Living in the Future

Sometimes, as I run along Lac Beauvert, listening to some impossibly fast, sampled drum-beats transmitted from a matchbox size hard-drive in my pocket and with an anonymous woman telling me I've travelled "Four. Point. Six. Five. Kilometers. At a rate of. Four. Minutes. Fifty. Five. Seconds. A kilometer.", deducing my distance and pace by the cadence of my footfall, I often wonder if I'm not living in the future, and that all that would be needed for my life to have taken that final step into science-fiction would be a little Heads-Up-Display in my eyesight, telling me how far I was going, what I was listening to, points of interest etc.

Oh wait...

The Guns'n'Weed VP

Consensus on the internet seems to regard Sarah Palin's nomination as a calculated and cynical grab at the disaffected Hillary Vote. This is transparently so, her nomination is absolutely a campaign decision rather than a governing one and seems to me to reflect a desperation among the GOP just as Biden's nomination reflects a presumption in the mood of the Democrats (Biden being nominated to govern, more than campaign).

But Palin seems to be alot more than this. She seems to be the perfect GOP candidate. She is attractive, young, forward-looking and female. She favours offshore drilling and the opening of the ANWR but is tempered with the instinctive, conservative environmentalism of the blue-collar north-west. She is a devout, pro-life Christian but is steeped in the guns'n'weed, leave me alone creed of the Alaskan polity. She has had an impressively perfect little life (beauty-queen, star athlete, childhood sweetheart) but struggles with the eminently relatable problems of bringing up a family (Disabled kids, custody battles).

In the campaign she will attract the base of the GOP without scaring off the independents, like George W Bush she will flourish and shine under the dimmed lights of lowered expectations and make Joe Biden look like an over-bearing bully, and she will do this all for the price of the 'experience' weapon.

Not a bad trade off really.

Robot Aliens

According to Steven Dick, there's a more than 50% chance that they are already there, ignoring us in their virtual worlds as we toil down here on our pile of mud.

I tend to disagree and like to think that on matters of such unknowable scale that my guess is as good as anyone else's. Someone has to win the lottery, be the first, be the only, and we've already beaten astronomical odds to be here at all, let alone at the stage where a technological singularity looms large within our lifetime or the next.

October 28th

So I have just over two months to find myself a computer that can play this. I only have so many organs, but then again, I should only be in the position I am just this once. Hmmm

Pandering to the Jock Demo

Martha Bayles laments the uncritical and accepted development of the taboo bashing, gross-out films of the Farrelly Brothers and Ben Stiller et al:

"this mentality can be summed up simply: Young men have no minds, souls, or characters worth bothering about; they care about nothing, respect nothing, and aspire to nothing. They are pure appetite and aggression, just waiting to be pandered to for money. So may the best panderer win."

I can partly agree with Bayles, in that for every Tropic Thunder or Kingpin there is ten or twelve Harold and Kumars or American Pie sequels: straight to DVD efforts, moulded by commitee and drained of any and all sophistication and wit until only the vomit, seminal fluid and mysoginism remains.

I think a far more apt target for Bayles' scorn is the advertising companies of America and Canada; in whose minds the male population really do have no minds, souls or characters, are simply animals of appetite and aggression, who buy beer so that they can fuck equally void, bland young things and who need to be tricked into buying toiletries by shaping them into manly truck wheels and calling them 'tools'.

Smear Campaigns: Odious but Ineffective?

Brendan Nyhan, commenting on a New York Times in Review piece, postulates on the supposed effectiveness of famous campaign ads:


"While I obviously have normative concerns about misleading campaign attacks, it's much less clear that the LBJ ad had "crushing smear power," that the Swift Boat ads "severely undercut" John Kerry, or that Michael Dukakis lost his 17-point lead in the polls as a result of the Willie Horton ad. The leading models of presidential elections predicted that Goldwater, Kerry, and Dukakis would lose. Journalists tend to construct post hoc narratives based on dramatic visuals from debates and campaign ads, ignoring the fundamentals that actually drive elections (the state of the economy, presidential approval, war casualties, etc.)"

This is fair enough, but I think the election of 2004 is somewhat different, being such a dead-heat for so long that it was inordinately responsive to the actions of 527's like the Swift Boat Vets (which, it seems, did have rather an effect on the polls, when any effect would have been decisive). With the last two elections being so close and the next seemingly not deviating from this emerging pattern, the 'smear' campaigns, their attempts to define candidates and the small effects these will have on the polls are all going to become more important, and of course, the more important they become, the more they will be integrated into a media narrative.

Whats interesting to me is whether, in times of national depression or distress, times when the "fundamentals that drive elections" are more urgent and felt more keenly by the electorate, such tactics are more or less effective.

