My Only Hugo Disappointment

As most of you know, at last Saturday's Hugo Awards ceremony, the voters, of which there were a record number, chose not to offer awards in six categories rather than to give the award to nominees who got on the ballot because of the Sad/Rabid Puppy slating campaign. In the categories in which awards were given, in nearly all cases the Puppy nominees in the category finished below 'No Award.' The only category where a Puppy nominee prevailed was in Best Dramatic Presentation, in which one of their choices was Guardians of the Galaxy. There's not a lot of credit they can take for that one.

- John Scalzi, "Being a Jerk About the Hugos: Not as Effective a Strategy as You Might Think"

So, in the wake of the Sad/Rabid Puppy nonsense, I was moved to purchase a WorldCon membership and vote in the 2015 Hugo Awards. Some of my votes did well, particularly No Award, though clearly I wasn't alone in those votes. Other votes I didn't do so well in, but still thought the eventual winner was a good selection. There was really only one category where the Hugo voters disappointed me: the Best Dramatic Presentation category.

Technically, the Best Dramatic Presentation category is divided into two different awards: long form (a.k.a.: movies) and short form (a.k.a.: TV shows). The Puppies weren't quite as effective in getting their nominations on the ballot in these categories as they were in others -- only four works were nominated by the Sad Puppies for BDP:Short Form, of which three were nominated, and likewise only four works were nominated by the Sad Puppies for BDP: Long Form, of which two were nominated, though a third nominee (the Game of Thrones episode 'The Mountain and the Viper') came from the Rabid Puppy slate.

For the BDP: Short Form award, which has been won by the BBC TV series Doctor Who so many times that some fans have simply taken to referring to the category as the "Doctor Who Award", the majority of voters seemed to have decided to vote for the show that would most piss off the Puppy voters if it won -- thus, the Orphan Black episode "By Means Which Have Never Yet Been Tried" ended up winning. (The Hugo Awards uses a version of Instant Runoff Voting for its vote tallying, and by the results of the voting, it was clear that Orphan Black had a comfortable lead throughout the voting process.)

I myself voted for the pilot for the Flash TV series, even though it appeared on a Puppy slate. I felt my vote was justified for three reasons:

1. Just because science fiction is becoming and should become more inclusive and varied in the stories it tells doesn't mean there isn't still room for the traditional 'white guy hero' stories as well.
2. If you're going to tell a 'white guy hero' story in the DC Universe, pretty much only Superman is a better option than Barry Allen as the Flash (and that story, as 'Smallville', has already been told).
3. There's actually quite a bit of actual science in the science fiction of the Flash pilot, from the function of the particle accelerator to the specialties of most of the characters in the show, including Allen himself, who is a police forensic scientist.

I don't watch Orphan Black, but based on things I've heard about it from friends, I don't begrudge it the win; it certainly seems deserving.

Less deserving, in my opinion, was the BDP:Long Form win by Guardians of the Galaxy. Interestingly enough, a lot of my criticisms of GotG are available in entertaining YouTube video form thanks to Screen Junkies: Honest Trailers - Guardians of the Galaxy

To start, it's really difficult for me to come up with any actual science in the science fiction being celebrated here. Most of the aliens are human-looking people with different colored skin, but the skin colors don't inform anything about where the aliens are from or what their beliefs or personalities are -- this makes GotG's use of color less science-fictiony than Star Trek's, whose green Orion slave girls were at least a reference to the culture on Orion (even if it turned out to be a false signal) which informed a number of episodes in different series. Here, the color of the aliens isn't used for much other than a cue for the audience to root for the white-looking residents of Xandar as they get attacked by the motley blue and green aliens led by the main and lesser villains of the piece, respectively. The closest GotG ever gets to actual science is a reference, in passing, to the cybernetic surgery that created Rocket, but nothing is done with that, either, except to justify Rocket's alcoholism and psychopathy. GotG is basically science fiction in the same sense that Star Wars is science fiction -- which is to say, it's not really. Both films are more accurately 'space opera'; a genre set in a futuristic setting, but where neither the setting nor the technology and science therein really impacts the plots, which are all epic character arcs, romances, and political dramas.

