Braid and Portal Are Freaking Amazing

This is a beautiful game. Screwed with me on many levels, but it was heavily enjoyable. I loved its world and its characters...it was also kind of sad. But it was good, and there's an actual lesson to be learned.



This game is also quite pretty. I'm hesitant to call it 'beautiful,' and I'm also hesitant to identify much of a real 'lesson,' or message, but it's a similarly brilliant puzzler-disguised-as-something-else kind of game.

Airships Involved

Nana got that song right, via e-mail. It's Jars of Clay's "Portrait of an Apology."

I finished my first book for a class, which was Graham Greene's The End of the Affair. I thoroughly enjoyed the book; its characterization was masterful and the story was told in a fun style, though I would very much hesitate to call it at all a "fun" story. I've got some less-fun reading to do this weekend, such as this guy named John Shea writing about spirituality and storytelling (what I've read of it isn't actually a bad book; I did a little reading before coming to school.) I also am starting to read Chesterton's The Ball and the Cross today. An airship is involved. Also, I have to do some math this weekend, or die, basically.

I really hope I get a guard-rail soon. I might just start sleeping on the loft anyway, as I'm sick of having this mattress on the floor and I sort of doubt I'm going to fall off of it. Plus, then I'd have room for this chair that apparently my parents have that I can have...or something like that.

I got to play some Smash Brothers last night, with my cousins and then with some college people. That was pretty fun. I plan on visiting with some people tonight and maybe playing Capture the Flag. If I do CTF, it's going to be one of those massive campus-wide events. I'm really not sure how badly I want to play CTF, especially in that massive format, and I think the answer might be "not as badly as I thought I might want to earlier."

Also, I'm going clubbing next weekend with some people. Hopefully there will be straight people and good music there, but the likelihood of getting both may be low, especially given that we're in the under-21 crowd. :/ Oh well. It'll be fun anyway.

Lastly, here's a song I worked on before the start of the school year called "Something Ventured." Let me know what you guys think--constructive criticism is definitely welcome.

Playing Games in Spanish

So some of you may know that partly in preparation for Mexico I've been running things in Spanish. This means my G-Mail account is set to run in Spanish, so while the e-mails are English, the interface isn't. Which is good. I'm also running a strategy game, The Battle for Wesnoth in Spanish instead of English. It's got a fantasy theme so the usefulness of the vocabulary may be debatable. Still, anything helps, I say. The screenshot above is an orc talking about the player's troops...in Spanish. This is great. What makes it even better is that some of the dialogue's untranslated, so the characters speak Spanish, then English, then Spanish again. Quite humorous.

The translation: Look! I see a boat! Humans are coming! We can squash them! (I actually had to look up aplastarlos, the word which translated as "squash them."

Click on it to get a larger (more readable) version.

Tetris Attack for the WIN

So, anyone in the family who remembers how we used to rock at Tetris Attack, I present to you this clip. It isn't Tetris Attack; it's what Tetris Attack was in Japan before it got the Yoshi theme put on it for American shores (for the record the title of this game is Panel de Pon, but gameplay-wise it's exactly the same. And the people playing it are...amazing, to say the least. I recomment watching at least two minutes of this to get the idea of how awesome these people are. I'm pretty sure they'd beat me into the ground any day.

Finals Are Over

Hooray. Also, there's a game now in development which looks to be an awesome piece of freeware, entitled The Underside. It's sort of like Cave Story (which is a game pretty much anyone reading this could play, and their kids could play it too in my opinion.) However it plays a bit differently, despite stylistic similarities, and emits a much quirkier and offbeat sort of atmosphere. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing. Here's a trailer video from the author, courtesy of YouTube:



Enjoy.

New Cards! and Some Other Things

After failing to get new cards out last week, and the week before, I have two new cards. You'll notice I've put them up a day early. Consider them as covering the last two weeks. I'm going to try and see if I can't get another one or two out tomorrow. Today there's an Issues in Practice card and an Events in History card.

