Greg Sanders

Two areas where I give libertarians some credit

First local housing regs.  Many of the things wrong with the suburbs and exurbs are not the result of free market forces so much as single-use zoning regs, minimum parking requirements, and uncapped mortgage tax deductions.  Communities that evolve more naturally are often walker friendly with a greater mix of shops and housing rather than just vast stretches of ‘burbs with occasional mini-malls.  On the micro level, the local governments sometimes make inexplicable decisions like Metro offering free parking on inauguration day.  That will obviously lead to even more demand for the lots and provide no incentive for those who live in walking distance to leave the car at home.  Oddly enough even people who oppose universal healthcare seem to believe in a right to free parking.  That said, I do tend to think that contracts can lead to neighborhoods with discriminatory policies even without any government policies.  I think such policies can slip in much the way anti-competitive cartels can.

The other area where I give them so credit is the war on drugs.  I’m perfectly happily with heavily regulated tobacco companies and even tougher regs, but I wouldn’t support a ban.  I do see Democratic candidates saying some good things about criminal justice reforms and focusing on harm minimization strategies, but at the national level we’ve been largely unwilling to take on the ‘war on drugs’ to the degree that we’ve been willing to take on the ‘war on terror’ (could have done more there too obviously).  Thus I’m a bit worried that the proposed Attorney General, Eric Holder, supported mandatory minimums for drugs.  Hopefully that’s not his current stance.

Democratizing the MMOs?

Neat story by Tracey John about elections in EVE Online.  It’s a sci-fi massively multiplayer RPG.

So what is all this for? The space-themed MMORPG is holding its second election for the Council of Stellar Management, or CSM. CSM is made up democratically elected players who represent the “Eve Online” community and act as liaisons to Iceland-based developer CCP Games. The council’s purpose is to be aware of in-game concerns — as well as external ones that have direct relevance to the universe — and to voice these issues to CCP to improve the game experience.

This is silly to a degree but also cool.  Read the story to see some platforms.  Anyhow, I like to see Idol competition with voting and other forms of democracy in pop culture because it’s one more way to potentially subvert authoritarian countries that allow this sort of thing.  Building the habit and practice of voting provides a firmer foundation for future political reforms.

On a less goody-goody note, my fiancee plays FF11 and is a citizen of Bastok, nominally a republic, but they haven’t had a single election in the four plus years she’s been playing nor at any point in the six year history of the game.  Also one of the expansions lets people play on behalf of an empire and attack a republic but not the other way around.  Sure the republic is full of lizard people, but what’s up with that?  Someone needs to start up Radio Free Aht Urghan (Linkshell Free Aht Urghan?  Whatever).

Eve Online picture from the Eve Online website.

Blog roll addition: Haider Khan’s Globalization, Development and Democracy

I meant to add this a couple weeks ago but got distracted.  Prof. Khan had been one of my favorites in grad school, I first read Krugman’s and Rodrik’s books in his class.  I feel much better equipped to understand the current crisis and the net positive but mixed bag of globalization.  I think I would have had a rudimentary sense of many of these discussions from the news, but now I have some sense of the theory and the possible solutions.  As we as a nation debate what to do about the auto-industry or green infrastructure, I think Prof. Khan will continue to be a great resource.

His new blog covers the same issues I learned about in his class: globalization, development, and democracy.  He’s got one post up so far on whether Obama is going to be able to pull off his goals.  Here’s one point that’s of particular interest in my present line of work:

The good news is that the money spent on green development projects will create more jobs than other public investments. By using a social accounting matrix for the US, I estimated that more than 22 jobs will be created by spending an extra one million dollars on green public investment projects. By contrast, even progressive, non-military projects at best create approximately 15 new jobs per million dollar expenditure. Of course, military-industrial complex creates even fewer jobs; fewer than 10 for every million dollars of added expenditures.

I recommend the post if you want to get a better idea for some of our options and their likely effects.

Iraq: The democracy kicked in!

Electoral democracy has taken its lumps in post-conflict situations.  The lead-up to elections is statistically correlated with a rise in violence while the post-election period doesn’t lead to a substantial drop-off.  Participatory direct democracy is a popular tool at the low levels, but the two don’t have to be linked.  Protection of minority rights can even be at odds with majoritarian democracy.  For a round up of some of these critiques you can see Fareed Zakaria’s The Rise of Illiberal Democracy.  And obviously not even those wacky neo-cons thinks it actually works in the way shown below.

Family Guy~Democracy comes to Iraq | Funny Jokes at JibJab

Nonetheless, the strength of democracy is not picking good leaders but in kicking out bad ones. Similarly while democracy can lead to problems with minority rights, it’s also rather good at bringing in excluded factions.  In the Iraqi case, this process was slower because of electoral boycotts (have those ever worked?) but now the Sunni Awakening groups and Sadr’s people, if not Sadr himself, are likely to participate in the upcoming provincial elections.

Those thinking we may be staying in Iraq for another ten years, and that think this is a good thing, tend to say that Prime Minister Maliki is just responding to domestic political pressure.  His chief Shiite rival, Sadr, seems to have lost some support as a result of the tougher line. They may be right in the source, but as the SOFA negotiations shows, they are very wrong in the implications.  The U.S. occupation is massively unpopular, the surge and associated efforts strengthened Maliki’s hand, but that just makes him less dependent on the U.S. and thus better able to negotiate a tough deals.  The Sunni’s also managed to win a concession and adopt my favorite suggestion [update: notably proposed by the PCR team over at CSIS] on handling Iraq, a referendum on the agreement and thus the occupation.  If we can’t win that referendum in July we’ll need to be out in 18 months and not 3 years.

Of course, at the same time, democracy has been working in America.  Kicking out our old leadership led to the Iraqis trusting that withdrawal might actually get implemented and progress on the SOFA.  As Matt Yglesias notes, Obama did not ‘get lucky’ that the Iraqis supported his withdrawal plan.  Instead, he was aware of the unpopularity of the occupation and incorporated that into his plan.  Good policy can make for politics.

