Back of the Envelope

It was a pretty cool week, if a bit of a denouement after last week's excitement.

Sluggy Freelance -- Uh-oh, Horribus has finally learned that Torg's in the Dimension of Lame, and he's on the hunt. The gang goes into the sewers to escape. Curiously, it looks like the magic sword is in its gold rather than its silver state. I hope that means its partially charged. And a new filler pushes the full-color Sunday to Thursday.

Day by Day -- There's a plug for Eat what you want and die like a man, the usual mockery of Moore, Kerry, and the UN, and a correction on Thursday. A correction, of a comic strip. Yikes, it's a sad day when a comic strip has more integrity than the New York Times editorial page.

It's Walky! -- Danny meets a killer car. Wow, we don't see much of Danny these days, do we? And to think that he was the main character back when it was Roomies.

College Roomies from Hell!!! -- Hey, Marsha's wings are real! Now it looks like Dave just might make it out alive, and Roger and Mike are escaping as well. Now, is Mike permanently stuck in semi-nice mode?

General Protection Fault -- The GPFers throws Fooker a welcome back party, and they end up with Trish as a visitor. Only, is this the real Trish or the imposter Trish? It'd be helpful if they knew that there was an imposter.

Schlock Mercenary -- Well, now that they've taken care of the pet shop, it's time to track down the distributor. And Schlock needs some cold weather gear.

It's past 3 am, and I'm feeling a bit worn out. I've been working on some rather major changes to my blog, to be revealed some time next week. I've also been working on my résumé and CV, getting them not only up-to-date, but into distributable formats. PDF is easy--HTML is another story. Oh, I can put them in HTML easily enough, but getting them into HTML and looking how I want them to--argh, it's not easy. In any case, drop by next week to see the fruits of my labor.

While watching Stargate SG-1's season premiere on the SciFi channel, I saw an advertisement for a new season of Farscape starting in October. It looks like we're going to get a resolution to that cliffhanger series finale.

I just hope I have a job in October so I can afford cable.

Update: The announcement is on the SciFi channel website. Apparently it's old news from April. Geez, I never hear these things right away.

US lawyer Curtis Doebbler, the only American on Saddam's legal team, has filed a petition with the US Supreme Court to declare Saddam's detention unconstitutional. Does the Supreme Court have jurisdiction over Saddam Hussein? They might have, before he was turned over to the Iraqis, although since he was declared a POW it's not clear what the court would have to say. From the CNN article:

In paperwork at the high court, Doebbler said the detention of the 67-year-old violates multiple international laws and his constitutional Fifth Amendment right not to be deprived of "life, liberty or property without due process." He also said the war crimes tribunal planned in Iraq was neither independent nor impartial.

Let's be very clear about one thing: Saddam Hussein is not a US citizen. He does not have rights under the US Constitution. He may have rights under the Iraq Constitution, once it exists. As for international law--as Saddam was held as a prisoner of war, and treated as such, his detainment was fully in line with the Geneva convention.

The whole thing is silly, as is clear from the article:

The Supreme Court will review those arguments only if it grants permission for the filing.

"I doubt the Supreme Court will even get that far," said Fordham Law School professor Thomas Lee, a former clerk at the court.

Doebbler had filed a brief in the Supreme Court this year encouraging it to rule in favor of legal rights of foreign terror suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Last week, justices decided the nearly 600 men from 42 countries held at the U.S. prison in Cuba may use American courts to challenge their detentions.

In a dissent to that opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia warned that federal courts will now have to deal with lawsuits from "around the world, challenging actions and events far away."

You know, if I didn't know better, I'd think this was an article by a right-leaning news organization, as it seems to be saying that Scalia was right.

Steven den Beste has a lengthy post on how al-Sadr was defeated in Iraq. He thinks that the lunatic Left is making a mistake similar to the Mehdi's in embracing Michael Moore:

He's become the rallying point. He's raised the flag, and the most motivated LL's are flocking to support him. He's become their poster boy, their public face. He provides a focal point; he's a magnet around which they can gather and organize.

He has chosen the ground they will defend – and it is dreadful ground indeed.
...
Moore's stuff sells very well in Europe. It is comforting for the many Europeans who fear and hate America. They've found an "honest" American who bravely and forthrightly tells "the truth" about America: that the vast majority of us are stupid, venal, unsophisticated, uneducated, provincial, oblivious, and self-absorbed.

