Some efforts to protect kids are ridiculous, demeaning, and ultimately crippling. Examples, in my opinion: banning dodge ball or running on the playground.

Others efforts are perfectly rational.

Sometimes there are differences of opinion about where the line is. The line doesn't get any easier to draw when it's your kids involved. It gets harder.

Case in point: today it's hovering at about 107 or 108 Fahrenheit, and dry as a bone, where I live. The air quality is moderate (which is much better than when I was growing up here). That's Southern California Autumn for you. Evan, 9, and Abby, 7, have soccer practice in the late afternoon, at about 5:30. It may cool down to 103 or so by then.

The girls' coach already canceled practice. The boys' coach is suggesting they will press on with practice and just take a lot of water breaks.

I'm thinking that 102-107 is a little hot for 9-year-olds to be having soccer practice. I have doubts that they'll learn anything or develop any skills under those conditions.

Rational actor, or hand-wringing parent?

It's a hard life, paying the rent by appearing as a costumed character. It's damn hot in that suit. The whole thing smells like a locker room. Visibility's terrible. Sticky children grope you. Parents take forever to take the damn picture. You're expected to act happy, even though your life is miserable, because you wear a costume for a living. And the jokes, always with the jokes at your expense.

So if you're just taking a moment for yourself, delaying your festival appearance as Elmo to browse in a music store and descant upon your abandoned dream of being a guitar teacher, and some asshole gets all up in your furry grill, it's completely understandable if you kick the crap out of him.

"He [Elmo] just wandered into the Guitar Center to look at instruments," Farrell said. That's when police say a man, who they said felt "threatened" by the Sesame Street star, attacked.

Farrell said the attack was "unprovoked."

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"He immediately thought (the man dressed as Elmo) was a threat," Farrell said. Farrell called the ensuing struggle a "very physical fight," with multiple punches thrown.

"Elmo got the best of the guy," Farrell said. "He broke two of his fingers."

I sympathize. I only have to wear a pinstripe suit, and it makes me want to break people's fingers all the time.

Hopefully, this guy can go home and unwind and tell his goldfish all about his day, and put this behind him.

For a brief, shining moment, it looked as if Earth was going to have a coordinated response plan for alien invasion.

Notice that I did not say an effective coordinated response plan. That's because the response was, in theory, going to be handled by a sub-agency of the United Nations.

During a talk Othman gave recently to fellow scientists, she said: “The continued search for extraterrestrial communication, by several entities, sustains the hope that some day humankind will receive signals from extraterrestrials.”When we do, we should have in place a coordinated response that takes into account all the sensitivities related to the subject. The UN is a ready-made mechanism for such coordination.”

Now, if the alien invasion fleet can be defeated through open defiance of parking laws, graft, nepotism, sexual abuse, bureaucracy, censorship, and Jew-bashing, I'm sure that the U.N. will keep us perfectly safe. Otherwise, I thinking we're going to get all blowed up.

Fortunately, the U.N. has disavowed this alien-greeting role. Looks as if it was a hoax all along. Just as well. If history is any guide, The United Nations Select Committee On Whether Humans Should Be Eaten would be chaired by Idi Amin, Jeffrey Dahmer, and The Blob.

Grandy reminded us all of how great Ultima IV was a few weeks ago.  Sadly, there was a story today about how young people can't stand the game. A professor has his students play the game as part of a class on the Art & History of Videogames. It doesn't go well.

His students complain about not getting what is going on, and don't read any of the extra materials (is there a chicken & egg thing going on with the current depressing state of game manuals?) I guess they didn't even get to the dungeons that they had to map themselves, or the silly rune language on the map. Man, if they had trouble with this, imagine Wizardry I or even the original Bard's Tale?

Sigh, kids today.

143 years ago, the leaders of the Comanche and Kiowa tribes met with William Tecumseh Sherman at Medicine Lodge Creek, Kansas. The Comanche had dominated the American plains for hundreds of years, and had terrorized the Texans whose Confederacy Sherman had done more to crush than any other man. But this was not a meeting of equals. Sherman told the Comanche they had to give up the plains, to live on a reservation in Oklahoma: "You can no more stop this than you can stop the sun or the moon. You must submit, and do the best you can."

