Spoiler Alert: I don’t believe in Good Guys and Bad Guys, and don’t really believe in the narrative necessity of antagonists and protagonists or the centrality of Conflict. Stories, to me, are about Problems, and the most interesting Problems are the ones that arise when everyone thinks they are basically the Good Guy Doing the Right Thing. Subsequently, most video games bore or frustrate me. That said, I’m loving Pipe Trouble, the newest new-media thingy from affable pop-culture gadfly Jim Munroe.
I dig games that 1) interestingly model real-world conundrums (however abstractly) and 2) force the player to balance competing interests in a Universe where there is never (or rarely) a zero-loss win-win. Add in adorable high-rez 8-bit graphics, interestingly quasi-narrative faux CBC radio clips between scenes, and reasonably ramping difficulty (I’m crappy at most traditional video games, so you kinda gotta take it easy on me), and this is just a perfect-fit game for dave-o.
Added bonus: Playing this game with my 6-year-old catalyzed a great conversation about 1) how to balance the stress of being challenged with the enjoyment of playing (levels get steadily harder and faster, which mega wigs both me and my kid out), 2) balancing economic development and environmental conservation in energy policy, and 3) how competing interests aren’t generally ones of “good guys” vs. “bad guys,” but situations where various groups are disagreeing because they have different visions of what constitutes the Best of All Possible Worlds, and their actions–no matter how destructive–come out of a good-faith effort to Do the Right Thing.
You can play a trial version online for free before buying–but I’m telling you, this is worth the price of a decent cup of coffee. Go get it for iPad or Android thingy.
Category: Other Writing
MI voters: Plz take 10 seconds to help preserve public education in Michigan! Plz Share & RT! #PureMichigan
UPDATE MARCH 20, 2013: Although this stupid bill made it out of committee unamended (boo!), it still needs approval from the House–so call or email your rep ASAP and repeatedly! The sample letter below still applies. Thanks!
If you live in Michigan and give a crap about local-control of the public schools you pay for, please contact your rep *right this second*–you can even crib from my letter, included below!
The state House Education Committee will likely vote this afternoon on House Bill 4369, which expands the Education Achievement Authority “takeover” district (currently dicking things up big time in Muskegon Heights and throughout Detroit) to a statewide entity . I wrote about this extensively back in December–the bill numbers are different, but the bad plan remains the same. The website of the Michigan Educator’s Association (I.e., my wife’s union) has a concise bit on the current bill.
Here’s the letter I just sent. You can use it if you want, modify it how you choose, customize it to best speak to your concerns and community–just write your rep and do it *RIGHT NOW!*:
SUBJECT: I OPPOSE HB 4369! DO NOT EXPANDED THE EAA OR PRIVATIZE PUBLIC EDUCATION IN MICHIGAN
Dear __________________,
Please do everything you can to oppose any expansion of Michigan’s as-of-yet unproven Education Achievement Authority, and to limit the implicit privatization of public education in Michigan. This includes opposing House Bill 4369 (which expand the Education Achievement Authority to a statewide entity composed of charter schools). I have deeply held philosophical reasons for opposing the operation of our public schools on a for-profit basis.
Handing over our public institutions – and tax dollars – to private companies with no demonstrable record of success, and doing so without strict oversight, flies in the face of reason and should offend rational, honest public servants on both sides of the aisle.
For a detailed analysis of the hazards of pitfalls inherent in the EAA, charter schools, and “cyber” schools, please take a few minutes to read this 2012 article by Ann Arbor Chronicle columnist David Erik Nelson: http://annarborchronicle.com/?p=102112
Thank you for your time, consideration, and good faith.
Sincerely,
NAME
ADDRESS
Dear __________________,
Please do everything you can to oppose any expansion of Michigan’s as-of-yet unproven Education Achievement Authority, and to limit the implicit privatization of public education in Michigan. This includes opposing House Bill 4369 (which expand the Education Achievement Authority to a statewide entity composed of charter schools). I have deeply held philosophical reasons for opposing the operation of our public schools on a for-profit basis.
Handing over our public institutions – and tax dollars – to private companies with no demonstrable record of success, and doing so without strict oversight, flies in the face of reason and should offend rational, honest public servants on both sides of the aisle.
For a detailed analysis of the hazards of pitfalls inherent in the EAA, charter schools, and “cyber” schools, please take a few minutes to read this 2012 article by Ann Arbor Chronicle columnist David Erik Nelson: http://annarborchronicle.com/?p=102112
Thank you for your time, consideration, and good faith.
Sincerely,
NAME
ADDRESS
(Obviously, plugging my old column is totally optional–but the details are all there, and the concerns for citizens laid out clearly, with citations and everything!)
The MEA suggests contacting both your own rep and the entire House Education Committee. I agree with this strategy; info for the entire Committee is pasted below:
(And here’s all those emails in one easy-to-copy&paste-string: LisaLyons@house.mi.gov, RayFranz@house.mi.gov, HughCrawford@house.mi.gov, KevinDaley@house.mi.gov, BobGenetski@house.mi.gov, PeteLund@house.mi.gov, TomMcMillin@house.mi.gov, ThomasHooker@house.mi.gov, BradJacobsen@house.mi.gov, AmandaPrice@house.mi.gov, KenYonker@house.mi.gov, EllenLipton@house.mi.gov, DavidKnezek@house.mi.gov, WinnieBrinks@house.mi.gov, ThomasStallworth@house.mi.gov, ColleneLamonte@house.mi.gov, TheresaAbed@house.mi.gov)
Thanks! GO FORTH AND HASSLE YOUR ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES! Be the Boss!
RECOMMENDED READING: The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters
The Last Policeman is a really enjoyable read, both as a literary novel and as a low-grade mystery/crime thriller. About 60% into the book you suddenly realize that the crime has been solved and all loose ends secured–which leaves one to wonder what the hell is going to occupy the remaining pages. At this point, though, the investigator tracks backward through his solved mystery (not temporally, just in terms if the relationships of cause and effect), and unwinds a whole second layer to it all. So, right there, it would be a great piece of mystery writing, wonderfully managing expectations and non-cheating reveals (a la the best of Christie or Doyle). Throughout, it’s also great crime writing, showing the way that ordinary folks can resolve–without cognitive dissonance–the mismatches between their external and internal lives (I think of Price’s Clockers as being the epitome at this aspect of crime fiction). This is all pinned against an almost classic SF backdrop: Impending meteor strike is gonna end the world on a known date. Everything that means for workaday humans–including this fair-and-square regular-joe cop who’s found himself suddenly bumped up to detective–brings these “lowly” genre pieces up a notch. It’s fine *craft* being used to explore the poignant humanity of Kobayashi Maru, which is basically the thing we mean when we say “art,” right?
Takeway: Read this. It’s a quick one and worth your time.
(DISCLOSURE Those are indeed Amazon affiliate links to the book; if you click on them and buy it, I’ll get some minuscule percentage. Also, the book itself was a gift from my mom; all of these factors may have swayed my opinion. I’m only human.)
On Guns and Control, Tools and Instruments, the Quick and Dead
I’m back to writing a monthly column for the Ann Arbor Chronicle. February’s column kicks off a series on guns (and largely builds off thoughts I posted here back in January). If you have experiences of guns–your actual first-hand experiences–that you’d like to share, please feel free to hit me over Twitter or email.
The Ann Arbor Chronicle | In It For The Money: Guns And Control
A gun isn’t a tool – it’s not a hammer or a drill that you can pick up, use to solve a problem, and put away until you have the next problem you want to solve. It’s an instrument, like a guitar or piano. It requires constant care, it requires checking and tuning before each use, it requires an intimate relationship with its mechanisms, with its parameters, with what it can do and what it should do and what it is meant for. It requires care and feeding. And it requires practice, near constant practice for you to be any good at doing anything with it.
But most of all, it requires attention – all of your attention. You are exquisitely focused when you are holding a gun – and not just because the gun can hurt or kill anyone nearby, including you. (Our cars are far more likely to hurt and kill anyone nearby, and we zone out behind the wheel all the time.)
