Electronic Economics

I was given a $30 gift card for JB Hi-Fi for my birthday, and since I now have a computer that might be able to run Starcraft 2 and was pretty sure I'd seen the game at JB for $34, off I went to purchase it. Maybe that $34 pricetag was only there for the Christmas sales, or maybe I only imagined it. Either way - I wasn't getting SC2 from JB without forking over sixty bucks. Sorry, $59.95. 

Now that is fine. Sometimes prices are oddly high or low at stores for reasons I can't guess at. But by this point I had been imagining finally getting this game and playing online games with my friend Big Josh. I hopped on to the Blizzard website to buy SC2 digitally. 

$39.99. I assume that is US dollars, so probably a little less in AUD at the moment. Wait, no, after logging in with my Battle.net account I see it is $49.95 AUD.

Leaving aside the fact that from the splash screen Blizzard actually requires you to enter a Battle.net account to see the price (click buy from this screen) this is a ridiculous price. First of all, this is a game that came out three years ago. Computer games usually experience a fairly swift fall in prices after the first 6-12 months. For example, Deus Ex: Human Revolution came out in 2011 and is $25 online through Steam (without taking sales into account). I'm sure it was around sixty dollars on release. This might seem like a steep drop-off but big-budget games aren't so different to big-budget movies: first the expensive release price for those want to have it now (at the movies). Then the lower price for those not prepared to pay so much, or only vaguely interested in the experience (buying or renting DVDs; also streaming video or Pirate Bay). 

But there is another reason why this price is ridiculous: it is only ten dollars less than the in-store price. This seems like a funny thing to say. It is very convenient to buy a game over the Internet; why should the publisher knock down the price for such a superior delivery method? 

In fact digital purchase is vastly less convenient than a physical disc. You have to download all the files for install rather than having them to hand, you have to re-download them if you get a new computer or have to re-format, and you cannot do any of this if the publisher's servers are down or you lack Internet access. That might be fine now, but in three years that publisher may not even exist. Companies merge, split, dissolve or are dissolved all the time. And who will be supporting the publisher's guarantee of access to the data you paid for? Probably no one. 

Not to mention that a digital copy is not "yours" in any physical sense. You can't sell it secondhand, or give it to a friend, or trade it in for something new. Digital purchase is a purchase of access to data and services, not of any clearly defined "thing". This is why it is cheaper for the publisher. They do have to pay for server space and so on, but this is much less than burning and shipping DVDs (packaging, quality control, security, so on and so forth). 

We also have to look at the competition. Blizzard's big enough to distribute its own games, but many companies aren't. In the world of digital distribution of games, there is Steam and Origin (we don't talk about Microsoft's efforts). I haven't really used Origin but I do use Steam. What is my experience of Steam? Games often cost the same on Steam as physically, but because of the frequent sales this is a fiction. Because of Steam, my attempt to buy SC2 was my first attempt to physically buy a computer game in years. Games are cheap and Steam's cloud backs up my progress in case of a hard drive failure. Yes, the same fears about access to what I paid for continue to exist. But the marketplace is cheap, slick and  most importantly Valve have been in the business for a while and to a degree have earned my trust. 

The final reason $50 is an outrageous price? This year Heart of the Swarm, the next standalone expansion pack (don't ask) for Starcraft 2, will come out. Multiplayer is the main reason I wanted to buy this game and Heart of the Swarm will have a separate multiplayer ladder (no crossover with basic SC2 players). Most dedicated SC2 players will upgrade. Essentially, base SC2 will be obsolete. And yet the price is still $50. 

I've put thirty-nine very enjoyable hours into Mark of the Ninja. I bought it on sale on Steam for five bucks. 

What kind of world are you living in, Blizzard?

Failing

You may have noticed that there are rather less posts in the Calvintaries series than you might expect, since I declared a M-W-F timetable for them. The truth is I have totally failed to do what I hoped and planned to do. Let's talk about why.

The first reason was a blow to my morale. When I struggled with the posts about Romans (more on why below) and missed several deadlines, I wasn't really sure how to deal with it. I had lost my momentum. I was going to break my self-imposed schedule, which would make me feel bad. The only way to avoid that feeling was to ignore the project and pretend it didn't exist. This has been a pattern in my behaviour for years.

The best way to fix this response to failure is to, upon missing that deadline, commit to getting the next thing done without reference to time. I think that this will help restore momentum (upon which I emotionally thrive) and get me over the shame of failure. Yes, even for a little blog project which like five people will ever see, I experience shame when I fail.