The Comanche were led by Ten Bears, their last great war chief save Quanah Parker. This is what Ten Bears said to Sherman:

My heart is filled with joy when I see you here today, as the brooks fill with water when the snows melt in the spring.  I feel glad as the ponies do when the fresh grass starts in the beginning of the year.

My people have never first drawn a bow or fired a gun against the whites. There has been trouble between us. My young men have danced the war dance. But it was not begun by us. It was you who sent the first soldier.

Two years ago I came upon this road, following the buffalo,that my wives and children might have their cheeks plump and their bodies warm. But the soldiers fired on us. So it was upon the Canadian River. Nor have we been made to cry once only. The blue-dressed soldiers came out from the night, and for campfires they lit our lodges. Instead of hunting game they killed our braves, and the warriors of the tribe cut short their hair for the dead.

So it was in Texas. They made sorrow in our camps, and we went out like the buffalo bulls when the cows are attacked. When we found them we killed them, and their scalps hung in our lodges. The Comanches are not weak and blind, like the pups of a dog when seven days old. They are strong and far-sighted, like grown horses. We took their road and we went on it. The white women cried and our women laughed.

But there are things that you have said to me which I do not like. They were not sweet like sugar, but bitter like gourds. You have said that you want to put us on a reservation, to build us houses and to make us medicine lodges. I do not want them. I was born under the prairie, where the wind blew free and there was nothing to break the light of the sun. I was born where there were no walls and everything drew free breath. I want to die there, not within walls. I know every stream and every wood between the Rio Grande and the Arkansas River. I have hunted and lived all over that country. I live like my fathers before me and like them I live happily.

When I was in Washington the Great Father told me that all the Comanche land was ours and that no one should hinder us from living on it. So why do you ask us to leave the rivers and the sun and the wind and live in houses? Do not tell us to give up the buffalo for the sheep. The young men hear talk of this, and it makes them sad and angry. Do not speak of it more. I love to carry out the talk I heard from the Great Father. When I get goods and presents my people feel glad, since it shows that he holds us in his eye.

If the Texans had kept out of my country there might have been peace. But that which you say we must now live in is too small. The Texans have taken away the places where the grass grew thickest and the timber was best. Had we kept that, we might have done as you ask. But it is too late. The whites took the country which we loved, and we wish only to wander the prairie til we die.

Four years later Ten Bears was dead, and the Comanche were being herded to the reservation. Today there are fewer than 15,000 Comanche left.

But what Ten Bears told Sherman was as eloquent as anything ever said by a man who simply wanted to be left alone.  It's a classic of American anarchist thought, as profound as anything written by Lysander Spooner or William Lloyd Garrison.  It was an elegy delivered by a man who would not submit.

So the Republicans are unveiling their "Pledge to America" today. For the most part, it is a pretty standard lay out of the party line. It's full of the sort of righteous complaints that minority parties make until they are in power again. Sure, the preamble is a treacly bit of American exceptionalism that rubs me the wrong way, but the Dems would do the exact same thing. It does include this awesome bit:

"An unchecked executive, a compliant legislature, and an overreaching judiciary have combined to thwart the will of the people and overturn their votes and their values, and scorning the deepest beliefs of the American people." Sounds more like Bush post 9/11 than anything else.

I won't bury the lead here, the plan sets itself up for failure almost from the start. The fiscally responsible plan wants to cut your taxes & also cut wasteful government spending (unlike every other plan ever created!) but outlines it's own demise with this sentence:

"With common-sense exceptions for seniors, veterans, and our troops, we will roll back government spending to pre-stimulus, pre-bailout levels, saving us at least $100 billion in the first year alone and putting us on a path to balance the budget and pay down the debt."

Without touching Social Security, Defense or Veterans funding it is impossible to make even a small dent in our deficit. Besides, isn't this the party of Dick "deficits don't matter" Cheney?

One of my favorite parts is one of the many infographics they use, depicting the use of so-called "martial law" provisions in the House. The point they are trying to make is how often they have been used this year, but the chart clearly shows that the last two Republican Houses were just as bad, and last year's Democratic House was much better. Ah, the perils of data.

