A while age, I was doing some derisive reviews ("sporkings") of Oryx and Crake, I got halfway through before it became more trouble than it was worth (if you build it, they will not necessarily come, or comment). I got this nasty little flame just now and I thought I'd share it with you.

So, any advice?

Long time, no read. My excuse? A wargame with 10-year-old graphics. It's more interesting than socializing with human beings, which is ironic since the game's meant for multiplayer.

Here's the plot: you're a pretender god of some fantasy civilization, not necessarily a human one, and your goal is to kill off the competition. The beauty of the game is the simple premise and variety of details.

To get you interested, here're the details on the Wish spell (scroll up a bit).

I don't know why this article on Chinese capitalism is in Librarian Link of the Day, but I like this and feel like talking about it. The gist of it is "Remember, America used to be this bad too." Absent, thankfully, are the usual boringly angry diatribes against America, and globalization, and imperialism, and capitalism, and, corporations, and Bush (I hate him too, please don't stone me), and oil, etc. Such ranting confabulation (big words are great for putting on airs of intelligence) doesn't give solutions so much as strongly hint that humanity should adopt a strictly localized and steady-state economy, something groups wanting mainstream credibility know not to mention explicitly.

All right, I'll admit that I've just ranted too. Can you blame me ranting given the above?

Anyway, the article. Here's how Mihm summarizes the problem:

Piracy, fraud, and counterfeiting, whether of currency, commodities, or brand-name electronics, flourishes at a particular moment in a capitalist society: the regulatory interregnum that emerges in the wake of fast-paced capitalist change. This period is one in which technology has improved, often dramatically, and markets have burst their older boundaries. Yet the country still relies on obsolete ways of controlling commerce. Until there's something to replace them, counterfeiters and other flim-flam operators flourish, pushing new means of making money to their logical, if unethical, conclusion.

Emphasis mine, of course. Following this some paragraphs later is his solution.

But understanding the parallels does suggest a way to move forward. The rogue industries of the United States eventually responded to stiff international economic pressure. Beginning in the 1880s, the European meat boycotts spurred Congress to pass a raft of federal legislation aimed at imposing some inspection controls on the exports of meat. In response, European countries opened their doors to American meat again. And in 1891, Congress finally bowed to decades of angry lobbying and passed an international copyright law that protected foreign authors.

Sometimes, the invisible hand needs to show itself and make rude gestures. The point is that America adapted to change rather than corpse grasp the Old Ways like so many present-day archeological sites did when they were still countries.

No, this isn't a political post (thank goodness), it's an answer to a major boggle I've had about GURPS High-Tech. See, the 3rd Edition version of the book was nothing but guns, guns, guns; everything I wanted to know about guns but almost nothing about any other gadget goodies. This annoyed me. The latest edition looks to be much improved; while yet more gun goodness pagecount-wise, the larger book means that about half of the text describes everything else.

Wanting to know why the disproportionate incongruity, I asked "Why?" Here's the thorough answer I got:

I think there are several reasons. First, most gamers know very little about guns in comparison to other modern technology. In many ways, the gun, though a contemporary tool and much more familiar than the sword, is just as misunderstood. Gamers know computers, TVs, radios, automobiles, and other common core technology that might be part of a setting that features guns. There's very little need to explain how a computer works, or the differences between IBM, Mac, PDA, iPod, and so forth. Guns, however, are comparatively expensive, often restricted, and require training and facilities that aren't normally encountered on a day to day basis. Thus, gamers who don't own a gun are forced to create their understanding about them from movies, TV, fiction, and so on. Often, what they "learn" is wrong, or at least doesn't jive with what the RPG purports. So, in these civilized times, you'll find many questions on these forums about weapons -- and guns in particular. Adventurers use guns quite a bit, but gamers, generally, do not.

Second, Hans is a gun expert. He has a massive library of very arcane gun data, and his histories and tidbits have always been well-received in the gaming community. In addition, Hans has worked closely with David Pulver to work out a consistent underpinning on how guns and ammunition perform in relation to GURPS mechanics. Thus, Hans is well-informed about guns and gamers in the GURPS community know this.

Third, guns are a powerful and stylish part of our culture. Much like the action movies of the last 20 years, using guns in an RPG is about power and control, something that appeals greatly to all people involved in escapist entertainment, and gamers are no different. Using a gun, carrying a gun, and so forth in an RPG is a central part of being an adventurer, someone who can handle the threats thrown at them. As such, guns are often a special adventuring tool and so are deserving of exactly the same kind of attention to detail as any other construct in a RPG, such as costume, magical objects, spell lists, powers, character description and background, and so forth.

Finally, there is an element of human history in guns, just like any other material culture. How guns were designed, adopted, and used is interesting to a large number of people, for many of the reasons listed above. This is understandable since it is one of the most important tools in all of human history. Guns have played a key part in human events since their inception, and continue to drive human activity -- as we see the AK-47 has done for the last 60 years.

