Considerations

"Words can’t express all that happened. But they’re all I got."

2012-01-26T23:21:00.000-08:00

Bastion
Supergiant Games

Lovely. Touching. And the best combat this side of God of War.

Bastion has its flaws, but few games put it all together the way this one does. The base of the game is something that at first reminds you of Diablo with its isometric view and experience points, then makes you feel like you're playing Gauntlet in the Wild West, and finally circles back to Diablo when the full range of weapons and upgrades - that is, spells and abilities - become available. Everything feels solid. The joy you got from calling down a Meteor comes back in the form of a Galleon Mortar. The fully upgraded Flame Bellows puts an inferno at your fingertips. The Carbine may be my single favorite weapon/ability of all time in an action-RPG: a powerful single-shot item whose focusing mechanic give your patience a viscerally satisfying payoff. The game simply feels the way it should.

I bring up the gameplay first because I'd otherwise be tempted to focus on nothing but Bastion's art and music. The graphics are lush, hand-drawn, and anime-inspired in the best way possible, part Studio Ghibli and part Rayman Origins. No point in blathering on when you can see for yourself:

But the music. Oh lord, the music. Darren Korb's self-styled "acoustic frontier trip-hop" is now my favorite soundtrack in gaming. Here's Bastion tricking us into thinking Firefly's still on the air:

Next, a marvelous combination of beauty and threat:

Clubbing in Hyderabad?

I don't even know. Korb's tracks offer up great variety while maintaining a unified sound. The music manages to make the game's combination of western themes and steampunkish high technology come across as a delight rather than a mess, and it sticks with you long after you've finished the game.

The overall sound design is just as strong as the music, the most obvious part of this being the character of the narrator. Somehow, some way, the folks at Supergiant created a nonstop dynamic dramatization of your actions that you never get tired of hearing, and that even gains new significance when you play through the game again. But there are other touches that shouldn't be missed. Realizing from the sound of her voice that you're circling a singing woman in one level drives the allure of finding out who she is. The sound effects of your weapons reloading and the monsters' tip-offs build some of the tightest timing-based combat you've seen outside a Nintendo title. A hallucinogenic sequence gives us the narrator humming a half-remembered melody from a previous level. It all works.

And then there's the story. This is both Bastion's strongest and weakest point, I think. Others have written some great, spoiler-filled pieces on the themes in the plot, so I'll mostly skip that except to say it's one of the few game stories worth experiencing. In fact, Bastion has perhaps the single most moving scene I've ever experienced in a game. What's unfortunate is that this scene is hidden behind an essentially meaningless player-made decision. Neither choice modifies the game's outcome, and one offers a narrative far superior to the other. Perhaps the designers felt that players would only care if they had chosen the action themselves, and there's some merit to that. But I wish that, having done so, they would have given the opposite choice an equally significant alternative scene. As it is, some percentage of people playing the game surely missed out on what is essentially the climax of the plot without getting anything in return. A second plot choice at the very end of the game is well-executed, with both paths hitting the right notes in response to the player's decision, which makes the lazy treatment of the earlier dilemma all the more confounding.

This problem goes to the heart of what sets video games apart. Choice allows us to become more invested in the narrative than any other medium; choice allows us to break that narrative and undermine our own experience. That seven people working from a house are pushing this medium forward is both a testament to their shared devotion and an indictment of the wasted potential at so many studios with far greater resources. Certainly, nothing is perfect, even a game that expands our horizons like this one. But speaking solely as someone who, like most of us, delights in new experiences and well-told stories, I'll leave it at this: I can't wait to see what these creative giants come up with next.

Played on PC (Steam, Xbox 360 controller, headphones)
Completed the game twice, 16 hours /played
Current price: $15

The Backlog

2012-01-21T11:30:00.000-08:00

The title refers to the way this blog fits into my life...get it? So meta.

I just took my second comprehensive exam yesterday morning, meaning that (assuming I pass the oral exam in two weeks) I'm at the end of the road as far as classes and exams. While there's still plenty to do - studying Chinese, going to talks, writing dissertations etc. - I'm finally going to be free of the three-seminar reading load.

I noticed I haven't posted to this in a year and a half. Clearly I'm going through the typical half-assed blog cycle of posting a few things, forgetting, posting etc. But, I may have found a solution that will keep me writing more. And I do like posting because it lets me think at length about the things I discuss and sometimes people comment which is fun. Or just Alb comments. But that's fun too.

Here's the solution. I just looked at my actual "backlog" - the books, games, and movies I've been intending to get through forever. And there's something like 70 individual items in that pile. So I'm thinking, in addition to the occasional tech/China/politics posts, I'll do some discussion or reviews of the things I cross off my list this semester. My thinking is it'll force me to post at least a couple times a month and also motivate me to get through some of the backlog, which I fear is nearing sentience. Sound good? In any case, I promise I won't be posting things like CALL OF DUTY: 11/10 STARS BUY IT.

Progress and Regress in MS Office

2010-10-27T23:29:00.000-07:00

It's time for another user interface blog post or two. This one focuses on MS Office - a program almost everyone uses almost all of the time.

Back in 2008(!) I kicked this blog off with a look at the then-unreleased Windows 7 interface, arguing that it was a strong example of innovation at MS. That was an example of good interface work; this will be an example of the opposite. The story starts back in 2005. That was the year that MS introduced the controversial Ribbon to MS Office:

It may not have been the first "tabbed toolbar" interface, but it's certainly the most (in)famous. I know that plenty of people say they dislike the Ribbon, and it's easy to understand the frustration of having to learn a different interface than the familiar menus and toolbars one grew up with. I'd argue that once you put some real time into it, though, there's simply no comparison - especially when it comes to finding features that you didn't know a program had. But this isn't a post about my personal love for the Windows Ribbon. Just assume for now that MS wasn't crazy when they applied six years of data and research to building a new interface.

The video below is the first 10 minutes of a 90 minute presentation (full video here) straight from MS on the research and design that went into the interface, and I'd recommend clicking through to watch the first 15 to 20 minutes, if only to understand the problems with Office 2003 and earlier. If you're anything like me, though, you'll be sucked in when he starts talking about the data they track on how people use Office (did you know that 70% of people physically click "Undo" rather than using ctrl-z?) and pulling out all the crazy prototype interfaces they designed. That and MS ripping on Clippy:

Anyway, the main features of the Ribbon are these: grouping of related commands into "tabs," live previews (for example, as you hover over a font choice, selected text in the doc changes to that font immediately without requiring a click), and context-sensitive tabs like Picture Tools that show themselves when you select something - in this case, a picture.

The reason I bring this up three years after the fact is that yesterday Microsoft released Office for Mac 2011. My professors, my university and all of the people outside GW that I've worked with deal exclusively in Word, Excel, and Powerpoint, which makes accurate page rendering, track changes functionality, and VB macro support a must. Office for Mac 2008 is something I use (along with Office 2010 on my desktop) every single day. If you haven't had the misfortune to use Office on the Mac before, count yourself lucky - it's notorious for having bad performance, not playing well with other features of OS X, and generally feeling like a broken compromise between Windows and Mac design principles.

