Endure: Hurricane Ike (Part 2)

Tuesday ends, and most of the city is still without power. Water is back up. The phones and gas have always been on.

Traffic on the way to work was very light. Nearly all the stoplights are non-functional, though the roads have are also all nearly cleared. What tomorrow brings is still impossible to predict. Wednesday 17 September will not be as certain as 10 September was.

I'm using the words "most", "nearly all", and "virtually all" a lot, because those are accurate terms to use. Most businesses operated at less-than-optimal capacity, if they were open at all. When gas stations have gas, long lines form. Grocery stores close early. Laundromats close early. The curfew is still in place.

Ike was just a Cat 2 storm! It was a Cat 1 when it passed over Houston proper. Imagine what havoc Rita would have caused!

Today is Tuesday, and four solid days have passed since conventional business is possible. What is impossible is the ability to buy groceries and gasoline while holding a regular 9-5 job. Right now, individuals must choose between going to work at regular hours, or buying gas or food.

I did not imagine this happening. I did not imagine the evisceration that would happen in the aftermath of the storm. All this from a Cat 2 storm.

All this instructs us to know that one cannot depend on power, gas, and food deliveries at least four days after a Cat 2 storm. When we recover from this storm, we should keep in mind what we would need to prepare for, when a Cat 5 storm comes along.

My best wishes to those repairing the electrical grid, cleaning the streets, and trying to see to their property.

Endure: Hurricane Ike

First, major thanks to Pam and John Odom. They took my sister, my roommate, and myself into their home, for the hurricane. I cannot thank them enough, and hope that we as guests can return the favor one day.

The part of the hurricane's aftermath that affected the everyone was the lack of power. As I type (5:11 pm Sunday 14 September), power has still not returned to much of the city. Combine that with the awfully humid, still weather Saturday night, has produced a unique misery.

Houston is in shambles. While most buildings suffered little damage, many, if not most trees have been severely damaged, if not out-right downed. Roads have tree trunks across them, making driving a kind of dodge 'em affair. Traffic only continues to build from the virtual ghost-town of Friday towards the back-to-business-and-them-some of...Monday? Tuesday?

Schools are closed for Monday, some open Tuesday, most by Wednesday. The Galleria was open this afternoon, and is packed. The food court especially has astoundingly long lines. The Taco Bell on Gessner had a line out onto Gessner southbound. If a store is open, it is packed. Anything to get out of the house.

Before Ike hit, I was thinking that so far, people in the area are acting based on the lessons they learned from Rita. There was no panicky evacuation. Everyone prepared, some got out, some hunkered down, and we'll bounce back.

Read: The Foundation (the first two books), by Isaac Asimov

I have read relatively little "classic" science fiction, the earliest story of which is War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells, published in 1898. From what I recall, it is one example of Victorian/Edwardian-era literature that doesn't "feel" like something from that era. It doesn't read like Charles Dickens, for instance.

Nothing comes to mind for the decades of 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, but for the 1940s, there is The Foundation, by Isaac Asimov. According to Wiki (as of 6 September 2008), the stories within Foundation were published from 1942 through 1950. The "feel" of the book is like pulpy, comic-book science fiction, the kind that you can imagine, with characters talking like snarky New Yorkers.

The overall concept is bold: The Galactic Empire is failing, slowly but surely, and one guy has figured it out. Hari Seldon, psychohistorian, has modeled civilization mathematically, and has seen the future, mathematically speaking. He arranges the creation of a Foundation (two, actually, but that is mentioned only once in the first book, and again once or twice in the second book) to preserve the scientific knowledge after the Empire falls.

Naturally, the powers that be at the Empire do not like the idea of someone spreading word that their government system is going to fail, and that there is nothing that anyone can do to stop it. This doesn't stop Hari, who tells a young protege, Gaal Dornick, about his work. The suspense builds; will Gaal be able to create the Foundation? Will someone from the Empire try to stop them? Will anyone not talk like they have an attitude problem? All that and more, just turn the page to read the next chapter and--

--fifty or so years have passed. What happened? Well, apparently, the Foundation was established, and it has a bunch of scientist and bureaucrats arguing. At this point, I had a hard time caring. What happend to Hari and Gaal? Who are these new people? Why are they all so sarcastic? There is a crisis or something, political parties form, and something like a revolution occurs, and so then you turn the page and--

--not again! Sixty or so years have passed, another crisis, new characters, new names, no new attitudes...

