When I have the time and space to be so, I'm a fairly serious about my computer games. I don't mean I take games seriously - I reserve that distinction for people who are more committed to their World of Warcraft* characters than their real lives. No, what I mean is, I play games that most people balk at, the kinds of games that people point to when they're talking about why PC gaming is dying (because the games are too complicated for a general audience). For example, I'm a big fan of Europa Universalis III, a game with a practically vertical learning curve, no victory conditions, and one of the most awful, boring combat systems you'll find in a strategy game.
* Blogger, evidently, thinks "warcraft" isn't a word, as angry red squiggles pop up when I type it (it sugests "watercraft," "aircraft," and "hovercraft" as alternatives, among others). This is odd because warcraft was a word far before the series of games came into existence. More hilariously, "Blogger" also induces angry red squiggles.
Another example: Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI. I'm linking to the Metacritic page because the blurbs there tell you a lot. IGN writes, "The considerable investment of time and focus it takes to begin to enjoy Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI is probably enough to turn off most gamers." Absolute Games says, "The pace of this game is laid-back even by the standards of the 4X strategy genre. Most people will hate it for being obscure and boring." A particularly harsh review from PC Zone UK muses, "It lacks the logical connections that most strategy games have."
But I love it! Well, most of it. The problem with Romance, for me anyway, is not its so-called steep learning curve (I found the game quite easy to get into) or its extreme micromanagement. Rather, the problem is an abysmal tactical and strategic AI and the rather shallow limits in the number of choices the player can make as leader of his ancient Chinese faction. The game looks amazing, but its problem is that, far from being too hard, its far too easy. Add in an atrocious interface designed for console (strategy games on console? really?), and you have the makings of a disappointing title, overall, but for all of the opposite reasons from the ones the reviewers give.
I could list more games, but the point is, I prefer deep, strategic, complex games with challenging AIs. I prefer turn-based games over real-time games, I prefer games that ask me to design (in one way or another), rather than games that ask me simply to be awed by beautiful graphics and to kill everything that moves.
It might come as a surprise, then, if I say that I am fascinated by a large number of recent Casual Games. The genre is nothing new - think Bejewelled or even Tetris - but the level to which casual gaming has risen is truly stunning. In addition to the literally thousands of free flash games - some of which quite good - available at dozens of websites, there have been a handful of standout commercial games in the last few years that I want to mention in particular. Why? Because it turns out that a good developer, with some creativity and a good design process, can create a game every bit as deep as a Civilization title without forcing the gamer to spend ten (or twenty, or a hundred) hours playing just to achieve victory.
Osmos is a recent standout. Not only is the game beautiful in all of its 2D splendor, but it's highly intuitive and incredibly relaxing. Also, it's one of the single most difficult games I've ever played. The later levels cannot be defeated by willpower alone; rather, they require intense focus, strategy, and a fairly sophisticated and intuitive understanding of orbital mechanics. One level in particular - which had me screaming, cursing, walking away from the computer - is so difficult that it took me probably in excess of 50 tries to beat it. And yet, even in my frustration, I was happy; this was a challenge worth meeting.
Completing F3C-3 (Epicycles 3) from hemisphere games on Vimeo.
The level in question is "Epicycles 3," in the Force tree of the game. Your goal is to progressively absorb other motes until you're big enough to absorb or otherwise destroy the four "attractors," in the game window. The tricky thing is, in order to move, you have to expel mass, and thus you're in a constant fight to get larger whilst also moving to the right place. In most levels, doing this is fairly straightforward - though cleverness and patience are always virtues - but in Epicycles this is a truly Herculean task. As you can see from the video, the developers of the game realized the level was so difficult that they felt compelled to put up a tutorial just for the level.
Flotilla is a game I haven't played much, but I love that it takes only fifteen minutes or so to complete a play-through. Often, at least for the beginner, much less. What makes Flotilla great is its combat system - which is really the whole game. It's incredibly abstracted, thanks to the wire-frame animations and general lack of graphics, but it has a certain charm to it as well, and the tactical depth is incredible. Casual though this game may be, it's no walk in the park to play. As I said, the beginner (like me) is liable to get blown out of the water repeatedly before he gets the hand of how to effectively pilot his ship. But this is a game where defeat does not weight heavily on you, because you can simply fire up a new ship and get blown to bits by someone else. And even if you do manage to survive your battles, your "Capitan" is on his proverbial last legs anyway, so death is inevitable.
A similar game to Flotilla, though a bit older, is Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space. The concept is eerily similar, but the execution very different. Combat is 2D instead of 3D, and you're much more likely to survive the thing. Like Flotilla, Weird Worlds takes minutes, not hours, to play, and there's a certain satisfaction in exploring the entire map you're provided at the beginning of each session. Even better, in Weird Worlds, is all the frankly bizarre stuff that happens. Sometimes the galaxy gets invaded by a freakish alien menace, sometimes stars go supernova, and sometimes you get sucked into a black hole because you thought you could make it around the thing when you actually couldn't. Even in death, however, there's always the opportunity to fire up a new 10 minute session and to see what will happen this time.
Passage is a game you've probably never heard of. It takes five minutes to play, and you'll probably only play it once or twice, but it is truly one of the most fantastic gaming experiences I've ever had. The play area is only 100 pixels by 16 (4 of which are used for a small scoreboard). But what it accomplishes with that space is amazing. It's poetry. It's art.
I don't want to give the game away, because not knowing what it is makes for much of its charm. Download it, play it, and be stunned. You may even cry, it's that good. And once you've had a chance to play it, I promise to do a whole post on it at a later date.
Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords is somewhere between casual game and traditional PC game. I say that because actually beating Puzzle Quest - as I have not done - takes as long as beating a normal RPG. The gameplay is almost all Bejeweled, but the bejeweled puzzles take place as a part of a classic RPG storyline where you, as a young mage/knight/warrior/druid have to fend off some evil nemesis yadda yadda. Actually, the story is more compelling than you'd think, and the artwork throughout the game is charming and fun. There are even some (somewhat simplistic, but fun anyway) strategic elements to the game, including building up your castle and choosing which mount to ride into jewely battle. In all, you don't lose in Puzzle Quest, so it is decidedly casual, but no game is as indicative of the rise of casual gaming in the PC world as it is.
