The Character Defense - Warning: Nerdy Post Ahead

I admit to being a gigantic nerdy geek-a-tron. I have been playing video games since I was but a young lad of six, I spent most of my life practicing a musical instrument instead of going outside and playing sports like all the other kids (my brief stint of wrestling in sixth grade, and six years of Little League notwithstanding), as the Internet grew in popularity, I used it constantly, and when I got to college, many of my fellow marching band fraternity/sorority members got me into Dungeons & Dragons.

I really like the concept of the game. It's effectively an immersive multiplayer video game. A game that allows you to create a character and then have it interact with and explore worlds that we could never actually go to, as boring mere mortals.

But, inherent in the concept of being *multiplayer* is that the characters must work *together* toward a common goal, be it retrieving the Obelisk of Eternal Despair, Slaying the Evil Brown Dragon plaguing the Kingdom of Centralia, etc...

That is, the team has to actually work as a team of some sort.

Things to Think About

Depending on the level of skill for the Dungeon Master, this can mean a number of things that the players and DM must think about...

*Splitting the party - Do you? Don't you? I don't particularly see the problem with having adventuring parties split up...it allows for more freedom of movement, perhaps allows the game to move along more quickly, and allows the players to do things that their characters would be more wont to do.

*Party Alignment - When a Lawful Good character meets up with a Chaotic Evil character, generally they tend to be at odds...is there a way to be effective party members while still undermining everything the other person stands for?

*RP - How do you role play your character? Many parties don't particularly relish the roleplaying aspect of the game and would much prefer to have their stories told for them by the DM instead of actually talking in character, and only breaking out the dice and interacting with the world itself to steal something or kill someone...but some players relish the chance to transform themselves into Gargathan Smashington the Half-Orc Druid or Gamliel Pygmalion the Eladrin Wizard. (Yes, they're mine.)

Players who love to immerse themselves in their characters have even created backstories. They know where they've been, where they're going, and what they plan to eat for lunch. Some of my dearest characters are the ones who I watched grow from birth and then died of old age after battling some of the greatest enemies of their time (and sometimes...everybody else's, too).

But, because they have every single step plotted out for their characters, this sometimes causes problems with the rest of their fellow players and the DM.

The Inter-party Relationship

For those of us who have been playing for even a short time, we can all recall that one player who stubbornly insisted to follow their own path regardless of what the team wanted or needed...When met with the ire of the party, both in and out of character, the player simply shrugs and says "But, that's what my character would do!"

We, as gamers all, have been conditioned for years by playing RPGs to assume that since we are playing a character, we are the protagonist and everything that we want must come to pass...and then we play out our decisions and see where they leave us, regardless of consequences. We all do it because it's part and parcel to discovering ourselves and testing the limits of the world we have created around us.

But, in a party situation such as D&D, there are sometimes four or five other people with whom one shares the spotlight. The purpose of a party is that every single character gets great moments to shine, explore, and even fail spectacularly, and it is important that every character get the chance to do so.

That Weird Voice Coming From The Heavens: Playing God

The DM/player relationship is one of storyteller and storybuilder. The DM's job is to set the scene for the players, perhaps add ambiance with props and music or flickering lights and scary characters. The players' job is to take that scene and play it out and interact with the DM productively.

Nothing is worse than a campaign that feels like it is DM vs. Players. If the players are spending more time bargaining with you for re-rolls than they are role-playing...something is wrong.

If a player spends an entire day of in-game time engaged in espionage, even if there was not going to be anything of importance in the room that he went into...throw him a bone. Find someone to tell him a really juicy piece of information that he can bring back to the party, or barring that, a nice chunk of XP, a shiny new sword with a nifty enchantment, or a bag of gold for his trouble.

It's about positive reinforcement. You should always reward players for playing (and even more for playing well). Even if it doesn't always line up with your initial expectations for the game. If you have a NPC who was supposed to die, but didn't...you'll have plenty of time to kill him later if it's ESSENTIAL. This is a world of magic. Think of all the awesome ways he could die! If they can kill off Aeris in FFVII, you can find a way to kill off an NPC.

The important thing is compromise.

Likewise, as a player: If you are getting nasty looks from your party members and your DM has buried his head in his hands, this might be a sign that you are overplaying your role as a PC. Sometimes, it's important to think about "What your character would do" in a different sense: "What would my character do if he wanted this to run smoothly?"

Granted, there are situations where your character specifically doesn't want the campaign to run smoothly, and that's okay! Even so, consider only screwing up everybody's plans...every once in a while, or collaborate with the DM to have one big screw up that the party has to work through together.