And so it goes for the rest of the book. The reader goes through a history of the first two or three centuries of the Foundation itself, faster than one goes through American history in fifth grade. Imagine reading the personal accounts and meetings of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and Benjamin Franklin. Then, just as Washington refused to be elected to a third term, you turn the page and--

--Kansas is bleeding! Now you have Congressmen beating each other up, and South Carolina secedes and...what is going on?

The point is, one can excuse the reader for thinking that the story of The Foundation is really the story of the crises of the first Foundation. As if nothing of interest ever happens on Foundation in between the crises. To top it all off, near or just after the resolution of each crisis, a scheduled hologram appearance of Hari lets viewers and the reader know that he, Hari, saw the whole thing, and that such-and-such should have happened.

The reason for this story arrangement is that The Foundation was not published as a complete body of work. Asimov wrote each crisis as an independent story. This would explain the near-zero character development that occurs. By the end of the book, I could have cared less about what happened to the Foundation or its residents, especially since Hari reminds everyone that he saw it coming, but won't tell you what's going to happen next, since that would violate one of the laws of psychohistory.

So, onto the second book, Foundation and Empire. This book is actually much more interesting, featuring things like character development. This book is also actually two stories, one after the other. They are both crisis stories, but the reader follows two or three characters as each crisis unfolds over months and years. This in-depth approach actually lets the reader know more about what happened before each crisis, in a casual, non-encyclopedic way.

The first story is about a General, named Bel Riose, who thinks that he can take on Foundation. Why? Just because he has been successful in the past. By this point, the Empire (still falling, three or so centuries after Foundation was started) has lost technological superiority over the Foundation, despite having a much larger population. What is comedic about this story is that one of the people that Bel consults, tells Bel that he will fail. How Bel will fail is not known exactly, but since his success would mean the demise of the Foundation, Bel will fail. Foundation cannot fail, which means that anyone who tries to destroy will somehow not succeed.

So much for anyone.

What about anything?

The second story in Foundation and Empire is so far the most interesting story in Foundation. Two newlyweds, Toran and Bayta, meet a performing jester, Magnifico, and take him with them on their travels. Meanwhile, a civil war is brewing between Foundation and the surrounding planets. And then, something, known as the Mule, begins to take over the planets. The Mule can do something no one else can -- manipulate other people's emotions. Mostly, in a negative way. He kills morale, brings people over to his side, and sort of saunters his way to power.

So, Toran and Bayta find themselves on the run with Magnifico and a scientist, trying to find ways to defeat the Mule. After an encounter with a mind-controlled agent of the Mule, and a run-in with other unsavory characters, Bayta points out one fact: after all their running, why are they the only ones who haven't fallen under the power of the Mule?

Overall, if you can get past the first book, the second one is pretty good. Foundation encompasses a whole series of books, making reading the entirety of the story as daunting as reading The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson. If you have the patience, it's worth it.

Read: The Mystery of Capital

In all of American history, you probably learned just how land ownership was conferred, approved, and made transferable. In Texas, empresarios recruited colonists to settle in the then-Mexican state. The Texas General Land Office says,

Mexico retained ownership of the land within a colony until the colony's land commissioner issued title to it. The colony's actual boundaries were therefore determined by the extent of settlement within it, rather than by the boundaries specified in the contract. Mexico made more than two dozen empresario contracts, about half of which were even partially carried out. However, empresarios brought about 50,000 settlers to Texas between 1821 and 1836.

...

The Colonization Law of 1825 also created the office of land commissioner. Because Texas was so large, the governor was authorized to appoint commissioners who would issue land titles, maintain land records and provide the colonists with copies, maps their regions and supervise surveys. In addition, commissioners were to take the oath of allegiance from new settlers, appoint surveyors, select sites and mark the streets for new towns and provide and maintain ferries. Payment for performing these duties would come from title fees collected from colonists.

Source.

