Spaced out of Color

The Majesty of Colors is a pixel-horror Flash game by Gregory Weir. It was released in December 2008, but I came across it only recently.



It's brilliant. Go play it now.

Dig and map

I've got a problem. See, I built a lighthouse:

I had to put in cactuses during construction to stop spiders from climbing in over the unfinished walls. Stupid spiders!

Obviously, I want a light on top of the lighthouse; I mean, without a light, it's just a house. That used to be easy, but now that Notch (you know, this guy) fixed fire, it's no longer possible to have a permanent fire using just wood. What I need is netherrack, which will burn infinitely. The problem? You can only get that in hell. And to build a portal to hell, you need either lava or obsidian.

Now, there's lava over at my other tower, but that's far away and besides, the last time I had anything to do with that lava, I died. So I'm sticking to my old digs. And when I say digs, I mean this dig:

My goal is to eventually reach the bottom of the map, for a proper chasm. On the way there, I'll definitely run into some lava, which will let me build a portal to hell. There's all sorts of interesting things you can do with portals, which are intriguing in connection to another project I'm thinking about.

Now, as anyone who's played Minecraft knows, mining ain't easy. Here's what I stumbled across in my big dig:

Yup, that's me looking down into a cave with a Creeper in it. Turns out, not only is there a Creeper, but there are several skeletons as well. Now, am I going to drop down into that death cave of death to be murderlized by skeletons and creepers? Hell no.

Hey creeper! You think you're going to blow me up?

Think again.

It's really hard to explain how satisfying that is. Especially since creepers aren't nearly as big a problem now as they used to be. Way back when, I have "fond" memories of hunkering down in a barely secure dugout or tiny wooden cabin, listening to the zombies zomb and watching the creepers creep, and then running like crazy in the morning to get away from the fucking exploding cacti before they destroy me and everything I've built. Before I tidied it up a little, the ground in front of my door looked like it had been shelled by Schwerer Gustav. But then this came along:

That's right, beds. Now if you mosey on inside around sunset and bed down before it gets dark enough for monsters to spawn, the game skips the night altogether and lands you safely in next morning, with nary a creeper in sight. So now, while all this is going on, you just sleep:

And wake up to a pristine world without creepers hiding behind corners. Blah. It's all so easy for you young 'uns! Why, when I built my first tower...

When Minecraft makes it to the XBox, blowing up a creeper with TNT has to be an achievement.

**

I have to be honest, though: even with all these explosive shenanigans, mining solid rock isn't really all that interesting in itself. I'm in it for the end result, not so much the process, even if there is a certain meditative quality to it. So every now and then, I take a break from the mining to explore side projects. This time, I've been mapping!

The silver arrow is where I'm at, and it's currently at my first ever base. Just to the right of it is my first tower. Here's a more complete view of the area around my spawn point:

You can actually see my tower and the walkway leading away from it. Oddly, on these maps north is left. Notice some ice at the lower right corner! As you can tell from those two maps, the wooded hill to the left of my tower is where my main base is, and the underground passages I'm digging lead east of there. The lighthouse is a little to the north of the hill.

**

All this is well and good, but how about mapping something a little more epic? Like maybe Epic Island?

It's good to be back!

Maps, however, don't make themselves. You need redstone, iron and paper, and while I've got the first two in quantity from my mining operations, paper is a different beast. Through excellent foresight, by which I mean a lucky accident, I took some reeds with me and planted them next to my tower to get that sweet, sweet paper:

And once that's done, here we go!

The way the map works is simple: as you walk around holding it, it fills in. So the way to map Epic Island is to walk around on it, and as I'm doing so, I'm struck again by how freaking big it really is. Here's some sights from along the way, starting with a very unlikely geological formation:

A nice view from the coast, about directly north of Twin Tower:

And this epic snow-covered mountain, a sure site for a construction project:

That shot also gives you a fair idea of how mapping works. The plains in the middle of the main part of the island are full of sinkholes and caves:

The map actually takes up quite a bit of the screen when you're holding it, and you can't see directly below you, making it amazingly easy to walk right into one of those.

Finally, here's the more or less finished product:

That giant thing is Epic Island. And no, it won't fit on the map. To give you an idea of the sheer scale involved, my Blood Bowl pitch is in the lowermost part of Epic Island, the bit that's connected to the island proper by a sort of isthmus, at the extreme right. Snow Base, on the other hand, is just beyond the ice at the very top right-hand corner, slightly off the map. Twin Tower is just east of the cursor in the middle of the screen and can actually be seen as a tiny brownish-gray dot on the map. The white area at the eastern edge is the snow-covered mountain in the previous picture.