Camping on the Athabasca

Spent the mid-week camping alongside the Athabasca river, just south of the falls. The wonderful thing about living in a national park is that all of this is literally just a walk away (or a half-hour drive, if you want the luxury of an outhouse with toilet roll and a ready made fire-pit)







Managed to get the Mantis (that orange triangle there) up in record time, and I got to find out the correct way to climb a pine tree.










The Athabasca river is COLD, too cold to do anything other than paddle up to your ankles for a maximum of 90 seconds. It also flings along a current that would sweep away any living thing, it served as a gorgeous backdrop, a lovely noise to sleep by and made a nice breeze to escape the 90F heat.

Empty Idealism and the Crushing of a Democracy

Christopher Hitchens has on more than one ocassion denounced foreign policy realists such as Brent Scowcroft, for their unabashed support for the status quo in places like Iraq and Darfur. He is absolutely right to do so, when the end result of these realist policies is the slow and torturous death of a people held under the genocidal rule of a gangster tyrant.

However, If the Russian-Georgia fighting has demonstrated anything, its that an empty and thoughtless idealism can be just as damaging as a cold and calculating realism.

Gregory Djerejian outlines this, comparing the rhetoric of John McCain in his reflection of the current US regime's (and Barack Obama's) desperate rush to have Georgia join NATO, to the cautious advice given by George Kennan:

"(E)xpanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold war era. Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking."

McCain, Obama and Bush all hold rather idealistic positions regarding Georgia, wishing to expand the NATO alliance, foster democracy in the caucuses and eventually bring to it the prosperity of the EU, all very laudable stuff. But when this idealism is empty, when words are used that implicate a form of action that is not forthcoming and when Georgian leaders are goaded into belligerent self-confidence by Dick Cheney, then America (and NATO) forfeits it's already slender credibility, with both the Russians and the Georgians, and a fledgling democracy is crushed by a Russian response.

2008; An Inevitably Retrospective Election.

George W. Bush can tout any number of disputable achievements he has presided over since 2000, all of which can and will be argued over by the partisans of the left and the right for years to come.

None of these achievements comes close to what he has managed to do to the idea of retrospective voting.

Retrospective voting, at its most basic level is the judgement of the voting public on the performance of an incumbent. For this it requires an incumbent, if the incumbent is not running for office, how can they be judged, negatively or positively, by the voter?

George W. Bush and the election of 2008 demonstrate the answer to this question.

Make no mistake, America has had a chance to endorse Mr Bush and his politics. All but two of the Republican nominees shared facets of his leadership style and admiration for his initiatives in office; Rudy Guiliani reflected the unnacountable and authoritarian way in which Bush and Cheney have prosecuted the 'war on terror', Mick Huckabee the bellicose religiousity and Mitt Romney the sneering cynicism and say-anything mode of campaigning that gave Bush and Cheney their 51%.

All three were rejected, with only Mick Huckabee garnering any kind of enthusiasm from his evangelical base. Instead the Republicans and America in general opted for John McCain and the only chance of saving the Republican brand from the stain of the Bush/Cheney administration.

Incredibly, the election of 2008 has already become a retrospective renunciation of George W. Bush, before a ballot is cast and whatever the result may be.

Procedurally Generating Worlds

Jim Rossignol writes in Wired about the use of algorithms to create procedurally generated worlds.

A tool that harnesses the power of algorithmic code to create giant worlds is a life-line to small developers who, as Rossignol notes, dont have the man-power of a Rockstar Games to create the individual alleyways and architecture of a New York size city.

I've often thought, since Sim City 4 refused to allow the computer to generate fresh terrain for me (couldnt be arsed to build mountains and spray trees and bears everywhere), about the application of algorithms to create landscapes.

So far, such tools are only practical for the broad and stylistic worlds of upcoming indie games such as Love or Introversion's Subversion. However I can see it eventually becoming useful to such world-crafters as Bethesda, whose giant lands tend to be rather sparse and dappled with cookie-cutter huts and villages. With an algorithm creating the world for them within defined parameters, it would free up man-power to individualise the virtual landscape and add depth to their virtual country, something for which they have had to rely on an army of unpaid, independent modders to add after the fact.

Algorithms will soon be able to paint the broad strokes of a developers work, allowing them to focus on the finer details.

Storms

Stood by the window the other night to watch a storm explode behind Signal Mountain. There was not a cloud in the sky, the stars were out, but an unseen electrical storm raged a few miles behind the mountain, so that all we could see was the flare of an unseen lightning strike. It was pretty cool.

