Catchup - Abstract Strategy

Catchup - Cool Abstract Strategy Game

This is a new iOS implementation of a cool abstract strategy board game called Catchup. The game was designed by Nick Bentley, and the app was implemented by Martin Grider.

It is good! But these guys need more people to buy the game, so please, if you have any interest in abstract board games and have an iOS device, then consider buying this game!

There's even a well-implemented AI opponent that automatically adjusts to your skill level to keep you challenged.

Go get it!

Catching Up on some Short Dreams

Hi! Just a quick catching up post to describe a few vaguely interesting dreams I had over the past couple of weeks (dreams are what this blog is primarily about, right?).

I had a dream in which I was a policeman trying to stop four teenagers from vandalizing a closed store. When I say vandalizing, I mean that they were inside the store basically destroying all the furniture inside to the point that standing on the street outside the store I heard loud crashing and wood breaking noises. The youths came out of the store, and I told them to get on the ground. They did so, but soon they got up and started running away from me. I pulled out my gun and starting telling them to halt (I think I said "halt," not "freeze"), but they didn't, so I started trying to shoot them, but my gun wouldn't fire. Instead of a trigger, it had a power switch like you'd find on the back of a computer. Like one of these guys:

Eventually, I figured out that it was a revolver with an external hammer mechanism and I was failing to cock it manually, but by this time the hooligans had escaped me.

Another dream I had involved a duck being trapped in a large animal's mouth that looked like a second floor window. I mean, it was like a building, except I understood the building to be a creature of some kind and the window to be its mouth. Weird.

Anyway, the duck was afraid for its life and for the life of its egg, which it was holding in its mouth. I beckoned for the duck to simply jump out of the window to safety, which the duck did. But for some reason the duck neglected to fly and fell to the ground, slamming its head against the pavement. The egg fell from the duck's mouth and rolled away safe and uncracked, but the duck began dizzily sauntering about, clearly seriously injured. I felt bad for having recommended that the duck leap from the window, but I guess it sacrificed itself to save its egg? I don't know. Weird dream.

In a third dream my wife and I were sneaking into a high security warehouse district in search of the new textbooks for the upcoming school year. I guess we wanted a sneak peek? At one point I turned a corner and found myself looking directly into the lens of a security camera, and I was like, "oops." But whatever, nothing happened. We found the books, and I was very excited to look at the physics book. It had a pink cover.

The first dream (the one with the gun and the teenage vandals) was interesting in that normally when I use a gun in a dream, I don't actually have a gun but rather simply pretend to have one and make gun noises and then get frustrated that my imaginary gun is completely ineffectual. Of course, I keep trying, but it never works. In this dream, I had a gun in my hand. Perhaps the difference was that I was a policeman, and so it came with the uniform? Anyway, the gun was ineffectual all the same.

Nope, No Time for a 7DRL

I will not be creating a 7DRL for the 2014 Challenge this year. I don't have the necessary motivation for that right now.

Instead, I think I'm going to stay up late and work on music for Selatria (which I should have been doing anyway, so...).

7DRL Challenge 2014 - Two Weeks Away

It seems that the 7DRL Challenge for 2014 is going to happen during the week following March 8th. Yikes! Where has the time gone? I created a 7DRL last year that turned out rather well, so while it really is a challenge, I know I'm capable of it. Today an idea came to me for what I might try to create if I did enter. So I'm fleshing out the details, trying to work out what is feasible and worthwhile and what is difficult and unnecessary. I am excited! I'm not really sure if I'll end up having enough time to manage it, but I think that's a crucial part of what makes the 7DRL Challenge fun.

Rattus Sculptoris

One of my neighbors is a rat.

I don't mean that he tells the police what criminals are doing.

The kind of rat I mean is Rattus mindorensis, the Mindoro black rat. This kind of rat usually lives in the Phillipines, not America, but my neighborhood is unusual. It is popular amongst wealthy and eccentric immigrants. I do not know why.

I have become friends with my rat neighbor. Sometimes I see him poking his head out of one of several little windows on the front of his house, and I start a conversation with him. His name is Iqougguef, but he had to spell it out for me before I could understand what he was saying. I asked if his name was common in rat society, and he said he had never known any other rats by that name. He said that it was derived from the name of a god worshipped by ancient rats. The advent of Postmodernism in rat culture has made religion unpopular.