Hope you enjoy those. In other news, school is going well, but I am sick, somewhat. I am happy because I got to see some Smash Brothers action yesterday and will probably get to do some more today. I think my Marth play is getting better and I'm branching out into using Yoshi, because it's really not good for me to be specializing in just one character and their moves and whatnot; I should probably have at least two or three that I'm using; hence I am branching out some starting majorly with Yoshi. On the academic front I also need to start on Math today and get some laundry done today or tomorrow. I got my first Number Theory assignment back yesterday and I got about a midrange B, which is fine by me. I haven't gotten the one after back yet, but I'm enjoying the class even though it's quite challenging. So socially and academically things are going fairly decent, although physically I could be a bit better.

So.

So, summary.

Since I got here, I've...

* Been to each class at least once.
* Had exactly two class periods cancelled due to snow/ice.
* Gotten a taste of how bad 18 credits is going to be.
* Hung out with people.
* Gone to Mass/Bible study.
* Noted just how much my roommate Tyler procrastinates.

So, classes.

Modern Western Civilization

The professor is going to be fairly solid. The class on the whole should also be fairly solid. What I will probably enjoy least will be the textbook, for the reason that, well, I'm not going to be exceptionally interested in the material coming in. But I did get to pick the history I would take, and I did pick this, so I can't complain too much.

Linear Algebra

Easier than Discrete Math by a bit, and definitely easier than Number Theory. Right now we're mostly dealing with matrices and related subjects, so it'll require further examination. I had problems staying awake last Friday and am (successfully as of today's period) combatting this by the same method I am using in Augustine of Hippo. The professor, who I also had for Discrete Math, is solid, so learning stuff in this course shouldn't be a problem if I apply myself.

Augustine of Hippo

Confession: I've slept twice in the three periods of this course I've had. Not a good sign, but I plan on combatting it short-term with caffeine and long-term with a bit more sleep. That strategy, by the way, actually worked today. Pun: Unintentional, but I'm not going to change it just because it's an unintentional pun. Class Itself: Should be fun and interesting to learn about Augustine. The professor (same one I had for church history last semester and who is the theology advisor) is going to be solid.

Responding to God

I actually met the prof for this class at the theology-major party and she's awesome. It's going to be fun stuff, although I'm going to have to find time for five instances of an assigned weekly spiritual practice, which could be troublesome, because I also have to find enough time to do said practice for roughly fifteen minutes in a minimally distracted and minimally interrupted space. However the class should be an overall good and interesting experience as it seems to be taking a more experiential approach to learning.

Philosophy of Religion

This should be fun. The professor I know to be solid given my Intro to Philosophy course a few years ago. The material also interests me and I hope to be challenged

Number Theory

Will be fun, but boy is it going to be tough. I have a bunch of proofs due tomorrow, essentially. Not that I didn't do any this weekend, but I should've done more. To illustrate how this class could be, here's a picture that my roommate took of me while I was thinking about one of the proofs:



It's really not that bad and according to the professor (who I am also predicting will be solid) the homework sizes will go down, but the picture was genuinely taken while I was thinking about the math homework.

So, socializing.

General Entertainment and Gaming

Played games (video, like Super Smash Brothers and SoulCalibur II) with friends and with my roommate. Played pool with a couple of friends, too. Generally hung out. Watched some of The Office including the excellent two or three episode arc that ties like half the series' "through lines" or overarching stories together. Also, on SoulCalibur II, I think the plan is that Tyler and I will be playing at least a few matches a week (not necessarily a few times a week, but it might go in in leiu of other procrastination tools like The Office on a given night. Eventually we hope to actually get better at playing the game. It'll be fun because we're fairly evenly matched at it.

Other

I've had the chance to talk theology / random life things / philosophy with people some this semester which of course has been loads of fun. I haven't had quite the two-or-three hour discussions yet but I've at least heard a few peoples' funny stories, which is always good.

So, religion.

Bible Study and Mass

Um, well, I went to CHUBS (Christie Hall Bible Study) last week; that was about it for Bible Study. Also, if you didn't know what the U stands for, 'tis a marketing thing: "It's because we want you there!" is the line used.

I also went to mass (Christie Hall Mass and Chapel of Christ the Teacher both Sunday nights) and I'm doing hall mass again tonight.

