Several weeks have passed since the shit went down at UC Davis.  The highlight moment, of course, was that whole thing with orange cloud of agony. Sort of the modern day Prismatic Spray.

I think the media has missed a crucial detail about this whole narrative. And I will address it presently.

First, I think it’s important to note that one of the officers, one Lt. John Pike, with his little red can has earned a certain amount of…let’s call it celebrity.  The internet at large has had a chance to digest this imagery and a consensus has emerged. The internet has judged him at once hilarious and monstrous at the same time. The internet, the place where all media is carried to its logical extreme, has taken this image and this footage and created a sort of inspiring memetic art series. Each image is more absurd than the last. Each one adds to the narrative without fully realizing the full ramifications.

This isn’t just a political thing.

First, the official narrative. If we look at this purely from the standpoint of law enforcement, the official statement is clearly false. I am not being politically biased, I am being intelligent.

The question that has been asked time and again with respect to Occupy Wall St. and the 99% movement is essentially this: has the response from authorities been appropriate to the situation?  The authorities all say “yes” but, of course, they would.  The 99%-ers say no, and I tend to agree with them. To an extent.

Look at Pike. Take a good look at this picture because this is the most important one.  Watch the video.  The justification for the pepper spray is the safety of the officers.  They supposedly felt threatened and this was the justifiable response in that situation.  To hear officials talk, the protesters should be thankful that Pike didn’t start blasting them with rubber bullets for how unruly they were.

But does his posture look like that of a threatened man?  Body language is really difficult to quantify scientifically. That is, it’s hard to quote. So after the fact, all we have is the video and the narratives handed down to us from the authorities and from anyone else that was there.

The problem is, the narrative from the authorities does not match the footage or the images. However, I am about to argue that 99%’s narrative is, while closer to the truth, still not accurate. I am going to propose a third version of the story.

Humans are, by and large, experts at reading body language, barring some sort of neurological disorder.  Most people are empathetic enough to understand when a person looks uncomfortable, angry, happy, sad, etc.

In short, we can all recognize a man casually spraying a noxious orange cloud over a bunch of spoiled college students. The media and the authorities spoon-feeding us the story that this man was somehow afraid for his life is the purest bullshit. What I mean is, anyone with half a brain can see that this guy is not feeling threatened. But, I will point out, neither does he feel glee. He takes neither pleasure nor wrath. He is showers these kids with the casual ease of a gardener spraying pesticide. A sort of beatific…peace.

This is what I want to focus on here, because a friend of mine believes, and I think I agree with him, that Lt. John Pike is very likely a heretofore unknown sixth avatar of Vishnu. Or at the very least, a Buddha, or a Bodhisattva, or a Saint or an angel (if you’re of the western persuasion).

Compare with an image of Vishnu.  Observe the way he stands in close detail.  Not only does the students’ pain mean nothing to him.  The students themselves mean nothing to him.  He cares not one whit whether you experience pain nor joy.  This is a sign of a true enlightened one.  The kids on the ground are the true sinners.  Buddha said that suffering arises from craving.  From  materialism.  Indeed, in our tableau, it is not Lt. Pike that is the sinner, but the college students.  They are the ones who are living in suffering.  The mace which is causing their suffering is symbolic of their obsession with the material world and their refusal to pursue the true enlightenment, to cast off that which causes suffering. To cast off their obsession with material wealth and gains.

He is like a Boddhisattva who has chosen not to ascend to Nirvana, opting to stay behind as a teacher.  A teacher of important lessons which issue forth from a spray nozzle.  Many have denounced Pike for a monster. But he is not. He brings knowledge and wisdom in an industrial can of pepper-spray. Indeed, his benevolence knows no limit for he has put off Nirvana specifically to convey this important wisdom to the masses. The lesson: pain is illusory. By succumbing to it, by allowing ourselves to suffer by wishing for the absence of pain, by craving, we are only distancing ourselves from the enlightenment that could be ours.

And so I believe that this is the truth that the internet has touched upon with all of the fantastically edited versions of this image. But what they say in images, I say in words. This man, Lt. John Pike, is the enlightened one. He is a prophet of a new age. And we should listen. Because he cares. He doesn’t show it, but he cares.

Ein weiser Mann schmeichelt der Narr.

So, I just finished the main quest for Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.  I’m a little surprised, honestly.  Not about the ending.  There were no surprises to be had there.  In many ways the story is quite standard.  This is not a criticism, just a fact.  Anyway, what surprises me is the fact that I actually finished the game.