Texas apparently did not go through the same trouble that colonists went through in other parts of the United States, and what people in many developing countries currently experience.

The problem of land ownership, title, and transfer is a major stumbling block, and that is the thesis of Hernando de Soto's book, The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else. This book is important, and explains why some countries, like the United States, Canada, Western Europe, Japan, and others are wealthy, and why some seem to stumble or spin their wheels.

De Soto claims that mystery of capital is such because it has received the least amount of attention from activists and the media. Economic reforms have been tried before, and in many countries, they have failed to bring about the long-term economic growth that the US has experience since the 1930s. Even today, leaders like Hugo Chavez propose economic policies that are troublesome at best, and disastrous at worst.

The mystery of capital, of why many countries have trouble building wealth, is actually five separate mysteries: the mystery of missing information, of capital itself, of political awareness, the lessons of US history, and that of legal failure. De Soto devotes a chapter to discussing each of these, and proposing solutions.

The missing information is just that: no one really knows who owns what, outside one's inner circle of friends. Much of this comes from fairly recent, post-1950 economic development. De Soto compare's the post-World War II development of the third world to the post-Revolution developments that occured in Europe and the new United States. The Industrial Revolution was not isolated to the city; its impact was felt in the countryside. Then as is now, people left the agricultural sectors permanently. When they left, they found themselves against a legal system that made entry into legal property ownership, employment, business management so difficult as to be impossible. De Soto cites the example of Lima, Peru:

Our goal was to create a new and perfectly legal business. The team then began filling out the forms, standing in the lines, and making the bus trips into central Lima to get all the certifications required to operate, according to the letter of the law, a small business in Peru. They spent six hours a day at it and finally registered the business-289 days later (18).

With hurdles like these, no one should wonder why so much the economy in developing countries is underground. De Soto has charts in his book that details the mind-numbing process that people in countries like Peru, Phillipines, Egypt, and Haiti must go through to become legit. It takes 168 steps and 13 - 25 years to formalize property in Phillipines. Seventy-seven steps and 6 - 14 years to "gain access to desert land for construction purposes and to register these property rights in Egypt" (22 - 24).

De Soto and his colleagues have done a stunning amount of historical research, going back to Adam Smith and Karl Marx. Economists such as these attempted to define capital, and de Soto says that capital is an abstraction that must be realized, that is, made into something concrete, fungible. Only that which can produce greater value is capital. A car that transports one to work, so that one may earn money, to buy other things (like a replacement car) is capital. A car used for joy-riding is not capital, until put to productive use. De Soto claims that several billion dollars of "dead capital" exists in most of the world, mostly in people's houses, workplaces, and business transactions. Few of these are recorded, made public, and given titles, proof of ownership.

What does exist is an ad-hoc network of informal systems. How to prove that you own what you own? You have a piece of paper, issued by some office, but that office is itself not a legal establishment. The only proof you have is your word, the word of your friends and family, and your neighbors. A stranger has little reason to trust you, and you have little reason to trust them. Among those strangers, is the local, state, provincial, and federal governments.

The word "messy" does not begin to describe the chaotic approach millions of people have taken to securing employment, buy houses, set up utilities, and, well, build capital. It is as if the way that undocumented immigrants have gotten jobs were extrapolated to most of the US population. People like you and me, driving cars, working on computers, renting apartments, blogging, doing all of that without licenses, registration, an accurate electric meter, housing inspections, and a journalist license. Imagine spending years of your life to get an officially sanctioned house. You would probably blow the process off, find a house, arrange payment, move in. You hope that nobody comes knocking on your door, claiming to have a piece of paper demonstrating ownership of the property that was given to them decades ago by the previous government.

At one point, something like that existed even in the US. De Soto writes how in centuries past, the transition from extralegal arrangements to inclusive was made throughout Europe, North America, and Japan. The process then was not easy, and in the US took nearly the entirety of the 19th century. Progress was made in fits and starts, with a lot of emotional rhetoric on the part of lawmakers.