The Christian Theology Board Game

This is my sort of independent project which is designed to be a quasi-educational board game about Christian theology. I haven't done enough work in the last two weeks as evidenced by the lack of new cards on Sundays. However I intend to pick up the pace and start doing them again by next Sunday. If I can get enough done then I can take a weekend (perhaps with some help from my closest on-campus collaborators) to put together an actual copy of the game, and soon after to test it out. The Advisor (the theology prof) said he'd be willing to test it with us which could make for great fun.

So, conclusion.

That's pretty much everything that's been up with me lately. Good day and God bless, all. Also, Tyler is procrastinating like mad right now, not that being on Facebook is helping him any.

My Mother, the Gamer

To this day, my Mom has logged over sixty hours of playtime with Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. It's kind of funny, because she used to talk about hating the traditional RPGs. (She did however play through The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, in fact finishing it before I did.) I know it's not totally traditional, but it's enough to make me laugh a bit. Sixty hours. For the record, I think that comes to over twice my playtime on that game. Unfortunately my Gamecube is having trouble right now, which is a bit of a shame because she's on the last boss--just that close to beating the whole game. It's not guaranteed to work or not to work, is the thing. In other game-related news, I did a bit of research and found out Tales of Symphonia is in the "Used" stage. Hopefully I'll be able to find it somewhere, and hopefully the Cube's not totally busted by that time. At the very least I hope my Mom can finish Paper Mario before that happens.

The Coffee Trilogy is Complete

Okay, it seems that we are finally clear on the responsibilities of the parties involved in the Hot Coffee scandal. Michael Millar noted the fact that things are “eliminated” from games in a fashion similar to the “coffee scene” elimination more often than we think. In another conversation, he had informed me that apparently Rockstar was legally required to release ratings-concerned information to the ESRB. Those of you who know Michael know he knows his stuff when it comes to games; knowing that he was probably right I checked out the ESRB’s web site for myself, and found the following in their FAQs regarding their ratings:

“Every publisher of a game rated by the ESRB is legally bound to disclose all pertinent content when submitting the game for an ESRB rating.”

I believe we can safely presume that the “Coffee” scene is pertinent; in the least, it is now. Now if it was not considered to be “pertinent” at the time that the game received its first rating, then perhaps Rockstar is not guilty of any goof-up. If it is perfectly legit for Rockstar to “remove” the content in this matter, then if you ask me neither Rockstar nor the ESRB actually did anything legally wrong. Morality’s still in the equation, there, though.

However, if whatever is on a disc can be considered pertinent—as seems to be the case here—Rockstar did goof up, in which case they really did have the AO rating coming. But I do have to say I admire their willingness to cooperate and, at least now, to truly eliminate the “hot coffee” from the game. I say that this can be safely considered pertinent, because the actions the ESRB is now taking are, at least in terms of its FAQs, noted as actions to be taken when the publisher fails to reveal certain pieces of information.

The last three posts have been a total learning experience for me. Many valid points have come up with regards to the fairness of the rating system with relation to both Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and God of War. (They haven’t been mentioned here; they are given brief mention in the ESRB interview that Wygal linked to.) For your convenience, since the URL is visually cut off in his comment and I’m not sure why it all copied, the website’s total, I will give you this link to the website. Anyway, for me the issue is pretty much resolved. Rockstar and the ESRB have done what they can. Hilary can back off of the issue; she really shouldn’t be getting in on it now if she wasn’t in on it when GTA first fanned the flames of controversy. kokosmasher proposed to me that perhaps she’s running for election. Anyone scared by that possibility?

Now I go on to happier things, like random comments made by youth pastors. I made a brief mention of a problem regarding predestination in another post, which Matt Prior, my current youth pastor, made a comment on: “Predestination, are you a predestined predestinationist?”

I suppose if you were one who believed in predestination (either a Calvinist or a determinist of some kind) you would have to believe that you were at least in some sense predestined to believe in predestination. I came up with an interesting thought the other day: “I’m trying to decide if I should be a determinist.” Of course I realize now a funnier thought would be: “I’m trying to decide whether I have a choice.”

