A Meaningless Title

Tiny Country Recognised By Even Smaller Country

davidnewgreen@gmail.com — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 02:46:05 GMT

Nauru has become the fourth country to recognise the Republic of Abkhazia, and is apparently considering extending recognition to South Ossetia.

Presumably Nauru is hoping to get some sort of benifit from Russia in exchange for recognising the ex-Georgian republics - though I suspect any goodwill from Russia will be canceled out by Nauru's previous recognition of Kosovo.

Nauru is also one of the few countries to recognise Taiwan as the Republic of China over the People's Republic, so maybe they just like recognising largely unrecognised states.

One Step Forward and Two Steps Back

davidnewgreen@gmail.com — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 08:32:34 GMT

In positive news, the Federal government is looking into creating an R18+ rating for computer games, bringing game ratings in line with movies. Currently, games that would be rated higher than MA 15+ are refused classification, and thus effectively banned in Australia.

The government is seeking submissions from the public on the issue here.

Overshadowing that brief moment of progress, the government looks like it’s still soldering on with its net censorship plans. Communications minister Stephen conroy says that “about 15 western countries had encouraged or enforced internet filtering” as justification for this ridiculous idea – I’d be interested to see a list of these countries, and which ones are actually enforcing internet filtering. ‘Encouraging’ doesn’t mean anything; I have no problems with proposals for the government to offer free net-filtering software on an opt-in basis, but there’s a big difference between that and the black box censorship the government’s proposing.

Again, while the current state of the opposition is hilarious, we do kind of need a large party opposing some of the crap the government's trying to do. Unfortunately, this is just the sort of thing that's right up Abbot's alley.

EDIT: Not that online petitions ever do much good, but GetUp!'s got one against net censorship here.

Word of Advice to Borders:

davidnewgreen@gmail.com — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 06:49:21 GMT

Not that I'm in the target audience to either, but I'm not sure that devoting more shelf space to Sarah Palin's new book than you have to, say, Twilight was the best way of using space.

Naming a Planet "Pandora" is Just Asking For Trouble

davidnewgreen@gmail.com — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 04:43:51 GMT

So, is anyone actually looking forward to Avatar? There seems to be a massive hype machine going, but I’ve yet to encounter anyone with a more positive impression than “Meh, maybe I’ll see it.” I'm not saying it's going to flop, but it really doesn't seem to have caught anyone's attention.

It occurred to me watching the trailer that I’ve seen this movie before. Well, alright, everyone’s seen this movie before, it looks like your standard ‘evil exploiters vs noble savages’/’what these people need is a honky’ story. But what it specifically reminded me of was… Star Trek: Insurrection.

I think it’s a bad sign when your massively expensive high profile major movie seems to have little distinguishing it from the most forgettable of the Star Trek movies. And Insurrection at least had Picard, Worf and Data singing Gilbert and Sullivan, which is something I doubt Avatar includes.

I want to see one of these movies where the backward primitives are actually an advanced civilization themselves; they're just pulling a massive con game to play on people's sympathies while they get their own heavy equipment into position.

Nitpicking, I Know

davidnewgreen@gmail.com — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 15:36:48 GMT

From Obama's Nobel Prize acceptance speech - "...America has never fought a war against a democracy."

War of 1812?

As for the rest of the speech? Well, I'm guessing this is the first time a Peace Prize acceptance speech has included an explanation of why the recipient is morally justified in invading other countries.

Not Exactly James Bond

davidnewgreen@gmail.com — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 11:32:33 GMT

So, hey, remember back before the Iraq invasion how British intelligance was claiming that Iraq had WMDs that could be launched within fourty-five minutes? Well, it's now come out where they got that nugget of information from:

An Iraqi taxi driver was the source of the discredited claim that Saddam Hussein could unleash weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes, a Tory MP claimed today.

Adam Holloway, a defence specialist, said MI6 obtained the information indirectly from a taxi driver who had overheard two Iraqi military commanders talking about Saddam's weapons.
- The Guardian

Well, a taxi driver! Who could be skeptical of such a reliable source as that? As we all know, taxi drivers are the most trusted sources of information in modern society, renowned for their reliabilty and accuracy! One can assume other valuable intel that somehow didn't make it into MI6's report included evidence that immigrants should all go back where they came from, and a list of 'shortcuts' to every major landmark that inexplicably take longer than the normal route. The humanitarian case for the invasion was presumably also bolsterd by this MI6's source's long explanation of "You know what the problem with this country is, mate?"

Really, how could they have possibly known a taxi driver's second hand information could be unreliable? Who could have guessed?

Review: Where the Wild Things Are

davidnewgreen@gmail.com — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 10:59:01 GMT

I’ll admit, it’s been a while since I read the children’s book, but I remember it as being rather sombre but fun. The movie manages to be both depressing and loud. Not… not entirely what I was expecting.

Problems: Well, you’ve got the extended opening sequence in the real world. The problem here is that Max struck me as very unlikable and never gained my sympathy. I’m not criticising the actor who does a very good job – but the character, as portrayed on screen, is constantly either sulking or angry, generally for little or no reason. He’s furious when his sister’s friends destroy the igloo he’s built out of snow. Fair enough – except they didn’t destroy it out of spite, it was destroyed as collateral damage in a snowball fight he started, a snowball fight they happily joined in.

Now in the picture book, Max is sent to his bedroom as punishment, where he creates the land of the Wild Things out of his imagination. Here… here he runs away from home after his demanding “Feed me, woman!” and biting his mother (!) fail to get him the attention he feels he deserves, where he eventually stumbles across a boat that takes him to the Wild Thing’s land. The whole sequence leading up to the boat is where my tolerance of Max snapped; he comes across as completely out of control, violent, and possibly in need of actual psychological help.

