The Waffle Is Dead...

Long Live The Waffle!

The failure of interactive government

I like Barack Obama; that is, I like him in the same way I like or dislike any constructed celebrity: based on the veneer that I see on a regular basis he seems not to be a rampaging, incompetent asshole. In general, I tolerate Obama politically, which for me is a fairly generous statement -- my social and political views are usually impractical, perfectionistic, aggressive, and unpopular (at least, many of them are) so I don't expect to see a successful politician adopt them any time soon. But there has been one constellation of ideas coming from Obama and his team that I seemed to be really, honestly agreeing with: it looked like, from the change.gov website, Obama was going to actually start synthesizing a new style of transparent and interactive government from a combination of technology and "forward" thinking.

I say "forward" in quotes because it's really only "forward" thinking from a backward, beauracratic, governmental point of view. We could have started with real and meaningful open government as soon as we had technology that supported it. Minimally, the bare-bones Internet was enough to make an effort, but certainly by the early 1990's the web was available enough that it could have been put to use productively by the government.

But governments and technology generally mix like oil and water, so only now do we see the glimmer of a government that has anything to do with modern communications and interactivity.

Or rather, only now had we seen a glimmer of this kind of government. Change.gov was a brilliant platform: though it sometimes felt a little ad-hoc, it was a surprisingly open forum, where lots of people posted lots of comments about lots of things. People could make suggestions about what Obama should be doing, and then they could vote on and talk about suggestions from other people. I was impressed by this, coming from a president-elect -- it was a good sign.

But now we've lept off the precipice of warm-fuzzy-president-elect / change.gov and landed in the shit-storm that is omfg-that's-the-oval-office-president / whitehouse.gov.

I gather from the large button that says "Participate - Office of Public Liaison - Changing the way Americans engage with their government" that there is some intent to offer similar interactivity on whitehouse.gov... but right now clicking on that button gives you a stock "Contact Us" form and this introduction:

The Office of Public Liaison & Intergovernmental Affairs (OPL-IGA) is the front door to the White House through which everyone can participate and inform the work of the President.

OPL-IGA takes the Administration out of Washington and into communities across America, stimulating honest dialogue and ensuring that America's citizens and their elected officials have a government that works effectively for them and with them.

OPL-IGA will bring new voices to the table, build relationships with constituents and seeks to embody the essence of the President's movement for change through the meaningful engagement of citizens and their elected officials by the federal government.

We'll be adding many more ways for you to interact with OPA-IGA at this page in the weeks and months ahead. In the meantime, please take a moment to share your thoughts using the form below.

Here're my thoughts: Fuck you.

"Weeks and months ahead"? This is the web in 2009 -- weeks and months might as well be eons and eternity. And change.gov is (was) working now. What do you need weeks and months for? Are you tweaking the god-dammed color scheme for the "many more ways" for me to interact? This is like a California prop-8 bait and switch: throw out change.gov as some distant beacon of how we might start moving forward with an open government then snatch it away right after everybody realizes its actually there. I hope that little contact form has been flooded by people complaining that they miss being able to actually interact. If it hasn't been, we're in even worse shape than I thought: we had something -- something good -- and now we don't have it any more -- that should piss us off.

Some people probably think I should just be patient. Those people are wrong. They're wrong because it just doesn't take that long to start offerring real, useful interactivity on a website. They're wrong because even if it did take ages to assemble those kinds of online tools they've already been built and deployed at change.gov -- they could just be moved, if only as a stop-gap measure so the fledgling "I actually want to interact with my government, even if it's all imaginary and pointless in the end" community would have something -- some token of good faith -- to work with.

And, perhaps most importantly, they're wrong because we don't live in an age of patience anymore. Sometimes patience is still a virtue -- sometimes we need to wait for things, and savor the waiting. But most of the time our technology gives us things quickly -- I can send a message nearly instantly to any one in the world with a computer, I could travel anywhere on the planet within 3 days, I can stream entertainment of all kinds from all over the world, and I can even contribute to that entertainment (and information) whenever I wish. We live in a world of astounding agility, and we are at the dawn (yes, really, still just the very early dawn) of a world in which information and ideas race around at speeds, and in ways, that will continue to amaze us for generations.