Finally, the crowning jewel of the casual game world, at least to my mind, is 2D Boy's World of Goo. It is brilliant, both in its fantastic level design and in its humor. The mechanic is fairly simple and intuitive, and learning the game takes no time at all, but the twists the game's "story" goes through - and the levels with it - are all so wonderfully unexpected and fresh that one wonders why major developers can't find people this creative. One part in particular - when the goo world suddenly turns into a Tron-like retro 80's look and the gameplay mechanics shift fairly substantially - had me literally jumping up out of my chair in excitement.
What's best about World of Goo, and what makes it perhaps even more emblematic of modern casual gaming than Puzzle Quest, is its wide-ranging appeal. To a true, serious gamer it is hilarious, full of cynicism and barbs intended for both society at large and the gaming world in particular. For the truly casual casual gamer, it is both fun to play and intuitive.
For my part, playing World of Goo is easily one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had, on par with more in-depth games like Civilization IV or Mass Effect. Which surprises me. I suppose the question is, what makes these simple, mostly 2-dimensional, casual games so compelling? Or, perhaps more aptly, why are (mostly independent) casual game developers doing such a better job being creative and innovative than big companies like Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, or Firaxis? That's kind of a leading question of course, because a smaller package means it's easier to take risks, and there are a great many casual games that fail to deliver on their innovative promise. Nevertheless, casual games are becoming more and more prominent, and can deliver - even for a serious gamer - a truly in-depth, strategic, and stimulating gaming experience. Who knew?
Friday, September 10, 2010
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Ode to the Ptolemaic Venus
This is an assignment from back in (undergraduate) college. We were asked to write a 3 to 5 page essay about Ptolemy's treatment of the planet Venus, so of course I wrote an essay in verse. It probably took me 10 times longer than the assignment should have, but I'm still happy with the result. It occurred to me this morning that I hadn't posted this, so here it is.
Of planets fair and fairer still ‘tis Venus that’s most bright
Before sunrise or after set when Moon conceives the night.
Described by motion circular, the learned Ptolemy claims
Through Almagest, in which for wisdom he enshrined his name
In tomes of history, the planets move about the earth
In just such way divinity would give the sky its birth.
And yet a question plagues his work (that long was held as True):
What of the equant, we must ask, that gives appearance due
Measure against the doubt that our observance fuels with sight,
When Venus struts across the sun in variable flight,
That circles lone cannot describe except with forced constraint
Of center offset that a line to epicycle paints,
Describing thus by motion circular about a path
Itself circular? It is here we later find the wrath
Astronomers to come will hold, and doubt ourselves whether
Ptolemy can be justified in sending this tether
To bind the motion of our star (the brightest and most fair).
If circles can only describe the heavens with repair
By inconsistent equant, then it seems simplicity
(Which is a gauge of truth and, more, this task’s felicity)
Is lost, with both epicycle and eccentricity.
Our author asks if we can judge by earth’s shallow standard
What is ‘simple’ to heaven high, or if instead it’s slandered
By our unwitting questions, thus in Book Thirteen he writes:
“We should not judge the simple by what nature’s spirit frights
To changeability, for we forever move and change
And find ‘simplicity’ of constant motion out of range
Of human possibility.” Therefore we must rethink
Whether objections on these grounds must surely start to sink
Beneath other concerns, or if instead we will challenge
The bold proclaiming Ptolemy and for ourselves avenge
Our first complaint. Defense, it seems, is possible on grounds
That, while eternal, motion such as this is hardly bound
By laws divine, for though we cannot know the mind of God,
We can ask whether “constant motion” is but a facade
For Ptolemy through which his physics he can then imbue
Without having to worry whether ultimately True
His universe remains. For his concern, I think, is not
For Truth complete, but rather what he passionately sought
Was explication of mathematics pure, and what we see
In starry night that seems to us to move with constancy,
And more, still left in this is something true, we may decree.
To Venus, then, we must direct our literary gaze,
For in the star of love our enterprise may yet be razed.
If from appearance first our author asks us to derive
The motion of a planet that a theory can describe
By means of observation first, then reason soon applied,
Allowing first predictive sight, and then to physics tied,
Then we are blessed with math divine that morning star abides.
If from a misconception, though, of earth-bound universe,
Accepting as a truth assumptions now found as perverse,
And then applying oft sought visage to a path rehearsed
By circles impiously from their very source reversed,
And put in hands of man, then sadly we are cursed.
Returning to the open of astronomy’s great work
Confronts us with a disparate opinion which to shirk:
That Ptolemy, a charlatan, has hidden us from truth
(Despite his claims that to do so would be a bit uncouth),
Or else that he may be aware of centric point besides
The earth. It hinges on a phrase, a clause he leaves aside,
Which some translate as “simple” where we may have “simplistic,”
And this is where suggestions of heaven heliocentric
Are born. If Venus, to rephrase the thought, moves by mean sun,
Which Ptolemy himself admits, it seems with only one
Small step we can deduce that circles epicyclic move
About the sun itself, and we with bright planet of love.
Regardless of translation we approach a reason odd
For why this cannot be the case, that, if we still must prod
Into the nature of the heavens, it will soon be clear
That nothing could exist on earth (letting alone the air)
If quick about the sun we twirled. In this there is complaint
That gravity and Newton fix, but now ‘tis still a feint,
Avoiding possibilities this system strong implies,
But undermining eloquence, and thus we cast aside
The whole affair, rather to face a truth left incomplete
Than ‘knowledge’ false. Such quick restraint an admirable feat
It is for our learnèd astronomer, who did not shroud
In propositions ostentatious falsehood far more loud;
For in philosophy there is no room to hold the proud.
Questions of equant left and doubts of insincerity,
In Venus we find questions still of what the point may be.
Why Almagest was written, so much time and effort spent
On tracking nightly skies with inaccurate equipment
If only to arrive at a confusion unresolved
By equant line, a paltry thing, that neigh the problem solves?
Alas that problems physical which plague this work divine
Could come from planet Venus, causing questions unrefined!
Before an answer I propose to why we read this book
I first ask that we contemplate the task that undertook
Great Ptolemy when every night he gazed on spinning sky,
Imagining and measuring where in the heavens lie
The Beauty that first Euclid gazed upon so well.
And in this task he found there was a story still to tell
Of Euclid’s pure geometry in heaven ably mirrored,
That now he too, toward realms of gods, had fortunately peered.
