds of newly released documents.

The documents include letters and deposition testimony from Cardinal and Archbishop of New York Timothy Dolan who, during his time as archbishop of Milwaukee from 2002 to 2009, appealed to Vatican on numerous occasions to help address the ongoing fallout from the scandal.

The 6,000 pages of documents related to eight decades of abuse cases showed in great detail the Milwaukee archdiocese regularly reassigned priests who were accused of sexual molestation to new parishes and Dolan himself asking the Vatican permission to transfer $57 million to a trust fund to protect it against court action.

So we can't be moral without 'God,' huh? Well, maybe churches should demonstrate that they can be moral with God. I'd stack my own morality up against that of the Catholic Church any day of the week!

If a priest can behave like this, you have to wonder what their god can do for ordinary people, don't you? But more than that, this demonstrates that Catholic officials care more for the church itself than for the church's members.

Well, those celibate old men have given up everything for the Catholic Church, haven't they? They don't have families, and they're not supposed to have a sex life. The church is not just a job, but their home, their family, their everything. What are someone else's children compared to that?

This is the problem with valuing an organization over people. If you'll move pedophiles to unsuspecting parishes in order to protect the institution, not caring at all about raped children, what won't you do?

Yeah, I know. This isn't your religion, right? (Or maybe it is. For some reason, Catholics stay Catholic, despite all this.)

But even Christians can't all agree on what Christianity is. Christians can't even come to a consensus on their own religion, let alone all the other religions in the world. That's because religion is faith-based, not evidence-based, so you just believe whatever you want to believe (almost always, what you were raised to believe).

If Christians had a good reason to believe what they believe, they wouldn't need faith. (And if they had a good reason - even one - they'd be quick to point it out to us atheists, too.)

So don't try to tell me that I can't be moral without God. And before you try to convince me your religious beliefs are true, maybe you believers should first get together and agree on what's true and what isn't. If you can't even come to a consensus among yourselves, why should I take you seriously?

Time to face reality, Darwinists

(Jesus and Mo)

Yes, Ray Comfort has a new video out which will "shatter the faith of the average believer in evolution."

Really, Banana Man? Like how you proved 'God' based on how perfect a domesticated fruit is? You see, Ray Comfort is so ignorant about science he didn't even realize that the wild banana is not what you find in your grocery stores.

But this is the guy who's going to disprove evolution? I'm sure the Nobel Prize Committee is paying close attention. :)

From the Christian News Network:

A major evangelistic ministry is preparing to launch a 30-minute documentary that Christian leaders say will offer a “devastating,” “lights out” challenge to the evolutionary worldview. ...

The main premise behind “Evolution vs. God” is that top evolutionary scientists cannot convincingly support their theory, and instead rely heavily on unfounded assumptions. Even when Comfort personally interviews influential evolutionists from major universities in the film (such as well-known atheist PZ Myers), they are unable to satisfyingly answer Comfort’s prodding questions.

“As you will see on “Evolution vs. God,”” Comfort stated, “not one of the experts could give me a whisper of evidence for Darwinian evolution. The movie is going to shatter the faith of the average believer in evolution, and strengthen the faith of every Christian.”

There's a reason why this talks about the opinions of Christian leaders, rather than biologists, because biologists actually know something about evolution.

Here, for example, is "well-known atheist" - and biology professor - PZ Myers:

I was one of those scientists. NO, I did not disagree with Dawkins about evolution or the evidence for evolution; NO, nothing I said provided any support to creationist claims; NO, there is not a lack of evidence for evolution.

What actually happened is that I briefly discussed the evidence for evolution — genetics and molecular biology of fish, transitional fossils, known phylogenies relating extant groups, and experimental work done on bacterial evolution in the lab, and Ray Comfort simply denied it all — the bacteria were still bacteria, the fish were still fish. I suspect the other scientists did likewise: we provided the evidence, Ray Comfort simply closed his eyes and denied it all.

And, of course, Comfort took those interviews, selected a few sentences out of context, and put them in his video to back up what he already believed - and has been trying to convince others his entire adult life.

Why would you listen to a religious leader about science, anyway? Why wouldn't you listen to scientists? Scientists at least know something - generally, a lot - about their own fields of expertise.

Western scientists were also overwhelmingly Christian when Darwin first proposed natural selection as the mechanism for an evolution they already could see in the fossil record. Christian churches, of course, all opposed it. Would 'God' choose such a horrible, bloodthirsty, wasteful process for his creation?

