Chinese Used Video Game to Train Policemen?

According to the bastion of VERY UNBIASED news, the state-run People's Daily Online, it seems policemen used the video game Counter-Strike to improve their counter-terrorism tactics. According to this article,

Keyboards ready, headphones on, Chinese police moved in for the kill.

More than 300 police officers in China's northern port city Tianjin were "mobilized" to an Internet cafe Wednesday for a three-day competition of the terrorism-themed computer game Counter-Strike.

I want to stop you and have you think about that first sentence there. This really seems to convey the fact that the police want to shoot first and ask questions later. The police officers whose keyboards were "ready" and whose headphones were "on" are all about firing indiscriminately at anyone who looks like a terrorist. I have an inkling that Chinese police are more likely to square off against their own citizens rather than Islamic-looking terrorists. Just a thought.

Also, let's be serious here. Counter-Strike just isn't a realistic game. You don't have to shoot someone twelve times with a Glock to be able to put them down. Also, things usually blow up a lot more devastatingly if you throw a HE grenade at it. And I'm pretty sure you can't jump down two flights of stairs in real life without injuring your leg. This article is so propagandized that it becomes absolutely laughable. Yes, folks, brace yourself for the Chinese police, they have military training FROM A VIDEO GAME. THEY ARE ABSOLUTELY UNSTOPPABLE NOW.

Here's another snippet from further down the article:

Counter-Strike, played by hundreds of thousands of gamers worldwide, is a tactical first-person shooter video game and features real-world weapons.

This is an argument ad populum because it implies that it's a really good tool for law enforcement because it's been "played by hundreds of thousands of gamers worldwide". This article is correct that it features real-world weapons, but these guns don't do real-world damage. And I'm pretty sure that Chinese police officers don't run around with Desert Eagles or akimbo Beretta M92FS pistols.

And in the next paragraph, it just keeps getting better (emphasis added):

Han Zhen, a tactical instructor of Tianjin police, found the game very helpful. "Given its close resemblance to real-life scenarios, the game greatly enhances the terrorism awareness of our officers," the five-year veteran gamer said. "And it is very important as terrorism has become a global issue.

Um, first, I'd like to point out that take issue with the fact that there's no closing quotes on the last sentence of that paragraph. Apparently the People's Daily Online doesn't care very much about copy editing their great works of journalism. I also think it's funny that they keep repeating that it's realistic. They're playing themselves if they think that you can't potentially die from one bullet. And I don't see why terrorism being global necessitates the police to play video games. It's not a very well-thought-out idea.

And even the ending to this article is made of fail:

During the competition, a panel of referees were introduced to ensure no cheating, such as "peeking".

"In actual situations, you have no way to peek at the terrorists' position," Han, the instructor, said.

O RLY. You had referees. That's super. I bet that happens in real life terrorism scenarios too, right? A super high-tech way of preventing the police from screen-cheating.

By the way, if this post didn't convince you that Counter-Strike isn't like real life, maybe this picture might help:

Counter-Strike Source: Because Chinese policemen might have to defend against terrorists trying to blow up a European castle.

Rasterbating for Fun and Pleasure

The Rasterbator is a cool piece of software that is totally free to use! According to the website, http://homokaasu.org/rasterbator/:

The Rasterbator creates huge, rasterized images from any picture. Upload an image, print the resulting multi-page pdf file and assemble the pages into extremely cool looking poster up to 20 meters in size.

I used their standalone software that I could install it on my computer rather than opting for the online interface. I don't think there's any difference in quality whether you want to use their online or offline Rasterbator.

