Brainthoughts from my headmeat

I dunno if anime is supposed to be mainstream or something these days, but the university anime society still seems to attract a lot of people with the kinds of personality traits that get you auto-marginalized in our society.

It reminds me of the Morlocks.

La Cave du Vin is one of the few real honest good things Cleveland has to offer, and if you’re ever in the neighborhood and capable of appreciating good beer and/or wine, you should stop by Coventry village and try it out.

The first time is always weird, because you have to look up where it is or be escorted there by somebody else, and you see the sign and walk in and go down the steps and…there is nothing there. You look around and there is a utility closet or something that seems to have a La Cave du Vin flyer on the door. Is this it? You cautiously open the door, and inside there is this otherspace. Christmas lights strung about light up the wine bottles and it seems like there’s not too many people there because the place doesn’t really heat up until around 11. There is some psychadelic electronica trance or indie rock playing in the background. You sit at the bar and a guy in tattoos or with an enormous beard or somebody comes up and asks you what you’d like.

… You have no idea. I mean, what the hell is this place. Well, what’s on tap anyway? They run through it and you ask for something, or aren’t sure, and they’re like, well, what kind of thing do you like. I like guiness I guess. Okay, try this. And you do. And it’s good. Because this place is SO pretentious that rather than scorn they have PRIDE; and they will find something for you. List of adjectives? We’ll see what we’ve got. Oh you like that? Want to buy the last bottle I’ve got? You won’t find this anywhere else in the midwest. Only here, because I like it and happen to have imported a few bottles.

If I don’t wake up sick tomorrow I’m going to be fairly convinced that my immune system is now powered by coffee.

I am presently fascinated by my boots. My tennis shoes are rather old and worn and not even a little water resistant. But I put the boots on, and, and…it’s like there’s this entire universe between my feet and the wet cold snowy ground. The universe of boot.

If I thought he had even a remote possibility of winning the nomination, I’d vote for Mike Gravel.  He doesn’t, so I won’t, which is too bad.

As some others have observed, I dislike broad category labels.  I tend to find that they range between useless and damaging by creating undue connotations.  I think when people ask me about my political philosophy I say something overly hyphenated, like, “libertarian-leaning-liberal”.  “Liberal” and “Conservative” are utterly useless terminology.  They tell you nothing; they’re the political equivalent of racial slurs.

If I actually described my political positions, I think basically everyone would say I was a Libertarian.  Except for actual Libertarians who would ask me I’m so in love with big government.  I can’t be a Libertarian.  Why?  I’m not fundamentally opposed to welfare systems, for one thing.  And I generally think the appropriate scope of federal government action is considerably broader than an actual Libertarian could allow.

I’m supportive of Ron Paul even though I disagree with him on several major issues and am very disturbed by his rather nuanced reading of the Establishment clause.  But I’m supportive of him because he’s closer to my philosophy than the major candidates.  Also he has at least established some presence in this election year.  Whether he’s winning crap or not, he’s doing well enough that people are likely to *look* and *listen*.  And I think that’s a big deal.  A lot of my movement toward a philosophy of limited government came from addressing simple assumptions I’d always had.  Sometimes ideas are so distant from the status quo and the way we are used to thinking about things that they just seem laughable!  And that’s fine.  Skepticism is healthy.  But so is consideration.  Somebody says something crazy.  Is it so crazy?  Maybe it actually makes sense.

I think drug policy was the first one like this for me.  I never drank or smoked or used any recreational drugs except for caffeine when I was in High School.  I grew up in the culture of D.A.R.E. and “This is your brain on drugs” and so forth.  “Drug” people were like this evil underbelly of society.  But then I got pretty open-minded in high school and I looked around on the internet to see what the crazy-loony-druggie opposition said (where the hell would I have found this kind of thing without the internet?  anyone who doesn’t understand how this technology has totally altered the nature of my generation is pitifully blind).  And I thought about it.  This actually resulted in a major change in my thoughts about the role a criminal justice system ought to play in general.  Why the hell are we putting people in jail for this?  I have trouble even remembering the context in which that notion could have made sense.

But anyway, i was reading over Wikipedia Pete’s “Political Positions of” article for Mike Gravel.  It turns out he’s even closer to my philosophy than Ron Paul.  He’s also fucking hilarious.  He’s so hilarious you can tell that he’s an actual person.  An old ornery Alaskan who thinks government can play a PROACTIVE positive role in society, but right now it’s just…full of shit.  He’s pro universal health care and pro drug decriminilization.  He also has weird and interesting ideas like a constitutional amendment to let the public vote on federal issues (as many states already do).  I mean I’m not sure if I think that’s a good idea or not, but I think it reflects the kind of open-mindedness our political leaders seem to sorely lack.