Next, consider that much better examples of science fiction were on the ballot, not all of which was Puppy-approved. Sure, both Interstellar and The LEGO Movie were Puppy-nominated, but at least the former was much more rooted in science-fiction. More significantly, Edge of Tomorrow, the Tom Cruise time-travel movie, managed to be nominated despite not appearing on either Puppy list. I actually voted for Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which wasn't quite as 'hard' as Interstellar on the Mohs scale of SF, but was at least a more gripping fantasy than GotG.

But the big problem with GotG as Hugo-winner came when I discovered what movie got left off the Hugo nominations list because of the three films from the Puppy slate that got on it: Big Hero 6.

The entire plot of Big Hero 6 revolves around the question of who decides how to make the best use of technology, and for what ends. The 'superpowers' exhibited in the film all make use of science presented in the film, and while not all the science is strictly 'real-world', it still follows the rules set up in the film itself -- for example, the limitations of Hiro Hamada's big invention become a significant plot point in the defeat of the true 'villain' of the piece. And, of course, it was a really good story, well-told. Had Big Hero 6 been in the nominations list, I'd have voted for it myself, and felt it was the most deserving potential winner, but because a bunch of butt-hurt white dudes felt like flooding the Hugo nominations market with their own wishlist, the movie I thought would have been the most deserving 2015 Hugo winner didn't even get nominated.

That, to me, was the biggest and really only disappointment I had from taking part in the 2015 Hugo Award voting. It may well be something I decide to do more regularly in the future, if only to continue to represent a 'new mainstream' in SF where diversity in stories and subjects is celebrated, not lamented.

Love Won, Because It Was Time

The decision is reminiscent of the "penumbras, formed by emanations" reasoning employed by Justice William Douglas in Griswold v. Connecticut, which eventually made the constitutionally unprincipled ruling in Roe v. Wade possible.

- Ken Connelly, opinion piece published on cnn.com

Since the Supreme Court's ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges was announced on Friday, June 26, a certain portion of the conservative commentariat has gone earnestly ape-shit over it. Connelly's position should be obvious given his drive-by reference to Roe v. Wade, another conservative jurisprudence shibboleth, and I doubt anyone would be surprised that he contributed friend-of-the-court briefs in both Obergefell and United States v. Windsor, the ruling that served as precedent and struck down the definition of marriage in the federal Defense of Marriage Act as unconstitutional, both on the side seeking to maintain the status quo.

Those points in themselves, though, are not sufficient to dismiss Connelly's point, despite the tone of his argument approaching what a much-younger friend described as 'butt-hurt'. The argument that Connelly makes for "Why [the] Supreme Court got it wrong" (the title of his essay), basically boils down to this passage:

[T]he court in Obergefell v. Hodges ignored history, the text and meaning of the Constitution, and prior Supreme Court jurisprudence to justify its holding that the 14th Amendment mandates the recognition of same-sex marriage.

The problem with Connelly's argument, and the reason it can ultimately be dismissed, is that he doesn't actually back up his thesis with credible evidence, and the little he does provide is easily disproved by examining the decision itself.

For instance, with respect to history, Connelly notes that when the Court struck down Texas's sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas, it cited that "national laws and traditions" (to use Connelly's words) were evidence of "an emerging awareness" (to use the Court's words in Lawrence) that private decisions on sexuality were part of the 14th Amendment's protections. Likewise, Connelly points out that in Roper v. Simmons, a decision that found that assigning the death penalty for juvenile offenders was unconstitutional, the Court cited both a "national consensus" and the "overwhelming weight of international opinion" to help justify its decision.

Connelly complains that such consensus is not cited here because it does not exist -- he goes on to claim that only 21 of the 193 members of the United Nations have legalized some form of marriage for same-gender partners, and that only one international court has judicially imposed the practice as being in concert with that nation's own constitution. The problem with this is that Connelly is engaging in a bit of selective framing: of the vast majority of U.N. members that have not yet legalized marriage for same-gender partners, those nations are overwhelmingly 'third-world' nations; of the U.S.'s peer nations, the majority have recognized such a right and have enumerated it. Canada did so ten years ago, as an example, and Ireland recently did so in one of the most popular plebiscites in its history. Even Spain and France, cited by Connelly as nations who've had judicial decisions upholding opposite-gender marriage, have legalized marriage for same-gender couples through legislation: France did so in 2013 while Spain did so in 2005.

