Sweatshop, the game

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Monday July 18, 2011 · 9:37 AM PDT

2011/07/18 · 09:37

Sweatshop, a game sponsored by the UK's Channel 4, is one of the most interesting things to come out of gaming I've seen in a while. A simple premise: you're the foreman of a sweatshop, and have to meet quotas the owner imposes on you by hiring and hard-driving your laborers. You want to keep your job, right? And after all, they need the money too.

Uses very typical game mechanics simply but cleverly, in a way that makes things very uncomfortable to play. Hiring and firing various classes of employees, even kids, is from within a game-mechanics universe purely a calculation of how much they cost versus their output (hmm...). Gets even more uncomfortable as it gets into the higher levels and you're treating "worker loses a limb" as merely some negative points, a bump on the factory-management road to be contingency-managed.

Delirium

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Thursday June 18, 2009 · 2:57 PM PDT

2009/06/18 · 14:57

I should begin by disclaiming that all predictions of the future in Iran are subject to high error. But I ran across a few bits of information that, especially taken together, are a bit ominous. There seem to be indications of some sort of crackdown being prepared for Friday, and other indications that the reformist politicians are worried about one and trying to sidestep it.

Delirium

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Tuesday February 13, 2007 · 2:24 AM PST

2007/02/13 · 02:24

A bus blew up in Bikfaya, a mainly Christian town in Lebanon and the town from which the Gemayels are from (a prominent political family including assassinated anti-Syria Parliament member Pierre Gemayel); as rescuers arrived a second bus blew up behind it.

Obviously there is only rampant speculation about the culprits so far. The fact that it occurred in a mainly Christian area and on the day before the anniversary of the Rafik Hariri assassination leads initial speculation to point towards either Hezbollah or other Syrian agents. Could easily be interpreted as the opening shot in a civil war if not very carefully handled.

Delirium

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Saturday July 29, 2006 · 12:19 PM PDT

2006/07/29 · 12:19

I've been thinking on and off about the various strains of thought within 'the left', generally speaking (in which I include liberalism), on how different peoples ought to interact with each other. A lot of today's ideological conflicts within western foreign policy boil down to this: When, if ever, should we overthrow dictatorships? What is the balance between supporting freedom everywhere and respecting other people's choices?

Inside are some musings on two major viewpoints within the left, a bit of history, and a few thoughts for implications, although this is more of a theoretical than a practical political diary. Read More

Texas redistricting case opinion breakdown

Delirium

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Thursday June 29, 2006 · 3:28 AM PDT

2006/06/29 · 03:28

There's been some discussion of the recent Supreme Court opinion in League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry, challenging the Texas redistricting. While there's a lot of good discussion of its ramifications, the opinion is so convoluted that many people are basing the discussion on an unclear view of what the opinion actually said, and which holdings had how many justices in favor.

So what I'm going to try to do here is keep the analysis to a minimum and just put together a moderately concise summary of how many justices supported each of the various claims in the slew of opinions. It took me a few hours just to come up with this relatively bare-bones summary, so it's no wonder nobody knows what the decision actually said. Read More

House moves to block the effects of Kelo

Delirium

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Friday November 04, 2005 · 1:17 PM PST

2005/11/04 · 13:17

The House voted overwhelmingly (376-38) today to withhold federal money from states and municipalities that use eminent domain for commercial purposes, as permitted by the controversial Kelo v. New London Supreme Court case. Some states had previously started working on state laws to curtail eminent domain to only public-use purposes, but this would effectively do so nationwide. Read More

What's with all the Democrats supporting Miers and cronyism?

Delirium

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Monday October 31, 2005 · 9:24 PM PST

2005/10/31 · 21:24

I was pretty stunned by the reaction today to Alito's nomination—not that the Democratic Senators oppose Alito, but that they (Kerry and Reid in particular) seem to be retroactively glorifying Miers and giving conservatives the credit for sinking her nomination. In fact, plenty of liberals were opposed to her from the start, because Miers was an unqualified cronyist pick who would never have been nominated if she weren't Bush's personal lawyer. She did not deserve to be on the Supreme Court, and if she had come up for a vote, I would have been severely disappointed in any Democrat that voted for her; it would be no better than supporting Arabian-horse-society head Michael Brown to lead FEMA. Read More

Live Webcam from New Orleans

Delirium

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Wednesday August 31, 2005 · 5:16 PM PDT

2005/08/31 · 17:16

Well, it seems that DirectNIC's offices in New Orleans are still up and running, and the internet connection is intact, so they've got a webcam up (feeds: 1, 2), along with running commentary on a blog. They say they've got 3 weeks of generator power and are on the top floor of a building (the street it's on isn't flooded anyway, though). Their main worry seems to be looting, including apparently some looting by police, so they're armed and have the building locked down.

Not a policy to be proud of

Delirium

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Saturday June 18, 2005 · 11:50 AM PDT

2005/06/18 · 11:50

A book review in The Economist (June 9, 2005 edition) of a book by a military intelligence soldier describing the effect being in Guantánamo had on him. This is probably nothing new to people here, although I hadn't heard of this particular book. It also might be useful to send around to any moderate conservative friends you have, since The Economist is well known as a fairly conservative newsmagazine—and even supported the war in Iraq—so may hold more weight than sending them an article from, say, The Nation would (though the magazine is "liberal" in the classical sense, so very pro-human-rights and pro-civil-liberties). Read More

The Economist: Bankruptcy Reform Bad For Business?

Delirium

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Wednesday April 20, 2005 · 12:25 AM PDT

2005/04/20 · 00:25

Well, the bankruptcy bill already passed, so I suppose whether it's good or not is not a pressing issue, but The Economist had an interesting analysis I hadn't seen mentioned before, which surprisingly was wary of the reform (surprisingly because The Economist is unabashedly (classically) liberal in its economic viewpoints). Read More

Fun and Political Orientation

Delirium

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Monday April 04, 2005 · 3:39 PM PDT

2005/04/04 · 15:39

Occasionally a relationship between fun and political orientation is pointed out; usually here, of course, the relationship is that Christian Conservatives are basically puritans, defined by that old aphorism that puritanism is the fear that someone, somewhere, is having fun. My experiences tended to differ from this (although not always), perhaps because of the liberals and conservatives I've run across; some musing inside. Read More

International Opinion Survey on Bush Reelection

Delirium

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Tuesday January 18, 2005 · 6:19 PM PST

2005/01/18 · 18:19

The Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) did a survey on attitudes in 21 countries regarding Bush's reelection. Some interesting results, graphed on the linked article. Read More

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Sweatshop, the game

Ominous signs for Friday in Iran

Bus bombing in Lebanon

Internationalism, interventionism, and 'the left'

Texas redistricting case opinion breakdown

House moves to block the effects of Kelo

What's with all the Democrats supporting Miers and cronyism?

Live Webcam from New Orleans

Not a policy to be proud of

The Economist: Bankruptcy Reform Bad For Business?

Fun and Political Orientation

International Opinion Survey on Bush Reelection