To be fair, he’s a lot more likable once we actually get to the Wild Things, though he never really gains my sympathy. The Wild Things themselves – well, they look great, they sound and move fine, and their whole story starts off at ‘melancholy’ and then detours towards ‘utterly depressing’. See, the film at this point seems to be trying to address the trauma of growing up, of leaving the illusions of childhood behind. Max meets the Wild Things, talks his way into making him their king, and promises to solve their problems, create a world where nothing will go wrong and everyone will be happy forever.

And he fails miserably, is forced to admit he’s not a king, not an explorer, just a little kid, and eventually sails away. The best one can say for his attempts to make the Wild Things happy is that he tried. Now, alright, it’s all very well to have him grow into maturity, develop some level of empathy and recognise there’s no magic power he can use to make everything the way he wants it – but, damn, couldn’t we get at least some glimmer of hope here? In the end, we’re watching as a group of Wild Things stand on the shore, no happier than they were at the start of the film, mournfully making calls of goodbye as their ‘king’ leaves them, presumably never to return.

Part of the problem, I think, is that the film seems unclear what the Wild Things represent. Are they aspects of Max’s own personality, or are they his perception of the people in his life? The film seems to go back and forth, and never seems to reach a conclusion despite some ham-handedly obvious echoing of scenes from the ‘real world’ section of the film. Either way, they seem to be lacking the raw imaginative power of the Things the book’s Max conjures up; they seem too much representative of forces outside of Max’s control for his leaving them to really work – he’s not turning his back on his fantasy of power and unrestrained freedom to return to his home and mother, he’s abandoning lost souls after having demonstrated he has no power to help or comfort others.

It’s a clever film, and I think a great deal of it works well – but in the end, it seems to have no soul, and there’s no joy to be found among the Wild Things.

Boom-cha Meme

davidnewgreen@gmail.com — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 03:51:14 GMT

Because everyone else is doing it.

Leave me a comment saying "Boom-cha" and I will respond by asking you five questions that satisfy my curiosity. Update your journal with the answers to the questions, including this in the post.

Questions by sunnyskywalker

1. What do you think happened to Talia Winters? Did they really dissect her like Bester said, or was he just trying to rile them?

I always thought dissecting Talia seemed a bit of a waste of resources – even if Talia 2.0 couldn’t access Talia’s telekinetic powers, presumably she still has the ability and the priority should have been on getting it to work again so the Corps could study a living subject and telekinesis in action.

Then again, the alternate personality might not have been designed for long-term operation and might have shut down on its own – considering Talia 2.0’s subtle reaction to being exposed is to pull a weapon on Lyta in front of a half-dozen witnesses while bellowing Psi-Corps slogans, one kind of gets the impression it was a rush job and perhaps not too smart when left unattended.

Anyway, I’m an optimist, and I prefer to think that Talia survived somehow and was eventually restored. Bester might not even have been intentionally lying – he is somewhat out of the loop when it comes to some of the internal conspiracies in the Corps. Maybe Talia was transferred over to Bureau 13 with death and dissection as a cover story.

And I have – admittedly slim – evidence to support the theory that she was restored. Sleeping in Light, when everyone toasts to absent friends, Talia isn’t one of the dead characters named. Granted, neither is Lyta, but nobody was really close to her except Zack, and he’s not there. So I say, that proves it, obviously she wasn’t named because as of 2281, she’s not dead!

And I refuse to listen to any arguments to the contrary.

2. Tell me your thoughts on orcs, of any brand.

I’ve always had an affection for orcs, going back to when I was a kid and I used to collect Warhammer model soldiers. In the Warhammer game system, the Orc and Goblin army was one of the most unreliable, with special rules to represent the tendencies of orcs to fight among themselves rather than the enemy, the unreliability of most orc weapons, and the generally uncontrollable nature of an orc horde – Orc wizards sometimes overloaded their brains with too much magic and exploded, some of their special unit moved a random amount each turn. Fun army, very characterful, not very effective, but more fun to play than the disciplined, organised ranks of an elf or dwarf army.

One of the things I like about orcs is that they tend to fit into the pseudo-dark ages society most fantasy worlds are permanently stuck in a lot better than chivalrous knights or refined elves. Why’s Gorbad the Stabber the boss? Because he’s got an army of orcs behind him who beat the crap out of anyone who disagrees. What have you got to say to that, Mr. Rightful Heir, True King, Last of Your Ancient Line? Why are we at war with this kingdom? Are we reclaiming our ancestral lands? Are we fighting a last heroic stand against the forces of evil? No, but our soldiers are getting restless and they’ve got shiny things we want. It’s a bit more honest to just admit you rule by strength of arms and brutality, and more true to how most noble dynasties originally rose to power…

3. How did you get into vexillology? Was it just too cool a word?

Flags and coats of arms are one of those things I’ve always been interested in. Unfortunately, most countries to have gained independence in the last few decades have picked terrible flags. Bosnia’s flag seems to have been designed primarily to communicate “We really want EU membership!”. Kosovo stuck a map of their country on the flag, which seems to be missing the point of a flag as an iconic representation of the country. Montenegro just went with their coat of arms on a coloured background, which again seems to be missing the point of having a flag – a mistake a fair number of US State flags have also made. Eritrea just hurts my eyes to look at – I think it’s the red and green right next to each other. Turkmenistan stuck a strip of carpet on their flag, which, well, A-plus for creativity, minus several million for aesthetics, yes?

