Red Queen's Court

The Red Queen theory tells us that evolution is a harsh mistress. I've imagined mythologizing that, the embodiment of the evolutionary arms race as a blood-red Zerg Hydralisk hunter-killer, its red maw consuming the unfit, without mercy or conscience. Seems depressing, but might be a good idea too. The Dunning-Kruger effect says overconfidence is a systemic bias. Maybe an antagonistic memento mori would help us stay sharp and on our toes.

You could make up a whole pantheon of the demons of fail. Taleb's Black Swan dive-bombs down on the unsuspecting and complacent. Larry Niven already had "the dread god Finagle and his mad prophet Murphy."

StarCraft 2

Finished playing it a few days ago, though I just got as far as the Thors in campaign mode, skipped the Ghosts/Spectres and went straight to Char. Felt kinda meh about it at first; the voice acting was better before, it felt a little derivative with obvious nods to Firefly and changing Raynor into a Solid Snake type character. The Raynor/Kerrigan ship was a kluge; when they last parted in Brood War, Raynor swore he'd kill Kerrigan someday. Gameplay felt very Warcrafty, and while obviously there are limits to how realistic you can make a space opera (mutalisks flapping their wings in deep space), I still prefer my sf to be grittier than my fantasy.

It gets better past the hump, somewhere over halfway through. I quite liked the Protoss missions and their heroic last stand. Good foreshadowing. Sucks that they nerfed the Mothership though, Planet Cracker should have been the new nuclear strike, the ultimate-damage screen-clearing kaboom. And I wanted to play the Zerg, even if just for 1 or 2 missions. Here's to hoping Heart of the Swarm comes out next year. With LAN play, damnit!

The Battlecuiser captain is way more fun this time around. Yes RLY.

excerpt. the trap of Dharma. Choices.

"The guardian of the lake was a lonely man, the more so because he had a wife. He showed me her picture in a plastic shield in his wallet, a prettyish blond girl trying her best to live up to the pictures in the magazines, a girl of products, home permanents, shampoos, rinses, skin conditioners. She hated being out in what she called the sticks, longed for the great and gracious life in Toledo or South Bend. Her only company was found in the shiny pages of Charm and Glamour. Eventually she would sulk her way to success. Her husband would get a job in some great clanging organism of progress, and they would live happily ever after. All this came through in small, oblique spurts in his conversation. She knew exactly what she wanted and he didn't, but his want would ache in him all his life. After he drove away in his jeep I lived his life for him and it put a mist of despair on me. He wanted his pretty little wife and he wanted something else and he couldn't have both."

-John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley