Nature knows when to give up

Amusing quotes from BYU's own Daily Universe I've been toting about in my laptop case (ummm, sorry if I was supposed to give it back, k_t):

Wednesday, June 8th - Student discovers flaw, calculators get recalled
"'His fellow students were so proud of him and congratulatory. They thought it was really cool. They didn't call him a nerd or anything,' said Michael Bolling..." Sounds to me like this guy had plenty of experience with verbal abuse in school, on one side or another.

Thursday, June 9th - Cold fronts chill Provo
"'The reason for the cold, wet weather has been a persistent low-pressure system over the northwest quadrant of the U.S.,' said David James, a meteorology professor at BYU and local weather guru. 'As it spins in a counterclockwise direction, it sends spokes of storm energy across mainly northern Utah,' he said." I am no longer confident I could reliably distinguish between the assertions of a meteorologist and those of a Time Cube theoretician. Think Seattle's zoning board would pay you to map the lines of storm energy over their city, Dr. James? (Huh, I actually really like the new Time Cube background.)

I see from the title of the Board that I'm not the only one who watched WarGames on TNT last night, hah. Such a fun movie, with great little amusing touches, and a Mack girl, which just guarantees awesomeness (on the grounds that Bobbi has impacted that line as strongly as Eve has humanity). Whoa, the actress who plays the Mack girl is also the goth in Breakfast Club! Also, Professor Faulken studied law at Jesus College and has appeared in 67 movies from 1952 to 2004. Props, bro. It amuses me to no end how he stands back smirking while David struggles to get back into the system and save the world at the end. Totally black of blue.

I did have a point, though: in the two decades since that movie came out (GAH! I'm almost twenty!), it's still sci-fi. That is, for all Microsoft's movies about laptops chatting to you about what needs to get done that day as you drive to work and SantaBots on AIM, computers blow as companions. I mean, there are the famous idiocies, like the glaring absense of bots in Halo 2, but even on a more mundane level, the AI for Age of Empires is trash.

Sure, as you turn up the difficulty, they wait longer to gather forces before throwing them at you, but their strategy still always boils down to "build a wall around the city, throw up as many castles in random spots as possible, then tell units to march together to some random spot in the territory of our strongest enemy." It's disgusting how often two squads of competing enemies will march up to my borders, decimated by walking blindly through other nations, then start fighting one another as my fortifications rain down arrows. I'm fairly sure, though, that they've trained computer allies to copy human behaviour, and it's a rush sailing into an enemy harbor with your ally's fleet right beside you. And admittedly, the ally commands feature is a vast improvement, but obviously buggy when he ignores my pleas to "Build a navy," or at least a dock, so I can trade, and his constant "Help, the enemy is in my town!", based on a conception of "town" stretching deep into enemy land, grows quite wearisome. (What do the grammaticians think of that post-quotation-mark comma, btw?)

It's the glimpses of what it could be, really, that ruin it, the moments when allied cavalry rush in to protect your trebuchet, or when you look back in Halo 2 to see two Marines in ghosts flanking you. And then one of them drives off a cliff; or you start a new game in Age of Empires, and your ally forgets everything you've taught him about organized combat. Strategy gaming would be so addictive if they'd just make "Joshuas," artificial intelligences recognizing the activity as a game and eager to play, who instead of saying "Stone please!", would tell you they need to fortify their eastern border, who upon starting would ask, "Do you want to focus on the sea this game, or shall I?" Add a next-generation conversation bot, and I'd never play with humans again (not because they're inferior, but because negotiating schedules and connections can be so very bothersome).

Man, I miss Smurfer. I know he gets a bad rap, but I really enjoy his company; we had a very pleasant chat on that last drive. Mostly, though, as I wandered around campus the other night, in the back yard of the old President's house, down the path behind the gazebo, I found a path with a dumpster blocking the way, an austere sign noting "DO NOT ENTER," and I know that if he had been here, I could have called him up and invited him to violate it. Maybe there's, like, a werewolf or something, but you never know. Could be a facility where they're researching the next version of Creamery chocolate milk, and man, if it's as good as cookies and cream...

Belvedere just became my second-favorite word, I think. It's kind of ugly-sounding in English, but wow, what a fun etymology.

Oh, I suppose could I actually update. Ditched Institute in favor of semiotics last night, which I certainly don't regret, even though we did very little in the way of triangles. Basically, they made conversation until eleka left, at which point Katya and I had a long debate about how the earth's rotation affects our perception of gravity and the legitimacy of centripetal force while Melyngoch thought up questions for revision three of the Peircean test. I'm really excited about it; we're talking about making it an intuitive test that narrows you down with increasingly specific questions. Yay, real programming!

I love hanging out with that crowd; it's awkward talking to Leibniz, but with that delightful green-green expected awkwardness (not orange enough to babble; not purple enough to ignore it). Melyngoch is, of course, a delight, sagacity set aflame. Katya joked, upon hearing of my initial perception of her as snarky, that she's glad she improves upon acquaintance, but she really does; I even find her prettier with each glance, though perhaps that goes with saying for the very daughter of Scandinavia. Universe, I'm seriously annoyed that all the marvelous girls I know are old. I'll be patient for a while, but if there's not another good crop in a couple of years, heads will roll.

I think I'll cut it off at this point, actually, before I lose all the readership (hurrah for comment-whoring); perhaps I'll work on the theological entry back at the apartment. Hasta.