Natalie Maines speaks out

See the full article here.

This is a pretty short article, I'll excerpt some points and give my comments.

"I think people were misled and I think people are fighting a war that they didn't know they were going to be fighting," Maines said Friday in a television interview. "And I think they were misled by people who should have been asking questions and weren't."

This is more like it. She's being sincere and polite and not making disparaging comments about anyone.

The country stars faced criticism and even death threats after Maines said she and her bandmates were ashamed that President Bush was from Texas. She made the remark in London shortly before the war began.

If you think someone has made a stupid or incorrect statement, then criticism is perfectly acceptable. Death threats are not, and are in fact criminal acts last I heard.

As for the backlash, she said, "We like making music and we'll continue to do that whether people buy it or not."

Damn straight. Criticism of your dissent stifles it only if you let it. You just need to realize that free speech doesn't mean that you are free from any consequences of what you say. You accept those consequences like an adult. Responding to your critics with reasoned arguments is good. Childish antics like wearing a shirt with "F.U.T.K" on it is not (though it's still your right to do so). It looks like Ms. Maines is figuring that out and I'm glad to see it.

A couple of game reviews

Here are reviews of three computer games that I've played or am in the middle of playing.

Call of Duty

This is the latest WWII first-person shooter action game, from many of the same people who created the excellent Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. The similarities are obvious. I wouldn't say this game is revolutionary, but it is evolutionary. The game's tagline says "In the war that changed the world, no one fought alone." Almost all of the missions in this game involve you working with other, computer-controlled characters to achieve your objectives. The computer won't complete your mission for you, there are things you must do or else they won't get done, but your computer teammates do help you out quite a bit. Also, you play as three different characters, one American, one British, and one Russian.

The game was actually shorter than I thought it would be. I completed it in a week. As I usually did, I played it on the easiest difficulty level and didn't have any problem getting through it without resorting to cheat codes or walkthroughs. I would say the centerpiece of the game was the Battle of Stalingrad. It was this game's equivalent of the assault on Omaha Beach that was in Medal of Honor. If you've seen the movie Enemy at the Gates, about the duel between snipers in Stalingrad, this mission will be very familiar. It starts out with you on a boat crossing the Volga River into Stalingrad, being strafed by German fighter planes and shelled by German artillery.

I haven't played much of the multiplayer game yet, I'll probably do so soon. What I did play seemed comparable to Medal of Honor.

The levels are very well done and highly detailed, and the teamwork component is a nice change from the one man mowing down his enemies style of play you usually find. The game engine is pretty state of the art so you'll need a reasonably beefy machine to run it. My box is pretty hot so I can run it at high resolution with all the goodies turned on. The sounds are very well done, the guns are properly loud. There's also a neat effect that happens if an explosion goes off near you, such as from a tank shell. The game slows down, sounds get very muffled, and the visual display gets blurry and sorta psychedelic. You also get knocked off your feet and have to stand back up. This lasts about 5 or 6 seconds and then everything returns to normal.

I recommend this game, although with the brevity of the single-person campaign, I'd wait until the price comes down some or it's on sale.

Aliens vs. Predator 2

I haven't gotten very far in this one yet. I have a hard time playing it. Not because the game isn't good, but because it's nerve wracking. They have done an excellent job of recreating the suspenseful atmosphere of the movies, especially the second one. You never know when an alien is going to jump you and try to tear you a new one.

The game is actually three games. I think the events intertwine but I haven't gotten far enough to know for sure yet. There are three campaigns, you play as a Colonial Marine, an Alien, and as a Predator. I've played partway through the Marines campaign and have briefly tried the Alien and Predator campaigns. When playing as the Alien, you start as a facehugger and try to find someone to implant. You then follow the lifecycle of the Alien. As the Predator, you can cloak, and can use enhanced vision modes. I'm told you can also rip the spines out of your victims (yeah!). And, as the Marine, it's much like the second movie, with the weapons lovingly recreated including the pulse rifle and the smart gun.

As with most games, most of the gameplay is pretty much solo action, though there have been a couple missions for the Marine where you have some fire support from an APC. The levels are well done and detailed. It's pretty eerie to come across a couple of skinned corpses hanging upside down. Of course, you as the player know this is the work of a Predator (though at the point I've reached so far I've yet to see one directly, just Aliens).