There is so much fun to be had by everyone when playing any Table Top RPG, but it is important that everyone work together so that EVERYBODY has a good time. Keep your eyes and ears open and allow everybody to participate constructively.

Let's talk about America, shall we?

I have been waiting for years for a Harry Potter theme park. I am a nerd for this type of thing and I enjoy it particularly.

I'm a little disappointed that I might not be (in my current state, at least) allowed on one of the rides "Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey."

But that's me. I am a little bit overweight. I am 6' even and 260...so I'm not a particularly svelte individual...although I don't think I could ever be one, even if I had no fat on me at all. I'm sort of built like a linebacker. (Is that really a bad thing, though?)

But here's the thing: America is becoming overweight. The average height of men in this country is approximately 5'9" while the average weight is approximately 200 pounds.

BMI (Body Mass Index) is approximately 3 units above normal on average, as well. (25 is considered healthy.)

This is a bad sign, I think.

Listen, I'm not saying that we should begin this nationwide campaign to run the Boston Marathon for next week, but come on now. If you are going to complain about not being able to fit on a ride, please do it after taking a good hard look at this guy.

If you aren't willing to keep yourself in shape, or attempt to make your way there, you don't deserve to complain when you can't be accommodated.

It's embarrassing. Absolutely! ...and, if we learned anything from Kevin Smith and his debacle with Southwest Airlines, we know that sometimes, people are douche bags about it. You should be treated with respect regardless of who you are and what shape you are in (or what shape you are and who you're in...but I digress), but if you are overweight and potentially unhealthy, you aren't entitled to RAISE A STINK if you cannot be accommodated for safety reasons.

And as for comparing Jeff Guillaume and Dwight Howard...well, they both might weigh 265, but consider the height difference, shall we?

If Dwight Howard can't fit on a ride, it's probably because he'd get his head cut off.

"Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right"

Yesterday, the Society of Notheists at Purdue University held a Pastafarian Preaching Day in honor of Talk Like a Pirate Day. The purpose of having such a day is to illustrate how stupid it sounds when you encounter people like that of ANY religion and how we must always consider the validity of the beliefs being espoused by even the most sane and attractive crew of scurvy buccaneers you may come across.

It just so happened, as we were planning on having our preaching day, we discovered two very important facts:

1. Talk Like a Pirate Day was on a Saturday this year...which was an incredible bummer.
2. Gene Levy Brother Jed was making his annual visit to Purdue the day before.

In the effort to make the day as awesome as possible, we decided that our Pastafarian Preaching needed to occur in tandem with the visit by our equally furry-eyebrowed, twice as hilarious arch villian.

The days passed and Jen decided that this day must be documented with the latest in high tech devicery...a video camera. She managed to rent one from our school library and then discovered, to her chagrin, there were no storage media included with said camera. Unfettered and still heartened from the amazingness of the day, it was decided that, as we were to be on our way to campus that morning, we would stop and purchase an SD card to store the videos on so we could be in our appointed spots at 8:50 with plenty of time to set up.

And so we sallied forth that glorious Friday morning dressed in full pirate regalia (or in my case, a bandanna, eyepatch, and jeans), we crossed campus facing the jeers and chortles of our passing fellow students and made our way to the local campus bookstore to find out that the place didn't open until 9.

After we set down, we were able to have a brave soul run back and acquire our sorely needed storage medium. One of the hallmarks, every year, of this event, as I see it, is when we pull out the Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti monster and preach from it. It is superbly well written and infinitely hilarious. Last year, when I did it, by the end, I was surrounded by people in bathing suits bowing down to me. It was absolutely glorious.

During a passing period, it was insisted that I repeat my performance this year...where it would be recorded for posterity. I pulled out my best preacher's voice and laid it on thick. A beautiful piece of work for everyone who walked past.

Afterward, I went to go get a drink of water and came back to a puzzled-looking Jen fiddling with the camera.

"Do you think it might be possible for you to do it again later? I don't think it recorded."

My heart sank. I had class all day and I was only really supposed to be around until 10:45 so I could properly prepare for the math class I teach at 11:30.

In between classes, I learned that a news van had stopped by, Brother Jed had finally showed up, and I was missing all of it. On the other hand, I taught about quadratics and completing the square, so not all was lost.

Luckily I had an hour between my last two classes and I was able to stop by, listen to Brother Jed make a fool of himself, and ride the Boilermaker Special.

The highlight for me, amazingly enough, occurred in this small span of time between classes. We had just exited the Boilermaker Special and moved back to watch Brother Jed and his fantastic pimp cane.

When suddenly, we noticed two men clad in spiffy shirt and tie ensembles.

