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| Monday, November 16th, 2009 | | 5:26 pm |
| | Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 | | 6:38 pm |
!!!!!!!BEST VIDEO GAMES EVER!!!!!!
Games are rated on fun, innovation, graphics and sounds, influence, etc. But mostly on fun. 10. Rock Band (Xbox360, PS2-3) - Rock Band is fun as hell. And four people can play at once. And there is plenty of good music on it. And tons of great music you can download. But the best thing about Rock Band is that the drums and the singing on it are decent simulations of real drumming and singing. (the guitar, however, is nothing like a real guitar) This type of interactive game is still in its infancy, I expect some great developments in this genre in the future. 9. Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kongquest (SNES) - Donkey Kong Country was a great game, and they somehow managed to top it with this sequal. This is a fantastic platformer, the levels are innovative and are constantly providing the player with new challenges. Also, this game is very hard, but is not impossible, which makes for rewarding gameplay. 8. Pokemon Red/Blue - This ends up as the lone RPG on the list, but that is because it is just fun as hell. Running around, catching pokemon, training pokemon, battling. When I first got this game I could not put it down. Literally. I took it in the bathroom with me when I had to shit. I had a chance to play through the new Pokemon game for DS, and that was really fun, mainly because they hardly varied the gameplay from the original at all. Having two games with all but like, 5, of the same pokemon is shady though. 7. Master Of Orion (PC, MAC) - This game is the pinnacle of turn based strategy, and is absolutely underrated. There are a bunch of alien races and humans, and they're fighting to control the galaxy. What could be better? But what is really great about this game is the gameplay has a certain simplicity to it, but still allows for plenty of tactical decision making. Turn based games have become increasingly complex and convoluted, often requiring you to micromanage the hell out of things: it can be very tedious. In this game, your colonies can each do about 5 things (build ships, build planet defenses, build factories, keep the planet clean, research new technology), but there is plenty of other fun facets to this game. Highly recommended. Downsides: The AI is not great, you need to identify a ship from a list as an anti-piracy measure. Also, I feel bad every time I attack someone and it tells me how many millions of people died in the bombing while the silly bomb sound effects play. 6. Street Figher II (SNES/Gen) - This really is the king of all fighting games. Each player has unique moves and a unique control interface. The characters are remarkably balanced (especial in editions like Turbo and Super Street Fighter II, which improve on the original) This is the first fun fighting game. But it is also still the most fun. Brilliant gameply. 5. Mario Kart: Double Dash (gamecube) - This game never gets old. I could play it all day and all night. It does a great job combining racing and combat. It also has a great blend of requiring skill and being absolutely chaotic and up to chance. (it reminds me of poker...also addictive) All the different items in this game make it especially fun. While this game can be maddening when blue shells won't leave you alone, or someone else hits the bomb-car and you get blown up, or Donkey Kong keeps knocking you off the bridge, this game is insanely fun. 4. Super Castlevania IV (SNES) - Great platformer. Running around killing mosters with a whip, what could be better? This game improves on the old NES Castlevania games, which were among the best of that console. It's challenging, lots of fun. But also a beautiful game. This was maybe the most visually artistic game ever when it came out, and the music is AMAZING. Also, this is the only Castlevana game where you can whip up. I don't get why you can't do that in the others. Lots of good Castlevania games out there, but I don't think they ever topped this one really. 3. Silent Hill 2 - This game is also really pretty. And it's really deep. But most importantly, it is TERRIFYING. I don't think any game can suck you into it's atmosphere as much as this. And it's not scary because of lots of cheap monster pop-outs, such are actually rare in this game. It's just reeeally creepy. It's got horrible sights, horrible sounds, horrible monsters, and even-more horrible mosters who rape the horrible monsters. The only drawback is that the gameplay isn't much to write home about. When I played this with Lisa, who knows it backwards and forward, I often gave up the controls to her because I was sick of getting killed, or running out of bullets, or what have you. But a few of the times I was just really scared and wanted someone else to play. 2. Starcraft (PC) - In my opinion this is the kind of realtime strategy. The playable races are all unique and well balanced. This story is pretty fun. The gameplay is simly fantastic...there's just a ton of strategy in this game. I also like that you can have half a million units at a time...I was dissapointed in Blizzard's subsequent Warcraft 3, when I found out you could only have like five units at a time. In South Korea Starcraft matches among experts are treated sort of like star athletes are here. They've got the right idea. 1. Super Mario Bros 3 (NES) - What else? Well, I guess it could have been Tetris. Tetris is great and gets an honorable mention. | | Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 | | 9:49 pm |
| | Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 | | 3:23 pm |
Best Mario Kart Games
1. Mario Kart: Double Dash (Gamecube) 2. Mario Kart (SNES) 3. Mario Kart wii 4. Mario Kart DS 5. Mario Kart 64 6. Mario Kart super circuit (Game boy advance...I've actually never played this one, but I'm assuming the others are better) | | 3:21 pm |
| | Monday, November 2nd, 2009 | | 1:54 pm |
Alice in chains/Jerry Cantrell album rankings
1. Dirt 2. Jar of Flies (would be #1 if it were not an EP) 3. Face Lift 4. Self titled (dog album) 5. Black Gives Way to Blue (I've decided that the best song on this album is "Private Hell" 6. Boggy Depot (I do need to listen to this again, and "My Song" is probably better than any track on the album) 7. Degradation Trip Degradation trip still has it's moments. The strongest of which are "Anger Rising" and "Psychotic Break" Psychotic Break: <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value=" http://www.youtube.com/v/sFRrqbXJtBM&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src=" http://www.youtube.com/v/sFRrqbXJtBM&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object> | | 1:00 pm |
Nadav, Palin agrees with you (around the 2:00 mark)...now having an idiot agree with you usually does not defeat a position....but Palin is wrong 100% of the time. Krugman explains why its rubbish. Palin should signal to sane people that the most compelling political objective is to make sure that republicans are never in control of the government again. | | Sunday, October 18th, 2009 | | 8:33 pm |
new AIC
I mostly agree with what others have said about the album. One thing I should add...It's really weird for a band to go from a bunch of songs which are all like "I'm miserable and on so many drugs...O Yeah!" to songs which are like "You were miserable and on so many drugs...O YEAH..." | | Tuesday, October 6th, 2009 | | 9:52 pm |
| | Sunday, October 4th, 2009 | | 2:36 pm |
Why economsts lean libertarian
"If economists wished to study the horse, they wouldn´t go and look at horses. They´d sit in their studies and say to themselves, "what would I do if I were a horse?"" ~ Ely Devons | | Wednesday, September 30th, 2009 | | 12:50 pm |
limits on freedom of contract
There are some good reasons to restrict contracts freely entered into by parties. Absent a good reason of course, parties should be able to contract into whatever they want. Now, the beauty of the contract is that parties can exchange promises, and if one party performs and the other party does not, the government (or in Nadav's world the mercenaries) step in and grant relief so as to make the wronged party in the position they would have been in had the other side performed. (to the extent they can, of course) Capitalism works in places where there is a functional government and fails where there is not.I should also point out that if parties want to they can contract out of the legal system.If parties specify in a contract that disputes will be settled by binding private arbitration or mediation, the courts will generally not interfere with the decision of the private tribunal without any evidence of foul play. I think such agreements are dubious, because contracts can be used for all sorts of shenanigans. Example: when you bought a cell phone, you contracted out of the legal system. You don't remember?!? Didn't you read the entire contract? Arbitrators are supposed to be neutral and independent, but I think realistically you have pretty crappy chances for judicial independence when the judges are paid by one of the parties, who is a repeat player. Anyway, such agreements to contract out of the legal system are generally upheld. On to administrative clarity...one day in contracts class I asked my professor why parties in Illinois couldn't make a contract and agree that it will be governed by New York Law. My professor, who was not the kind of professor who people generally asked questions to and was a very business only kind of guy, said "well, if you want to get philosophical, at some point freedom of contract is overridden by administrative clarity. He further explained that since contract law was already complicated enough, parties at some point have to stick to certain rules and terms in order to be able to resolve disputes. There is a cost to dealing with these matters and at some point you just need to make people follow certain procedures to make legal and administrative costs manageable. Contract law is very complicated. Now you can say that it is only complicated because of law makers and lawyers making it so that there will always be business for lawyers, but that is not entirely correct. The world is just a complicated place, and most of the rules in place make a legal system more manageable. In 19th century France, Napoleon implemented the Code Napoleon, which was very short and simple. The idea was get rid of all these stupid fucking lawyers and judges. But situations often came up where it was not clear what should happen from the rules, So they ended up with more laws and more lawyers again. Now, the other reason that contracts should not be enforced is if they are unconscionable to a party with less sophistication or bargaining power. (The contract is raping somebody) Consider a contract where a poor person takes out a large loan with an adjustable rate, allows for garnishment of money, and also provides that bankruptcy law should not apply to debts incurred under the contract. A poor person, happy to get money now to finally pay off their bills and thangs, signs that contract. Should the whole thing be enforced? Absolutely not. If it was people would just be signing up to be indentured servants