It is long past time for the government to catch up and start acting like an agile, modern institution, instead of like a plodding 18th century juggernaut with busted cog.

I can single-handedly conjure at least a basic interactive, community building website from my ass in less than a day. A lot less if I use existing open-source platforms and tools. In fact, if I already had an existing site I could probably drop in a basic message board in minutes.

Am I suggesting that I think building a chunk of whitehouse.gov where the public can voice and discuss their concerns is as simple as whipping up a common message board? No, I'm not. But there's a whole office of the whitehouse devoted to this... and there's a substantial base of existing tools at change.gov... and there's a huge base of existing tools other people have built... and it doesn't have to be perfect on launch day, it just has to be there. And, on reflection, a lightly but visibly moderated message board with a section for, say, each item on The Agenda would actually go a very long way towards restoring my faith in this open government idea that change.gov started; aside from bueracratic crap or plain old laziness I don't see any reason why that couldn't be available tonight.

"Weeks and months" my ass.

Diablo 3 Nonsense

A while back Blizzard announced Diablo 3 by way of a series of splash pages, with their usual jovial shroud of misdirection. Blizzard has also trickled out a few handfuls of screen shots and a game-play movie... and that's were the trouble started. Shortly after this meager bounty of carefully selected D3 information was released, a community of ... how shall I say this gently ... fucking morons with pirated copies of Photoshop and way too god-damned much time on their fucking greasy hands started imagining new rules for how Diablo is supposed to look.

Now we get to listen to people whine: "It need to be grittier and darker", "It's too bright", "Why are there so many colors?", "It's not even Diablo anymore!"

I love the visual style of Diablo 3 -- at least, based on the insignificantly tiny snippet of imagery we've seen so far. I had my fill of games that looked like mud in a barrel stirred vigorously when I played the original Quake. The addition of things like colors and, heaven forbid, a rainbow, doesn't make it "not Diablo" -- it just makes it Diablo with more then a cramped 256 color pallet.

An aside to this bullshit, is that, as far as I can tell, no one has actually done any work to demonstrate their ideas of what the Diablo 3 artistic style should be. Instead, people have taken screenshots and fiddled with the color balance, added a little noise, maybe even messed with that lighting filter... I don't see any from-scratch mock-ups or original paintings. People are happy to bitch and moan, and to sign petitions (no, really), and complain endlessly, but I guess putting together a dungeon's worth of sample art is a bit too hard. Why don't we see an outpouring of community-made, fully-rigged and animated 3D models? Where are the meticulously grimy sample textures? The carefully crafted 3D tiles that snap together neatly to create the "properly gothic" labyrinths?

Perhaps all the "fans" really want is a little tweaking, a little filter-esque nudge, and that's why all this sample working isn't being furiously developed. If that's the case, I have a suggestion for Blizzard:

Just-in-time pixel shader plugin support.

Here's how it works: render the game to a texture, rather than the screen (it's certainly possible this is already being done, for other effects purposes). Let "the fans" plugin a pixel shader that the engine uses to render this texture to the screen (this rendering process is not, by itself, innovative, but I think the idea of letting jackasses plug their own pixel shader in might be fairly original). The great news is, you should be able to emulate most of the Photoshop-ish effects in a single pixel shader. I for one can't wait to see the repositories of "gothic filters" that creep up all over the net, with hundreds of little pixel shaders that make things just a bit darker, or a little blurry, or add lots of noise to the screen so it looks "more evil".

Here's my contribution (I think it's perfect for the people who think the game just isn't dark enough in general):

float4 d3FilterShader() : COLOR
{
    // Should be nice and dark now
    return float4(0, 0, 0, 255);
}

Put that in your elongated, pseudo-realistic, gothic, fantasy, halfing's-leaf pipe and shove it up your ass!

"The Controversial Survey" - Part 2

Oh yes: Part 2.

So the "survey" itself was mediocre. After finishing it, I had this pit in my stomach... like, maybe people familiar with my personality would feel like my usual venom hadn't been spit... perhaps they would worry that I had caved in and become something "fluffy". To allay these fears, I present here a discussion of the subtexts of several of the questions from the "Controversial" survey.

I hope you find them ascorbic and thought provoking. Then ascorbic again. In that order.

"Do you have the guts to answer these Q's and repost as The Controversial Survey?"