On the plus side, East Timor came up with a very nice and distinctive design, and most of the former Soviet Republics came up with interesting flags.

And, no, I’m not a fan of Australia’s current flag – looks like a colonial flag, and too similar to New Zealand. Unfortunately, I suspect an Australian Republic flag would be much worse; I’d like to see the Eureka flag chosen, but that’s probably got too much political baggage.

4. Besides Kirk and Spock, who learns Spock Prime's identity? Sarek? The Admiralty? No one?

I assume the Federation was kind of hush-hush about what happened in general – nobody wants to know they’re living in an alternate timeline, and you don’t want other governments trying to work out how to send their ships back in time – or how to make contact with their
counterparts in alternate realities.

I imagine Spock Prime would tell as few people as possible – he probably doesn’t want to be pestered every other week with Starfleet demands for information on future events. Sarek probably knows – hmm, and maybe Pike too. Spock was very loyal to the guy in the prime timeline, it makes sense that if he was going to contact anyone in Starfleet, it’d be him.

5. What is the coolest translation you've done in Greek?

One of the most fun was when we were assigned a passage from Aristophanes’ The Clouds. The point of the exercise, as the teacher explained afterwards, was to check how confident you were at translating when the correct translation produced sentences like “And then he took the flea and dipped its feet in wax. And so it had Persian slippers on its feet!” – the sort of result that makes it very easy to assume you must have screwed up somewhere…

Strike Me Down...

davidnewgreen@gmail.com — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:26:29 GMT

Have to admit, I was expecting Abbot to either win big or lose big in the Liberal leadership challenge; winning by a single vote with one absence and one abstaining vote means that it looks like the Liberal party’s not out of the woods yet. I’m not sure if we can expect to see Abbot last any longer than his predecessors.

A shame Turnbull’s gone, but this could work out for him in the long run. No matter who leads the party, there’s no chance of the Liberals winning the next election; Rudd’s still a very strong opponent, even if they weren’t torn apart by internal divisions. After the election, Turnbull will be in a good position to blame their inevitable defeat on their opposition to climate change and retake the position of opposition leader.

At least, I hope that’s what happens – I may not like Turnbul, but at least he wasn’t a climate change denier and seemed to be making at least some effort to move the Liberal party in the right direction. Abbot’s likely to swing the party back towards extreme social conservatism - if he cements his position as opposition leader, there’s nobody to restrain Labor’s own occasional flirtation with conservative social policy.

The sad thing is that Labor’s emission trading scheme isn’t actually very good, and its emission reduction targets are pathetically low. But it’s better than anything the climate sceptic wing of the Liberal part is ever going to support…

Meanwhile, Joe Hockey seems to have destroyed whatever support he had, having failed to remain loyal to anyone while also having failed to actually gain any support on his own.

I will admit to some level of amusment at seeing the Liberal still in total disarray, this long after the election, but it would be nice to have a functional opposition... The Greens, unfortunatly, don't have the numbers, and I don't trust Labor unopposed to do the right thing.

All That Glitters

davidnewgreen@gmail.com — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 05:01:41 GMT

Amused to notice while I was borwsing DVDs that the packaging for the 'deluxe' edition of Twilight actually sparkles.

(It might be threatening my reputation as a snarky critic to admit this, but I've got to say, the idea of vampires that sparkle in sunlight has never struck me as automatically absurd. Granted, Meyer doesn't really do anything interesting with the idea - and seems to forget she's established it occassionally - but the idea of vampires as modern fey, inhumanly attractive and alluring, doesn't strike me as that much of a departure from the basic concept...)

Review: Dragon Age

davidnewgreen@gmail.com — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 04:28:31 GMT

Dragon Age is obviously BioWare’s attempt to create a new fantasy game franchise that’s entirely owned by them and not bound to any licence, in the same way as Mass Effect is their original science-fiction franchise. They’ve been working on it and hyping it for some time, and clearly are treating this as one of their big prestige projects. Unfortunately, looking at what they’ve produced… Well, I’m still eagerly awaiting Mass Effect 2, but I suspect I’ll be skipping the next game in this series.

Gameplay wise, the game takes its lead from the Baldur’s Gate series; combat’s a lot more tactical than Mass Effect or the KotOR games. On the one hand that’s nice – it makes boss fights into more of a puzzle than a simple endurance game – but it also drags out every fight in the game, and there’s a lot of them. The game is hard – I ended up switching to easy mode after only a few early fights, and every battle seems to require extensive micromanagement of your team to win. The game seems to have borrowed not just the tactical aspects of Baldur’s Gate but its occasional total unfairness – one often finds dead end rooms filled with traps and dozens of enemy soldiers that seem to serve no purpose except to punish you for making a wrong turn. A great many fights are ambushes, and there’s no way to set a formation for your party to ensure that, for example, your mage isn’t left vulnerable at the back of the group.

Annoyingly, for a tactical game, the interface lacks a lot of the useful tools one would expect. There’s no way to set the game to auto-pause when one of your characters finishes casting a spell or is otherwise idle, for example. Equally annoying is that the game rarely gives you the information you need to properly weigh up your options. The Baldur’s Gate games were using the Dungeons and Dragons rules, and their spell descriptions were (I assume) taken directly from the pen and paper rulebooks, and thus told you exactly what they did in game terms. Here, Bioware is using their own rule system, and their descriptions tend to be vague at best. An example: the spell “Winter’s Grasp” is describes as “freezing lower-level targets solid. Those that resist suffer a penalty to movement speed.”. What’s a lower level target? Lower than your level? Lower than your spell power skill? Based on their total health? Based on their current health? How long do they stay frozen, and how much damage do they take? These are things you really need to know when you’re picking your spells, especially considering how unforgiving the game is at higher difficulty levels. It just gets frustrating after a while, trying to work out what’s a good pick and what’s a waste of a level.