The engine is the latest incarnation of the Lithtech engine from Monolith, the same engine used on No One Lives Forever 2. The Lithtech engine started out several years ago as a project called DirectEngine, which Monolith was doing for Microsoft. As I understand it, the idea was to make a general-purpose 3-D game engine that companies could use to make games. Microsoft decided not to continue with the project so Monolith continued on their own. The engine is pretty good, supporting many of the latest Direct3D features. One of the places it really shines is in the detail quality of the textures.

I do intend to complete the game, but I can only take so much before I just get exhausted from the suspense. That's the mark of a well-done game, though, and I highly recommend it.

Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne

One of the most highly anticipated games of the year, this game takes up after the first game ended. Max thought it was over, but it wasn't. I'm part way through the game and I'm loving every minute of it. The bullet-time physics have been modified somewhat and it makes it more useful and fun. The story is engaging, if somewhat overly melodramatic. But that's the point, it is noir after all.

This sequel continues the use of the "graphic novel" cutscenes, although some of the non-interactive action is rendered by the engine. The voice acting is pretty good, especially that for Max, who is voiced by the same actor as in the first game. I'm not sure but I think at least some of the other characters are played by the same voice actors as before as well.

Max Payne 2 uses the new, state of the art, ragdoll physics which basically means that bad guys, when they die, flop around realistically based on a model of how it would work in real life, as opposed to a set death animation. Also, many of the objects that exist in Max's world react realistically to being kicked or shot. For example, you can have a metal shelf with boxes and other stuff stacked on it. If you blow a bad buy back into it, it tips over and all the stuff falls off.

The levels have been lovingly crafted, which probably explains why the game, as some have commented, is somewhat short. The game is simply beautiful to look at. The characters move more realistically than I've ever seen and the facial expressions and movements are pretty good. The previews I've seen of Half Life 2 indicate that it will be even better but, for now, Max Payne 2 is probably the best looking game out there.

I definitely recommend this game although, again given the reported brevity, wait until it's on sale or the price comes down.

The 9th Circuit Strikes Again

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has reinstated a wrongful death suit against the gun industry. Read about it here.
http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAU61BA9ND.html

There is no question in my mind that this lawsuit is without merit. This is like suing an auto manufacturer for wrongful death if someone uses a car to run somebody over. Although the death of one person and the injuries to others is tragic, the responsibility lies with the man who pulled the trigger. The gun industry is already one of the most heavily regulated industries in this country. These companies did not do anything illegal. They are not culpable.

From the article:

Survivors claimed that several weapons companies produced, distributed and sold more firearms than legal purchasers could buy. In addition, they claimed the industry knowingly participated and facilitated an underground illegal gun market.

Excuse me? Since when is making more of something that can be sold a crime? It happens all the time. This makes it sound like they handed out surplus guns on the street to whoever walked up and held out their hands, or that the gun dealers deliberately sold surplus guns to non-legal buyers. If that's the case, then a crime has been committed, but that did not happen. As far as the bit about an underground gun market, that's a pretty incredible claim. Given the scrutiny that the gun industry is under all the time, I find it fantastically unlikely that this is the case. If there is strong proof of this, don't you think we'd have heard about it by now? Don't you think it would have been all over the news?

This is, in my opinion, an attempt by trial lawyers and the anti-gun movement working in concert to attack the lawful gun industry. The lawyers want the money. The anti-gun movement wants to kill the industry since they haven't been able to ban guns.

Historical accuracy vs. commercialism

This is kind of a tough one.

Legislators Protest Beer Logos on Museum Exhibit

The short version is that a well-known acrobatic aircraft, which is currently painted in a red-and-white color scheme with Bud Light logos, is to be displayed in the Smithsonian's new aviation museum at Dulles Airport. Several members of Congress have objected to this claiming that it's inappropriate and will influence underage people to drink beer.

My first reaction on hearing about this was that, since the sponsorship of Anheuser-Busch helped make the existence of this aircraft possible, then it's entirely appropriate that this be reflected in the display. However, upon reading further, I found out that the guy who built the plane and flew it in competition did so himself. The plane was originally painted blue and yellow. It was only after he retired from competition and started performing at airshows that Anheuser-Busch came on as a sponsor and the plane was repainted.

The argument can be made that either paint scheme is historically accurate. However, I think I'm going to come down on the side of saying that the plane should be left as is. It's in the state it was in when it was retired and in which it has spent most of its life (it was built in or before 1975 and was repainted in 1983). And, although A-B wasn't involved in the construction of the plane, they did help make it possible for it to continue as an exhibition aircraft at airshows. Corporate sponsorship in sports, especially motor sports, is a fact of life in this country and repainting the plane its original colors, or simply covering the logos, isn't going to change that. Most people will realize that this does not consitute an endorsement of Bud Light by the museum, or vice versa, and parents should be explaining to their children about the dangers of underage drinking anyway. However, if they want to do something, I would have no problem with there being a disclaimer on the display stating that the museum isn't endorsing Bud Light or vice versa.