There is an essential quality to this instrument compared with others; its nature is to make us aware of how vital and powerful our attention is, in and of itself. I don’t look at my father when I’m holding my loaded shotgun. I don’t look at my son when I’m holding my loaded pistol. I look at the target – only at the target, because whatever I’m looking at is the target.
But most of all, it requires attention – all of your attention. You are exquisitely focused when you are holding a gun – and not just because the gun can hurt or kill anyone nearby, including you. (Our cars are far more likely to hurt and kill anyone nearby, and we zone out behind the wheel all the time.)
There is an essential quality to this instrument compared with others; its nature is to make us aware of how vital and powerful our attention is, in and of itself. I don’t look at my father when I’m holding my loaded shotgun. I don’t look at my son when I’m holding my loaded pistol. I look at the target – only at the target, because whatever I’m looking at is the target.
“Light Motif” and Taking Hi-Res Pinhole Digital Snapshots
Last month I wrote a piece for The Magazine about glass-lens vs. pinhole photography, and a little $40 accessory my brother-in-law manufactures and sells that allows you to take old-school, genuine pinhole snapshots using high-end Micro 4/3 digital cameras. The article is currently available for free reading over on The Magazine‘s website:
Light Motif — The Magazine
A lens creates a sharp image by gathering photons and directing them toward its focal point. Collecting more light reduces exposure times and noise, creates brighter images, and increases detail. But a lens bends the light it gathers; the image it casts is not true to the object. The most obvious example of this is the barrel distortion created by a wide-angle lens.
You and I both know that no architect designed a roofline with that curve, and no masons tried to build it that way. This image is grossly distorted, but every image coming through a lens has at least subtle distortions corrected by optics and electronics.
A pinhole camera creates no such distortion because it never alters the path of any photon. Instead, it sharpens an image by massively reducing the number of photons that reach the image plane. Blurriness, in part, is caused by a “point-to-patch” correlation between object and image, where photons striking a given point on the object scatter at slightly different angles and thus strike over an area of the image plane, rather than at one point. By blocking these stray photons, the pinhole brings us closer to an ideal point-to-point correlation between object and image.
You and I both know that no architect designed a roofline with that curve, and no masons tried to build it that way. This image is grossly distorted, but every image coming through a lens has at least subtle distortions corrected by optics and electronics.
A pinhole camera creates no such distortion because it never alters the path of any photon. Instead, it sharpens an image by massively reducing the number of photons that reach the image plane. Blurriness, in part, is caused by a “point-to-patch” correlation between object and image, where photons striking a given point on the object scatter at slightly different angles and thus strike over an area of the image plane, rather than at one point. By blocking these stray photons, the pinhole brings us closer to an ideal point-to-point correlation between object and image.
FYI for Writers: The Magazine has been a great publication to work with, as a freelancer: Good pay, good editors, an excellently fair contract, and really solid exposure and promotion of your work. If you’ve got an article in your that suits them, you owe it to yourself to pitch it.
A Gun Is an Instrument, Not a Tool
(I originally posted this last night over on Poor Mojo’s Newswire, and thought that it might belong over here, too.)
Proof that Concealed Carry permit holders live in a dream world, Part One – YouTube
Over the Winter Holiday of Your Choosing we visited my in-laws–who live on a bunch of fallow acres in West Michigan–and I brought my pistol, a Belgian-made Browning Challenger. These .22LR target pistols were made in the ’60s and ’70s; mine was a gift from my father, the gun he learned to shoot on, and on which he subsequently taught me to shoot. He was the original owner, and bought it in the mid-1960s, back when these pistols were still hand-machined from a single block of steel by an actual human. Primarily I’d brought the pistol to my in-law’s because my father-in-law had recently purchased a Browning Buck Mark (which is descended from the Challenger, but is CNC-machined from 7075-T6 aluminum), and was curious about the comparison between the two. But also my son, who is in first grade, had taken an interest in the war games my nephews (who are older–middle school and high school) play on Xbox, and had been regaling me daily with accounts of the “HALO” games he and his friends re-enacted on the school playground. If he wanted to talk about guns, to imagine guns, to play at what guns are and do, then I wanted him to shoot a gun. He’d seen me shoot plenty of times, but had never pulled the trigger himself.