All told, I have logged an astonishing 93 hours on the game.  I think I spent less than 6 hours on the main quest.

I have some problems with it.  If you had asked me three weeks ago whether I was likely to finish the game it would have been an enthusiastic “yes.”  I was enjoying the hell out of the game and I was hitting it hard for hours every night.  The problem is, it soured for me somewhere around hour 50.  As stunning and well-designed as the dungeons are, they started to feel repetitive.  After a while, I even stopped looting these dungeons.  There was nothing in them that I wanted.  Nothing in there for me.  I was the uber Dovakhiin who could shout a fucking dragon into submission and destroy it with nary a thought.  When fighting a dragon is nothing more than a nuisance, there is something wrong.

Even Alduin was a trivial encounter.

Bethesda, in the months leading up release, was bragging about how the game would have so much content.  The problem with having that much content is that when a player spends that much time in a world, he begins to see its flaws. I suppose it is a monumental feat that the major flaws did not become evident until so many hours had gone by. I spent far fewer hours on, say, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and I was entertained the entire time, but it was by no means a perfect experience.

To contrast, I have spent far more hours on Minecraft. Hundreds probably. But Minecraft still hasn’t lost its allure.

My experience with Skyrim is something like my experience with Family Guy in one important respect.  It’s essentially the same exact show that it was in season one but where it was interesting and new and fresh back then, it is now stale, boring, and its structure is showing.  It can get a few more yuks by making fun of its own formula to a certain extent, but that will only take it so far.  Then again, the Simpsons has been doing that for years.

I feel the same about Skyrim.  Unlike a TV show, there isn’t really a “jump the shark” moment. Just as there wasn’t a specific one for Family Guy.  Rather, it was a gradual realization that everything is the same no matter where you are in the world or what you are doing.  The sameness is palpable, oppressive after a while.  Many of the small quests and stories are clever; don’t get me wrong.  But almost all of them have you doing the exact same thing.  Travel to a location, fight some fuckers, recover an artifact, return it for money. It doesn’t vary much.

An example of what I’m talking about is the flow of a dungeon.  Almost every dungeon that you encounter in Skryim follows a pattern.  I don’t care if its a mine, a bear cave, or a centuries old Dwemer ruin.  You kill a few mobs outside and then enter the dungeon. As you pass a certain threshold, you may or may not notice a sealed door that would take you directly to the end of the dungeon.  But it is inaccessible.  Instead, you follow a more or less linear rail to the terminus of the dungeon where you fight some sort of boss, get some sort of quest item, learn some dragon shout, and/or complete some objective.  There’s a door behind the blasphemous altar or ancient sarcophogus.  Behind that door is a chest with some really sweet loot and some shelves with potions or soul gems or alchemy reagents.

You will then find that barred door or hidden passageway that spits you out at the beginning of the cavern or poops you out at the top of a mountain that would be inaccessible from outside.  The structure is apparent.  It’s a convenience, a mercy for the gamer, not to have to slog back through a now empty and desolate cavern, but when you iterate it sixty odd times or more, the game begins to feel engineered, rather than organic.

My understanding is that Bethesda had an entire *team* of dudes just designing dungeons.

Don’t get me wrong, the game is good.  It might even be great.  And it’s beautiful.  My god, is it beautiful.  But I’ve played it.  I’ve done it before.  It was like Oblivion (without the annoying Oblivion Gates) and Morrowind before it.  But where Morrowind was unlike anything I had ever played before (think Season 1 of Family Guy), Oblivion was an iteration of Morrowind and Skyrim is an iteration of Oblivion.  There is nothing inherently new.  In fact, I might even go so far as to say that by streamlining the level-ups and the various crafting and combat systems, they actually managed to make the problems more apparent.  There isn’t a whole lot of min-maxing to be done, which takes some of the fun out of it for me.

In fact, for the first two hours of the game, I was waiting for some stat assignment or detailed character creation screen to pop up.  It never did.  Maybe I’m still waiting for it.

In the end, I enjoyed my romp through Skyrim.  I will probably even play it again someday.  Perhaps even someday soon.  But I will never finish the game again.  I won’t ever be able to recapture the magic of it again.  It just isn’t in me for this one anymore.  It’s been exhausted.

Lastly, I would like to point out that Skyrim is not a sandbox game. A sandbox should have more options, more paths, a more vibrant world. Skyrim just has a lot of dungeons. There’s nothing wrong with that, but you can’t call it a sandbox. Your options are too limited. You can’t open a store. You can’t build a house. You can’t create a trade network. You can’t rule a nation. X3: Terran Conflict is a sandbox. Minecraft is a sandbox. Skyrim is not.