He did not see a universe that spun around a pole
Impaled in sun, but rather saw the spinning human soul
And heard the music that only the goddess, Venus, sings
When morning comes, or evening falls, and love through cosmos rings,
For that is where humanity must find its hidden wings.
My answer, then, I fear I have precluded with too much
A hint. My reader likely has proposed to guess that such
A world as our astronomer unfolds we ought to see
Because in his great work he shows us true divinity.
Not Truth as we would have it in our ultimate repose,
But truth as best we can perceive, with senses so imposed
Upon our reason, that only in math do we see pure
An abstract world that, free from us, provides our wonder cure,
Proclaiming Truth as Ptolemy, who saw Venus as we,
And knew that in his human sight could only hope to see
Its motion through the heavens from his humble place on ground,
While it, so perfect in its light, about the stars was wound
Like justice, or a true account, or Plato’s fleeting forms
That hide themselves and so withstand the ever-blowing storms
Of false impression. In such way soft Venus moves the mind
To Beauty, and in Beauty’s hearth we may at long last find
A Truth that only Beauty’s breath could e’er hope to unwind.
Of planets fair and fairer still ‘tis Venus that’s most bright
Before sunrise or after set when Moon conceives the night.
Described by motion circular, the learned Ptolemy claims
Through Almagest, in which for wisdom he enshrined his name
In tomes of history, the planets move about the earth
In just such way divinity would give the sky its birth.
And yet a question plagues his work (that long was held as True):
What of the equant, we must ask, that gives appearance due
Measure against the doubt that our observance fuels with sight,
When Venus struts across the sun in variable flight,
That circles lone cannot describe except with forced constraint
Of center offset that a line to epicycle paints,
Describing thus by motion circular about a path
Itself circular? It is here we later find the wrath
Astronomers to come will hold, and doubt ourselves whether
Ptolemy can be justified in sending this tether
To bind the motion of our star (the brightest and most fair).
If circles can only describe the heavens with repair
By inconsistent equant, then it seems simplicity
(Which is a gauge of truth and, more, this task’s felicity)
Is lost, with both epicycle and eccentricity.
Our author asks if we can judge by earth’s shallow standard
What is ‘simple’ to heaven high, or if instead it’s slandered
By our unwitting questions, thus in Book Thirteen he writes:
“We should not judge the simple by what nature’s spirit frights
To changeability, for we forever move and change
And find ‘simplicity’ of constant motion out of range
Of human possibility.” Therefore we must rethink
Whether objections on these grounds must surely start to sink
Beneath other concerns, or if instead we will challenge
The bold proclaiming Ptolemy and for ourselves avenge
Our first complaint. Defense, it seems, is possible on grounds
That, while eternal, motion such as this is hardly bound
By laws divine, for though we cannot know the mind of God,
We can ask whether “constant motion” is but a facade
For Ptolemy through which his physics he can then imbue
Without having to worry whether ultimately True
His universe remains. For his concern, I think, is not
For Truth complete, but rather what he passionately sought
Was explication of mathematics pure, and what we see
In starry night that seems to us to move with constancy,
And more, still left in this is something true, we may decree.
To Venus, then, we must direct our literary gaze,
For in the star of love our enterprise may yet be razed.
If from appearance first our author asks us to derive
The motion of a planet that a theory can describe
By means of observation first, then reason soon applied,
Allowing first predictive sight, and then to physics tied,
Then we are blessed with math divine that morning star abides.
If from a misconception, though, of earth-bound universe,
Accepting as a truth assumptions now found as perverse,
And then applying oft sought visage to a path rehearsed
By circles impiously from their very source reversed,
And put in hands of man, then sadly we are cursed.
Returning to the open of astronomy’s great work
Confronts us with a disparate opinion which to shirk:
That Ptolemy, a charlatan, has hidden us from truth
(Despite his claims that to do so would be a bit uncouth),
Or else that he may be aware of centric point besides
The earth. It hinges on a phrase, a clause he leaves aside,
Which some translate as “simple” where we may have “simplistic,”
And this is where suggestions of heaven heliocentric
Are born. If Venus, to rephrase the thought, moves by mean sun,
Which Ptolemy himself admits, it seems with only one
Small step we can deduce that circles epicyclic move
About the sun itself, and we with bright planet of love.
Regardless of translation we approach a reason odd
For why this cannot be the case, that, if we still must prod
Into the nature of the heavens, it will soon be clear
That nothing could exist on earth (letting alone the air)
If quick about the sun we twirled. In this there is complaint
That gravity and Newton fix, but now ‘tis still a feint,
Avoiding possibilities this system strong implies,
But undermining eloquence, and thus we cast aside
The whole affair, rather to face a truth left incomplete
Than ‘knowledge’ false. Such quick restraint an admirable feat
It is for our learnèd astronomer, who did not shroud
In propositions ostentatious falsehood far more loud;
For in philosophy there is no room to hold the proud.
Questions of equant left and doubts of insincerity,
In Venus we find questions still of what the point may be.
Why Almagest was written, so much time and effort spent
On tracking nightly skies with inaccurate equipment
If only to arrive at a confusion unresolved
By equant line, a paltry thing, that neigh the problem solves?
Alas that problems physical which plague this work divine
Could come from planet Venus, causing questions unrefined!
Before an answer I propose to why we read this book
I first ask that we contemplate the task that undertook
Great Ptolemy when every night he gazed on spinning sky,
Imagining and measuring where in the heavens lie
The Beauty that first Euclid gazed upon so well.
And in this task he found there was a story still to tell
Of Euclid’s pure geometry in heaven ably mirrored,
That now he too, toward realms of gods, had fortunately peered.
He did not see a universe that spun around a pole
Impaled in sun, but rather saw the spinning human soul
And heard the music that only the goddess, Venus, sings
When morning comes, or evening falls, and love through cosmos rings,
For that is where humanity must find its hidden wings.
My answer, then, I fear I have precluded with too much
A hint. My reader likely has proposed to guess that such
A world as our astronomer unfolds we ought to see
Because in his great work he shows us true divinity.
Not Truth as we would have it in our ultimate repose,
But truth as best we can perceive, with senses so imposed
Upon our reason, that only in math do we see pure
An abstract world that, free from us, provides our wonder cure,
Proclaiming Truth as Ptolemy, who saw Venus as we,
And knew that in his human sight could only hope to see
Its motion through the heavens from his humble place on ground,
While it, so perfect in its light, about the stars was wound
Like justice, or a true account, or Plato’s fleeting forms
That hide themselves and so withstand the ever-blowing storms
Of false impression. In such way soft Venus moves the mind
To Beauty, and in Beauty’s hearth we may at long last find
A Truth that only Beauty’s breath could e’er hope to unwind.