Iq is a sculptor. I used to see new works that he had completed sitting on the grass in front of his house, but he has started putting his sculptures in his backyard because the other neighbors were stealing them. They do not recognize that rats can legally be property owners.

The sculptures are usually carved from columns of basalt that Iq has imported from Iceland. He polishes the sculptures to make them shiny and black. Many of them are depictions of ordinary objects like ceiling fans and street lamps, though I think seeing these objects carved from basalt makes them seem special. I once asked if I could purchase one, but he told me that he doesn't sell them. I often wonder how he gets the money to buy the stone or to pay the mortgage on his house, but I do not ask because I think it would be rude. Basalt is a very hard stone, so Iq uses powerful machinery to help him carve it. Even if he used soapstone, I think he would need the machinery because he is a fairly small rat. He is also very shy. He doesn't let me watch him sculpt.

But Iq often invites me and my son into his studio when he is not working. My son plays quietly, and Iq and I sit and drink coffee and watch his pet birds wandering through the garden in his backyard. There is a large rock face and two tall wooden fences surrounding the garden. To the birds the garden is a perfect little sanctuary and the sculptures are like ordinary rocks or trees. The largest of Iq's birds is a blue heron that never makes a sound. One of the other birds is a guineafowl that makes a sound like a crow. "Ka ka ka ka ka ka ka!" he says. The heron watches him solemnly like an old man watching his grandchild.

Physics in Motion

I own a small building downtown, and one of the units in that building is rented out to a fitness company that holds classes, the sort you might see taking place in a gym. Karate, cycling, Tae Bo, you know the sort of thing I'm talking about.

Well, the other day I was down there checking up on things, and a karate class was just finishing up. Now, there was an aerobics class of some kind called Physics in Motion, which was supposed to start right afterwards. Unfortunately, as far as I could tell, the instructor wasn't there. She simply didn't show up. Of course, the people taking the class were there, and they wanted their exercise!

Obviously, I too wanted them to have their exercise. I wanted their money! So I did the only natural thing that any reasonable property owner would do, which was to pose as a substitute instructor and lead the class myself. I gave a little spiel which proceeded in a manner similar to the following:

"So, everyone gather around, Physics in Motion is going to begin. Your regular instructor isn't here tonight, but apparently I'm some kind of fitness expert, so I'm going to lead instead. You see, in aerobics we move our bodies a lot, and I guess the basic idea is that you sweat a lot and therefore start burning fat or something like that. I don't know, but people do this stuff, so I guess it works. Anyway, today's animal is the speed leopard! Er... I think it was maybe the cheetah? Nevermind, let's get started."

So I started to jog very lightly in place, and the people enrolled in the class followed suit.

"This feels pretty good. Starting to feel the burn. Yeah, that's good! Getting in shape!"

We continued to jog in place like this for about a minute.

"Let's just keep this up! This is good! Nice form, everybody!"

Finally, someone said to me, "I don't think this is going to work."

A Case for Emotional Correctness

First of all, Sandy Kohn's TED talk about emotional correctness is relevant to the present discussion, and in fact, prompted me to write it, though the thoughts that follow have been boiling in my mind-kettle for some time.

I intend to argue roughly that anger is counterproductive to serious debate about important controversial issues, and in fact, irrational.

When you feel very strongly about something and hold a very strong opinion about it, possibly on account of having conducted a careful and thorough rational analysis, it is easy to view those with whom you disagree as simply being unethical morons. That is, it's easy to feel justified in disregarding your opponents' opinions via a line of thinking that amounts to something like:

1. On account of my careful and thorough reasoning, my stance is the ethical and rational one.
2. Thus, if my opponent had considered the issue as seriously and as carefully as I have, then he or she would agree with me.
3. My opponent disagrees with me.
4. Therefore, my opponent has either failed to consider the issue seriously and carefully to a satisfactory degree or else has done so but nevertheless holds a different stance because he or she is unethical, irrational, or stupid (possibly some combination thereof).
5. Engaging in a serious debate about an important issue without considering the issue seriously and carefully is itself unethical, irrational, and stupid.
6. Ergo, my opponent is unethical, irrational, or stupid, and probably all three.
7. Unethical and irrational morons do not deserve to be treated with respect.
8. Therefore, I shall disrespect my opponent.

