Slippery Slopes

I've been up all night, it's time to ramble. There was some disconcerting news over the wire Monday, regarding the increasing practice of psychiatrists to eschew psychotherapy (aka "analysis") for "medication management." Per the article, 1/3 of office visits that used to involve social therapies and analysis, now involve prescription writing and a revolving door. In other words, roughly 1/3 of the psychiatrists in the U.S. said "Psy...psy...F*** this, I'll be a stripper," by 2005. Hilariously (and greasily) enough, this is exactly the backdrop for which marijuana could end up being legalized for medical purposes: insurers will be able to grease the wheels for Big Pharma, by offering incentives to psychiatrists who prescribe pot (or derivative pills); but the practice (and cultivation/distribution) has to be legal. Terminal patients, being short-timers, die off too quickly to form an adequate market share, and are considered too expensive in the first place. Head cases and pseudo-cases, on the other hand, already exist in market-making numbers. This is not to say that people will be allowed to grow their own pot, as the growing and/or manufacturing rights would likely be auctioned off to the highest bidder(s). Actually, I can't see this kind of legalization happening any other way, as governments at all levels profit far too much to relenquish their power. This does, hoever, make for a rather unorthodox path to reap benefits from that plant, while ensuring the principal players don't risk their safety in the bargain. Call it a Pickens Plan for Pot.

posted at: 08:02 | permanent link to this entry

Today's topic for discussion is:

A flickr photoset: "Urban Exploration" makes decay look downright colorful.

posted at: 01:52 | permanent link to this entry

Almost Great: Amorphous+

There are, according to the late, great George Carlin, seven words that can't be spoken on (broadcast) television. This game will make you say them in bunches, and may award you a ribbon for certain combinations. Amorphous+ is yet another Flash-based game that would be much better served on a real gaming platform. The object: splat the hand-drawn blobs with the hand-drawn sword lifted from FF-VII. Oh, and stay alive as long as you can, until some combination of biting, sticking, acid-bursting, lunging, bumping, enveloping, skewering, and/or slicing species of said blobs decide your game is over. To keep you entertained along the way, a system of named checkpoints (awards) are set up for meeting certain scenarios, from your very first blob-splat ("Participation"), to splatting each type of blob (e.g., "Custard" for yellows), to being killed from something spawned off-screen("Unfortunate"), to the standard metrics such as Number of Kills and Time Survived. Here are some criticisms I have of the game, so far: Hit detection: Sometimes, hits don't register until after the swing. This smells like cleanup-code, and it actually causes problems, particularly when... Lunging blobs (blue and furry) can lunge through a swing. Due to the hit-detection problems mentioned above, the blue 'biter' blobs can get the swinging player, and end your game anyway. Bump delay is too long. We get it; our character has been bumped, and the whole point is to allow other blobs time to catch the player. The delay is too long by 1/3. Swing delay is too long. Not as much as bump delay, but still enough to get you killed early. The bump effect is triggered omnidirectionally. This looks silly; player should be able to bump the blobs from behind, instead of being bumped. Stupidly overpowered blobs: Gray, Fire, Horror, Void Eater, Razor Queen, Borg Thor. What the hell, Reed. Blind reward tree: This is where the game takes the biggest hit. Supposedly, there are power-ups; you can enable them by winning certain quantities of awards (those little ribbons). However, you can't see the power-ups without looking for a strategy guide; so the general game progression is: splat blobs - get ribbons - buy powerups - scrap savefile and start over when you realize your powerups are useless against a blob insurgency.

posted at: 00:56 | permanent link to this entry