For instance, before the first service pack was released for Office for Mac 2008, it took over 40 seconds to start Powerpoint. As far as interface, it was a disaster. The programs incorporated a non-OS X-standard toolbar, floating palettes, and a Ribbon-like device called the Element Gallery that has the distinction of containing only useless items like templates and SmartArt. On top of that, all the standard menus are still around:

If you watched the presentation, you can see how close this is getting to the UI nightmare scenario presented for Office 2003. And heck, even document compatibility, the raison d'être of Office for Mac, wasn't 100% in this version.

In that light, the main features touted for the new Office 2011 release were quite promising: better performance, better document compatibility, and the introduction of the Ribbon UI. I happily picked up my copy on launch day, installed it, and immediately noticed two things: performance was indeed much better (thank God), and the Ribbon was just different enough to make me write a blog post.

Here's the crux of the matter. Office 2011 should be the best of both worlds. Unlike Office on Windows, it retains the menus and toolbars so that users who despise the Ribbon are free to hide it:

And at the same time, I can get everything except the Ribbon out of the way if that's what I'm used to on Windows:

So far so good. But now we play a little game called "Spot the Difference." Notice any difference between these two Ribbons?

Office 2010 Windows

Office 2011 OS X

That's right - MS decided to arbitrarily change the tabs and command groupings. What's included in "Document Elements" on the 2011 Ribbon? Everything? Why do Tables get their own dedicated tab there when the Tables tab on Windows is context-sensitive? Why has the formerly-separate Insert tab become a small section of the Home tab? Even the group labels have been moved from bottom to top, a decision specifically rejected by the Windows Office team.

Not only this, but basic behaviors have been changed as well. Live Previews simply don't exist. Worse still is the show/hide functionality. On Windows, you can hide or show the Ribbon by double-clicking. If the Ribbon is hidden, a single-click on a tab shows it until you choose your command, at which point the Ribbon dutifully hides again. On the Mac, a single-click now permanently hides and shows the Ribbon while a double-click does nothing, meaning there's no way to work with it hidden unless you like manually clicking to close it every time you choose a command. Not content with destroying all of my hard-learned work habits, the Mac Office team also decided that an extremely slow animation ought to show the Ribbon physically sliding up or down each time you show/hide it, making the need to constantly do so the proverbial Tabasco on my sundae.

The ultimate question for me is, how can a company with as many gifted people as MS fail to successfully copy itself? How does this happen? The failure here is three-fold:

Consistency. The entire point of bringing the Ribbon to Office for Mac is for the interface to be familiar to Windows users.
Functionality. No Live Previews, no option for an "auto-hide" Ribbon.
Useability. The Ribbon itself performs slowly and group labels have moved to a less-intuitive place.

I understand that the Windows and Mac teams are separate and even in separate cities, that they don't necessarily see each other all the time. I can understand when the Xbox people fail to get everything squared away with the Windows Live folks or whatever. But this is simple stuff, and it's arguably Microsoft's signature product. Not only that, but as you heard in the video above, the original design was based on years of research into how people use Office that has apparently been neglected in favor of superficial resemblance. If you're going to innovate well, then for the love of God - don't let your own teams break your own innovations.

Hangzhou

2010-10-19T22:27:00.000-07:00

As alluded to earlier I spent a week after work was finished travelling in China, about three days of which was a great visit to the city of Hangzhou.

Basic facts on Hangzhou: It's a city of about 8 million people, four hours or so southwest of Shanghai by train. It's either the bottom of the first-tier or top of the second-tier of Chinese cities in terms of status - but it's also by far one of the richest outside of Shanghai. Think something like Seattle or Boston's place in the US. Hangzhou is famous for its location alongside the West Lake, which has been famed throughout China for at least 1,500 years as one of the most beautiful places in the country. There's a very well-known saying that goes:

"Shang you tian tang, xia you Su Hang" （上有天堂，下有苏杭）

Roughly, "There's heaven above - but on Earth, there's Suzhou and Hangzhou." Having never been to either Suzhou or Hangzhou before, I was pretty excited to find out what half of China's heavenly counterpart was like.

First off, travel is always better with a friend and this was no exception. I was staying with a guy, Andrew, who worked last year teaching English with Mandi in Tianjin. He's extremely cool, a Texas A&M grad, and very much into making the most of life in China - so getting plugged into his friend networks (both foreign and Chinese) was nice. Ate lots of good food and drank a lot of bad beer with them, which after two weeks of survey work was perfect.

I'll skip the day-by-day narrative for a couple highlights. The West Lake really is lovely, as some of the pictures below will attest. One can only imagine how picturesque it would have been before development. I spent an entire afternoon there by myself while Andrew was at work and it was a great retreat. Even though a lot of people visit, the long causeways out into the lake mean there's a ton of room to walk and spread out so it never really felt crowded.

I enjoyed another fun conversation with a cab driver about the relative merits of the US and China. Along with my love life and religion this is one of the stock cabby topics beyond "which country are you from?" and "what are you doing here?" There's a lot of confidence in China, but there's also a very clear recognition of the strong (overbearing?) position of the US in the world right now. I remember that this guy in particular wanted to talk about what a waste of time our adventures in the Middle East had been - but any time that I tried to throw him a "yeah, compared to the US, China is really doing great" softball, he'd send it back at my face with the usual comparisons about how much worse off Chinese people are, how much smaller China's military is etc. There's already a lot of talk about the brash, overconfident Chinese emerging on to the world stage, but it's an attitude you rarely encounter in real life. Much more realistic optimism, in my experience.

Andrew and I managed to almost entirely avoid Chinese food except for some street food one evening with friends - I had awesome Mexican and Indian (the former operated by a Ukrainian?!). A delicious indicator of the deepening globalization at work there. Speaking of which, Hangzhou strikes me as a city from the future. It's like flashing forward to China 2020, where cars have learned to stop for pedestrians, bike lanes go unused, the pollution is under control and everything just looks a little less "built as fast and cheap as possible" and a little more "mature."

Not much else to say. My flight back to Beijing was cancelled two hours before takeoff, but they put me in first class on an alternate airline. My thanks go to Jiang Shan who coached me (well, berated me) over the phone to get really assertive and demand an earlier flight when I told her what had happened. Saved me four hours and a coach seat, even if the first class on Shanghai Air was about one service grade above "Greyhound bus." Better than the alternative, I guess?

More later.

A nice typical street. Note the lack of insanity.

For all you Final Fantasy fans out there.

A view southwest across the smaller side of West Lake.

On the causeway walking south into the lake.

A perfect afternoon.

When hot in China, roll up thy shirt.

A view north to the Hangzhou skyline.

So in love, even their clothes have to match.

The mostly unspoiled hills to the southeast of West Lake. I can see how it got the reputation for beauty.

What's China without a little Engrish?

Bai Juyi (772-846) was a famous poet and governor of Hangzhou. This statue commemorates his departure from the governorship and city to take up residence in Luoyang in 824. Apparently noted for his contributions to the scenic beauty of West Lake, he gets a statue 1,200 years later. Sometimes I really like China.

