Congressional Representation for D.C.: Why the Constitution isn't Really such a Big Problem

The District of Columbia presently has no representation in the Congress of the United States. Why not? Because of the Constitution. Art. I, Sec. 2 of our founding document provides:

The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States...

Since D.C. is not a state, its people are not constitutionally authorized to elect a member to the House of Representatives. (Art. 1, Sec. 3 makes the same rule applicable to the Senate). If you wonder why this is such an affront, think about every income tax increase, declaration of war, imposition of the draft, etc., in the history of the United States, and recall that the residents of D.C. had no voice in the authorizing legislation, but found themselves just as subject to it as did the citizens of any state. It's practically imperialistic.

There is now a bill in the works to allocate one seat in the House of Representatives to D.C. (No plans for the Senate yet, apparently). The problem is that the bill is almost certainly unconstitutional. Like I pointed out above, the Constitution says if you're not a state, you can't be represented in the House. Not even an act of Congress can change that. It will take a constitutional amendment to properly get D.C. into Congress, just like it took the Twenty-Third Amendment to allow its residents to vote for President.

(There is an interesting Supreme Court Case, Tidewater, holding that Congress could constitutionally treat D.C. as a state for purposes of diversity jurisdiction, even though the text of the Constitution says that diversity jurisdiction only applies to cases and controversies "between Citizens of different States." Tidewater is probably distinguishable though, because the question involved there was not nearly as politically fraught as this one is. A court has inherent authority to determine the limits of its jurisdiction, which is all that the Supreme Court did in Tidewater; courts will tread much more lightly on the turf of the legislative branch.)

Anyway, I was reading today an argument from someone fretting the unconstitutionality issue, but urging the passage of the legislation anyway. His argument was that although the measure would be overturned in court, the legal turmoil would publicize the plight of D.C. residents, laying the groundwork for a later constitutional amendment. I have a better idea. Pass the unconstitutional law and don't sweat it; it will not be overturned anytime soon.

Just because a law is unconstitutional doesn't mean that Joe Schmoe can file a petition in U.S. District Court to have it declared unconstitutional. You have to overcome an initial showing that you have "standing." In general, that means that you have to show that the unconstitutional law is causing you a particularized harm, and that an order from the court will be effective to cease that harm. Now I ask you, who has standing to argue in court that the D.C. representation act ought to be declared unconstitutional? I've come up with two scenarios, both somewhat implausible.

1. Imagine that after the D.C. Representative is seated, he votes to enact a new federal criminal statute. The measure passes the House by one vote, is passed by the Senate, and signed by the President. Later on, a criminal defendant is indicted under the new measure. The defendant brings a motion to quash the indictment, arguing that he didn't violate the law because there was no law; the bill was never properly passed by the House of Representatives. It was only considered to have passed because of the improperly seated Representative from D.C., whose vote should not have been counted. Now, the issue really is whether the law authorizing a seat in the House for D.C. is constitutional, and the criminal defendant can clearly meet the burden of standing. The situation is implausible because it relies on the bill passing by one vote; otherwise it makes no difference how the Representative from D.C. voted.
2. The Constitution gives the members of each house the authority judge the "Qualifications of its own Members" (Art. 1 Sec. 5). They can and do sometimes refuse to seat members, as you may recall from part of the Rod Blagojevich scandal. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that the House could refuse to seat a Representative from D.C. on the grounds that his election would have been unconstitutional. If they do so, his recourse is to sue in federal court to have his election declared valid, at which point, the court will have to decide the issue of whether the statute authorizing his election was constitutional. The reason this scenario is implausible is that, assuming the D.C. Represenatation statute passed the House in the first place, it's doubtful that the House members would then turn around and refuse to seat the elected representative. It would take a big shift in the makeup of the House for that turnaround to occur; by the time it does, the congressman from D.C. may already be pretty well entrenched, and the political fallout from the challenge might outweigh the political gain.

Pass this statute because it's the right thing to do for the residents of D.C., and because it stands to actually do some good long before anybody racks up the standing to have it declared unconstitutional.

WrestleMania 25: Chris Jericho vs Randy "The Ram" Robinson

So The Wrestler still has not appeared on Baton Rougean shores as promised, missing its Jan 23rd opening date, but the hype just got taken to a whole 'nother level.

As I have gathered while trying to remain spoil-free, the movie revolves around an aged, down-and-out wrestler, Randy "The Ram" Robinson, who finds himself with no family, friends, or career. Robinson goes on a journey to reconnect with his daughter and get a shot at "the big one".

I've no idea what happens at the end of The Wrestler, but it appears Mickey Rourke/Randy "The Ram" will get his final hurrah not at the end of the film, but on "the grandest stage of them all", WrestleMania, against current super heel Chris Jericho on April 5th.

This just might be the biggest thing to hit wrestling since Hulk Hogan vs The Rock at WrestleMania X8. First, we have a wrestling related movie that serves some justice to the industry, unlike David Arquette's Ready to Rumble. Then it's actually recognized as being a pretty good movie, not only by wrestling fans, but critics, too. And now we have Mickey Rourke bringing his character off the silver screen with Randy "The Ram" Robinson getting the opportunity to perform at WrestleMania in Houston.

For the movie, Rourke was trained by WWE Hall of Famer Afa "The Wild Samoan", so Rourke is suppose to have had serious wrestling training, unlike Jack Black's Nacho Libre. According to Afa, Rourke deeply impressed him and can be considered "one of the boys".

But can he successfully bring Randy "The Ram" to WrestleMania?