Moore's stuff sells in Europe precisely because it seems to justify and reaffirm the prejudices many there have about Americans. It is unlikely that Moore is actually changing any minds, however. The Europeans who buy and read his books and pay to watch his films are the ones who already agree with him. They consume his material so they can laugh as he makes fun of us, and nod sagely as he explains how Big Oil and Corrupt Businesses are actually behind it all. (And the Jews. And the Saudis.)

His primary audience here in the US is exactly the same. He's preaching to the converted. Non-LL's who have gone to see his movie have concluded that it was a total crock.

If one accepts the cynical evaluation of Moore, then it would be clear that he doesn't care. If someone watches his film and finds it shoddy and totally unconvincing, he still gets a piece of their ticket price, and laughs all the way to the bank.

Nonetheless, as D'Ancona says, the LL's have rallied to his flag. They've moved to his holy city. They've adopted positions on the terrain he's chosen for the battle. And they're using the arguments and evidence he provides as ammunition.

In the short term, it may seem as if the LL's are mobilized and fighting hard. But it also leaves them concentrated and vulnerable. And they are fighting on just about the worst ground they could have chosen.
...
Moore may or may not believe that, but a lot of the LL's who have rallied to his flag do believe it. However, will it really be the case that he nurtures that delusion? Or merely bring together those who already suffered from it? Will his flag inspire LL's to loudly proclaim that which they already believed, thus ultimately making their paranoid delusion blatantly clear to the broader electorate?

Will the LL's rallying to Moore's flag be able to inspire the broader electorate to join them? Or will they end up isolated, discredited, and ultimately disillusioned, to slink away quietly when the uprising doesn't materialize?

As usual, den Beste provides intriguing analysis, if you have the patience to get all the way through his essays. I wouldn't have drawn the same parallel with al-Sadr, but I do agree that the more the Democrats embrace Moore and his ilk, the more it's liable to hurt them. The problem is that the mainstream media seems more than willing to run interference for Moore and Gore, burying their wilder statements, giving them positive coverage which plays up how respected they are. It might work for Al Gore, but it's harder to do with Michael Moore, since anyone can simply go to see the movie or read his books.

Dean Esmay has a deep-seated, burning hatred not just for Michael Moore, but for everyone who supports him:

I thought about it and: no way. He's a scumbag, and furthermore, if you like him, even a little bit, you're a scumbag too. You're an embarassment to liberals, an embarassment to Democrats, and an embarassment to your country. I would sooner eat dog poop than share the same room with you.

I wouldn't go that far. I don't think you need to be a "scumbag" to think that Moore has a point. Ignorant, gullibly accepting of every meme from the hysterical wing of this country's Left, sure, but scumbag is reserved for those who know he's lying and use those lies to attack the US just because they feel the US needs attacking. I wouldn't accept as fact anything coming from Michael Moore, and I'd refuse to allow such facts into any debate I was taking part in without support from another, more reliable source, but I won't call anyone who cites him a scumbag unless they know the fact they're citing is a lie and they use it anyway.

Lileks, by the way, has a thorough fisking of a column by Michael Moore in the LA Times. He's equally hard on Michael Moore. A small sample:

[Moore:]If you are one of those who love what President Bush has done for this country and believe you must blindly follow the president to deserve to fly the flag,

[Lileks:]Stop. This is a perfect example of prose from someone who either does not understand his opposition, or chooses not to grant that they have a legitimate basis for opposition. Or, it’s just bad sophomoric writing. If you are one of those who love what President Bush has done for this country and believe you must blindly follow the president to deserve to fly the flag. Yes, that’s me. Me deserve fly flag! Me blindly follow! Hulk smash!

As you can see, Lileks calls Moore a scumbag too.

Old Post: My last post on John Kerry's misunderstanding of the separation of Church and State is here. It looks like he hasn't learned a thing.

The Washington Post reports that Kerry has this to say about abortion:

A Catholic who supports abortion rights and has taken heat from some in the church hierarchy for his stance, Kerry told the paper, "I oppose abortion, personally. I don't like abortion. I believe life does begin at conception."

Spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said that although Kerry has often said abortion should be "safe, legal and rare," and that his religion shapes that view, she could not recall him ever publicly discussing when life begins.

"I can't take my Catholic belief, my article of faith, and legislate it on a Protestant or a Jew or an atheist," he continued in the interview. "We have separation of church and state in the United States of America."

I've been wanting to comment on this, but I couldn't find the words to express just how fallacious and dangerous Kerry's argument is. In my previous post, I pointed out that this attitude is actually a threat to freedom of religion. Kerry is arguing that you can believe whatever you want, as long as it doesn't affect how you live. Ironically, it's not too different from what the Romans believed. Of course, Christians were notoriously problematic as they let their religion affect their actions, even going so far as to refuse to perform an obeisance to the emperor, a minor religious observance to prove their patriotism. And let's not even talk about how they treated slaves--so many slaves became Christians that Christianity was considered a slave religion.

Christianity grew up as an oppressed belief by a small minority. The Romans would have been quite happy to let it stay that way. Instead it started growing, it started to change Rome, and the Romans tried to stop it. Miraculously, the Christians won. Because Christians, in whatever position they held, whether slaves, citizens, and rulers, lived out their faith and engaged the world with it. Freedom of religion is the freedom to engage the world with your faith, to try to change it. What Kerry is advocating is freedom from religion, that it have no influence on anyone but the practitioner. For the Christian that is impossible. If Kerry's view had been the dominant one throughout the history of this country, there would have been no anti-slavery movement, no social gospel, no civil rights movement.

If religion cannot shape the fundamental beliefs about right and wrong which guide your actions, including which laws and policies you pursue, what can?

The Queen of All Evil points to an article in the Boston Globe where principled abortion rights supporter, Eileen McNamara, has this to say:

I, and I suspect many others who support legal abortion, had mistakenly assumed that, on this very personal issue, Kerry's conscience was at odds with the teaching of his church. His consistent record in favor of abortion rights, family planning, and reproductive freedom was, I thought, a courageous reflection of an independent mind.

Now, I don't know what to think. I cannot respectfully disagree with him as I do with an abortion opponent whose conscience prompts her to work to unseat lawmakers like Kerry. I understand her. She is acting on principle, lobbying to change laws antithetical to her conscience. I don't understand him, voting consistently in opposition to what he now tells us is one of his core beliefs.

Just so. In the end, Kerry is consistent in that he always tries to have it both ways on all issues.

The twenty-fifth Christian Carnival is up at Messy Christian. There are a lot of submissions this time, including mine on Science, Reason, and Faith. Check out what other Christian bloggers are thinking about.

Dean Esmay is begging people to move off of Blogspot to another service. I'm always reluctant to change websites, but after the trouble Blogspot has been giving me over the last couple of days--you may have had trouble just getting to this page--I'm tempted. The cost is minimal, but that's quite different from my current cost, which is free. I have another reason to move now as well. Since I'll be leaving U of R soon, I'll be needing to change my homepage, and Powerblog's hosting and 75 MB storage space may be useful. I just checked, and my homepage only takes up 5 MB, so I wouldn't even need the more expensive options.

In case you missed the original announcement this weekend, the first part of the story A Phoenix in Darkness has now been posted. It is available here.

I made a small template change that should fix the problem of my sidebar being bumped to the bottom of the screen on lower screen resolutions. Sorry about that--operation at 1400x1050 resolution makes it easy for me to forget these things.

I was going to go into work today, but I hadn't realized just how seriously people took this federal holiday. The building I work in was locked down tight. I found that curious, as I was able to find an open door yesterday, July 4th and a Sunday. Since I don't have a key to the outer door, and I was unable to reach anyone who did, I wasn't able to get in. It looks like I'm being forced to take the day off whether I like it or not. Kind of annoying, isn't it?

Old Post: I first mentioned that I might share this story in my post on Spiderman 2.

