Elder Abuse

Have you ever seen Robert Byrd speak? He is so doddering that I almost want to charge the people who vote for him with abusing a poor old man. I do not like how we seem to put politicians in till they go senile. The Republicans do this too, and I really wonder if these parties support older politicians so they can take advantage of them. Or maybe its just easier than kicking them out.

A way to end this would be term limits, which is the last thing we will ever see. Getting rid of the seniority rules might help. I think politicians are less competant the longer they are in.

Factions

One thing that has always fascinated me about Real Time Strategy games are the way factions are set up. I dislike playing RTS, because you have to upgrade your base and fight at the same time, but the way factions are balanced interests me. This is more pronounced in science fiction and fantasy games, and was first mastered by Starcraft.

We had Protoss, superior psychic aliens who had expensive, powerful units. We had the ravenous swarm of the Zerg, who like large numbers of cheap soldiers. The Terrans were kinda in the middle on unit cost vs. strength, but they had other things to seperate them from the other two. So, how do I take my love of factions with different units, and do something constructive with it?

Well, I can't write a story about it. "Techpirate Hijack Bot Number 543 (with rocketfeet upgrade from Chop Shop) screamed as the MethMonster Drill Wurmz (with metal digestion from the HiveShack) ate its face." doesn't come out well. Although it is hilarious.

Write out a ridiculous paper covering unit development and comparisons for a game that I don't have the financial power to make correctly? Well, that seems like fun. And it will confuse my only readers (hi mom!). It will also take forever. Meh.

Constructive is out, then. I will then describe a few factions for a crazy world my brain can come up with.

MethMonsters: Well, ole Billy added the wrong chemical to a batch of meth, and it exploded, opening a hole in space-time. He is now the mutated leader of a swarm of confused mutated animals and people. Redneck bugmonsters!

TechPirates: The reason no one has nuked Billy. TechPirates have cool robot toys and are just as slimy as normal pirates. I would make them have the most expensive units, as they are cowardly criminals who send robots to actually fight. Being attacked by bugmonsters has lowered the amount of time they spend screwing up the rest of the world.

Lizard Men: Ravenous lizard men from Venus! Hmm... I think I'd better stop.

Humans in science fiction

How come humans never get to be the sneaky race in sci-fi? We always seem to be put in the top dog or mewling prey department. Either we have a massive empire or we are barely surviving genocidal monsters. This is usually a bit more balanced in strategy games, but humans in games suffer from always the middle of the road race.

Why can't we be the sneaking spy or unruly horde? I guess because people want to believe humans are either inferior or average, and never give a thought that we might be one of the weirdo races in the future. But I think people might like to see humans as the clever and crafty sneaks, with a fleet of stealth ships, secret agents, and stealth suited space rangers. I would, at least. But we have to sell it, so lets try.

One) Stealth ships give some of that submarine warfare tension. It would also be a departure from the spacecraft carriers that fill science fiction. Plus, cloaking effects aren't that hard.

Two) Think a less slimy James Bond meets Mace Windu. No shiny stuff, he is about trickery and misdirection. In fact, the Jedi have made it acceptable for a "good guy" to mind fry people, add to that some cool gadgets and guns, and we've got our agent.

Three) Space Rangers (or Marines) are often done, but they are generally the first to get eaten or killed, and these guys are different. These Rangers will be a close-knit team, and while we can't go full "Predator" on their enemies, because of the lack of drama, we will make them scary to the enemy. They can lose a few members, just not enough to make a joke out of them (no red shirts).

So we have three ways to show sneaky humans. I believe their weapons will not be shiny or flashy, nor loud and rumbly. I like simple longarms that spit whispers of dark energy. No lazy tossing modern guns to them.

Who leads the party?

Alright, this has bothered me for a while. Who leads either political parties? Their highest level guy? So, is that executive or legislative? I know many people think that Bush or Obama lead their respective parties, but I don't see it. The idea that we need "leaders" is beyond me. We are a Republic, after all, we hire the guy to represent us for his term. If he doesn't do his job, we fire him at he end of this term.