Story and setting wise… well, for all that Bioware hyped the ‘dark fantasy’ aspects of the setting, a lot of it’s your bog-standard Tolkienesque fantasyland, with elves and dwarves and what may as well be orcs. The only real concessions to ‘darkness’ seem to be the use of the George Martin-esque spelling of ‘Sir’ as ‘Ser’ and that everyone has really grimy teeth. There’s some attempt at political intrigue to go with the standard evil invading army of evilness plot, but a lot of that fell flat to me… well, that’s not entirely fair. The political plot struck me as far more interesting than the supposed main plot, it just isn’t detailed enough. If the game had focused on that exclusively, I think I’d be a lot more impressed with it, but as it is it feels very disconnected from a lot of the rest of the game.

An additional annoyance – your own character seems to lack any real connection to the plot. I was very impressed with how much Commander Shepard in Mass Effect came across as a character in his/her own right; here the player character is far more of a blank slate, and it’s unclear why you’re even necessary. The plot makes a big deal about how you’re the last of the ~~Night Watch~~ Grey Wardens… but you’re not – Alistair, one of your companions is not only also a Warden but a more senior one. I’m not exactly seeing what unique skills my character was bringing to the party. It’s especially annoying since the special ‘origin’ stories/tutorials (five to choose from) all give your character a really interesting background and motivations… which rarely seem to come up in the main game, where quite often I felt more like the sidekick than the protagonist.

In general, the plot feels a little stretched out over too much game – I understand BioWare was hyping how big the game was, but a smaller more focused game would have been more enjoyable – the dwarven section is particularly irritating. It starts off very entertaining, with you having to choose between two Dwarven nobles, getting involved in their politics. It ends pretty well, with a particularly unnerving boss and a difficult moral decision, and then the crowning of the new dwarven king. And in between… in between is level after level of near-identical ~~orc~~ darkspawn infested tunnels, with little of interest. The same goes for the Mages tower, which is probably about twice as big as it needs to be.

It’s a shame, because the characters of the story are entertaining and consistently well-written, and I enjoyed unlocking their stories. I particularly liked Alistair – BioWare seemes to have finally worked out how to write interesting male characters; hopefully we’ll see no more Carths or Kaidans. But they’re not enough to make up for a generally unfocused story, tedious combat and a less than original setting. In the end, while it had its moments, too much of Dragon Age felt more like a chore to get through than entertainment.

And where the hell are all the dragons?! I encountered, like, two total, and one was completely optional.

Minor notes:
- If you’re wondering, I found ‘Cone of Cold’ to be one of the more consistently useful spells. Most of the others either didn’t do much damage, or had special effects that most tough enemies were immune to.

- Don’t bother with lock picking; there’s barely anything of use in locked chests. I do actually like that, for once, you get most of your useful equipment through merchants rather than loot – but if all I’m finding is junk I’m going to sell, why not just make it coins to start off with? Save a little hassle.

- Make sure you complete the quest to get the dog as early as possible. It’s very easy to hit the point of no return and permanently screw yourself out of having a doggie.

- Annoyance: trying out the various origin stories and fiddling with the character creation tools, I created a black character to play through the human noble story - where I found my character's entire extended family were white. Surely it's not that hard to set certain NPCs to have whatever skin and hair color were picked for the player character? Fallout did it.

- What’s the deal with the DLC that comes free with the game? Why not just put it on the disk? It’s not an anti-piracy measure, or at least it’s not an effective one, since anyone with a pirate copy could just download pirated DLC.
And having a character give you a quest you can only complete with downloadable content you need to purchase is just unconscionable. The game isn’t exactly cheap new; there don’t need to be advertisements in it.

Tell Me This Isn't a Brilliant Idea!

davidnewgreen@gmail.com — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 03:05:38 GMT

Saw a poster for the new uncanny valley inducing Christmas Carol movie, which baffles me both because it looks utterly horrifying, but also because do we really need another Christmas Carol movie? The definitive version was the Muppet version, and I don't see anyone improving on it any time soon.

And that reminded me of one of my recurring brilliant ideas: There should be Muppet versions of every movie! It should be like how in classical Athens, you had to write a Satyr play to be performed alongside a tragedy, if you make a movie you should have to also write a Muppet version of it!

I Am Incapable of Managing My Own Life

davidnewgreen@gmail.com — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:02:06 GMT

After working myself into a fever over honors applications and trying to work out why I kept getting automated rejections every time I applied for a post-graduate study unit, I actually looked at my academic history record... and realised I still haven't completed enough units to finish my undergraduate degree.

I guess that makes working out what to do with myself next year a lot easier...

Review: Before Dishonor

davidnewgreen@gmail.com — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:04:10 GMT

I stopped reading Star Trek novels a while back, when they seemed to abandon standalone stories in favour of an increasingly byzantine continuity with seemingly endless crossovers and a galaxy spanning crisis every other month. I’d heard they’d killed off Captain Janeway a while back, but I’d largely forgotten about it until jedinic mentioned it in passing a few days ago. In the interests of getting some idea just what the hell’s been going on since I stopped reading, I thought I’d track down a copy of the relevant book myself – Peter David’s 'Before Dishonour', and see how her death was handled.