In late 2001, shortly after 9/11, I was pondering what to do with my life. I was nearing the end of my Ph.D. career, expecting to finish by August of 2002. What was more, I had recently rediscovered how much I enjoyed writing, to the degree that I had taken an Undergrad creative writing course. It was time to start looking for a job, and while the obvious thing to do would be a Postdoc or a national lab, I was wondering if I could find a job which utilized my writing talents. Around that time, I dropped by Bioware's website. Bioware is the software company behind Baldur's Gate II, Neverwinter Nights, and Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, a top tier company when it comes to computer role-playing games, and I think I was looking for information on Neverwinter Nights. While there, I noticed an advertisement saying they were looking for a writer for computer games. I checked out the advertisement, amused at the coincidence, and looked at the job requirements. Surprisingly enough, I met the requirements, which were pretty vague, so I sent in my resume and a writing sample (what is now "A Stranger in the Library"). I'm not sure who was more surprised, the HR manager at getting a resume from a Ph.D. candidate, or myself, when they actually called to see if I was serious. I said I was, which was true enough. I hadn't decided I wanted to leave my field, but I was entertaining the possibility.

To apply, I had to take a series of tests. The first was a writing test, which I took in the comfort of my own home. I had to write a sample dialogue tree for a character in Neverwinter Nights. (For those who played the game, the character was Sharwyn, the bard, and the piece of dialogue was a description of a couple of quests, including one for her mother's cure. It wasn't exactly the same as in the game, and I didn't have enough information on the character to know she was a bard and a mercenary NPC, but I'm glad to say that I got her personality pretty close.) A dialogue tree, if you're unfamiliar with it, gives the player multiple things he can say, and the person he's talking to says different things depending on what the player says. In this case, since it was an RPG, the dialogue was more complicated, with the choices available depending on the player character's attributes (certain options were only available to smarter player characters, for example). To make it even more complicated, I had to write it in Word, using hyperlinks to connect the player's dialogue choices to what the Sharwyn would say in response. I had 8 hours to complete the test, which was administered by e-mail. I sent them 11 pages of dialogue, about 4000 words long.

Shortly afterwards, they flew me to Edmonton for an interview, where I talked to game designers, programmers, and the company owners--plus I went to see Spiderman with them. The next day, I took more tests, programming tests. First, I looked at a C-type script in Neverwinter Nights' scripting language and tried to spot the three bugs. I found four. Second, they had me try my hand with the scripting language, taking a basic map and adding objects and NPCs and building some events. They had a minimum set of required tasks I was supposed to do, then some optional tasks if I got those done. I got through all of them in five hours or so and was kind of drumming my fingers at the end. I considered adding a few flourishes, but the last thing I wanted to do was mess up the work I had already done. After this test, I talked to the head designer about what I could expect to be working on. Then I went home while they considered.

In case you're curious, I did sign a non-disclosure agreement. I'm pretty sure none of this violates the agreement, and by now it's dated anyway--the scripting language is one of the game features, and anyone who's played with it knows as much about Neverwinter Nights as I learned in my two days there.

I returned home, and I think it was a couple of weeks later that I got a call offering me the job. As you probably guessed by the title of the post, I turned them down. The least important part of the reason was that the position had evolved, so that the job I was being offered would be a level designing position rather than a writing position. More significant, I'm sad to say, was money. The amount they were offering was well below what a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering could expect to make, and that was before you factored in the exchange rate--the job was in Canada, remember. But the most important reason was timing. By that point it had become clear that I wouldn't be finishing my Ph.D. in August--as it turned out, the most significant data in my thesis, the data which is central to my recently published paper, wasn't taken until that August. Since I didn't know how much longer it would be before I finished my Ph.D., I felt that I couldn't take the position. While I may occasionally regret not taking the job, I would have regretted not finishing my Ph.D. more.

I was a bit more productive in the posting this week, so there're a few more posts to highlight than last.

Turnover early -- The US turned over power to the Iraqis earlier than expected. It's not a scoop, but I have a few thoughts in this and the follow-up post.

They may look like wimps, but... -- I sing the praises of Torg, Dave, and Jason, my favorite characters in Sluggy Freelance, College Roomies from Hell!!!, and It's Walky! respectively.

Some bad news -- It looks like my time as a Post-doc will be coming to an end earlier than expected. While disappointing, I'm not too worried yet.

Science, reason, and faith -- I comment on posts at Evangelical Outpost and Letters from Babylon discussing the conflict between science and philosophy and that between faith and reason.

A Phoenix in Darkness begins -- I've at last begun to publish this story. The first part is free.

Spiderman 2 review -- My thoughts on the new Spiderman movie, with a few spoilers.