Of all possible ways to defile this place with American consumerism, this may be the least offensive? Their deck made a nice place to take a break.

News from the PRC

2010-09-19T23:09:00.000-07:00

Many of you know that I went to China this summer as the research assistant on a new project being done by Prof. Bruce Dickson here at GWU. I don't want to go into too much depth immediately, but I think it's high time I posted some information and reflections on my first "business" / "field research" experience abroad.

A quick overview: I spent two weeks in Beijing as we worked with our Chinese partners to develop a ~100 question survey which will be given to over 3,000 respondents in cities around the country. The general topics covered by the survey include personal values, support for different levels of government, provision and use of public goods, and a few other items that I'll get to later. The full survey will be carried out later this year. The work is being funded by the National Science Foundation.

My deepest impression from the experience was simply a realization of how much work goes into constructing a survey. Before leaving we had spent months looking at past surveys and creating questions on our own, trying to put together a set of questions that would both elicit the data we needed and that would be intelligible in a Chinese context. I thought we were really well-prepared, and that we would be able to take this huge bank of questions and fashion it into a workable survey fairly rapidly. Instead, we spent entire workdays each day for two weeks going through each question, checking the Chinese wording, explaining to the Chinese side precisely why each question needed to be included, worrying about which order to ask the questions, and just generally discovering the sheer volume of time required to make sure everything is done as well as possible. This was compounded by the cultural and language barriers we faced - if we had invented a question in English, it was often the case that a suitable translation took a lot of iteration to find or that the question itself simply didn't make sense to Chinese people. In the end, though, we finished putting a full draft survey together on the last day of our stay in Beijing.

Beyond this, it was a great chance to put my Chinese language skills to use. They'd atrophied a lot over the year in DC, but things came back quickly and I've reached a level of fluency where I lose vocabulary, not the ability to communicate. Suffice it to say that I wouldn't have been qualified for this project (or my stipend) without the Chinese I learned at UM and in Beijing, and it was immensely gratifying to use it for something outside of school.

That's not a lot of detail but I don't expect this to be the final post - it's just an introduction to what I was doing. I also spent a week afterwords traveling to Tianjin and Hangzhou, which I'll post a bit about here.

And finally, some of you may remember a post I made many months ago about a Chinese professor and his views on democracy in the PRC. I translated Yu Keping's article and posted it on the briefly active Chinese politics blog I started at the end of my year in Beijing. I bring it up because, to my utter surprise and delight, I spent an entire morning with he and his coworkers at the Central Translation Bureau during my trip! Again, fodder for another post, soon.

Games, Media and the War

2010-09-16T21:08:00.000-07:00

Although this isn't as unprecedented as one might expect, the New York Times Magazine published a really interesting article on the portrayal of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars last week with a focus on combat's depiction in games. It's an article that takes games seriously, and I think it raises a number of thought-provoking issues. I'll just highlight a few:

The fact that the vast majority of media contact with these wars and with combat in general now occurs through games, not the news or movies. The Hurt Locker pulled in $16 million while Modern Warfare 2 (admittedly, only tangentially related to real life events) pulled in over $1 billion. The upcoming Medal of Honor from EA, explicitly set during the earlier days of the Afghanistan war, will pull numbers much closer to the latter.
There's still a strong degree of cultural approbation connected to playing as an enemy of US soldiers, especially in a depiction of ongoing events. Is this a sign of the immaturity of games (they aren't willing to tackle and defend tough material?) or of general sensitivities we ought to respect?
Most interestingly, games seem to be both the least and most empathetic manner in which to experience and understand these events. Is it more meaningful to watch a character suffer a tragic death on screen after 2 hours of film or to die for the 895th time in a multiplayer match? Is it more meaningful to watch the response of a soldier confronted with an ambiguous, potentially tragic situation in a warzone - or to play as that soldier, making that decision of whether or not to shoot the young man who looks like he's reaching for a gun?

I highly recommend the article. What do you think?

The Steady March of Progress

2010-09-14T21:17:00.000-07:00

As indicated in the post below, I've been looking into getting a smartphone lately (and if you haven't commented, feel free to do so!). With that has come an interesting realization that was probably already obvious to most of you, but that took me awhile to admit: phones are the new computers.

Anyone who knows me knows that I've followed (certain branches of consumer-grade) PC tech semi-obsessively since at least high school. It makes for a great, if expensive, hobby - you always know something better is going to come out, that Intel or NVidia or AMD are busy cooking up the next new thing in a lab somewhere, and that when it makes its way to the market it'll make something I use every day even better.

Recently, though, it's gotten a lot less interesting. With a few exceptions, the big-budget gaming industry has swung heavily towards consoles, which are technically interesting only for the first two weeks after they're announced. This has also meant that all of that ever-increasing computing power hasn't had much of an outlet besides the occasional video compression. The desktop computer has fallen off in sales and day-to-day usage compared to laptops, which in turn tend to use cut-down derivatives of last-generation's hotness. You can only get so excited about lower thermal envelopes before the primal lizard brain starts craving benchmarks. And finally, we've reached a point of seeming diminishing returns. With the shift from ever-faster processor cores to ever-more cores on a single chip, an upgrade just isn't what it used to be. Sure, I can buy a six-core CPU - but if four of them are idling because nothing besides a few niche programs takes advantage of it, why bother?

So even though Intel, AMD and NVidia have all kept releasing new CPUs and new graphics cards, it just hasn't been the same as the glory days of my misspent youth. And yet. When one looks at the smartphone market today, it's hard not to see both the past and the future rolled into one. On one hand it's like a 1980s redux, with multiple major playors (including old standbys MS and Apple alongside newcomers like Google) fighting once again to provide the dominant operating system and set the standards for the market. If nothing else, it's fun watching people invent entirely new interfaces and software after decades of clicking a start menu:

Windows Phone 7 vs. iOS vs. Android (in this case HTC-modified) interface.

Simultaneously, these devices are the beginning of the future: they've gone from phones with extra features to computers with a built-in phone, and it's obvious that in five to ten years time the power of a high-end desktop will be sitting in everyone's hand. Plug the thing into a charge station with display and input jacks (or hell, set it on its wireless induction pad next to a bluetooth keyboard and WirelessHD-equipped monitor) and you'll never need another machine.

I still read up on all the new graphics and desktop CPU releases, but now I get to spend time on the latest phone hardware, SoC (system-on-a-chip), operating systems and Cortex CPUs - and in the process, find myself back in the midst of the horserace for both higher performance and better experiences that I always knew and loved. As ever, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Special thanks to AnandTech for being consistently awesome from the first day I read the site - and for making all those links so easy to find.

Three Questions

2010-08-29T23:00:00.000-07:00

No, nothing about African vs. European swallows. And actually more than three questions.

1. Where did all the comment spammers come from? I don't know. I tried to kill them. Let's see if it works.

2. How many of you have smartphones (defined as something running Android, iOS, WinMobile, Blackberry or Palm WebOS)? What do you like about it (the OS, the hardware, the experience of having a smartphone in general)? Dislike?