I wanted to Rasterbate this image to create a large poster for my room:

This was the result. I had to cut it in half so that I could actually open my closet. I also had to use scissors to cut off the margins, because my laser printer won't print borderless images. Please enjoy:

Pokémon Nostalgia

I was the biggest Pokémon fan back in the good old days. My earliest memory about this game dates back to when I was six years old and playing AYSO soccer when I used to live in the San Fernando Valley. I remember I was chilling out at some benches after a game and some kids were playing Pokémon. I thought it was the coolest thing in the world and couldn't stop thinking about it. I finally got my opportunity to play this game for myself when my parents bought me a Game Boy so I wouldn't be bored when I went up to my grandparents' house near Sacramento, CA. I remember playing the game nonstop for the entire drive up and being so engrossed in the game; it was one of the most exciting experiences I can remember. Part of why it was so exciting was because there was some epic weather happening on the I-5 freeway and it was raining pretty hard while I was playing the game. This ambience must have contributed to my sense of excitement and wonder about Pokémon. At the same time, I began to watch the Pokémon animated series on UPN-13 during the week before I would get driven to school. Then I would wake up at 6:00 and watch several hours of cartoons on KTLA-5 during the weekend. I remember Pokémon was the most hyped show on the entire block of cartoons and came on at 9:30 AM. I used to go to school, go to an after-school program on the campus, do all my homework, get driven home, eat dinner, and then play Pokémon or some computer game for the rest of the night until I fell asleep. It was an obsession. That was nearly all I talked about with my friends for a couple of years (from age six to nine or ten). So naturally hearing these clips on YouTube of the epic Pokémon music from the original Red/Blue/Yellow gave me the chills and filled me with nostalgia. I thought i might share some of these clips with you, and what these clips make me remember.

This is the bike theme. It's a really short, catchy tune that stuck in my head as a kid. Hearing this clip reminded me of the fact that I would always make the bicycle my first item in the trainers' backpack.I could press start, down, down, A, A, and I would get on the bicycle and be on my merry way.


This is, of course, the Pokémon battle theme, played on a piano. There are some mistakes on here, but you get the idea. The piano is making it sound pretty epic, I gotta say.


This was the music that played when you're just starting with your quest. It's really a nice tune that makes you want to continue playing the game. Route 1 is the route between Pallet Town and Viridian City, if I'm not mistaken. This is where you encounter your first wild Pokémon, such as Pidgey and Rattata.


I hoped you enjoyed this trip back in time as much as I did.

Album Review: Elect the Dead - Serj Tankian

After having seen this YouTube performance by Serj Tankian and the Auckland Philharmonic Orchestra (watch in 1080p!) of the song, I thought I discuss a little about why I think this is a great album. Released in 2007, this album was undoubtedly a political statement by Tankian (in the vein of one of his influences, Frank Zappa). It came at a very interesting time in U.S. politics, when Iraq was rapidly disintegrating due to sectarian/insurgent violence, and when many of the problems that are being "dealt with" right now began to take shape in the political arena. The idea that Bush was leaving office was taking root in my mind, and in the minds of others I'd imagine. On one level, this album approaches the subject of politics by citing specific examples of where the government has done wrong. Tankian actively campaigns for the U.S. to recognize the Armenian genocide; it's something he's been doing for practically as long as he's been famous. When it comes to this album's title track and first single, "Empty Walls", you'd be right if you thought that the song was some kind of political statement making use of metaphorical walls as boundaries in society, and that they were "empty" and contained no real justification for their use of force (being a wall). It's not that complicated, and although I mangled it trying to explain it just now, I think the average person can infer from the title that it's at least vaguely political-sounding. The next track, "The Unthinking Majority" (also a single), is even more blatant about its political implications. Serj attacks corrupt politicians and the pharmaceutical industry's grip on society through anti-depressants and the like. Overall, Serj seems to attack passivity in politics most of all in this song. He clearly desires for people to be educated and make informed political decisions.