But scientists were convinced by the evidence, which has just gotten more and more overwhelming in the 150 years since then. How overwhelming? Well, overwhelming enough that most mainstream Christian denominations officially accept Darwinian evolution now, too.

Sure, they weasel around it. They claim that human evolution must have been "guided" by their god, despite the lack of evidence for that - and plenty of evidence against it.

But just as they were forced to accept that the Earth revolved around the Sun, despite what the Bible says (since arresting Galileo and threatening him with death didn't stop the progress of science), they were forced to accept the reality of evolution, too - though they don't like it much.

So you can accept science without giving up superstition, though you might have to modify your beliefs a bit. You'd also have to ignore the implications of evolution, and you'll certainly have to ignore the successes of evidence-based thinking, compared to the continuing failures of faith-based thinking, but you can do it.

But the really funny thing about all this is that, even if Ray Comfort could disprove evolution - and win a Nobel Prize, and become the most famous scientist since Einstein - that would do nothing to advance any belief in gods.

Evolution could be completely wrong, despite the abundant evidence, and it still wouldn't be evidence for a god. If evolution were proved wrong, the very best you could say is, "we don't know." In order to demonstrate that a god did it, you'd have to provide evidence backing up your claim. Disproving other claims - even if you could do it - wouldn't get you even one step closer to that.

But, despite what he says, Ray Comfort's video isn't designed to convince people who currently accept science. It's just designed to make believers feel better. And to get more donations from the faithful, no doubt.

Seth Andrews: Get them while they're young

Great, isn't it? This was a talk at the Oklahoma Freethought Convention in Oklahoma City a couple of weeks ago. There are others here. I haven't had time to watch them all yet, but I'm looking forward to it.

I've got Step One covered

(Savage Chickens)

I just can't figure out why I don't have more readers. Clearly, I've got Step One covered, right?  Hmm,... I must be falling down on Step Two, whatever that is. :)

Atheist comedy - the Great Flood

That's interesting... blot stats

Yeah, I haven't been blogging much this summer, and my blog stats show it. Actually, they dropped last summer and never recovered much. But they're not looking great now, either.

No problem. I'm sure I repeat myself. And I write this for me, mostly - just a way to get things off my chest. A good rant never hurt anyone, right? :)

But I do glance at my stats each week, both from StatCounter and the internal stats here. And for the past couple of weeks, my post with the most 'hits' - by far - is this one, from a year and a half ago, about "Mitt Romney's Bain Capital problem."

Why? I have absolutely no idea. Has there been something new in the news about that? If so, I haven't seen it. And I did a search myself without finding anything recent, at least at the top of the results. Blogger also lists the "search keywords" which presumably led people to my blog, but there's nothing even remotely relevant there, either.

Weird, isn't it? I'm happy enough for that particular post to get hits, because it's a long post, drawing from a variety of sources, leading up to a point. But as I note there, it's mostly just an introduction to my follow-up post on "Our Bain Capital problem" - and that one hasn't had any hits at all (well, not many, at least).

This stuff isn't important, I know, but it's strange, isn't it? Normally - almost every week - my most popular post is the one I wrote about house sparrows. Yeah, that's one of only six posts I've written which are even loosely connected to birds (this isn't exactly a nature blog), but apparently a lot of people in the world are looking for information about sparrows and find themselves here. (I'll bet they're surprised by that!)

But not last week. That house sparrows post wasn't even in the top ten last week. I guess, for some reason, all those people who normally search for sparrows suddenly lost interest last week, instead becoming curious about a failed presidential candidate's past business dealings.

Or is Blogger just making all this stuff up? :)

One neat thing I discovered today was that a link to my post about "How to deal with sexism" was added to the description (at YouTube) of one of the videos I embedded there. I didn't get a ton of hits from that, but apparently 19 people clicked on that link last week. (I thought it was neat because the link was posted at all, not so much from the traffic I got.)

Week after week, most of the hits I get - at least when it comes to older posts - are about computer games. Mostly, people seem to be looking for information about less commercial games - Dwarf Fortress (always popular), Cataclysm, UnReal World, etc. That's understandable, and it's great, too.

Unfortunately, these are games which are still in development - and continue in development for years and years, in fact - so I'm not sure how much help my older posts will be. Still, that apparently leads to hits on my computer games page, too - at least, that tends to be the most popular of those pages - so it's all good. :)

OK, none of this is important to anyone but me. Actually, it's not even very important to me, but I find it interesting. When it comes to blog stats, I understand some of this,... but some of it makes no sense at all. Well, maybe if I knew why people were suddenly interested in "Mitt Romney's Bain Capital problem," it would make sense, huh?