Connelly does a similar re-framing tap-dance when he notes that "[o]nly 11 states, acting either through their people directly or through their elected legislators, have chosen to redefine marriage," by pointing out that the many other states where marriage is allowed to same-gender couples were "thwarted -- by state or federal courts -- in their attempt to retain marriage as it has always and everywhere been defined." In every case, the 26 states where courts made a judicial ruling allowing marriage for same-gender couples did so based on the same reasoning used by the Supreme Court -- the state constitutions, containing equal protection clauses equivalent to that of the 14th Amendment, provided for equal treatment of same-gender and opposite-gender couples with respect to marriage. One could just as easily make the rhetorical point that "only 13 states continue to ignore that their state constitutions will not tolerate the different treatment of same-gender and opposite-gender couples with respect to marriage" and be just as grounded in fact. The reality is that, if there is momentum, it is in a direction favorable to marriage for same-sex couples: prior to 2012, bans on marriage for same-gender couples had never been defeated in state-wide elections, until the voters of Minnesota defeated such an amendment in November of that year. Minnesota eventually passed a law explicitly allowing marriage for same-gender couples, but it was not the first state to do that: Delaware and Rhode Island had done so by legislative action earlier in the year, while Maine, Maryland, and Washington state incorporated explicit approval in their state constitutions as part of popular plebiscites the prior November.

The idea that allowing marriage for same-gender couples is some kind of hasty, un-analyzed option was directly addressed in the majority opinion in Obergefell, specifically in Part IV of the opinion. The opinion basically demolishes the argument from both sides: on one, the opinion notes that:

[T]here has been far more deliberation than this argument [in favor of waiting for legislative action and greater public approval] acknowledges. There have been referenda, legislative debates, and grassroots campaigns, as well as countless studies, papers, books, and other popular and scholarly writings. There has been extensive litigation in state and federal courts. See Appendix A, infra. Judicial opinions addressing the issue have been informed by the contentions of parties and counsel, which, in turn, reflect the more general, societal discussion of same-sex marriage and its meaning that has occurred over the past decades. As more than 100 amici make clear in their filings, many of the central institutions in American life -- state and local governments, the military, large and small businesses, labor unions, religious organizations, law enforcement, civic groups, professional organizations, and universities -- have devoted substantial attention to the question. This has led to an enhanced understanding of the issue -- an understanding reflected in the arguments now presented for resolution as a matter of constitutional law.

As an example, Appendix A, referenced in the quote above, is more than five full pages of references to court decisions and legislation related to the discussion of marriage rights for same-gender couples, and while many of those references are recent, they also include citations as far back as Baker v. Nelson from 1971. So, no, the discussion regarding marriage for same-gender couples is not in its infancy in any way -- it's been going on for decades and is reaching its maturity as this Court is making its deliberations. But even so:

The dynamic of our constitutional system is that individuals need not await legislative action before asserting a fundamental right. The Nation's courts are open to injured individuals who come to them to vindicate their own direct, personal stake in our basic charter. An individual can invoke a right to constitutional protection when he or she is harmed, even if the broader public disagrees and even if the legislature refuses to act. The idea of the Constitution "was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts." ... This is why "fundamental rights may not be submitted to a vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections." ... It is of no moment whether advocates of same-sex marriage now enjoy or lack momentum in the democratic process. The issue before the Court here is the legal question whether the Constitution protects the right of same-sex couples to marry.

I bolded the most significant point for emphasis; even though the opinion does demonstrate that the argument had advanced much farther than opponents want to admit, that very argument is irrelevant when the question is one of fundamental rights and relates to the Constitution. Game, set, and match.

We could move on to address Connelly's points regarding previous Court decisions and the Constitution itself, except that Connelly makes no such arguments in his essay: the closest he comes is to cite Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and claim that a Supreme Court decision isn't reflective of a government of "the people".

I'd provide the counterarguments for Connelly's assertion myself, but I don't have to -- Justice Anthony Kennedy has done remarkably well in the majority opinion, so you can read it there if you like.