The Republican's state that Representatives should be measured by how they represent the people (presumably their constituents) not by how many bills they pass or how much money they bring to their district. And we can call this assessment elections, and let people choose whether or not they feel represented. It's a crazy new idea. Seriously, what do they mean? If you are elected, you have been given the right to represent your constituents. What other metric could they possibly have? How much the people who didn't vote for you like you? National opinion polls? Does anyone think that's a good idea?

At least they had the common sense not to mention any of their social platforms, so we don't get as many God references as usual, and no mention of how they consider gay people second class citizens. Still, this whole thing is pretty boiler plate. Not to get too sports referency here, but the Republicans are the backup QB, and the backup QB is everyone's favorite player until he becomes the starting QB (or he is JaMarcus Russell), and all of a sudden ideas have to become action. Just like I have never been a fan of Obama's "Hope" I'm pretty dubious that the Republicans have any real desire to change anything other than which party is in the majority.

Your smirking lecture to the panhandler, to the effect that money isn't as important as good will, and while you weren't going to give him money you were going to think good thoughts about him, would have been a lot cuter if the panhandler hadn't been drooling on himself, and confined to a motorized wheelchair.

You punk.

Missouri to Judges:  Do you have any idea what it costs to put these people in jail?

Judges to Missouri: Actually, we didn't.

When judges here [St. Louis] sentence convicted criminals, a new and unusual variable is available for them to consider: what a given punishment will cost the State of Missouri.

For someone convicted of endangering the welfare of a child, for instance, a judge might now learn that a three-year prison sentence would run more than $37,000 while probation would cost $6,770. A second-degree robber, a judge could be told, would carry a price tag of less than $9,000 for five years of intensive probation, but more than $50,000 for a comparable prison sentence and parole afterward. The bill for a murderer’s 30-year prison term: $504,690.

This may seem a crass question, but why shouldn't the cost of imprisonment be one factor, of many, that judges weigh in their sentences?  It's not as though a second degree murderer is going to get probation, but it is nice to know that a judge might have to think about what it costs to lock up a small time user or seller of marijuana.  After all, someone has to pay for a judge's largesse in handing out active time to non-violent offenders such as drug users.  And the people paying are not judges.  Nor are they the prosecutors who are having absolute conniptions over Missouri's consideration of cost in sentencing.

[C]ritics — prosecutors especially — dismiss the idea as unseemly. They say that the cost of punishment is an irrelevant consideration when deciding a criminal’s fate and that there is a risk of overlooking the larger social costs of crime.

“Justice isn’t subject to a mathematical formula,” said Robert P. McCulloch, the prosecuting attorney for St. Louis County.

The intent behind the cost estimates, he said, is transparent: to pressure judges, in the face of big bills, into sending fewer people to prison.

With all respect due to the honorable Robert P. McCulloch, Mr. McCulloch has not earned an honest dollar since he took over the office of state's attorney for St. Louis County.  I define an "honest dollar" as one voluntarily transferred, by its owner, to another in return for goods or services of perceived value.  All of the dollars Mr. McCulloch earns are involuntarily transferred, by people who fear, for good reason, that if they do not pay taxes they will be imprisoned by someone like Robert P. McCulloch.

I suspect that if the St. Louis County prosecutor's office had to hold a pledge drive, or a bake sale, or a car wash, to pay its bills, Mr. McCulloch's salary would be far lower.  He might have to take an honest job to supplement his pay.

Judges, and prosecutors, do not generate wealth.  They merely subsist on involuntarily transferred wealth generated by others, as do police, prison guards, wardens, public defenders, social workers, probation officers, legislators, and all of the other traditional "stakeholders" in the criminal justice system.

So why shouldn't they consider what it costs others to lock up an offender, versus supervised release?  For that matter, doesn't Robert P. McCulloch, as a public servant charged with husbanding the resources of the citizens of Missouri, make that decision every day?  Do St. Louis county prosecutors go balls to the wall every time some jerk is accused of driving 79 in a 55, or letting a passenger hold an open container of beer, insisting on jail time for petty crimes and misdemeanors?  Of course not.  They husband their own resources, their precious time, because they don't want to try cases until midnight 7 days a week, or to let murderers go because they were busy throwing the book at a 19 year old who tried to get into a bar with a fake ID.