One last note: Note that kokosmasher and I discussed how we would address this. It involves on of the comments made on the last post. Humorous comments are welcome, and light innuendo should be fine, but innuendo which involves God is something we at The Ongoing Saga would rather not have posted in comments on the blog. Thanks for understanding. As to the morality of those comments outside of the blog...I don't think I really know yet.

("One Last Note" Paragraph updated at 5:06 PM.)

Coming from this issue: Does anyone have an opinion about how the appropriateness of a joke such as mine or in fact Bobby's might change depending upon the situation and the group that one is with?

Anyone have an opinion on the ESRB's respective ratings of GTA and GoW?

More Hot Coffee

Hey! A new commentator! Awesome. In response to the last post about the Hot Coffee issue with Rockstar and the ESRB, high.as.a.kite responded: "It was, in fact, a MOD that needed to be downloaded to open this file in the game. Further more, the ESRB is given the code of the game. For all of the people that will be reading this htat don't know what I mean, the ESRB is given a paper that shows the internal make up of the game. It shows everything including a "sex scene" that is "locked"." (There will be more of high.as.a.kite's responses quoted later. His words will be in italics from here on out.)

This first peice of information has serious ethical implications. The question has now been raised: if the ESRB knows that there is something in a game not currently accessible, but which may later--and on a reasonably wide scale--become accessible, should they rate the game as if the content were readily accessible. I confess I was operating under the assumption that, for whatever reason, the ESRB had no knowledge of the Hot Coffee scene. If I may ask, high.as.a.kite (by the way, he's a friend from De La Salle North Catholic High School whom I will refer to for brevity as Wygal), are you positive that the ESRB was aware? Was the stuff shown to them purely in code form? I guess that perhaps seeing code, if they have someone who can read it, could show them what the scene was. I admit to wanting to protect the ESRB here much more than I want to protect Rockstar; one is a well-intentioned although oft-misguided agency; the other is a money-driven oft-misguided game company. Let us proceed to more of Wygal's commentary:

IN MY OPINION, and the most probable reasoning for this problem is that Rockstar created the scene as part of the original game. Then they realized that if this was part of the content then they would not get the M rating. So they locked the coding that contained the sex scene "Hot Coffee". The reason they would have locked it instead of deleting it is because a game that requires such an intrequite code would need a change that would be so drastic that it would require a whole deletion of a major section of the game' code. This would slow production and cause a later release date. When the ESRB was given the code I am sure that they knew it was there and that it was locked and I am sure that it was locked tightly. Then some pervert, computer nerd, that has no life, opened up the code and saw "Hot Coffee" a sex scene. To him it was gold. This problem is all because of some pervert that wanted to see sex and figured he would find it hidden in the code of a game that has lots of killing and cussing.

Interesting thought. I don't think, however, the responsibility for this is on the nerd. At least, not all of it. One could argue that the nerd was the one who unlocked it, but the question remains:

If we assume that Rockstar (as we have much reason to believe) knew what was on the disc, and that the ESRB (as we have been given some reason to think) knew what was on the disk, then should they be rating every little bit of the disc or simply that portion which is readily accessible? Obviously, if Rockstar believed that it was "locked tightly" enough, and it was enough to convince the ESRB, we might refutre the calls that the ESRB (and possibly even that Rockstar) screwed up here--given a situation like Rockstar's where they might not want something to be part of the game but at the same time not want to totally erase it, is it reasonable to expect it erased, or just tightly locked?

My question is (this is a conceptual question which it is unlikely we will be able to answer): If they can lock the code without compromising other parts of game code, why can't they delete it? How tied is this one scene to the rest of the game? I don't really know; perhaps it is tied together. I find myself thinking of the philosophical/theological implications of one event in our lives being predestined; that will be another topic for another post.

The one thing I am contending at this point: This is a very important ethical issue for game companies and the ESRB alike. We should study it further and come up with a more concrete rule of what, exactly, is fair game for the rating. If this was unlocked by some random nerd, was it locked tightly enough? If it had to be unlocked by some random nerd, should it be considered part of the game?

* Just a note to nerds who read my blog: I don't think you're all perverts. "Random nerd" and "the nerd" are just references to whoever did the unlocking.