Non-wrestlers' wrestling matches tend to be fairly safe and non-eventful beyond the name value. Though Rourke and the WWE can go this route, it would be a poor choice. Likely the promotional main event of WrestleMania, all eyes will be on this match, fan and non-fan alike. As such, WWE needs to book this match to properly hide whatever faults Rourke may have due to his lack of experience while giving the audience a big main event match in content that matches the forthcoming media blitz. In terms of The Wrestler and the character of Randy "The Ram" Robinson, it's important that Rourke and the WWE step up to give a proper closing chapter to "The Ram". Much like Rocky Balboa, Robinson manages to find himself in the main event at a major promotion. It's not a matter of winning or losing. It's about going the distance and ending your career with satisfaction. Robinson has this chance.

So the stage is set for potentially one of the greatest WrestleMania matches/moments of all time. It's in the hands of Vince McMahon, Rourke, Jericho, and Rourke's insurance company. Let's hope everything works out.

Thank the Jesus that Nicolas Cage dropped out of the movie.

Hate Food, Lose Weight

Katy and I started the South Beach Diet on January 12. I've been making an effort to work out at least every other day since then. So far, over a week and a half, I've lost 4.5 pounds. So that's progress.

But I have this inkling, this sort of tickle that arises from the junction of my meager education in physics, biology, and nutrition, and it tells me that I'm being hoodwinked by this diet. My intuition, aided by whatever foundations I have in science, tells me that the weight loss/weight gain inequality is actually much simpler than all this. I'm internally convinced that the rule of weight loss is that you lose weight when, over an extended period of time, your daily caloric output (metabolism plus exercise) exceeds your daily caloric intake, and it makes no difference where the calories come from.

Stirling, is this right? I mean, I know the diet is working, because I've been steadily losing weight. But I'm beginning to wonder if the particular way that this diet moderates my caloric intake is by making sure that there is nothing in my apartment that I would actually enjoy eating. I haven't had a Coke, or a potato chip, or a cookie, or a cracker in a week and a half. When I go to Subway for lunch at work, I have to get a salad instead of a six-inch sub because the bread has too many carbs. The only things I own are vegetables. And if I have to eat one more spoonful of ricotta cheese mixed with Sweet n' Low, I'm going to go completely apeshit. It is amazing how much variety your life seems to lose when you no longer have free reign over what you eat.

There are some upsides. For instance, I'm learning to cook things. I poached a salmon last night, and even though it didn't come out particularly tasty, it was still an accomplishment. And I can make a killer ham and mushroom omelet now. Breakfast has actually become my favorite meal of the day because the diet doesn't modify a typical breakfast menu very much—except that I would like to be able to have a slice of toast with my omelet, or a Pop Tart if I'm in a hurry.

Admittedly, I'm only in "Phase I" of the diet, which is the most draconian of the three phases. Starting next week, I'll be able to eat whole grain breads at lunchtime, and oatmeal for breakfast. But I don't think I'm supposed to have potatos again for the rest of my life. Seriously, Stirling, does carb-counting make sense, or does this diet only work because it makes me loathe the foods I eat?

Artists Offer Mindblowing APYs on Colossal Certificates of Deposit

Marcel Salathé and Anthony White are a pair of artists undertaking a somewhat perplexing experiment involving art and economics. They take a canvas, paint words on it promising to pay a certain sum of money to the person who returns it to them, provided that person returns it during the month denoted on the painting. It looks like this.

You can think of it sort of like a certificate of deposit, except that it's on a square yard of canvas, and, if the maturity date expires, it won't roll over into a new CD; instead, you can't redeem it at all after that date.

My expectation would be that the novelty of a giant certificate of deposit that you can hang on the wall of your urban loft-style apartment with exposed ductwork would make these paintings sell at higher prices than CDs of the same face value that you purchase from your bank. Effectively, the artists ought to be able to offer a lower annual percentage yield (APY) than a bank does, because of the purported aesthetic value of the painting. In practice, this expectation has not always been borne out.

The series so far consists of six paintings, four of which have been sold. The maturity dates of two of the four sold paintings have passed (Bond Nos. 1 and 3). Bond No. 1 is pictured here to my left. Bond No. 1 promised $1,063 if it was returned during February 2008. The piece was sold at auction for $1,286. The painting was not returned, and so the artists netted $1,286. That's a good result for them. Not only did they sell a promise to pay $1,063 for more than $1,063, but the promise lapsed without being enforced. Not bad.

To my right now you'll see Bond No. 3, which promised $1,392 if returned during October 2008. Bond No. 3 was sold at auction on April 29, 2008 for $960, and was returned to the artists in October 2008. The artists then paid the returning party $1,392, and auctioned the painting again on eBay, where it sold this time for $242.50. All told, the artists netted a loss of $189.50 on Bond No. 3.

It seems to me that Bond No. 3 was worth well more than $960 when it was purchased, and that the reason it sold for so little must have had to do with the thin market (i.e., the fact that not many people knew about the auction). If you bought a CD for $960 that promised a return of $1,392 in five months, its interest rate would be 89%. That comes to a 144% APY. For comparison, if you buy a six-month CD from Chase today, it will buy you a measly 0.25% APY. Bond No. 3 was a steal at $960.

After Bond No. 3, the artists apparently learned their lesson, and stopped auctioning the paintings. Instead, they placed a fixed price on them. Bond No. 6, pictured at the top, lists for $2,699, and promises $3,658 if returned in November 2011. The comparable CD would have an interest rate of about 10.4%, for roughly an 11% APY, nowhere near as crazy high as Bond No. 3, but still a much, much better rate of return than would be available from a bank right now. In fact, an 11% APY is higher than you'd ordinarily expect in a decent year from stocks (and Lord knows we may be waiting a long time for another one of those); on a guaranteed investment 11% APY is mind-blowing. I say buy it if you have the cash on hand.

But doesn't this seem strange? Like I said above, the aesthetic value of the art ought to mean that the artists should be able to offer lower yields than banks. Instead they offer higher ones. It's almost like the aesthetic/novelty factor actually makes the painting worth less than a traditional CD. Are Salathé and White making a paradoxical or ironic statement about art values? Or are they just not performing the calculations that would tell them that they are grossly undervaluing their work?

Marvelous Word Clouds

Just wanted to post a link to http://www.wordle.net/, which uses a Java applet to generate marvelous word clouds, either made from text you enter on the site, or text it imports from a blog you direct it to. To the right, you'll see the word cloud it generated when it crawled our site. In other news, we are huge nerds.

I also tried it with some of my old papers from college. Here's the cloud Wordle generated for my paper, "Beauty is Truth: Modern and Medieval Notions of Historicity in The Lord of the Rings."

I haven't beaten FFXII, and let me tell you why...

Stirling,

I haven't beaten Final Fantasy XII. I've progressed as far as the City of Archades, and my game is saved in there somewhere.

That game puts me at odds with myself. On the one hand, the game is beautiful. The setting of FFX may be prettier in itself, but XII's attention to detail (and controllable camera) take it to another level. Also, the storyline is much, much deeper than that of any RPG I've ever played. It's full of intrigue, diplomacy, espionage, and statecraft, and all of its mysteries are only slowly revealed. Trying to keep track of the competing motivations of each of the characters reminds me of reading Balzac or Dostoevsky. And unlike in FFX, the voice acting adds to the appeal of the game.

But it has its own set of problems. Like FFX, it suffers from Yellow Brick Road-syndrome: the mini-map makes it so easy to determine where you need to go that you never really end up exploring. You just follow the Yellow Brick Road from the beginning of the game to the end.

Also, the characters are not very distinct from one another in terms of their abilities. There's nothing stopping you from making Basch a wizard, or Fran a tank. Just acquire the relevant licenses from the license board. Somewhat related to that concern is this: I can't remember a single instance in the entire game where I had to change out my party members. At first, you might think it's nice to only have to deal with the characters you like. But every time you go to the menu, you'll be reminded, like I am, that you're wandering the world of Ivalice with three characters above level 40, and three characters around level 12. This is aggravating, and a better-designed game would give you some sort of incentive to try different party combinations. But since each character is so customizable, there's no incentive to change party members to access new abilities. And since party makeup has no effect on in-game dialogue or cut-scenes, there's no incentive to change out party members to try to learn a different side of the story. Despite the fact that I've never used Balthier in battle, he keeps showing up alongside me, making quips and casting foreshadows.

You complained about the bosses and the random battles being too hard after a certain point. I agree with you about the bosses, but I actually never found the random battles to be too difficult. The only exception I've found is in the Jungles where the Viera live, there's a monster called a Hellhound that's obscenely tough for the stage in the game where you face it. Other than that, I didn't have too much trouble with random encounters. Bosses and Marks are another story. Marks especially so, but that may only be because I'm impatient and try to defeat them as soon as they show up on the bulletin board.

But I think what I may dislike the most about FFXII are the gambits. Because FFXII isn't turn-based, gambits are a necessary evil; although you can give specific instructions to your characters, to do so is so cumbersome that most of the time, you'd prefer to give them some AI governing what they do when you're silent. I always have equipped Attack Enemy with Lowest HP, and it gets you through random battles nicely. You can also equip Cure Ally when HP < X%. That's another one you'll appreciate if you've ever played RPGs before. But to give you an idea of how fickle gambits can be, I'm well over 40 hours into the game, and I still can't tell my characters, "If you're ally is poisoned, use an Antidote on him," with gambits.

The genius of turn-based RPGs is that slowing the action down allows one player to realistically simulate a strategy that might reasonably be adopted by three or four playable characters. It's not necessarily a non-starter to try to implement a realtime game experience if you supplement it with character AI (Baldur's Gate did a good job on this front); but if you do, the AI needs to be robust. FFXII's gambits fail miserably. You cannot implement a winning strategy against any substantial boss in FFXII using gambits alone. You always have to burst in with specific instructions, in which case the action freezes while you navigate the command menus, and you're left wondering what was gained by switching from turn-based in the first place.

The last thing I don't like about gambits is that they distance the player from the action. It used to be that you would deck your characters out in weapons, armor, etc., and then head out to smite some evil. Once you were in battle you were essentially at the mercy of your equipment if it was suboptimal, but you could limit the fallout by making wise commands. Gambits take your battle commands and make them more like weapons and armor and relics in that respect, since you're sort of stuck with the ones you have equipped. Admittedly you can disable gambits or override them with specific commands, but those are just small exceptions; most of your time in FFXII is spent watching your characters instead of playing them.

For all its faults, and I know I've been really hard on it, it really is a game that's worth playing, and maybe even worth loving. Somebody with less traditional tastes than I have might even be able to prefer it over the rest of the series.

Oh, and we haven't signed up for HD satellite service yet, because the HD-DVR receiver costs more than we want to spend right now.

FFXII Made Me Do It

Ryan,

So the dude loved FFIX and Chrono Cross, eh? Good. I enjoyed Cross a lot. One of the smartest gaming-related decisions I made was ordering a copy from amazon a few years back. As we discussed before, Cross certainly does have a slow, near pointless start. Once you cross (ha!) the slump hump, things do get better and the game settles into the very good-to-great category. Or at least, I think it does. From what I've read, most people either hate CC or love it. They're diehards one way or the other. Though some of the diehard love may be embellished by the diehard hate that the game unfairly receives.

As far as criticisms, FFIX seems to be in the same boat as CC, interestingly enough. There's either blind hate or blind love. It's been called the worst FF as well as the best. I bought my copy. We'll see.