I sold the Elder Scroll to the librarian at the Winterhold College for 2,000 pieces of gold.  I should have haggled.

Ein Freund der Teufel ist ein Freund von mir.

A hard limit on the mass of dark matter has been set.  So that’s cool, right?

There are a couple things that I like about this story.  First, consider that this hard limit is set at 40 giga-electron volts.  This is a unit of measurement so tasty and geeky that it makes my brain noodles just tingle with excitement.  It’s like the ultimate in nerd speak because fewer than 1% of the world’s population actually know what it means.  They are the 1%.

Next, consider the following passage:

“The observational measurements are important because they cast doubt on recent results from dark matter collaborations that have reported detecting the elusive particle in underground experiments. Those collaborations — DAMA/LIBRA, CoGeNT and CRESST — say they found dark matter with masses ranging from 7 to 12 GeV, less than the limit determined by the Brown physicists.”

There are two ways that you can read this, depending on how you define the word “underground.”  On the one hand, there is my basic assumption that we have a whole subculture of scientists who wear baggy pants and like to skateboard. Not to mention, they are making all sorts of frankly audacious claims about the mass of WIMPS.  It makes DAMA/LIBRA, CoGeNT, and CRESST sound like the names of gangs. 7-12 GeV?  Those damned kids and their crazy ideas.

Indeed, this is how I initially read the article.  And then I realized that they were probably just referring to the fact that these experiments took place underground.  As in, in a cave.  The 40 GeV result is from data collected from outerspace.  That dichotomy makes a lot more sense.  But still, it’s an important lesson about the ambiguity of language.

But perhaps the most important lesson here is in the numbers themselves.  A frequently overlooked issue surrounding Dark Matter is the actual source of its mystery.  It does not interact except with its gravity.  As we all know, gravity is by far the weakest of the forces.  Dark Matter neither reflects nor emits electromagnetic radiation of any kind.  It is only detectable by its gravitational effects.

And yet, it accounts for around 23 percent of the universe.  Ordinary matter, the stuff we deal with on a day to day basis, the stuff we have wars over and have sex with, only makes up 4%.  Dark Energy, a far more mysterious substance which is responsible for the acceleration of the universe’s expansion, accounts for the rest of the universe.  Over 70%.

So, what to make of this?  There are two ways you can look at it.  On the one hand, you can relish the mystery that the majority of the universe is made up of something completely intangible and possibly unknowable.  This is admirable.  It is the source of all sorts of sci-fi tropes and wild flights of fancy.

But two important facts needs to be taken into consideration when it comes to Dark Stuff, which accounts for some 96% of reality: they don’t do anything and they are the rule, rather than the exception.  Put another way, ordinary matter is the exception, the exciting stuff.  Dark Stuff is mundane and ordinary.

Indeed, the vast majority of the interesting things that happen in the universe happen as a result of interactions of ordinary matter.  Dark Stuff doesn’t do squat.

If I were a powerful scientist with a lot of clout, I might even be inclined re-label these things.  Dark Stuff–once it’s determined just what, exactly, it is–would be better renamed Mundane.  Ordinary matter, rather than being labeled as merely “ordinary” is actually the exciting stuff.  It might be far more appropriately termed “Bright Matter” and “Bright Energy.”  It is tiny in proportion, but it packs a hell of a kick.

I am a fan of Bright Matter.  I am made of it.  My body is star dust made flesh.

Ich bin aber Sternenstaub.

I do not own a Macintosh. I will never own a Macintosh, iPad, or iPhone unless someone else buys it for me. I will never spend my dollars on one of Apple’s devices.

I do own a Generation 6 iPod (I think at the time it was called iPod Video because you could watch Ask a Ninja videos on it) and I use it all the time.

I find it interesting that my Facebook feed is overflowing with all sorts of sentiments concerning the death of Steve Jobs. I personally, am focusing most of my media consumption on other matters, but it’s not unreasonable that this should get a certain amount of play. Indeed, it managed to elicit a bona-fide spin from yours truly.

This was my family’s first computer. The Macintosh 128K. I believe the 128K part refers to its RAM. My current home (Windows) PC has 4 gigabytes of RAM. A little perspective. Also relevant: the Mac 128 debuted in 1985 and cost almost $2500.

By today’s standards, it was an utterly useless and overpriced machine. But it was great. I am pretty sure I am the person I am today because of that machine. What did I do with it? MS Paint, for one. Hours disappeared. But I think the lion’s share of my hours were spent playing this text-based game. Didn’t know it was a book until several years later, but it captivated my mind. I spent hours and hours and hours typing my way around the Heart of Gold. I didn’t actually beat the game until I was 25. Had to. Closure, you know.