-- One last note: Wygal wanted me to plug his blog--the first post has an important message for the DLSNCHS
Class of '05.

EDIT (added at 5:15 PM): Oh yes. On the University of Portland track of things, I got my first philosophy paper back. A red, circled A was on the cover. It felt awesome.

Blog Updates, I'm Up Late

Blog update! The color scheme has changed. Everybody, kokosmasher included (especially kokosmasher), let me know how it looks; if you like it generally but could suggest changing just one thing, tell me that, too.

* Note: If you have children reading over your shoulder who don't need exposure to mature subjects, don't click on the links in this article. This post itself is, however, fairly discrete.

So Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas recently had its rating bumped up from M (17+) to AO (which is basically the NC-17 of video games.) Why, you ask?

Apparently Rockstar put something in there that deserves an AO rating--something that happens onscreen, which had to be blurred when VH1's Best Week Ever ran their commentary on it. Best Week Ever's commentary was actually quite amusing; catch a reshow of that this week if you can, there are some other funny things in it as well.

Well, you might ask how on earth this slipped past the ESRB. It's not often a game this big gets rerated after it's been released. The thing is, this secret "scene" is unlocked with a special code. I have heard rumors that you need to download some patch or other, or whatever. But the fact remains that the scene is ON the GTA: SA disc when it comes. This scene -is- part of the game, just like any other secret code or Easter egg, no matter what you have to do to unlock it. Read the 1up.com story here.

Links leading from a different (but in my opinion related story) lead to one quip by a gaming magazine editor pondering exactly why it is this "Hot Coffee" scandal that pushed things over the edge, as opposed to the violence already rampant in San Andreas.

Of course, given that such a huge game had to be rerated, some critics are saying now that the ESRB is not enough, or isn't doing enough, or whatever else. To that I answer with a big, huge honkin': What on earth? Really, this is not the fault of the ESRB, especially if there was some modding needed to get to this extra scene. How can you blame the ESRB for not rating something that A) wasn't exactly the most readily accessible material in the game B) Rockstar conveniently neglected to mention? You could argue it's their job--but is it their job to track down modding tools to uncover every single bit of a game, to check every little corner of the disc for foul play, whether or not that corner is normally accessible? I'd say that's putting a bit too much of a burden on the ESRB. Even though the ESRB isn't always my favorite organization, I do believe that they are the victim here--well, they and several unsuspecting households.

Rockstar (who, for those of you who don't know, made San Andreas) is cooperating with the new rating. Good for them. They had it coming. At least now that they've been confronted with it, they're deciding to be responsible. I guess it's possible that the higher-up Rockstar officials didn't know, but...Okay, following the line that even if Rockstar officials didn't know, that it was their job to know, one could argue the ESRB DOES have a responsibility to know. The logic would go like this:

If the company making a game is responsible for knowing everything that's
on the discs, then the ESRB is responsible for knowing.

Of course the resoning falls apart on further examination--the difference between the ESRB and the company is simple and vital: the company makes the game and can be expected to know what's going into it. The ESRB only rates the game on the basis of what the company tells them and what their people are able to find in the game--and the company doesn't necessarily tell them everything it knows. Even if we assumed that neither set of officials between the ESRB and Rockstar knew what was up (and may I point out that the only officials we can safely assume were in the dark were those at the ESRB), Rockstar is still more responsible, because they have a chain of information that should, ideally, be flowing to the top. The ESRB on the other hand has no chain of information coming to them from the people who are putting things on the discs, and is at an informational disadvantage.

The Almost Always Productive Day of Zeux

Well, I took the comment of two posts ago as a starting point for my last, so I suppose I should take the comment of the last post as a starting point for this one: "daniel - when are you going to write something that i can understand??!! thank you for becoming my own personal greek philosopher and i crown you danocrates the great. you rock. but really write something i can get. love you stud. " My aunt, who in the forum of Blogspot has assumed the moniker of "k-po," wrote this comment. I hope that whatever on earth I provide in this next post will fulfill that request.

I have now turned off the music that was playing in my headphones after a long and tiresome writer's block. Music it seems can be as much a distractor as it can be a focus tool. For those of you who doubt its power as a focus tool, note that while reading much of what I have read of Simon Blackburn's Think for my philosophy class, I was listening to the Linkin Park album Meteora--and it seems it helped a bit. Do you italicize album titles or just put quotation marks around them? I wonder.