So yeah, it's huge. No wonder I couldn't circumnavigate the damn thing! Still haven't, by the way. The two maps don't quite fit together, but this is a fair approximation:

That's most of the world I've seen so far. I want to venture out and see a lot more of it, but I'm kind of holding back in anticipation of the great adventure update, which is coming at some point. If they're going to be adding loads of new stuff specifically as incentives to go adventuring, then surely there's no point in not waiting? So for the moment, my exploration of my Minecraft world is on hold. There's a lot to do before the great adventure update, though, so I'll be back soon...

In the meantime, if you want more Minecraft-related entertainment, got take a look at Far Lands or Bust; for background, take a look at the Far Lands page on the Minecraft wiki. It's pretty awesome.

This blog on TV

Wow, I missed this. Earlier, I criticized Radley Balko for co-operating with Russia Today here. What I didn't know, and only found out just now, was that while Radley's response to my criticism was, well, underwhelming, Alyona Minkovski decided to address me on a video she published for her show on Russia Today.

It's strange to hear someone talk about my panties on television. What's stranger, however, is that Ms. Minkovski would bother to address my criticism on the air, by name and by showing a shot of my blog, but not actually talk about what it is that I said. In the video, Ms. Minkovski implies that I've said she shouldn't be allowed to criticize her government.

That's absolutely ridiculous. My actual criticism, which you can read from the link in the first paragraph, was directed at Radley Balko. This was the gist of it:

In my view, working with Russia Today, and even more so in letting Russia Today's employees broadcast themselves through his blog, Radley Balko has put a big question mark next to his name and his integrity as a journalist. To me, it's profoundly unethical to blithely co-operate with the propaganda organs of one of the most repressive states in the world and simultaneously cultivate an image of oneself as a libertarian human rights advocate.

Another quote, this time more directly applicable to Ms. Minkovski herself:

Furthermore, I don't believe the people making shows for or otherwise directly working with Russia Today are exactly pursuing an agenda of human rights. Surely if they were concerned with police brutality and human rights, they wouldn't be working for the Russian government. So either they have a very limited definition of human rights that excludes, say, the Russian opposition parties and sexual minorities in Russia, or then they have a different agenda. What's certain is that the channel they're working for is pushing the Russian government's agenda, not a human rights one. And by letting its employees promote themselves and their channel on his blog, Mr. Balko is also taking part in the Russian government's information warfare, to the direct detriment of human rights in Russia.

I don't see how it's possible to read my post as implying that I think Ms. Minkovski shouldn't "dare" criticize her government. What I'm trying to say is that it's more than a little dishonest to criticize the United States for police brutality while working for the Russian government. Surely the two are different things.

When Ms. Minkovski says I should be concerned that US mainstream media isn't reporting on police brutality, I can only say that I am concerned. I've written about SWAT teams and the war on drugs plenty of times on this blog. But what I was trying to say in my previous post is that I'm also concerned that her network isn't reporting on similar stories from Russia. Why is it okay to downplay and ignore police brutality in Russia? For that matter, why is it okay for Russia Today to distort the truth in their country, while it isn't okay for American mainstream media to do the same? That seems like a double standard to me.

Seeing this video was a little bizarre. On the one hand, Ms. Minkovski and, presumably, her producers, felt a need to address my criticisms of her appearing on Mr. Balko's blog. However, they couldn't seem to bring themselves to actually answer my questions, but instead attacked a bizarre strawman. If anything, this would seem to confirm to me that my criticism of her and RT was well-founded. If her reply to a question on journalistic ethics is to distort the question beyond recognition and mock me for asking it, I guess that's all the answer I need.

Not to mention that me and this blog are much more famous than I thought!

Radley Balko and Russia Today

Chances are, you've seen activist Adam Kokesh and his buddies get arrested with unnecessary brutality at the Jefferson Memorial. If not, here's the video:

What you may not know is which channel this show runs on: Russia Today, nowadays known as RT. Described by the Guardian as "the latest step in an ambitious attempt to create a new post-Soviet global propaganda empire", RT is a TV channel funded almost entirely by the Russian government. In that same Guardian story, their then-editor-in-chief explains:

"I don't believe in unbiased views. Of course we take a pro-Russian position."