Political linkage

Mark Steyn writes in the Telegraph:

If you're so inclined, you can spend the week listening to long speeches by George Galloway and Harold Pinter. Or you can cut to the chase and get the message from Maulana Inyadullah. In late September 2001 Mr Inyadullah was holed up in Peshawar awaiting the call to arms against the Great Satan and offered this pithy soundbite to the Telegraph's David Blair:

"The Americans love Pepsi-Cola, we love death."

That's it in a nutshell - or in a nut's hell. And, like Mr Inyadullah, if it's Pepsi or death, the fellows on the streets of London this week choose death - at least for the Iraqis. If it's a choice between letting some carbonated-beverage crony of Dick Cheney get a piece of the Nasariyah soft-drinks market or allowing Saddam to go on feeding his subjects feet-first into the industrial shredder for another decade or three, then the "peace" activists will take the lesser of two evils - ie, crank up the shredder. Better yet, end UN sanctions so Saddam can replace the older, less reliable shredders, the ones with too many bits of bone tissue jammed in the cogs.

Read the entire article here:
It's 'peace' psychosis in a nut's hell

An Iraqi who is enjoying his new freedom to say what he wants has some words for the world that allowed Saddam to terrorize the Iraqi people for three decades:
You owe us an apology

QandO goes through the so-called "resume" of George W. Bush that has been circulating recently, which claims to show how he's abysmally unqualified to be president, and takes it apart piece by piece:
Resume of George W. Bush

What's interesting about this piece is that he fully admits that he can't make a comprehensive rebuttal of all the points in the "resume." As he writes:

I will make no attempt to give a comprehensive rebuttal, for now, because I simply don't know every answer and don't have time to research all of them. I do know enough to deal with many, and you are welcome to fill in the blanks. If you know more, I will post it.....

If the situation was reversed, would the author make that concession? I don't know.

Another rebuttal of the "resume" can be found here (note: it's a pdf file so you'll need Acrobat Reader):
The Truth About "The Resume"

In both of the above documents, I'd like to draw your attention to the refutation of the meme that Bush "went AWOL" from the Texas Air National Guard.

And, finally (for now), the news that you're probably not hearing about on the major news stations and sites (except for Fox News, of course). The Weekly Standard reports that:

OSAMA BIN LADEN and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist attacks, al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi financial support for al Qaeda--perhaps even for Mohamed Atta--according to a top secret U.S. government memorandum obtained by THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

Read the entire article here:
Case Closed

I will admit that I'm not completely convinced of the accuracy of this report. It simply sounds too good to be true. I will reserve judgement on it until and unless I hear more.

Getting out

GeekWithA.45 writes an amazing essay about why he's finally leaving New Jersey.

New Jersey Voters, Redux

Fortunately, Washington State, even the rather liberal Seattle area, is not so bad that I feel the need to move away. I really hope it never gets to that point because I love it here, not least because I love working for this company. As far as gun rights go, Washington is pretty high on the list. I would say only Vermont and Alaska are higher (at least as far as I know), since they don't require a license to carry a concealed pistol. Washington does, but you only need to fulfill certain objective criteria and they have to give you one. There is no training requirement as many states have. (Please note that I do not advocate carrying a concealed pistol without having at least some training in the use of a firearm. However, requiring training, or even a license for that matter, to exercise a right means it's no longer a right, but a privilege. Driving on public roads is a privilege, hence you need a license. Owning and bearing arms is a right.)

However, the government of this state is controlled by the Democrat party, and both of our senators are Democrats. This is reflected in high sales taxes and (in my opinion) high property taxes. We have no state income tax but the idea is brought up every so often and there's always the chance it will come into being. Our licensing fees for cars were once among the highest, until the voters made it abundantly clear that that should no longer be the case. To their credit, the governor and legislature followed the will of the people even though the initiative which mandated lower fees was ruled unconstitutional and void after it passed. Attempts at broader gun restrictions crop up from time to time but haven't gone anywhere, probably due to the more conservative rural population.

But it's not as bad as, say California. And I hope it never gets that bad because I don't want to feel that I have to leave because of political reality. I hope I'm never pushed to the point that GeekWithA.45 was eventually pushed to.