So, yeah, too bad Gravel’s campaign isn’t Serious Business.  Sighs.

 I recently cut my hair.  If DrObvious’s theories are correct this will coincide with a genearlly improved well-being for me.  Presently this seems to be manifesting in my slow recovery of something resembling financial savings.

However, I also started playing Baten Kaitos again. If DrObvious’s theories are correct this will result in an unfortunate turn in my (presently non-existant) love life.

I’ve been looking through my copy of Ars Magica, thinking about maybe using it for a game.

Chargen seems to be rather…involved.  I think it’s probably slightly simpler than Burning Wheel, and actually bears some resemblance to that system.  For one thing, your character has a lot of…stuff.  For another, in a normal game, you are probably building at least two different characters.   Non-magus chargen might be simpler.

To build a magus, it goes something like this:
1. Choose a house.  But this isn’t just a flavor decision.  Each house grants  virtue of some sort.  Some of them don’t grant a specific virtue, but instead your choice of a broad class of virtues.  At least one of them grants two virtues and a flaw.  Several of them grant extremely powerful virtues that give you access to different mechanics other Magi won’t have.

2. Choose virtues and flaws.  A magus gets up to 10 points of virtues and flaws, and they have to balance out.  Also there are restrictions on how many flaws and virtues of various types you can take.  Virtues and flaws do a ton of different things, ranging from dice pool bonuses to granting bonus XP at chargen (or later) to granting access to broad classes of abilities.  Virtues tend to be very powerful.

3. Choose characteristics.  These are your physical/mental/social stats.  You don’t get very many points here, but you can trade off lowering some to get more points.  There are also virtues that grant points to spend here.  It turns out some of these are incredibly vital to casting spells.  Which ones are most vital depends on the manner in which you want to cast spells.  Stamina is normal, but doing lab work (enchantment) requires int, and spontaneous casting needs, uh, quickness I think.

4. Choose abilities.  Despite all the sundry virtues you could have chosen or not chosen, this is where things start to get complicated.  You buy abilities with XP.  Some abilities require a specific virtue before you can purchase them.  Magi can get some abilities like that without a virtue, but only once they start their apprenticeship.  And it turns out that you have to select them based on XP doled out on a per-year-of-life basis.  So you have to decide how old your magus is.  Aging sufficiently starts to require other work, like checking to see if they kicked it (you could die in chargen).  This is an arbitrary balance point.  Being older almost categorically makes a magus more powerful.  However, even starting one fresh out of your apprenticeship, you have to do “Early childhood” (0-5) choosing from a rather limited pool of abilities, then the set of years between them and their apprenticeship (broader range, depending on virtues), and then the 15 year apprenticeship,  Like pretty much everything,  abilities rise non-linearly in cost (1=5,2=15,3=30,4=50,5=75) and can be bought up to a (possibly arbitrary; I forget) fairly high value.  The nature of this scale is that you probably don’t focus too much, but rather buy a low rating in a lot of different things.  Some abilities are necessary or very helpful for performing various kinds of magic.  All abilities come with a specialization, even if you only have them rated at 1.

5. Purchase arts.  You get points for this from your apprenticeship and possibly from virtues.  Arts seem cheap because they are.  They also rise in cost extra-linearly, but not at as steep a rate as abilities (1=1,2=3,3=6,4=10,5=15) .  To do a spell you have to combine two arts (a verb and a noun) and then you add various other things to it depending on how you are casting it.  Then you have to get some margin relative to the spell’s level.  Botches are dangerous.

6. Purchase spells.  You can do magic without knowing a spell, but it’s really hard.  You get points (separate from other XP) to purchase levels of spells with.  Each verb-noun arts combination has an outline of what you can do with it at various spell levels (which range from 1 to arbitrarily high) , and then there are several parameters you can adjust (raising them increases the level).

Then there are a few more details, but that is quite a bit of work to figure out everything you need to play the character you want.  There are other fun wrinkles, like how you can add your score in the Philosophiae ability to ritual magic, but you need Artes Liberales first, and to get that you need a 3 in a language that is usually Latin, and you can’t purchase Artes Liberales until you’re an apprentice, unless you get a virtue that lets you.

Basically there are *a lot* of different systems which put different demands on the character, and a lot of parameters to be aware of.