I know that this may not appease the commentator but it will probably be a bit less strenuous for everyone involved (I myself the writer and you readers) to note the continuation of a great tradition in the Megazeux community over at DigitalMZX. Well, it's a Megazeux community tradition in general, but that's the main site. Megazeux, or MZX for short, is an obscure game-creation system from the mid-1990s which has passed into open-source development, meaning it is no longer shareware and is developed freely by anyone willing to expand on the code of the system and put up whatever code they add to it for others to expand on.

Anyway, this tradition is a contest in which Megazeuxers try to make a game on a previosuly unannounced topic in the span of 24 Hours, without A) dying or B) falling asleep. This great test of wills, wits and wacky game ideas is known as the Day of Zeux. I myself have been a participant, and I daresay that it has produced some of my decent finished games. I missed it this time, because it was the same day as the rodeo, but there are two games I have played so far worth noting. One involves a secret agent who, over the course of each level, becomes increasingly obese and hard to maneuver. Another involves the catchphrase "eat or be eaten" and a character who moves by the pixel, which is good fun because in MZX games movement is most often done by the tile.

Those not involved with the MZX community should probably figure out if they even understand how to work MZX before downloading the entries; this time around, there's something special you have to do, because they're not on DigitalMZX right away. But even if you're not into the idea of getting into something like MZX, I hope that this little dash of obscure internet subculture has brightened your day.

A Moral Issue and a few Theological Ones

So I have now officially completed my first week of college, and my first college assignment. Procrastination didn't get me too badly this time, but I need to step up my pace some, because there are going to be more than two papers which will be fairly long but not have really long times attached to them. (We're talking about 5 pages in about a week and a half, so nothing too horrible.)

I read today an intriguing (and I would say good and fair and balanced) article on gender and gaming over here at 1up.com. Well, to be honest, I didn't read every word of it, but I read a fair amount--enough to get the basics. It features commentary on the shifts in female stereotypes over the years, from the pretty girls who get rescued in older Zelda and Mario to the pretty girls who kick guys' butts in fighting games. (Depending on the fighting game, this may also be the pretty boys. See Soulcalibur's Yunsung.) It was good to read an article on a gaming website which acknowledged the problem of gender stereotyping in games but did not demonize game companies for doing what was and to a vast degree still is business. The article also acknowledges the progress that has been made, and must continue to be made, if the game industry is to play to more than just males. There was also the valid reiteration of the point that games are far from being the only media which can/does promote gender stereotypes; e.g. the People/inTouch/Us Weekly/Cosmopolitan magazines come to mind. Of course the biggest modern culprit, at least when it comes to female stereotypes, is the entire Dead or Alive series of games. I support 1up.com and others in dealing with this moral/cultural issue. Check it out.

World religions reading was interesting as usual. Comparing and contrasting religions helps one to better understand them. I've learned a lot about Hinduism these last few days and I am learning a lot about Buddhism from this weekend's reading. For instance, while both religions emphasize selflessness and service, the ideals are interpreted in different ways and taken to different lengths. It is also interesting to see the difference in dealing with the issue of desire. Christianity sees some desire as good, and some as bad, noting that when people desire bad things they are trying to fill a hole left by what they really desire (Christ.) But they do not know they desire Christ and so they try to fill the hole with the more tangible things they desire. When one comes to Christ one finds one's deep-rooted desires fulfilled, and the other desires either eliminated or fulfilled, depending upon the situation and the morality of those other desires. By contrast Buddhist teaching seems to indicate that the path to salvation is to eliminate all desire, rather than fulfilling it. Desire in Buddhism is not good at all--it is the root of our suffering. Somebody once pointed out that the goal of eliminiating all desire could be seen in and of itself as a desire, but in a sense you are eliminating that desire once you have eliminated all others. Of course none of this makes them compatible, but that is no matter for my textbook; it is determined to impart unto me the utmost pluralism (not the "appreciation of religions," as it defines it, but rather the idea that "all religions are somehow compatible and are a way of interacting with the divine reality.")