Saturday, September 4, 2010
The Many Attractions of American Sports
As you are probably aware, today is the first serious day of college football in the United States. Today all the preseason ranking will be proven wrong, all the analysts will change their strongly held opinions, and quite possibly some big name team will have its national championship hopes dashed by an upset.
I doubt I'll watch any of the games today, especially because Stanford's matchup with Sacramento State isn't televised and, frankly, shouldn't be. Nevertheless, major sporting days like this one - especially coming as it does, in the midst of baseballs playoff races, and with the NFL and NBA seasons right around the corner - spark thoughts about sports widely. I've written here before about the role and importance of athletic competition to our culture, so today I want to be a little more specific. What is it about each of our major sports, in particular, that make them popular?
Baseball, of course, is the so-called "national pastime," a quaint and anachronistic name for a game that has a cadre of die-hard fans, many of whom are stat-heads. The sport is buoyed, however, by casual observers who care a lot more about home runs than things like BABIP. Regardless, the attraction of baseball is, I think, its pace and its capacity for sustained drama. The one-pitch-at-a-time nature of the game - where one pitch could be complete inconsequential, or could be the third out, or could result in a grand slam - makes the excitement of those close games all the more palpable. There is no continuous action to force focus on a player, instead he must focus during the pause, as the crowd cheers and as everyone waits for the next pitch. On a related note, I think baseball also benefits, in a world of sports that are timed, by its lack of a clock. The idea that the game will simply go on until a winner is declared only adds further drama.
More than anything else, though, what is compelling about baseball is the skill necessary to play the game. While this is true of any sport at its highest level, in baseball there is a particular honor given to the guy who can hit. People often say that baseball is a game of failure, which is mostly true, but only because hitting is so difficult to do. Likewise, over such a long season, pitching consistently well (and without injury) is well nigh impossible. Even fielding and baserunning, which are frankly the easiest parts of the game, are full of nuance and challenge, so much so that players need gloves and basecoaches to help them do it right.
Basketball, is extremely different. I think the attraction here is, in part, all of the awesome moments that occur during a game regardless of drama at a given time. A slam dunk or an alley-oop or a three from the corner is pretty cool no matter what the score, and because basketball's best moments come from sheer athleticism, there's a kind of visceral reaction to them. I would argue this is why basketball's all-star game is so much more entertaining than baseball's or football's: in those sports, the score gives sense of drama that in basketball is generally missing, not because winning and losing don't matter, but because the game is so often decided in the last five minutes anyway that most basketball fans are used to watching for greatness without worrying about the points each team has scored.
I think, also, that basketball is well-liked because it is played so widely. More than any other major American sport, people play basketball. Basketball is everywhere, from the local gym to the driveway to the neighborhood park, and it's going on all the time. People feel a natural connection to athletes who play the same games they play (I certainly appreciate baseball more as someone who grew up playing), and so, despite the horrid officiating, the often boring first three quarters, and the bizarre and draconian salary laws in the NBA, people watch.
Football is almost certainly the most popular sport in America, but I don't think it's for the reason you normally hear. Football is an exciting and violent and fast-paced game, in some ways, and I'm sure a great many people watch it for that reason, but if that were what makes football popular, I don't know why rugby or, frankly, soccer hasn't caught on in the US. Both rugby and soccer are faster-paced than football, rugby is more violent, and soccer is, I'm willing to argue, more exciting. Football, I think, beats those sports - and basketball and baseball - not on drama, on intensity, or on pace but on tactics and strategy. Even the dumbest of the dumb football fan, if he is a serious fan, will talk with great intelligence and nuance about the values of the 3-4 defense compared to the 4-3, or about the kinds of blocking schemes his team's offensive line is using, and so on.
People say that baseball is appeals to the intellectual, and it does, but not because it is tactically complex. Baseball's "chess match" is really more of a checkers match, while the football is more akin to chess, if not something even more complicated like Go. Consider that, in baseball, even former players - many of whom are not that bright - often make good managers. Former football players - with the exception of quarterbacks - rarely make good coaches because the game is so complex, so tactically nuanced, and so strategic that only particularly bright people can handle it. On top of that, the NFL at least comes with a complex set of roster rules that add another strategic dimension to weekly preparation.
Football teams play only once a week in part because of how physically demanding the game is, no doubt, but I expect that a huge part of the reason for its infrequency is how mentally demanding it is as well. There's a bit of a chicken-and-egg thing going on there, but it seems to me that, given the modern game, teams and coaches need at least a week to prepare tactically for the next week's game, as much as they need that time to prepare physically.
To summarize, baseball is a game of sustained drama, basketball a game of moments of extreme skill and athleticism, and football a game of tactics and strategies. Of course, all three games have aspects of all three of those attractions, but what makes each stand out - to me, anyway - are what I have listed above. Just don't tell any of those rabid Texas football fans that football is a slow-paced (four hours? Really?) game of the mind, lest they get offended.
I doubt I'll watch any of the games today, especially because Stanford's matchup with Sacramento State isn't televised and, frankly, shouldn't be. Nevertheless, major sporting days like this one - especially coming as it does, in the midst of baseballs playoff races, and with the NFL and NBA seasons right around the corner - spark thoughts about sports widely. I've written here before about the role and importance of athletic competition to our culture, so today I want to be a little more specific. What is it about each of our major sports, in particular, that make them popular?
Baseball, of course, is the so-called "national pastime," a quaint and anachronistic name for a game that has a cadre of die-hard fans, many of whom are stat-heads. The sport is buoyed, however, by casual observers who care a lot more about home runs than things like BABIP. Regardless, the attraction of baseball is, I think, its pace and its capacity for sustained drama. The one-pitch-at-a-time nature of the game - where one pitch could be complete inconsequential, or could be the third out, or could result in a grand slam - makes the excitement of those close games all the more palpable. There is no continuous action to force focus on a player, instead he must focus during the pause, as the crowd cheers and as everyone waits for the next pitch. On a related note, I think baseball also benefits, in a world of sports that are timed, by its lack of a clock. The idea that the game will simply go on until a winner is declared only adds further drama.