No, the objection to Missouri's novel system is that it's a rabbit hole, and prosecutors know exactly how far down that rabbit hole goes.   If judges are allowed to consider the cost of a prison sentence, the public may as well.  The public should as well.  The public, in post-industrial St. Louis County, might consider exactly what it costs to run the state's version of the war on drugs, and to prosecute other victimless crimes.  God only knows where that could lead.  It could lead to a lot of St. Louis County prosecutors losing their jobs, as St. Louis County voters consider whether their money is better spent on improving the county's abysmal schools than on prisons.

And if judges are to consider the cost of imprisonment, they might be encouraged, openly, to consider other societal costs that they already consider covertly when they're doing their jobs properly.  Like the cost to society of taking a father away from his children for several years over a non-violent offense.   Or whether a dishonest police officer or other public servant costs society more than a dishonest taxpayer (who holds an honest job as I've defined it above).  Horrors!

If we go all the way down the rabbit hole, we could see judges given some actual discretion in sentencing, as opposed to mandatory minimums, structured sentencing, and other appealable guidelines.   It would be just like the 1970s, dope fiends running around in the streets of St. Louis raping white women with only Dirty Harry, the Warriors, and Charles Bronson (whatever the name of his character was), standing between America and anarchy.  And then, as the Russians invade the east coast, the Chinese invade the west coast, and the Cubans invade the south coast, and the Canadians invade the north coast, only the Wolverines! will fight to stave off communism.

Or not.  Maybe, if judges are required to at least think about costs of sentencing, St. Louis County will actually be safer and better governed, with prison time (that is to say, someone's honest dollars) being channeled from victimless crimes to truly violent offenders.

Via Jeffrey Miron, who has a sense of humor rather like my own.

No, I'm not dead. I just haven't been in the frame of mind to write much. That will change, I hope.

Instead of writing this weekend, in addition to the normal flurry of soccer games and kid parties and such, I discovered an inventive and addictive little indie game — Minecraft. It's not done yet — it's still in Alpha — but even in that early state, it is more fun and immersive than many big-company productions costing five times as much.

Minecraft drops you into a blocky 3-D landscape — everything, from the trees to the water to the soil, is made of blocks. So long as the sun stays up, you can wander safely. At night, the beasties come out, and will getcha. To protect yourself, you need to harvest resources (like wood and stone), make tools to harvest resources more efficiently, and then build yourself a safe place to pass the nights — and perhaps even arm and armor yourself. Slowly you progress from mere survival to mastery of the landscape, amassing the resources to build whatever immense above- or below-ground structures please you. There are caves to explore, rare resources to find if you delve deeply enough, and increasingly complex things to craft — all the way up to powered mine carts, if you find the right resources.

As is often the case, I can't quite put my finger on what x-factor makes the game so addictive. The graphics are primitive, and the gameplay is simple, but the combination of exploring (and worrying that I may accidentally dig into a deep cave, or a lava flow, or an underground river) and creative building gives me what I want in games.

Rock Paper Shotgun has had great coverage. This weekend it's been impossible to register or buy the game — the viral success crashed the guy's server, and led to this one-man studio suddenly making so much money that PayPal shut its account down for suspected fraud. But it's only about $14 right now, and that will get you the full game when it's done as well as the chance to play the Alpha. There's an early multiplayer mode that has great potential, there are already player-made skins, and I'm thinking it will be a modder's paradise (I've been imagining a zombie-apocalypse-survival mod, in which the beasties are gradually more persistent and attack structures).

Highly recommended. And now some pictures:

Here's the tower I've been building on a small sandy island near my starting point. Note the glass windows on the upper levels — you can craft glass by making a forge, and finding coal, and using it to smelt sand.

And here is a view of the same tower, seen from a nearby mountaintop. I got to the mountaintop not by climbing, but by digging a mineshaft from my original tiny safety cave.

Edit: Fixed pictures.

Yesterday, a co-worker suggested that Sarah Palin was the Republican version of Ralph Nader. Of course, she was suggesting that Palin & Tea Party Candidates like Christine "America is one of the most free places in the Country" O'Donnell would cost the Republican base votes. I suppose, but I see one huge difference – Ralph Nader never raised millions upon millions of dollars for the Democratic Party.

All Palin & the Tea Party do is serve to drive the Republicans ever rightward, pound out the moderate voices in the party and give us awesomely bad campaign commercials. Nader actively hurt the Democrats, and took support (both electoral and financial) away from Presidential candidates. Palin will not do this, and will continue to fill the GOP's coffers.