No, you're not a part of the fanboys I referred to. FF7, as the first mega successful "mainstream" RPG, brought many fans to the playstation brand and to Final Fantasy/RPGs. There's an unholy sect of FF7 fanboys whose RPG resume' began, and in some cases ended, with FF7. These are the fanboys who will have no part of any earlier FF and bitch about every subsequent post-FF7 Final Fantasy because it's not FF7. These are the fanboys who want an FF7 remake simply because they want to play a "real" FF again. I want an FF7 remake because the original's early 3D visuals are a facepalming eyesore.

Have you finished FFXII? I was hyped for that game. A major FF in the FF Tactics universe?! Sign me up. Loved the art style and the characters were cool. No one got on my nerves. The story, from what I played, had me intrigued and seemed like it was going places. The battle system killed me. I don't have to love an RPG's battle system to enjoy or just simply play the game. And I didn't mind FFXII's, until you got to the point where "random" enemy encounters were unnecessarily difficult and damaging to your party and the boss battles were encounters seemingly based purely on luck. Against my will, that battle system drove me to, if not hate the game, then put it back on the shelf unfinished (which is almost the same thing). Every once in a while, I'll pop the game back into the PS3 only to once again place it back on the shelf an hour or so later. I got the limited edition, though, so at least the box is nice to look at.

Nice TV, btw. Watch The Dark Knight on that bad boy? Or RAW in HD?

Review of the Good Installments in the Final Fantasy Franchise

Stirling,

I never played a lot of FFIX, but a friend of mine had it in high school and he liked it. This was the same friend who introduced me to Chrono Cross. He loved both games, but I never played far enough in either one to really see the appeal. I'm not saying they're not good games, but my attention span expired before I got to the good stuff apparently.

Maybe to stray from your topic a little bit, but Katy and I last week purchased our first HDTV, and so (as soon as she would let me) I pulled out all my old RPGs to see what they looked like on the bigger screen. Maybe I'm only being nostalgic, but in my opinion, the newer FFs don't have nearly the heart or the replay value of the older ones.

No single-player game of its era, for any system, by any publisher, or in any genre, is as replayable as Final Fantasy I. There are 126 distinct party combinations, and I'd be misleading you if I said that I don't want to someday beat that game with each and every one of them. Sure, the plot lies somewhere on the continuum between simplistic and non-existent, the magic system is outdated, and your party members will occasionally attack monsters that are already dead. I don't care. Yeah, yeah, the status and equipment menus are poorly integrated, being poisoned alters your party order, and sometimes you'll get killed by a roving band of Sorcerors before you can peel off a single round of attacks. I don't care. It still sets the standard for how attention-hogging an RPG should be. When I'm bored, I'm still more likely to pick FF1 up than any other RPG I own. I will admit that I'm probably lucky that FF1 was my first RPG experience, since its clunkiness would have been more readily apparent if I'd played others first.

I'll skip down to FFVI, although I could certainly sing the praises of IV and pass mild judgment on V. Final Fantasy VI is the best RPG ever. I said it. Ever. There is more in there to see, to do, to find, and to equip than there ever has been in any other RPG. There are 14 playable characters, and only a handful of them are throwaways. Each one is distinct in terms of personality and equipment. And the level of certitude that the game achieves in terms of the effects of elemental magic and weapons is superior to that of any game before or since. And maybe what I love about this game the most is that getting the best weapons, armor, and items in FFVI does not necessarily require you to go to GameFAQs or buy a strategy guide (except for the Paladin Shield); FFVI rewards patience and cleverness, without requiring you to be an insider.

Final Fantasy VII. I don't think I fall into the camp of fanboys that you loath, Stirling, but this game is another one that's pretty much spot-on. It's the first time that the English translations from Japanese started to sound relatively fluid and natural. (With some exceptions!) It's throughgoing storyline is superior to that of any FF before or since, with the possible exception of XII. And I do prefer materia over magicite. But in every other respect, I prefer VI over VII. Most of the characters in FFVII are totally peripheral. That includes Barrett, Red XIII, and Vincent, but I'm referring especially to Yuffie, Cait Sith, and Cid. The Cloud-centricity of the plot makes these characters' side quests feel that much more tacked-on. Also, I sort of feel like there's less to find in FFVII, and even after you find it, it's not as interesting as the stuff you found in FFVI. Once they decided to make weapons customizable by equipping materia to them, they limited how much interest the weapons themselves could hold. Weapons became reduced to battle power, hit rate, materia slots, materia growth rate, and ability bonuses. But that meant that you'd no longer find weapons with elemental effects, or that cast spells randomly upon striking, or that consumed MP to cause a critical hit. If you wanted such a weapon, you had to create it by equipping materia. Which is fine for what it is, but the more ground the game designers cede to in-game customization, the less the game draws on the old swords and sorcery motifs that made RPGs appeal to me in the first place.

But it's really only in FFs X and XII (among the ones I've played) that the in-game customization reaches such an epic scale that it becomes an actual turnoff. Come to think of it, in-game customization is probably at least a part of what makes FFV a few tiers below the best of the series as well. Since this is getting pretty long already, I'll save my rants on those games for another time.

Waiting for Squeenix

When one thinks of video games, surely one thinks of a particular company. That would be Nintendo. If you were to continue on, you'd probably list Capcom, Konami, Sega, Data East, Sunsoft, Rare, Grasshopper, Activison, Acclaim, and the list goes on....

....oh! and you might think of another company. First Square, then Squaresoft, and finally Square-Enix.

Unless you bought a Nintendo 64 or a Gamecube, you'd be hard pressed to NOT find a multitude of Square games.

The NES was given Final Fantasy I, II, & III among other Square products.

The SNES got Final Fantasy IV, V, & VI, Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger, Super Mario RPG, etc.

The PSX got an assload of Square with Final Fantasy VII, VIII, IX, & Tactics, Chrono Cross, Vagrant Story, Xenogears, Bushido Blade 1 & 2, Parasite Eve 1 & 2, Brave Fencer Musashi, plus various Final Fantasy/Chrono Trigger remakes/re-releases, Japanese wrestling games, and other products.