Instead, I'll make a point that I feel is significant in the evolution of this discussion regarding marriage for same-gender couples, and it relates to my using that specific phrase instead of 'same-sex marriage' in my own essay. The people who were always highly motivated to see marriage between same-gender couples as wrong, I believe, was always a minority and a fairly small one at that. What they lacked in numbers was made up for by the advantage of rhetoric -- they were able to put their objections into a form that people who didn't feel strongly about the issue found persuasive. The phrase 'same-sex marriage' was part of that rhetoric -- it suggested that same-gender couples were looking to twist the classical definition of marriage by trying to sneak in a special right to it. While they had no evidence that 'same-sex marriage' would harm children and lead to the weakening of more traditional marriages, their rhetoric was persuasive to many when the only counter-argument was 'no, that's silly'.

But as time passed, and many of the argued dangers of 'same-sex marriage' were exposed as the pieces of frightening yet empty rhetoric that they were, so, too, did public tolerance of that rhetoric change. People began to realize that there was no 'same-sex' or 'opposite-sex' marriage, just as, for an earlier generation, there was no 'same-race' and 'mixed-race' marriage; there was just marriage, and that denying people the chance to pursue their happiness in marriage to someone they love wasn't really a thing they wanted to do. This was a huge win for the advocates of marriage equality; a time where raising awareness was exactly the needed tonic for the national disease of bad arguments. Today, the tired old arguments that keep getting trotted out by opponents of marriage equality (it'll lead to polygamy! to bestiality! to consanguinity!) are being more and more frequently ignored, not because people stopped agreeing with the argument, but because they finally became aware that they never agreed with the argument in the first place.

Marriage for anyone who feels strongly enough to take on the challenge is an idea whose time has finally come. Congratulations to all of us.

Much Ado About Spectrum Crunch

After decades of growing access to the Internet, faster speeds and more bandwidth, and all the new technologies that come with that -- a tech boom that has spanned many of our entire lives, we're about to run into a pretty sturdy ceiling on this thing.
- Extra Credits, "Spectrum Crunch" (June 14, 2012)

"Right now, we have a 15-to-20 year backlog of new technologies and architectures ... which can take us a long way into the future."
- David Tennenhouse, VP of Technology Policy at Microsoft, quoted in the MIT Technology Review (November 26, 2012)

Let's start out by saying that I'm a fan of the folks at Extra Credits. They generally do a good job of covering topics of interest to the gaming community, and sometimes come up with absolutely amazing episodes that expand the sum of human knowledge -- their take-down of the game "Call of Juarez: the Cartel" pointed out both how lazily designed the game was as well as highlighting that the game both trivializes and misleads about a major source of tragedy -- the drug war between Mexican cartels and the Mexican government.

With that said, the Extra Credits folks, particularly the guy who does the major share of the writing and comes up with many of the topics, James Portnow, doesn't always get his bat on the ball, so to speak, and has some blind spots that he, to his credit, seems to be trying to work on. One of his biggest blind spots is that James isn't a technologist, he's a game designer, so while the episode on spectrum crunch listed in the opening quote looked well-researched on first viewing, it's quickly clear that a lot of what is being cited is simply releases from other folks commenting on the issue, much of which is done without bothering to analyze whether the information is wholly accurate** or whether the reason the information is being released has some ulterior purpose.

** - Best example: the video notes that, according to the FCC, the 'average iPad' uses 122 times the spectrum of an old-style, pre-smart-phone era cellular phone. I'm not sure how the FCC is defining 'average', though, because a significant portion of iPads, perhaps even a majority, use exactly zero cellular bandwidth, because they don't have a cellular modem (it's hard to tell because Apple doesn't provide a breakdown of iPads sold by type -- they've only released total sales by quarter -- but since the models with the cell modem are more expensive, and since they also need to have their 'wireless plan' turned on for the cell modem to be usable, it's probably a more accurate statement to say that a majority of iPads, even a majority of iPads with cell modems in them, use very little if any cellular bandwidth in any given month). According to Cisco Systems, 'mobile connected tablets' (which includes both iPads and Android tablets) consumed just over 2 gigabytes of mobile data per month in 2014. (With over 100 million iPads sold since the start of 2013 through the middle of 2014, this means that the 'average' iPad is using about 20 kilobytes of cellular bandwidth, defined as mean usage. This is pretty clearly not what the FCC is talking about when they talk about the 'average' iPad.) This total is pretty big compared to total bandwidth used by smartphones (which averaged 819 megabytes of mobile data per month during the same time period), but it's just a bit less than that used by cell-equipped laptops (which consumed 2.6 gigabytes of data per month).

