On the underpowered-ness of Video Game Machine Guns

Machine guns are pretty effective in real life, as far as I can tell. Probably an order of magnitude more effective at dealing damage than a pistol of the equivalent caliber. While playing Halo 3 recently, however, I was again reminded of the continuously ridiculous underpowering of automatic weaponry. If they make the game too easy, reduce the available ammo! Nothing is more maddening than unloading clip after clip into someone, only to realize that you're apparently firing papier mache bullets. If it takes one hundred rounds to kill a giant enemy crab with an MP5, it should take 100 rounds to kill it with a 9mm Glock.

The three worst offenders I can think of amongst notable/quality games:

3)The original Halo: Three headshots with the pistol equals death, but you can unload a clip into the torso of enemy soldiers and watch them shrug it off. I didn't, and don't, particularly enjoy the "reload dance" that is required whenever I don't manage to kill an opponent at close range with the default machine gun. The problem has been somewhat eliminated in the most recent entry-- not by improving the machine gun, but by making the pistol worthless.

2)Gears of War: I gave up on Gears of War multiplayer for one simple reason -- the ridiculously underpowered machine gun. You basically have to abandon the machine gun for the shotgun in multiplayer, and the "dodge and blast" strategy required for that particularly weapon takes away what could have been a fantastic tactical experience. It's not fun unloading a clip at point blank range and watching an opponent approach and kill you with one blast. Fenix looks muscular enough to carry some real ammo, damnit!

1)Far Cry (on the Xbox/Xbox 360): Far Cry takes this problem to a whole new level. I tested this out in co-op mode. Two or three shots of a Desert Eagle to the head will kill you. About four or five from a silenced (!!!) 9mm will also do the trick. How much machine gun fire can you absorb? From the regular machine gun, at least a full clip. Even if you're dual wielding, forget it. The biggest noob mistake is thinking that the machine gun was worth a crap. I can't count the number of times some moron with the default machine gun would charge and "light me up" thinking I was stuck with a dinky silenced pistol. This quickly would turn to howls of incredulous anger as I would pop them a few times in the head. Ridiculous.


Who got it right (more or less): The Call of Duty series seems to have the best pistol/machine gun balance out there. Meaning that the pistol completely sucks.

Lottery Winners Unintelligent? No way!

http://new-million-dollar-ideas.blogspot.com/2007/10/7-lottery-winners-who-lost-their.html

Come to think of it, the fact that you are participating in a lottery is essentially prima facie evidence that you are stupid and would be unable to intelligently manage the lottery winnings, isn't it?

We used to call lotteries something else back in the quaint days of Cosa Nostra. They were called "numbers rackets." Why "rackets?" Because they were considered a scam. People pay money for a chance to win a smaller percentage than what others paid in. It's a classic scheme/crime. So, of course, they're illegal.

And governments run them.

Oddly enough, when crime syndicates and private enterprise fight for your idiot tax, they offer you much better odds. The California lotto, for example, pays pennies on the dollar into the winner's share. If there was competition, you'd see 99% pay-outs competing with 99.9% payouts in no time (assuming overhead is as low as I think it is, and collusive activities outlawed).

Why I believe in Gattaca and learned to stop loving unfettered breeding

You need a license for just about anything of importance in this world, except bringing a child into it.

Two facts that will probably blow your mind.

1. Think of any individual who has ever lived. Thomas Jefferson, your grandfather, your brother, or the first human being who ever walked the earth. The chances are overwhelming that if you pour yourself a couple of glasses of water, you will soon be consuming a molecule that once passed through the bladder of that individual. Statistical probability doesn't lie, and there are several orders of magnitude more molecules in a glass of water than there are glasses of water in the world.

2. Think of a particularly vivid memory from your childhood. You were there (or you wouldn't remember it), right? Well, actually, you weren't. There isn't a single atom in your body that was in existence when that event occurred. Whatever YOU are, it must be something other than the stuff that makes YOU up ... right?