3. Do you use a personal calendar application either on the web or offline? What is it and how do you like it?

Yes, I'm shamelessly surveying my friends while considering new ways of ordering my life.

Budgets

2010-05-21T08:27:00.001-07:00

Since there's going to be a lot of talk about the national debt and deficit over the coming months, I thought I'd post a link to this simulation put together by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (a very centrist group). Have fun seeing what your own preferences would translate to, fiscally.

I was pretty surprised that after gutting our Iraq/Afghan deployments, reducing subsidies to low-earners to buy mandated health insurance, and adding a carbon tax and higher gas tax while killing biofuel subsidies, there was basically no way to reach the goal (admittedly somewhat arbitrary - keeping the national debt to 60% or less of GDP by 2018) without either letting most of the Bush tax cuts expire AND adding a national 5% VAT, or else by letting all of the Bush tax cuts expire. Rough life.

Also it's summer and I'll be posting more, so if you happen to read this put up a comment so I can see if anyone' still popping in on occasion.

Topology demo

2010-02-18T23:26:00.000-08:00

So, for whatever random reason, this political science student found himself with an interest in topology earlier today and stumbled across this video. It shows how to "turn a sphere inside out" though of course it's a math problem, not a physical exercise. It's also 24 minutes long but very well done, pedagogically speaking, if you have time to watch all or most of it.

I'm assuming the rules of this mathematical game are constructed on the basis of a continuous / continuously differentiable function, but of course I don't know any of the real math behind it.

Turning spheres inside out.

And yes, the voiceovers are pretty sweet.

Doing Justice

2010-02-03T08:47:00.000-08:00

With reference to the current spat about civilian trials for terrorists, undie-bomber and KSM included, I respectfully submit (re-post from the Daily Dish) part of the judge's statement at the sentencing of attempted terrorist Richard Reid in civilian court. I forgive him the cliche 2003 "you hate our freedom" lines based on the strength of his first point, and his last:

We are not afraid of any of your terrorist co-conspirators, Mr. Reid. We are Americans. We have been through the fire before. There is all too much war talk here. And I say that to everyone with the utmost respect.

Here in this court where we deal with individuals as individuals, and care for individuals as individuals, as human beings we reach out for justice.

You are not an enemy combatant. You are a terrorist. You are not a soldier in any war. You are a terrorist. To give you that reference, to call you a soldier gives you far too much stature. Whether it is the officers of government who do it or your attorney who does it, or that happens to be your view, you are a terrorist.

And we do not negotiate with terrorists. We do not treat with terrorists. We do not sign documents with terrorists.

We hunt them down one by one and bring them to justice.

So war talk is way out of line in this court. You're a big fellow. But you're not that big. You're no warrior. I know warriors. You are a terrorist. A species of criminal guilty of multiple attempted murders.

In a very real sense Trooper Santiago had it right when first you were taken off that plane and into custody and you wondered where the press and where the TV crews were and he said you're no big deal. You're no big deal.

What your counsel, what your able counsel and what the equally able United States attorneys have grappled with and what I have as honestly as I know how tried to grapple with, is why you did something so horrific. What was it that led you here to this courtroom today? I have listened respectfully to what you have to say. And I ask you to search your heart and ask yourself what sort of unfathomable hate led you to do what you are guilty and admit you are guilty of doing.

And I have an answer for you. It may not satisfy you. But as I search this entire record it comes as close to understanding as I know.

It seems to me you hate the one thing that to us is most precious. You hate our freedom. Our individual freedom. Our individual freedom to live as we choose, to come and go as we choose, to believe or not believe as we individually choose.

Here, in this society, the very winds carry freedom. They carry it everywhere from sea to shining sea. It is because we prize individual freedom so much that you are here in this beautiful courtroom. So that everyone can see, truly see that justice is administered fairly, individually, and discretely.

It is for freedom's seek that your lawyers are striving so vigorously on your behalf and have filed appeals, will go on in their, their representation of you before other judges. We care about it. Because we all know that the way we treat you, Mr. Reid, is the measure of our own liberties.

People are all too ready to collectively lose their heads over dangers that, while real, do not rise to the level of any of the dangers, wars and crises faced down by our parents and grandparents. There will be another terrorist attack someday. I worry that there are too few men and women with the character of this judge remaining to avert a self-inflicted meltdown of American government and society when that happens. And yet the answer is right in front of us: Be ourselves. Uphold our principles. Let the strength of two thousand years of western democratic heritage stand against a thirty year old nihilist, murderous ideology. Are we truly afraid that such a comparison will come out poorly for us? Don't give an inch.

Alas that it seems we've already given a mile.

Question Time

2010-01-29T18:59:00.000-08:00

For those of you not familiar, Question Time is the British Parliamentary practice of posing questions (daily) in Parliament to government ministers, including the Prime Minister, which they are obliged to answer.

On that criteria, I think Obama would make a decent Prime Minister. Watch his Q&A today with the House GOP caucus and see if you don't agree.

Obama Q&A

With any luck this will happen on a regular basis, though I'm not holding my breath. And yes, I did make the post below before I knew Obama had made the exact same point today in this Q&A.

Broken Politics

2010-01-29T06:34:00.000-08:00

Check the results of the Senate vote to re-institute "pay-as-you-go," which requires that discretionary spending which would add to the federal deficit be offset by either reduced spending elsewhere or increased revenue. Guess which forty Senators voted against it?

Lifted from Wikipedia:

"These rules were in effect from FY1991-FY2002. Enacted in 1990, it was extended in the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 and the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. In FY 1991 the Federal deficit was 4.5% of GDP, by FY 2000 the Federal surplus was 2.4%. Total Federal spending as a percentage of GDP decreased each year from FY1991 through FY 2000, falling from 22.3% to 18.4%. Deficits, though, returned by the last year PAYGO was in effect: There was a return to deficits ($158 billion, 1.5% of GDP) in 2002."

Not that I would suggest the entire federal surplus was due to pay-as-you-go, since I have no evidence for that. But it doesn't seem to have hurt, it sounds like something that would be an obvious step broadly popular with Americans, and not a single Republican can vote for it. Sad.

Games as Art? (Updated)

2009-12-10T22:56:00.000-08:00

*An update with some interesting / relevant links:

Roger Ebert's response to Clive Barker and response to a reader question (third question)
Magical Wasteland take on Prime vs. Kane
On Facade and "interactive drama," from The Atlantic (scroll past Hillary)

A break from politics, politics, politics.

I've had long-standing interest in the question of the artistic value of video games, which was recently brought back to mind by this article at IGN. Said website, incidentally, was Rupert Murdoch's #2 idea for News Corp's big internet acquisition, #1 being MySpace. Wonder if he wants that one back.

Anyway, the article compares Metroid Prime to Citizen Kane. I think it's a silly comparison, personally, but I also haven't seen Citizen Kane. Still - any game in which you're faced by an enemy known as "Space Pirates" while cheesy synthesized guitar wails play in the background isn't really up there artistically in my book, even for a video game. That's actually a strong statement for me. Metroid Prime is the game that caused me to buy my first console, and absolutely one of my favorites of all time. It creates a wonderful feeling of isolation and identification with the character of Samus, surrounded by incredible (for its day) graphics and occasionally haunting music, when the Pirates aren't around. But it's not art.