Strangely, my coworker (perhaps looking for any good news in what is no doubt a tough year to be the party in power) would have none of it. I see that happening more and more, even within the Dems. Anyone who actually cares about things like the poor and a woman's right to choose should not be crowing how Palin & the Tea Party will cost the Republicans, because they will damage us far more.

Unrelated note: I refuse to post a time waster when Grandy posted the link the ultra awesome flash version of Ultima IV below. There will never be a better timewaster (until someone figures out how to make a flash version of Ultima VI!) Go play it now!

P.S.K., making that green.  People always sayin' "What the hell does that mean?" P is for People, who can't understand, how one homeboy became a man.  S is for the way they scream and shout, one by one I'm rockin' out.  K is for the way my D.J. cuttin'.  All them MCs, man they ain't sayin' nuttin.

– Schoolly D, "P.S.K.: What Does It Mean?"

For MC Freekazoid, a resident of the gritty Parkside neighborhood of Philadelphia, those words bring back memories of torture.

"Word up man, back in them days MCs was gettin' disrespected left and right.  I remember I couldn't even walk to the corner store to buy a fly gold chain without punks jumpin' up and callin' me a wack MC," Freekazoid recalls. He refers to the mid-1980s, a time most Americans of MC Freekazoid's generation remember for Pac-Man, President Ronald Reagan, and the films of John Hughes, but that MCs, like MC Freekazoid, recall with horror.

MC Freekazoid

"It was constant static," recalls Blood MC, a native of Hollis Queens.  "Once that song came out [Run-DMC's Hollis Crew (Krush Groove #1)], I'd hear "SUCKER MCs WHO DID NOT LEARN, IF YOU DON'T THIS TIME WE SHALL RETURN" from seemingly every boombox on the street."  As an MC, Blood MC recalls a constant torrent of abuse from former neighbors, friends, and even relatives.  "My own niece called a weak MC, and accused me of of stealing her rhymes.  At Christmas."  For Blood MC, the toll of America's change in attitude toward MCs, as expressed in popular songs of the day such as Run-DMC's Sucker MCs, was particularly high: divorce, and the loss of his day job as an urban planner for the borough of Queens.

"Even Vanilla Ice condemned me," a tearful MC Blood relates.

Blood MC

In the irrational exhuberance of the 1990s, things only got worse for America's MCs.  With the advent of hip hop and gangster rap, nameless, forgotten MCs were continually smoked and ganked by a procession of rappers and their fans and followers, such as Ice-T, and the late Ol' Dirty Bastard, who "emptied the 36 chambers of the Shao-Lin" into MCs accused of "biting the Wu Tang style."

For all of the troubles of the 1980s and 90s, MCs have survived.  And in an America wracked by war, recession, and political conflict, where polls show most having little optimism for the future, MCs overwhelmingly express a sense of hope: the hope of acceptance and tolerance.

"Yo, when Obama came on the scene, all that turned round," says MC MeccaGodzilla, of south central Los Angeles.  "He told the world that MCs was people too.  He earned that Nobel Peace Prize, by teachin' rappers to get along with MCs."  MeccaGodzilla refers to President Obama's campaign speech of September 7, 2008, delivered before a throng in Denver's Mile High Stadium, in which the Democratic nominee stated:

"Like most Americans, I'm sick and tired of having my beats and lyrics stolen.  Now, some would say that the ones guilty of ripping our shit are weak-ass MCs who can't rhyme and can only drop dimes.  But we all know that the ones who stole America's beat are on Wall Street.

And their enablers in the Republican Party of John McCain and George W. Bush."

It was a time of euphoria for MCs across the nation, who overwhelmingly voted for Obama, based on his promise to extend federal civil rights protection to MCs, and to end the military's policy of discrimination against Wack-Americans.

Yet many experts contend that the turnaround for MCs, who were previously reviled as jealous, cowardly, and unable to rhyme, is as much a function of changing social attitudes as changing politics. "Honestly, the idea of random attacks against anonymous MCs, accusing them of stealing dope beats and rhymes, is outdated in the 21st century," says Todd Gitlin, Professor of Communications at Columbia University and author of The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage.  "Even in former bastions of intolerance such as Compton, Queens, and the South Bronx, Americans are more concerned with unemployment and the rising cost of gold chains than whether some gimp MC ripped off this or that lyric.  I can't recall a culturally relevant rap dissing MCs since Uffie's I Got Something MCs Can Kiss, and that was 2007."