Also, some commenters seem to think this is a win for the admin.  Chill people.  We need to be out of Iraqi cities by the end of 2009, that substantially limits what we can actually do on the ground, and there’s a deadline for total withdrawal, absent circumstances short of negotiating a new agreement, by 2011.  Our contractors no longer have legal protections. In short, we are staying on an uncomfortable SOFA, it does not fold out to make a bed, unlike Japan, Germany, or Korea, this is not a long term arrangement.

Question of the Day: VP showdown

Aaron Burr vs. Dick Cheney.  Who would you bet on.  Burr is presumably the better duelist but Cheney is much more subtle and you may not see it coming.  Seems like the classic fighter vs. rogue conflict.

Light posting this weekend as I’ll be in Virginia beach.

Happy Thanksgiving

I’m personally thankful to be in comparatively good health and that for all its troubles the nation actually has leadership again. 

Ross Douthat raises another point to be thankful for even in the face of the acts of evil in India.

One thing that's worth noting, amid all the horror, is the resilience of Indian society in the face of terrorism - not just today, but every day of late. As the above suggests, these particular attacks are in a class by themselves, and the reports that the gunmen were targeting Americans and Britons - and Jews, perhaps - has obviously given them a worldwide resonance that they might not have otherwise enjoyed. But for Indians, this spasm of violence represents an escalation, rather than a rupture with what their country experiences day-to-day: As the L.A. Times points out, "2,300 people died in 2007 in attacks by various groups in India, making it perhaps the country most affected by terrorism in the world."

Yes, in part this may reflect the deplorable failure of India's counterterrorism efforts. And yes, even independent of terrorism, I suppose you could argue that the subcontinent's extremes of poverty, disease and violence make Indians much more inured than the inhabitants of the developed West to extremes of suffering and horror jostling their way into everyday life. But still: If you try to imagine how the United States would bear up under the kind of horrific drumbeat of small and large-scale attacks that India's experienced in the last few years, it's hard to feel anything save admiration - and, on this day, thanksgiving - for Indian courage and resilience under fire.

If the US was once the last, best hope for self-government, India is the best hope that some form of democracy can thrive in all the world, not just in countries with 6k a person.  That’s not to say that everywhere has the institution and cultural advantages that India does, but in many ways they may be more of a relevant model than we are.  I’m not sure that adapting to terrorism is that remarkable of a trait, most everyone who faces sustained campaigns seems to do so, what’s more remarkable is that the Indian system, for all its difficulty, has proved resilient to a range of challenges.

I’m also thankful that the SOFA in Iraq has passed the parliament, but that deserves a post of its own.

Assault on Mumbai

The news from India is frankly frightening.  This sounds like a well coordinated attack involving a fair number of armed militants hitting many targets at once.  By the time you’re reading this, there’s fresher news, but it sounds like at least 100 dead.  Based on early reports, the main targets are the US and the UK.  The exact motivations are still obscure, there’s a range of militant groups in India, not all Islamist by any means, and the one that claimed responsibility is a relatively unknown one.

The US and UK might mean this is partially about Iraq, if it were about Afghanistan France or Germany might also be targeted.  Alternately we might just be seen as the leadership of an opposition coalition.  Yet another possibility is that the the UK was included because of its historical relationship with India.  I don’t know.  That said, this is in no way just about us, they hit relatively hardened targets including taking out the anti-terror chief.

As India figures out what to do next we should look after the safety of our people but first and foremost support that great, pluralistic, and democratic nation. The “Global War on Terror” is worse than a useless catch phrase, it encourage conflating potential adversaries and encourages a focus on primarily military measures.  Figuring out what happened here will be hard work and the next steps depend on discovering whether this was perhaps an Al Qaeda operation or something more local.  Isaac Chotiner gives a quick summary of the worsening spiral of violence between extremist Islamic and Hindu groups, a conflict that will no doubt be aggravated by this attack, which was perhaps part of the point.

Aside from any larger geopolitical implications and repercussions, then, it is worth giving some thought to what now awaits Bombay. An Indian friend of mine currently works at the Taj Mahal Hotel in the Colaba area of the city. It is one of the amazing landmarks that was attacked tonight. I have not gotten word from my friend, who was fortunate to get this good job that enables him to provide for his wife and children. And, although he does not advertise it, he happens to be a Muslim--a Muslim who has faced the same hardships faced by many Muslims in Bombay. Even if he's presently safe and uninjured, he and many residents of this remarkable city face long and possibly harrowing days ahead.

While we learn more, once the immediate crisis is dealt with, our first foreign priority should be to make it as easy as possible for India to shore up the foundations of its pluralistic society.  Part of that is helping to find and punish those responsible, but dealing with the larger problems doesn’t end and given the inherent difficulties may not even start there.

Schooled by Commenters: Mecha on Mirror’s Edge review

A friend of mine made a rather thoughtful comment on my post yesterday.  Probably worth being a post in its own right, but that’s a different technical matter.

It isn't as if we don't have history on this. There are many games which are singled out as 'innovative' in the past (10+ years ago?) but were extremely to ridiculously imperfect. But some people found them fun, stepped past their imperfections, used them to inspire greater stuff in the future. Would it not be beneficial to future criticism, future game development, if we were capable of making that clear?…

People complain about how nobody's being 'good innovative' AND set the bar for 'good innovative' as 'better than most games out there on base, and then having to do something completely new and succeed with it in any way'

I’m not too bothered by the reviews because I could look at them and go, okay, they implemented it well, good enough for me.  That said, if you only look at the numbers or scores, which a lot of people do, then the game gets screwed.  It may be the reviewers job to rail against that, but reviewers should also live in the real world.  I don’t think rewarding 12/10 points in some category makes sense, but if they seriously innovate something than it’s worth perhaps doubling the weighting on that 10 to make sure it gets up to the point where people will consider buying the dang game.

Serious successful innovation should be rewarded by sales.  Mecha’s absolutely right, most of the classics were flawed in similar ways.  More conventional games are just as flawed, but they are flawed in ways we expect them to be flawed.  I mean I sometimes hear discussion about how polished the JRPG model is.  I don’t buy that in the slightest.  Has there ever been two final fantasies in a row where they kept all the good stuff from the previous game?  And to be fair, let’s limit that to all the good stuff that doesn’t conflict with innovation in the new game.  I don’t think so, instead we just expect some level of flaws there.  For example bad gunplay in a game about running.  Big whoop, trying throwing away the gun more.  An innovative game will often screw up some basics because being Blizzard or Valve is really effing hard.