YES. The Mormons had come to campus the same day...and they disliked this detestable man as much as we did. Finding common ground and coming to some sort of unholy temporary truce, we took on Brother Jed together!

Far be it for me to ever say anything nice about the Mormons as a whole, but the two guys we were with that day were incredibly nice, down to Earth people.

All in all, a very good Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Also, Re: Desperado
Salma Hayak causes traffic accidents. RAmen.

PS: Check out Politics and Pucks for even MORE blogging on this event!

Walking tour of the Creation Museum Part II: The Quickening

I apologize for the various and terrible quality of the pictures you are about to see. Enjoy!


This picture is likely highly indicative of the rest of the museum. Let's see what happens, shall we?


Those sharp claws on his feet are for slicing lettuce. There is a salad spinner behind the sign.


Mel Brooks decided to make a special guest appearance. He was displaying the fifteen ten commandments.


Maybe there IS hope for this museum after all! *shifty eyes*


"Om nom nom nom nom"


This lamb looks like he's scared of being raped.


"Really? Vegetables?"


Did I mention that these wax dummies look way too eerily realistic? If they spent as much time actually providing substance to their exhibits as they did trying to make eerie, lifelike dummies, they'd give the Smithsonian a run for its money.


There was not enough room to finish the sentence. It should have read, "The world's not safe anymore for people with IQs above 10 with museums like this still being funded!"



Here we see two people particularly angered by the paparazzi. Apparently they weren't willing to sign the release and their pictures were used anyway!


After killing his brother, Abel, Cain has to sneeze like a motherfucker. Abel's first invention, pepper spray, doesn't work anywhere near as well as he'd have liked.


Completely undecided as to what this was telling us not to touch, we hands-on Atheists decided to begin investigating. It turned out that nobody cared...except maybe the one guy. You'll see him.


Discovered by one of the members of the party with which I was touring the Museum, we come to the real heart of the issue. There is nothing on Earth besides the United States and, perhaps, part of Canada and Mexico. It is a stunningly accurate commentary on the educational system of many religious areas of Kentucky.


The museum was kind enough to embolden some of the more important words of this quote from one of the books of Peter. I think we could do without all the rest of the empty text. "Willingly ignorant word of god" seems to be good enough for me.



Here we have what I can only imagine is Hebrew...sort of.
It's time for a quick Hebrew lesson.

*HEBREW LESSON TIME!*

Let's begin, if you will humor me, from the right side. Hebrew is written right to left. Let us begin with the awkward blob of letter that looks like a K who has seen better days. THIS IS NOT A HEBREW LETTER. Awesome. If it is supposed to be a tsadi or an aleph, it is a tsadi or aleph made exclusively of fail.

Next, we come to the letter Resh. The only problem with this letter is that it has been flipped 180 degrees.

Thirdly, we hit the Hebrew letter Vov which is both correctly oriented and in the proper proportion. Let's move on. Nothing to see here.

Fourthly, we have what is called "Fey." Besides the fact that the letter is the mirror image of how it was supposed to be, it is fine...except for one thing:

This is Fey in it's so called "Final" form. This letter, if it is to be in the sentence AT ALL, should be switched with the letter farthest on the left...which is funny because that letter is a Fey also! It is also flipped over itself.

So, creation museum...whatever you were going for here...it didn't quite work.

EDIT: Jen got the video of me explaining this at the creation museum. I am aware I pointed the wrong way when I mention the end of the word...It had been a long day. Spare me please. =P

Walking tour of the Creation Museum Part I

As you all know, today was the infamous visit to the Creation Museum. I'm going to try to, as best I can, give you a small sampling of the many wondrous exhibits that were to be found.

Let us begin with the main foyer.


Here we can see what I can only assume is a brief reenactment of that ever-so-famous scene from The Dark Crystal. Here we can see a young Gelfling child who is trying to hide, with little success, from two Skeksis. Or maybe not...I honestly can't tell.
Remember, people, Skeksis are armed and considered dangerous. Do not pet the Skeksis.





Following the Jim Henson memorial, we find God's ode to linguistics. I always knew he loved alliteration. This just proves it.Following the English department, we move into geology. It seems that there are two uh...*conflicting* theories on how fossil layers were formed. Of course, we know that God's Word must be correct. I mean, seriously now, look at how much more efficient God is than those silly processes. Who can argue with those numbers!? WHO, I TELL YOU?!?!

I'll continue this later.

Proving Infinity

I'm going to put on my pedant hat again today and talk about a concept that we all know and love...or maybe not so much love depending on your math skills.