This is how you publish an episode about 'hey, there's this big problem coming that's going to have a major impact on gaming', and less than 6 months later find an article published by MIT that basically says 'yeah, it's something to keep an eye on, but nothing to really worry about'.

So what is 'spectrum crunch'? That's the name given to a potential crisis deriving from a basic scientific understanding: that information broadcast through the air can only be done through certain frequencies (mostly in the radio portion of the electomagnetic spectrum, as infrared and visible light tend to be blocked by most physical objects, and ultraviolet and higher frequencies tend to be dangerous and/or lethal), and the number of usable frequencies is finite, because frequencies can't be infinitely sub-divided.

So how did the Extra Credits folks end up falling for the hype? And how do I know it's mostly hype? Well, consider the following:

'Spectrum Crunch' will always manifest as a local, not a global, problem

The presentation of spectrum crunch as a problem always seems to presume that it's a problem that's going to affect everyone -- everyone in the US, everyone in the world, what-have-you. But radio transmission really only ever takes place over a limited region -- that's why you can have one radio station broadcasting on one frequency in Minneapolis, for example, and another broadcasting on the exact same frequency in Madison, because the reach of those broadcasters is such that the station in Minneapolis isn't going to have any significant impact on the signal from Madison and vice versa (the possible exception being the very small area on a direct line between the broadcast towers and exactly half-way between them).

What this means is that while New York City is already suffering to some degree from spectrum crunch (go read reviews of the various wireless companies as listed online by folks who live and work in Manhattan for an example), folks in, say, Bozeman, Montana aren't going to feel the crunch for quite some time, if ever. This is small comfort to folks who live in New York City, but it's good news for the rest of us, because we can get a feel for just how significant the issue is becoming by watching how it's being handled in places like NYC and Los Angeles -- if enough technological work-arounds and new technology tricks are introduced to defer problems with spectrum crunch in NYC, then Minneapolis isn't going to notice any problems with spectrum crunch over that same time period.

This also suggests that spectrum crunch may have some positive effects -- for instance, a 'mobile office' isn't really useful if you don't have enough spectrum to be able to run your mobile office. But as markets evolve to the point where you don't need to have your office in the same geographic location as your customers, people will be motivated to move away from the spectrum-crowded huge cities out to less populated cities and even into rural areas being served by wireless network services. This distributed spectrum usage then creates more distributed use of other resources as well.

There are technological work-arounds already in place

The MIT Technology Review article cited in the opening quotes starts out by asking the reader to imagine a stadium, filled with sports fans or concert fans, all using their phones to send data to their friends. What do you suppose the impact is on the local wireless spectrum around the stadium?

The surprising answer is 'none'. Strategically placed through the stadium are a number of small boxes that contain wireless receivers connected to routers. Those receivers pretend to be cell phone towers so that phones will connect to them (since they are closer and thus have a stronger signal), but those receivers then route the traffic they receive onto a wired Internet connection out of the stadium and onto the global web. As long as the folks installing the receivers put enough of them in the stadium to cover the maximum possible bandwidth usage by people inside the stadium, the folks there won't even notice (except maybe once in a while if enough people connected to the same receiver try sending/receiving information at the same time).

You can do something similar for your own bandwidth -- for instance, if you live in a large apartment complex, you'll be better off connecting your phone to your own wi-fi network than using the cell network. Not only will you save on cell data charges, but by not sending your traffic over the cell network, you're not contributing to a local spectrum crunch.

This kind of off-loading is becoming increasingly common, by the way -- the same Cisco article linked above notes that 2.2 exabytes of mobile traffic was off-loaded into wired networks each month in 2014, which is over a billion times as much traffic as was generated by tablets.

