BioShock 2

BioShock 2: Hands All Over It

First, you know what’s obnoxious and insulting? This: “I stopped by the Access PR offices this week in New York City to put my hands under the shirt (and the bra) of the latest up-to-the-minute build of BioShock 2.” And it’s the first sentence of the article. That’s a completely unnecessary metaphor (especially when you consider that the only female characters in those games are only sexy if you like children and zombies,) and the only thing it accomplishes is to set an anti-woman tone that completely colors the writer’s complaints about the Big Sister and makes me think that you just don’t want women ruining your video games. *eyeroll*

That irritation aside, I’m not sure how I feel about the BioShock 2 this writer described. I really liked the hacking mini-game from the first game, and I hate that they’ve dumbed it down. Hacking was a nice break from the game’s environment; yeah, it got a little tedious at times, especially when you’re watching someone play, but the solution shouldn’t be scrapping it for something easier—it should have been to mix it up a little. Why not have save the easy mini-game for vending machines and save the original mini for turrets and cameras?

I am, however, looking forward to adopting the Little Sisters (I couldn’t bring myself to harvest one in the original) and seeing what the Big Sister’s story is. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that we get to see a LOT of new areas of Rapture, too, and that the Big Daddy is slightly less cumbersome than the main character at the end of the first game. Overall, I’m staying cautiously optimistic about BioShock 2—especially since the jerk writer of this piece couldn’t get through a piece without invoking boobies. Somehow I doubt that he and I see eye-to-eye.

Lunch-break Links

Well, there are plenty of criminals working in Washington (Rangel, Geitner, Dodd, etc…) so why should this be any surprise? Stimulus Contracts Go to Companies Under Criminal Investigation

This is just silly: NOW President on President Obama’s All-Male Athletic Outings: “It’s Troubling.” First, the man’s entire family is female—let him have some boys’ time. And second, anyone who says “If women had been at the heads of the companies on Wall Street instead of these masters of the universe then we might not be in the predicament that we’re in today,” which is the equivalent of “If we had female leaders there would be no war!!!” shouldn’t be taken seriously. Couple that quote with the minority-counting approach of “Well, half the population is female so half the Cabinet should be female!” and you’ve got a smorgasbord of ridiculousness.

Full Augustine Commission Report We’ve had Senator-Presidents and Governor-Presidents, Peanut Farmer-Presidents and Actor-Presidents, so how about a Scientist-President?

Fake AP Style Book (on Twitter) My favorite so far is, “The first sentence of a photo caption describes what is being shown, in the present tense: ‘Holy crap, it’s Pteranodons!’”

Seen Any Weird Wills Lately? (Legal Geekery.) Wow. This almost makes me want to take a Wills and Estates Class. Almost.

Throw Out Your Old Cat Ears, It’s Time to Update Your Halloween Costume! (io9) Is it bad that I can look at Venom Mickey (picture 2) and recognize that Elevator as the Marriott Marquis at Dragon*Con? I’m pretty sure I know the Classic Leia Zombie in the middle of picture 8, too. (BTW, I’m not done with my Halloween costume yet—Dr. Girlfriend from “Venture Brothers,” if anyone is curious.)

Twitter Links

Links I’ve seen this morning from Twitter:

- Hot Air: Quote of the Day Ooh burn, Cheney.
- Hula Hooping it up for health, First Lady swivels Hooping with a tiny kid’s hoop like that is hard when you’re an adult. The worst thing about this story is that her mimicking a whiny kid about not wanting to eat healthy foods reminds me of a 22 year old I know. *facepalm*
- Left vs. Right An interesting visualization, even if most of it is dead wrong. (All conservatives are judges? Really?)

Early Morning Lameness

You know what sounds lame?

“Sorry, I’m not prepared to contribute today because I brought the wrong book to school with me and I don’t have time to go get it.”

And yet, that’s exactly what I did today. I left my Admin Law book at home and brought my IIP book with me instead. *facepalm* I have a bad feeling about today.

It’s that time of the year again…

No, I’m not talking about mid-term time, or Fall Break time, or “Holy crap I really ought to be outlining and paying more attention in class” time, though it is all of those things…

I’m talking about registration time.