More than anything else, though, what is compelling about baseball is the skill necessary to play the game. While this is true of any sport at its highest level, in baseball there is a particular honor given to the guy who can hit. People often say that baseball is a game of failure, which is mostly true, but only because hitting is so difficult to do. Likewise, over such a long season, pitching consistently well (and without injury) is well nigh impossible. Even fielding and baserunning, which are frankly the easiest parts of the game, are full of nuance and challenge, so much so that players need gloves and basecoaches to help them do it right.
Basketball, is extremely different. I think the attraction here is, in part, all of the awesome moments that occur during a game regardless of drama at a given time. A slam dunk or an alley-oop or a three from the corner is pretty cool no matter what the score, and because basketball's best moments come from sheer athleticism, there's a kind of visceral reaction to them. I would argue this is why basketball's all-star game is so much more entertaining than baseball's or football's: in those sports, the score gives sense of drama that in basketball is generally missing, not because winning and losing don't matter, but because the game is so often decided in the last five minutes anyway that most basketball fans are used to watching for greatness without worrying about the points each team has scored.
I think, also, that basketball is well-liked because it is played so widely. More than any other major American sport, people play basketball. Basketball is everywhere, from the local gym to the driveway to the neighborhood park, and it's going on all the time. People feel a natural connection to athletes who play the same games they play (I certainly appreciate baseball more as someone who grew up playing), and so, despite the horrid officiating, the often boring first three quarters, and the bizarre and draconian salary laws in the NBA, people watch.
Football is almost certainly the most popular sport in America, but I don't think it's for the reason you normally hear. Football is an exciting and violent and fast-paced game, in some ways, and I'm sure a great many people watch it for that reason, but if that were what makes football popular, I don't know why rugby or, frankly, soccer hasn't caught on in the US. Both rugby and soccer are faster-paced than football, rugby is more violent, and soccer is, I'm willing to argue, more exciting. Football, I think, beats those sports - and basketball and baseball - not on drama, on intensity, or on pace but on tactics and strategy. Even the dumbest of the dumb football fan, if he is a serious fan, will talk with great intelligence and nuance about the values of the 3-4 defense compared to the 4-3, or about the kinds of blocking schemes his team's offensive line is using, and so on.
People say that baseball is appeals to the intellectual, and it does, but not because it is tactically complex. Baseball's "chess match" is really more of a checkers match, while the football is more akin to chess, if not something even more complicated like Go. Consider that, in baseball, even former players - many of whom are not that bright - often make good managers. Former football players - with the exception of quarterbacks - rarely make good coaches because the game is so complex, so tactically nuanced, and so strategic that only particularly bright people can handle it. On top of that, the NFL at least comes with a complex set of roster rules that add another strategic dimension to weekly preparation.
Football teams play only once a week in part because of how physically demanding the game is, no doubt, but I expect that a huge part of the reason for its infrequency is how mentally demanding it is as well. There's a bit of a chicken-and-egg thing going on there, but it seems to me that, given the modern game, teams and coaches need at least a week to prepare tactically for the next week's game, as much as they need that time to prepare physically.
To summarize, baseball is a game of sustained drama, basketball a game of moments of extreme skill and athleticism, and football a game of tactics and strategies. Of course, all three games have aspects of all three of those attractions, but what makes each stand out - to me, anyway - are what I have listed above. Just don't tell any of those rabid Texas football fans that football is a slow-paced (four hours? Really?) game of the mind, lest they get offended.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
The Specialist and the Generalist
A recent Pitchers and Poets podcast spoke to an issue about which I have a strong opinion. I suppose I have a great many strong opinions - or at least I present them strongly - but I would argue that the vast majority of those remain conditional. It is important, I think, to be open-minded enough to be persuaded by a contrary, or more likely, an entirely new perspective on an issue.
For my own part, my political convictions - which were (and are) quite strong - have undergone quite a few radical shifts since I first was granted the right to vote. The outcome of that was, in the 2008 election, a ballot which included at least one vote for a member of each of the following parties: Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Green, and Independent. Why? Because I felt, in each of those races, that the party in question was irrelevant, and that the person most capable of doing the job was worthy of my vote. Anyway, the point here is not to discuss politics, but to point out that even what seems a fervent position on my part is liable to change if I am confronted with a valid alternative that seems compelling enough. At the very least, I am easily persuaded by nuance, especially nuance that takes on accepted cultural narratives.
There is, however, one duality which I reluctantly accept, and about which I firmly and probably irrevocably believe in one position. That duality is specialization versus generalization, or the competing ideas that a person should focus on learning a small number of things exceedingly well, on the one hand, or a large number of things in less depth. Of course, as Ted and Eric point out in their podcast, we live in a time where being a generalist is almost impossible. Specialization has so much won the day that it's practically a sin to have too many interests.
Of course, I think it's difficult to draw an exact line between the specialist and the generalist. How many fields must one study to be a generalist? How advanced must a person's knowledge of a particular field be in order to qualify as a specialist? What about people who are somewhere in between? And, moreover, isn't the true generalist also a specialist in some sense?
All of those are valid questions, and I think the duality here is - like most dualities - not totally fair. I believe there are a great many people who are, in fact, both generalists and specialists, and there's no reason those things have to be mutually exclusive. I think there is, however, a marked difference in mentality between the two. It is especially rare to find someone who will advocate specialization whilst also celebrating the "Renaissance Man," as we like to call generalists (implying their anachronism).
It seems to me, however, that this is a horrible mistake, and particularly important in education. A lot of what people say is "wrong" with education amounts to this: it's not specialized enough. Certainly it's not fair to look at students and to say that they all need the exact same, incredibly broad education, but it's also not fair to say that we should tailor everything we teach to some appropriate and predetermined career pathway for each student. Specialization, at its extreme, suggests that students should not learn anything that isn't directly relevant to what they're going to do in their lives. Of course, the extreme generalist learns anything completely regardless of its value, which is equally silly, but that's the point. Going to an extreme here is bad, and these days, as we cut arts programs, recess time, and gym class, we're much closer to the extreme of specialization.
The reason this debate is important in education, however, reaches far beyond the classroom. It is in our adult lives where we, generally speaking, are forced to specialize most. Indeed, the older we get and the further along we go in our career paths, the more and more narrow our focus becomes. Professors at most Universities don't just study a field (like Sociology) or even a sub-field (like the Sociology of Business), but a specific aspect of that sub-field (like gender relations in rural small businesses, or some such). At a certain point, the robust thought processes that shaped the original study become so fine that, I would argue, they are no longer useful.
