I just returned from casting my vote at the local elementary school. Remarkably, the line was already quite long at 7:50 when I arrived, though not nearly as gargantuan as it was each of the three times I tried to vote early on campus. It’s heartening to see the enthusiasm for the election this year, even in the midst of (because of?) the vitriol that’s taken root in political discussion. Many of my evangelical Christian friends clearly think that anyone who would consider voting for Kerry is not only mentally unbalanced, but also in danger of the fires of hell. Quite a number of my other friends believe Bush to be ignorant and/or malign in various degrees, and certainly not competent to hold the most powerful elected office in the free world.

All questions of past military service aside, I decided for the first time in my life to vote for a Democratic presidential candidate. (And, incidentally, for the first time in this weblog to delve into politics.) I wasn’t wildly enthusiastic about Kerry, but have grown increasingly unhappy with, and eventually rather alarmed about, Bush over the past four years. The pillars of my discontent are these:

• Foreign Policy: I was initially very pleased at Bush’s restraint after 9/11. I fully expected the government to go in guns blazing days after the attacks, as a knee-jerk reaction to an incredibly hard blow. In the heat of the moment, I couldn’t really have faulted him, nor could much of the rest of the world. But he and his cabinet exercised restraint, did their homework, and eventually went into Afghanistan to root out the terrorist influences there. Good job, W — thank you for your considered leadership during that hard time.

  However, things started to break down when Iraq came into the picture. The first time I heard Bush speaking of Iraq, there was already a strong “we’re going to invade” subtext. He offered various reasons for this, none of which seemed sufficient to justify a preemptive invasion of another country. The WMD issue was plagued by bad intelligence. One can’t, of course, lay the blame for bad intelligence entirely at the feet of the president, but I would argue that in undertaking such a significant step, one should demand much more comprehensive information than one normally relies on.

  Many people assumed that we were invading Iraq because it was tied to 9/11 in some way. I don’t believe that Bush made that claim, and have never seen it fleshed out beyond the idea that the country is terrorist-friendly.

  The last justification is the humanitarian one: aren’t the people of Iraq better off without a despotic dictator than with one? It’s a good question, though not one I remember Bush invoking very much before the war. It is, however, one I can’t answer as well as I’d like. Certainly the mass graves are an indication that life under Saddam was often horrible beyond belief. However, one can’t discount the people who have died as a result of the war either. We most often hear about the 1,000+ Americans, but estimates of Iraqi civilian deaths as a result of the war range from 15,000 to a staggering 100,000. (I think the latter figure is wildly inflated, but of course have no way of knowing directly.)

  One can recite endless anecdotes of people who are much better off than before the war started, and of those whose lives have been ruined (even without Michael Moore’s facile editing). The daily accounts of bombings, hostage-taking, and various other atrocities, however, seem to indicate that the people of that country have yet to be freed of the threat of violence. Once the rule of law is established there, the humanitarian case will be easier to make — in the meantime, it’s difficult to say conclusively that Iraqis are better off than they were. Certainly, if humanitarian motives are our prime movers, there are other places our army could go and help more people with less resistance.

  A final note on foreign policy: one of the reasons America is viewed with disfavor in many parts of the world in our perceived national arrogance. Make no mistake — it is possible to be strong, and yet avoid bluster. Roosevelt is famously quoted as saying “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” Bush’s invitation to terrorists who feel they can attack us here — “Bring ‘em on!” — made me cringe, for it doesn’t speak of a nation seeking safety and peace for its people, but of a blustering bully of a nation itching for a fight.

• Fiscal Policy: In the last four years, we’ve moved from a national budget surplus to a massive deficit. Obviously, dealing with the aftermath of 9/11 has put strains on our budget that wouldn’t have been there otherwise; one can’t place the blame for increased spending entirely on the President. However, the tax cuts were something he drove through of his own initiative. When one is spending more, but taking in less, a deficit is bound to ensue.

  I’m generally in favor of keeping us much of our money as possible in the hands of the people who earn it, and therefore love tax cuts in principle. However, I’m also an adult, and recognize that if we as a nation determine that something is worth spending money on, we have to pony up the cash. When Bush leads us to war, and at the same time reduces the government’s income and charges the war on the national VISA, it strikes me as tremendously irresponsible, an attempt to both have his cake and eat it. He is not, of course, the only President to do this, but I expect more care with money from the party that derides its opposition as “tax and spend.” It’s far better for the nation’s health to tax and spend than to not tax, and spend anyway!

Enough of that for the moment. As I mentioned, I’m not wild about Kerry, and I have little doubt that, in Texas’ electoral college, my vote will make no difference. I hope that the next four years will bring us a diplomatic, thoughtful, responsible presidency, regardless of who occupies that seat.

And if you’re an American, get out there and vote!

Our inimitable Emily, a long time Homestar Runner fan, decided to make a birdhouse for her aunt for Christmas. At the risk of ruining the surprise, I thought the fruits of her labor wonderful enough to post here.

I’m so proud! (Sniff.)