The answer? Badly, but no more so than anything else in this train-wreck of a book. Where to begin? Well, there’s the problems inherent in setting a TNG novel after Nemesis – Riker and Troi are off on their own ship and Data’s dead. I’ve got nothing against LaForge and Dr. Crusher, but there’s a real shortage of major characters when they're the most important ones left after Picard. Here, the author pads the cast out a bit by giving major roles to Seven of Nine and Spock. You might ask what role Ambassador Spock could play in a TNG novel about a Borg invasion, and the answer is… well, not a lot. I’m assuming the author just likes Spock – fair enough – but never seems to come up with a reason for him to be present.

I’m sure a decent author could tell a great story about the post-Nemesis Enterprise – but this isn’t it. There’s a bunch of new characters filling in the gaps in the crew – apparently they were introduced in previous TNG novels – but Peter David gives us no reason to like or accept them, culminating in a ludicrous plot where they try and take over the ship from Picard after disagreeing with his decision to ignore Starfleet orders. Again, handled well, this could be an interesting idea – Picard is, after all, not entirely without biases when it comes to the Borg, and in First Contact it did take an outsider, Lily Sloane, to make him see that – but it’s not handled with any subtlety here at all. Peter David has a problem, both here and in his other novels, in that he seems unable to portray opponents of the heroes as anything but bumbling incompetents. Besides, let’s face it – if you have a dilemma and Picard’s on one side, Spock’s backing him up, and the opposition is entirely people we’ve never seen before… well, it’s pretty obvious who the author wants you to side with.

Then again, even the canon characters are pretty poorly characterised; I get the impression David hasn’t actually seen much Voyager, and he seems to be writing Seven as Data. Worf’s a one dimensional caricature, and Picard is lacking any real depth. Besides poor characterisation, the tone of the book is oddly discordant – on the one hand, the narration is trying to convey a sense of imminent doom, while on the other hand, every other character is cracking jokes. The fact that very few of the jokes work doesn’t help –in particular here’s one recurring joke about a gift shop that seems to be lacking a punchline.

As for the plot – well, apparently a previous TNG novel had a Borg ship, cut off from the collective due to the events of the Voyager finale, enter Federation space. Picard stopped it, shutting it down before the ship could generate a new Queen. This book picks up from there, with Janeway heading out to investigate the ‘dead’ cube – which, of course, turns out to be not quite dead yet. The cube assimilates Janeway, uses her as its new Queen, and then starts heading for Earth, absorbing everything in its path.

There’s the beginning of a good idea here, with some early scenes indicating that the Cube itself is as much a Borg as the drones are. You could use that idea and the Cube’s isolation from the Collective as an excuse to return the Borg to what they were in their first appearance – no Queen, no Locutus, maybe even no assimilation; just this implacable mechanical force wandering space. That would certainly be more interesting that what we get, which is Queen Janeway cackling like a b-movie villain while – of all things – discussing her options with a drone ‘second’. I’m almost convinced the whole story is some sort of stealth parody of how the Borg concept has been misused and wasted over the years.

Then, just in case you weren’t already lost by this story being a sequel to a recent TNG novel, the book turns out to also be a sequel to David’s 1991 TNG novel “Vendetta”. Now, let’s be fair – David used to be a damn good writer and Vendetta is one of his best. That’s kind of the problem – this book’s bad enough on its own, and referencing his previous work just serves to remind the reader that he can write the TNG crew well, he can write tense, exciting stories with the Borg – that hell, he used to be able to pull off a story like “The Doomsday Machine vs. The Borg” without it seeming absurd. Here, not so much, and it doesn’t help that his ‘sequel’ contradicts his earlier work in several places – it’s bad enough he’s having trouble writing canon characters and concepts well, but when it’s his own creations he’s having trouble with it’s just pathetic.

As for Janeway – well, she spends most of the book as an assimilated Borg Queen. As Queen, her powers seem vague and her motivations unclear – somehow, Spock mind-melding with Seven at Vulcan is something she’s aware of, and causes her to attack Earth – which she promises to spare if Picard and Seven are turned over to her. In general, the book seems unsure if she’s been possessed by the personality of the normal Borg Queen or if her actions are being influenced by the darker side of Janeway’s own personality. Considering how often assimilated Janeway gets a chapter or two to deliver exposition – one particularly odd scene has the female Q from “The Q and the Grey” appearing in the Cube for seemingly no reason other than to give Janeway an audience – you’d think her motivations would be somewhat less murky, but like I said, the characterisations tend to be so bad it’s impossible to discern anything.

And then she gets killed when Seven of Nine delivers the anti-Borg software puzzle from “I, Borg” into the collective. Why the assimilated Janeway is destroyed by this while Seven survives – despite the novel mentioning several times before that it would be a suicide mission – isn’t explained. Then again, the next scene has Janeway being guided to the afterlife by the female Q, so coherency and explanations have largely been abandoned by this point in the novel.

Now, personally, I rather fell if you’re going to kill off a captain, you should do it in their own continuity, not as part of someone else’s novel. You probably shouldn’t have them spend practically the entire book as a villain either. Then again, I might be willing to be more charitable if any of this was at all well written – Peter David has been a decent author in the past, which makes this so baffling in its lack of quality. It reads like a first draft written by someone with only the most minimal knowledge of Star Trek or its characters.