Any ideas?

The terrifying Bert and Ernie

These right-wingers are certainly getting hysterical, aren't they? The New Yorker is promoting child abuse with its Bert and Ernie cover? You know, I doubt if many children read The New Yorker. Just sayin'.

And they're sitting on a couch together, watching TV! Two muppets! Jebus, how innocuous can you get?

Besides, just because The New Yorker implies something about two puppet characters, that has nothing to do with Sesame Street. "'Criminitly,' they say. 'They're Muppets! They have no sexual orientation.'" Exactly!

Bryan Fischer's idea of a 'homosexual clinch'

(Salon)

I thought Fischer's reaction was hilarious. Admittedly, it would be more funny if it wasn't so hateful.

America comes out of the closet

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Distant Worlds: Shadows - pirates!

Terran Federation, 2126

I described my initial steps in Distant Worlds: Shadows a month ago, shortly after I bought the game. But I ended up starting over, when it was updated to a new version.

I don't think that was necessary - indeed, I'm pretty sure it wasn't. But I'm always tempted to start over when I'm playing games, since I keep thinking I can do better the next time. I'm not sure that's the case - certainly, I seem to be just as short of resources in this game - but that's the way it is.

And I'm still playing that game, at least. :)

But I thought I'd talk about pirates in this post, since I'm now 26 years into the game, and pirates are no longer the threat they were. Note that they've been a very grave threat - in fact, the only real threat I've faced. And I really like how that works.

There are a lot of pirate factions in the game (a good thing, in a way, since they also fight among themselves), and they start with ships and technology which we empires lost when galactic civilization collapsed previously. In particular, they have ships which can travel between star systems.

Diplomacy screen: most of these are pirate factions

As an empire - I'm playing a human democracy - the Terran Federation started off very weak, with literally nothing but a home planet. We had to build a space port before we could start building ships and slowly start exploring our own solar system.

The thing is, we couldn't even start researching hyperdrives until we discovered clues to the technology on another planet in our system. Despite the name, that initial technology, Warp Field Precursors, does grant the ability to build FTL ships. It's a primitive technology, still too slow for effective star travel, but it makes a huge difference in exploring (and building) within a solar system.

Anyway, there's really no sense in building anything but two or three exploration ships before you get that first hyperdrive technology. If you've played the game before, you'll know where to send them, but you can also just let them explore the system at random. But even after you've researched Warp Field Precursors, there's no sense in building fighting ships right away, because you're just too weak to fight (and that Warp Bubble Generator is much too slow).

Pirates show up almost immediately, so you really have no choice but to pay them protection money. Later, after you've built a few ships, you can cancel that, but don't believe that your escort ships are a match for theirs! They have a real technological advantage - and they've got the further advantage of being able to explore the galaxy before you do.

After you develop real hyperdrive technologies, you can start to explore the galaxy, yourself. And you can make construction ships to build mining facilities and other bases in nearby star systems. But the problem is trying to protect them from pirate raids. It does you no good to waste money and resources building what you can't defend.

One of my prosperous colony worlds

This is a very different dynamic from similar games (or even Distant Worlds games set in the 'classic' era), where you inevitably want to expand as quickly as possible. In the Age of Shadows, you have to be careful how quickly you expand, because it's very hard to protect what you've got from pirates.

I started in a particularly rich solar system (a starting option I chose), and I only built mines there, at first. Even so, it was hard to defend them. Pirate ships were faster and stronger. I needed a fleet to attack even one escort, and a fleet can't be everywhere at once. (Plus, note that defending yourself from pirates just makes them angrier.)

But it wasn't until I colonized a new planet that they really became a problem. I had a suitable planet in my home solar system, so I figured I could defend it OK. Well, pirates just sent wave after wave of ships against it. On the one hand, the AI wasn't smart enough to send them all at once, so I could defeat their ships piecemeal. But they still did a lot of damage.

I'm not sure if it wouldn't have been smarter just to pay them off, but throughout this game, I didn't want to give them money. Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute, right?  :)  I figured that tribute would just make them stronger, so I should use the money to build more ships, myself.