And they do. Here's the Independent on the topic:

Russia Today, an English language service, was set up in 2005 to present a perspective from Vladimir Putin’s government as a counterbalance to Western global news organisations such as CNN and the BBC. Its editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan claims that the Russian state “doesn’t at all” interfere with the output of the network’s journalists.

But Shaun Walker, The Independent’s Moscow correspondent, disputes this. “It is untrue that the channel’s journalists are able to report on what they want to without editorial influence; while as time has gone on there have been more features on “negative” aspects of Russia, there is still a total absence of any voices criticising Prime Minister Vladimir Putin or President Dmitry Medvedev,” he says. “The channel’s coverage of Russia’s war with Georgia was particularly obscene. With Western TV networks hooked on a “New Cold War” headline and often not too well versed in the nuances of the region, there was a gap in the market for a balanced view of the conflict that explained Russia’s position. Instead, RT blasted “GENOCIDE” across its screens for most of the war’s duration, produced a number of extraordinarily biased packages, and instructed reporters not to report from Georgian villages within South Ossetia that had been ethnically cleansed.”

Indeed, one of their reporters resigned during the war in Georgia. Here's the Guardian:

Russians appear to be getting only one side of the story of the conflict in Georgia. According to a Moscow Times article, Russian television is showing the misery left by the Georgian assault in South Ossetia, but few, if any, reports mention Russia's bombing of Georgia.

After William Dunbar, a correspondent for the English-language state channel Russia Today, mentioned the bombing in a report on Saturday, his scheduled reports later that day were cancelled by the station. He said: "I felt that I had no choice but to resign."

He added: "I had a series of live, video satellite links scheduled for later that day, and they were cancelled. The real news, the real facts of the matter, didn't conform to what they were trying to report, and therefore, they wouldn't let me report it."

Of course, everyone knows how committed Russia is to the freedom of the press. The first Guardian article I quoted? Its author has since been expelled from Russia for no stated reason.

The idea for founding the channel seems to have come from former minister and Putin aide Mikhail Lesin, who wanted the channel to "polish Russia's international image". And they do, but not only by presenting Russian propaganda: part of their agenda is also to criticize Western countries.

For example, here's an RT reporter waxing lyrical over protests at the 2009 G20 summit in Pittsburgh:

RT: Who does this government consider an enemy?

The students were cornered, beaten, tear gassed, thrown to the floor and arrested – all for gathering inside a public park to express their political opinions.

This scene did not happen in a Third World country in the midst of a revolution. It occurred in Pittsburgh during the G20 Summit.

Of course, that very same year, a Gay Pride rally was held in Moscow. The rally was banned, and Moscow police had threatened the activists with "tough measures". When it went on anyway, police immediately arrested everyone present with "needless violence". Of course, that was better than some previous years when the police stood aside and let skinheads beat up the protesters.

You won't find any of this on RT: no reporters bemoaning the plight of the gay rights activists, let alone getting in amongst the demonstrators and writing harrowing first-person exposes of their arrest. No, on RT "Police disperse gay pride parade", without a hint of violence or impropriety. The channel unquestioningly accepts the official explanation for banning the marches, and under the sub-heading "A fight for gay rights or a farce?", goes on to lambast one of the organizers as a bully and a propagandist. Russia's embattled opposition gets similarly short shrift from RT, with no horror stories of police brutality.

Another topic that drew RT's ire is America's prison system. By contrast, read this Wikileaks cable or Amnesty International's report on Russia for some idea of what goes on over there; a topic you won't find any RT coverage on.

Finnish readers may be amused by the fact that notorious Finnish lunatic Johan Backman is a respected source for RT, quoted in stories like this one, which makes some hilariously over-the-top claims, including that in Finland, it's a crime to "criticize a legally operating organization". Their paraphrasing of what both Molari and Backman have said is also somewhat tenuously connected to reality. Molari and Backman are both rather well-known in Finland as extremists, and especially Backman is given fairly wide publicity in Russia because of his willingness to distort and exaggerate events in Finland in accordance with the Kremlin's propaganda line that Finland mistreats its Russian minority. That his views should be uncritically repeated by Russia Today speaks to the channel's ideology.

**

So a TV channel funded by the Russian government isn't exactly delivering objective journalism. Big surprise. It does raise some interesting questions, though, and to introduce them I'll promote a blog called The Agitator, by Radley Balko, a journalist and libertarian. I have great respect for the man as a chronicler of what I consider America's gradual evolution into a police state. His paper, Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America, is pretty much required reading for anyone interested in the topic. I read his blog regularly.