The Very Rare Reverse-Godwin

davidnewgreen@gmail.com — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 13:24:53 GMT

There has been fiery debate in (West Australian) State Parliament over the government's legislation proposing greater stop and search powers for police, with comparisons made to Nazi Germany.
- 'Hitler cited over stop and search laws', ABC News

Well, I guess the debate must have gotten pretty heated for someone opposed to the laws to bring up Hitler-

Last night Liberal backbencher Peter Abetz spoke in support of the legislation and used the example of Hitler... He said the dictator gained support because he provided people security in a time of anarchy.

Huh. Did he... Was he... Wait, what? He's arguing in favor of the laws by saying that passing them will make the WA Liberals like Hitler? That's a... creative choice of examples.

Crappy Week

davidnewgreen@gmail.com — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 05:56:29 GMT

If you’re wondering why I haven’t posted in a while, it’s because I’ve been having a shit of a few weeks.

My grandfather died last week, so that’s been a stressful time. Funeral was Friday. I don’t begrudge others the comfort of familiar ritual – but the whole emphasis of the service was, to me, absurd. I’m not religious, neither is my mother, and listening to a priest babble on about faith in Christ means nothing to us. It was a nice enough service – but the religious elements seemed out of place. My aunt’s very religious, and she organised the service – but my grandfather himself wasn’t a religious man, and it felt to me a divisive choice. On the other hand, my mother was in no state to make the arrangements, and the priest seemed nice enough…

Meanwhile, it was my twenty-fifth birthday on Wednesday, so that was something of a sombre affair. And, just in general, I’ve been struck with a sense of ennui. I mean, bloody hell, I’m twenty-five, an adult. Shouldn’t I be doing something with my life? Shouldn’t I have made some friends since high school, developed some relationships, have some idea what the hell I want to do with my life?

I’ve got to get an honours proposal in soon if I want to do that next year, and I can’t think of anything I want to spend a year researching or writing about – and I know doing honours would just be a way of delaying actually thinking about what I want my life to be for another year.

And then, just in case I haven’t been in a crappy enough mood already, we’re going into the heat of summer. Thankfully, the air conditioning is working – because nothing else is. Found out my DVD player has died on me when I decided to take my mind off things by sitting back and watching something, and the internet connection keeps failing – ISP say they’re ‘aware’ of the problem... It's trival, but it's still a constant annoyance when I want to relax.

Don’t like to rant, but, hell, this sort of crap’s what Livejournal’s for, right? And it’s oddly cathartic to post things like this to a global audience.

If you’ve actually bother reading this – and I don’t blame you if you didn’t – here’s a picture of my cat, wrapped up as a bunch of flowers, as a reward.

...Either That, Or Wider Awareness of Eid

davidnewgreen@gmail.com — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 08:09:47 GMT

Not that I'm a fan of more Americanisation of our culture, but I always kind of wish Halloween had taken off a bit more here. Not for its own sake, just because hopefully an easily merchandisable holiday around this time of year would at least delay the Christmas decorations and music going up until, say, mid-November...

Why is Christmas unique among major holidays for having god-awful music, anyway? "Away in a Manger" alone is enought to make me avoid public places for the last quarter of the year.

Schadenfreude

davidnewgreen@gmail.com — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:43:03 GMT

Is it wrong that my first reaction to seeing people complain about Hulu going to a subscription model is to laugh at their disapointment?

Perhaps if their content had ever been viewable outside the US, I'd feel differently...

Farewell, Geocities

davidnewgreen@gmail.com — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 05:48:23 GMT

It’s been a while since I actually visited a site hosted on Geocities, but I still feel kind of sad that it’s gone. Granted, the sites on it were generally crap, filled with animated gifs, under construction signs and inexplicable lists of people’s CD collections – still, at the time it was really exciting to be able to set up your own website, put your own content out there where anyone could see it – even if the chances of anyone actually stumbling across it was slim to none.

I first used my username to set up a geocities account – admittedly, I never really got around to making a site and mainly used the account to just store images I wanted to link to on message boards. Still, just having the option of being able to create a free website was something that really brought home the potential of the web – which, at the time, was still struggling to justify its existence in the public mind.

I remember reading someone pointing out that the 1990s and twenty-first century could become something of a dark age for future historians; sure, everything’s being recorded somewhere online, but how long is any of it going to last? Geocities being shut down just brings home the ephemeral nature of content on the web; granted, maybe there’s not much value in preserving ten thousand ‘Joe’s Cool Site’ award gifs and non-functional webrings – still, it’s a whole section of online history that’s gone now, and I can’t help feeling that’s something of a shame.

Rereading B5 Books - "Clark's Law"

davidnewgreen@gmail.com — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:01:56 GMT

Well, this was a nice change from the general low quality of the first three Dell B5 novels. I suspect Clarke’s Law was the first of the novels to be written by someone who had actually seen episodes of the series, and it references the existing continuity very well. The story is clearly set in the wake of the fall of the Narn homeworld, and there are references to plenty of other episodes from the end of season two – a brief appearance by Lyta Alexander, a mention of Dr. Franklin still being haunted by the recent death of the Markab, a Vir storyline that’s clearly intended to follow on directly from his attempt to apologise to G’Kar. It’s a welcome change from the earlier novels, which were all rather awkwardly placed in points in the show’s timeline the authors were clearly unfamiliar with.