I struggled (struggle) with summarising Romans not because I can't understand what Calvin is saying but because I found it difficult not to simply transcribe the commentary. What I really want to do is look at what Calvin is saying about the passage, and how it relates to that passage, and why he might expound it in that particular way. Really I want to analyse Calvin's hermeneutic. This takes more time and brain power than I anticipated.

So that's why the blog has been dead. Hopefully it will regain some life in the near future. 

Skyfall Is A Beautiful Mess

As an action movie experience, Skyfall works. It is exciting to watch. It is engaging. It draws you into its world and movements. It is the most visually beautiful Bond movie I have seen, and by far the best-directed of the Craig films.The theme song by Adele is beautiful and sums up the spirit of the film - but which film? Because Skyfall tries to be three different movies; and so it is totally lacking in cohesion and internal logic in both a narrative and thematic sense.

Also, there's a massive helping of misogyny to the point that I felt uncomfortable because my female friend didn't feel uncomfortable. Has she been living with this kind of stuff so long that it no longer registers? Anyway, spoilers (misogyny isn't really a spoiler).

As I said, this is a movie in three parts. There is the traditional Bond movie which holds our attention at the start and appears in brief flashes later: far-flung locations, Bond being charming and deadly, a villain with a plan that threatens the world. There is also a rather more grim movie in there about the challenges that MI-6 faces in a new world as its enemies not only proliferate but splinter, endlessly, into so many different faces that they might as well not have identities. And there is the beating heart of the movie which asserts itself most in the last quarter: the origins of both Bond and his enemy, and the dread machine of human intelligence into which they were both fed. Or into which they fed themselves - the movie is intentionally ambiguous about that point (and I can't really tell if that's a good thing).

The problem is that these three movies, these three plots, have very little to do with each other. The villain's identity as ex-MI6 rather undercuts the idea of MI6 suffering fundamentally new threats. And the intimacy which the villain shares with both Bond and M means the missing list of undercover operatives which ought to drive the plot never gets the space it needs to feel properly threatening. And as for the villain's big evil plot...it turns out to be to shoot M. Marvelous. The same M who was traveling about London in a Jaguar for much of the movie, and Jaguars are not known for their bullet-resistant properties. I understand that it is the mentality of the villain which drives this complicated plan, but the villain himself is a problem.

He's a former agent with a bone to pick with MI-6 and particularly M, who gives a brief justification of her abandonment of him. This issue is never questioned or expanded upon by any of the characters. Skyfall is content to let us know that there might be a moral issue here, but it has no interest in actually dealing with it. The brutal use of people, fed into the machine of human intelligence and gunfights that is the recent Bond movies - that goes unexamined, even though the entire motivation of the villain is to get M to examine herself. Because Rodriguez nee Silva never gets a chance to be right, he is never proved wrong and so his hatred of M lingers with the viewer longer than I think it was intended to. That Javier Bardem makes the character work at all is a testament to his talent and presence on screen.

Let's now talk about the misogyny. First of all, the easy example. Bond meets a henchwoman in Macau. Her name is Severine (though in fact the movie develops her so little I had to look up her name on Wikipedia), and she is magnetic. The self-control covering gnawing fear, the self-possession of her body language, the strange and fragile hope which she places in Bond to free her from slavery. Then she is killed by the villain to mess with Bond. Perhaps the point is that Bond failed her, that agents cannot rescue everyone who needs rescue - but this is never pointed out in any way by the movie, and in fact her quiet, senseless death is overshadowed by the arrival of Bond's backup. What should be a stirring moment was for me a waste. Why couldn't they have arrived ten seconds earlier and saved her? Why is her death so meaningless? Why is she in this movie if she has no purpose? Is she just here to look pretty and vulnerable, sleep with Bond, and then die?

Do not, please, tell me that this is part of the Bond movie milieu. Skyfall is not based on a Fleming novel, and even if it were there is no reason that an adaptation has to carry across misogyny and the linking of female sexuality and death. Nor ought it to contain its other strange message about gender: that women cannot be trusted in fieldwork or authoritative positions. Early in the movie Bond tells Eve that field work is not for everyone, and near the end she accepts his advice and accepts an administrative posting, becoming Moneypenny. This might fly if it was a decision she made herself, but because of Bond's blunt assessment earlier it has nasty undertones of women can't do this manly manly job. Screw you, Skyfall.

Now, I'm a Christian. I get my spiritual truth from the Bible. Let's flick to Judges chapter four, down to verse eighteen. Jael invites this guy in to her tent, gives him a drink to put him at ease, and when he's asleep hammers a tent peg through his skull. Now, this might not have been a moral thing to do. But it was certainly stone cold and I think's it pretty clear evidence - which is borne out in the world around us - that woman are just as capable of violence, and duties which involve violence, as men.