The part where de Soto describes US history is for me the most alive part of the book, no doubt at least in part because I'm an American, and the Wild West is romantic, if only in very fuzzy hindsight. He writes,

The governments and judiciary of the young states, not yet so legally united, were trying to cope with the law and disorder of migrants, squatters, gold diggers, armed gangs, illegal entrepeneurs, and the rest of the colorful characters who made the settling of the American West so wild and, if only in hindsight, so romantic. To a Third Worlder like me [de Soto], this picture of the gringo past is astonishingly familiar. Although my colleagues and I have trouble relating to 11,000 on the Dow Jones, we feel quite at home among the squatters in Thomas Jefferson's Virginia or the log cabin settlements of Daniel Boone's Kentucky (107).

This is an important fact: America was a 3rd World Country, too. Its progress from 3rd to 1st was not due solely to technology or (as some would have it) providence. It was the way that the law reflected the vast majority's outlook on life and its processes. The law reflects society's habits, not commands it. The law is useless if irrelevant and impossible to enforce. Every citizen would do well to be acutely aware of that fact.

If only modifying the law were to be so easy. De Soto says that developing nations have spent more than a century trying to reform property laws, but to little avail. He thinks the problem rests on misconceptions on the part of the reformers. The people who attempt to fix the problem seem to fall in the trap of thinking that people who live and work extralegally do so to avoid taxes, or that proper surveying and recordation is necessary. Maybe the powers-that-be think that the current law is sufficient enough, and that enforcing compliance is the issue. Maybe other leaders think that the current social contracts, however informal, can just be ignored, and that in any case high-level leadership is not necessary.

De Soto deconstructs each of these arguments and demonstrates their fallibilities. Living in the extralegal sector is hardly a tax break, compared to all the "favors" that one must pay to avoid crossing the local gangs. Proper surveying in the United States was not conducted until after property law was reformed.

There is a point in the book that makes me wonder if de Soto contradicted himself. At one point in the book, de Soto writes "Does that mean that lawyers should lead the integration process? No. Implementing major legal change is a political responsibility" (158). Later, he says, "To be sure, the battle [of property law reform] was uphill all the way, mainly because, as Peter Stein has remarked, lawyers' 'contribution to a proper understanding of legal institutions was obscured by their emphasis on antiquarianism and their acceptance of Roman law as a finished product.' Nevertheless, over time, great European jurists overcame excessive rigidity because as Stein points out, they 'made it their profession to become experts in the intricacies of the Roman law, and to ensure that it moved with the time.' Against their colleagues' rampant unresponsiveness, in every European country an elite band of lawyers emerged to help lift the bell jar" (201).

Maybe de Soto thinks that lawyers need to stop venerating the law so much, and assist or lead the political process in adapting the law to be more inclusive. This is a call to profound citizenship.

De Soto concludes that if capitalism is not introduced on a micro-economic scale, then the problems afflicting developing countries threatens their already fragile stability. Earlier I mentioned that non-capitalist movements are seeing a revival, with all their problems. Capitalism for the elite is a bad investment in the long-term.

I conclude by saying that this is one of the most important books of this era. This book should have been published, distributed, and injected into the popular global mindset back in 1991. I posit that many, if not most, economic problems are unnecessary. They are the result of bad management, poor risk evaluation, and now as the case has been demonstrated, an impossible legal framework for the majority of people in developing countries. We the people of Earth deserve better than that.

Watch: Battlestar Galactica

Few TV shows stand out, and make a lasting impression upon one's mind. Few shows make you think, days afterward, about life, meaning, religion, its followers, leadership, the things that leaders must do to convince their followers that the path that they are on is indeed the right path. Few shows have dared to be arty, weird, funny, sad, subtle, symbolic, romantic, passionate, and tragic.

Battlestar Galactica (BSG for short), the new one, is one of those shows. It is one of the best TV shows I have ever seen. It is certainly the best American (though it was partnered with British network Sky for its first season) show I have ever seen. The best TV show I've ever seen, though it was actually an OVA, is Legend of the Galactic Heroes (LoGH). The best broadcast network TV show I've seen is Lost. Special mention goes to Doctor Who, for pure inventiveness, but its stories are inherently non-linear as the years go by, so I cannot say that there is a coherent episode-to-episode story like BSG, LoGH, or Lost. There you have the categories.