From what I’ve read, Mirror’s Edge did what I wanted and thus deserves my $60.  I’d already been planning to get around and buy it.  I think it’s completely fair to play some role in instructing the developers, but that only works if they get a sequel, reviewers should also instruct the game-buyers enough to make sure they get that sequel.

Promotional image used above see http://www.mirrorsedge.com/ for more.

Well, okay, if you say so.

Via Ackerman, according to the the Associated Press, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has told the Security Council that “the international community should set a timeline to end the war in Afghanistan.”

Here’s Ackerman’s analysis:

Is it too much of a stretch to wonder if Karzai is floating the timetable idea as a bankshot way of promoting his negotiations with the Taliban? In other words, is he trying to box people -- namely, Americans -- in to thinking that the only thing less desirable than negotiating with the insurgency is to set a date for leaving Afghanistan, so they better support the first option?

And another thing, in the context of those negotiations: If it's true that the Taliban feels stronger than the government right now, would it feel such an incentive to negotiate if it believed Karzai was going to kick the U.S. out no matter what?

I really don’t know how to read this.  If it is a bankshot it’s a hell of a maneuver.  I don’t think Obama would be opposed to such negotiations in the first place, so I’m not sure why they’re turning the screws on us.  First and foremost I’m guessing it’s just the more straightforward example Ackerman raises, response to domestic pressure.

I guess it’s time to put a more thought in how we can exit in a manner that best serves the Afghan people and kneecaps Al Qaeda.  Just exiting will put a damper on recruitment, but Osama was in Afghanistan well before we were.

Are reviewers too tough on innovative games?

Also, since Croal was so kind as to link to my thinking, it’s only fair if I direct you to his latest Big Idea column, one I eagerly awaited since he’s recently been on vacation.  He cites three writers arguing that the gaming press can be too tough on control issues and mechanics in exciting an innovative new games.  By comparison film reviewers were more forgiving and often championed weird new styles that often sacrificed technical proficiency.

First off, since I rather liked the demo, I should throw in his critique of Mirror’s Edge.  It’s fairly widely repeated. I think I’ll still get it, but buyer beware.

From where we sit, the core mechanics of Mirror's Edge--the locomotion, or movement, of the main character--are exceedingly well implemented. The same is true for the twinning of the player and the camera. The shooting mechanics, however, are shockingly mediocre for a studio whose history and expertise lie in first-person shooters. As for the hand-to-hand combat, it's certainly well-animated and pleasing to the eye. Yet it's also both perfunctory and unforgiving, which means that it's somewhat satisfying when you get it right and thoroughly irritating when you get it wrong.

His larger point is that while innovation should be rewarded in reviews, it already is, and the concentration on mechanics is completely fair.  “We see games with our hands. In other words, not only do mechanics matter .. but mechanics are also improvable.”

I do think graphics classically are given too much emphasis, often to the detriment of the rest of the game.  But I agree that mechanics are different.  They are the core of the game.  Admittedly, I do think some independent film styles screwed with the fundamentals of film, but also film is a much more mature medium.  When bad mechanics happen people often don’t seem to realize the rules they’re breaking.

Also, bizarrely, from what I’ve read in Mirror’s Edge the mechanics sometimes undermine the innovation:

As Penny Arcade's Tycho put it, "The main problem is that I love what they've done with the art and with the style of play, but when they start hounding me with these snipers and S.W.A.T. motherf---ers it quickly becomes a game I don't want. I guess the idea is to make it more exciting, but I was already having fun."

In this case, the criticism should help future innovators who need to stand up to people demanding traditional elements.  From what I’ve heard, Assassin’s Creed had the exact same problem with lots of combat at the end implemented via an inferior combat system.  Heck, again chiding the genuine masterpiece Beyond Good and Evil, why the heck was there no stealth options for the final boss fight?  Thief pulled it off.

Anyhow, one other thought for any Mirror’s Edge sequels.  Everyone seems to agree that the game gets more fun on repeated play-throughs, the real problem is the trial and error while needing to move fast at the start.  This seems like a great reason to implement a more open world design that makes repeated use of some settings, letting you learn them and then go through them again under harsher circumstances.  Ideally later on there wouldn’t just be cops to get in your way, but level design training wheels removed.    That said, I don’t think Faith picks up new moves throughout the game, so it’s harder to make repeated features of the same area interesting.

Greetings Level Up readers!

Hello to anyone coming from the link from Newsweek’s thoughtful game journalist N’Gai Croal.  Here’s my games entries and here’s the feed sign-up if you’re inclined to stick around.

I’ll post some more game stuff in the near future.  One idea that’s been ruminating in my head for a while is how to improve the mechanical implementation of dialog.  Adventure games just encourage exhausting all options, although some games like Pheonix Wright make you choose wisely what possibilities to raise.  RPGs such as the Fallout series, most Bioware games, and Black Isle classics like Planescape Tourment provided rich dialogues trees but also make copious demands on writers.  The Monkey Island series famously incorporated insult sword-fighting, but that particular rhyming mechanic probably won’t be applicable in most cases.  I think the path to more game-like dialog might take cues from symbolic logic and from the L5R tabletop RPG series.  Come back later to see how.

Gaming and the results of failure

Here’s another story as part of a follow-up to my last post.  N’Gai Croal linked to an interesting article on the valuthe of epic failure in games.  Told the story of a guy who accidentally blew up his own jeep in the newest Far Cry and then had to walk back through the Savanna to the nearest safe house.  He argued that some of his most memorable gaming experiences came from failing and dealing with the consequences rather than reloading.