"Institutionalized prejudice against MCs is so retrograde that I can see it coming back only in France, where Michael Jackson and Sylvester Stallone are still considered great American artists," Gitlin continued.

Ironically, France remains a major source of concern for MCs and their advocates, as recent plans by the French government to deport "Suckez MCs" to their alleged places of origin, such as Brentwood and Atlanta, enjoy widespread support.  The deportation program remains stalled, pending a challenge before the European Court of Human Rights.

Yet even in 21st century America, MCs, even those who don't suck, remain without legal protection.  The ambitious MC Protection Act of 2010 (MCPA), introduced in the House of Representatives by Rosa DeLauro (D-Connecticut), passed on June 14, 2010, but remains stalled in the Senate, where majority leader Mitch McConnell proclaimed, "Punk MCs are relevant NOT. If they come round here they will get shot!" in defending a filibuster, still unbroken.  Scarcely a Tea Party rally goes by without signs condemning the Obama administration for its support of "Sucker MCs and Socializm."  Perhaps worse, to date MCs have filed dozens of lawsuits alleging discrimination in employment, clubs, romance, and the 'hood, yet only the oft-reversed Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has found Wackness to be a constitutionally protected status under the 14th Amendment.

Tea Parties condemn Wack MCs

Which is not to say that pro-MC litigation, and even the MCPA, are without their intellectual and academic opponents.  Jeffrey Miron, a Senior Fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute think tank in Washington, says "Look, I think we can all agree that prejudice against MCs, sucker or not, is abhorrent.  But consider the legacy of Roe v. Wade.  Prior to 1974, the states were on their way to passing laws which would have allowed abortion, with constraints one may deem reasonable or not, but chosen by the people, through the democratic process.  Since 1974, Roe, a mandate imposed by 5 isolated old lawyers, has only led Americans to harden their positions.  It's the same for MCs and even biters.  If we allow the American people to move forward, on their own, I suspect that 20 years from now punk MCs won't be getting smoked on the streets."

"And not to belabor the point," Miron continues, "but jealous MCs try to dis all my tracks. They run away in fear when they hear my hot wax!"

Despite continuing opposition to their quest for equal treatment, under the law and on the streets, MCs remain confident for a better future.  "I know it's a long time coming," says Blood MC, "but I look forward to the day when I can walk the streets with my head held high, even in Hollis."

Sort of. . . I'm informed that today is the 25th anniversary of the Apple II release of Ultima IV. I can't recall if it came out on the Apple IIc/e before any other system and don't particularly care.  There is never a reason needed to celebrate this milestone, but a release anniversary for one of the major computer systems is a fine reason to rub some funk on the celebration.  We don't like to pass up a chance to discuss Ultima IV here at Popehat, because it remains one of the most amazing examples of a hobby we hold dear, even as we get older and have less time to devote to it.

The story – in Shay Addams'  book is that Richard Garriot was going through a period of depression post Ultima III, something Popehatians can relate to.  Ultima III was an exceptional game, one of the first if not the first computer role playing game to feature tactical combat.  Combat took place in a separate screen from the world/dungeon maps, in an overhead perspective on a grid.  Players moved their little guys (and gals!  And, uh, larks.  Ultima III had some really weird races and classes) around on a grid trying to smash monsters before being smashed in kind.  It was a radical and wonderful departure at the time, one that would spawn an entire new line of CRPGs, from Wizard's Crown and Pool of Radiance through Fallout.  The combat would serve as a major inspiration for  indie developers like Tom Proudfoot (Nahlakh and Natuk) and Jeff Vogel (Exiles, Avernums, Generforges. . . oh my).