While setting up the new iMac, I’ve been able to establish dynamically-assigned network addresses on an 802.11 wireless network, integrate its networking with both the Macs and Windows machines at our home, install specialized drivers to integrate with a third-party outboard USB audio interface, and use a third-party USB/Serial adapter to provide backward-compatibility with my old GPS unit.

One question remained, however, which Apple has now thoughtfully answered for me. Thanks, Apple!

Last weekend Dad McMains spent a couple of days with us while Lana was off at a church retreat. He and I and the kids spent five or six hours playing Lazer Tag, running all around the yard, through (and on) the house, waging epic, sweaty battle. The new gear is fully as much fun as I’d hoped, and the time with Dad was great — hopefully we’ll be able to do that a bit more often, now that both of our schedules are a bit less demanding than they had been.

I’ve nearly wrapped up my first DVD project with Final Cut Express and the new iMac, and am generally pretty happy with the way things are coming out. I’ve got a little more tweaking to do, but it was exciting to be able to pop a near-finished product into the DVD player last night and see it on the big screen. (The project is a pseudo-documentary of the recent trip to Santa Fe. It came out, once edited, to about 13.5 minutes — a little longer than last year’s Chicago video, which surprised me, as I didn’t think I had as much material to work with this time around.)

I stumbled across another article about Christians Making Videogames this morning. (See What Would Jesus Play? for some earlier thoughts on the subject.) It’s especially interesting to me that most of us Christians who make videogames, or indeed most forms of art, insist on very explicit communication of an unambiguous message. One game mentioned explores the Egyptian plagues, another encourages you to bring the Bible to a cultural group which has lost access to it; in another the player battles demons and searches for a missing pastor.

Contrast this with the way Jesus taught: in parables, often opaque even to his disciples. It seems, however, that we’re uncomfortable with ambiguity, with letting those hear who have ears to do so. Certainly some of this is borne of a sincere desire to have people understand the good news of the Gospel. However, I suspect that if Jesus had a marketing department, they wouldn’t have let him get away with parables. Videogames tend to entertain less when one tries to saddle them with a message; so also is the gospel made weaker when it’s recast as a diversion, especially one that tries to be a commercial success. And Jesus, whom we purport to serve, had a thing or two to say about serving two masters.

My email’s been down since Wednesday due to a minor configuration error. If you sent me anything interesting between then and Friday at about 8:00pm, it would be great if you could resend it. Sorry for the inconvenience!

There’s rather too much going on around here for a proper post; here are a few highlights:

• Went with Daniel down to see a Chris Taylor show a couple weekends back. Chris is an old friend from high school who writes some dynamite stuff, is a great performer, and has enjoyed some measure of success with his music (including a Dove Award nomination for Best Rock Album for his Worthless Pursuit of Things on the Earth album, which is available in its entirety in MP3 format at the linked page). It was great to see Chris again, and always a treat to enjoy his music in person.
• I took all the kids for a day at the Texas Renaissance Festival last weekend. Though it rained on us the whole way there and for an hour after our arrival, we had a great time tromping around, watching the shows, buying authentic renaissance pretzels, and befriending the craftsmen. While parts of the festival were a bit cheesy, fireworks set to live bagpipe music cover a multitude of sins in my book.
• It’s Maggie’s fourth birthday this weekend. She shares her birthday weekend with Lana and my Uncle Bill. Happy birthday to all of you!
• We had a good show down at Cheatham Street Warehouse last weekend, and are playing for a Hays Country Sheriff “Brown Santa” benefit this weekend. Should be fun.
• I got ahold of some of the new Lazer Tag gear, and will likely be putting it through its paces with the help of the young ones this weekend.

Just enjoyed a super lunch with Jason, who was gracious to drive down from Pflugerville for a tour of some of the niftier stuff around campus, a trip to El Charro (one of my favorite local taquerias), and a visit to the house to say hello to Kathy and Maggie. I met Jason for the first time online many years ago, back when I was messing about with home automation. We bumped into each other on the XTension mailing lists, and he became a regular reader of Brain Sausage, a now-defunct collaborative weblog I edited with Chris Morris and Robert Leahey. (The system running Brain Sausage was my Perl-learning exercise.) Later, we discovered we had a friend in common in the person of Barry, and finally got to meet in Real Life™ when he brought us over to Jason’s house one night.

Jason’s a fascinating guy, who writes, produces, and performs music for a living, is a space nut (hooray SpaceShipOne!), leads wilderness camping and rafting excursions, and is a super-nice guy to boot. I highly recommend a lunch with him if you ever have the chance.

Update: Jason just posted a long, wonderful piece on his love for aviation and excitement for SpaceShipOne’s accomplishments.

I have a long history with Laser Tag games. It all started in the late ’80s, when World of Sports opened a Photon arena on their premesis. The gear was bulky, the helmets made it impossible to see to the sides and guaranteed you’d be bouncing off walls and teammates pretty much continuously, but the arena was great — two levels, with connecting ramps, lots of obstacles and gaps to shoot through, fog, beacons, sirens, strobe lights, and even an observation deck with guns where noncombatants could watch and take pot shots at the players. We loved the place, and used to make regular pilgrimages out there on Sunday nights after church with a bunch of youth group kids. (I even remember us all sticking our guns in together and having a pre-game prayer. What a bunch of youth group nerds we were!)