That sounds good to me.  Manically fighting for your life can be much more interesting than a smooth well played run.  That said, failure leading to slow treks can also cause immense frustration.  The writer at Groping the Elephant mentions some Thief runs, and I’ve got to say Beyond Good and Evil was often more fun than Thief because it was a bit easier to recover from botching your stealth.  I don’t mind running in fear or having a somewhat prolonged journey to recover from a mistake.  However, after that trip I don’t want to be back at square one, I want to have achieved the objective albeit in a round-about way.  If it’s just resetting the puzzle, I’d like that to happen quickly.

One recent example I’m rather pleased with is the demo of Left 4 Dead.  It’s a survival horror game with four characters (some mix of AIs and players) facing off against zombie hordes.  It has an “AI director” that mixes up when large numbers of zombies and special zombies come after you.  In addition to keeping levels fresh, the ‘director’ also eases up a bit on you when your having trouble.  This didn’t really come into play as much until I hit the highest difficulty level and after a couple tries couldn’t get past the second stage.  Normally that would frustrate me some, but by holding back some with the hordes it made my troubled runs longer and gave me a decent shot at victory, albeit with lower odds than if I’d been doing better in the first place. 

By comparison, chiding Beyond Good and Evil this time, that game had a multistage boss fight that took me many tries to get through.  On those tries where I messed up early I just let myself die and tried again from the check point.  There was no real reason to go on as I knew I didn’t have enough health items left to have a chance at victory.

[Update: Greetings to any that came from Level Up.  I’ve just put up a response to N’Gai Croal’s latest big idea piece that I hope you’ll find interesting.]

Exploration versus Consequences in gaming

Patrick Klepek has an interesting interview with Greg Zeschuk of Bioware on consequence in gaming.  “Everything is very low impact and there’s no real negative result that can occur. We’re going to start bringing that back but in a rational way, a way that doesn’t punish the player — but puts them on the spot.”  Essentially he wants to encourage players to make a choice and stick with it, rather than explore all the options.  And, since he’ll be running a Knights of the Old Republic Star Wars MMO, he’ll actually be able to do that.

Stephen Totilo discusses this conundrum in the context of the newest Spiderman where you can choose to be red suit or black suit Spidey.  Totilo had a tough time making the choice, as he didn’t want to miss out on interesting extremes:

With a game like “Fable II” I can handle being given these life-path choices. I know enough about the differences between using magic or swinging hammers to know what I prefer. I can sense what the ramifications will be if I decide to be a family man or a robber or a combination of the two. But given the choice to be a Dark Jedi or a Light Jedi… I just get spun around in confusion.

Do the developers really expect me to choose? Are they just signaling that they want me to play the game again, the opposite way?

I think the key principle here is to not waste the player’s time.  If a game is made to be played through twice to really get the full content it should probably be relatively short or have a new game plus mode that accelerates later playthroughs. 

If instead the developer wants to us to pick a path and stick to it, then the consequences of choices, particularly choices that influence mechanics, should be quite clear what the implications will be.  Letting the player try experiment some with different options can be a good way of doing this.

That said, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with secondary consequences, both good and bad, flowing from the choice.  But they should be just that, secondary and with a logical if not necessarily easily predictable consequence of the choice.  Alternately it could be the less directly related cumulative impact of several smaller choices, so long as there’s some foreshadowing and an opportunity to change paths if you don’t like where you’re headed.

I think successful consequences can lead to regret, but it should be the kind of regret shared between the player and the character.  Missing out on the ‘interesting extremes’ as Totilo mentions is not how you want to do things, although with some universes like Star Wars it’s probably fairly inevitable.  I think Patrick Klepek’s regret after choosing who to kill in GTA4 is a much more successful example of a regretted and one that deepened rather than weakened identification with the story.

Friday Diversions

Mighty God King has a terrific set of alternate covers for fantasy and sci-fi books.  They make up a three part series.

Not all the ones portrayed are bad books by any means, but I think most of the joke titles are pretty on point.  I’m actually surprised that I haven’t read a fair number.  Although there are a good number that I really not interested in reading at this point.

My initials make the big leagues

Yglesias argues that we should consider using industrial policy to help build a green collar economy.   Industrial policy, that is having the government intervene in the economy to build or protect key manufacturing sectors.  This doesn’t make sense if you’re following a full free-trade model, but that model assumes no economics of scale among other things.    Industrial policy is hard but the countries that developed in the later half of the 20th century had such policies as did some that didn’t.  However, in some ways industrial policy might not be harder than other things that governments do.

In any event, Yglesias sited an article on how Defense Industrial Policy effectively props up the aviation and electronics sector.  The author, Steve Coll, went on to argue that it’s worth considering some such measures for the auto industry to further America’s energy interests.  He doesn’t necessarily endorse such a policy, but says that those favoring defense industrial policy can hardly dismiss such an idea on principle.  My contribution, which got me an initial credit (Yay!) was letting Yglesias know that industrial policy does indeed speak its name and even has an official Deputy Under Secretary.

So, is Coll right?  Yes with a few caveats.  Defense industrial policy tends to be concerned with having domestic sources in case conflict cuts off access to foreign supplies.  We’re probably a bit too concerned about that, I think we’d be better off making sure we don’t have to fight without our allies than making sure we can fight without them, but that’s a different topic.

So, in that sense, industrial policy doesn’t really apply outside of defense.  However, Industrial Policy also plays a role when we’re working with allies.  See the tanker example Cole mentions where Northrop is working with a European consortium.  The purpose there is to make sure that industry can support Defense Department needs even with support from allies.  Also, for better and worse Congress often treats defense industrial policy as a jobs program.  Whether guaranteeing supply or ensuring jobs, this mainly matters when we’re talking about industries with high barriers to entry and economics of scale.  That’s hardly a unique to the defense sector, so  I think Coll’s argument holds up.  If defense industrial policy, as commonly implemented in the U.S. makes sense at all, then it also makes sense for other sectors.

Photograph from DoD by Seaman James R. Evans.

Only Waxman can save a planet in peril!

The current head of the House Energy and Commerce committee is Rep. John Dingell, D-Michigan.  Not surprisingly he takes a great interest in the health of the auto industry but isn’t always the most reliable vote on environmental issues.  Waxman has been doing a great job on oversight and after reading one of his reports on government contracting I was tempted to try for a staffer job as he then wouldn’t have to rely on contractors to run the data.