Future technological advances are already on the way

In what might count as ironic, one of the reasons that cell carriers seem so excited to roll out higher speed networks is that, in doing so, they defer spectrum crunch.

How? Well, consider that most Internet usage doesn't require a continuous connection. Sending e-mail, loading up photos to Snapchat, updating your status on Facebook, those things require a connection to send the information, and then the connection is no longer needed. The faster you're able to complete your task, the sooner your connection is off the network, and the sooner that bandwidth is available for someone else to use.

The one area where I will concede that the Extra Credits folks have a good point to make is that gaming is one of the few online applications that does require a continuous connection -- the example games listed in the YouTube video linked above would require continuous connections, and thus wouldn't be affected by improving speed (if anything, better speed might convince game developers to increase data transfer for the game, since the faster network can ostensibly 'handle it'). So there is a possibility that, if the spectrum crunch does become less and less able to be mitigated with technology work-arounds, local governments might start imposing usage limits on cellular network use that would have a huge impact on gaming. But that just segues into the last point...

The 'spectrum crunch' is as much a political issue as a technological one

The radio spectrum is presumed to be 'owned by the public', which is why the federal government licenses its use. The Federal Communications Commission does this, along with other duties, on behalf of the public. You may have most recently heard of the FCC with respect to the rules they passed in support of so-called 'net neutrality', but that's just a small part of their overall responsibilities.

However, it should be noted that the Commissioner of the FCC, the one who issued the report that made 'spectrum crunch' into a thing, was Julius Genachowski, who had worked mainly as an attorney prior to his appointment to the FCC. He had worked as a Chief of Business Operations for a technology company and also co-founded another, but his background wasn't in technology, it was in law and business. Likewise, the current Chairman of the FCC, Tom Wheeler, was previously head of the National Cable Television Association, head of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association, and CEO of a private investment firm. In fact, it's hard to find anybody with a chairpersonship in the FCC who actually has a technology background -- one commissioner actually lists in his bio that his "focus is on creating a regulatory environment in which competition and innovation will flourish, thus benefitting American consumers. He believes that it is vital for the FCC to adopt policies that will give private firms the strongest incentive to raise and invest capital; to develop new products and services; and to compete in established and new markets."

It is therefore telling that the FCC's published advice on the 'spectrum crunch' issue is largely to make more spectrum available to wireless broadband providers.

It is true that, as noted in the MIT article, the federal government has had a very low-tech approach to licensing the radio spectrum, especially for military use -- it's noted that the government has licensed specific frequencies for military use across the country, even where the military requirements for such use occur only in a few specific areas. Nevertheless, it should be obvious that increased licensing is just as much a stop-gap measure as technological work-arounds are -- eventually you'll run out of extra spectrum to license. The real kicker is that wireless providers have already paid billions of dollars in auctions for parts of the spectrum, and are clearly hoping that having political allies in Washington will allow them to get additional spectrum for much less cost.

In other words, business as usual for major corporations in the US. It might have been nice if some of the comments used in the Extra Credits video had been analyzed to realize just how self-serving they were, in an attempt to make the issue seem much more of a crisis than it really is.

indiana's RFRA and GenCon - State of Play

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.

- U.S. Constitution, Article Six, Clause 2 (a.k.a.: the Supremacy Clause)

Those of you familiar with this blog will know that I often write about heading to GenCon, the massive gaming convention that's been held in Indianapolis over the past decade. So my ears perked up when I heard that GenCon was one of a number of companies (GenCon LLC is the actual entity that runs and organizes GenCon as a for-profit enterprise) that published an open letter to Indiana governor Mike Pence encouraging him to veto a bill that would, in theory, protect the religious liberty of Indiana residents.

Pence, who is said to have entertained hopes of contending for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, signed the bill into law anyway.

GenCon CEO Adrian Swartout then published another open letter, this one to the GenCon community, explaining that, while GenCon had been happy with their partnership with the city of Indianapolis, and that they were honoring their contract with the city to continue to hold the convention there through 2020, they were also planning to carefully monitor the environment in the city and that the impact of the new law might well convince GenCon to make different arrangements for the convention in 2021 and beyond.