Of course, there are a couple unique issues at play in this question. First, games synthesize a lot of other potentially artistic media. Is the music in Mario Galaxy art? How about the visuals in Okami? If Bioware's writers wrote dialogue on par with the most finely crafted drama films into their next RPG, would that be art? Personally, I would say that none of those would be sufficient (or necessary) conditions for the game to be art itself. I think, if certain games wish to be considered as art, they must do so on the basis of the interactive experience that is unique to the medium. No matter how good the score, no movie is rated among the best of all time solely because it had a good soundtrack.

Secondly, there's the Roger Ebert criticism: since games offer a choice of where to go and what to do, they can NEVER be art. If I, as a player, have the capability to just stare at a wall for ten minutes, or to change the ending, or to kill everyone else in the game, then how can the creators of the game be said to have defined an artistic experience? And if the game is so linear as to frame each action and shot, wouldn't we just have created a movie delayed at times by the need for a button press? Final Fantasy notwithstanding (just kidding, fanboys), that doesn't sound like much of a game.

Third, and finally, what is art and who experiences it? Is my printed version of "Macbeth" art, or would it only be so if I watched it performed live? Would the actors be experiencing a work of art? While admitting that games may be elegant, sophisticated, and artistic, Ebert excludes them from the category of "high art." This he defines as a set of mediums by which “[. . .] we as their consumers become more or less complex, thoughtful, insightful, witty, empathetic, intelligent, philosophical (and so on) by experiencing them.” I'm not sure if I agree, but it makes at least a useful starting point.

Answering the above questions has led to the better part of six pages that I've never posted or published, but I'd like to leave my own thoughts here for now. I will say that I think, with certainty, that video games can be art or "high art" though few have ever reached that status. Some (all?) of you reading have had part of this conversation with me and know where I'm headed. But before moving on to my own reasoning and experience, I'd be appreciative of any comments from others on their initial thoughts on the subject.

How do you define art? Can games be art? Why or why not? And if you have played one that you consider to be so, tell us about it.

On (Political) Science

2009-12-05T22:02:00.000-08:00

On November 5th the U.S. Senate rejected Tom Coburn's amendment to prohibit the National Science Foundation from funding political science research. On one hand, this is an obvious victory for people like me who see value in studying political questions and in combating the notion that social science has nothing to teach people.

But on the other hand, the guy has a point.

Not a point in the sense that his ignorant assertions equating nationwide political studies with CNN punditry have any merit, but in the sense that asking whether political science is indeed a science is a legitimate question. To George Washington University's credit, I spent the first six weeks of my program dealing with just this question in both comparative politics and international relations contexts, and if I came to one conclusion, it's that not even political scientists are totally comfortable claiming to be scientists.

Most of us operate with a fairly clear idea that there is a hierarchy to science. Of the evidence-based disciplines, we would tend to think of something like physics or chemistry as "hard" sciences, in which no or minimal subjectivity exists. One can follow the scientific method, constructing a hypothesis, putting it to experimental test, and then revising one's hypothesis in a generally straightforward manner, string theory aside. A little farther down we have things like biology or perhaps psychology, whose questions don't always fit as neatly into observable, constructable experiments as a field like physics', but whose methods are undeniably empirical and quantifiable. And then, somewhere way below those, we imagine there lie the "soft sciences" of sociology, anthropology, history, and the study of politics.

In that gap lies the field that inspires in political scientists either boundless envy or a good measure of disdain: the dismal science, economics. The methods of economics are essentially quantitative, and any microeconomics student who spends a few minutes being shown the shifting supply and demand curves while shading in the area of the graph representing dead weight from taxes or unmet demand can't help but come away with the feeling that economics deals with Laws. We know that a lower price will shift demand to the right and that a subsidy of X will artificially inflate production by Y amount in a way that anthropology or sociology can never seem to match. At the same time, economics still runs into the classic problems of social science - an inability to predict with certainty, especially at the macro level, and the charge that its quantification may miss something important in human economic behavior. We can mathematically describe all the relevant features of a mass moving through a vacuum. We probably cannot describe in a parsimonious, quantified way all features relevant to an individual or firm's economic decisions without strictly limiting the conditions to which they are subject.

Much less the individual or group's political decisions, usually taken in spaces with even fuzzier rules than the market. But the regularity and at least micro-level certainty offered by economics is both an inspiration and a threat to the field of political science. Why shouldn't we be able to develop similar theories in cases such as voting, or party formation, or the decision to revolt? Of course, many political scientists have done just that, and some economists have written works foundational to political science. We can model the utility function of voting or apply the concept of free-riding to membership in political organizations. Unfortunately, from what little I have seen so far, works of political science claiming to have developed laws or law-like regularities as parts of political theories have tended to fail (in the sense that they cannot conclusively convince an overwhelming majority of political scientists) with only a few possible exceptions. In general, if we make economic assumptions about individuals such as rationality and a desire to maximize their personal outcomes, we come away with theories predicting that exactly 0% of the populace will vote and that states will always tend to balance against the most powerful nation, except in all the cases where they don't. And yet if we don't make those assumptions, we're often left with a world that may be completely realistic but utterly indescribable in scientific terms.

Even when we succeed, it's usually in a probabilistic nature. We know that economic development is associated with governmental stability, but we can't pinpoint a per-capita GDP at which revolution will never occur. An in-depth study of states' international behavior may indicate that they tend to align themselves in ways which balance those states most threatening to them, but it seems hopeless to quantify "threat" when it must include not only military factors but also expansionist ideologies or historical grievances. In short, we're held back by the methods available to us. Statistical surveys, game-theoretic analysis, and qualitative case-studies can all provide extremely valuable and convincing information, but we will never be able to create two identical countries, hold one as the control, and then introduce an additional $5,000 of per-capita income into the other to see the effects on governance.

Before lapsing into despair, however, there are two points I want to make. The first is that science does not consist solely of controlled experiments, and that political science truly is more scientific than most people unfamiliar with the field give it credit for. We are not engaged in publishing political opinion as fact. Field experiments, natural experiments, statistical data and even the maligned case study all provide evidence for or against the hypothesis being tested, within limitations that we must keep in mind. Certain empirically established, generally accepted principles DO exist, from Duverger's law to the median voter theorem. Secondly, I think that part of the difficulties faced by political scientists are self-inflicted. As soon as we chose the name "political science" for this field, our fate, as the acolyte would put it, was sealed. Having put science in the name, we are obliged to make it as scientific as possible, even when it makes us look ridiculous. Furthermore, we're asking to be judged in comparison with other sciences, a comparison which from a lay (or even informed) perspective is never going to end well for politics.*

So am I a scientist-in-training or not? At the end of the day I suppose that I am, insofar as anyone being trained to generate hypotheses and then test them as rigorously as possible is a scientist. The experimental method is not the only method allowed in science, though it has been by far the most productive. Before dismissing anything discovered outside the lab, though, consider that Einstein didn't deduce relativity from any observation or experiment possible on Earth. He started from a set of existing contradictions in physics, created new a priori assumptions, deduced those assumptions' implications, and then had the good fortune to have those implications experimentally verified (at first via natural experiments, not controlled) within a few years of its publication. The spark behind relativity was entirely human in nature, dreamt up in isolation and developed solely in the mind. Perhaps someday, the still-young field of political science will also have its breakthrough, scientific, moment.