Yglesais reports that Waxman is apparently doing better than some expected with his challenge:

Rep. Henry Waxman won a round in his quest to chair the House Energy and Commerce Committee as the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee recommended that he chair it. The issue is destined to go to the full caucus for a vote, since this is too important to be handled at this level, but for the challenger any kind of win can help build momentum.

If Waxman pulls this off, I wonder who gets oversight.

[Update: Waxman wins it!]

Purple Line hearings on Wednesday at UMD and Saturday at Montgomery College Silver Spring Campus

For those of you unfamiliar with the project, it’s an addition to the D.C. Metro transit system that would connect the inner-suburbs.  When the Metro was designed it took a spoke approach to let commuters get into and out of the city.  However, at this point, a lot of travel takes place between the suburbs and would be well served by a dedicated light rail line..  For more, see purplelinenow.com.

The environmental impact study just came out and their seeking citizen comments.  Here’s some scheduling details and an alternative for those who can’t make it:

You may also email testimony by January 14, 2009. Simply send your comments totestimony@purpleline.info with "Purple Line DEIS Comment" in the subject line and include your name and address in the message.

 

I put my three minutes worth of speech in at the New Carrolton event this past Friday.  I mostly covered all the ways I could have used a good high capacity line while growing up in this area and waiting most of my life for anything to happen.  On Sunday a post editorial does a pretty good job of explaining the advantages of doing light rail over bus.

The report does conclude that bus rapid transit is more cost-effective than light rail. But those numbers are based on estimates through 2030. Light rail requires a bigger capital investment initially but is sturdier and, in many cases, more cost-effective in the long run. If Metro, which has operated for more than 30 years, is any indication, the Purple Line is likely to operate far beyond 2030. Light rail also provides more flexibility in the probable event that ridership exceeds estimates — just add more rail cars. Even critics of light rail acknowledge that the trains will be significantly faster than buses.

If you want a quick way to show your support, here’s a petition to elected officials and the Purple Line Facebook group.

Image from http://www.innerpurpleline.org/

Another link round up

Busy day.  The one person I’ve heard back from said definitely keep up the commentary on them, otherwise what’s the point.

• Ross Douthat and Megan McArdle suggest a way that the print media to save the mainstream media’s business model: extortion.
• Kevin Drum notes that unions are there in part to keep teachers from having to work twelve hour days and become heroes in movies about troubled students.  I find that convincing.  Teachers don’t need to be driven by social conscience to go well above and beyond normal duties, they’re already probably in a lower income field because they’re teaching.  Our video game industry is of a size that it can get ridiculous amounts of work out of its reasonably well paid people because they really want to make games.  That doesn’t scale up to a nation wide education system.
• Also Kevin Drum’s mom house seems to attract cats the way a Japanese harem comedy guy attracts girls.
• Yglesias notes that moderates don’t necessarily want a smaller government, but instead want an effective government.    Trimming bloat is of course one way to get a more effective government, but if there were easy political wins they’re isolated to recent programs or have been made long ago.
• According to Barron YoungSmith of TNR, the talk of appointing Hillary Clinton to State may be related to assuaging potential feminist backlash from appointing Larry Summers to Treasury.  Can’t say that idea excites me, I much prefer Sen. Clinton’s domestic policy to her foreign policy.
• David Shorr discusses how we could move towards nuclear disarmament.  I think he’s absolutely right.  With the fall of the Soviet Union, there’s no reason we’d ever need to worry about being conventionally overwhelmed on the defense and thus needing a nuclear first strike.  Meanwhile the non-proliferation regime basically has broken down and nukes are slowly spreading.
• Obama is standing firm against torture.    Good.  Hopefully he’ll also take the next step and be sure to gather preserve evidence that may be needed for future war crimes trials.
• CVS is now selling DC Metro Smarttrip cards.  Thank goodness, I’m tired of having to evangelize the things just so my traveling companions don’t slow me down. (Hattip: Greater Greater Washington).

Random observations about life

The main sport I follow is baseball.  I do enjoy it, but actually watch it more in person than on TV, unless a team I like is in the playoffs.  That said, I’ll freely admit that baseball can be kind of boring, the game is really centered on pitching battles, and it can be tricky to actually watch that action unless you’re real close or watching the pitching MPHs and descriptions.  The strike count itself can be interesting and I enjoy the fielding, stealing, and all that.  But all and all, there’s really a lot of down time.

I think for me, that’s actually one of the perks.  I enjoy the excitement of a good game and all and like playing softball, but I’m not really a sports guy.  What I can do is go to a game, have some ballpark food, and talk to people I like for a few hours while having a low-key source of entertainment available.  If my team starts doing really well then I get the euphoria of the crowd and get into it, that’s fun too.  But I’m basically okay with having a mediocre team so long as they aren’t actively terrible.  The stats and such are fun too, but I’m not a fantasy baseball player so that’s not really my thing.  So, perversely, if my team ever got really good for multiple years and the ball park was full of shouting people constantly, I’d probably get bored of baseball.  No real risk of that though.

There are actually probably a lot of things I don’t do because I don’t take much pleasure in sitting around drinking.  I don’t object to it (within reason), but doesn’t do much for me.  I’m thus much more of a coffee house than a bar guy, I like sitting down and being able to hear the conversation thank you very much.

 

Picture of Camden Yards by dvwtwo used under a creative commons license.

Review: Mirror’s Edge Demo

Mirror’s Edge combines a compelling core gameplay mechanic with a great setting.  It has a lot of potential, but seems rather difficult to execute.  Happily, based on the demo, they seem to have pulled it off.

The game is based on parkour, also related to free running, basically a highly acrobatic form of urban navigation.  It was notably featured in Casino Royale in the superior chase scene at the start of the movie.

 

Mirror’s Edge is a 3d game where unlike most FPSes you actually see your character’s body.  When she grabs a ledge, her hands shoot out, when she slides you see her legs in front of you.  The setup is that you’re a runner delivering data by rooftop in a city where every other means of transfer is monitored.  I’m told it’s also one of my favorite types of action/adventures, one where you don’t have to kill anyone although it is an option.