Telegraphing punches (or not)

Stephen Den Beste's latest starts out talking about the browser war and the Java war and ties it all into the current real war.

Telegraphing your punches

After the lead in where he discusses the failure of Netscape and Sun, he ties it into his view of the US's strategy in the war:

Surprise is a major advantage. It doesn't last forever, but for a critical period tactical surprise can be the difference between victory and defeat. And strategic surprise operates over a period of years; it's always a mistake to let someone know that in a couple of years you expect to be gunning for them. That was the mistake Sun and Netscape made.

In the current war the US is fighting the long term strategy is, and I now think always was, to bring about democratic and liberal reform in most of the major Arab governments. After the attack on NYC and Washington in September of 2001, and after it became clear that al Qaeda was responsible, it was obvious that the Taliban were in the crosshairs and with few friends and no important patrons had no chance of survival. I think it wasn't too difficult for anyone to figure out that Saddam would be next, though it wasn't anything like as clear that those plans couldn't be derailed.

Some of the things that the president and his administration have done (especially Colin Powell and the State Department) have confused me. Things like playing up to the Saudi monarchy when there exists considerable evidence that it is not at all the ally it has been perceived to be. As Stephen writes:

Some have argued that the current war is actually a Saudi Civil War which they exported. As Dan Darling put it:

For the last 14 years, there has been something of a gentleman's agreement between House Saud and al-Qaeda: the latter will not target the former, in exchange for the Saudi government turning a blind eye towards al-Qaeda's activities in the Kingdom.

Those activities included fund raising and recruiting, and even turning a blind eye towards the occasional attack inside Saudi Arabia itself, which the government blamed on foreign liquor smugglers. It was also part of a larger devil's agreement that the House of Saud had long had with the Wahhabis that the Sauds would let the Wahhabists operate unhindered and let them persecute heretics and enforce "proper behavior". In exchange the Wahhabis would ignore the decadent lifestyles of the Saud Princes (who, for instance, reportedly import huge amounts of Scotch Whiskey) and let them continue to rule the nation and to skim off a large part of the national income for their own use.

Many accuse President Bush of not being very smart. However, I've been wondering for some time if he really is a lot smarter than he appears, or at least the people that help him make decisions are. I've certainly been hoping that that is the case. If what Stephen says is true, then my hope is justified:

Yet President Bush seemed to spend a lot of time cozying up to the Sauds, even inviting a group of high level Sauds to visit the Texas ranch. For that he's been criticized roundly, with veiled intimations by some that it's (whisper it) all about oil.

Actually, it was all about not telegraphing punches. It was all about not letting the Sauds, and other autocratic Arab leaders in the region many of whom were "allies", know that our long term plans required that they either drastically reform their own nations or be deposed. Had they understood the long term plan and its implications, they would have banded together and actively opposed us, representing a serious impediment and possibly making victory impossible.

As he has shown repeatedly, Bush doesn't cave in to political expediency and criticism. And it looks like he once again waited it out until the time is right:

Over the last few months the US has been colder towards the Sauds. We haven't demanded that they step down, but we're asking for more in the way of concrete action. And with the most recent attack of a couple of days ago, it's become clear that the militants in Saudi Arabia are beginning to actively work to depose the Sauds themselves. The tacit truce with al Qaeda is over, and the Sauds are going to be forced to choose sides at long last, and to fight the civil war they've been trying to avoid for the last few decades. If they do that, we might help them. But they no longer get a pass; there's no "special relationship" any longer, no more blind eye turned their direction.

It's good that it's out in the open now. It's good that it's now formal policy of the government. And it's good that Bush was in no hurry to announce it; it's good that he was willing to wait until that announcement would not do more harm than good. It's good that he wasn't willing to compromise execution of the strategy just to relieve political pressure and defuse criticism.

These excerpts, as usual, only give the flavor of his writing, but I recommend you go read the article in its entirety.

Race

An excellent essay on race over at VRWC, Inc. by James Finch.

Click here.

And now the female perspective

Kim Du Toit's essay, The Pussification of the Western Male, has caused quite a firestorm in (here's the catchword of the day, folks) the blogosphere. The responses range from "Right on!" to "You're a knuckle dragging neanderthal." However, the most revealing comments, I think, are those from the woman who knows Kim most intimately, his wife Connie. She supports him 100 percent, but don't tell her that she must have "let Kim write what he did" or that she is completely subservient to him. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Her comments can be found here and here.