Let's have some personal background to this logical exercise first:

A year ago this September 19th, the Society of Non-Theists at Purdue University SONTAPU, lol held a sort of mock-evangelical rally for the Flying Spaghetti Monster* to try to convey a message. This message was: "Unverifiable claims aren't true just because you cannot disprove them.

Throughout the day, we drew larger and larger crowds. The various people were eliciting emotions ranging the gamut from "lol" to "Alright!" to "What on Earth are they doing?" to "OH LAWD BABEH JEEBUS HELP ME!!!1!1!eleven"

In the corner, however stood two people. One was holding a video camera and the other was talking, perhaps if narrating.

After I read a chapter of the Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster in my best "Preacher Voice" I went to go get some water and was stopped by these guys to talk.

It became clear very quickly that these people were not here to get the poop on what we were doing and why we were doing it, but I talked to them civilly. They asked me how I felt about God and what I, myself believed.

I told them. As a scientist and, much more specifically, a Math major, education classes be damned, I had very specific ideas of what I would need to be persuaded to the side of the believers. That is to say, PROOF. Logic. In order for me to stand up and say "There exists a higher power." I need to see a written proof with QED at the end (although now, I think I'd also accept the heavens parting and having God himself send me on a quest a-la Monty Python).

"How about infinity?" was the response. "Can you prove infinity?"

"Well...prove infinity itself? Hmm...I'm not sure I, myself know how to do that. I suppose you could go through the route proving that the integers have no upper bound and are therefore infinite."

This, of course, didn't help. Eventually, they moved away from Math onto subjects that they were more properly coached on and that I didn't have enough real training in to properly bullshit mine their arguments. I made eye contact with other people from our group in the traditional, "Shit, shit, help me! They won't stop throwing bullshit at me!" fashion, allowed someone else to get caught up in the argument and then bowed out claiming various excuses.

But, it got to me. Infinity. What does infinity mean? We use it in math all the time, don't we? Calculus is basically built around the concept of infinity, isn't it? Differentials...integrals, Reimann sums...The infinite and the infinitesmal are all around...well...sort of.

Infinity is a somewhat wooly concept...and by somewhat wooly, I mean completely incomprehensible. To have an infinite quantity of something is physically impossible. It's a contradiction of terms, really. If you have a quantity, you have quantified it. How can you quantify something that is, by definition, inquantifiable? Well, that's precisely it. You can't.

Infinity is not a thing. It is not a measurement. It is not, really, even a state of mind.

Infinity is, in all senses, the impossible we can never and WERE NEVER MEANT TO reach simply by the very nature of the concept! It's not even a benchmark that is merely set too high.

"But, Mark," You say. "There are so many other concepts that we can't actually see that we use all the time, too!"

"Well, yeah. Sorta."

"I mean, you have imaginary numbers, transendental numbers, even, perhaps, NEGATIVE numbers are also abstract concepts that we are surrounded by in math that we don't actually argue with."

This is very true. You probably couldn't find -1 apple, or 2i dollars in your wallet...and I'd love to see someone come up with exactly pi of something.

However, in each of these situations, regardless of their abstractness, we use them because they appear in nature. Even imaginary numbers have a very useful practical application that translates into something tangible. Just ask your friendly neighborhood electrical engineer. I'm sure he'd be glad to point you in the right direction.**

The point is that infinity is really the only one of these that doesn't get a real, practical analog because it doesn't exist on its own.

Infinity is a tool, certainly, but not something that can be proven.

*Yes, they're bowing down to me. It seems that, on the same day, there was a flash mob. They were going through and taking showers and brushing their teeth in all the fountains on campus. There is a small fountain right by where we were holding our event.

**Just make sure he's bathed recently.***

***I'm just kidding. I love you all. Please don't kill me with your trebuchets.

I just got God-Rolled.

I'm trolling Reddit to find some sort of goings on around the Interblag to talk about and I stumble upon a youtube video called "How Big is the Universe?"

"Awesome!" I think.

I've always been an astronomy nerd. The cosmos are awesome and I enjoy nothing more than looking up into the sky at night and thinking about what awesomeness lies beyond this solar system and how Kepler's Laws apply to them. *cough* Sorry...when a math geek is simultaneously an astronomy geek, you occasionally lie awake at night wondering if you could represent the gravity sink of a black hole with a differential equation.

Simultaneously, when you have a math geek who is a music geek, you try to graph sinusoid functions of the music you play.

It's a hazard. I'll say that much.

AT ANY RATE

The video basically goes through and (on a log scale) gives you an idea how long it would take to be able to see the entire universe out of the side of the cockpit and provides you with a tour along the way as various milestones of visibility hit.