The same could be said in the business world. One of the reasons we have such a strongly established hierarchical structure in business - besides being a vestige of feudalism - is the fact that all of the specialists that make multi-national corporations go can't speak to each other without an interpreter. The fact of being able to talk to the IT guy, the operations guy, the finances guy, and the engineer, and the ability to translate between those branches is, as far as I'm concerned, the primary function of most executives at major companies. Making decisions and selling the company are of minor importance by comparison.
Unlike in academia, however, in business there is an established method for getting specialists to interact, and it mostly works. Indeed, if specialization didn't work, we wouldn't use it. It's almost impossible to argue with specialization, in fact, from within our existing social and economic system, because of how effective it is. The point, however, is that if we step outside of the specialized world and look at the other consequences of a society built around the extreme specialist, it's not quite as pretty as it seems from the inside.
Bertrand Russell was fond of pointing out that things like useless knowledge and idle inquiry are vital to a person's happiness. A child does not ask questions because he wants to master his world, but merely because he is curious. Over time, curiosity tends to diminish and ambition increase, and as a result people become more successful and less happy. Education, from my perspective, works best not when it forwards a person's professional goals, but when it reminds him or her that there are other important goals as well. What good is money if you are so specialized that you don't know where and when to spend it? What good is success if you are so specialized that you can't have a conversation with anyone?
From the individual point of view, specialization, I think, can be somewhat soul-crushing. A professor I had at Stanford told me that the day he got tenure was one of the best and saddest of his life. Best because he was secure and successful, saddest because it meant he was locked in, all of the potential paths he might take had been narrowed to one that he had taken and would take from then on. Why must we do that to people? Does our society benefit so much that taking away the wonder of exploration and inquiry into ideas unknown and unconsidered is necessary?
The answer, I think, is clearly no. Our society may benefit from specialization in that we are able to produce more goods, more "knowledge" (which so few people can use, because it's highly specialized), and more advertising. But isn't one of the biggest problems we face as a world that we produce too much? There are too many people on the world, eating too much food, using too much plastic, guzzling too much gas, and wasting too much electricity. It's all well and good to address those problems by creating legions of conservation specialists, I suppose, but wouldn't it be better to just ease up off the ever-racing production line? Indeed, it seems to me a self-perpetuating cycle. Less specialized work means more generalization, more "Renaissance Men" who can step back and see that, hey, the world is a better place when we communicate more and produce less.
Again, I don't advocate the extreme, here, else nothing at all would get done and we'd all starve, but it seems to me that we've ventured too far in the direction of specialization. What's more, my other fervently held opinions - that process is more important than outcome, and that cooperation is generally a better model than competition - seem to me to be complementary here. Specialization encourages competition, which in turn is concerned with outcomes. Generalization encourages cooperation, which is much more about processes (stuff like how people work together and whether they're doing the right thing) than outcomes.
All told, it's unlikely that we'll see a world of generalists anytime soon. But it is the case, in my experience, that we "Renaissance Men" have serious advantages, even in this society, over extreme specialists. Generalists learn to say "both... and..." while specialists are stuck with "either... or..." As a teacher, there's no bigger selling point: generalists get to be leaders and visionaries, while specialists have to do what they're told. As a human being, I believe my breadth of interests may make it harder for me to define myself to other people, but it makes it easier for me to move around joyfully and inquisitively. And, really, what else is there?
For my own part, my political convictions - which were (and are) quite strong - have undergone quite a few radical shifts since I first was granted the right to vote. The outcome of that was, in the 2008 election, a ballot which included at least one vote for a member of each of the following parties: Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Green, and Independent. Why? Because I felt, in each of those races, that the party in question was irrelevant, and that the person most capable of doing the job was worthy of my vote. Anyway, the point here is not to discuss politics, but to point out that even what seems a fervent position on my part is liable to change if I am confronted with a valid alternative that seems compelling enough. At the very least, I am easily persuaded by nuance, especially nuance that takes on accepted cultural narratives.
There is, however, one duality which I reluctantly accept, and about which I firmly and probably irrevocably believe in one position. That duality is specialization versus generalization, or the competing ideas that a person should focus on learning a small number of things exceedingly well, on the one hand, or a large number of things in less depth. Of course, as Ted and Eric point out in their podcast, we live in a time where being a generalist is almost impossible. Specialization has so much won the day that it's practically a sin to have too many interests.
Of course, I think it's difficult to draw an exact line between the specialist and the generalist. How many fields must one study to be a generalist? How advanced must a person's knowledge of a particular field be in order to qualify as a specialist? What about people who are somewhere in between? And, moreover, isn't the true generalist also a specialist in some sense?
All of those are valid questions, and I think the duality here is - like most dualities - not totally fair. I believe there are a great many people who are, in fact, both generalists and specialists, and there's no reason those things have to be mutually exclusive. I think there is, however, a marked difference in mentality between the two. It is especially rare to find someone who will advocate specialization whilst also celebrating the "Renaissance Man," as we like to call generalists (implying their anachronism).
It seems to me, however, that this is a horrible mistake, and particularly important in education. A lot of what people say is "wrong" with education amounts to this: it's not specialized enough. Certainly it's not fair to look at students and to say that they all need the exact same, incredibly broad education, but it's also not fair to say that we should tailor everything we teach to some appropriate and predetermined career pathway for each student. Specialization, at its extreme, suggests that students should not learn anything that isn't directly relevant to what they're going to do in their lives. Of course, the extreme generalist learns anything completely regardless of its value, which is equally silly, but that's the point. Going to an extreme here is bad, and these days, as we cut arts programs, recess time, and gym class, we're much closer to the extreme of specialization.
The reason this debate is important in education, however, reaches far beyond the classroom. It is in our adult lives where we, generally speaking, are forced to specialize most. Indeed, the older we get and the further along we go in our career paths, the more and more narrow our focus becomes. Professors at most Universities don't just study a field (like Sociology) or even a sub-field (like the Sociology of Business), but a specific aspect of that sub-field (like gender relations in rural small businesses, or some such). At a certain point, the robust thought processes that shaped the original study become so fine that, I would argue, they are no longer useful.