BSG started out as a miniseries on the Sci-Fi channel, and is now in its fourth season of regular programming. Summarizing this show is difficult, and can take a while. I will focus on just the parts that stick out in my own mind.

Gaius Baltar's vision of the Opera House, and other visions of music and architecture. The music stands out, and what cemented in my own mind that this show was becoming a work of art. The scene is not pretentious, as it is consistent with Baltar's previous visions of Number 6, and the Opera House will figure prominently in later episodes. But, listen to the music! Count the layers of sound! The architecture stands out, because how often do interior layouts, design, and lighting get such high billing and focus? I'm not sure what the Opera House is supposed to mean, other than as a setting for drama, or a cultural bond that humans and cylons share.

The human culture. The humans mostly worship a pantheon of gods. In fact, their culture reminds me of what the Roman Empire might have been like if it had not fallen. Imagine Rome being the center of the world, politically and financially, with computers, space travel, and a (somewhat) democratic process. BSG is not entirely into world-building, which has its pluses and minuses.

On the plus side, Caprica and the other colonies were destroyed, so in the context of the story, they are the past. The show is about the trying to live after the attack, not about life before the attack. Supposedly, a new show, called Caprica, will depict life as it was. That new show would be almost entirely world-building, though if it depicts life decades before the cylons blew everything up, the show could be filmed in present-day Vancouver and no one would justifiably holler "where's the sci-fi city!" Also, world-building often strikes me as poorly-done, since sci-fi tends to have a poor track record in getting future predictions right.

On the down side, enough colonial culture exists in BSG, differing from US culture, that it leaves questions, such as:

Why do most, if not all, documents and photographs have their corners filleted, to form octagon-like shapes?

Why do men and women live in such an explicitly gender-neutral culture (men and women share public bathrooms, and refer to each other as "sir")? How was this achieved?

Given that advanced AI exists, and has existed, and space travel is far advanced, why do human lifespans seem so normal? It's OK that they don't, just...why? I know that advanced space travel and artificial intelligence does not guarantee a greatly reduced incidence of heart disease, but someone should bring it up. At least complain about it.

And, so on. I understand that there has to be some differences, otherwise the show would be Americans in Space on the Run from Monotheistic Robots. But, what differences that do exist, an explanation or reason would be nice.

Another thing (aside from the music/architecture/visions, and their culture), is the high quality of the acting. I don't know if acting is like fashion: it has its cycles and moments, or is something that can be said to evolve, similar to advertising. Advertisers try to convince you to buy something, don't actors try to convince you to believe what they're saying? Maybe the whole subject is, well, subjective. I can't remember a time when the characters acted contrary to previously established behaviors (looking at you, Lost) , but otherwise don't devolve into stereotypes or have over-simplified personalities.

Special attention should go to Katee Sackhoff, who plays Starbuck, and is the first actor I've seen to effectively communicate doubt and dread while barely flinching a facial muscle. She is the most complex person on the show, even more so than Baltar. She loves two men, marries one, is sent out on the most dangerous, strategically ambiguous missions, and maybe even "dies" and returns from the "dead" with photos of Earth and a brand new spaceship. She drinks, smokes, plays cards, had a stash of drugs back on Caprica, is fiercely loyal to Odama, and is currently convinced she must find Earth. All that, and the Cylon Hybrid takes a break from its non-stop babble to grab Starbuck's arm and tell her that she, Starbuck, is the "harbinger of death".

Harsh.

I won't go into an episode-by-episode re-hash of the show. You can visit Ack-Attack's website for that. I just think that any creative endeavor, even video games and TV, can become a work of art, though of two different kinds.

Just as a painting or sculpture tries to evoke an emotion, however abstract, video entertainment can achieve a similar effect. The problem is that these are new forms of media, and don't have centuries of background like other conventional art forms. How long before photography became an art form? Movies? Few paintings have the status of the The Last Supper or Starry Knight, or sculpture like that of Venus de Milo or David. They reflect the idealization, honoring one's cultural background, or that which exists naturally. They stand as wonderful representations of the era in which it was produced.