As it turned out, this foray was wonderfully instructive. We went out into the field, where my father- and brother-in-law have built their shooting range. The day was bitter cold. I hadn’t shot my .22 in several years, and it kept misfeeding, only squeezing off three rounds successfully (I later discovered that the barrel screw was a touch loose; these guns are accurate because they are built to tight tolerances, so even a little shifting will muck things up). The Buck Mark similarly misfed and misfired (although at a lower rate)–this, I think, because of the lighter aluminum unevenly contracting as it made the shift from a warm house to a cold field. But my boy got to shoot (with my father-in-law guiding his hand). And what he found was what is true: Shooting can be stressful. A gun–even a plinky little .22–is *loud*, and it jumps in your hand like something live and nervous. It’s hard to use; most of his shots sailed into the dirt two yards in front of the target, even with an adult steadying his hand. And guns are unpredictable: Many shells turned out to be bad (they were bought bulk, cheap), or were crimped useless when they were slammed crookedly by the misfeeding slide. And even though we were shooting at a steel target made for .45s, I broke the damn thing with a “lucky” shot that was a touch high and happened to catch the ironwork at its seam, sending the heavy target sailing away. Even this little gun was fearsome; it brought a touch of dread to the boy.
Because a gun isn’t a tool–it’s not a hammer or a drill that you can pick up, use to solve a problem, and put away until you have the next problem you want to solve. It’s an instrument, like a guitar or piano, it requires constant care, it requires checking and tuning before each use, it requires an intimate relationship with its mechanisms, with its parameters, with what it can do and what it should do and what it is meant for. It requires care and feeding. And it requires *practice,* near constant practice for you to be any good at doing anything with it.
It’s not a tool, and it doesn’t solve problems; it is an instrument, and it expresses feelings. When I’m shooting skeet, I have to feel that clay in my heart before I can smash it, I have to feel how it soars. The hard part isn’t the shooting–that’s just a swing of the arm and twitch of the finger; I never even think about it. The hard part is the *seeing*, really seeing the orange disk, not just assuming I see it, or thinking I see it, or seeing my idea of the disk and its location, but really and truly seeing the world for what it literarily is. It’s harder than you think, because most of us go most of our days without beginning to appreciate how little we see the world, and how completely we rely on our *ideas* about the world without checking them against what our senses are actually reporting. (In light of this, it should come as no surprises that the most natural shots I’ve ever met have all been artists, ’cause that’s the only other human endeavor that’s so much about perceiving the world as it is, rather than as we’d have it be.)
When you pick a gun up–just like when you pick up a ukulele or a violin–even if you are “just practicing,” you are saying something about yourself, about the world and your place in it, about the connectedness of things, about our human tendency to build things beautiful and destructive.
So the shooting–out in the cold, with real guns that were loud and destructive and erratic–was stressful for my son, and reminded me of the first time *I’d* gone shooting with my dad, when I was in my 20s. I’d never touched a gun–although he’d always kept them in the house–but I’d grown up an American, and so I had *ideas* about guns. And the gun I used that day was *his* preferred gun at the time, a Beretta 9mm. I couldn’t hit a thing with it–literally. As I recall, the paper target was entirely unscathed. And I’d had to force my finger to curl around the trigger each time, because each explosion was tremendous, each felt like the Worst Thing I’d Ever Done, and with each shot I couldn’t help but imagine that bullet tearing into me, piercing my chest, breaking my bones.
But afterwards, I’d wondered, and we went back with the .22–an impractical gun, in many regards, low-caliber, too bulky to conceal, the barrel long for accuracy, the grip thick for comfort and steadiness, the sights absurdly pronounced for a pistol in America. But it fit my hand like no other object I’d ever touched, and every shot went exactly where I wanted it, where my eye placed it. I never thought about my hand or my chest or my heart or my bones, just my eye and the sights and the target. Just the world.