"Q's"? You mean "questions"? For Christ's sake if you're going to climb up Mt. Soapbox and call something "The Controversial Survey" at least write the whole word "questions". No where else does this document descend into such pointless macho posturing bullshit; it's as if the author needed to lure me into the dark back alley of the survey with a pasty-white-rapper-boy faux persona before we could "talk business" and actually use whole words.

And what does it say about our society that we need to have "guts" to answer some charged semi-political opinion questions in public? "Oh, no, I'm not gutsy enough to have opinions -- I just think we should have sunshine and bunnies and whatever anybody else says!"

I say: bunnies are delicious the sun just gives you cancer! Stay inside! Feast on rabbit stew!

Parental Licensing

In one survey circulating around MySpace we have an example of parent's hitting their kids, a 12-year-old mother and a woman who killed her 5 children! What is this nonsense about letting anybody have as many kids as they want? Having a child is a tremendous responsibility, and most people aren't and won't ever be ready for it.

You should have to be licensed to have a child.

You should be required to demonstrate that you understand that children are expensive and that they cry a lot, and won't shake them to death because you wind up sleep deprived and fifty grand in debt.

You need to have a steady job that pays all your current bills with plenty left for your savings account (which you are required to have).

You need to demonstrate some basic knowledge of child care: diaper changing, feeding, nutrition, and so on.

We don't verify anything about people before we let them pop out babies at whatever rate they please. Do we worry at all about the impact this has on the children? I suppose some people would argue that having kids is some sort of God-given right -- something you can't take away from people. I say that's a load of steaming crap. Kids deserve to be raised by competent parents, not by blubbering idiots who treat them like another trophy dog or hunk of bling to parade around in front of their friends as a measure of status. Having a child isn't about feeling better about yourself, or strengthening your relationships: it's about raising a child. If you aren't 100% clear, certain and comfortable with that, I don't think it's a great idea for you to be raising the next generation.

Alcohol and Drugs

People have a unique talent for transforming small problems into epic and often misplaced and misunderstood battles. Alcohol, drugs, and cigarettes have all been solid examples.

16 year olds like to get totally shit-faced because they aren't allowed to. Would you like to end childhood diabetes? Make vegetables illegal and watch as the average childhood diet skyrockets into the land of ultra-healthy.

In general, we seem to believe we can keep people from doing things; this is entirely untrue. Kids who want to drink will. Adults who want to do coke will. People who want to smoke will.

Making these things illegal just makes them more interesting to younger people and more dangerous in general. A much better approach to these problems is honest education, and better laws.

Let's teach our 12 year olds what booze is and what it does. Let's let them have half a glass of wine at diner, or a beer out on the boat with the family. Then lets modify the penalties for the real issues related to drinking: got a DUI? You never drive again, ever. Period. No suspended license, no community service, no second chances. After all, we've been telling you about alcohol since you were 12! You know how fucked up you get when you're drunk, and if you can't keep your shit together enough to plan not to drive when you're drinking why on earth should we ever let you have another chance? You might kill somebody!

But it's important to notice that you're not killing somebody because you're drunk. You're killing somebody because you're an idiot. The alcohol isn't what made you stupid: you were stupid when you drove your own damn self to a bar to get hammered. That little planning mis-step happened before you had your fun.

There's much more to complain about regarding drugs in general -- but there's also more of the survey to dissect, so for now at least, I'll move on (perhaps I can revisit this gem in a later post).

The War in Iraq

There has been a surprisingly effective metamorphosis of the debate around the Iraq War: the real issue is not about the war itself -- the issue is about the process by which we "prepared for" and subsequently entered into war.

It's probably safe to say that Saddam Hussein wasn't going to win the "Most Bestest Dictator of the Year" award; and it's probably true that not having him in power -- considered in isolation (i.e. without regard for the mess that's filled the vacuum) -- is a "good thing".

The problem is that we got fed a heaping platter of horse-shit about why we should go to war, and what we were trying to accomplish in the war. We had no plan to successfully complete and exit a conflict because we lacked any interest in understanding the region we were about the enter into conflict with. We went ahead in the most consistent and well-known (and globally reviled) American tradition of deciding: "them's not us over there, so they must all be the evildoers and we can fuck'em up good and make things more American-y and that's better for ev'rybody!"