This is hard to handle, as we want a scapegoat to blame when everything messes up. But why do we have to follow the leader? Is it just our human weakness? America might be better off if we stopped looking for leaders, and started doing things ourselves. If no one is going to fix social security, you need to start saving! If everyone did this instead of spending everything they make and then demanding a bailout, we wouldn't have an economic mess.

Americans caused the economic meltdown, the invasion of Iraq, and now try to blame it on Bush. Same goes for Obama too, he isn't the problem, he's just our stooge. All elected officials are, and the sooner we realize it, the better.

Wait, what?

Snicker

Look, this kind of thing is simply hilarious. When primitive screwballs used to talk like this, Westerners would snicker under their breath at them. But nowadays too many are willing to believe silly crap to justify the "victim hood" of a group of rather nasty individuals. To the point of magic disintegration bombs. Its truly laughable, as their are nasty weapons that actually exist which do far worse than "disintegrate".

Anime oddness

I noticed when watching Naruto Shippuden online how much power-levels switch in anime. This undead bruiser smashes a building and easily snares two decent soldiers (We've seen these two since day one) with freaky detachable fists. However, when they get rescued, he gets held off by a kid using basic martial arts. This kid isn't even a main character. He's one of those random uniformed ninja who usually die in five seconds.

This must have to do with anime villians obsession with looking weak and being strong. But its kind of jarring how the main characters seem to waste their magic on splashy effects, while some random kid holds off a guy twice his side with a few punches. The shift in power is just odd.

Robin Hood

Robin Hood stole from the rich, right? Well... technically. He didn't steal from shopkeepers all that often. He was most known for stealing tax money from greedy taxmen who took too much. In the day of his legend, the rich were the government. In addition to taking back peoples money from the government, he also stole the money the church gained by selling papers to forgive sin.

This may shock the people who hear that he "took from the rich to give to the poor". But Robin Hood took from a upper-class much different than those we have today. Lets face facts, he took from an overbearing government and gave money to taxpayers. The rich are no longer all lords and ladies in castles. Many are people who create wealth through ideas and inventions, or invest wealth into factories or stores. They didn't steal to get where they are. Sure, some just got lucky, but why get angry that they got a break?

Robin Hood was rich, after all. In fact, he was an aristocrat. But he didn't steal using government power. Government is always the real threat. It tries to blame the rich for its corrution, but it has all the real power.

Don't worry, the robots will pay!

Modern politicians have this idea that our grandchildren can pay for all of our wasteful spending. Now, from a certain point of view, this might make sense. After all, throughout human history, the next generation has had it better. But will this be true when social security goes bankrupt? When our energy policy is more about reducing carbon than supplying energy? When did we get the idea to screw over kids for our own comfort?

In certain science fiction, we start building AIs as smart as humans, basically, they are humanities children. When I see how we shovel responsibilities on future generations, it makes me realize how silly this is. No wonder Skynet blew up humanity. We chuck unwanted babies in garbage cans, pass the costs of our slovenly, greedy lives to our children, and whine about how hard life is.

However, not all of us do this. Many people don't want their children to pay for someone elses mistakes, and many parents will sacrifice to help children. Hopefully, this group will wrestle control back from society before the robots decide to chuck us in garbage mashers instead of working our debts off.

Silly lies

Obama will let the Bush tax cuts expire, but claims it isn't a tax hike. Sorry, but if taxes increase, its a tax hike. Then we get a 3.2 trillion budget, with increases for his favorite social programs. Now, to be fair, some of the savings he's trying to get are decent ideas. But the increased spending erases any savings, so whats really the point? Then theirs the fuzzy math on Iraq. His "savings" in Iraq assume spending 180 billion in Iraq every year till 2019, which was never going to happen, as even Bush's deal with the Iraqis had most resources out by 2012. So another silly lie.

I hope the economy recovers, even if Obama gets credit for it. But taxing energy companies for carbon, on top of the 35% corporate tax rate, is going to increase costs across the board. Energy makes everything more expensive. Families might weather it, because they can buy Chinese products made with cheap coal power, but increasing costs on Americas dwindling manufacturers seems like suicide.

Obama seems to think everything will work his way, magically. But he's kidding himself with his silly lies.