Can video games transcend technology? Can the romance of 8-bit go beyond nostalgia of the 1980s? Is Myst the first attempt at such transcendence? How about A Mind Forever Voyaging, an attempt at literary video gaming? Can TV be art? 2001: A Space Odyssey manages to be both art and sci-fi. Same for Metropolis. Why not TV? Not an adaptation of previous literary work, but a project conceived explicitly for 22- or 45- minute long viewing segments. Something that will stand as being symbolic of its era.

I saw an episode of The X-Files a few months ago, more than a decade after that particular episode aired, and several years since the show ended. At that moment, I realized how much TV (well, the kind of TV I watch) has progressed, or at least changed. The technology, exhibited on-show as well as used in the production of the show, had changed. Camera positioning and movement styles had changed. The fashion, cars, and particular political outlook (post-Cold War, pre-War on Terror) was so...'90s. All that was missing was music from the Stone Temple Pilots, and a kid playing the first generation Sony Playstation. But those are mostly details, like synthesizer music in the 1980s and afros in the 1970s.

Is Battlestar Galactica the first show to be TV as art?

Play: Halo: Combat Evolved

Can there be a more perfect game than this? After playing games like Pac-Man, to Super Mario, to Sonic the Hedgehog, to SimCity, SimCity 2000, SimCity 3000, SimCity 4, SimTower, SimIsle, Tomb Raider, and Final Fantasy (as well as '90s-era DOS games like Jill of the Jungle, Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure, and Secret Agent), this has to be the most perfect game thus far.

The story is relatively standard pulp. You play a cybernetic super soldier, kind of like Predator, only you're the good guy. You are the faceless, anonymous, most-awesome-looking body armor-wearing Master Chief. I'm not a fan of body armor by and large. The closest I got to wearing it was when I used to play ice hockey, and donning and doffing it was tedious and dull. Not Master Chief. The dude lives in it, and lives to fight the alien bad guys.

The alien bad guys are on a religious quest to wipe out the human race, and you begin playing in the middle of the story, whereby you and the aliens have come to a head at this massive ring-world built by someone other than the humans and the aliens you were fighting. The micro-awesome is the MC's armor, but the macro-aweseome belongs to the Halo itself. The game designers were thoughtful enough to include it within the perspective of actually being on the Halo. Meaning? You get cool scenes like this:


Source: theblogComics.com

I want to drive on a freeway going around this thing. For those of you who read different science fiction than I did, yes, I know, shades of Larry Niven.

Beyond that, you shoot shoot shoot, kill kill kill. That part is not particularly special. What is special is the way the game teaches you how to play. After watching the movie that begins the game (it seems virtually all non-sim games since 2000 have gone to long cut-scenes), you are guided by the female computer voice-over, known as Cortana, as she shows you how to aim, shoot, and use your accessories.

I've not played many games where the tutorial is part of the game, but this was very well done.

Top it off with perhaps the best feature in game design I've experienced: auto-save. None of this "look for the glowing blue ball", but rather, you finish a level, the game saves, and you have no need to go back and re-load at the last save some 30 minutes ago if you are killed. The auto-save feature is the best game improvement ever since games moves away from the arcade-style "3 lives and you're dead" meme that lasted through the early-1990s. If having to go back all the way to the beginning to the Green Hill Zone for the umpteenth time killed my interest in conventional 1990s games (and sent me to the Sim games), then having to level-up and look for blue balls is about to kill my interest in conventional 2000s-era games.

Halo lets you play as much or as little as you like, and you are not punished for it by facing dozens of rounds of the exact same battle sequence just so you can advance your skill set to include some spell, which frustrated you so much the last time you played that game two months ago that you put it aside.

The only problems I have with Halo are the confusing maps and unfair fights. I found myself wandering in circles in beautiful terrain for nearly an hour before I walked enough of the right zones to activate the next cut scene. Also, facing a barrage of ten thousands alien bad guys all by yourself when you have one bullet left and one health point blinking red is disheartening, prompting many times to "restart the level" with full ammo and lots of health.

If those are the only two faults in Halo, then the game is fantastic.

Video: Driving Around Houston's East Side Part One

The video was taken with a helmet cam, to test the camera, my ability to do some very minor editing, as well as how the video looks on YouTube. This is only a test.