This is cool. I'm alright with it so far. There's the occasional grammar mistake; but, whatever, the person is obviously not American (Or so I hope) so I am very tolerant. It provides cool pictures, at any rate. Finally, we have traveled outward for about 10 billion years and we can now see a theoretical view of the entire universe with entire galaxies as mere specks of light.

And just as I'm looking at this wonderful view of the universe and all the things in it, I get a gigantic kick in the balls as the caption on the screen appears:


Great.

If you also watched the video, here's another to cleanse your palate.

Thank you and goodnight.

Math Time

Apropos of nothing, I want to talk about the Brouwer fixed point theorem.

This theory states, basically, there is at least one point on that function that sends the point to itself. That is, there is always at least one point x such that, for a function f, f(x) = x.

I find this property of life so unequivocally awesome that I have to talk about it.

What this theorem shows is that regardless of how you manipulate the world around you, something will end up back where it started.

Let's start simple...

1. Imagine you had a flat map of your country sitting in front of you...or, indeed, dear reader, go get one now. Were you to drop it on the ground, there would be, without a doubt, one point on that map that was directly above the point it represented no matter the scale of the map as long as one sat inside the other.

2. Alternatively, take two pieces of paper with identical pictures on them, crumble one up and place it on top of the other piece of paper. At least one point on the crumbled up piece of paper would be sitting above its corresponding point.

3. Let's say you had a cup of coffee and a spoon. After stirring your coffee, there would always be at least ONE atom of coffee in that cup that was in the exact same place as where it began.

4. This property is also the reason why you could never have a tie in a game of Hex.

As for the proof itself, it's omfg a head tripsomewhat difficult to understand if you don't know the jargon*.

The proof is normally done by contradiction--that is, we try to prove the opposite (i.e. that there are no fixed points) in the hopes that we find a result that shouldn't exist.

Effectively, we begin by saying "Assume there is no fixed point" and then try to "break" the proof using what we already know. If we can show that saying there is no fixed point is absurd, then there can only be one recourse...that there is at least one fixed point somewhere.

Interestingly enough, later Brouwer rejected this proof because he felt that all proofs must be "constructed." That is to say, he felt that proof by contradiction was cheating and that if you are going to prove something, you should do it directly--which he did end up doing for some proofs, including, eventually, the Fixed Point Theorem**.

I hope you feel more enlightened now.

*I know the feeling quite well. My first time being given this proof was in a special guest lecture about the history of proof. It whizzed by me so fast that when I copied it down, even now it makes no sense...which is a terrible shame.

**Which was, I'm sure, awesome for him. Even I don't want to touch that one.

I love Conan.

Here's why:



This is outrageous! I have a wallet!

Ukulele Orchestra - The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

As a musician, I am always happy to find awesome performances on crazy instruments.

I was so excited to find this fantastic video. I hope each of you enjoy it as much as I do.

Oh, videogames.

Now, if you know me well, you'd know that I'm not particularly good at video games.

When it comes to video games that I excel at, there are only two major types:

RPGs and Music Games

The latter is self explanatory once you understand that I've been playing the cello for approximately twelve years as of this fall (as well as violin when I was three, vocals when I was in elementary school, and I've had a smattering of piano lessons).

The former has a lot to do with the fact that while they require strategy during the parts that were there to kill you, they don't necessarily require that you be particularly expedient about it or even graceful...Especially for turn based games such as the later games of the Final Fantasy series. In Final Fantasy 7, I basically had to hold down the x button and cure when everyone got low on HP. Not that even this is necessary anymore.

In Final Fantasy IX there was a slight strategy upgrade in that people were, once again, specific in their abilities...so now I had to actually watch the screen during boss battles instead of spamming the X button while I went into the other room and made a sandwich.

The first (and last) really reflex intensive video game that I was any good at was Goldeneye 64. The reason for this was that I was able to go room by room and kill the baddies one at a time, systematically. I beat the game, but my times were all abysmal because of how slow I was.

Nowadays however, I feel bad even holding FPS games in my hand because of how bad I am at them.

I am physically unable to play these games because, when I play, I have to process what is going on around me. I don't have the coordination to master games like Halo, et. al. because they're too fast-paced for me.

The other type of games that I find impossible to play well are Puzzle Games. I can't think that fast. Tetris, I have less of a problem with because it just involves fitting pieces together, but games like Columns that are color based simply baffle me. According to Jen, it may be genetically linked to my gender...however I am not anywhere near qualified to make a statement regarding this fact. I'll leave it to her to post on this in the near future.

Also, I lost to my 6 year old brother in Mario Kart 64.

In conclusion, I am a terrible gamer who only plays video games in a very small niche. This will not change any time in the near future and I only somewhat consider myself less of a person for this being the case.