Affirmative Action at its most extreme

http://www.guardian.co.uk/zimbabwe/a...181086,00.html

Zimbabwe's bakeries have shut and supermarkets have warned there will be no bread for the foreseeable future as the government admitted that wheat production had collapsed following the seizure of white-owned farms. The agricultural ministry announcement that the wheat harvest is only about a third of what is required, and that imports are held up by lack of hard currency, came as a deadline passed today for the last white farmers to leave their land or face prosecution for trespass. The maize harvest is expected to be equally dire and price controls to contain hyperinflation have emptied the stores of most other foodstuffs. The World Food Programme says at least 3 million people - one in four of the population - will need food aid in the coming months.

The agriculture minister, Rugare Gumbo, has blamed the food shortages on black farmers who have taken over formerly white-owned land."I am painfully aware of the widespread theft of stock, farm produce, irrigation equipment and the general vandalism of infrastructure by our new farmers," he said."I am disappointed that our new farmers have proved to be failures since the start of the land reform programme in 2000. In spite of all the support government has been pouring into the agricultural sector, productivity and under-utilisation of land remain issues of concern."

Zimbabwe, once the world's second largest exporter of tobacco, has also seen production of its main cash crop nosedive, further undermining its ability to buy food from abroad. This year's crop is not likely to be much better than recent harvests, with many farmers saying that their seedlings have died for lack of irrigation. The government's admission that the land redistribution has failed to deliver the promised boost to food production coincides with a deadline for the last white farmers to vacate their land.

Zimbabwe's economic problems are likely to be compounded by a law passed last week that compels many publicly owned companies, including foreign firms, to sell a majority of their equity to black Zimbabweans. Zimbabwe's minister of indigenisation, Paul Mangwana, said those companies that do not like it can "pack their bags and go"."If they feel that we went into the bush [to fight against white rule] for them to enjoy our wealth then they can leave. We are talking about the total liberation of this country. I have no apologies for that," he said.

Is there any country in Africa that isn't either a hellhole of despair, or teetering on the edge? I cannot imagine why taking land from people who know how to farm, and giving it to people who don't know how to farm, would be considered a good idea? Hmmmm.....maybe it's never a good idea to ever make any decision based on the color of a person's skin, rather than on merit? Naw, that'd be too crazy.

A reading list for Doubting Thomases

And you know who you are.

1. The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins.

2. The End of Faith, by Sam Harris.

3. The Final Superstition, by Joseph Daleiden.

What do prisons accomplish?

There's been quite a few reasons bandied about as to why we lock folks up. And the United States, by and large, locks up a hell of a lot more people than anyone else. Mostly due to our irrational, puritanical, and ridiculous drug laws; but that's a blog post for another time.

Let's discuss the various rationales given, and the one big, elephant-in-the-room explanation that no one ever, ever, ever discusses -- UNTIL NOW!!!

Rehabilitation

Don't make me laugh. This has actually been written out of the California legislative materials on incarceration. GED programs, study at home courses, and vocational training do a wonderful job of helping a very, very small percentage of inmates. It goes without saying that people are who are going to be locked up through their productive years probably don't take advantage of this opportunity, and for good reason; it's probably a waste of time (in economic, not personal, terms). If we could do an intelligent study on rehabilitation efforts, I'd bet that the recidivist rate amongst those who participate would be exactly the same even if such programs weren't offered. Meaning that the offender, who likely has a fairly short jail term and has no intention of returning, probably learned his lesson and wouldn't have committed another crime anyway. Does rehabilitation benefit society and make our prison system more productive? By and large, I'd say no. We pay it lip service, but that's about as far as it goes. Given that most people are anti-social miscreants due to genetic predisposition and/or a terrible upbringing (don't pretend that in most cases it's exclusively one or the other), a few GED courses aren't going to accomplish miracles.

Punishment

An "eye for an eye", and all that. Punishment used to a socially acceptable reason. Now, if it's used at all, it's mentioned with distaste. People say "make him serve his time" rather than "lock him up and throw away the key." Given our shameful acceptance of prison rape as both a fact of life, and a source of endless "don't drop the soap" punchlines, I think the vast majority of the American population just want to see these inmates suffer. And for some of them, I agree. But does punishing inmates benefit society? Well, it probably makes people think twice about committing crimes. But, apparently not enough people, since we still have catastrophically high crime rates, particularly in the inner city. Generally, people who commit serious crimes are morons, so they either don't appreciate the likelihood that they get caught, or aren't imaginative enough to realize what it will mean. Intelligent people who commit serious crimes are typically white collar criminals (which have far shorter prison terms as compared to the harms they cause) or they don't get caught.