My conclusions so far on compatibility of religions, going on belief systems:

Buddhism and Hinduism: Some, but not enough for them to really "work" well together. Morals are somewhat the same--Buddhism's moral code has less to do with the life you are "born" into. Hinduism and Christianity: Some interesting moral similarities, and some similarities in the manifestation of the divine. However the latter calls you to seek out the position that God wants for you, and the former simply says "where you were born is where the god(s) want you. Buddhism and Christianity: Just as with the other two, some moral similarities. Again espeically similar around the ideals of selflessness and charity, but these ideals are played out to different lengths. The biggest differences: Hinduism's pantheistic, Buddhism is non-theistic and Christianity is monotheistic. I should like to read the Bhagavad-Gita sometime, perhaps this summer. Should be an interesting read if I want to learn more about Hinduism's moral code.

Of course I must be fair and note that pluralism is a great thought. It is idealistic and reaches out in unity and love and understanding. But the greatest understanding is not found there; there will be more on this subject later.

Formal Logic and the Rodeo

Rodeos. An interesting concept--skills that real-life cowboys/ranchers/etc. use(d?) are corraled into a family-fun and family-friendly collection of events. The events include things like bull riding, wild-horse racing (that is definitely the most hilarious event; the horses run that show), bull-wrestling, and so on.

I went to a rodeo last night. Well, technically, since it is now the Fourth by about eight minutes, I went to a rodeo the night before yesterday. But the rodeo experience was still quite entertaining. I have to admit I wasn't quite sure what to expect. The smells were less than glamorous, and it was a little bit of a wait once we sat down. The rodeo clown was more just an entertainer--not really the stereotype of the "clown" I think I was expecting.

Bareback horse riding was one of the more tedious sports, as just about every small town in Oregon seemed to boast its own competitor, and a few other Northwest towns as well. Aside from the million and one competitors it was fun. Bull riding was also very much fun--all that eight-second excitement but with at least half the tedium of various competitors. There was something where they wrestled small bulls (would it be bull calves?) to the ground, a "wild cow milking" competition (quite entertaining), barrel racing, and my personal favorite, wild horse racing. There were a couple of other events, too.

Wild horse racing isn't really racing on a wild horse. It's really a question of which team can A) get a member on their horse and B) get the horse through to the other side, through the side door of the arena, and do it C) the fastest. I think it was the first two teams who were counted, or something, but people kept going until five minutes had passed, so perhaps everyone who got through was counted. Beats me. The point of the event, as far as I could tell, was really to see how badly these horses could torture the cowboys. More than one of these poor guys were dragged quite aways across the arena by their horses. By the end of the five minutes four horses were running free, about three or four teams had passed through the gate, and one poor cowboy was sitting on his horse very very near to the gate, trying various tricks to try and get it to go in. The poor guy wasn't getting any response from his horse, whom he and his partner had in fact gotten this far already, and I believe the timer sounded when he was still standing outside the gate.

So there is a connection between two recent things in my life: we're in the middle of formal logic in my Intro to Philosophy class, and I'm addicted to a game called "Sherlock" which revolves around discerning, given certain statements, where certain icons lie in terms of column. Look it up on some Shareware site; I'm sure it's laying around somewhere. Formal logic, as it's coming across to me in class, basically means putting things in certain terms so that they can be read as a sort of formulae. You even have to diagram some things. It's kind of like the proofs from Geometry, except that it's about more than Hexagon X,Y,Z,P,D,Q. I'm having fun at school. It's a good place, UP. And taking summer classes now means I'm meeting people in a smaller setting, as opposed to meeting them in the multitudes at the Freshman Orientation. The whole college experience should be fun.

Well, I need to start winding this thing down. I've got some classwork to do tomorrow. My weekly assignment is likely to be something along the lines of "learn how much less procrastination works in college as opposed to high school." I have a bunch of definitions for words in Hinduism to be done tomorrow, and they won't define themselves. I also need to study my logic a bit and read about Buddhism. The strangest thing is, now that I've spent a week in school, I am no longer wondering what on earth I was thinking taking these classes in the summer to begin with.