*Thanks to my dad, another scholar of the social sciences, for this point.

Hello Again

2009-12-02T01:21:00.001-08:00

With winter break approaching I thought I'd post to say that I remembered I used to have this blog that I enjoyed. Seeing as how it has a few followers still, I'm pleased to say that I do in fact plan to start posting items once in awhile here. Right now the semester is heading into exams and so on, but keep an eye out for some actual content in the near future.

Torture FAQ

2009-04-23T23:22:00.000-07:00

"No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."
UN Convention Against Torture, Article 2 Section 2

Q. Who are the people opposing any investigation and/or advocating the value of torture?

A. Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, former Department of Justice lawyers and some in the intelligence community. The people with the most to lose.

Q. Who are the people calling for an investigation and/or claiming that this policy has been detrimental to the United States?

A. Many actual interrogators. People who have actually suffered torture. People who saw what was going on and knew immediately that it was wrong. Reputable organizations like the International Red Cross.

Q. Is waterboarding even torture?

A. We jailed and executed Japanese soldiers who used it against us in the Second World War. We train our special forces to resist it if captured, presumably by enemies who are free to choose other methods. Every authority on earth outside of the Bush Administration considers it to be so. In what universe is intentionally and repeatedly inflicting the physical and psychological pain of death by drowning anything else?

Q. This was just enhanced interrogation, used only on the highest value suspects when they refused to cooperate. Why should we investigate something used in such a limited way?

A. In fact, this punishment was inflicted on suspects as often as six times a day, every day for thirty-one days. Oh, and we approved putting people in boxes with crawling insects.

Q. But didn't torture produce actionable intelligence?

A. That's hardly a clear cut case. Some people, especially former Vice-President Cheney, are adamant that it did. Others, including FBI special agents, dispute that. Nobody has indicated that this information could not have been obtained in legal ways.

But to paraphrase Colin Powell: isn't the really right answer, so what if it did? Isn't the point of having principles that we stick with them even at a cost to expedience?

Q. Principles are great, but if there was a nuclear bomb about to...

A. Stop right there. If we're going to play out facile thought experiments, then let's at least be realistic. Would the hardened terrorist, trained for martyrdom, knowing he is mere hours away from bringing off the largest attack against the West in history, give up the information just because you hurt him? Furthermore, if "what would we be willing to do to prevent an imminent nuclear explosion" is our standard for what's allowed, then what's not allowed?

Q. Wouldn't an investigation be extremely divisive?

A. Probably, but only because many Republicans and others have abandoned the rule of law. In most civilized countries, investigating criminal actions isn't considered divisive. Besides, we are bound by the United Nations Convention Against Torture, which we have signed and ratified, to do so. Please consider these two quotes from the United States Constitution.

"This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land" (Article 6)

In other words, treaties have status equal to federal law. This has been established by Supreme Court precedent, and means that we are indeed obligated to investigate. The only reason our international obligations would not apply is if they contravened the Constitution, but it's hard to imagine a conflict between the investigation provisions of the Convention Against Torture and a Constitution which takes the following as a basic principle:

"Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." (Amendment 8)

If such a conflict is believed to exist I encourage relevant officials to bring suit and await the decision of our judiciary.

Q. But isn't President Obama against investigations as well?

A. Yes he is. He's also wrong.

President Obama has argued that we need to "move forward," and believes that his political capital is better spent on repairing the massive structural damage of the past eight years. I understand this perspective. But I can think of no more lasting harm to our nation than to establish a policy of non-investigation of criminal cases based on selective convenience.

Resources:

George Washington University "Torturing Democracy" Document Archive

More sources and resources will be linked later.

Unsatisfied

2009-04-06T11:15:00.000-07:00

So, I'm not happy with this blog and will be relaunching one with an actual purpose. Forgive me for never really getting into posting on this, but I feel like I should only post if I have something of value to say and little of what I've written here reaches that standard.

The new one will certainly be limited at least to political science, in a more academic sense. And likely, more specifically, to democracy in China - not agitating for revolution but rather writing about how democracy is discussed, envisioned and practiced in the PRC.

If you miss my oh-so-insightful once a month postings, I might continue them on jsethw.blogspot.com after I get back from China. A personal blog and a work / serious blog if you will.

The Loyal Opposition

2009-03-03T02:16:00.000-08:00

I realize that I shouldn't let words upset me, but one of the ongoing issues in American politics is a constant disconnect between political words and their meanings. See: use of Liberal as a slur, Obama the Marxist.

Anyway, some great lines today from Roger Simon at Politico, reporting on Obama's intention to "transform the country." Simon goes on to talk about the Republican opposition, which at this point pretty much consists of Rush Limbaugh. If you, as I did, doubt this fact, consider that Limbaugh yesterday forced Michael Steele, the Republican National Committee Chairman, to apologize for suggesting that Steele himself was the leader of the party and that Limbaugh was only an "entertainer." The quote below is from Rush's recent keynote speech to Conservative Political Action Conference in DC - not exactly outside the Republican mainstream.

/*

“So here we have two systems,” Limbaugh said. “We have socialism, collectivism, Stalin, whatever you want to call it, versus capitalism.”

And that’s it. Obama and the Democrats represent Stalin, and Limbaugh and the Republicans represent capitalism. Take your pick.

But doesn’t it make you kind of wonder why the American people picked Obama and the Democrats last November?

How did that happen, exactly? Was it mass hypnosis? Were we bewitched?

Or were we just tired of the endless hyperpartisanship, the endless name calling, the endless demonizing of the opposition to “energize the base” and the endless refusal to develop real solutions to real problems?

Yeah, that could be it.

*/

Ah, I love the liberal media.

So, the first point is that demagogues are scary. The second thing to keep in mind is that this isn't a few crazy Digg commenters calling Bush a Fascist - this is the keynote address to one of the largest conservative gatherings of the year. Mitt Romney was there, Mike Huckabee was there, Newt Gingrich was there. I'm no more in favor of guilt by association than I was during the Bill Ayers flap, and hardly believe that they too think of Obama as "Stalinist" (well, maybe Huckabee...), but it's depressing that these views even receive a welcome in such circles.

What's left of the Republican Party seems to have some growing up to do. They might read a history of the Soviet Union while they're at it before throwing around such words. And we would all do well to consider our own language, even in the heat of debate.

Libertarianism and its Discontents

2008-11-16T06:49:00.000-08:00

Interesting introspection by Benn over on his blog on libertarianism and the reasons for its failure to gain more public acceptance. I was especially interested because, like many others, I went through a "Fountainhead / Atlas Shrugged" phase of teenage life that imbued me with a Libertarian viewpoint, at least temporarily. But in the end, there are some reasons that Ayn Rand isn't taken seriously. These are mine.