The control scheme is pretty intuitive, with shoulder buttons used to jump and duck.  Mouse and keyboard is usually thought of as the ideal control scheme for shooters, but for this type of gameplay dual control sticks and shoulder buttons may be preferable. The move up button also lets you grab ledges, which makes many of the jumps much more forgiving than they might otherwise be.  Once I mastered that I could do a run through without dying from a mistimed jump.  No real penalty to dying aside from watching from Faith’s eyes as she plummets to her doom.  You just start up not that far from where you died.

Anyhow, won’t really be able to judge if the plot and fairly unique protagonist live up to their potential, but the demo is enough to convince me to buy the game when I have the funds available.

The combat system is pretty simple, you can do disarms if you time it right, and the one conventional attack button is context sensitive based on whether you’re running, ducking, etc.  Also it makes me want to actually take one of the DC courses.  I always played around with lower key versions of having fun with obstacles in my way.  That said, even I ever go for it, I think I’ll limit myself to street level as we haven’t yet developed quick save / quick load technology.

What’s next for the GOP

There’s been a lot of discussion on where the Republicans go from here.  I’ll get into some of it when I introduce some opposition blogs to the blogroll, but regardless of what the more interesting thinkers have to say, I expect at the national level the party will stay pretty conservative for another two years.  It’s too easy to blame McCain for being an unorthodox Republican rather than blaming the base for foreclosing his better options.  The state level will be more interesting, as shown by Gov. Bobby Jindal’s health care proposal for Louisiana, but there’s always more room for variation at the state level.

I expect that for the next several years abortion isn’t going away.  Unlike other social conservative issues, the demographics aren’t shifting on that one.  The intensity of some of the other social conservative fights may go up but I expect them to be fighting a losing battle there, although sadly the passage of Prop 8 in California and of worse initiatives elsewhere suggests that it will be a slower fight than I hoped.

Regardless, I think the speed of reforms may also be hastened if Republicans reform their Primary to be proportional like the Dems.  McCain won, but only by heavily exploiting the winner-take-all nature of the races.  Obama’s victory in the primary was much more slow and costly, but he truly secured the nomination and had greater freedom to run the campaign he waned.  I’m not sure if McCain could have won a proportional primary, but if he had, it would likely have required a genuine debate about where the Republican party was going.  He might have gained some flexibility to run to the center, or more likely he’d have lost and a more conventional candidate would have gone on to lose the general.  But, that more conventional candidate would have at least taught the GOP the error of their ways in a way McCain really can’t.  [I know I’ve picked up some of this analysis from other sources, but it was a few weeks ago, so danged if I can remember where and my RSS searches aren’t helping.]

Link Round-up

I don’t think that many people read my shared RSS feed, so I’m going to try out posting one of those link round ups for some of the articles I shared or just feel like making a quickie comment about.

• Dahlia Lithwick explores the argument in an odd case of Mormons versus a newer odder religion.  The risk of opening up to memorials to hate seems a bit overstated to me, many memorials have religious overtones, but are devoted to a secular purpose.
• Taking out one Spam host dropped the worldwide spam volume by two thirds.  Must have been one serious zombie master.
• Ezra Klein argues that the Department of Agriculture is obsolete.  We need to have a food policy, not an farm policy.
• How do political parties work?  They pursue their interest groups agenda to the greatest extent they think they can without the public noticing.  One exception being when parties thing they’ll lose anyways and so run their favorite.  I’d like to see this tested, but haven’t skimmed the paper to tell if they do.
• Iran is now afraid of talking to us.  As Ackerman notes Obama has won a PR victory before he even gets in office.  Nicely this also makes it easier to eventually hold talks without giving a PR boost to their current President who doesn’t control foreign policy anyways.
• After watching this clip Ta-Nehisi Coates found, I increasingly like Fox New’s Shep Smith.
• Alex Tabarrok links to an awesome map of federally owned land by state.  I don’t know enough about the land to really judge his suggestions about what we do with some of it, but may be worth talking about.

This is a bit more commentary than most people do for these round-ups but a bit less than what merits a post in its own right.  If you, my loyal readers, have any comments on a preferred format, please let me know.

So what can we do about Somalia?

After being reminded of a horror story about the stoning of a young rape victim in Somalia, I wanted to add to my previous post to note what we can do.  First off, the Islamic Courts Union wasn’t this bad, but now it’s fragmented and not about to come back together again.  We can work with the moderates, are generally unwilling to work with the militants, and as the story above shows some of the factions are resorting to acts so evil that in a novel they would be attributed to bad writing.

So the current ‘legitimate’ government is unpopular, the alternative is broken and in some cases completely nuts, what can we do?  Going back to Bronwyn Bruton at the Africa policy blog:

The urgent humanitarian intervention in Somalia. On the contrary, in the absence of a comprehensive strategy to stabilize and rebuild Somalia, the United States should perhaps look to humanitarian relief above all other projects. The sincere prioritization of humanitarian support may eventually mitigate the rampant anti-Americanism that has taken root in Somalia. This is a truly modest goal; but it is probably the only victory within our grasp. The U.S. should actively urge the U.N. and IGAD to refrain from political negotiation, and to focus all efforts on recapturing a posture of neutrality. A position of neutrality is an essential pre-condition for any viable interaction with Somalia, and the international community should focus on positioning itself to re-engage when the security situation eventually stabilizes.

In the longer term, and as a short-term measure to promote peace and economic development at the community level, the United States should examine several nontraditional strategies, including the previously explored “bottom-up” and/or “building block” approaches that were applied with some success in Somalia during the 1990s.

This seems sound to me.  When we don’t have good options, sometimes lowest common denominator aid is all we can do.    If we’d done a better job of taking the interests and desires of the people of Somalia in account in the first place we might have been able to do much better, instead we made the situation worse and there’s no easy do-overs.

Enlightened Self-Interest isn’t enough

I recently watched a bloggingheads TV between Robin Wright and Ross Douthat and for once I pointedly disagree with something Robin Wright said (Douthat didn’t take a stand on this either way).  Specifically around the 49 minute mark he argued for a liberal-realist fusion that there’s an argument on realist grounds and humanitarian grounds for intervening in Somalia and probably intervening as much as you can practically handle around the world.  That American self-interest can lead you to do a lot to fight disease and prevent failed states.