The same could be said in the business world. One of the reasons we have such a strongly established hierarchical structure in business - besides being a vestige of feudalism - is the fact that all of the specialists that make multi-national corporations go can't speak to each other without an interpreter. The fact of being able to talk to the IT guy, the operations guy, the finances guy, and the engineer, and the ability to translate between those branches is, as far as I'm concerned, the primary function of most executives at major companies. Making decisions and selling the company are of minor importance by comparison.
Unlike in academia, however, in business there is an established method for getting specialists to interact, and it mostly works. Indeed, if specialization didn't work, we wouldn't use it. It's almost impossible to argue with specialization, in fact, from within our existing social and economic system, because of how effective it is. The point, however, is that if we step outside of the specialized world and look at the other consequences of a society built around the extreme specialist, it's not quite as pretty as it seems from the inside.
Bertrand Russell was fond of pointing out that things like useless knowledge and idle inquiry are vital to a person's happiness. A child does not ask questions because he wants to master his world, but merely because he is curious. Over time, curiosity tends to diminish and ambition increase, and as a result people become more successful and less happy. Education, from my perspective, works best not when it forwards a person's professional goals, but when it reminds him or her that there are other important goals as well. What good is money if you are so specialized that you don't know where and when to spend it? What good is success if you are so specialized that you can't have a conversation with anyone?
From the individual point of view, specialization, I think, can be somewhat soul-crushing. A professor I had at Stanford told me that the day he got tenure was one of the best and saddest of his life. Best because he was secure and successful, saddest because it meant he was locked in, all of the potential paths he might take had been narrowed to one that he had taken and would take from then on. Why must we do that to people? Does our society benefit so much that taking away the wonder of exploration and inquiry into ideas unknown and unconsidered is necessary?
The answer, I think, is clearly no. Our society may benefit from specialization in that we are able to produce more goods, more "knowledge" (which so few people can use, because it's highly specialized), and more advertising. But isn't one of the biggest problems we face as a world that we produce too much? There are too many people on the world, eating too much food, using too much plastic, guzzling too much gas, and wasting too much electricity. It's all well and good to address those problems by creating legions of conservation specialists, I suppose, but wouldn't it be better to just ease up off the ever-racing production line? Indeed, it seems to me a self-perpetuating cycle. Less specialized work means more generalization, more "Renaissance Men" who can step back and see that, hey, the world is a better place when we communicate more and produce less.
Again, I don't advocate the extreme, here, else nothing at all would get done and we'd all starve, but it seems to me that we've ventured too far in the direction of specialization. What's more, my other fervently held opinions - that process is more important than outcome, and that cooperation is generally a better model than competition - seem to me to be complementary here. Specialization encourages competition, which in turn is concerned with outcomes. Generalization encourages cooperation, which is much more about processes (stuff like how people work together and whether they're doing the right thing) than outcomes.
All told, it's unlikely that we'll see a world of generalists anytime soon. But it is the case, in my experience, that we "Renaissance Men" have serious advantages, even in this society, over extreme specialists. Generalists learn to say "both... and..." while specialists are stuck with "either... or..." As a teacher, there's no bigger selling point: generalists get to be leaders and visionaries, while specialists have to do what they're told. As a human being, I believe my breadth of interests may make it harder for me to define myself to other people, but it makes it easier for me to move around joyfully and inquisitively. And, really, what else is there?
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Stealth More Interesting: Ralph Waldo Emerson
One of the most attractive and problematic aspects of the "Great Man" theory of history is that it allows us to pack stories into neat packages of a few important people. World War Two, for example, is largely a story about Hitler and Churchill, with supporting roles played by the leaders of other countries and, of course, J. Robert Oppenheimer. These few men dictated, the story goes, the fates of millions, and it was their interactions and their decisions which shaped the modern world. Similarly, if we look back at earlier wars, important scientific discoveries and theories, or famous and influential pieces of art, the dramatis personae is always small.
In reality, of course, no story is so simple as to be about a single man or woman. At the most basic level, the massive network of personal interactions and cultural influences that any given "hero" experiences means that no one is shaped solely by himself. Even the most stubborn, self-assured, and rebellious personality stands in contrast to something, and so the lone voice of a Galileo or a Lucretius hardly exists in isolation. Those voices were alone - though not entirely, of course, even that gets overblown - because they contravened excepted dogmas and cultural narratives so strong as to be unquestionable.
What makes such people memorable, however, is rarely their genius. In that regard, I suspect that there have been and are many more people capable of great fame than have achieved it. What's more, even genius may be culturally mitigated, and one time's luminary may be another's villain, or, worse, Average Joe. No, fame is mostly about luck, about being in the right place at the right time, to use a tired phrase. Even an unquestionably great man like Gandhi would not have been Gandhi without South Africa, and without a colonial oppression so vile that a nation of a billion wanted desperately to fight against it. Without his context, Gandhi is just another deeply spiritual man, and not a man who changed the world.
Which is not to say that the fact of fame is accidental, but rather that the bestowal of fame on particular people is. We, as Westerners, and likely as human beings, much prefer to condense our stories into manageable chunks. Without some synthesis of the vast account of a particular bit of history, how could we possibly build an understanding of meaning? Leave the detailed examinations to the experts, we say, and let the school-house narrative of George Washington and the Founding Fathers suffice when the Fourth of July roles around. There is, frankly, nothing to be done about the simplifications we make, because they are necessary in order for us to accomplish much of anything. To study the thousands of years of recorded history across the many different cradles of civilization that exist in depth is the work of dozens or hundreds of lives.
Nevertheless, it is easy to forget that we are reducing, reducing, reducing. It is easy to forget that even Galileo was not solitary, and that even Beethoven's music was impossible without his interactions with his father, with Haydn, with the music of Mozart, with the women he lusted after, with the countless unnamed and unremembered princes and patrons and musicians. I as much as anyone am guilty of letting the name of some famous person stand in for an unimaginably complex situation which I don't understand, and more often than not I forget that I am doing it and come to a conclusion about that bit of history that supports my own biases and ideals.
How much more so media, politicians, advertisers, text books and teachers, who are in the business, to varying degrees, not only of informing, but of convincing as well? How much of our understanding of the world shaped by our confirmation bias? Because we grew up with a certain narrative, and from that narrative - be it historical, religious, moral, or some combination of all of those (and more) - we have each built a set of ideals and expectations, our own schema for interpreting and defining and rewriting complex events to make them comprehensible, we tend to find that the world either agrees with our preconceptions, or is not worth bothering about. Approaching history from any other way is not only difficult, it may very well be impossible.