To summarise the plot, leaving out a lot of subplots and minor details – A recently arrived alien delegate has murdered a human while in a maddened state. President Clark recently reintroduced the death penalty for murder, and, of course, doesn’t want to look weak on crime or to let an alien get away with murdering a human. The problem is the alien first wasn’t in her right mind when she killed the human, and has since suffered brain damage due to vacuum exposure, and cannot be considered responsible – indeed, her own people now consider her to be a new individual. Sheridan tries to prevent the execution while avoiding openly opposing Clark, eventually faking the alien’s execution. The apparent failure of the courts to prevent the execution of an innocent leads to a riot on the station between anti-death penalty and anti-alien mobs in which several people die, while the demonstration of the new tough on crime policy shores up Clark’s position on Earth.

There’s some interesting characterisation of Sheridan here. I suspect this is the first novel written by an author familiar with the character, so that on its own is nice. But specifically, I think the author is taking his cues largely from “In the Shadow of Z’ha’dum”, which portrays Sheridan as a far more ambiguous figure than most of the rest of the show – and to me, as a more interesting character. The Sheridan shown here is someone disgusted with his government, with his situation – and also a little disgusted with himself, with what he has to do while walking the tightrope of avoiding direct confrontation with Clark or the Shadows while still trying to work against them. There’s also the subtle theme that Sheridan could be susceptible to Shadow influence under the right circumstances, that he's someone who won’t necessarily do the honest thing first off, but will instead try to manipulate and use people to get what he thinks is right. It’s a very interesting take on the character, and I think it does work in the story, and I think the tension between Sheridan’s obvious frustrations with having to solve problems using the same covert manipulative style as Clarke and his apparent willingness to still grit his teeth and do such things, even knowing there could be unexpected fallout on innocents, is one of the real strengths of the novel.

There are weaknesses in the story, though, particularly in the portrayals of G’Kar and Londo. Londo is a little too much of a straight villain here, lacking any of the complexity or internal conflict that he has on the show. Here, we have Londo casually contacting Morden to have G’Kar killed as part of a complicated plan that is not only out of character, but doesn’t seem to make much sense on its own either. It’s nice to see an author that’s noticed that Londo has moved beyond the simple comic relief role of early season one by this point in the series, but here it’s taken too far to the other extreme.

G’Kar meanwhile… well, the alien delegation in this story? They’re from one of the worlds conquered by the Narn regime, who only managed to regain independence after the fall of the Narn homeworld, and they’re on the station looking for foreign help in repairing the damage caused by the Narn occupation. That’s all well and good, and it’s nice to see consequences of the collapse of Narn power. The problem is that the book also includes a flashback to the conquest of the alien homeworld – a conquest in which G’Kar led the Narn forces, destroying their capital from orbit before landing and blaming the devastation on the Centauri, tricking the aliens into allying with Narn, an alliance that would result in a generation of brutal enslavement. Now, sure, G’Kar’s probably got a few skeletons in his closet – but portraying him as someone guilty of crimes as great or greater than Londo’s and portraying the Narn Regime as literally just as bad as the Centauri… no, that just plain doesn’t work with the characters portrayed on screen.

That’s really the problem with the novel. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a real cut above what’s come before (damning with faint praise), well written with interesting ideas and some interesting examinations of aspects of the series and characters left untouched by the show itself. On the other hand, that makes the occasional missteps just that much more glaring. Not just when it comes to characterisation, either – the book’s generally very good with series continuity and bringing in minor characters, but then there’s a couple of inexplicable errors, like asserting that Lyta is deaf or that the Centauri Emperor is called “Narleeth Jarn”. Even more bizarre is a minor character introduced in the prologue who returns in an epilogue… and for some reason now has a completely different name. I’m beginning to think these books didn’t just not have a good editor – I’m thinking they didn’t have one at all.

KotOR 2 Restored

davidnewgreen@gmail.com — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:13:26 GMT

So, the KotOR 2 Restored Content mod came out a while back, and I’ve finally had a chance to play through the game with it installed. It’s well worth checking out – there’s a few bugs here and there, but it adds back in a lot of stuff that was cut from the game before release. Most significantly, it adds in the HK-50 Droid Factory and as a result the confrontation between Goto and the Remote now actually has a conclusion. There’s also now a lot more bits of dialogue on Malachor V that make the end game feel… well, less unfinished. Plus there are a fair number of other little bits added to the rest of the game.

Of course, it’s still not perfect – the mod team have done a great job, but they’re limited by what resources they have, and a lot of the ‘missing’ content just didn’t exist in the first place. The game was really rushed out the door, and I’m not sure if the designers had ever worked out how the final sections of the game were meant to work. As it is, even with everything added back in, the last few areas of the game are still obviously unfinished compared to, say, the Nar Shadaar section.

Then again, I’ve always felt the increasingly unfinished feel of the game from the return to Dantooine onwards actually sort of works in terms of the story. The game’s story is essentially entirely the relationship between Kreia and the Exile, and it seems to me unintientionally inappropriate that once Kreia leaves the party, the next few sections of the game are so brief and seem so disjointed – defeating Nihilus doesn’t matter, saving the Repubic doesn’t matter to the Exile any more, they’re just delays on the way to confronting Kreia one last time. The tragedy, of course, is that the Exile and Kreia can never face one another as equals, only as deceiver and deceived, betrayer and betrayed… and in the end, as slayer and slain.

Random observation: I’ve always thought it odd that the official position is that Revan was male and returned to the light side, when KotOR 2 by default assumes the opposite on both. Certainly, KotOR 2’s storyline with the Jedi dead and the Republic on the edge of collapse make far more sense if you assume the first game ended with the Dark Side ending. Revan’s gender has les s impact, though if you have her as a woman, there are some lines of dialogue in the sequel that due to the ambiguity of pronouns could be referring to either Revan or Kreia, which I find adds a little interest to things.