So, while I think High-Tech has a nice healthy mix of non-gun content that will interest anyone playing in TL5-8, it is also a tremendous resource for using and handling guns, and contains a veritable encyclopedia of gun histories, technologies, and statistics.

I particularly like the third answer myself.

The reading statistics still could use some improvement, however.

The Bible and religious works were read by two-thirds in the survey, more than all other categories. Popular fiction, histories, biographies and mysteries were all cited by about half, while one in five read romance novels. Every other genre including politics, poetry and classical literature were named by fewer than five percent of readers.

Just the same, there are a lot of rude believers in Ugly Americanism needing manners shived into their heads. They'd be more honest if they said instead, "Americans don't read the 200-page political tracts I think they should read."

Getting off my rant and back onto the data, here's what I pulled from the infographic (as I linked to the pure text print version):

AP-IPSOS Poll: "Have you read any books in the past year?"

Midwest: 80%
West: 72
South: 71
Northeast: 69

Suburb: 75
Rural: 66

Whites: 74
Minorities: 68

I'd be interested in statistics about IPSOS's politics, considering its home country. (This is assuming that corporations are always biased, of course.) Not that I'm seeing maliciousness in the findings, I'm surprised they're as high as they are!

While looking around InsaneJournal, I've noticed that there's not much to look at. Problem as I see it, people don't comment in inactive communities, but not commenting leads to community inactivity. The solution to getting activity is easy, import blogging celebrities from LiveJournal. What I'm asking is, do you know of any active communities here? I'm hoping to get known through my postings, but I'd need my entries actually read you see.

Cataloging by trained librarians is important, summarized thusly:

To sum up, the threats to our profession are not from the Internet per se, which is just another tool we can use to do our jobs better, if we use it sensibly. The real threats are posed by the large number of our fellow librarians, including prominent leaders in the profession, who do not grasp the nature of our profession and the fact that human intervention for information organization is at its core; the low self-image those librarians have; and the failure of online catalog designers to learn about the nature of catalog records and the nature of catalog users so as to design systems that allow users to search for the entities they seek (works, authors, and subjects), which are represented in catalogs by headings, not by keywords.

Emphasis mine so as to show what I thought the most important point in the article:

Many members of our profession, including catalogers, believe that information seekers prefer keyword access and that, for that reason, Amazon.com and Google are better designed than library catalogs. The reason catalog users seem to prefer keyword access is that system designers make keyword access the default search on the initial screen of nearly every OPAC in existence. It should be no surprise that transaction log studies then show that users do more keyword searches. The entities users seek when doing a catalog search (works, authors, and subjects) are actually much better represented by headings than by keywords. Keywords do not link synonyms (hypnosis vs. hypnotism) or variant names (Mark Twain vs. Samuel Clemens); keywords do not differentiate homonyms (electrical power vs. political power) or two different people of the same name (Bush, George, 1924- vs. Bush, George W. (George Walker), 1946-); keywords do not precoordinate complex concepts to indicate their relationships (e.g., Women in television broadcasting), and keywords do not suggest broader, narrower or related terms. However, *browse* searches with heading displays, which do all these things, are buried by system designers on advanced search screens, and put into indexes in which users are required to know the order of terms in a particular heading in order to find what they seek.

1) Give your name and a little about yourself, including interests and hobbies.

Hello all, my screenname's DryaUnda. Before you ask, the name's a holdover from AOL, and based on the root words of my favorite * of Mana series spirits.

My hobbies are browsing the Web, dabbling in fanfiction, playing computer games, and reading rpg supplements. My interests, things that I like and don't feel will be passing, are right on my profile.

I'm currently enrolled at San Francisco State University as a Liberal Studies major. After that, I'm going to enroll at San Jose State University and earn my Master's in LIbrary Science.

2) Tell us why you came to InsaneJournal. Did someone from IJ tell you (and if so, who)?

I came here because it's not LiveJournal; the main reason is given below but I'm not particularly fond of 6A's selling out to witch-hunters either.

3) What is your favorite thing, so far, about InsaneJournal?

I can get a fresh start friendlist-wise without worrying about offending anyone.

4) Have you joined any other asylums? If not, would you like to?

No, but I'd like to. :)

5) Is there a certain kind of asylum or type of friends you are looking for?

Whatever and whoever shares my interests, basically. Barring those, I'm willing to take a look at anyplace active.

Regarding blogfriends, I'm looking for ones sharing my interests. This isn't to say you have to share my interests if you find me interesting and want to friend me. What I want to avoid is being all by myself against some griefer who lives for endurance "debating". Also, I crave comments, I want to know that I'm being read. (On that note, do you know of any entry counters that work on Macs?)

6) Do you want to be an active member of InsaneJournal? (Meaning, do you want to promote IJ, update, and get involved in asylums?)

As stated above, I'm very interested in updating and posting in asylums. Promotion, however, will be on an incidental and ad-hoc basis. Please note that I'm utilitarian in my entries and won't be talking about my life much, as I don't have much of one.