Quotulatiousness

March 9, 2011

ESR considers “game”

Filed under: Randomness — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:59

I’ve been a fan of Eric S. Raymond for years: he writes very well about things that interest him and we have some large overlap of interests. In this post, he talks about the “game” used by the Pick-Up Artist:

Slang dictionaries never fail to interest me. A few days ago I ran across one serving the PUA (pick-up artist) subculture, a network of men (and a few women) who have attempted to systematize and explain tactics for picking up women. Chasing links from it, I found a network of blogs and sites describing what they call “game”, which has evolved beyond mere tactics into a generative theory of why the tactics work; indeed in some hands (such as the ferociously intelligent PUA blogger Roissy) it seems to be aspiring to the condition of philosophy.

I’ve found reading about this stuff fascinating, if not quite for the usual reasons. I’m what PUAs call a “natural”, a man who figured out much of game on his own and consequently cuts a wide sexual swathe when he cares to. Not quite the same game they’re playing, however. For one thing, I’ve never tried to pick up a woman in a bar in my entire life. College parties when I was a student, yes; SF conventions, neopagan festivals, SCA events, yes; bars, no.

Also, and partly as consequence of where I hang out, it has been quite unusual for me to hit on women with IQs below about 120 — and it may well be the case that I’ve never tried to interest a woman with below-average intelligence. (Er, which is not to say they don’t notice me; even in middle age I get lots of IOIs from waitresses and other female service personnel. Any PUA would tell you this is a predictable and unremarkable consequence of being an alpha male.)

Charles Stross on the future of gaming (from 2007)

Filed under: Books, Gaming, Media, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:35

Charles Stross is the author of many fine books, but it was Halting State that many gamers would know him from. At the time the book was published, he wrote an article for GuildCafe on the future from a gamers viewpoint. The original article disappeared, so he’s reposted it on his blog:

I’ve been asked by our hosts to take a stab at identifying how online games will affect our culture over the next couple of decades. That’s an interesting target because it covers a bunch of time scales. So I’m going to look at where we stand today, and where we might go at various stages along that 25 year time-line.

That’s a tall order; technology doesn’t stand still, and it’s no good trying to guess where the gaming field is going without knowing where the tech base is taking us. So we need to look at where we are and where we’ve come from in order to plot a course ahead.

[. . .]

The first symptom is that Reuters pay Warren Ellis or some other cutting-edge cyber-celebrity to move into SL. (And, whaddaya know, if they did the job right, they picked someone who actually knows what they’re talking about.) Warren drinks their retainer or injects it into his eyeball or something, then dashes off some febrile prose which gets syndicated. Heads turn at AP and UPI: “why don’t *we* have someone covering this Whizzumajig? We’re falling behind! Hire Hunter Thompson!”

At the same time, some random gamers in places like the Swedish Foreign Ministry or the French Nazi Party decide they can get some free publicity by staking out some territory and figuratively mooning the straights. Exploding pigs, flying lutefisk, and other whackiness ensues.

And then the tidal wave of mass media awareness arrives, complete with the usual foaming mess of sewage, uprooted trees, and general crap turned out by the tabloid press and cheap news channels as they try to spew one lurid scenario after another through the playground. “It encourages pedophiles! Or terrorists! Kids get into Whizzumajig and fail their college exams! Users get hair in their palms and go blind! Ban Whizzumajigs now, before it steals our precious bodily fluid!”

“It’s the libertarians who push this crap”

Filed under: Economics, Liberty, Politics, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:22

Dave Weigel tries to find the answer to the burning question “Why do conservatives hate trains so much?”:

But it could hardly make less sense to liberals. What, exactly, do Republicans, conservatives, and libertarians have against trains? Seriously, what? Why did President George W. Bush try to zero out Amtrak funding in 2005? Why is the conservative Republican Study Committee suggesting that we do so now? Why does George Will think “the real reason for progressives’ passion for trains is their goal of diminishing Americans’ individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism”?

“You need to distinguish between Republicans and conservatives and libertarians when you look at this,” says William Lind, the director of the American Conservative Center for Public Transportation. “It’s the libertarians who push this crap.”

Libertarians, of course, have no problem with trains (see, e.g., Atlas Shrugged). They do have a problem with federal spending on transportation, as do many Republicans. Atlas Shrugged was published in 1957; Amtrak took over the rails in 1971. Since then, conservatives will sing the praises of private rail projects but criticize federally funded projects that don’t meet the ideal. Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., for example, pushed a high-speed rail initiative through Congress in 2008. By 2010, he was denouncing “the Soviet-style Amtrak operation” that had “trumped true high-speed service” in Florida. In 2011, as the chairman of the House Transportation Committee, he is interested in saving the Orlando-Tampa project by building 21 miles between the airport and Disney World. This is about 21 miles farther than local Republicans want to go.

Players’ union rejects owners’ offer of limited financial data disclosure

Filed under: Football, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 07:31

It’s not surprising that the union hasn’t leaped at the owners’ small gesture of financial openness:

N.F.L. players union officials on Tuesday rejected an offer from the owners to turn over audited profitability data from all 32 teams for the past several years. The offer, made Monday night, was the first time the owners indicated a willingness to share financial information with the players beyond what is required by the collective bargaining agreement.

Union leaders told the owners’ negotiating committee that they wanted each club’s audited full financial statements, according to two people who were briefed on the talks.

The standoff could significantly hamper negotiations because union officials have indicated they will not make any more financial concessions without receiving fully audited financial statements, data it has been seeking for nearly two years.

One person involved in the negotiations called full financial disclosure a potential “silver bullet” in the negotiations.

Negotiations on football matters like the drug-testing policy and off-season camps had taken place Tuesday morning, but the split of the $9 billion in annual revenue the N.F.L. takes in remains the biggest stumbling block toward reaching a new collective bargaining agreement before the Friday night deadline.

The financial situation may indeed be as dire as the owners are claiming, but it’s hard to believe them when they won’t actually show the full financial picture to prove it. The continuing refusal to open the books has a strong appearance of deception.

Felicia Day, Wil Wheaton, and Amy Okuda panel discussion

Filed under: Gaming, Humour, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:05

And, part two, with Wil Wheaton’s immortal advice “Guys . . . when a woman joins the game, don’t be a dick.”:

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