This May, Radley went on vacation and left us with a collection of guest bloggers. Most of them did well, even if it was a little odd when one of them felt that if we only divided ourselves into competing factions that identify themselves by differently colored uniforms, the world would be a better place. I thought we were already doing that. Another guest gleefully insulted a 17-year-old boy and expressed the fond hope that he would be assaulted in prison. These are just a couple of things that rankled me, though, and overall it was fine.

One of his guest bloggers, however, was RT's own Alyona Minkovski. Here's a clip from her show, which runs on RT:

As it happens, Radley's appeared on RT himself. As he explained, he went on RT "because they asked".

Now, I have a problem with this.

**

First of all, let me make absolutely clear that police brutality and the wholesale trampling of civil rights in America is reaching scary levels. Things like this, this and this are appalling, and so is the fact that the police will arrest you for dancing at the Jefferson Memorial. The fact that police brutality and abuse is much worse in Russia is no excuse for the Americans or anyone else.

My problem is RT and the nature of their coverage. It's pretty obvious that they use a whole different yardstick for events in the US and in Russia, and much of their reporting consists of regurgitated Kremlin propaganda. They do go to some lengths to disguise this as critical journalism, but it's fairly obvious that when it comes to Russian interests, propaganda takes over. So when someone like Radley Balko attaches themselves to a channel like this, by appearing on it and hosting one of its reporters on his blog, I have a real problem with it, because he's lending his credibility to a Russian state propaganda operation.

I fully understand that there are economic incentives, direct or indirect, as well as the obvious political ones, for publicizing one's cause as widely as possible. In this particular case, though, that publicity comes with giving good press to the Russian state's propaganda machine; in other words, helping the Kremlin project a totally false image of Russia to the world. It also raises troubling questions about Mr. Balko's ethics as a journalist, in that he's willing to attach himself and his name to a government propaganda operation, seemingly without second thoughts.

In my view, working with Russia Today, and even more so in letting Russia Today's employees broadcast themselves through his blog, Radley Balko has put a big question mark next to his name and his integrity as a journalist. To me, it's profoundly unethical to blithely co-operate with the propaganda organs of one of the most repressive states in the world and simultaneously cultivate an image of oneself as a libertarian human rights advocate.

To take just one example, Radley linked to the same Huffington Post piece I did above, on their questionable way of reporting an incident of police brutality in Washington, D.C. He doesn't seem to have a problem with it when RT glosses over Russian police brutality, though. In my books, that's hypocrisy.

Furthermore, I don't believe the people making shows for or otherwise directly working with Russia Today are exactly pursuing an agenda of human rights. Surely if they were concerned with police brutality and human rights, they wouldn't be working for the Russian government. So either they have a very limited definition of human rights that excludes, say, the Russian opposition parties and sexual minorities in Russia, or then they have a different agenda. What's certain is that the channel they're working for is pushing the Russian government's agenda, not a human rights one. And by letting its employees promote themselves and their channel on his blog, Mr. Balko is also taking part in the Russian government's information warfare, to the direct detriment of human rights in Russia.

It's a funny sort of libertarianism where you co-operate with one of the most repressive regimes in the world. I don't much care for it.

**

Last year, the Economist ran a piece on police brutality in Russia.

Cops for hire: Reforming Russia’s violent and corrupt police will not be easy

THEY shoot, beat and torture civilians, confiscate businesses and take hostages. They are feared and distrusted by two-thirds of the country. But they are not foreign occupiers, mercenaries or mafia; they are Russia’s police officers. The few decent cops among them are seen as mould-breaking heroes and dissidents.

Daily reports of police violence read like wartime bulletins. Recent cases include a random shooting by a police officer in a Moscow supermarket (seven wounded, two dead), the gruesome torture and killing of a journalist in Tomsk, and the case of Sergei Magnitsky, a young lawyer for an American investment fund. He was denied medical treatment and died in pre-trial detention in Moscow having accused several police officers of fraud.

American police brutality is alarming enough that I can't say it's nothing compared to what they do in Russia. Both countries' police forces at times terrorize their inhabitants like an occupying army. But having been to both countries, I'd still rather get arrested by American cops than Russian ones. Hell, I'd rather be raided by the Pima county SWAT team than by OMON. If American SWAT teams sometimes remind us of storm troopers, their Russian counterparts pretty much are the SS.

And one of the foremost critics of police brutality in America co-operates with their PR department.