America thrives on an unspoken policy of isolationist delusion. We simply declare that we're the best at everything, then lump the outside world into the "Other" category. We, as a nation, are incapable of sensitivity or nuance, and we have become (or perhaps have always been) unable to examine ourselves in the harsh light of reality.

The war in Iraq must continue now, because it is not finished (though, it would be quite in character for us to abandon it mid-stream, having decided we'd done our part). But the people responsible for it should be eviscerated; our failure to do this may be the real lasting impression of the war abroad. We will show the world -- again -- that we do not hold accountable the people who blunder across the globe inciting the deaths of nearly-countless-thousands at a time; we will demonstrate -- again -- that as a people we are unable to find any way to approach a problem unarmed.

When the war is finished, we should take a long, hard look at the cost of the war. We should ponder the way in which this vast expense could be incurred for the sake of destruction, but we cannot educate our children and we cannot heal our sick.

Of course, we won't perform these examinations, because we are a society of impotent, fearful, greedy people. We are petty; and, terrifyingly, the only nation on the planet that has not accepted it is our own.

"The Controversial Survey" - Part 1

I've been off MySpace for a long while now, since the site is really shamefully broken shamefully often. But today, feeling excessively bored and annoyed by Facebook's two-hundred-billion-fucking-widgets all of which are sending me constant invitations to "be bought", "be punched", "punch someone back", "go on the Oregon trail in so-and-so's wagon", "receive a pet", "receive a patch of grass", and so on, I decided I should peek in on the old MySpace page.

As I'm mucking about looking for show dates for a band named after a bland, starchy, snack food (yeah, I mean you ::points menacingly::) I notice there's been ... a bulletin posted a while back with the tantalizing title "The Controversial Survey".

I have mixed feelings about these survey things that circulate the social networks; most of them are shit (... I guess that's not that mixed). But I really fucking love controversy, so this worked out to slightly better than a wash.

Here, then, I present my responses to "The Controversial Survey":

Do you have the guts to answer these Q's and repost as The Controversial Survey?
No. This post is a figment of your imagination – go take your god damned meds.

Would you do meth if it was legalized?
No; but you can do it if you want to. In fact, I’d really prefer you buy your meth legally from the local 7-11 rather than blowing shit up when you drop your second-hand mixing flask in your garage.

Abortion: for or against?
I’m strongly for it. We have plenty of people already and, frankly, most people make bloody rotten parents.

Would our country fall with a woman president?
Yes, but not because of having a female president. The gender of our president isn’t likely to have any impact at all on our Romanesque shit-spiral into the lowest regions of decadence and depravity, and our overall attitudes towards the rest of the world should ensure that any leftovers from the impending implosion are mopped up nicely.

Do you believe in the death penalty?
No. In order to even begin discussing the death penalty as a viable form of punishment, you must be able to ensure with 100% certainty that it is never misapplied. Currently, our justice system is unable to ensure with any certainty at all that any law ever applies in any consistent way.

Do you wish marijuana would be legalized already?
Yes. Unless you’re willing to ban all potentially intoxicating substances (which is whole-heartedly foolish, and rampagingly ineffective to boot), there’s really no point in banning any of them. Besides, this is a tremendous missed opportunity for taxation – maybe we could use the revenue to pay for something frivolous for everybody – like fucking healthcare.

Are you for or against premarital sex?
For! Marrying someone you’ve never had sex with is just a steaming load of bullshit. Unless you’re legitimately asexual, sex is going to be an important part of your relationship – figure out if it works before you facetiously commit for life, make babies, have affairs, get divorced and fuck up your kids.

Do you think same sex marriage should be legalized?
If we’re going to keep heterosexual marriage legal (which is not necessarily a great idea), there’s no reason not to make homosexual marriage equally legal.

Do you think its wrong that so many Hispanics are moving to the USA?
No. However: the process of immigration in this country is a nightmare, and has clearly been designed with the intent of being impossible to navigate for virtually all immigrants; this needs to be fixed so we can actually provide a sensible legal process for immigration.

A 12 year old girl has a baby...should she keep it?
Abso-fucking-lutely not. It is probably the case that this baby will obliterate the 12 year old mother’s life (and very likely the lives of her immediately family, if they are present and involved), but of much greater concern is the fact that a 12 year old is utterly incapable of raising a child effectively in our society, and the baby is the one who’s about to be truly and seriously screwed because of it.