The PS2 continued the assloading with Final Fantasy X & XII, Dragon Quest 8, Kingdom Hearts 1 & 2, Grandia 3, Radiata Stories, Musashi: Samurai Legend, Drakengard 1 & 2, and the list goes on.

But something happened. Once considered progressive and infallible, Square merged with Enix in 2003 to become an assumed megapower.....but that hasn't really happened.

Once content to not revisit past franchise installments, Squuenix has continually re-released old games on new formats often with little enhancements. See the many Final Fantasy re-releases on the PS1, Gameboy Advance, and DS.

Considering the lasting popularity of Final Fantasy 7, fanboys happily rioted when Squeenix announced the "Compilation of Final Fantasy 7", games that would revisit and explore the Final Fantasy 7 universe and characters. Fanboys rioted again when these games sucked. There were two cellphone games (ugh!), a 3rd person shooter starring Vincent, a CGI film Advent Children (that forgot to render a plot along with its flashy visuals), and an animated OVA. A prequel FF7 game was released for the PSP following Zack Fair recently, and it's considered to be the sole good product to come of this compilation, but it's also considered too little too late. Nearly four years ago, Squeenix showed off a PS3 tech demo of Final Fantasy 7. The hype flood began until Squeenix killed it off announcing that the tech demo was JUST a tech demo and that FF7 was not being remade. Since a remake of FF7 is the only thing anyone has ever been asking for, kinda lame one must settle for shooters and cellphone games that "expand" the FF7 universe.

And now I find myself waiting..........waiting for Squeenix who seems yet to have caught up with the next (now current) generation of hardware with exciting, must have, Square-quality games.

There's Final Fantasy XIII & Final Fantasy Versus XIII which we've seen videos of for the past couple years. These are set for release God knows when, maybe next year.

If you're a WiiBoy, you only have Final Fantasy Crystal Chonicles: My Life as a King, a downloadable Wiiware title, and Dragon Quest: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors, a point click/action RPG lite type thing. Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers looks interesting with its steampunk style and the main character being a renowned superhero, but Squeeinx has promoted little of the title. Thought to have been quietly canned, Squeenix confirmed it was still in development, then went right back to showing nothing.

Outside of FF13, the Wii will be home to Squeenix's biggest game if this gen, the recently announced Dragon Quest X. Toasty!

If you're an HD boy, you don't have much to play with on the PS3 or 360. The Last Remnant and Infinite Undiscovery were RPGs meant to satisfy Western gamers, but has shown to have satisfied few.

Star Ocean, the two Final Fantasy XII games, Kingdom Hearts III, and whatever else in the HD-pipeline could and hopefully does change this.

As of now, your home for quality Squeenix is the Nintendo DS. There's the 3D remakes of Final Fantasy III and IV, re-release of Chrono Trigger that can be seen as an "ultimate edition" of sorts, Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings (a sequel to FF12), The World Ends With You, etc.

I've yet to dive into the FF3 & 4 remakes, but their receptions were positive. With portable gaming possible becoming the most convenient form of gaming for me, I may jump in pretty soon.

On the other hand, I have played the re-released Chrono Trigger and The World Ends With You.

Chrono Trigger didn't get the 3D upgrade, which sucks, but the 2D sprites appear sharper than before. There are many options for this game, providing the best of the SNES & PSX Triggers with the added comfort of the DS's dual screens. There's no enforced touching, which is a plus. Two new dungeons along with a new final boss have been added. These additions provide new backstory to further flesh out the events transpiring between Trigger and Chrono Cross. Though not 3D, it's the best Chrono Trigger release and worth having.

The biggest [positive] Squeenix surprise is a new IP, The World Ends With You (aka "It's A Wonderful World" in Japan). With an interesting artstyle and premise as while as excellent execution, it's the Squeenix game I didn't know I wanted.

Add to that, the DS is also getting Dragon Quest IX this year.

But that's handheld. Where's our console Squeeinx?! Since 2006 we've been promised much. Near three years later, they're delivered little. Hell, hardly any! We're still seeing non-in-game videos of the Final Fantasy XIIIs. Still nothing on Kingdom Hearts III. The Chrono announcement proved not to be a third game nor a 3D remake. Dragon Quest IX was "lost"to the DS. Dragon Quest X has been announced for Wii, but that's still a couple years off at best.

One might as well venture outside and have a social life, maybe even tan, as we wait for Squeenix.


Lastly, anyone have any opinions on Final Fantasy IX? I keep reading that its the best of the PS1 FFs, but also the most overlooked (along with Chrono Cross) as it was released just before the PS2. It's going for $15 new on amazon and I'm probably going to buy it at some point.

Quantitative Analysts of the World Unite!

Just wanted to post a quick link to an article by Bill James, a statistician, advocating that quantitative analysts effectively go on strike by refusing to allow the BCS to incorporate their computer rankings in its algorithm. Among other things, he points out that the BCS limits the computer rankings' inputs to such an absurd degree that it's impossible for them to make unique and meaningful contributions.

More interesting is James' assertion that participation in the BCS actually hurts the reputation of the field of quantitative analysis, since rightly or wrongly, when the BCS malfunctions, the knee-jerk reaction from practically everybody is to blame the computers. He says statisticians should refuse to continue playing whipping boy for the BCS. The BCS can hang itself with its own rope.

Aesthetic Experiences for Artists

Sean,

I think you put your finger on something interesting where you suggest that it's easier to admire a work of art when one's own fingerprints are not the only ones on it. I think you're right that Vinnie might have an easier time admiring Less Than Jake's output as a result of its collaborative nature. But more on that in a second.