Ultima III was an excellent game.  It was shining example of the genre at the time, and that was part of the problem.  Something was eating at Garriot.  CRPGS up to and including Ultima III were nominally about players assembling a band of heroes (or sometimes, a lone hero, as was the case with Ultima I & II) and then saving the town/kingdom/world from some evil thing or another.  This was generally done by killing monsters by the thousands.  It's an entirely consistent position with the genre, going back to its table top roots.  What Garriot was recognizing (I'm going from memory as I haven't read Shay Addams' book in ages.  But I ordered a fresh copy) was that something had been lost in the transition from table top gaming.  Computer games couldn't – at the time – really replicate the interaction between players.  And only this decade has software arisen that allowed interaction with a human Game Master.  But it was more than that.  While table top RPGing often involved slaughtering monsters by the horde, it often involved other things.  You know, actual role playing.  Whether it was teasing some important clue out of a local magistrate, or trying to prevent the assassination of a regent in a complicated political setting, or trying to fool some dark god and prevent his rise, tabletop role-playing games provided a very rich canvas on which  players could imprint their adventures.  The monsters and the loot were always there and always fun, but the greatest adventures always revolved around more.  They were the deeds of Frodo, Conan, and Elric brought forth from the pages of books and acted out by people who had grown up loving those books, adding new twists and ideas.

CRPGs had none of that.  The stories – the saving of the worlds from the great evils – were always the thinnest of things, but it wasn't just about story either.  Killing monsters and getting loot was really all they offered.  Even Ultima III – whose plot was excellent for the genre at the time – still revolved around these things.  Worse, games often rewarded players for decidedly un-heroic behavior like stealing.  Ironically, perhaps, the Ultima games were famous examples.  The player got ahead (no small feat; the Ultima games were not easy ) by robbing merchants blind, even if the merchants were scurvy dogs on the Isle of Buccaneers in Ultima III.  A disconnect existed between the player and the game world, even in worlds as awesome as Origins (and they were noted for this, well before Ultima IV).  NPCs, at their best, were vending machines for the players.  There was richness in tabletop RPGs that simply didn't exist.  And it couldn't all be explained away by the limitations of the medium.

The front of the Ultima III box pictured a rather nasty looking daemon.  As such, the game came under fire from some right leaning, parental type groups.  It came under fire for all the wrong reasons.  Computer games are not vicious seeds of Satan that corrupt our children or anything like that (like anything else, as a parent you wouldn't want your kid spending all their time with them, nor would you necessarily want your kid to play certain games at certain ages or even at all).  Garriott wasn't condoning Satanism or any other kind of ism by putting a big mean daemon on the box.  But Garriott was at a peculiar time in his life, and the criticism none the less struck home.  There were problems with CRPGs as he saw it, and the criticism was close to those problems if inadvertently so.

And what we got was Ultima IV.  A game with more than its fair share of monster smashing and loot grabbing (particularly in the final dungeon, The Abyss).  But also a game where being a paragon of what it is to be heroic and noble was not just encouraged, but required to win.  The game moved beyond monsters and loot even as they remained a big part of it.  Players found themselves in pursuit of enlightenment, practicing the eight virtues (Compassion, Honor, Humility, Honesty, Justice, Sacrifice, Valor, and Spirituality).  Suddenly players had to stop and think about what they were doing.  Helping people who needed it – whether by donating blood at the local house of healing or giving a beggar a few coins – was an important part of the game.  So was allowing certain, "non evil" types of monsters to flee battle if they so chose.  Lying was verboten, and the almost unfathomably deep conversation system provided more than a few chances for players to do that.  Ultima IV's world was a sandbox and many of your actions affected your standing in each of the eight virtues, for good or for bad.  Garriot made Ultima IV's Britannia a land of darkness and strife, in need of a shining beacon.  And you, the player, were it.   Literally; the game began with you creating a character and taking a quiz filled with wonderful moral quandaries of the "do you honorably report a poor farmer for stealing bread to feed his family, or compassionately let him off?" variety.  The character was one from our world who had wandered into the games'.  The game practically begged you to enter your name in when you created a character, and it's clear this journey was considered *your* journey.  Decisions in the game revolved less around "well, what will net me the most gain so I can go kill the bad guy" to "what would *I* do if I had been sucked into this fantastic world?".

Ultima IV was a revolution.  Anyway, if you are curious don't listen to me.  Try the flash version, which we have mentioned previously (I'll link to that post as soon as I find it).

Look guys, I voted for Bob Barr because I think John McCain's a RINO, but when you attack Andy Fucking Griffith, you've gone too damned far.