At my law school, we register using a bidding system. Each person gets 50 points (total) to bid on the classes they want to take, and after we’ve placed our bids, the Records office arranges us all in bid order and then hands out spots in the class. If there are ties, they do a drawing. We have to pick the classes we want and ALSO alternates, which may or may not conflict with what we actually want to take.

In short, it complicates a usually-banal process and injects competition into it. And heaven knows we law students don’t compete with one another enough—for interviews, for jobs, for grades… *eyeroll* I hate this system of registration. It’s frustrating and full of uncertainty, not unlike law school itself. I mean, it would be nice to have one aspect of my education that I had a significant amount of control over. But here I am, painstakingly counting out points for the classes I want. (I’m already done, btw. Because I love signing up for classes and am a huge school nerd.) I can already tell that I probably won’t be in any classes with my friends (again) next semester, except for maybe ConLaw—our interests are just so different. Oh well, here’s hoping I get what I want! Wish me luck!

I love my nerdy IP professor!

My IP/International IP professor uses PowerPoint for lectures, and after we finish a topic he posts them online. His IP slides are Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy-themed and the IIP stuff is Harry Potter-themed. So far we have the Hitchhiker’s Guide to Trade Secrets, The Patent at the End of the Universe, IIP and the Introduction Stone, and IIP and the Chamber of Patents. These titles amuse me to no end—he’s definitely one of my favorite professors here. (Honestly, I don’t know if any of the profs I have in the future will out-awesome and out-geek the professors I have this semester. They’re all fantastic.) And while I shouldn’t be all that surprised—this is the professor who gave a talk about IP from a Harry Potter perspective last year—honestly, it makes me like those classes just a little bit more.

Also, how sad is it that slide filenames brighten my day? Oh law school.

Edit: At the end of Land Finance, our professor gave us a big handout of e-mails from A-students with their study tips (as well as self-admitted weaknesses!) Like I said above, my professors this semester are fantastic.

Running an organization is hard, y’all!

Friday afternoon I got an e-mail from one of the reps of the Student Bar Association informing me that I had not renewed my membership and that they did a locker check and realized I was still using my locker. Because “occupying [my] locker without paying is not fair to those members who annually pay to use their locker” (and I swear those were their actual words), I had to either pay for my locker or be evicted during Fall Break.

Aside from the completely asinine “it’s not fair!” argument, there was one problem with their e-mail: I renewed my membership in August, and I had the canceled check and a receipt to prove it.

So I shot off an e-mail to them within minutes of receiving the first e-mail explaining that I had paid in August and the check was deposited on the 21st. I didn’t hear from them ALL weekend, so last night I scrounged up a scan of the check (thank goodness for my bank’s online banking services!) and sent it to them.

I finally got a response this morning saying that everything was fine. And it included this gem: “Often our records do not accurately reflect the situation due to the large amount of council members who work the office. The chain of communication is bound to get broken.”

Seriously? This is the equivalent of, “But we only wanted to be on the council to pad our resumes—you can’t expect us to do real work!” Maybe before you threaten to evict SBA members from their lockers you should check the copies of the receipts you’ve written. Or talk to the council members. SBA members pay between $50 and $100 at a time for membership, and these lapses in communication don’t make me confident that next year they won’t try to shake me down for even MORE money.

Cause no, honey, breaking the chain of communication isn’t “bound to happen” in these situations as long as your council members can competently take notes in a ledger or fill in a grid on Microsoft Excel. SBA is a large organization, and if it’s too hard to expect the officers and council members to follow their own rules and keep organized records, maybe they shouldn’t be an approved organization until they get their shit together.

In any case, law students, keep your receipts for these sorts of things! You never know when you might have to use them, and goodness knows that most of us don’t have an extra $50, $80, or $100 to spend on something we’ve already paid for.

Link round-up: Obama wins the Nobel Peace Price

I made something to commemorate the occasion:

You can re-post it, but please give me credit and don’t hotlink!

