The Half-Life Of Falsehoods

Kevin Drum notes that far more people have a favourable opinion of Obama's healthcare bill (passed, you may remember, in mid March amongst much wailing and gnashing of teeth) than have an unfavourable opinion, and that we're not that far out from the favourables being a clear majority over the unfavourables and undecideds combined.

Obviously, that's good news, but it kind of makes me wonder whether anyone will remember to ask Megan McArdle if she wants to amend her idiotic column demanding no bill be passed unless the majority support it at the time of passage. I mean, I can't imagine she will, given she's already willfully blind enough to argue that bills should be vetoed by comparatively small majority objection but that massive majority preference shouldn't compel Congress to actually lift a finger, but it's still a logical bind I'd enjoy watching her trying to wriggle out of.

Cephalopodic Clairvoyance

It's always been my assumption that the animal most likely to topple mankind from our lofty perch of dominance over the planet is most definitely the octopus. Bollocks to the dolphins. I'm not afraid of anything that can't open doors or drive a tank. But those villainous molluscs? Handles and levers aren't going to be an obstacle. They're amongst right now, learning the ways of man from the cold brine of their aquariums. Every time I take a look at the giant Pacific octopus they have in Tynemouth, its cold dead eyes impart a simple message. "One day I will kill you, and the only reason you're still alive is that I haven't worked out how to make it really hurt yet."

Frankly, I'm pretty sure the only thing that's kept our civilisation safe all this time is the fact that octopuses hate each other almost as much as they do us. Global dominance is a hard trick to pull off by oneself, though I'd put down money that there's at least a couple of the cephalopodic bastards who have built their own volcano lairs - presumably staffed by hypnotised cuttlefish and guarded by cybernetic sharks.

In other words, the octopus was a scary enough prospect just when it was an eight-legged malevolent predator that could solve problems and squeeze into crevices. I don't have the words to describe how much more terrifying they've become now I know they can see the fucking future. Some naysayers might greet this terrifying development with full-scale denial, pointing out that four predictions in a row would happen once every sixteen times - easy enough for the population of even a small aquarium to manage. Others would wonder whether the Germans have also imployed squid to predict the stock market, or perhaps bet on Wimbledon winners with the aid of a pair of curious sea-cucumbers.

All those people are fools. The octopuses are now, at long last, demonstrating their true powers. And why would they do that - WHY - if not for their certain knowledge that for humanity it is already too late...

The Shake Experiment: Slight Return

With the World Cup now in full swing (and it's faintly depressing that my definition of "full swing" appears to be "England have gone"), it seemed like an opportune time to dust off The Shake Experiment for a day and try out the "World Cup Special", which rather pathetically is just the Mars Bar shake previously available (though buying it did give me the opportunity to talk to the shop keeper about football; it appears my ability to blag my way through such conversations is growing).

Today's shake: Mars Bar

Taste: 7
Texture: 5
Synergy: 6
Scorn: 2
Total Score: 6.5

General Comments: I figured this would work well, mainly because of a previous addiction to Mars Bar ice creams that I am still struggling to overcome (I probably shouldn't have had this shake at all, already I can feel the crabings kicking in). Unfortunately, the Mars Bar milkshake is a poor cousin to that most noble of frozen treats. There just isn't enough chocolate in there. It's like eating vanilla ice-cream mixed with caramel, and if that's what your into then fair play. I found it all rather sickly.

Still, I'm at least glad the proprietor hadn't chosen to stop selling it after Sunday, or to replace it with a steaming turd floating in a bowl of cream, as some might have been tempted to.

Natural But Insufficiently Super

With Future SpaceSquid back where he belongs (he left clutching coffee filters and a child's drum, whilst muttering darkly about radioactive sea lions), we can talk about another Season Five finale in a more traditional way. This time, it's Supernatural under the microscope. Spoilers below.


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"Swan Song" is a tough episode to judge, because it's very difficult to decide exactly what criteria I should be using. As an actual Supernatural episode, it was entirely acceptable. Hell, it was one of the better ones. It pulled together the overall theme of the show - the importance of family - very successfully, and made the most important point very well, namely that one's family is not simply who one is related to by blood. Sam and Dean's relationship is obviously key to everything, and John Winchester casts a long shadow over the proceedings as always (the similarities between the brother's responses to their father and Lucifer and Michael's responses to God are once again driven home effectively, if perhaps rather unnecessarily), but the Winchester boy's family is more than that. It's Bobby. It's Castiel. It's the Impala. In a weird way, it's even us to, as represented by Chuck. I was never very convinced by the idea of a "prophet" telling the Winchester's story as Supernatural novels, it all seemed a bit precious, but having him narrate the "final" story makes a great deal of thematic sense.

Given how well all of that hangs together (and having Sam regain his wits after seeing the toy soldier in the car door was particularly nice, though it might have been a lot nicer had we been given more warning), it would be churlish to point out how easily Lucifer is dispatched. At least, it would be were this an average episode.