What is there to do, then? Well, ignoring the problem is perfectly valid. I say that without irony, because frankly, it is not in the least bit upsetting to me to imagine a world where we tell wonderful stories about the exploits and tribulations of great men and women. Though we call such things history and myth based upon their supposed accuracy, they are more often than not the same thing, and regardless both excite the imagination, inspire the heart, and stimulate critical thought. I am just as likely to talk about Beethoven as a paragon as I am to talk about him as situated within his cultural and society. Indeed, I am more likely to do the former, because it's a more compelling and more entertaining story.
On the other hand, I do have some interest in the truth, and while ignoring complexity is valid, so it charging headlong into it. That is a more complicated task, granted, but a rewarding one as well. Indeed, many of the stories of greatness we have come from people who did exactly that: consider, again, Galileo's challenge to our most fundamental beliefs about the nature of the world. Consider the development of calculus by Newton and Leibniz, who violated the established principles of mathematical truth to do so. Consider more modern examples like Erving Goffman, who challenge the very notion that gender is anything but a socially and culturally mediated display of differences, and not nearly so rooted in biology and neurology as we like to think. Consider Stanford's Ray McDermott, who argues that learning disabilities acquire kids more than kids acquire learning disabilities.
Yes, there's certainly something to be said for challenging accepted narratives in order to, just maybe, get closer to something that is true. But even in so doing we tend to find a similar set of biases and ideologies. The dogmatic belief in being anti-dogmatic is itself dogmatic; the insistence on challenging established cultural and historical narratives can itself become (and has, in some circles) an entrenched cultural and historical narrative. So what is there to do? Nothing, and everything. Who can really say? It's a too tangled web to unravel in a mere blog post. Rather, I'll make reference to Emerson in Self-Reliance: "Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind."
In reality, of course, no story is so simple as to be about a single man or woman. At the most basic level, the massive network of personal interactions and cultural influences that any given "hero" experiences means that no one is shaped solely by himself. Even the most stubborn, self-assured, and rebellious personality stands in contrast to something, and so the lone voice of a Galileo or a Lucretius hardly exists in isolation. Those voices were alone - though not entirely, of course, even that gets overblown - because they contravened excepted dogmas and cultural narratives so strong as to be unquestionable.
What makes such people memorable, however, is rarely their genius. In that regard, I suspect that there have been and are many more people capable of great fame than have achieved it. What's more, even genius may be culturally mitigated, and one time's luminary may be another's villain, or, worse, Average Joe. No, fame is mostly about luck, about being in the right place at the right time, to use a tired phrase. Even an unquestionably great man like Gandhi would not have been Gandhi without South Africa, and without a colonial oppression so vile that a nation of a billion wanted desperately to fight against it. Without his context, Gandhi is just another deeply spiritual man, and not a man who changed the world.
Which is not to say that the fact of fame is accidental, but rather that the bestowal of fame on particular people is. We, as Westerners, and likely as human beings, much prefer to condense our stories into manageable chunks. Without some synthesis of the vast account of a particular bit of history, how could we possibly build an understanding of meaning? Leave the detailed examinations to the experts, we say, and let the school-house narrative of George Washington and the Founding Fathers suffice when the Fourth of July roles around. There is, frankly, nothing to be done about the simplifications we make, because they are necessary in order for us to accomplish much of anything. To study the thousands of years of recorded history across the many different cradles of civilization that exist in depth is the work of dozens or hundreds of lives.
Nevertheless, it is easy to forget that we are reducing, reducing, reducing. It is easy to forget that even Galileo was not solitary, and that even Beethoven's music was impossible without his interactions with his father, with Haydn, with the music of Mozart, with the women he lusted after, with the countless unnamed and unremembered princes and patrons and musicians. I as much as anyone am guilty of letting the name of some famous person stand in for an unimaginably complex situation which I don't understand, and more often than not I forget that I am doing it and come to a conclusion about that bit of history that supports my own biases and ideals.
How much more so media, politicians, advertisers, text books and teachers, who are in the business, to varying degrees, not only of informing, but of convincing as well? How much of our understanding of the world shaped by our confirmation bias? Because we grew up with a certain narrative, and from that narrative - be it historical, religious, moral, or some combination of all of those (and more) - we have each built a set of ideals and expectations, our own schema for interpreting and defining and rewriting complex events to make them comprehensible, we tend to find that the world either agrees with our preconceptions, or is not worth bothering about. Approaching history from any other way is not only difficult, it may very well be impossible.
What is there to do, then? Well, ignoring the problem is perfectly valid. I say that without irony, because frankly, it is not in the least bit upsetting to me to imagine a world where we tell wonderful stories about the exploits and tribulations of great men and women. Though we call such things history and myth based upon their supposed accuracy, they are more often than not the same thing, and regardless both excite the imagination, inspire the heart, and stimulate critical thought. I am just as likely to talk about Beethoven as a paragon as I am to talk about him as situated within his cultural and society. Indeed, I am more likely to do the former, because it's a more compelling and more entertaining story.
On the other hand, I do have some interest in the truth, and while ignoring complexity is valid, so it charging headlong into it. That is a more complicated task, granted, but a rewarding one as well. Indeed, many of the stories of greatness we have come from people who did exactly that: consider, again, Galileo's challenge to our most fundamental beliefs about the nature of the world. Consider the development of calculus by Newton and Leibniz, who violated the established principles of mathematical truth to do so. Consider more modern examples like Erving Goffman, who challenge the very notion that gender is anything but a socially and culturally mediated display of differences, and not nearly so rooted in biology and neurology as we like to think. Consider Stanford's Ray McDermott, who argues that learning disabilities acquire kids more than kids acquire learning disabilities.
Yes, there's certainly something to be said for challenging accepted narratives in order to, just maybe, get closer to something that is true. But even in so doing we tend to find a similar set of biases and ideologies. The dogmatic belief in being anti-dogmatic is itself dogmatic; the insistence on challenging established cultural and historical narratives can itself become (and has, in some circles) an entrenched cultural and historical narrative. So what is there to do? Nothing, and everything. Who can really say? It's a too tangled web to unravel in a mere blog post. Rather, I'll make reference to Emerson in Self-Reliance: "Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind."
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