I'll admit first off that others have actually read philosophy and thought about these problems in more depth than I. So, if you have a deeper perspective than my surface criticisms, please post in the comments section.

I dropped the libertarian viewpoint because I came to believe that, in general, a. libertarianism doesn't make an accurate accounting of the world and b. it's immoral and inconsistent. I understand and usually support the idea of maximum individual freedom of action, at least until such point as it impinges on another's. But especially on economic (broad use of the word here, think all types of capital) matters, I find the ideology unsustainable.

a. Libertarians never seem to account for market failure. People are not always rational actors; acting as though they are is a recipe for disaster. Witness Alan Greenspan's admission last month: "Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief." That is, banks and others acted in a way inconsistent with their own long-term security and self-interest. This apparently is "shocking." Unfortunately we know that short-term greed often trumps reason and that greed is not always good - here, it helped lead to a systemic collapse. The ideology simply didn't account for reality.

In addition, we need to account for human desires for things such as community, stability of life, tradition and other "irrational" incentives totally overlooked by most libertarians. I'll use an example that I guarantee exists in my hometown. Consider a very middle-class minority family in a poor urban area with bad schools, but in which they live, have friends and go to church. They have the money to buy a cheap pre-fab house at the rural edge of a good suburban 95% white school district. Do we castigate them for not moving? Perhaps, but I think we need to acknwledge the very valid reasons why they might hesitate to do so and account for this in policy.

b. Libertarianism espouses the superiority of the free market, and yet a free market is nothing without people capable of making transactions. No matter the economic system, people have a stake in each other's success and I am forced to admit that birth, over which we have no control, sets a lot of parameters in life. I didn't get to where I am on my own and I acknowledge this. The schools and university I went to were built by other people's effort and taxes. I was able to go there because of both my parents' hard work and a long string of accidents and good fortune. I've never been economically independent, entering relationships purely based on rational self interest. Rather, my good fortune in the relationships which I have inherited and which I have privileged access to obliges me to, in some measure, support increased opportunities for those who weren't as lucky.

Some even argue that unfettered capitalism isn't the secret to success at all; maybe it's education. The corollary to all this is that I think government should work to enforce equality of opportunity as a basic matter of human rights and fairness. We could make a market for free speech but we consider it too important to limit; similarly, I don't think there should exist our current market-enforced limits on economic and social opportunity.

Anyway, I obviously support market economies which have been the main drivers of growth and the elimination of poverty around the world - but this doesn't mean I am against intervention in markets or establishment of systems outside the market. Personally I think the US has the level of interventon about right.

Let me know your feelings on the matter and the numerous ways in which I've misinterpreted libertarian philosophy.

Republican Prospects, pt. 1

2008-11-06T08:23:00.000-08:00

What's next for the Republicans as a party?

I'll get to that at a later date, but for now let me ask a different question.

What do Texas, Tennessee, Missippi, Kansas and Kentucky have in common?

Well, yes, they all went for McCain this year. And yes, they are among the reddest of states, their margins for McCain ranking between #8 and #15 among all fifty states.

How about this? They were all closer races than Michigan. Michigan, until McCain's pullout on Oct. 2, was considered a "swing state."

To reiterate, Democrats are currently more competitive in Texas and Mississippi than Republicans are in Michigan.

In terms of the electoral college, therefore, things will likely get worse for the GOP before they get better. Obama is committed to expanding and reshaping the electoral map; he has already succeeded in reducing the Republican party to a party of the rural south and west. He dominated among black voters, Hispanic voters, and Asian voters, among youth, among women AND won a greater percentage of white voters overall (~44%) than either Kerry or Gore.

When a modern American party's supporting demographic consists solely of rural white men, they're in trouble.

The long-term trends that delivered North Carolina, Virginia and Nevada to the Democrats for the first time in 40+ years aren't going away in the near future: enhanced African-American turnout in light of Obama's candidacy and legitimation of the political process, Hispanic immigration, replacement of the older generation with younger voters, and the movement of young, educated professionals to new centers of the service sector and finance such as Charlotte and Alexandria. In addition, the Republican Party currently has no reputation to speak of, and, without any leadership role in government, is unlikely to win back its good name soon.

These factors aren't likely to have a large impact in a state such as Alabama over the next four years, but the advantages of presidential incumbancy are going to reinforce them in such a way that, barring the emergence of a major new credible Republican figure and assuming a basic level of competence on Obama's part, 2012 will see an expansion of his 2008 strategy. This year, I'd break down the competitive states (~10% margin either way) that Obama chose to compete in as follows.

Defend: Minnesota, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Iowa, Maine District 2*

Offense: Colorado, Nevada, Florida, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, Missouri, West Virginia

Long Shot: Indiana, Georgia, Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska District 2*

Obviously he did extremely well, taking all of the "offense" states other than Missouri (0.2%) and West Virginia (13.1%), while also unexpectadly pulling out Indiana by 0.9%. UPDATE: He might also have won Nebraska 2. Furthermore, the entire "defend" column has almost certainly moved into the safe Obama column. Even Pennsylvania went to Obama by more than 10% with all of McCain's focus on it. Those states are not competitive. In 2012, I expect to see something like the list below, assuming a similar number of offensive/long shot states that Obama engages in.

Defend: Colorado, Virginia, Ohio, Nevada, Florida

Offense: North Carolina, Indiana, Missouri, West Virginia, Georgia, Montana, North Dakota, Arizona

Long Shot: South Carolina, South Dakota, Nebraska District 2

This list has Obama starting at 264 electoral votes (pre-2010 census) before any of the above states are counted. Not a great place to be if you're a Republican. The obvious question then is whether the party can remake itself quickly enough to either regain a competitive edge in places like Iowa (or Virginia or New Mexico) or to become competitive in a state like Michigan (Pennsylvania or Minnesota). On the Democratic side, the question is whether the party can govern competently enough to hold together this coalition.

A lot can happen in four years, but if I were to a place a bet I would say the Republicans will have at least eight years to consider where they went wrong. Eventually, though, they will need to either moderate their nativist and anti-lower class wing to go after Hispanic voters in the expanding southwest, or else find some way to appeal to the Great Lakes states. The coasts are long gone. In the meantime, with an already large technological and fundraising advantage, the Democrats are going to go even further in rewriting the rules on which states are in play.

*Nebraska and Maine divide their electoral votes by congressional district. This year Nebraska-2 encompassed the city of Omaha, worth one electoral vote and putting it for a few weeks in Obama's sights. Maine-2, the rural north of the state, was similarly in McCain's crosshairs; both of Maine's Senators are moderate Republicans. After the 2010 census Nebraska may lose a congressional district, which would probably kill Obama's chances by expanding the 2nd district to include other, more rural areas.

