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Watched a clip of the “I’m a PC guy” John Hodgman at the White House press corps. dinner (I think the same one with the reprehensible Wanda Sykes). Unlike Sykes, Hodgman was in the actual spirit of the night, mildly poking fun at President Obama for being the “first nerd President.” I noted that when Hodgman called most of the audience nerds, they weren’t smiling or laughing. Watch for David Axelrod, who looks absolutely stone faced in the video.

It was a funny bit, delivered in something like the bi-partisan spirit that these events are supposed to be. However, I do disagree with several assertions, and I think it is worth discussion.

Hodgman is partially correct in stating that there is a difference in philosophy between “nerds” and “jocks.” But he paints too broadly (yes, I know this is a light hearted bit, but let’s roll with this here). Hodgman asserts that jocks are those who are self-confident folk who only go on “gut feelings.” Whereas nerds, I guess, are people who are bookish, who rely on something like pure reason or whatever.

In reality, of course, jocks are simply people who tend to enjoy physical activity naturally, while nerds are those who gravitate towards mental activity. And there is quite a bit of cross-over. A jock can be quite bookish (one remembers Minnesota Vikings running back Robert Smith, who took time off of football at Ohio State to focus on academics, and who retired in his prime to pursue intellectual interests), while a nerd can still enjoy physical activity (id Software’s John Carmack is a martial artist, at least according to Masters of Doom).

However, I do rather take exception with Hodgman’s claim that the founding fathers were “nerds,” and that strict constructionist judges are “jocks.” This is insane. Constructionist judges are the ultimate nerds! A nerd is someone who knows the difference between an Orc and a Uruk-Hai (as I do, which says something about me, heh). A constructionist judge is a nerd about the Constitution. Now, liberal judges are also nerds, but about other stuff. 

Also, Hodgman thinks that to actually understand the founding fathers intent is impossible. Well, that is rather stupid, because they told us, in writing, again and again, what they meant. This isn’t esoteric, 1776 wasn’t some secret Atlantian nation founded thousands of years ago. Yes, Hodgman is making “teh funny,” but I still felt compelled to point out his errors.

One last exit question remains. If “PCs” (as Hodgman plays the part of a “PC” in the Apple computer commercials) are nerds, are Apple users….. jocks?

Hat tip to Petitedov

The economy, with its invisible hands and visible government hands, is hard to figure, even when armed with the basic data. We’ve topped 9% unemployment, which is closer to the kind of number that we used to laugh at European countries for having. Yet I read on Facebook posts that seem to say this variant: “Hey, went to X place, it was extremely crowded, I thought we were in a down economy?”

I am a new member of the video game industry, an industry which is on most of those “recession safe” lists you see in the media. For good reason, we’re a muscular, dynamic industry that has massively expanded in the past few years. Plus it fits into the old conventional wisdom that entertainment does well in down economies.

Yet the current situation has certainly affected the industry. Something like 10% of the game industry was laid off last year, as companies downsize and start to rely on the dreaded O word, outsourcing.

This means that a glut of talented, veteran developers are now flooding the market, at the exact time when graduating classes from my graduate school, SMU Guildhall, is trying to place highly qualified but as of yet industry unproven talent in the industry. For a school like Guildhall to struggle in placement is something to notice, as it boasts a 95% placement rate. It’s still getting that rate eventually, but it has been harder and harder for each graduating class, with my own being the hardest hit it seems. Almost a month from our graduating ceremonies, and precious few of us have jobs.

How does this affect economy, on a micro-scale? It works like this: These guys and gals I went to school with generally had decent paying jobs before, and saved, or they are getting assistance from upper middle class families or better. In the short term, folks will get by on credit cards and savings. That would explain, again in a microcosm, how popular restuarants and movie theaters stay crowded here in Plano, TX. People generally do not scale back their lifestyle until they absolutely have to (which is unwise, but that’s American culture in 2009). But in time the affects will be felt: people will pool together and cram into small apartments, instead of spending more per person on a one bedroom place to themselves. As money gets tighter still, they will stop going to those favorite restuarants and movie theaters. It’ll be ramen noodle time, and by sheer requirement the money spending stops, particularly when the six month point hits: when the student loan payments start up.

Call these people “the hidden unemployed.” You’d never guess they weren’t holding down a job. That’s why I remain very skeptical when the media wants to make the mere slowdown of job losses into the sign that we are getting out of this. This isn’t a left or right thing. It’s a “there are dark clouds in the sky” thing, and for me, a bitter pill: I’m happy for myself to be newly employed, but heartbroken for my colleauges, who will get jobs eventually, but must suffer through the knowledge that, if it were only a few years ago, they’d probably be entertaining offers already.

Some Sunday fun from the ’sphere:

Rule 5 madness as usual, which features this amazing picture from The Other McCain:

My wife and I are both big fans of Megyn Kelly. Which fulfills an important rule I have for marital bliss: Only talk about how much you admire another woman IF your wife agrees COMPLETELY with you.

The now pregnant Megyn Kelly hosts the mid-morning news at, of course, Fox News, and is a firebrand, not letting guests get an easy ride. She also has a delightful persona and a great chemistry with co-host Bill Hemmer (with Kelly’s serious lawyer manner blending well with Hemmer’s goofball dork personality).