Also M is treated oddly. She tells Eve to take that shot, even though Bond is in the way. Later she gives a perfectly reasonable justification for her decision and Bond says she lost her nerve. Yes - because the heads of intelligence agencies are commonly very nervous people. The whole thing has nasty undertones of oh women are so emotional. And at the end of the movie, after M's death, she is replaced by a man. This would be no problem if it wasn't for all the weird gender roles stuff the movie had spent so much time implying. As it is, it reeks of the idea that women can't control their emotions and so can't be trusted with Important Decisions.

In summary: a beautiful movie as long you don't listen to anything anyone says.

Calvintaries 01 - Intro

My resolution for the summer holidays was to read all of Calvin's commentaries. I picked up the series second-hand for a remarkably fortunate price this year, so I might as well actually use them rather than let them sit prettily on my shelf. Well, they're actually sitting messily on my floor.

I am planning to read them in the order Calvin wrote them. I am going by the dating of his dedications; if I get them a little out of order I won't be that worried. I will try to maintain a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule but I don't think that will last long.

First up is Romans, coming atcha live from the year 1539.

Dubai International Airport

The first sign of being in a foreign airport is the helpful signage.
The blast of Western ads brands cares is solid, so solid it wears at the base.
It's all familiar, no alienation, how are you meant to feel at home?
No shopping centre or terminal back home gives you any help:
this is your manor, your patch, of course you know your way around.
A native will never get lost, so signage is not for the natives.
Nor for the lost.
If you are well lost no sign, not even lightning and fire, will help you.
Signage nullifies the possibility of getting lost and so, with no adventures
(mis or otherwise)
you never burrow into the landscape like a native.

This is all perfect for airports.

There is sure a limit to how much you can learn about a city from its airport
But, as the layovers hits that middle sweet spot not long enough to go
see something but just too long to be passed by several pots of tea
and conversation,
I shall similarly hit the sweet limit of my knowledge.

The staff all were in a hurry, the world about to fly apart if they
are not doing the best automaton impression they could be
No passengers hurry.
Some of them move like maniacs, sure
But that's just the downshift.
Stand on a travelator and walk off the end, feel the earth sap your momentum:
the downshift.
Going from screaming three hundred kays or more through the air –
sitting still –
to moving nowhere, fixed in transition, despite all the locomotion in the world.

I'm locomoting, putting each foot down with precision
As if the wrong distribution of weight may start a riot, make me the cautionary story.
Not tired but plenty wired, on lack of sleep and lack of coffee, which I self-denied to – note! get some sleep on the plane.
No one sleeps on a flying death tube, unless they are foolish or pilots or not me.
Wired, pock-eyed, pockmarked with pores and pimples stretched with hundreds of oil molecules cratering into my face, digging for whatever,
I roam the terminal like a caged tiger (if my moustache were more impressive)
See the people sprawled on chairs and floors, casualties of eighteen or sixteen hour flights from some place they didn't want to be to another place they didn't want to be
Trying to suck in the emotional oxygen to get through another flight, veterans now, one trip and they're veterans of this war on geography.
The defibs have signs saying they don't work, don't bother, do you want to wake up back in an airport?

Did catch some of Dubai during the descent.
Thirty-three Celcius at four o'dark! I'm convinced it's the streetlights.
An ocean of orange, careful to illumine all of the no cars.
Four a.m., okay, but Dubai – known for its hotels and everyone going to bed at nine with a glass of milk?
Pacing cross-legged sitting down, staring at a grey cityline in a grey morning.
Is Dubai even real? Are the houses you see from the flight path fictional, a city invented by rich bastards to golf or fuck or, unlikely, make love without marriage intruding?

Of course Dubai's real, of course it is. Dubai Dubai Dubai we've all been there man.
The ceiling is the same colour as a cloudy – or smoggy, I'm from Brisbane what do I know from smog – sky outside. In Dubai. 
I can't take it any more.
This terminal is making me free, master of my own destiny, I can't stand it.
I can see the fences and razor wire but I need them closer.
Need some boundaries to ricochet around to keep me moving.
I'm like a shark – only one piece of me worth selling.

Thank god for the bars along the terminal walls or we would never get out.

A Candle Is Not A Conflagration

Should Christians oppose the legalisation of same sex marriage?

The answer to this question is inextricably linked to another, equally complicated question: what should be the relationship between church and public life? My own answer is that the church should actively inject Christian values into public life, but should not project Christian expectations. Values such as compassion, mercy, justice, truth and integrity can do nothing to harm society; they are invariably positive for society, and for the gospel. Injecting these values into society through involvement in public life - specifically in the political process - is one means by which the church can be a light to the world. These are our values, both because they are good and because Jesus commanded them, and we should not hide them. We should inject them into all that we can: not hiding the lamp that is Jesus' church, but putting it on a lamp-stand. 