Likewise, I accept your correction regarding the chronological perspectives (short versus long term) from which Vinnie and Joey, respectively, were speaking. As I was wrapping up my last post in this thread, I think I had come to the conclusion that, really, that distinction was less important than the one between Joey speaking as an artist and Vinnie speaking as a promoter, but I never got around to saying so.

But let me go back to what you said about it being easier to appreciate other people's work than one's own. The more I think about it, the more I wonder if it's even possible to have an aesthetic experience of one's own work. I mean, I can talk about liking or not liking "Beer Goggles" using the same language that Joey Cape can. But if I say that I don't like it, do I mean the same thing that he means when he says that he doesn't like it? I don't think so.

It seems to me that as a listener, when determining whether I like a song, I determine how much awe it puts me in. (Of course, I'm using that word to cover more ground than it ordinarily would). But as a writer of music, if I ask myself whether I like a song I've written, I determine how much pride it induces in me. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but it seems to me that there is a qualitative difference between pride and awe; that is, a difference other than whether the emotion is self- or other-directed.

To put it in particulars, to the extent that I admire a poem that I've written, I don't think that my emotions are so much different from those of a contractor who admires the building he's just erected, or of a mechanic who admires his handiwork in repairing a broken engine. With respect to my own work, I can't get past the pre-aesthetic level: the level of craftsmanship. My emotions when reading my own work bear no resemblance to my emotions when I read Tennyson's "Ulysses" or Yeats' "Sailing to Byzantium"; those works elicit a tingle in me that my own do not, and I don't think it's only because they are much, much better than mine.

Concerning the differences between Joey Cape and Vinnie

Ryan, you made an excellent point about comparing Joey and Vinnie, but I don't know that it's quite apples to oranges in the way you suggested. Going back to Joey's interview, after mentioning the time and work spent writing songs, then the recording phase, and then on to producing, Joey finishes by saying, "By the time a record comes out, I usually, really honestly never want to hear it again." Considering Vinnie already had a cut of the album, I don't think they're quite so far apart in terms of perspective.

I think the reason it might be wrong to compare them has more to do with their respective roles. Vinnie writes lyrics and plays percussion, but most of the composition duties fall to Chris and Roger, and I'm not really certain how involved Vinnie is with the recording and production. On the other hand, Joey Cape does all the writing, most of the composing, and is very involved in all phases. I didn't take into account that Joey was responsible for a much higher percentage of his music. While I still don't care for how much Vinnie loved the new album, I don't think it's nearly as tasteless when we consider that he could legitimately be enjoying the work of his bandmates rather than his own contributions.

I also agree that there must have been some stage in the process where Joey Cape appreciated his work, and I think I would have pressed him a bit further on that issue if I were conducting the interview. Just as not being satisfied helps you grow, there still must be some degree to which you appreciate your work, because how else can you distinguish between bad, good and better? I think I would have asked him to look back at all his experiences through all stages of writing songs, and if he could, pick the one song that gave him the most momentary satisfaction with his efforts as an artist. Or more simply, which song was he most proud of at any given moment?

Against Playoffs

The college football postseason winds down Thursday night when the Oklahoma Sooners and the Florida Gators finally meet in Miami. For a lot of people, the BCS national champion is going to be crowned illegitimately, because the system used to select the champion does not involve a playoff. The debate over a playoff in college football has raged for a long time, but as far as I'm aware, advocates of the system presently in place have always played defense in these debates. They say that the present system preserves the importance of the regular season; that it preserves the unique pageantry of the bowl season; they say that college football already has a playoff, and it's called the regular season.

What they don't say is that a playoff is a less efficient and less accurate method of determining the national champion than the present system is. Maybe they should.

The idea of crowning a champion is that we want to recognize the "best" team. Underlying this definitional matter is the assumption that each year, there is one, unique, "best" team. The hard part is identifying the best team. All systems will identify the wrong team as the best occasionally; the goal should be to maximize the percentage of seasons when the correct team is identified.

A playoff has its good points in this analysis. By giving more than two teams a chance to play for the title, a playoff increases the probability that the best team will make it into the mix. But there's a countervailing concern. The more teams allowed into the playoff, the more rounds it will require; the more rounds it requires, the more likely it is that the best team will lose.

That's right, because sometimes deciding it on the field means the better team loses. According to Coleman's rankings, which minimize the number of losses by a higher ranked team to a lower ranked team, the better team lost to the worse team no less than 9.22% of the time during the 2008 regular season. It's likely though that these so-called ranking violations occur more often than strictly mathematically necessary. Massey's consensus rankings—which are more in line with popular opinion than Coleman's are—place the percentage at 18.4%.

Note also that those numbers are across all games; where the opponents are more evenly matched, as they would be in a playoff scenario, the numbers would be significantly higher. So let's say that among the top 32 teams, the weaker beats the stronger with a probability of 32%. In each round, as the competition gets stiffer, the probability that the weaker beats the stronger increases by 4%, so that in the final round, the weaker team has a 48% chance of beating the stronger team. Obviously these assumptions are simplified (especially since they ignore the effects of seeding), but they seem reasonable enough.

So now let's estimate the probability that the best team will be included among those invited to the playoffs. Here, I'll fly a little more by the seat of my pants and say that the probability that the best team is among the top 2 is 50%; the probability that it's among the top 4 is 75%; the probability that it's among the top 8 is 87.5%; and so on.