In my estimation, this is very common. However, I also consider it to be very rude, but also very counterproductive because it tends to cause the focus to be drawn away from exploring the issue and placed onto the goal of defeating one's enemies by any means necessary.

For instance, suppose Drew and Glenn are debating the issue of abortion and have this brief exchange:

Drew: I think abortion should be banned.
Glenn: So you support rising child homeless rates? I can't understand how you are willing to hold such a position!

Or possibly:

Glenn: I think abortion should be legal.
Drew: So you support the murder of babies? I can't understand how you are willing to hold such a position!

Both of these cases are problematic because in each case the indignant responder projects particular ethical assumptions on the other person, who probably doesn't make those assumptions. They also erroneously assume particular reasoning on the part of the other person (i.e. no one wants to ban abortion specifically because doing so will increase teenage homelessness, and similarly no one supports its being legal specifically because they want babies to be murdered). But unfortunately, this is not an extreme hypothetical situation. These are the sorts of things we actually hear people say with respect to this issue.

But suppose I am very, very, very convinced that my opponent's stance is completely immoral or incorrect. Am I justified in being angry at them for their immoral position? Possibly, but if you are so angry, then it is at least wise to make a conscious effort not to let it affect your performance in an intellectual debate.

However, I argue that it is better to avoid such anger when possible, and especially with respect to issues that are very controversial. The reason why is that it undermines the importance of the issue. If the opinions on an issue are divided roughly equally, even amongst intellectuals, then it stands to reason that there exist seemingly rational means of arriving at either opinion (for the sake of argument, let us suppose it's a binary decision in question). One's anger about the opposing opinion seems to imply a belief that the correctness of the correct answer is roughly obvious provided you think about it reasonably carefully. In essence, rather than saying (implicitly) "my opponent disagrees with me because of their use of a different argument, one which I consider invalid but which a reasonable person in their fallibility might consider valid, which is undesirable but still morally acceptable" you are saying (again, implicitly), as I suggested above, "my opponent disagrees with me not because of an ultimately invalid but seemingly correct argument, but rather because they are stupid or immoral or both, and this is bad, bad, bad!!!" However, given that it seems rational to assume that there exist apparently rational means of arriving at either opinion, the second attitude is actually likely an irrational one. It is the attitude of a person who presupposes that their own reasoning is not only flawless but also obviously correct to anyone who will hear it.

Am I saying that in debating important real life issues we should be emotionless robots? No, of course I am not. It is natural to become angry at what we perceive to be immoral attitudes. What I am saying is that it behooves us to rein in that anger and give the benefit of the doubt to those with whom we disagree and presume that their actual reasoning (of which we are initially unaware, since it is someone else's reasoning) is at least worthy of genuine examination, because it is by doing so that we dignify the importance of the issue under discussion.

Emotional correctness, as Sally Kohn puts it, supports this motive, and emotional incorrectness is in stark opposition to it. The example Kohn uses is a good one. Someone who claims to hate immigrants doesn't necessarily actually hate immigrants because they're just a hateful person who has chosen to be immoral and mean. It is probably because of some other emotion, such as fear, which we can easily identify with and understand. This is the common ground that Kohn seeks to find. I believe we should all seek to find it.

Null Terminator - In the Presence of My Enemies

As I've mentioned before, I am producing an EP and a full length album for Galactitronic Super-Space-Composer Null Terminator. The last track I posted was from the EP, which should be released first, though I still have no idea when it will be completed.

Anyway, I felt like officially sharing another track, though this one had already been available. I simply had never really pointed it out on this blog before. This will be the third track from the full length. I should add that while the EP will probably be 100% composed by Null Terminator, this track is in fact almost completely my own composition, so on the full length I suppose I will be credited as co-composer, which is good, obviously, because I have been wanting to get into the professional musicdom for a long time now.

Null Terminator - In the Presence of My Enemies

Interval Permutations

Drew F. Nobile has written an article called "Interval Permutations" about how interval sequences can be permuted in order to produce different pitch class sets that are audibly related. Of particular interest is his example 18, a graph that depicts all of the possible relationships made by such intervallic permutation between tetrachordal set-classes. I have created my own version of this graph to emphasize the natural symmetry present:

Source Code for Uushuvud Released

I have made the source code for my 7DRL Uushuvud available here.

I wrote the code in the span of about five days, so don't expect masterfully clean code. This could surely be improved in many ways.