I think that view is a fairly traditional one in Democratic circles, but that it gets one critical thing wrong.  Namely enlightened self-interest isn’t so good at incorporating the opinions of the people you’re intervening on behalf of.  Establishing a democratic government can do a lot to help.  However, even a democratic government may not reflect popular sentiment until that government is strong enough to stand on its own and until those locals that oppose the intervention are brought into the process.  The situation can be far worse when we’re backing a transition government that we judge to be the lesser of two evils.

For an example of this sort of failure, I would point to… Somalia.  Bronwyn Bruton has a post at CSIS’s Africa Forum on the present debacle there.  Details after the cut:

Blogroll addition: United States of Jamerica

I'd been meaning to provide a blogroll link to the United States of Jamericapolicy blog for a bit, and the Dean post provided a useful reminder.  For a sample post, here's a recent entry on a statement by the Defense Business Board calling for cutbacks in wasteful programs.

Arguably, one of the largest obstacles to the progressive project (at least in the long term) is the sheer scale of military appropriations.  The Pentagon’s proposed budget for 2009 (not including spending on Iraq and Afghanistan) is $515 billion. That is a substantial increase over 2008’s budget, and the Joint Chiefs are proposing an additional $450 billion on top of that over the next five years.  As the Defense Business Board notes, a good deal of these spending increases are going towards wasteful — and in some cases, strategically unnecessary — development.

A simple ten percent cut in Pentagon funding would be more than enough (four times more, in fact) to both pay for a universal pre-K program (estimated $10 billion annually) and provide a needed 250 million mosquitonets worldwide (estimated $3 billion).  The latter of which would probably have more impact with regards to national security than spending $30 billion on the Joint Strike Fighter program.  But, as long as Pentagon spending is so ridiculously high, it will unfortunately crowd out spending for progressive domestic and foreign policies.

True enough.  Cutting programs is a complicated business.  There are fees for breaking contracts and depending on how we want to affect the size of the military, we’ll probably end up buying more of present day technology or pay for additional block upgrades to spiff up what we have now.  Of course many of these mega-programs have only begun to go over-budget, so the existing estimates may well prove optimistic.  I’ll probably post more on this later.

Three Cheers for Howard Dean

Back in 2004 in the primary fights I had backed Wesley Clark because I liked his work as a general in Kosovo.  Clark proved to have some weaknesses as a candidate although I still stand by him and think we should make some use of him in the new admin.  Regardless, even back then I was puzzled about the animosity within the party towards Howard Dean.  I recall one person commenting that they’d vote for Bush first because they thought Dean was nuts.  I didn’t understand that view then and now I can happily say that the Dean approach has been vindicated.

The former VT Governor is not going to seek an additional term as DNC chair to let an Obama loyalist take the role. I’m in agreement with Spencer Ackerman, Dean was right on the Iraq war, right early, and took a firm stand back in the ‘04 primary.  He also greatly contributed to our ability to exploit this year’s electoral comment.

SPENCER: This is a man who will simply never get his due. Fought at every single step of the way for the Democratic nomination, fought at every single step of the way for the DNC chairmanship, all to say that the time is ripe for a progressive infrastructure in all 50 states, and most importantly at the state legislature levels to build the future of the Democratic Party, and vindicated in every particular.

Well I at least say good work Governor, and props to the Deaniacs, your guy came through.

Helpful advise for my adversaries

Jack Santucci from Democratic Piece and Rob Richie have an op-ed in the Washington Time about the breakdown of Congressional attempts to keep the DC Council multiparty.  Congress had mandated a rather dumb rule that two of the at-large seats had to be from the non-majority party.  Not surprisingly, this eventually led to people who are really Democrats winning those seats by out organizing competition.  Now, I’m a partisan Democrat, but I do believe that there are definite virtues to avoiding one party rule.  The op-ed gives some helpful suggestions how to change the electoral rules to achieve this in a way that both works and is a lot less arbitrary:

If the District's electoral rules translated political diversity into fair shares of the 13-member council, Democrats would hold a healthy majority, but Republicans typically would win one or two seats. The Statehood Greens or Libertarians might also win, and diversity in the Democratic Party would find fuller expression. A system that reduced the impact of spoilers and awarded seats in proportion to votes would let voters support their favorites, not force them to pick among front-runners.

That system, called proportional representation, guarantees the outcome that the District's limited nomination rule failed to deliver on Nov. 4. The proportional representation system comes in many forms. One style gaining popularity for local elections is called choice voting. Two dozen cities used choice voting during the Progressive Era, and Cambridge, Mass., still uses it today. New Yorkers elected their school board with choice voting until 2002. Minneapolis passed choice voting for some offices in 2006, and Cincinnati almost restored it Tuesday for city council elections.

Choice voting lets groups win numbers of seats equal to their strength in the electorate. At the same time, it lets voters choose candidates, not parties, so elected officials are accountable to people, not party bosses. Finally, if someone's favorite candidate doesn't win enough votes for a seat, the voter can pick someone to get his or her vote instead - no spoilers.

The short version is that the system works by ranking contenders.  For more details, read the rest of the op-ed.

Review: Let the Right One In

Saturday night I went out to see this Swedish vampire pick.  The buzz was rather good and I think it held up well.  I’m not normally a horror fan so part of the appeal when I see horror movies is the relative novelty, sort of like why I’m a big fan of the relatively rare Mr. Pibb. 

The story focuses on Oskar, a twelve year old boy who is troubled by bullies, and Eli who appears to be a twelve year old girl.  I’m not sure how usual this is for horror, but it follows the perspective of the ‘monsters’ for a good portion of the film, although Oskar is generally the viewpoint character.  With some key exceptions, the setting, Sweden in the winter of 1982, is fairly dour.  Generally speaking, the most fleshed out and interesting characters are the two kids, the adults aren’t generic, but don’t get developed that deeply.  That seems to fit fairly well with the child-centric perspective, that said, this film is appropriately rated R.