"Andy Griffith Throws Away Fifty Years Of Good Faith In Thirty Seconds."

Sheriff Taylor's approval ratings are, supposedly, down in North Carolina because he participated in a commercial supporting Obamacare.  I have my doubts.  I've lived my entire life in the state, and would guess that Andy's ratings are down because the state's younger generation are a bunch of videogame addicted illiterates who think Larry the Cable Guy is classic comedy.  But that's just me.

The older generation knows.  And the kids will come around.  Eventually they'll rediscover "What It Was Was Football," "No Time For Sergeants," and hardcore oldschool Andy Griffith Show reruns, in black and white, not that miserable Mayberry RFD pap.

But don't take my word for it.  The surest sign that Andy is still relevant, still funny, and STILL A TITAN WORTHY TO SIT AMONG NORTH CAROLINA'S GREATEST SONS (roughly speaking, Thelonious Monk, George Clinton, Thomas Wolfe, John Coltrane, Andrew Jackson, and Andy Griffith) is that Bill O'Reilly has jumped on the bandwagon. If Bill O'Reilly is against Andy Griffith, he must be doing something right.

As Jon Stewart asked, "How do you turn against Opie's pa? Matlock! He's a Presidential Medal of Freedom winner. What happened, North Carolina, did Griffith wipe his ass on one of Dean Smith's old jackets?"

Look, Andy Griffith could endorse Satan-worship from a toilet stall in an elementary school girls' restroom, and I'd still be a fan. Long after Bill O'Reilly's show is cancelled following the host's horrific death from having his head sucked into the vacuum of his ass, the Andy Griffith Show will remain a classic.

This is what Staff Sergeant Salvatore Giunta had to do to become the first living recipient of America's highest military award since Vietnam:

In the most dangerous valley of the most rugged corner of eastern Afghanistan, a small rifle team of airborne soldiers fell into an insurgent ambush, a coordinated attack from three sides.

A young Army specialist, Salvatore A. Giunta, took a bullet to the chest, but was saved by the heavy plates of his body armor. Shaking off the punch from the round, he jumped up and pulled two wounded soldiers to safety, grabbed hand grenades and ran up the trail to where his squad mates had been patrolling.

There, he saw a chilling image: Two fighters hauling one of his American comrades into the forest. Specialist Giunta hurled his grenades and emptied the clip in his automatic rifle, forcing the enemy to drop the wounded soldier. Still taking fire, he provided cover and comfort to his mortally wounded teammate until help arrived.

While I agree with a recent Ninth Circuit decision holding the Stolen Valor Act unconstitutional, I understand the impulse that led lawmakers to pass that act.  Those who would attempt to steal the accomplishments of a man like Sergeant Giunta by falsely claiming such a medal (they'll always fail) should be named in every corner of the internet.

I find it equally distasteful that a videogame manufacturer trades on the name of the medal, to sell a game that features a highly unrealistic picture of war as essentially an action film.

The Beck Palin road show is continuing tomorrow in Alaska. The date was the best one they could find. After all, they didn't want to conflict with the Alaska State Fair. What's that? Tomorrow just happens to be 9/11? Well, imagine that.

The promoter of the event suggested the (apparently randomly) selected date was "a coincidence." The Anchorage Daily News said "Cox originally was eyeing Sept. 4, but did not want to compete with the Alaska State Fair, and moved the date to a week later, which worked out better for Beck as well."

Yeah, I bet it did work out better for Beck. Oh, and the media attention on this event (with tickets starting at upwards of $65) led Beck to finally say that he would donate his speaking fee. Funny that that had not been mentioned at all before. What better way to remember 9/11? According to Sarah Palin, there is no better way. "I can think of no better way to commemorate 9/11 than to gather with patriots who will 'never forget.'" and pay stupid amounts of money to honor them. The funny thing is, this was never billed as a fundraiser, ever.

Oh, back to the coincidence thing. Where else have we heard that? Wait, that's right! It was a "coincidence" that Beck's Washington rally was on the anniversary of MLK's rally. Total coincidence. Or as Beck refers to it "divine providence."

Given his track record, I think we can expect Beck to be in Hawaii in early December, right?

Oh, and just to give this post a little fun, I give you the Glenn Beck Conspiracy Theory Generator. Try it. You'll like it.