After we were back inside and warmed up, I asked my little boy what he’d thought of the shooting, expecting he’d repeat what he’d said when he was three and watched me shooting skeet with my dad–“Too loud!” he’d cried, despite wearing my big spare ear protectors.
But he didn’t. He was thoughtful, and he smiled, and he said it was good. And since we’ve been back home, it doesn’t seem like he’s been playing “HALO” at school.
Anyway, that’s what this video got me thinking about, how maybe the most fundamental flaw in our national discussion about guns is that so many of us think of them as tools that we can–or should, or might, or must–use to solve problems, instead of seeing them for what they are: Instruments through which we express ourselves, for better or worse.
Amanda Ghassaei 3D Prints Playable 33⅓rpm Records!
I printed these records on a UV-cured resin printer called the Objet Connex500. Like most 3D printers, the Objet creates an object by depositing material layer by layer until the final form is achieved. This printer has incredibly high resolution: 600dpi in the x and y axes and 16 microns in the z axis, some of the highest resolution possible with 3D printing at the moment. Despite all its precision, the Objet is still at least an order of magnitude or two away from the resolution of a real vinyl record. When I first started this project, I wasn’t sure that the resolution of the Objet would be enough to reproduce audio, but I hoped that I might produce something recognizable by approximating the groove shape as accurately as possible with the tools I had.
In this Instructable, I’ll demonstrate how I developed a workflow that can convert any audio file, of virtually any format, into a 3D model of a record, and how I optimized these records for playback on a real turntable. The 3D modeling in this project was far too complex for traditional drafting-style CAD techniques, so I wrote an program to do this conversion automatically. It works by importing raw audio data, performing some calculations to generate the geometry of a record, and eventually exporting this geometry straight to a 3D printable file format. . . .
In this Instructable, I’ll demonstrate how I developed a workflow that can convert any audio file, of virtually any format, into a 3D model of a record, and how I optimized these records for playback on a real turntable. The 3D modeling in this project was far too complex for traditional drafting-style CAD techniques, so I wrote an program to do this conversion automatically. It works by importing raw audio data, performing some calculations to generate the geometry of a record, and eventually exporting this geometry straight to a 3D printable file format. . . .
This is *such* a rad project! Clearly not practical–it requires a big 3D printer with *really* high resolution in order to get a really low-resolution version of a single song–but I *love* the whopping oscillation artifact that the process introduces to the audio. *That* has some delicious sonic possibilities, in my humble.
Here’s a very brief interview/overview:
I Have a Story in the Current Asimov’s! #scifi
“Table of Contents” – Asimovs
What with all the seasonal hubbub, I totally forgot to shamelessly hype that my short story “The New Guys Always Work Overtime” is in the current issue of Asimov’s (technically the “Feb 2013” issue, it’s on newsstands now and will stay there until mid-January-ish). It’s your standard time-travel/labor relations/supply-chain management/crappy corporate job/boy-meets-girl story, and leverages basically every bit of German I know (Yes, *both* phrases!) It’s available in dead-tree format only, which is actually pretty quaint for a time-travel story set in an iPad factory. Better hustle on down to your local bookstore and trade paper money for paper stories.
CORRECTION: Duh; things have changed a little since the last time I had a story in Asimov’s. The magazine is now available for Kindle with a *FREE* 30-day trial–so if you just wanna check out “The New Guys” you can do so with no risk *and* no leaving the house. Score one for leaving in the terrible dystopian future! Asimov’s is a pretty solid magazine–if you’re into “soft” SF–so it’s worth the $3 “risk” if you flake out on canceling the trial subscription:
Handmade Letterpress Editions of “Tucker Teaches the Clockies to Copulate”–THE PERFECT HOLIDAY GIFT! (for certain persons of ill-repute and refined tastes)
Still looking for that literary, yet semi-obscene, gift to give to your favorite brass-goggled poindexter? May I suggest he or she might really and truly enjoy a personalized, handmade chapbook of my celebrated novella “Tucker Teaches the Clockies to Copulate”? The cover is handset and printed on the *very same* Chandler & Price 10×15 New Style Printing Press featured in Wikipedia!