What I liked most about the movie was the craft, the special effects are sparse but consistently pack a punch, there are also a lot of small sweet or funny moments, although typically with dark overtones.  It isn’t too graphic as horror goes, although there are people murdered on screen.

Finally, I think the vampire mythos is implemented extremely well.  They’ve got a handy set of powers but also vulnerabilities such requiring an invite (see the title), the need to avoid sunlight, and the hatred of natural creatures (notably cats).  They aren’t especially broody and do seem to specifically need human blood to survive.  Finally, there’s a savage edge that’s particularly creepy and mainly shown through good sound work.

So check out the the trailer if this seems like your sort of thing, you probably won’t  be disappointed.   We’ll likely be seeing more of the actress that plays Eli, she seems really talented. Brief spoiler-y discussion after the cut, only really of interest to those that have seen the film.

Dancing in the Streets

After volunteering at a MD precinct I headed down to Front Page, a Dupont Circle bar where a bunch of my work friends were gathered. I’d also been there for the first debate and as then, the place was packed and each CNN projection for Obama was greeted with cheers. I put enough faith in Nate Silver that I rested easy after Pennsylvania was called, but it was still exhilarating to stay through the whole process. Being without a watch or cell phone, I was actually in the bathroom close to 11 eastern when I heard some cheers from upstairs. Rushed up after I heard cheers starting. Thankfully, I managed to get there while they were still calling states, got back to my friends in time for it to be come official. President Elect Barack Hussein Obama.

Stuck around for the speeches, McCain’s gracious, Obama’s inspiring. While we were waiting it was thrilling each time I heard President Elect Obama. Everyone was hugging one another, taking pictures with themselves and the announcement, toasting the results, and of course cheering like mad. Normally staid think tankers were in tears or waxing poetic about the moment, this is our chance to wipe the slate clean, the chance to awaken from an eight year national nightmare.

When we spilled out into the streets the city was alive. Cars driving in the circle were honking their horns and drawing cheers in response. Chants were being started at any giving minute. First time I’ve ever high-fived a passing stranger and I think I did it at least a dozen times. One image that will particularly stick with me was a passing Mack Truck blowing his horn to a "Yes, We Can" beat. On the streets people went with that, "Yes, We Did" or just a simple "Obama!"

I’ve never seen anything like it in person. I didn’t tend to participate when UMD had post-victory sports riots celebrations, but I doubt those weren’t as oriented on the country and they certainly weren’t as broadly based. The closest I’ve seen on TV were World Cup victories or the celebration of a newly emerging, or reemerging democracy after the fall of a hated leader.

For me, the occasion was only slightly dampened by the realization that the Metro closed, I had no easy way to get back to Silver Spring, and there were scores of people in the same predicament trying to get taxis. Fortunately I was able to get a hold of a friend who was kind enough to let me crash on her couch. Thanks again!

I didn’t bring my camera, but check out the DCist (via Monica) or Joel Achenbach for a description of the gathering at the White House.

Voting in Silver Spring

Line was about an hour at Sligo Elementary School, saw a few neighborhood friends acting as election judges, which is cool. I was expecting the line to be a bit shorter at 10:30 AM, guess it’s high turn out plus no early voting in MD. The process was pretty efficient and my vote itself just took a couple of minutes. I breezed out of there to keep the line missing but missed out on my sticker.

Once in a lifetime

I’m with Broder, this election has been amazing. Interesting characters, many twists and turns, and most of all it gave Obama the chance to prove his qualifications with a calm demeanor and a constant focus on the long-term strategy.

I have faith that he’ll win. To be sure, my faith in America was greatly jarred in ’04 and I was ashamed of that result. But we’ve been through a lot since then. The strength of democracy is not in picking good leaders but in showing bad ones the door in an orderly if not always a swift manner.

That said, faith isn’t a passive thing, it’s not just assuming the best. It must be put into action, giving the country the chance to be something better, to reach its potential. I think my region is going to be pretty well flooded with volunteers, so I’m going to help out at a local precinct and try to influence a few ballot questions. Others are doing more important work in the battleground states and for the hot Senate races, and they have my thanks.

So finally, go vote. If you aren’t sure of things, here’s a few links to help.

• Check your polling place.
• For Marylanders here’s where to double check where you’re registered.
• Run into any trouble on the way call 1-866-OUR-VOTE.
• And here’s information on ballot questions.

My endorsement for MD ballots:

• Yes on #1 for early voting. Voting should be easier for those with multiple jobs or tight schedules. Participating at all is more important than participating on the same day.
• No on #2 for slots. Ultimately seems like a gimmicky way to raise revenue. I’d really prefer to just legalize the small stuff people do anyways, office pools, poker games, etc. The rest I’m just as happy keeping out of states. Let people play arcade games instead.
• Question #A (Montgomery) Yes for a fairly clerical set of changes.
• Question #B (Montgomery) No for an attempt to cripple county finances. There’s a lot coming up we may need the money for.

Finally, on a lighter note, there’s Les MisBarack One More Day

Doing my part

On Sunday I went of to Pennsylvania to volunteer for Obama. My dad and I hit one of the rally points near Bethesda. They had a pretty good operation going and were teaming solo drivers with the car-less or other solos. We actually saw an activist friend and took him with us. The original plan had been Northern Virginia, but apparently they already had their fill, the choices were Richmond or Harrisburg and Dad hates driving 95 South.

Anyway, the volunteer turnout was pretty huge. We got sent to a fairly exurban SEIU headquarters where we actually got to do a traditional lit drop. Just putting up door hangers for first time Obama supporters with the location of their polling place and some details about the rules. I much prefer lit drops and handouts to canvassing and phoning, but most campaigns prefer the latter these days.

Anyhow, wasn’t really the most efficient use of our time or gas, but I did want to do my part with something other than money. And while I’ll be helping out the Dems at a polling place on election day, the Presidential race is completely decided in MD so anything here would just be a waste of time. I actually care about some of the ballot initiatives, so I think I might get some utility out of doing the precinct work.

Image from Allie’s.Dad and used under a creative commons license.