It isn't. It's the zenith of five years of story, each season building on the last, and of an entire year's worth of "Fucking Hell, Lucifer will destroy everything ever and he can't be stopped". If you're going to stake an entire half decade's worth of stories (albeit partially retroactively) on a single confrontation, you quite simply have to make it worth it. Babylon 5 had the same problem with "Into The Fire" after only three and a half years, and BSG after five (depending on how you count it) with "Daybreak". Both of them failed, in very different ways (though I think "Into The Fire" is a bit under-rated). Supernatural failed, too. It might seem petty to complain about Lucifer's short shrift when the rest of the episode worked, but the fact that The Morningstar's shadow loomed so large over everything is not the viewers' fault, but the writers'. In its own way, this is the same problem suffered by the end of Lost; the show repeatedly told us certain aspects of it were desperately important, and then apparently changed its mind. I've lamented before the way Supernatural drifted from fun and scary mini horror films into a long-running family drama with ghosts, but I saw it as a necessary evil to prevent the show from getting stuck in a rut [1]. If you're going to take this path, though, you need to have a much better picture of your endgame than this turned out to be.

Plus, as my esteemed flatmate pointed out, none of this is helped by Death showing up in the previous episode and being totally and unbelievably awesome. An episode of Sam and Dean trying to melvin Death? That I'd have liked to see.

[1] It also avoided to a great extent (though not entirely) the problem The X-Files quickly encountered, where each new "Monster of the Week" episode was either a paler retread of a previous concept (This guy can stretch his bones and eats livers! This guy can vomit acid and eats fatty tissue! This guy can fold himself in half and eats your pituitary glands!) or simply too bats-arse crazy to be taken seriously.

The Big Fizzle

Wow! Doctor Who, eh? WOW! What an adventure! What a thrill ride! What a brain-melting complex yet elegantly simple resolution! My reptile brain is fizzing! My cortex is aflame! My hippocampus is even more wiggly than I assume it previously was!

SHAZAM!

Stop!

Gasp! An intruder! And... a Devilishly handsome one, as well. Who are you, oh impeccably manicured interloper?

It is I! Future SpaceSquid! I have returned to the Earth Year 2010 to stop you making a horrible mistake! Do not write about how much you enjoyed the Doctor Who finale! It was bollocks and you'll regret saying otherwise!

But... but... it was so brilliantly written! Rory guarding the Pandorica; River taunting that Dalek; "I wear a fez now". It all felt right, didn't it? The execution was exceptional.

But the concept was total arse. How is two thousand years without stars going to get us to the same present day? How did people navigate the oceans, for a start?

That's a bit picky. I mean -

And how is the whole universe destroyed immediately, but Earth survives exactly long enough for Amy to be the same age as when the Doctor met her and no longer.

Well, yes, that's weird, but -

And how are we supposed to believe you can extrapolate the entire universe from one box?

That's a nod to Douglas Adams, though. You can't object to a nod to Douglas Adams.

What about the nod to Bill and Ted? A film specifically designed to make time travel as ridiculous as possible. How can the Doctor ever be in trouble again, huh? At this point, every single time he ends up in mortal danger he himself can just show up and get himself out again.

That would make the show pretty boring.

Yes it would, but that's not the point. The point is that to get anywhere with Who from this point on you'll have to deliberately repress what happened this time around. The Doctor just got given the ultimate Get Out Of Jail card and you're going to have to spend every minute of every episode of Season Six onwards pretending he can't use it.

Maybe he can't, though. Maybe it was something inherent in River's bracelet -

So 51st Century human tech beats a TARDIS? Plus, let's not forget that the show has explicitly stated that time travellers can't return to somewhere they've already visited without risking horrible consequences.

What makes you think that?

Well, there was that episode with the Reapers showing up to eat the universe. Plus, the line in "The Girl In The Fireplace" about not being able to use time travel to reset things when they weren't going to your liking.

Really? Which idiot wrote that?

That would be Moffat.

...Ah. Then how come you're here?

We're not working by his rules. We're working by yours. And you've planned this through properly.

Yeah, I'm pretty smart.

You'll regret that cockiness during the First Science Wars.

Really? When's that happening?

I wouldn't have signed off on that new flat.

Eek! Anyway, to return to the subject at hand. If there's no universe, then there's no Reapers, right?

Maybe. Who knows what they are, exactly.

So maybe that means that time-loops are OK now. Even if they still make no sense.

Well, that's just about possible. But, see, now you're having to sit down and find a justification for what happened. You're having to search for loopholes. That's not the sign of a good story. As a matter of fact, it's the sign of a terrible story. Especially one that was set up as a mystery. How will the Doctor stop the cracks in reality? How will he save his TARDIS? What will happen when the Pandorica opens? You can't just deal with all of that by introducing something we've every reason to believe is possible without paving the way first. It's Chekov's Gun, Younger Me; if you're going to change the way time travel works in the show you need to signpost the change early on. I'm not sure the show fits the mystery format at all, to be honest, but once you've gone down that road you have a cardinal rule to follow. Your mystery can and should fool the audience. It cannot lie to them. Then you've got the Doctor zipping backwards in time after he seals the cracks.