The best storms I have ever seen have been in Canada, one, while sat on the porch at 24 Cross Street, seemed to carry the entire weight of northern Ontario on it. Watching the storm I could see what drove transcendalists like Walt Whitman to worship North America as they did...it felt like we were on the edge of civilisation looking out to a roiling and endless wilderness.

The MOST impressive storm swept over us in Bon Echo provincial park, I can remember lying down and idly watching it blow up in the distance and drive toward us. A sharp wind blew, the pressure in the air changed and we all looked at each other for a second before scrambling to save our chili and pull down our Mantis(tm) dining tent around us. In less than five minutes we were pretty much in the centre of the storm, hanging on to the Mantis(tm) for dear life, the lightning lit up the orange fabric of the tent like a strobe disco, illuminating the darkness every second or so to highlight panicked and smiling faces, it was a blast. It ruined our tent, we slept in rainwater that night, but it was pretty feckin' awesome.

Canada is....

...Botwood Falls, Bedford, Belleterre, Bancroft, Bearskin Lake, Brandon, Boissevain, Bathurst Inlet, Biggar, Buffalo Head Prairie, Burns Lake, Burwarm Landing, Beaver Creek...

Olympics? What Olympics?

Having no TV and three radio stations (two of which are identical, classic-rock stations) the Olympics are passing me by.

The only thing to have attracted my attention thus far is the disgraceful behaviour of some American athletes, who emerged from their plane wearing gas masks, as if the slightest intake of Chinese air would infect them with some kind of horrible disease. Behaviour like this strikes me as not only incredibly rude but bordering on xenophobia in the ease and rush to believe the very worst exaggerations about Beijing and its air. The athletes have since apologised.

Canoeing on Lac Beauvert

Compliments of a good friend here at JPL, Sarah and I got a free canoe rental and decided to cool off in the 30 degree heat by pottering around Lac Beauvert.

The water looks incredible, so clear and colourful that it didnt look real. Sadly, things like that tend to bring to mind videogames to me, so I looked at how fantastic the water looked and thought of the fancy-pants DX10 water of Crysis. Sad but true.

Lac Beauvert is essentially a big bowl of ice-water, so while the water looks incredibly inviting as you swelter under the noon-day sun, its actually bloody freezing cold.

Perhaps the most incredible thing about our brief time on the lake was the visit of a pair of loons. We've been camping many times, Sarah and me, and Loons have always been, to me, the sound of the dusk and dawn and stolen glimpses of dots on the horizon. Evidently the loons around here are quite accustomed to the presence of people, they glided singing by our boat with little caution, only diving under the water when it looked like we might collide. The clarity of the water meant that we could see them swimming, an impossible sight in the murky lakes of Ontario, and an incredible one.

Jasper + iPod + Rotersand

1km
My leg aches a little bit, the muscles there, like pieces of chewing gum, need to be worked before they are supple enough to withstand the constant impact of the asphalt road leading out of Jasper Park Lodge. Dare to Live makes for an energetic start, a slight, pulsating element of trance to push me off the starting blocks.

3km
Reaching the bridge over the Athabasca river, I'm just about getting into my stride. Looking to my left I get one of the best views of Pyramid mountain. I cross all three bridges and head down into the trail that leads to Jasper, the hardest part is just ahead and Storm begins to stir on my iPod.

4km
A slight incline punishes my legs and leaves my heart bursting, Storm reaches its peak, it's explosive and pulsating beat pushes me up the path until I reach the top, gasping and struggling to lift my legs in the heat.

Once I reach the top of the path, Storm clears, as if on cue, and the relaxed, peaceful chords of By the Waters take over, reflecting the sheer bloody relief of seeing a lovely downhill road stretch out before me, with Signal Mountain squatting happily behind it.

6km

This is the point where I start begging myself to stop, no music really helps here, but the slow and strained chords The Last Ship (Part 2) reflect my mood pretty perfectly. The hard parts over but the end is still pretty far away. I'm trudging on down what seems an endless bloody road, my body is changing gears and my legs hurt. This is the longest kilometer.

7.5km

Things are a lot easier now, psychologically I know that I'm pretty close to the end, and I seem to have caught a second wind. I've left the long winding road and moved onto a sandy trail. I clap my hands here, I'm still quite close to the Lodge and this trail is well-used, but all the bear encounters I've been involved in or heard about have been within walking distance of where people live (including one cranky and injured bear strolling around the Baseball diamond outside my apartment). The trail takes me around Lac Beauvert and into the Lodge, over a lovely bridge with an awesome view of Mount Edith Cavell.

Once again, Rotersand seem to pre-empt my new found energy and compliment it with the cautiously buoyant and combative beats of Undone.