- Instapundit is doing a HUGE round-up, which will probably be updated throughout the day.
- Second, take a look at the people who were nominated and lost the Prize and compare that to what Obama has done thus far.
- Kaus gives Obama some good advice. Here’s hoping he’ll follow it.
- Jimmie Bise: Just Consider this the Obamessiah Version of the entry into Jerusalem
- Scalzi pretty much sums up how I’m feeling about it. (But don’t worry, I’ll elaborate below the fold.)
- Times Online: absurd decision on Obama makes a mockery of the Nobel peace prize You could say the same thing about Arafat or Al Gore though. It’s clear that the recent Peace Prizes have been awarded for purely political reasons, which is actually kind of sad. It smacks of “Peace is only Peace if it fits our narrative!”
- Barack Obama Nobel Prize: Why now? Guardian.co.uk. Pay attention to the caption: “Advances in Russian relations are one of the US president’s few clear achievements so far.” (emphasis mine.) Ouch.
- Nicholas Kristof: Obama and the Nobel Prize (NYT)
- Michelle Malkin also has a round-up and some commentary.
- Althouse is blogging a lot about this today, so the link goes to her Nobel Prize tag.
- JammieWearingFool’s Nobel Peace Prize tag.

- On Twitter, Jim Treacher and Doctor Zero bring the lulz, while lefties I’m following respond in the exact manner Jon Henke predicted when he tweeted, “The Left agrees Obama winning Nobel Peace Prize is ridiculous. But they still intend to ridicule the Right for criticizing it.” At least Scalzi has some sense.
- DNC Official: GOP Siding with Terrorists Classy. To be fair, Michael Steel shouldn’t have snarked that, “President Obama won’t be receiving any awards from Americans for job creation, fiscal responsibility, or backing up rhetoric with concrete action” (leave the snark for the bloggers, please!), but his statement that “The real question Americans are asking is, ‘What has President Obama actually accomplished?’ It is unfortunate that the president’s star power has outshined tireless advocates who have made real achievements working towards peace and human rights” is PERFECTLY VALID. Again, look at the people who were nominated and lost—they have done far more than Obama has done up to this point, and one of them deserved this award more than he did this year.

Obama adviser says Sharia Law is misunderstood

(from The Telegraph)

“They called for Sharia Law to be “the source of legislation” and said that women should not be “permitted to hold a position of leadership in government”.

LOL WUT? I mean, um, GENDER EQUALITY!!! (Also, shouldn’t this woman step down if women aren’t supposed to have leadership positions in government? SHE’S AN ADVISOR TO THE PRESIDENT.)

“Sharia in its broadest sense is a religious code for living, which decrees such matters as fasting and dressing modestly. However, it has also been interpreted as requiring the separation of men and women.

It also includes the controversial “Hadd offences”, crimes with specific penalties set by the Koran and the sayings of the prophet Mohammed. These include death by stoning for adultery and homosexuality and the removal of a hand for theft.

Miss Mogahed admitted that even many Muslims associated Sharia with “maximum criminal punishments” and “laws that… to many people seem unequal to women,” but added: “Part of the reason that there is this perception of Sharia is because Sharia is not well understood and Islam as a faith is not well understood.”

If a lot of Muslims associate Sharia with harsh punishments when that’s supposedly not what Sharia advocates, doesn’t that suggest that maybe the Muslim community doesn’t understand what it’s supposed to do? And maybe that it should engage in self-examination and determine what Sharia law actually means before making it the “source of legislation?”

This article just frustrates me. Not because the person involved is one of the President’s advisers (though that is frustrating), but that because she believes that a religious morality code (which is misunderstood by the religion’s own followers) should be incorporated into secular legislation without question. Oh, and also because she hypocritically agrees that women shouldn’t have leadership roles in governments while working as an adviser for the President of the United States. I mean, wow. Doing something like that takes guts… or total obliviousness to irony.

Nerdy Links

One of these days I’ll do more “SERIOUS BUSINESS” blogging, but until now, here are some cool links I’ve found in the couple of days:

- 10 Female Characters that would Kick Your Face In I heartily approve of their #1 choice.

- “Bound for Feminism” Lecture Will Focus on Wonder Woman I wish I could have taken a class on Women in Comics when I was in undergrad! This lecture seems really interesting, and makes me wish I could go. If only Richmond wasn’t so far away.

- Seek and Speak These are some amazing retro/mod-styled movie posters. I saw a link to them on io9 but thought I’d give the direct link instead.

- 25 Magnificent Modern-Day Movie Illustrations I love the ones that look like book covers.

- Eric Tan Art Eric Tan works for Disney (yes? I think?) and has done some awesome LOST and Up posters. Also, check out his Tiki-Stitch!