Naturally I really like it, and I think it simplifies a bit if you don’t try too hard to optimize, but I would feel sorry for any new player trying to build their first character without assistance.

Fortunately, all of the complications do not seem to be for naught: looking over this build system I think you could create most any kind of character (Magus-wise, at least) that you would want and the system supports a lot of different things for you to do (I built a mad scientist without having to go out of my way: Verditus Magic +  Inventive Genius).

One thing I like is how the game has a lot of systems for downtime and supports it well.  The assumption is troupe-based play, so there is probably only one maybe two players running their Magus at a time; the others are hard at work in their laboratories, inventing new spells, enchanting items, writing books, etc.; and they still gain XP while not out adventuring.

It’s got fae and demons and angels and magical beasts, and lots and lots of STUFF.  The only real problem it has is a lack of portability.  It has a lot of important setting assumptions, and doesn’t generalize too well without them.  Some degree of modification is probably possible, but takes effort on the GM’s part.

When people think about this subject in the U.S. they usually think about universities.

While I don’t regret my university time for a moment and feel I gained a lot from it, as an educational experience I felt it…lacked.

From a purely economic perspective, I think university education is not so great. Without a scholarship, you really have to consider if four years tuition (plus interest usually) plus four years of *not* working is worth your enhanced earning potential.

Also a lot of prestigious universities tend to be very graduate/research oriented; from what I’ve observed, it’s uncommon to see a university really focused on undergraduate education.

Also, university education is stupidly expensive. When I think about it, it is baffling that it can possibly cost what it does. Then I think about the ridiculous amount of infrastructure a university maintains, and it starts to make at least a little sense.

So my idea is to create a chain of subject-focused post-secondary academies which also double as HR firms. They teach only one subject, teach it as well as they possibly can, and find jobs for their graduates (and also possibly pre-graduate internships). By keeping the number of students relatively low, the infrastructure costs should be much more manageable. There’s also the added revenue of being an HR firm (% of first 6mo-year salary as finder’s fee to business). Another possible business connection is to foster relationships where we accept business’s new hires as students and their employer pays for their education.

Instructors would be hired based on their capabilities as teachers, and paid to teach. It would be necessary, I think, to focus a great deal of revenue into instructor salaries, given the probable low supply of qualified and interested applicants. However, since the academy is so focused in intent, some level of instructor training may be doable, and as the academy expands to multiple locations, it can maintain a single general structure for its program of studies and teaching materials. Nobody needs to reinvent the wheel.

I would probably just start with software engineering academies, because I can see the need there (it is my field after all). If that worked, then possibly it could expand to other subjects. Also we might be able to harvest the near-graduates for free software development as class projects (if it’s not good enough for us, why should we expect it to be good enough for anyone else?).

EDIT: I took out my money calculations, because I think I did them at 2 in the morning and they were really wrong.

I’ve been reading Girl Genius for, I dunno, over a year now, and I still get unnaturally excited every time a new page is released.  I read them like four times, sometimes out loud (which is less abnormal that it might sound actually, I talk to myself / recite scenes from head out loud all the time) particularly when there is a lot of jager dialogue; and also I’m getting the trades and occasionally page back through them.

Normally my obsessions with my new hobbies / media fetishes are played out nova style in a sudden orgasmic explosion of low-productivity, like marathoning some anime or some such, but since GG comes out in such tiny bitesize delicious morsels of comic yum yum salty…spicy…*SLOBBEREXPLODE*

Uh, so the point is I’m distributing a lot of obsessive behavior over a release cycle that is constant enough to keep me attached (compare monthly comic books), but slow enough that I don’t burn out; instead it is going to slowly gnaw away my sanity until the day I come storming out of my apartment mostly naked with a ray gun constructed out of plastic cups and computer cable, and declare in a vaguely Slavic accent my intense love for SCIENCE.  Then the ray gun will explode.

And I think my friends are going to lynch me now, but I didn’t get what all the fuss was about.  Maybe I was expecting too much due to hype, or maybe it’s because the copy I was watching had sub-par audio, but it’s a comedy; that shouldn’t matter yeah?

I just…didn’t think it was that funny.  There were a few good one-liners, but I was somehow anticipating more, I dunno, volume.

It did have an interesting style to it, but there wasn’t enough movie underneath that for me I guess.

Now one useful thing I can say is: those old incomprehensible British guys?  That is *sort of* what old people from where I grew up sound like, except in a different way (since I didn’t grow up in England).