Truth is one of our values, and we must always preach the truth about the gospel and God's commands. It is clear from Paul's writings that homosexual lust and-or romance is inappropriate for a Christian. We must not hide or soften that. 

But we must be wary of projecting Christian expectations alongside our values. By this I mean the expectations we have of fellow Christians. Homosexual romance is outside God's plan for humanity, and so it is a form of disobedience, of the rebellion which is endemic in all humans. The church should expect Christians to turn away from their sins. But we should not expect or require society to do the same before they have put their faith in Jesus. It is important to consider what spiritual effect actually results from opposing same sex marriage in the political process.

It is more godly to abstain from homosexual romance. But the question of godliness means nothing for a life if it does not follow on from faith in Jesus. It is particularly hollow when godly behaviour, or avoidance of ungodly behaviour, is required by law rather than caused by deliberate choice. Without Jesus, an individual has neither the motivation nor the ability to live for God rather than in rebellion against God. Requiring that they act as if they were living for God will have no effect on their inward attitude, and likely negligible effect on their behaviour. The church should be a light to the world, but it should not set the world on fire to provide better illumination.

I should also raise the point that if the church wishes to legislate against ungodly behaviour, opposing same sex marriage is only the beginning of its pushing for legislation. The majority of heterosexual romance will also have to be banned, as well as most divorces and almost every aspect of the Australian economy. Perhaps this does not seem unappealing. But I find it relevant that Paul instructs the Corinthian church to resist the social norms of ungodly behaviour and speak against them, but not to stamp out those norms. Sin is a part of living in this world. Earthly laws are for maintaining order, not for building up each individual's faith and love for God. And I would argue that projecting Christian expectations into legislation is in fact a subtle form of rebellion against appointed rulers and authorities: rather than trying to build the kingdom of God within petty mortal kingdoms and democracies, the church sometimes tries to create the kingdom of God top-down through mortal legislation. This will never work.

The principal task of the church is to spread the gospel. A significant part of this is, in gentleness and love, making people aware of sin; of their rebellion against God. Ideally they then put their faith in Jesus and live for him, which necessarily involves some changes in their lives. But when the church tries to skip to the end, to push non-Christians towards Christian living (in this case by opposing same sex marriage) it is confusing at best and appears bigoted at worst. 

I do not think the church is bigoted. Most Christians who oppose same sex marriage do so because homosexual romance is a form of rebellion against God. But it is impossible for people who do not trust in Jesus to understand that motive, or to differentiate it from hatred and prejudice. This is particularly the case for LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual) couples and individuals, who continue to experience significant discrimination in Australia. Non-Christian LGBT individuals do not understand where the church is coming from and so they quite reasonably associate the church with the general stream of hatred. So the church, as it tries to project Christian expectations into society, ends up associated with hate rather than love. 

This is a real issue for spreading the gospel. It presents the worst possible view of Jesus' church to not only the LGBT community, but to all of society - particularly youth. Young Australians react badly to what they see as blatantly unfair laws. No defence can be made for the church's position without first delivering the gospel, which can never be done effectively in a political context. I believe the church should not oppose same sex marriage. It should continue to make it clear that it does not believe homosexual romance is appropriate. But it must do this in the context of the gospel, not in the context of divisive politics. This will make the difference between the church and society clear, and allow a non-Christian hearing the gospel to subsequently consider same sex marriage in light of the gospel. 

The church can and should help care for society through involvement in public life. But it cannot reduce or prevent sin through such involvement; dealing with sin is God's domain. And the church must do nothing to inhibit the proclamation of Jesus' glorious work on the cross to wipe away human sin.

Best of the Best: Digital Mumbles

Digital Mumbles got me excited about music. Until recently music was only background noise to my attempts to build a cultural identity for myself, or white noise used to blot out distractions when I was writing an assignment. Sometimes I used it as a means of expression - playing sad music when I was sad, all the classic music tropes - but I didn't get anything out of the music. The flow of emotion and intellect was outwards rather than inwards, and quite shallow.

Mumbles has a fierce love of music, but what inspired me was her taste for music: refined but not pompous, earnest but considered, willing to make value distinctions without losing enthusiasm for the subject. Reading her blog ensured that I was listening to inspiring music - not always to my taste, but always presented with context and guidance that illuminated what made me like or dislike a track.

Good places to start are her recent hour-long radio special or her Alignment Week, in which she matched tracks with the Dungeons and Dragons alignments.