But I don't think we can do this album justice if we don't discuss the musical content. Some reviews I've read about this album mention that it's a slightly different twist on System of a Down's clichéd lyrics about how the political system is corrupt. I should point out that it's clear that these critics we have in mind have a dearth of appreciation for SOAD. My firm belief is that it is not possible to extrapolate what System's all about from just listening to their #1 hit singles as some kind of gospel. I would get the same impression that these critics obviously did about SOAD if all I did was listen to "Toxicity", "Chop Suey", "Lonely Day", and "Innervision". An appreciation of System can't really be outlined (that would be pretty pretentious of me, wouldn't it?), but it certainly needs to be cultivated from close listening to their lyrics and instrumentation. So the point is that it's not really fair to just cast off Elect the Dead as a mere rehashing of a contrived political statement from some former band without discussing any of the musical elements present in the album. So I, with my somewhat limited knowledge of music theory, will attempt to discuss some of the more interesting things Tankian has done with the instrumentation.

Initially note that this is an album that is best listened to from beginning to end. Having done so a few times, I think that Tankian does a good job of staying contained and coherent by employing a sort of theme-and-variations with a particular set of chords on the piano. This begins with a full instrumental flush in the song, "The Unthinking Majority" during the intro and bridge, if I'm not mistaken. As the listener progresses through the album, same-sounding chords on the piano are heard in the introductions of some of the later tracks (Sky is Over, Honking Antelope, Elect the Dead). I think this both blurs the lines between the tracks and simultaneously ties them together. It blurs the lines because similar-sounding phrases in are used in the introductions of four of the tracks, which kind of makes you wonder which song you're actually listening to if you hear it come on, let's say, on shuffle. It also ties the tracks together by virtue of being similar-sounding. From this understanding we can see now that all of the songs that have these variations on that one initial chord have relatively more political commentary than the rest of the songs. I don't know if this is a coincidence, so I'm going to go ahead and say, "no, it's not".*

Also, you have got to give credit to Serj for his amazing vocal versatility. He can belt out rock-opera-esque verses, hitting all the high notes. At the same time, his voice sounds great over a flurry of detuned, distorted guitar and some drums and bass. As the video at the beginning might illustrate, he's not that bad of a singer over a classical orchestra either.

By the way, here's a link so you can download this album and rock out to it. I paid for it, but it's your choice!
Note: I just linked to the first RapidShare I could of this album... I haven't tried it out for myself so for all I know it could have a virus or something. Probably nothing to worry about.

* There are some good piano arrangements on YouTube of many of Tankian's songs, if you're interested in seeing to which chord(s?) I'm referring.

Need an Example of Good Hip-Hop?

My friend Nathan (aka Zolem) just told me about a solid mixtape called "Breaks 'em Down, Volume 2". It features a full hour and change of DJ Premier beats mixed by DJ Crates. Here's the link:

Rapidshare link

Some Old Stuff

I used to play a Japanese 2-D top-down bullet hell game (danmaku) called Touhou. I thought I might dig up a couple remixes by enthusiasts of the game. They made some interesting Flash music videos (just like Deltron did several years earlier) that have now been ported to YouTube for your convenience. Forgive me if this is a huge shift away from hip-hop music; it's just that I had some different musical tastes in 2006/2007 compared to today...

IOSYS - 患部で止まってすぐ溶ける　～ 狂気の優曇華院


IOSYS - 魔理沙は大変なものを盗んでいきました


Cis-Trance - ポイズンボディ ～ Forsaken Doll(MAKINA MIX). Yeah this isn't IOSYS but it's just another example of a Touhou remix to which I frequently listened.


Next update: hopefully some political commentary...

Interesting YouTube Clip

What is the "meaning" of this clip? Why are the comments disabled? To me, this video's kinda artsy, as if there is some kind of deeper meaning that is not 100% apparent to me.

A Few IRL Updates

I'm still experimenting with what I want to put on this blog with regard to content. I thought I might want to just list some things that have been going on in my life.

I have been reading Plato's Republic in my philosophy class and have had some interesting discussions in class. I'm going to start reading Hobbes' Leviathan and writing a paper on something interesting I noticed in the Republic. I don't know exactly what I will write, but hopefully I'll have more insight on this later.

I've been going over different sorting algorithms in my CS class using Java. Cool stuff.

