Category: Journal

On The Literal Interpretation of Genesis

Until yesterday, I had been without a computer for ages — about a week and a half, I think. I decided to sell the iMac in favour of a PC that could run Flight Simulator, and the sleek white machine decided to retaliate by blowing up. So it’s in the shop getting a new motherboard and power supply, while the replacement PC only arrived yesterday. But it’s very nice — Athlon 64 3600+, 2G, GeForce 7600, 250G Raid 1.

That said, I just ran across this excellent analysis of the current linguistics wars (you’ll need to be a bit familiar with both the Intelligent Design movement and historical linguistics to follow it):

The opponents of Wrathful Dispersion maintain that it is really just Babelism, rechristened so that it might fly under the radar of those who insist that religion has no place in the state-funded classroom. Babelism was clearly rooted in the Judeo-Christian story of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11: 1–9); it held that the whole array of modern languages was created by God at a single stroke, for the immediate purpose of disrupting humanity’s hubristic attempt to build a tower that would reach to heaven: “Let us go down,” God says to Himself, “and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” Wrathful Dispersion is couched in more cautiously neutral language; rather than tying linguistic diversity to a specific biblical event, it merely argues that the differences among modern languages are too perverse to have arisen spontaneously, and must therefore be the work of some wrathful (and powerful) disperser who deliberately set out to accomplish a confusion of tongues.

This Upside-Down World

I’ve been skimming over some net discussions on the upcoming Da Vinci Code movie release. It is incredible but hardly surprising that the same people who voiciferously insist that the movie be accompanied by absolutely no disclaimers or commentary, much less criticism, are those who insist that we live in a theocratic police state.

Hmm. Only a few short weeks ago those same people were as noisy in their insistence that a few cartoons making fun of another religion’s founder be completely supressed.

Now they’re insisting that a movie which is both universally acknowledged as a tissue of complete and utter fabrication, and literally blasphemous to its subject religion, must be allowed to be promoted without any check, disclaimer or hint of criticism, much less a boycott.

If we are living in a theocracy, which religion’s is it?

Run, Do Not Walk…

To your local bookstore, and grab a copy of His Majesty’s Dragon. Lately I’ve been pretty jaded with fantasy — I just avoid that section of my local megabookstore. But I read a glowing review at SF Site, and decided to try it out.

It’s jaw-dropping amazing. Such glorious, glorious fun. It’s set England during the Napoleonic Wars. To say it’s reminiscent of Patrick O’Brian or Jane Austen seems at first almost faint praise, because it really stands on its own, but what else could you compare it to but to the masterpieces of the genre?

So go out and snatch a copy from the fast-diminishing stock, and prepare yourself for tall ships, iron men, high seas and billowing clouds, green fields dotted with sheep around stately manor houses, crinoline and lace and leather and gunpower, slow bows and sharp blows, the steady watch of weather-beaten souls in the narrow channel that holds back the dreams of an Emperor, fireworks and music on the water.

And . . . here there be dragons.

X-Plane Sucks!

And while I’m sitting here waiting for my source to build, I’m going to rant a bit about the vaunted X-Plane flight simulator. Last fall I replaced my ailing Windows machine with a nice shiny new iMac 20″ G5. (About a month before the announcement of the Intel machines… Grr.)

I was a little worried about not being able to run Flight Simulator any more, but from the hype on the web, X-Plane was more than enough to keep me happy. Little did I know.

To put it simply, X-Plane sucks. It’s a matter of production values. First, let me say that the new global terrain graphics are perfectly adequate. Graphics are not the issue.

First of all, the simulation engine changes with practially every single minor revision of the software. That means that planes designed for one version of the software fly wildly differently on others. And since updates are released about every six weeks, this is a major problems for one’s enjoyment of the product.

Second, the planes are crap. If the have a 2D cockpit, it’s only good for one resolution, and doesn’t scale to others. So I have to downgrade my screen to 1024×768 to fly, either sssstttrrreeetttccchhhiiinnnggg to fit my wide-screen monitor, or leaving black bars on each side. If I’m in 3D cockpit mode, most of the planes just have the 2D cockpit hanging in empty space in front of you. Any change in viewpoint from the default results in a jarring cognitive dissonance.

Third, the interface is crap. You cannot get a joystick coolie hat to move your view in both 2D and 3D cockpit modes at the same time.

Fourth, the avionics are crap, as are plane builders’ instrument choices. If you’re going to simulate anything more complex than the S-TEC, include a FLCH function. Trying to level some wildly overpowered fantasy jet before I can hit altitude hold is an exercise in futility. And the autopilot . . . what can I say. Don’t eat a large meal before engaging it, is all I can say. X-Plane is singularly responsible for introducing me to the concept of AIO: autopilot-induced oscillation. In all dimensions. And don’t even think about mentioning the FMC. If it bothers to notice a turn at a waypoint, it takes its time telling the autopilot.

Fifth, the AI air traffic control is crap. It takes no notice of airspeed when commanding descent, so many’s the time I’ve been instructed to call the tower on ILS intercept — and found I was at angels 10, one mile from the runway. This is probably the reason it nags you every 30 seconds whenever your rate of descent slips above -6000fpm.

Ordinarily I’m all in favor of the little guy — I’m writing a spaceflight simulator I hope to release someday — but in this case, production values win out. As soon as I can I’m buying a windows machine to run FS X on. X-Plane is pretty much the most disappointing $60 I’ve ever spent on software.