I thought that was really well done, actually. That scene with poor blind Amy finally made sense.

Did it? Or did it just transform from unexplained to nonsensical? Why would the crack sealing knock the Doctor back in time?

Why do we need to know that?

Because everything depends on it. Aside from it being a comedy, and thus playing by different rules in any case, when Bill and Ted use the trashcan to escape Ted's father it isn't objectionable because the whole film wasn't building up to them needing to escape from Ted's father. It's a cheat, but it's so incidental to the film that it doesn't matter. Whereas here, we're being asked to believe that the hero of the show can be erased from existence - after twelve weeks of dire portents, as usual - but that he can come back if someone remembers him.

That was the theme of the whole season, though.

And as a metaphor it's perfectly fine. But whilst the show has been chuntering on about the importance of memory, it's also been telling a story. What good is staying consistent with the former if it blows the latter out of the water? Why make it literal?

Was there anything I'll like about the episode by this time last week?

Sure there is. A lot of the characterisation was pretty good. The above problems aside, the Doctor pretending to die to allow his earlier self to act as a diversion was brilliant. As I say, the metaphor itself worked really well. It's just that all of that is bolted on to a totally ludicrous, unworkable frame. And given how well-done everything else was, that's just a huge bloody shame, and that's what you're going to remember.

Oh. Well, thank you, Future Me. You've saved me from a hideously embarrassing blog post.

No problem, Past Me. You'll do the same for Extra Past Me. And My Future Me did the same for Actual Me, who you know as Me, Future Me.

...Time travel gives me a headache.

The Engamerising 2010

Just a couple of notes from this weekend's gaming experiences. The Pegasus expansion for the BSG board game is a curious beast (much like the ship herself). The actual battlestar in question adds comparatively little (mainly a few alternative ways to blow shit up, including your own ships). The New Caprica board is an interesting idea, but it makes an already potentially long game far longer, particularly with a lot of players. By the time the fleet had made it to New Caprica, everyone was just as exhausted as the Colonials they were playing. On the other hand, one could quite easily tweak the rules slightly and actually play it as its own mini game, by randomly deciding how many civilian ships have made it, and in what shape the Galactica's resources, air wing, and locations start off in.

I'm also not yet convinced about the Cylon Leaders idea. This might be because I had a uniquely poor agenda to follow, but I'm not convinced; I think it's just as likely that said agenda revealed the flaw in the system. Other than to make sure the Cylons won, my only aim was to either end the game in the brig or detention, or be executed at least once. This meant the potential double-dealing and politicking that might otherwise have been involved was replaced by deliberately trying to wreck as much shit as possible so I would be dragged to the nearest airlock and introduced to Mr Vacuum. The fact that I was neither able to do a massive amount of damage to the fleet whilst making no effort to hide was not particularly encouraging, but the main problem was that the human players were in agreement that sending me to either the brig or the void was a waste of time since I'd immediately come back in a different body in any case. If a punishment system is so unappealing that you don't want to consider it for a player desperately trying to wreck your entire game plan, then something has gone wrong somewhere.

On the other hand, Red November is great fun, a lovely little quick game with plenty of character. The mechanic of replacing turns with minutes, and thus always allowing the player furthest "back in time" to have the next move is brilliant, and in any case I think there's a strict limit on how much bad things you can say about a game that forces you to ponder whether or not you're already too pissed to down the bottle of grog you need to make stabbing a Kraken to death a little easier. Of course, my viewpoint is a little coloured. Not only was I slightly drunk when I played it (Ooh! Red November drinking game: every time your gnomes polishes off a bottle of grog, you have to drink a beer), but I had an eye on the England game, which means I could have been playing Monopoly (most hated of all games!) and I probably would have appreciated the distraction.

It's also worth noting that, according to Garathon, the game was originally conceived as "Rescue the Kursk", before presumably being considered too legally tricky/in bad taste. It does make me wonder how much the game changed between iterations, though. As difficult as it might be to sell a game based on the tragic deaths of over one hundred sailors, one imagines it would be exponentially harder once your core game mechanic involves fuelling your repair attempts by stealing the captain's vodka.

Much Better Bloggers

David Brothers over at 4thletter! is without a doubt one of my favourite comic bloggers. The guy is undeniably smart and knows how to put together a good argument.

Well, last week he wrote a post in response to something I had said to him, and having only just realised this fact today (clearly I chose the wrong week to bury myself in my work), I thought I'd flag it up. David's initial post is here, and his response to my question (which includes my own comment) is here.

I've emailed my response to David directly, so I won't repeat it in full here. The short version, however, is that I feel we may have been talking at cross purposes. David may be using "statistics" to refer to specific numerical soundbites rather than the discipline, which was the sense in which I was applying the term.

I also think we need to consider that whilst David's experience and knowledge regarding race in America means he could get further talking about the subject without statistics than I ever could with them, that reflects poorly on my knowledge of the subject, not on the use of statistics themselves. In other words, Squid + Statistics < David < David + Statistics.

Anyway, it's a great article, and I'm delighted I helped create it in some small way.