A group of three White male (Pomona?) college students tried to pull a prank on me early Tuesday morning by opening my dorm room door and causing a ruckus, ostensibly to wake me up. I'm fairly confident this was just a random act of stupidity by some drunk students but I still thought it was a dumb thing to do, not to mention that I was awake and reading in my room at the time of the incident. I proceeded to put some shoes on and follow these fellows in an attempt to confront them, but the cowards had fled (I'm making an educated guess here) down the dorm stairs on the southwest side of the building and out into the courtyard. I then walked around for about ten minutes and, having found no trace of the offenders, went back to my room and fell asleep shortly thereafter.

I've been playing a fair amount of Call of Duty: MW2. I am of the opinion that the functionality of the Multiplayer part of the game is woefully inadequate, because one cannot access a list of servers and then determine which one to play based on relevant information (ping, number of players in the room, type of game). Instead, there's just a message that asks what game type one would like to play (DM, domination, CTF, FFA, etc) and then one is automatically matched. There are three main problems with this setup:

1. You can't know if you're playing on a server that has been illegally modified and contains hackers that will level you up to level 70 when you shoot them. This happened to me around 2/1/10 and Infinity Ward/Steam failed to detect this. I have heard that some hacks allow an opponent to reduce one's level back to 1 if one kills that opponent.

2. You can't play on a favorite server. That means that no clans can have public servers.

3. You can't browse a list of servers and choose one to play. This cripples the functionality of the Multiplayer aspect of the game. What if I want to play Rust on TDM? I can't select which map I want to play, only game type. It doesn't help that many of their maps suck and you have no choice in the matter when the program automatically chooses a server for you.

I would like to see this game more integrated with Steam so that it uses their implementation of the server list.

Memes Explained: "599 US Dollars"

So I thought I might harken back to an old meme supposedly originating on /v/. Techology correspondents, geeky bloggers, and Apple fanboys eagerly anticipated the launch of the then-super-secret iPad back in January. Now apparently Apple execs have expressed the possibility that prices could be cut in anticipation of poor sales due to the, ahem, *premium* prices. To elaborate: you get the 16-gig with no 3G for $499 and a 64-gig with 3G for $829. Personally I think not having 3G with a device like that is really crippling to all the applications (like email) that constantly get updates from the Internet, but I'm getting off track here.

The history of the "599 USD" meme can be summarized by discussing one event in particular that was markedly similar to the launch of the iPad: the launch of the PS3. It was, of course, eagerly anticipated. But another similarity was that people were a bit tweaked by how much they were trying to charge. This led to the creation of the "599 USD" meme on the Internet (specifically /v/, if I UD.com is true). I presume that there was a thread mocking the price of the PS3 versus that of the Xbox 360 (this is from my limited experience surfing that board--it's usually a bunch of troll threads about how one console is DA BEST!1). This presumably led to a posting of the video, whereupon the character of the person speaking on behalf of Sony, Kaz Harai, was thoroughly denegrated for "the lulz".

And this YouTube clip followed:



Then this one:



This is the best one though by far because it's a sick tune:



So there you have it. I wonder if there will be a revival of the "599 US dollars" meme couched in terms of the iPad? Perhaps not, because the Apple launch was trying to be way more serious than Kaz Harai was trying to act on stage.

My Top Ten Hip-Hop Artists

Note: this list includes groups as well as individuals and is in no particular order. I also wrote this very quickly and there's a possibility I'm leaving someone out.

1. Nas
2. Digable Planets
3. KRS-One
4. Wu-Tang Clan
5. Jeru the Damaja
6. A Tribe Called Quest
7. De La Soul
8. Del the Funky Homosapien
9. Dr. Dre
10.Big L

Coming soon... top ten hip-hop producers.

More Content for Today

My view on science is similar to Dawkins':



4:20 post...