The illustrated ebook pack is the same as the Kindle version available through Amazon, but DRM-free, and in formats suitable for almost any device. Includes mobi, ePub, PDF (in several print-ready layouts) files, and digital extras(!!!) Buying at the “Patrons” level gets you an exclusive, handmade, signed and numbered print edition (like the one in the pic)! Details on Pick-What-You-Pay options
Domestic shipping is free; international folks: we’ll have to figure that out. It’s a big, crazy world.
The Next Big Things: Authors Tagging Authors
I was tagged last week to participate in this “Next Big Thing” mutual-admiration bloggy chain-letter thing, where-in authors give each other the opportunity to talk about their upcoming projects. Much thanks to Cindy Spencer Paper–who’s currently rounding out her latest paranormal romance, although I’m a little more familiar with her for putting lots of steam in the steampunk (for which she’s gotten great reviews and high accolades just recently). At any rate, here goes for me:
A–Proud Flesh. An audiobook of a novella length portion of this–“Tucker Teaches the Clockies to Copulate”–is also in the works right now.
A–I totally have to credit my pal and long-time collaborator Fritz Swanson, who first suggested the use of imported Chinese clockwork soldiers during America’s Long Civil War. This particular project is built around my novelette “Tucker Teaches the Clockies to Copulate” (first published in the Spring 2008 Paradox, and now available as a standalone ebook for Kindle and other formats). It concerns a clockie enclave outside of the town of Lost Creek, Utah Territory, and began as a riff on a Zuni Trickster story, “Teaching the Mudheads How to Copulate,” that I was writing as a joke to show Fritz. It sorta grew out of control, and here we are.
A–Steampunk, Lord have mercy on us all.
A–That’s tough, because the protagonist of the central story, Dickie Tucker, has been terribly disfigured. In terms of voice and mannerisms, I’ve always pictured someone like Nathan Fillion or a young Jeff Bridges. Maybe Alan Tudyk?
A–“Ne’erdowell crippled alcoholic Confederate veteran teaches clockwork battle androids to have sex; complications ensue.”
A–Undefined value. I’m currently unrepresented, and although I’ve published and self-published some of the stories that fit into Proud Flesh, I’m not eager to self-publish another whole book–just putting together the novella was a lot of work (fun, but still, a *lot* of work) and I have other freelance projects that have to take precedence.
A–I’ve been working on “Clockie America” stories since 2006. The first was published in 2008, and others have since appeared in Asimov’s and the anthology Steampunk II
A–Ouch. I’m gonna level with you; I haven’t seen folks working a relatively straight steampunk Old West *without* also having magical aspects (zombies, for example) or actually being SF (Firefly, I’m looking adoringly at you). Maybe something like Joe R. Landsdale’s short story “The Steam Man of the Prairie and the Dark Rider Get Down: A Dime Novel” is closest, both in universe and tone.
A–Really, it started with Fritz’s idea of these clockwork soldiers as Civil War era munitions, coupled with the Zuni mudheads, who are, mythologically speaking, an idiosyncratic sort of ritual clown distinct from other sacred fools. They really are like bumbling robots. Once those pieces clicked, the universe sorta bloomed on its own.
A–Well, the current ebook editions of “Tucker” have original illustrations by Chad Sell (of “Rupaul’s Drag Race” fame). If I end up self-publishing the Proud Flesh, then I’ll be getting more illustrations done by Chad, because I *love* what he did for this story, and he has *tons* of great sketches I couldn’t afford to include. If I’d had the money, this novella would have wound up being a goddamned dirty-as-hell picture book.
Also, despite only being published in a small zine originally, “Tucker Teaches the Clockies to Copulate” garnered a fair bit of positive attention: It reviewed really well, was nominated for a Nebula (although it didn’t make it to finalist), and was up for a few other awards that honor fiction dealing innovatively with race and ethnicity, including the Carl Brandon Society Kindred Award. So, you know, it isn’t all fist-fights and dirty sex.
Thanks much to Cindy Spencer Paper for pointing folks my way. Next up are Fritz Swanson, Morgan Johnson, Ben Stroud, Ray McDaniel, and Jim Munroe.