Anyway, that machine introduced me to Douglas Adams. This is absolutely crucial as far as I’m concerned.

I will not buy an Apple product if I can help it. I think they are over-priced and under-functional. This is partly because I like to play PC games and Macs just don’t do that thing. It is also partly because I like the feel of putting together my own machine from parts I picked myself. My home PC was lovingly assembled in my home by my hands. I installed Windows 7 on it and crossed my own fingers while waiting for the BIOS to post. And then heaved a sigh of relief when it did, in fact, post on the first attempt.

I just purchased an Android Tablet. This one. My phone is a Droid X. I like its customizeability. I like that I can root it and hack it and do what I want with it. I like that they are the machines that I want them to be. Not the ones that Apple thinks I want them to be.

But, we must ask, would they exist if it weren’t for Apple? Would the tablet computer or the droid be the objects they are today without the iPhone or the iPad? I don’t think so. Apple kicked the industry into high gear with innovation on a staggering scale. They forced the industry into a whole new direction by demonstrating two things: what is possible and, more importantly, what the market will want. No, they didn’t just find out what the market wanted. They created the market’s demand for all things “i”. And it was brilliant. And it worked.

I have a lot of respect for Steve Jobs. I like what he did for and to the industry. I don’t want his product specifically because it is overpriced and cookie-cuttered. But the product I do want is available because of him.

A closing thought: I own that Gen-6 iPod and still use it because it is hands down, the single best dedicated digital music player that has ever been manufactured.

PS: I sketched the comic at the top on my Android Tablet. Fun fact!

Gute Nacht, süßer Prinz

I am back from my summer hiatus. It’s funny that I always feel compelled to blog when school is in session and I have 125 students to teach.

Anyhoo. There was a debate the other night. As a linguist, I find it very entertaining to uphold the farce that these things are actually debates. To define these things as such is a curious phenomenon and makes me wonder just what we are supposed to call real debates, where two or more people give their opinions and then rebut each other point for point. Like, in real life.

To call the farce the other night a debate is, in essence, to admit that democracy has sunk so low that I scarcely think it’s possible to claw our way back up to respectability. The question of “who won” the debate is even more illuminating. The only people who seem to think that it’s possible to determine a victor in such a vapid, empty excuse for political discourse, are the media.

But the thing that amuses me the absolute most is the fact that Rick Perry is generally considered the front runner in this whole circus. Mitt Romney, of course, is his closest competitor, but Rick Perry really seems to be capturing the hearts and minds of…well…somebody. I have a very difficult time understanding the mindset that is required to like this guy.

And that’s just the thing. In what diseased political atmosphere should someone like Rick Perry be the frontrunner for President of the United States? The guy went to Texas A&M, and his college transcript is something that I would be embarrassed to show my folks. That’s not the kind of transcript that gets you a sweet job at a big corporation. Corporations have standards. The state of Texas, however, does not appear to.

What sort of GPA do I think the President of the United States should have? Oh, I don’t know, maybe a fucking 4.0? I didn’t get straight As, to be sure, but I wasn’t too far off by the end. Also, the only college degree that this guy has is a BS in, get this, Animal Science. What the fuck is that even? How does that qualify him to hold the highest elected office in the nation? I want my presidents to have doctorates, I’m afraid.

Does that make me an elitist? Perhaps. But shouldn’t the president be elite? Why would I want a shlub like myself running the goddamned country? I want a genius running the country, not a country bumpkin like Rick Fucking Perry.

When I was looking for pictures of Rick on the internet, I did notice that he does a lot of pointing. My wife pointed out that it’s not pointing so much as it’s power wagging. A fair point. But I didn’t know how to make that any funnier than Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin already have. So I figured pointing a few fingers would be plenty fun. Not to put too fine a point on it.

Perhaps it’s not so much that he points, like he’s really getting to the bottom of society’s problems. It seems just as possible that it is, in fact, a threat. Isn’t it possible that with all of his money, he might have had his pointer fingers replaced with death rays? Whenever he points, he is daring us to step out of line, declare ourselves socialists, homosexuals, scientists, liberals, intellectuals, or thinking human beings. And if we do, don’t think for one second that he won’t project a stream of microwaves directly through your head, causing it to pop like an overripe cantaloupe. That’s what we can look forward to with a Rick Perry presidency.

Punkt für Punkt