One of a kind

Last friday 2011-05-13 Finland's Mikael Granlund scored a nifty goal against Team Russia at the Ice Hockey World Championship:



The goal has caught the attention of hockey fans around the world. TSN, Canada's sports leader, has an article on the goal.

TSN: FINLAND'S GRANLUND SCORES POSSIBLE GOAL OF THE YEAR

Early in the second period of Finland's semifinal win against Russia, Granland gathered the puck deep along the end boards in the Russian zone, stick-handled past a defender and behind the net, flipped the puck onto the blade of his stick, and flung it into the Russian's net, lacrosse style, to give the Fins a 1-0 lead.

TSN then goes on to make a strange claim:

Twice before has a goal like Granlund's been scored. In 1996, the University of Michigan's Mike Legg defeated the University of Minnesota in the NCAA Tournament with a similar goal, and in 2006 Sidney Crosby scored one just like it while with the Rimouski Oceanic in the QMJHL.

Twice before? That stretches credibility, as this move is quite popular in junior leagues around the world. And indeed, a quick look on the Web yielded several more instances.

Bill Armstrong has apparently scored a goal like that several times (two examples at 1:28), and claims to have pioneered the move.



As you may have gathered, those two goals came in the same week, so for him it wasn't a one time novelty move.

Mikael Granlund himself has scored a similar goal before in Finland's junior league.



And in 2008 U18 contest, though for a reason unclear to me that one was disallowed.



His brother Markus also scored a "lacrosse-style" goal in Finnish junior league.



And it's not just junior league stuff; "Zorro" goals have been seen in professional leagues as well. Here's Jani Lajunen, also a member of 2011 Team Finland, deciding an SM-liiga game on OT.



That was in 2010. If Granlund's goal is the goal of the year in 2011, that just means 2011 was slow. There was another high-profile lacrosse goal in 2010, in the playoff finals of Swiss league by Thomas Déruns.



So, yeah, twice before. TSN didn't even qualify that number in any way. I'm afraid the claim doesn't reflect well on TSN's hockey knowledge, or counting skills.

They do give Granlund's goal one distinction over Crosby's and Legg's.

But what made Granlund's goal extra special was that while both Legg and Crosby scored their goals standing still behind the net, Granlund pulled it off at full speed.

Much like Rob Hisey in SM-liiga. That's the reason Finnish play-by-play for Lajunen's goal called it a "Rob Hisey".



It's very unfortunate that Canada's series don't boast soft hands like that. Oh, Rob Hisey did it in another professional league as well, this time in Austria.



Of course, cool lacrosse goals seem to be his thing.



You'll note the clip is from TSN, so they can't really claim to be unaware of the guy.

Frankly, I expected better from TSN. The Finnish media is, predictably, going banana over Granlund's goal, which seems a little unwarranted as it's not all that unique, but I would have thought Canada's sports leader would have a little better sense of hockey history.

Deeper underground

I am doing just that. First of all, though, my underground garden is coming along nicely:

And I saw a wolf! Haven't seen those before; they showed up a couple of versions ago.

Remember that rockface from my previous post? Here it is:

That is the great underground hall leading all the way to Twin Tower. Or would be, if not for one little thing:

Yeah. The ocean.

**

Next on this music-themed Minecraft update: Creedence Clearwater Revival.

I have!

Weather was just one of many things Notch introduced in version 1.5 (which he stole from Goblin Camp). It looks and sounds great, but at the moment the rain rather abruptly stops at the edge of a biome:

Nonetheless, it's a great addition I've been looking forward to for a long time. The sound of the wind and rain, especially when you're inside, is incredibly atmospheric. Way to go guys!

**

To get my tunnel further along toward Epic Island, I have to move deeper. Firstly, this involves deepening the chasm, which I'm working on with the aid of a chicken:

Not that it actually helps me. Because there's some lit grass at the top level (more on that later), peaceful animals spawn up there. Chickens make it down just fine by flapping their wings; the other animals occasionally take a downward trip as well. They make it, just not quite how they left:

Along the way down, I've found gold:

And had a Shelob moment:

The whole process of continuing my great underground passage requires moving down one level. So, here's the corridor through my underground base:

Through the door on the left are the stairs up to my base:

It's still unfinished, but through the next door:

Stairs to the next level!

That's something for later, though; for now, I've spent long enough underground. It's time to get back onto the surface and get started on another project...

Dead economists

Here's a couple of educational videos from Econstories introducing the principles of Keynesian economics and Austrian School, and their takes on economic cycles. Enjoy.