Should the alcohol age be lowered to 18?
Yes – in fact, even lower might be better. The issue is not young people drinking, it’s young people failing to have a sense of responsibility imposed on them that’s the problem. Let’s teach 14 year olds to handle alcohol responsibly while they still live at home, and maybe they won’t find it so god-damned fascinating and rebellious when they’re 21 and driving (not that they should be driving – but that’s a different controversial opinion).

Should the war in Iraq be called off?
That’s a bit like asking if we should call off the demolition of the old city hall after we blew the fucker up. We should be moving out of Iraq as efficiently as possible at this point – the problem is, we’ve made damn sure it’s not going to be very efficient.

Do you believe in spanking your children?
I can’t answer this one: if I ever have children, it will mean that my beliefs have shifted so fundamentally that any answer I provide now will be utterly meaningless. As for you spanking your children: no, I don’t believe in it. I do believe you shouldn’t have had children, though, and that your likely total failure to prepare for parenthood is likely the reason why you now have rambunctious brats whom you’d like to hit.

A mother is declared innocent after murdering her 5 children in a temporary insanity case...opinion?
A thing over there just happened that might be kindof shady, but maybe nobody is getting blamed, per se, for it… opinion?

This question is full of vagaries; generalizing guilt, innocence, and punishment into little snippets of provocative drivel is 90% of the reason our justice system is a train wreck of racism and generalized bigotry ruled by wealth instead of sense.

It's between you and a person who is being kept alive by life support machines… one has to die, who?
It depends: is the other person being kept alive by life support machines with no chance at all of recovery? Is he or she already brain dead? If so, then I’ll be happy to yank the plug from the wall and go on my way, feeling, frankly, like I’ve done my good deed for the week.

If, on the other hand, my fate-bound-buddy on the tubes is likely to recover in some measurable capacity, this becomes an entirely different question, and would no doubt have a much longer answer... to be fair, it probably still involves me not being the dead guy though.

Global warming: fact or fiction?
Fact. Next?

Are you afraid others will judge you from reading some of your answers?
I’ll leave it to your no doubt fruit-filled imagination to guess at this one.

I live in a shit-hole!

I was browsing my local news on news.google.com today after I got back from my psychotherapist appointment (surprised? no, you're not :b) and was treated to this headline:

Providence cancels holiday fireworks display

Wow.

Providence routinely lights huge bails of wood floating in a river on fire (they call it "Waterfire", I call it "touristy bullshit"), so you'd think they'd be fairly good at managing burning stuff. You'd be wrong, though.

Apparently Providence has been launching fireworks from a plot of land near various state buildings since 2005. That's important because it's only just this year, with not enough time to find an alternate site to launch them from, that the fire marshal has "remeasured" (you can probably read this as: "bothered to measure for the first time") the distance between the fireworks and the buildings and discovered they're too close together to be safe.

And why remeasure now? Because of the "discovery of burns on the roof of the state medical examiner’s office". That's right: for 3 years Providence has been almost but not quite burning down, at a minimum, the state medical examiner's office.

Splendid.

And, partly to give credit where credit is due, and partly to convince you I'm not actually creative enough to make this shit up, here's a link to the original Boston Herald story: http://news.bostonherald.com/news/national/northeast/view.bg?articleid=1104356&format=comments#CommentsArea

and a longer story in the Providence Journal: http://www.projo.com/news/content/PROVIDENCE_FIREWORKS_07-01-08_BJAN5R2_v10.3e822ea.html

Say what? Another blog??

I realize at first it seems counter-intuitive, since I'm rotten at updating this blog to begin with (which probably explains my essentially zero-person readership), but I've spun off a second blog.

Why?

Because I'd like to discuss web development (and to a lesser extent general programming concerns) in a space that isn't cluttered with personal cruft. Likewise, I'd rather not loose my opportunity to dump my personal cruft into a giant blog-shaped barrel for the world to occasionally stumble onto. So, The Angry Waffle will be my personal blog, as well as my place to ramble about games and things along those lines, and Bloody Great Leaf will (surprisingly?) be just a bit cleaner, and devoted primarily to discussing issues that one way or another influence my professional life.