And maybe that was wise,.. but building ships - and repairing ships and bases - also requires resources. Also, there's a civilian economy - civilian freighters, mining ships, passenger ships - which suffers under frequent pirate attack. Even when you kill the pirates, it disrupts that civilian economy, as unarmed vessels flee the area.

My latest escort design

You can hire pirates to attack other pirates, but that's very expensive, and you don't know which pirate faction will accept the bid. Again, I thought it was better to use that money to build up my own fleets, but I'm just not sure that was the best decision I could have made.

Ordinary pirate ships are dangerous enough, but they can also find very advanced ships - far bigger and more powerful than anything you can build for a long, long time - as galactic derelicts. Those ships can take out an entire fleet by themselves. Early on, I was attacked by one capital ship - the biggest ship in the game - which I thought would destroy everything I had, all by itself.

That didn't happen, mostly because I'd designed my own escort ships - normally, a ship so small as to be completely worthless - making them much bigger, with better shielding, and arming them with rail guns. Rail guns bypass shields, so even when I couldn't get through the shielding of powerful pirate ships, I could still do some damage. A fleet of them drove off that pirate ship, even though I don't think I damaged it much.

I kept my ships in large fleets, so I could destroy lesser pirate ships before they could escape (and without taking too much damage myself). Bigger ships I tried to capture, and, eventually, I succeeded in capturing two capital ships from pirates (and my exploration ships found a couple of powerful derelicts, themselves).

Pirates can attack almost anywhere, but they tend to send wave after wave of small ships against the same colony. I don't know what the AI reasoning is, but that makes it easy to park a fleet there and defeat them. You still take damage, but you can wipe out a lot of pirate vessels that way! Still, they sometimes seem to have an unending supply of ships.

I didn't attack their space ports, not at first. Partly, I wanted to weaken them, but keep them attacking other pirates and my empire rivals. However, our closest and biggest 'rival' is friendly, and we were making money through trading with them. Eventually, I attacked and destroyed a few of the closest pirate bases, and that has made a huge difference in the number of pirate attacks we face.

That might be coincidence, I suppose. Certainly, we were destroying every ship they sent against us. And they have other space ports, so they can still build ships elsewhere. But those ports are some distance away, and we are far from the only enemy they face.

There are lots of different resources in the game

At any rate, there's been a significant drop in pirate attacks, so we've started expanding - rapidly. Just in case, I've got a powerful navy on guard in nearly every significant system, but without those constant pirate attacks, our young colonies are free to trade and to build. So the game really seems to have turned a corner.

We don't have any empire enemies, either. At least, we haven't been to war with any of them. We're quite willing to make friends - we benefit from peaceful trade - and those civilizations which don't like us tend to be weak and distant. (Our main ally has been fighting a war with a hostile civilization close to both of us, but so far, we haven't been drawn into the fight.)

Actually, we are very close to winning the game - at least, as the game defines it. We're a long, long way from researching everything in the technology tree, and certainly from expanding throughout the galaxy, but we're meeting most of our victory goals.

This game is a lot of fun, though it won't be to all tastes. It moves rather slowly, and there's a lot of micromanagement. You can set the AI to run anything you want. In fact, you can set the AI to run everything, while you just watch, if that's what you want to do. But the AI doesn't do things the way I would, so I end up... micromanaging - not everything, not by a long shot, but probably too much.

But there's always a lot to think about. You have to juggle your budget of course, but that's no different from most strategy games. The big difference here is resources. There are a lot of different resources in the game, and you need resources to do almost everything - including building mines to get more resources.

And all of those resources are delivered by civilian ships you don't control directly, so it's very easy to get bottlenecks. You need a healthy civilian economy, you need to provide effective security, and you need enough mines for every resource - and you still end up with work stalling for lack of a particular resource or resources.

It really is pretty complex. But if you like complex games, you might check this one out. I think the whole bundle is still on sale at 40% off, but that won't last much longer.

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Note: Check here for more posts about PC games.

Gutting the 1965 Voting Rights Act

I'm not going to add much, since Cenk Uygur does such a good job here, but just remember that it's the five Republicans on the Supreme Court who decided this (just as it was the five Republicans on the Supreme Court who gave us George W. Bush as president).

You don't think they have a partisan political reason for gutting the Voting Rights Act? Ha!

Let me just close with some quotes from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's dissent:

1. "The sad irony of today’s decision lies in its utter failure to grasp why the [Voting Rights Act] has proven effective ... Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet."

2. "When confronting the most constitutionally invidious form of discrimination, and the most fundamental right in our democratic system, Congress' power to act is at its height."