So to calculate the probability that the best team is crowned champion, we multiply the probability that it has been invited by the probability that it wins all of its games once it's there. Let's see:

2 team playoff (current system):
P = 0.5 x 0.52 = 26%

4 team playoff:
P = 0.75 * 0.56 * 0.52 = 21.84%

8 team playoff:
P = 0.875 * 0.6 * 0.56 * 0.52 = 15.29%

16 team playoff:
P = 0.9375 * 0.64 * 0.6 * 0.56 * 0.52 = 10.48%

32 team playoff
P = 0.96875 * 0.68 * 0.64 * 0.6 * 0.56 * 0.52 = 7.37%

Based on my numbers, which clearly are open to debate and criticism, the current system gets it right more often than any of the extended playoff scenarios, crowning the correct champion a whopping 26% of the time. (One of the interesting things revealed by this exercise is just how pathetic even the best system is in the face of a problem this intractable).

A rejoinder from the pro-playoff camp at this point might be that the point of a playoff is not to crown the "best" team, but rather to crown the team that has accomplished something great, the team that is the last one standing atop a pile of defeated contenders. A playoff is a well-honed instrument for ensuring that this is the result: at the conclusion, one entrant is undefeated, and the rest have one loss. No arguments.

But that structure is wholly artificial. We all know that it's a mathematical impossibility to answer the question "Who's the best?" by answering the question "Who beat whom?" The regular season is full of contradictions and vicious circles that have to be wrestled into submission, not casually cast aside. A playoff is a machine that is not engineered to crown the best team; it is a machine engineered to put an end to arguments, without regard for whether the champion it produces is the best team or not.

What I will say for it, though, is that it would make for quite a spectacle.

The Vinnie Paradox

Sean,

Speaking from my own experience writing music, poetry, and prose, I can say that if I work at it for a sufficient amount of time, I can come up with something that I love. On the other hand, virtually without fail, if I come back to that same work a year or two later, its flaws are obvious to me, and I'm embarrassed to have ever loved it, and I hate it a little for not being as good as I remember.

I think something like that could account in part for the difference between Joey Cape's opinion of his work, and Vinnie's of his own. Joey Cape was clearly taking a long-haul perspective, whereas Vinnie was talking about an album that was still fresh and new to him. The two are apples and oranges.

At the same time though, I won't fault you for feeling that Vinnie's extollation of the new album was a turnoff. Vinnie is in a tough spot, because he has always taken such an enthusiastic approach to promoting LTJ and all the bands on Fueled by Ramen. Back when the albums were unmitigated triumphs (like Losing Streak and Hello Rockview), his enthusiasm felt warranted. But as the quality of the music has steadily declined, Vinnie's rhetoric hasn't changed a bit, and as a result, he's started to sound shrill and hucksterish. When he says the new album is great, I have a hard time thinking anything except, "That's what you said last time."

The problem for Vinnie has got to be that he's taken it upon himself to be the band's biggest promoter, and that fact clouds his view of what he's accomplished (or failed to accomplish) as an artist. I don't think we'll ever hear him say that in retrospect Anthem and In With the Out Crowd disappoint him artistically, because he spilled so much ink telling us how great they were during their promotional phases. He may be so far gone at this point that he could never even imagine the albums being anything less than superlative, the dual roles of artist and promoter having become so intertwined. And even if he can bring himself to think it, he certainly can't say it, because it would look like he had been lying to the fans in the first instance. Still, I think that if we could retroactively split those two roles, and somehow talk to just Vinnie the artist (not Vinnie the promoter), he'd sound a lot more like Joey Cape does in the interview you quoted.

I'll add that I think there's something really embarrassing and gauche and tasteless about writing to one's fans that you've been driving around Gainesville listening to your new album and LOVING IT. It's always been sort of an awkward question—do bands listen to their own albums recreationally?—and the affirmative response is just so ridiculously and needlessly narcissistic that I really feel like a person ought to be too embarrassed to admit it even if it's true. To me, it would be like saying, "I love how I sound on voicemail."

But really that's all about comportment; it's not about how the artist feels, but rather what he says about how he feels. So I'll respond directly to the question you posed: should an artist love what he makes?

I do think that, at least in the short run, an artist ought to love the things he creates. In the long run, it's important to see where you could have done better, and inevitably that probably means falling out of love with your old work. But it's the pleasure of putting the pieces together and making them work, even when they don't perfectly instantiate your vision, that keeps you coming back to the drawing board. Of course you have to work and improve, but nobody works to improve skills whose exercise doesn't bring pleasure in the interim. Again, I don't think this view puts me at odds with what Joey Cape was saying; I just think that in responding to the question he was asked, he had the long view firmly in mind.

Joey Cape vs. Vinnie Fiorello: The Potential Flaw of Appreciating One’s Own Creative Endeavors

A few years ago, I was reading about Less Than Jake’s upcoming album on their website. Songwriter/percussionist Vinnie Fiorello had posted an update detailing how excited he was about the album. He said he had a copy of it and constantly listened to it in his car, driving around Gainesville, drumming on his steering wheel. In short, he thought the album rocked. He LOVED it (he might have actually used ‘love’ in all caps to describe it). While I didn’t really delve into it at the time, it definitely struck me as odd, and more than anything, I counterintuitively became more worried about the quality of the album. If I like a band’s music, and they say their new stuff is great, why should I be worried?

I got the album when it came out, and I didn’t really like it at all. It generally lacked all of the elements that I liked about their music. Rather than the quirky songs with fanatical bass lines and creative vocal harmony, I found the new album to be little more than fairly unoriginal rock music. That was the last album I bought from them, and that fact has much less to do with how much I liked that album than what Vinnie said about it. I think most everyone with a critical ear would admit that even their favorite artist/band has songs they don’t care for, and enough of those songs can make an album, but a bad album isn’t enough by itself to shake my faith that a band can still put out good songs. Vinnie’s glowing endorsement was a sign to me that the band was clearly going in a direction that I opposed.