indefinitely. Similarly, the contracts these days where poor people end up paying 30% interest on money they owe to a bank after they couldn't make an earlier payment. That just shouldn't be allowed. Also if there is a big complicated insurance contract where it asks a million little questions and says the policy will be void if any information is wrong. (just a crazy hypothetical) The rules of contract interpretation should make it so that in such a situation a contract can only be voided if defects are material. (fortunately, I expect that to be the law soon) Closing, I will say that I think goods and services should be able to flow freely, when they are readily available. If you have a thing and you want to sell it and someone wants to buy it, that should be totally allowed. (few exceptions...don't sell booze to anyone younger than 8...) But when you are dealing with financial services like banking and insurance, there is a lot more room for shennanigans. Banking and insurance are both incredibly useful, but they are also dangerous, and they should regulated more heavily. | | Friday, September 25th, 2009 | | 12:51 pm |
| | Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009 | | 10:12 pm |
private sector does it cheaper?...Healthcare
So in the book Nadav is going to read, according to Wikipedia, the guy says that whatever is done by the public sector can be done much more efficiently (it will cost half as much!) by the private sector. Of course that doesn't always seem to be the case. Our mostly-private system in the US is way more inefficient than the socialized systems of everyone else. (Just so you don't think I'm making the numbers up.) A few things to note: 1. This shows that the idea of competition always driving down costs does not always play out in the real world. (But it's great for hypotheticals) 2. We're spending about twice as much per capita (and more as proportionate to our GDP) as France, UK, etc. The reason that private insurance companies need to make a profit. A public plan needs to figure out how to pay for healthcare delivered. Private companies have to make profits for its shareholders and so the executives of the company can figure out how to pay themselves exorbitant amounts in addition to pay for healthcare delivered...so it costs more. Remarkably, the market has not created a condition where companies undercut each other by limiting executive compensation. It should also be noted that administrative costs for medicare, vs. the private sector, are about five times higher in the private sector because of this. 3. It's silly to think the healthcare system in America is twice as good as the countries it pays twice as much as. For one thing, those other countries don't have 15% of the population with no insurance coverage. Also, the people in America who do have coverage often find out that their coverage doesn't cover what they need it to, or they get their policy voided after years of paying premiums because of an immaterial defect in the lengthy agreement. (didn't report that they had been treated for acne) That is why most bankruptcies in the US are linked to medical bills and most of those bankruptcies are by people who DO have health insurance. ( link) Probably why our system is ranked 37th in the world by the World Health Organization. 4. Also Nadav said in a comment (without explanation of course) that government red tape is why insurers don't want to cover people with pre-existing conditions. (or that its why they do it less or whatever). The main reason, of course, is that it is not profitable to cover these people. The cruelty of our system is that the people who need care the most is often those who will not be able to get it. (also evidenced by how people with no coverage cannot bargain for lower prices, so the poorest end up paying the highest prices. I recall Lisa (who I love and is great!) being charged 200$ for penicillin, which would cost an insurance provider 5$) They're SOL. Paul Krugman said that Liberal and Conservatives basically agree that there should be a free market, but Liberals want to sand the market's rough edges and Conservatives just believe time and chance happen, and that's it. This is a case where the morally correct thing to do, even if the insurance market were otherwise private, would be to regulate the reasons insurers can drop or deny someone. The public option seems to be on the ropes, but fortunately I expect the government will soon pass a rule preventing insurance companies from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions. | | Sunday, September 20th, 2009 | | 9:24 pm |
So I was driving today and heard thee new Alice in Chains single "Check my Brain" (it's up on their website). It's solid on first listen, as it is in keeping of their style of being heavy, melodic, and ominous, and it doesn't seem too redundant with their earlier stuff. I still say they should have changed their name. They could have changed it to NoodlePot. | | Wednesday, September 16th, 2009 | | 9:30 pm |
| | Friday, August 28th, 2009 | | 10:34 am |
| | Tuesday, August 18th, 2009 | | 12:29 pm |
| | Friday, August 7th, 2009 | | 11:41 pm |
I didn't realize this song was on Thriller...what an insanely good album | | 11:23 pm |
So I'm in the 215 until Tuesday, Tuesday or Wednesday I should get back to the 216, and then I will be in the 217 by the time classes start on 8-24. | | Sunday, July 26th, 2009 | | 11:44 pm |
Palin!
There is no particular abuse of context going on here...she really is that stupid. The Couric interview is especially great because Couric actually asked her follow up questions. |
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