Sarah Palin 2012: The Craze Continues

I think that this Sarah Palin stuff has gotten way out of hand. I, like most liberals, hoped she'd quietly walk away from the loss in 2008 and stay out of the spotlight she never really deserved in the first place. It is abundantly obvious that she would be incapable of being President, let alone Vice President. I am going to list some examples that illustrate my point, just to make it abundantly clear that it is not, as Republicans like to say, "just a theory," and that this is somehow different from absolute truth. Oh yeah, and I'm not even going to discuss the allegations brought forth by either Levi Johnston or author John Heilemann because Levi is a pretty big tool and because I haven't read "Game Change" yet. I'm gonna try to get on that. Without further ado, here's the examples:

Here's a recent clip of Glenn Beck interviewing Sarah Palin. To put it lightly, she mangles the answer. I like how obvious it is that she's stalling for time trying to think of anyone to name and then finally she's all, "GEORGE WASHINGTON LULZ". This isn't, by far, the worst of the examples, just a more recent one that proves, if anything, that she's still currently made of fail (this one's for all the Palin apologists who claim that she's somehow more intelligent/informed now than during the campaign). Sorry for the low quality and the Glenn Beck prattling there at the end. I didn't edit this video.



Next of course are a few clips from the now-infamous Couric and Gibson interviews:



Okay, so hopefully these clips illustrate her lack of knowledge of basic US and world history, not to mention her dogmatism and ignorance. But don't let it seem like I'm singling her out her here. I know that most politicians are a far cry from scholars, but Palin has demonstrated that she knows so little about politics that the average American gets a kick out of seeing her try to talk about it.

But here's what grinds my gears. Instead of disappearing, Palin writes a book and gets millions of dollars from all the stupid people who were stupid enough to read it. At the time, I thought that the publishing of this book was an obvious stunt and a huge attempt at getting some money out of "the base." Yeah, it was a dirty thing to do, but it didn't really surprise me any.

Now, Sarah Palin is a correspondent for Faux News, and recently spoke at an astroturf Tea Party organization that is trying to make it appear as though there is not a gigantic rift between Tea Party supporters and the Republican party agenda. Now she says she won't rule out running against Obama in 2012.

Let's cut right to the heart of what's been bothering me this whole time: WHY is this woman still around? If the American public has shown repeatedly that they find her unfavorable (as evidenced by countless polls conducted since the last election), why are all the large media outlets finding this so important as to put it on the "top stories" section of their websites (and thus Google News)? Why does it matter what this unintelligent bozo who was soundly whipped in the last election has to say with regard to politics? So, why can't Sarah Palin just fade into the background?

My conclusion: The reason is because Fox News and the Republicans insist on continuing to use her as a figurehead for the conservative political machine. I can only guess the implications surrounding this decision, but I think that campaigners are looking to wage more attacks of the personal and illogical kind rather than tout her non-existent qualifications. She's unlike Octomom (in that she won't fade away) because she is continuing to be manipulated as an icon by the GOP.

New Blog

Well, I have started a blog. In this post I will discuss a bit about who I am and what I aim to write in this spot. To avoid rambling, I'll just say that I'm a student at Pomona College in Claremont, California. I'm studying, among other things, Politics, Philosophy, Economics, and Computer Science. I'm hoping to write:

• Philosophical questions I am pondering
• What's going on in politics
  
• California SB420/P215/H&S11362.5 (medical cannabis legal analysis and commentary)
  
• Public transportation in Los Angeles
• Commentary on new electronic gadetry
• A section where I call out people (Christian Conservative right-wingers and religious freaks) for using dumb arguments based on logical fallacy

Whoops. I haven't done any of this stuff. Well, you'll see. Just read on.
And there will probably some more random stuff in addition to those things. I will be looking at comments and replying to them if I have time and if I'm sure I'm not feeding a troll. I would like this blog to be as interactive as possible, where Internet users can express their feelings about certain issues and can either support or take issue with my reasoning and explain calmly why I'm wrong. Of course, this is the Internet, which we all know is not actually SERIOUS BUSINESS and a little humor is always appreciated.