John Hawkins over at Right Wing News does a “10 hottest liberal women” post. I can only say I agree about Kirsten Powers, but I do understand what Hawkins means about “bookish gals.”

Meanwhile, I have started to play Square Enix and Tri-Ace’s Infinite Undiscovery. It is more traditionalist  than the way, way out there Persona 3 (which still gets regular play), but I like the overall setup: You play as a fellow who happens to look just like a famous warrior, while you happen to just be a pansy, but likeable, flute player. Your resemblance gets you drawn into greater conflict. +++ for Tri-Ace in avoiding amnesia or mysterious loner cliches. Still, this game is similar to Tri-Crescendo’s Eternal Sonata, which has another interesting premise marred by kind of obtuse play; I’ve already, in the first 2 hours of playtime, had to consult the internet for answers.

Not to get off on a design tangent, but there is a difference between a game like Metroid, in which you are presented with puzzles that, while difficult, make sense, and getting stuck just because you have been given no information at all about the game mechanics. This seems to be a bugaboo of recent JRPGS I’ve played. “Oh, you just needed to use this mechanic,” but that mechanic hasn’t been taught nor have I had any reason to even use it.

This one violation hasn’t made me want to dump Infinite Undiscovery just yet, but a few more of these will get this put firmly in the “trade in” pile when The Conduit and Fight Night Round 4 come out, my next gaming purchases.

Here’s a take on Infinite Undiscovery from PC World.

Where people feel like they have to smack talk everybody. *sigh*

Here’s dude behind the Forza series, smacking down Gran Turismo:

“So, props to Kazunori Yamauchi-san and the PS1 team,” said Greenwalt. “That said,” he continued, “I feel that he’s passed us the baton. Perhaps he hasn’t meant to, but we have taken the genre to new levels and they’ve stopped evolving the genre. So again, tremendous respect to him, but I’d say the differentiator is they’re old school.” He conclued, “The emperor’s naked, and I don’t want to, you know, I don’t want to slap him around, but no game competes [with] us right now.”

I really hate this kind of thing. He pays Yamauchi-san respect, only to denigrate the current direction of the Gran Turismo series, a topic best left to anonymous message board posters, not an industry professional. I’ve never liked this kind of rock star mentality in American game industry people, and I would enourage Greenwalt to be more diplomatic in his discourse.

I owned Forza 2, because a few of my car fan friends had it. Personally the fun in a game like this, much like Madden and other realism heavy simulation type games, is strictly limited to one’s interest in the subject matter. Forza is fun for poeple who really like cars, which fortunately is many, many people. As a pure game, though, it relies heavily on realism to the point of limiting the fun (again, if you don’t care about the fact that track X is exactly like the real world version). My biggest frustration with games like Forza is that there is little context for the races, you must race, earn generic points, and spend them on more cars and such. EA’s Need for Speed made a niche for itself by introducing the idea of a storyline, some plot that made the races make sense in the context of a narrative, much the way that the Fast and the Furious movies create narrative driven excuses for all the fast cars.

Hat tip to Joystiq
More information on Forza 3 can be found over at gamer20

Recently, an online article from the pornographic magazine Playboy discussed what conservative women were best suited for something so disgusting that I cannot repeat it here. It came very close to outright advocating rape, and it was denounced and removed from the internet.

Yet it has been pointed out that this article went through multiple stages of production before it saw the light of day. It wasn’t just a blog post that got thrown up there; it was seen by supervisors and other people, and nobody thought it crossed a line.

This made me think about the recent “Drehergate,” and the general tendency for people to criticize conservative talk radio, such as Mark Levin, Sean Hannity, and the mighty Rush Limbaugh. Try as I might, one cannot find a comparable example of any of these men discussing a list of liberal women that they would like to, well, ahem.

The point is not conservatives do not use polemics, some of which might cross the lines of some and not others. Of course they do, and of course I don’t personally agree with every single sentiment expressed by a person like Ann Coulter.

The point is that the other side isn’t giving us any points for being nice. And the mushy middle doesn’t give that many points either; did the late Jack Kemp get brownie points for essentially agreeing with Al Gore when he said that Kemp wasn’t one of those racist Republicans? No, it made an otherwise great man look weak. Did John McCain, who focused on an “honorable” campaign, gain any brownie points when he rolled his “straight talk express” over Bill Cunningham, for the “crime” of uttering Barack Obama’s actual name?

Rhetoric alone does not an extremist make. Actions make the extremist. Rush, Sean, Levin, Coulter all advocate mainstream conservative positions across the board. Limited government, national defense, the defense of innocent human life… hardly crazy person talk.

When conservatives like Dreher, Frum, etc. spend undue time besmirching the character of some of conservatisms’ most succesful advocates, they unwittingly move the goal lines of the debate. Suddenly our best people are considered out of bounds, leaving our cause in the hands of those less capable to express it. We need to defend our people, unless they truly commit a real offense. And, sorry, expressing yourself in a manner that makes you a little uncomfortable doesn’t quite cut it.

Our opponents write articles about quasi-raping our women. Our best advocate’s cardinal sin is hoping President Obama’s policies will fail. Think about the difference.

R.S McCain: Against the Politics of Niceness

Michelle Malkin: AOL’s role in the Playboy article