Election Morning, Beijing

2008-11-06T06:14:00.000-08:00

There were 150 of us packed into a cafe in Beijing where the owner had a hookup to US CNN and had promised free Tsingtao beer if Obama won. Almost all of us were Americans but a few British, French and Germans made their way in as well, building the crowd as the morning (for us) went on. Other than the two drunken frat boys in back who kept getting shushed, the room was dead silent as both McCain and Obama delivered their speeches, breaking to applaud a line only once or twice for each. We were all truly moved by McCain's speech and especially the sad sight of an honorable man quieting the crowd as they attempted to boo Obama. But when Obama came out it was like a whole other world.

I can't tell you how it felt to stand in a foreign land, in a country where the people have no national voice and are taught nothing but cynicism about democracy. To stand in a country where I have heard for the last two months from people who have never seen my home or cast a vote that the only thing that matters in America is how much money someone has or whether "the rich and powerful" support him or her. To have those experiences coursing through me as, surrounded by Americans and America's friends, we watched Barack Obama deliver the speech that he did. At the end the black Americans in the room were jumping out of their chairs, the Indian Americans were high-fiving the white Americans, the Chinese Americans were laughing over a beer with the British, and for the first time in a long time, perhaps for the first time ever, I felt viscerally the power of those universal values. Democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope.

I don't expect him to be a perfect president. But for me and I think many of my fellow Americans, his election has restored our sense of promise and our sense of pride in the country we love. People, and countries, can change. Ideas matter. We choose our leaders. And at the end of the day, we are fortunate citizens of the oldest, proudest and most inspirational democracy on Earth.

If anyone has yet to watch Sen. Obama's speech in Grant Park, I would encourage you to do so. The Youtube videos I posted seem to be broken but they should be easy enough to find there.

The Windows 7 UI

2008-11-03T06:09:00.000-08:00

Last week in LA, Microsoft held their biennial Professional Developers Conference. This year, they showed off for the first time the new user interface that will be standard in Windows 7, due for release somewhere around late 2009.

Unfortunately, MS has already been and will continue to be accused of copying Apple with Windows 7. But Windows 7's UI appears to be, from a functional standpoint, superior to that of both Vista and OS X.

There's one simple reason why the copying accusations will fly, and that's the new taskbar (below).

Like OS X's Dock, the new taskbar is a combined launcher and task switcher, meaning that persistant icons are either shortcuts to the app when inactive or the place to switch to an app when it is running. The icons get outlines when the program is running, with multiple nested outlines if there are multiple windows or tabs of that application open. Furthermore, running apps have the square pane around their taskbar icons highlighted on mouseover with an app-specific color to distinguish them from unlaunched apps.

At first glance, this does look a lot like the OS X dock, except that the overbearing angled reflections and glowy blue indicators aren't there.

But when we get to switching between windows the differences really become apparent. In short, task switching in Windows 7 looks more intuitive and easier than either Vista or OS X.

Imagine the following scenario, typical for an experienced computer user writing an essay. You have email, a web browser, iTunes or your favorite media player, chat, two Word documents and three PDFs open at the same time. The web browser has at least three or four tabs open. In XP/Vista, this means six total items in the taskbar, with one of those six being a group of the PDFs. I can switch between the Word docs at will but I have to identify them based on the text in the taskbar. To go from a Word doc to a webpage, I have to switch first to the browser and then to the appropriate tab. If I want to get info from one of those PDFs, I have to click on the PDF stack in the taskbar and then identify the correct PDF by text label before switching to it to read or copy/paste.

OS X is substantially the same except that switching between the Word documents is harder because only the app icons exist in the Dock. Once I'm in Word, I have to either hit the "active application" Exposé button to give myself the "flying windows" effect and pick the right one based on its half size image, or else choose it from the text list in the Window menu. OS X does give me Exposé across all open windows with a different key, but by the time you have 8 windows open with 5 of them being text, the shrunken images don't lend themselves to immediate identification, especially on a laptop screen. In addition, there's no consistancy to where Exposé puts the windows - it changes based on which application is active when you press the button, so you have to search the entire screen each time.

Quick, find the PDF on China's military development.

Here's how Windows 7 is better. Imagine I'm starting in the same scenario, looking at one Word doc and wishing to switch to one of the PDFs. The PDFs are again all grouped under one application icon, but now when I hover my mouse I get a Vista style thumbnail of ALL three PDFs in a row right about that icon. This wouldn't be that great except for two points. First, the thumbnails themselves are clickable to switch windows. Second, on thumbnail hover, all other windows on the desktop go transparent. This means that you aren't selecting the window based on its thumbnail, icon, Exposé resized self or taskbar text - you're selecting it based on seeing the window itself at full size in its actual location. Furthermore, you can close windows directly from the thumbnail and the thumbnails will of course be lined up consistently based on the order in which you opened the documents. Check out between 3:00 and 4:00 below to see what I mean.

Not only does this work on windows, but it also works for tabs. So a hover over Firefox gives a thumbnail of each tab, and hovering the tab hides everything else.

Even better, Windows 7 supports accessing a lot of an application's functionality without ever switching to it at all. That transparency effect is great for finding the window to switch to, but what if I just need to see that date of publication in the PDF? I can simply hover the appropriate thumbnail and look at it, at full size, without switching to the PDF reader. Simply move the mouse off and Word is back at the front. In addition, MS is including basic controls in programs such as Windows Media Player so that users can hit play, next track etc. right on the thumbnail without switching focus, and this is accessible to third party developers for implementation in their programs. A new feature called "Jump Lists" lets you right-click an application icon in the taskbar to get a custom menu - Word would show recent docs, media players could show tracks, playlists and so on. OS X has a similar feature, but it only works if the application is running, whereas in Windows 7 this is available all the time. And last but not least, there's a new button that turns all windows to glass on mouse hover (the far right end of the new taskbar) so that you can see the desktop; click and the windows are hidden so you can interact. Combined with the fact that gadgets/widgets simply live on the desktop now as seen below, this puts a lot of information within a mouse hover rather than a focus switch.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, this is customizable. You can turn text labels in the taskbar back on. You can ungroup windows in the taskbar. You can make the icons smaller so the taskbar goes back to Vista height. Either way, all of the new functionality remains.

Microsoft deserves a lot more credit than they may get for redoing their UI in this way, but I for one am looking forward to using it. I hope that Office 2007 and Windows 7 mark a turning point for how MS innovates and is perceived to innovate by the Windows community.

For those interested, here's the entire developer overview straight from PDC.

Welcome!

2008-11-03T02:50:00.000-08:00

I'm starting a blog on more serious topics for a couple of reasons. For one, I've been spurred by the current election and numerous political discussions to put some of these thoughts and issues into a more structured, debatable form. Second, I feel that a place where I can share ideas or works in progress might be of considerable value, so I hope that anyone reading will comment, criticize and generally let me know if I sound like a hack. In addition, I kept finding myself with things I wanted to post to my China blog that simply didn't fit into the theme of life in China.

However, none of those are really the main point. The main point is to have interesting discussions that can include the opinions of people not in Beijing. To that end, I'd be more than happy to link anyone else's blog or post anyone else's contributions in this space.

That's that - expect posts to be something of a grab bag at least for now, generally focusing on politics, technology or Chinese studies with occasional forays into anything else that seems worthy.