All talk of directions aside, my question is this: Is it a flaw for a musician to like their music? Before I’d even heard the new LTJ album, Vinnie’s affinity for it raised red flags in my mind. Perhaps I had subconsciously surmised the direction the band was taking from the progression of their previous records, but I don’t think that’s what triggered in my head. Rather, I suspect that on some level, I simply could not identify with being a satisfied creator. My experience with writing songs is far too limited to draw on, but if I can take anything from my other efforts (writing, for instance), it’s that I’m never satisfied with anything, sometimes to a paralyzing extent. I can’t help but be aware that everything I’ve done could be better, potentially much better, and that makes it very difficult to even say something is good enough, much less great or exceptional.

Then there’s this excellent interview with my favorite artist, Joey Cape, in which he discusses exactly this in response to being asked to pick his favorite song that he’s written:

[I don’t like my songs. I think it might be an actual flaw when people that write music tell you they love the music they write. I don't really understand that. Most songwriters that I meet are always trying to perfect their art or trying to be better at what they do, so they're just basically not all that satisfied with anything they do, and I think that's what makes most artists at least capable or good at what they do.]

If I was leaning towards that opinion before, hearing it from someone I respect more as an artist than anyone has only strengthened that stance. I don’t mean to say that it’s impossible for a good artist to appreciate his work, but I figure it’s likely that any artist that does has reached his peak, and that peak is probably far lower than I’d like it to be.

Tongue in Ear?

This past New Year’s Eve was a two-year anniversary for me, so I was working on a post about the [somewhat weird and not that hot] romantic/sexual practice of placing one’s tongue in someone’s ear, and how it’s still largely considered sexy whereas similar acts such as tonguing eyeballs have failed to achieve such good publicity. Having experienced the act, I did not find it to be sexy in the least. I’m not going to say there was nothing sexy about it, because there’s certainly something sexy about a girl liking you that much in that way, but I fail to understand how anybody is so interested in what is essentially a wet willie without the middle man.

Then I had my first phone conversation with a friend I met on OkCupid. I mentioned I was working on a post for this group blog and she asked what I was writing, and upon hearing my topic, related to me that she orgasms just from guys whispering in her ear.

WITHDRAWN…

Book Review: The Cult of the Amateur by Andrew Keen

I just finished reading Andrew Keen's 2007 book, The Cult of the Amateur. The thesis of the book is that Web 2.0 technologies (think blogging, wikis, social networking, and file sharing) are undermining the cultural and economic institutions that, up until now, have made the world work. In particular, Keen's great phobia is a world where expert opinions are inaudible over the throng of amateurs shouting at each other.

To illustrate that point, Keen tells the story of Dr. William Connolley, a global warming researcher who was editing Wikipedia's "Global Warming" entry. Connolley's Wikipedia permissions were limited when another user (not a global warming researcher) complained that Connolley was "strongly pushing his POV with systematic removal of any POV which does not match his own" (p. 43). Keen's view is that in the ensuing appeals process, the Wikipedia staff should have considered Connolley's expertise and rescinded their order limiting his permissions.

I guess there's something bothersome about the story. It's true that I find myself sympathizing with Connolley. If I wanted facts about global warming, I would trust what he told me more than what the complaining user told me; if the complaining user tried to interrupt his explication in polite conversation, I'd tell the user to shut it, because I'm trying to learn something. But at the end of the day, I just can't get all that riled up about this story. There are plenty of things that Wikipedia is good for, like looking up Bob Dylan's discography, or the average annual rainfall in Rio de Janeiro, or a diagram of a generic drilling rig. But I don't know anybody who thinks that Wikipedia is the place to go to learn the unassailable facts underlying a scientific controversy. Frankly, it probably won't even give you enough background to meaningfully describe the parameters of the debate. In short, the entry on Global Warming is not what Wikipedia is good for. Of course, maybe I'm overestimating people's ability to rationally rate the reliability of information on the web.

Keen makes similar arguments about blogs usurping the role of the traditional media. Again, maybe I'm behind the times, but I don't read blogs to get the news, I read them to get opinions. If a fact sounds fishy, I try to corroborate it at a reputable news site.

In other chapters, Keen takes on the future of music (there will be so much selection that you'll never be able to find anything you like), the future of the book (in which there really is only one text), as well as privacy concerns and the evils of Internet addiction. The book is at its best though when it begins to hint at a sort of malaise infecting the concept of authorship itself. Information technology has progressed to the point where every presently existing art form can be encoded in binary. And with disk space to store the ones and zeros, processors to manipulate them, and networks on which to share them, (what we now call) plagiarism runs rampant, and amateurish remixes and mashups abound.

When the barriers to entry were higher, when it was harder to get eyeballs on your work, only the most talented had any real incentive to try and get "published." Now though the Internet is an echo chamber of mediocrity: a lot of teenagers on Xanga posting their poetry, trolling other teenager's poems, and writing, "I like that - come read one of mine, and leave a comment!" The talented all of a sudden have less to aspire to, because it is harder to see that there is anything fine and glorious and noble left in the work of art.

But all those hard drives and processors and networks make this possible too, and I don't know that I would trade it. It's just that the paradigm of authorship is shifting, and I'm nostalgic for it before it's even all gone.

Anyway, The Cult of the Amateur is one of the more poorly reviewed books that I've ever looked at on Amazon. Maybe you can imagine that there would be a natural bias among online reviewers, but it really does have problems. There are good ideas in there, but they are somewhat inartfully expressed, and I found myself doing most of the mental heavy lifting when it came to organizing and analyzing Keen's ideas. The chapters on privacy and Internet addiction felt sort of tacked-on. Also, the tone in some places is extra curmudgeonly. I can't really recommend it very highly unless the topics interest you on their own; the writing alone will not be enough to hold your interest.

Beta design

I've posted a beta design for this site at http://otherthaneven.blogspot.com. It's still pretty close to the Blogger default, but with a little bit more visual interest, I hope. If you both like it, I'll import the skin to this site.