9km

I'm nearly done, I follow the trail around Lac Beauvert and through the Lodge's small marina. A lot of people come to the Lodge to get married in front of the lake and Mounts Whistler and Edith Cavel. As well as my own, I may be in the photographs of two other weddings, a sweaty blur in trackpants rather than a shaking blur in a kilt.

10km

I come off the trail at pretty much the same point I started, handily there is a start/finish line that pretty much exactly demarcates where my last kilometer ends. I tend to get tunnel vision at this point, staring listlessly at the small wooden barrier that marks the finish line. I have found it helps an awful lot to imagine Sarah there waiting for me, I'm hoping her actual presence in Vancouver will push me under the 52 minute mark.

Bioshock

I'm pissed off with Bioshock, I feel cheated, misled.

I'm sure I played 2K Boston's game, but all can recall is watching it, taking it in. The gameplay was purely incidental. I can remember the shock of being thrust in a flaming ocean, I can remember marvelling at the elegant, art-deco architecture, I can remember losing myself in the artistic consistency of the world 2K Boston had created, sucking in with a grinning appreciation it's nods to Ayn Rand. I remember still the trepidatious awe of my first encounter with a Big Daddy, the buzzing neon and stylish advertisements and I remember the brilliance of Andrew Ryan's revelation, one of those ingenious twists that transforms any consequent play-throughs into marathons of forehead-slapping disbelief.

All these things were enough that, having finished the game after a week, I left with the impression of having played one of those masterpieces that emerge for the PC every four or five years... a Deus Ex, or a System Shock or a Grim Fandango. I suspect the writers of every 95% and over review felt the same way.

It was only months later, in the shower that I remembered with a bemused "Hang on just a bloody minute!" about actually playing the game.

This time I remembered the plethora of weapons and powers I didnt use because the game literally threw ammunition at me after every fire-fight, I remembered the false choice that the game put to you: whether to hamper yourself and free the little girls or aid yourself in destroying them (2K Boston copped out and made them both pretty much equivalent, in gameplay terms) and I remembered feeling absolutely no tension whatsoever, safe in the knowledge that should anything go wrong I would respawn a few doors back to restart the firefight where I left off.

The only elements I struggled to remember were the anemic 'hacking' system and the incongruously over-blown boss fight.

The game is a bamboozle, a con-artist. It distracts with it's complex and thoughtful treatise on Objectivism, it's beautiful, consistent, unique and detailed world and it's superb and superbly delivered dialogue, pushing you obliviously through the kind of straight-forward, linear shoot'em up that you'd otherwise leave to marinade on the $5 shelf of Best Buy.

Months later and its still there, on your hard-drive, as you scratch your head and shake your fist at the bloody nerve of it!

Edmonton

Spent the Mid-Week in Edmonton with Sarah, with plans to spend the night at the Fairmont and the following day investigating the West Edmonton Mall.

The 366km drive East was lovely, a long, lonely high-way, punctuated by Hinton and Edson and a few tiny burgs. A lot of the way the only radio we received were a country-music station and 'The Rig', a rock-station for truckers.

Sarah remarked that Edmonton made her think of the Toronto of twenty years ago, she loved the kitsch, the faded old signage still painted on the side of a lot of the buildings and the public art that dotted the downtown.

It reminded me a lot of the big cities of the UK; friendly, unassuming, working-class cities like Birmingham or Glasgow. Edmonton seems to be adjusting to Alberta's incredible wealth, and prestige-stores and corporate art is squeezed where it can be among the dated, eighties facade of a lot of the buildings. The elegant, tall windows of an Apple or Abercrombie and Fitch are wedged under a sand-colored, pebble dashed monolith, itself bedecked with a Miami-Vice pink neon script.

The Fairmont was lovely, the first time i'd stayed in a really posh hotel (four diamond!), we had what should have been an inordinately expensive dinner, with an apropriately doting and avuncular waiter. A very lovely experience.

Curiously, the Alberta Legislature Building had a Union Jack and an Alberta flag, but not a Canadian flag.
The West Edmonton Mall really does look horrible from the outside, my heart sank a little as we got near it, a giant, sand coloured building, squatting on the horizon. Inside it reminded me a lot of the mall in Milton Keynes, rows of shops seperated by long water-features and plants, its probably four times the size of the Center:MK though. Inside we browsed around, like a pair of bush-whacked country-folk, wide-eyed and gasping at all the shiny things and the massive bookstores and the three (three!) La Senza stores.

Ended the day by watching The Dark Knight at the IMAX screen there, the IMAX and the speaker system were a world apart from the quaint wee cinema we watched the film in initially.