I'm guessing that fear of punishment generally keeps in line those who would have behaved anyway. Sure it's emotionally satisfying to punish "evil-doers", but the mere fact that they are being punished doesn't really benefit us very much. If we wanted to prevent crimes, we'd randomly execute one in every hundred people who were convicted of a misdemeanor or a felony, regardless of the chrage. If that didn't get the job done, drop it to one in twenty. Eventually, only the severely deranged or the most recalcitrant hoodlum would still be engaging in crime.

Of course, mass executions would be socially unacceptable.

Removal

Aha! Now we're getting somewhere. When we talk about criminalizing behavior through jail-time being a source of lower crime rates, I don't think it's because bad folks decide not to do bad things to prevent incarceration. I think it's because we remove bad people from society for years on end. All those folks who would have committed crimes are literally unable to continue victimizing the community at large. Wonderful! Now we're getting somewhere. Suddenly, lengthy prison sentences make sense. The greatest predictor of future criminal behavior is past criminal behavior (odd that past criminal records is normally considered "irrelevant" in civil or criminal trials, isn't it?). If you're locking up criminals, you're almost certainly preventing future crimes. Delightful.

But, this "removal" has a hidden feature that's even important, though also appalling to discuss as touches upon the most taboo subject in modern society: eugenics.

Breeding

If you haven't read Freakonomics (do so!!), the most controversial chapter links Roe v. Wade to a precipitious drop in crime fifteen to eighteen years later. To wit, the children who are most likely to be aborted are also the most likely to commit crimes. This simple conclusion horrified people. The authors did a marvelous job pointing out that increased policing, the warehousing of inmates, and education spending were all illusions; the people who would have been genetically and environmentally predisposed to a life of crime were just less plentiful.

No one has yet extended this reasoning to the prison system, but since I'm an anonymous blogger, I will. Every year that a female between the ages of 15 and about 45 is locked up, is one less year they are capable of reproduction. For males, clearly the dynamic is different, but the philosophy remains in the same. Over generations this is likely to make a significant impact. There's some evidence that it already has. Despite the media frenzy surrounding violent crime, other than a few urban areas crime in the United States has gone down (particularly violent crime) over the last thirty years or so, particularly amongst the non-immigrant population.

Of course, genetic culling isn't an explicit goal of incarceration, nor am I saying it should be. However, in the long run we would be better off if we sterilized prisoners and let them out after a token sentence, then if we kept people locked up for moderately long jail sentences that allowed them at least a portion of their reproductive years. From a mathematical point of view, this makes perfect sense; from a humanist's point of view, it's a nightmare scenario. But, let's not pretend that it isn't a very real effect of our prison system, whether we want to admit it or not. Admittedly an inefficient effect (because it's not an outcome we're attempting to produce), but a real one, nonetheless.

Go Bears!

With a stunning, "one of the five best college football games I've ever seen", moment, California defeated Oregon on a last second forced fumble out of the back of the endzone (touchback!!) and won for the first time in 20 years on Oregon turf.

Ranked number 3, but with a brutal schedule coming up -- we may have to play three undefeated Pac-10 teams -- California's fate is in its hands. Win out, and we'll have at least a second place ranking due to a win over USC, and we're in the title game. Even with only one loss, so long as it's to an undefeated USC, I smell Roses (a game I could actually attend).

Given that John David Booty looked positively awful at Washington, we've got a real shot. If USC's QB can't complete a pass longer than ten yards, they're not going to win the Pac-10.

Chuck

Best new show I've seen.

Yvonne Strahovsky is a revelation. And, by revelation, I mean "smoking hot blonde they put in a German bar wench costume and revealing lingerie on a regular basis." Chuck manages to be geeky without being annoying, Adam Baldwin is finally being used properly post-Firefly, and the show is, overall, quite fun.

I don't see how they can sustain for an entire season the "he's a geek who happens to have spy info stuck in his head" routine, let alone for more than one season. At some point Chuck's going to have become a real spy, or at least competent, and they're going to have to change up the setting of the show.

BTW, Chuck's friend is the funniest sidekick character I've seen in years.