While I was in college, Worlds of Wonder released the original Lazer Tag gear. More fortunately for us than them, they went out of business just as we were discovering their products, so we were able to pick up a ton of kit on the cheap. I eventually got to be a dead-eye with my trusty Starlyte, though Bob Albright was nigh-unstoppable with his Starlyte Pro. We invested in the extremely silly looking target hats as well, as the chest sensors were too easily blocked, and even had a couple of StarBase units for use in team games. Many was the night we’d skulk around campus, unleashing Lazer-flavored death on each other and surprising the heck out of the security guards.

I left my gear with a friend when I returned to Texas, and though I’ve dabbled with paintball and airsoft intermittently since then, nothing has grabbed my interest in the same way — until now.

Shoot the Moon Productions, which were the big throbbing brains behind the original Lazer Tag gear, have signed on with Hasbro to deliver the oh-so-wonderful Lazer Tag: Team Ops. They’re ridiculous-looking ugly-as-sin guns, presumably so as to prevent users from getting shot by zealous law enforcement offers, but — oh, the things they do! While the old-school gear was pretty much limited to shooting (in the gun’s case) and getting shot (in the sensor’s case), the Team Ops weaponry adds a bunch of ideas from arena-style tag games and first person shooters, plus some new tech (like LCD displays and omnidirectional transmitters), to deliver a whole pile of new gameplay.

Cool stuff: Each gun has a Heads-Up-Display that shows you when you’ve got a lock, when you hit someone, or when you’ve been hit. This is a little semitransparent doohicky that sits in front of your eyes, so you get these indications superimposed on your field of vision. The new omnidirectional transmitter allows you to be alerted when an enemy is nearby, gives you IFF indicators so you know if the person you’re pointing your gun at is on your team or not, and even allows you to designate “zones” which can affect scoring. There are several different game types, all of which support up to 24 players on up to 3 teams. When a game concludes, all the guns talk to each other as part of a “debriefing”, and you can see how many times you shot your little sister and how many times she shot you. And there’s a (currently unused) port for a rumble pack, so presumably you’ll eventually be able to add a gadget to let you feel it when you get hit.

Best of all, the gear’s not too pricy — $50 for a two gun set. I hope to get a couple to try out, and if they’re as good as they sound, convince some friends to invest too. Here’s a review, another review, and the manual.

Liam’s kindergarten class had an open house early this week. I was, unfortunately, unable to attend, as it was my night to take Emily out solo for Chinese food and a dip in the river. Since the dinner was a buffet, we were in serious danger of sinking right to the bottom of the river due to the leaden weight of dim sum and egg rolls in our bellies, but eventually triumphed over General Tso’s attempts to drown us.

I found out later that evening that Liam was quite disappointed I didn’t come to his open house. By way of consolation, I told him that I’d walk to school with him in the morning and take the tour before class began. That seemed to mollify him, and he drifted off to sleep happy.

He awakened in the morning and wolfed a bowl of barely-fit-for-human-consumption Shrek 2 cereal while I called and told my relieved-sounding workout partner that I wouldn’t be able to make it to the gym that morning. Liam and I then walked down to his classroom, and he proudly showed off his desk, his poetry journal, and the other highlights of his first brush with academia.

While I was standing around looking faintly out-of-place among all the teachers and little people, one of his classmates — a tiny blonde girl with a beatific smile — evidently decided that I was in need of bucking up. Without a word, she walked up to me, beaming eyes fixed on my face, and wrapped her arms around my knees. I was so startled that this child who had no idea who I was would welcome me so enthusiastically that I could only manage a “Thank you, sweetie” and a pat on the back before she had run off to attend to other angelic errands.

I’m reminded that Kindergarten means “children’s garden.” It looks like they’re growing a good crop of kids in this one.

I’ve been working on my first Final Cut project on the new iMac since it came in on Monday, teaching myself how to use the new software along the way. I was hoping Final Cut would be as easy to pick up as iMovie, but was sadly disappointed in that regard: this is an application for which one really needs to read at least parts of the manual.

I’d estimate that the new software is probably 5x as difficult as iMovie, but 15x as powerful and flexible. Some things that it does that iMovie can’t include on-the-fly color correction, all kinds of interesting compositing (including chroma-keying), capturing a precise segment of tape using DV device control, and handling lots of audio and video streams at once. Some things it does better include transitions, organizing source media, slow motion (it generates extra frames to smooth things out), custom titles, and audio editing.

There are a few areas where it’s come up short: the manual doesn’t explain how to modify motion paths. While iMovie includes several animated title plugins, I haven’t been able to figure out how to do similar animations in Final Cut yet. It doesn’t play back MP3s well (though a quick conversion to WAV works around that issue), nor does it integrate with iPhoto nearly as smoothly as does iMovie.

Overall, however, it’s nice to have the added power that the program provides, and I’m enjoying the learning process.