3. "Congress approached the 2006 reauthorization of the VRA with great care and seriousness. The same cannot be said of the Court's opinion today. The Court makes no genuine attempt to engage with the massive legislative record that Congress assembled. Instead, it relies on increases in voter registration and turnout as if that were the whole story. See supra, at 18–19. Without even identifying a standard of review, the Court dismissively brushes off arguments based on "data from the record," and declines to enter the "debat[e about] what [the] record shows"…One would expect more from an opinion striking at the heart of the Nation's signal piece of civil-rights legislation."

4. "Just as buildings in California have a greater need to be earthquake­ proofed, places where there is greater racial polarization in voting have a greater need for prophylactic measures to prevent purposeful race discrimination."

"A Turn of Light" by Julie E. Czerneda

(cover image from Amazon.com)

Over the years, I've learned to trust my favorite authors. Even when a book doesn't sound appealing, I've usually been rewarded by giving it a try when it's from one of my very favorite authors - Lois McMaster Bujold, C. J. Cherryh, Connie Willis,... and, yes, Julie E. Czerneda.

So I didn't look very closely at the details of this one when I ordered it. Yes, A Turn of Light is fantasy, and I'd prefer science fiction. (Czerneda mainly writes space opera.) But I enjoy fantasy, too, so that wasn't a problem.

And this was a paperback, so I didn't have to make that decision. (Admittedly, it's a trade paperback, so almost as expensive as hardcover.) But I ordered it without paying much attention, because I was willing to give a favorite author the benefit of the doubt.

So I was shocked when it actually arrived to find that it's 854 pages long! The book is massive! Now, yes, her books have been getting longer and longer, but nothing previously like this.

And when I opened the front cover, I saw "Night's Edge: Book One." What? 854 pages and it's not even the complete story? (I would have been even more surprised had I realized then that the entire book is set in a tiny little village.)

First, let me assure you that, yes, this is a complete story. I assume that there will be sequels, but this is still a standalone book. You don't have to worry about that. And it held my attention, too.

As I say, the whole book is set in a very small village, and when I started reading, it seemed a bit... overly-descriptive - even leisurely. That might be accurate - and one reason why the book is so long - but I was never bored. The book held my attention throughout. But I did wonder a bit, at the start.

The fact is, this village is so small that everyone in it is important to the story. And the village itself is important. It's a magical place (in more ways than one).

The characters are really... nice. They're almost all very appealing, even those you don't expect to like. And if you want romance, well, the whole thing is filled with romance. But no sex. This is a fantasy novel, not a romance novel, and it's very definitely fantasy romance.

Oddly enough, for an old bachelor like me, I like that kind of thing. I like character-based fiction, and romance is frequently an important part of that. And I want to like the characters in a book, because I need to care about them, and innocent romance seems to help in that respect, too. (Personally, I never thought that text was a very good medium for pornography. Written sex never seems very realistic to me.)

At any rate, if you don't like romance, don't read this book. There's lots and lots of romance, and it all seems very obvious where it's going, right from the start. On the other hand, I had absolutely no idea where the fantasy was going, not until almost the very end.

It was kind of weird. Yes, there's a very unusual village, a very magical place, and the heroine who's desperate to travel the world isn't allowed to leave. So she doesn't. But,... what's going to happen? I didn't have a clue. I mean, I didn't know where the fantasy plot was going. The romance, as I say, seemed obvious from the start (all of the different pairings).

But this is a fantasy, and it was going somewhere. Don't get me wrong, it's not slow. Or, rather, it's slow, but it's entertaining enough that it doesn't seem slow. A Turn of Light certainly held my attention. Indeed, I had trouble putting the book down. (And that's a necessity, since 854 pages is a lot to read in one sitting!)

I'm afraid I can't describe it any better than this. It's a magical place with appealing characters and lots of romance,... and that describes most of the book. The plot advances, but it's never very clear where it's going (or it wasn't to me, at least). It wasn't even clear that it was advancing.

I liked that. Admittedly, when you get to the end, the result is not a surprise. But the fact that there was an end at all was surprising, at least a bit, since the book didn't really seem to be heading anywhere. (Of course, when I saw that "Book One," I was afraid there wouldn't be an end, not to this volume, at least.)

Sorry. I suspect that this is going to be a useless review to anyone else, but I really don't know what to say. I enjoyed it, and if you like long, romance-filled fantasy, you probably will, too. But if you want action, forget it. There is a fantasy plot here, but it doesn't get there quickly.

There's humor, and a slowly unfolding puzzle, and really nice characters, with lots and lots of romance. I suspect that some readers would absolutely hate it. But not me. I'll definitely buy the next one, probably without looking at the details. :)

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Note: My other book reviews are here.

Arma 3 beta

Arma 3 just went to beta, and there's been a bunch of new content added. If you bought the alpha version, as I did, the game is automatically updated on Steam.

If you haven't bought it yet, the price has gone up, from $32.99 while the game was still in alpha to $44.99 now (still cheaper than it will be when the final game is released, though).

It's a great game. Now, I don't usually play first-person shooters, but this game isn't like that. Yes, you can run-and-gun, but that's not how most people play it. Arma 3 rewards teamwork. It rewards thought.

Of course, you can play it any way you want, and you can find people who want to play the game that way, too. I don't normally play multiplayer games, either, but this one is just too much fun - at least, when you find compatible teammates. (I've been playing mostly with this small group. It's been great fun.)

This is a military simulation, of course, but you can take that as seriously, or not, as you wish. Some groups strive for the utmost 'realism,' right down to having a permanent officer structure. Some are completely unorganized, nothing but run-and-gun. Most are somewhere in the middle.

But the genius of the game is that you can play the way you want. And you can play with other people - all over the world - who want to play that way, too. (You can play with anonymous people on open servers, but that's not much fun. Most people find communities to join, so they can play with friends.)

The other thing to remember is that you're playing missions designed by other players. The Arma 3 developers have created the tools, but it's the Arma 3 community which creates the content. So the missions vary in quality, of course, but - much more than that - they differ in design.

So you don't just find compatible people to play with, you find compatible missions, too. And you can find a mod for almost anything. (If you don't find one, you can make one yourself.) That really makes the game diverse!

The Arma series has been around for awhile, and Arma 2 has a big following. So the most popular mods from that are being duplicated in Arma 3, too. This game is still in development, so all this is just beginning, but there's already a big variety of different play-styles. (Unfortunately, beginning players might get confused about the game when they stumble upon a Wasteland server, for example, thinking they're getting the vanilla game.)

I thought the trailer above was neat, but this video clip really explains the details of Arma 3 development:



But even that might give the wrong impression. Yes, this is a detailed military simulation, but you don't have to be a wargamer to enjoy it. I barely know one end of a rifle from another, and the details of military equipment interest me not at all.

If that kind of thing does interest you, then you can certainly find people in Arma 3 who share that interest. If you just want to play another first-person shooter, you can find people who'll share that desire, too (though you might be happier with one of the many other shooters out there).

Now me, I really like the teamwork in this game. I couldn't care less about military realism. (Let's face it, it's never going to be 'realistic' if death isn't permanent, and I don't want to play a game like that!) I don't care enough about military equipment to even keep one rifle straight from another. But I like the teamwork shown here:



The people I play with aren't this organized - and I'm certainly not - but we still try to work together as a team. When you play together regularly, you know what to expect. If it's not exactly what you want, you can just find a different group. There's a lot of diversity in Arma 3.

As I say, I don't play multiplayer games, not usually. I didn't even buy Arma 3 expecting to play it multiplayer. (You can play many of these missions by yourself.) I've tried multiplayer games before, but... frankly, it doesn't take too many jerks in an online game to ruin it for me.

But Arma 3 is different, because you're not always playing with strangers. Sure, everyone is a stranger at first, but you can play with the people you like to play with. (And most people aren't jerks.) It takes time, at first, to find people you're comfortable with. And they might not play exactly the way you want to play.

But it's easy to try a group and move on, if it's not what you wanted. Or you can create your own group. The Arma 3 community is diverse, and everyone seems to recognize that. If you're not a jerk, you're welcome in most of these groups,... but there are no hard feelings if it doesn't suit you and you decide to move on.

I don't know how long this will hold my attention, but I'm certainly enjoying Arma 3 now. Currently, I play with some older gamers on Saturday and Sunday nights. I've played with some great guys in Europe, too, but it's hard to find the time for that, since their evenings are my afternoons.

But it's easy to love this game. It's complicated at first, but you don't have to know everything. I'm still very much a newbie, but you don't have to be an expert to have fun at this. As inept as I am at anything approaching a first-person shooter, this game is fun!

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Note: Find more posts about computer games here.