On the Subject of Heresy...

davidnewgreen@gmail.com — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 06:00:37 GMT

"Marc Grizzard, of Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton, North Carolina, says that the first King James translation of the Bible is the only true declaration of God’s word, and that all others are “satanic”. Pastor Grizzard and 14 other members of the church plan to burn copies of the other “perversions” of Scripture on Halloween, 31 October."

- The Telegraph, 'North Carolina church plans Halloween Bible burning'

Ah, nothing like a good old-fasioned Halloween Bible-Burning to encourage people to join your church!

Are there any other translations of the Bible that attract fundamentalists in the same way as the King James? I can understand why people would choose to elevate the KJV above all other translations - it's got the authoritative weight of being old along with the more important weight of sounding very old - but you think occassionally you'd hear about crackpots that have developed an obsession with some other version. Is there, for example, a specific German translation that tends to be at the centre of nutty interpretations?

Rereading B5 Books - "Blood Oath"

davidnewgreen@gmail.com — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 06:17:03 GMT

Three books in to the Dell series, and we’re already seeing the same author again. I realise media tie-in novels aren’t that prestigious, but surely it’s not that hard to scrounge up three different authors?

On the plus side, Vornholt’s writing has improved somewhat since ‘Voices’. If nothing else, he’s learned to hold back on the exclamation points! Which is a nice change! Admittedly, I suspect most of the improvement has more to do with Vornholt having more time to write the story than he did with ‘Voices’ – both of the first two Babylon 5 novels were riddled with editing errors and ‘Voices’ in particular felt like it could have done with a couple extra drafts.

‘Blood Oath’ doesn’t have the problem the first two novels had of being a little too disconnected from the interesting parts of the B5 setting; most of the novel is set on the Narn homeworld and the main character is G’Kar. That’s right – G’Kar gets to be on the cover and in the novel itself! Seriously, though, it’s nice to get some descriptions of the Narn homeworld and society; the series itself never visited Narn until after the Centauri bombardment and even then only briefly, and besides some details on Narn religion we never really got much context into how the Narn regime was organised.

There are some details of Vornholt’s interpretation of the Narn that I’d quibble with, but most of what he comes up with works fairly well in the context of the series. Narn does seem to have an excess of un’necessary apost’rophes, but that’s a problem with the series as well, so I’ll let it go.

The downside is while the worldbuilding is fairly well done, the actual story is a mess. Basic outline: The relatives of G’Kar’s old rival Du’rog (mentioned in “The Parliament of Dreams”) have organised another assassination attempt against him. G’Kar responds by faking his own death and going undercover to the Narn homeworld to try and resolve the situation. Alright, that’s a good story, and G’Kar having to deal with the fallout from his more ruthless past ties in nicely with his character growth in season two.

The problem, unfortunately, is that this isn’t just a G’Kar story. Now, I don’t know if Vornholt was told he had to have a human protagonist or just didn’t feel up to writing a story entirely about Narn characters, but for whatever reason, Ivanova and Garibaldi end up on the Narn homeworld for most of the story too. Theoretically they’re there for G’Kar’s memorial service – Earth apparently doesn’t have an embassy on Narn – but that excuse gets mentioned maybe twice. Garibaldi – yes, this is the third book of three where he’s a main character – seems to be mainly interested in investigating G’Kar’s ‘death’. Ivanova… doesn’t seem to have any reason to be in the book in the first place.

And that’s really the problem with the book. I’d have expected the main problem with someone writing a G’Kar focused story in early season two would be that they’d paint him as a straight villain, ignoring his development since the start of season one. Vornholt manages to avoid this, but seems to then go too far the other way; G’Kar himself is reasonably well characterised, but his relationships with other characters are completely off – human characters treat him as a trusted ally and long-time friend. If I didn’t know when this was written, I’d assume Vornholt was thinking of G’Kar in the late fourth or fifth season. Garibaldi in season two, though, does not consider G’Kar a friend. He’s not going to like someone successfully assassinating someone on his station, but once he finds out G’Kar isn’t dead – and he does, before even reaching Narn – he’s not going to go out of his way to help him.

Oh, and there’s also a third human character, a trader who lives on Narn who tags along with Ivanova and Garibaldi for no clearly explained reason – Garibaldi agrees to this, because Michael Garibaldi is practically defined by his trusting nature, right? He does nothing of interest for the entire story and feels rather like someone’s Mary Sue that’s been stripped of all their Sue-ish qualities, reducing them to the blandest most useless character ever. I have no idea what he’s doing in the story other than irritating me.

On the plus side, the book does give Na’toth a big role, so that’s always nice.

Toil and Trouble

davidnewgreen@gmail.com — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 10:14:43 GMT

Handy hint: The opportunity to take a unit on the history of witchcraft should not be passed up. Not only is it a facinating area, but it also gives you one of the few legtimate excuses to use the phrases "malevolent sorcery", "the infamous Maleus Maleficarum" AND "blasphemous parody" all in the one essay!

You've Got To Be Kidding

davidnewgreen@gmail.com — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 10:01:47 GMT

Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize

Seriously, what has he done to earn the honour? "Extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples"? What efforts? I mean, yes, he's made some nice speeches here and there, and he's not actively hindering diplomacy like his predesessor - but nothing I'd class as 'extraordinary', and his primary focus seems to have been on domestic issues.

I mean, alright, I've never been onboard with the Obama hype, but please, can anyone point to something he's done that justifies this award?

(My choice? I was betting on Morgan Tsvangirai)