Since following this evolving situation, I've noted a lot of commentary about it -- the mass media seems to have gravitated to the novelty of a game convention company making a political stand against a state government -- and among that commentary, there is, unsurprisingly, a lot of misinformation and confusion. While I'm not a lawyer, the text of the actual law is fairly free of legalese and isn't terribly long, so I thought I might address some of the more egregious misunderstandings and mischaracterizations. Let's begin.

Why does GenCon have to get involved in politics anyway? Why can't they just focus on running an awesome convention?

Because the law has the ability to seriously impact the experience of GenCon convention-goers in ways that GenCon can't control, at least not under its current contract. To understand why this is, you need to understand what it is the law does.

The law's defenders state that the intent of the law is simply to protect the religious freedoms of the citizens of Indiana. But once you look at the law, it's clear that something much bigger is in play.

The law consists of 11 sections. Section 1 uses a spaghetti-list of legal terms to make clear that any law or other practice of a government is subject to this law. (Note that this section can't make the law apply to federal laws or practices, but it can apply to county, city, or other local Indiana government entities; this will become important later.) It also notes that all such laws are affected regardless of whether or not they were made before this section became law itself.

Section 2 says that only laws that specifically exempt themselves from this law are exempt, and specifies how to word such a law.

Section 3 deals with the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution -- for those who aren't legal scholars, the Establishment Clause is that clause in the First Amendment that says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." This is the law's first big cover-your-ass moment: the writers of this law knew that it could not affect federal law, and that to pretend that it could might well cause the U.S. Supreme Court to eventually rule that the law violates the U.S. Constitution, specifically the Supremacy Clause noted at the beginning of this post. Section 3 is basically a long paragraph saying that nothing in this law should be taken as a challenge to the supremacy of federal law as defined in the Constitution. The law also sneakily uses the word 'granting', burying in the middle of the text a definition that changes the meaning of the last sentence of the section -- "(c)Granting government funding, benefits, or exemptions, to the extent permissible under the Establishment Clause, does not constitute a violation of this chapter." The sneaky part? The earlier sentence that says, "'Granting', used with respect to government funding, benefits, or exemptions, does not include the denial of government funding, benefits, or exemptions." In other words, giving someone government money or benefits doesn't violate this law, but that doesn't apply to denying someone government money or benefits.

(Aside: it's not clear what part of the law Governor Pence is referring to when he claims that the existing law doesn't allow businesses to discriminate, but it's likely this one, as only one other chapter really comes close. Problem is, this section only applies to the distribution (or denial) of government benefits, which private businesses have no control over. If Governor Pence really thought that a protection against discrimination was in this law, then he was duped by his political allies, which doesn't bode well for his future in higher politics.)

Section 4 simply defines 'demonstrates' as a short-cut for 'meets the burdens of going forward with legal action under this chapter'.

Section 5 is short, but very sweet. It defines 'exercise of religion' as any exercise of religion, even if it is not required by a religious authority and even if it is not central to an established system of religious belief. In other words, if you say "this thing that I am doing is an exercise of my religion," this section has your back, because an opponent cannot claim that since no one in your faith requires you to do it and it is not considered a sacrament, that it therefore isn't a 'true' exercise of religion.

This section is clearly the part that people are jumping on to claim that the law authorizes discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) people -- few religious authorities command it, and many flavors of faith don't require it, but if you assert that your faith includes a need to not associate with GLBT people, that assertion is covered as an exercise of your religion. The only real question is, what under this law doesn't count as an exercise of religion?

Section 6 defines the governmental entities subject to this law. Unsurprisingly, they are all Indiana-specific, largely defined by a different Indiana law.

Section 7 defines 'person' under this law, and it's a doozy. A 'person', for the purpose of this law, can be any of the following:

• An individual
• A church
• An organization or group organized and operated primarily for religious purposes
• A business that exercises practices compelled or limited by a system of religious belief held by its owners and/or controllers, and that can be sued

Remember the old Sesame Street game, "one of these things is not like the others?" Try that here.

This is the specific section that critics say enables discrimination against GLBT folks. If you own a company, and you operate that company in such a way that the company itself can be said to practice your religion, then...well, we'll get to that.

Section 8 is the real meat of the law. It says that the governmental entities defined in section 6 cannot burden a person's (as defined in section 7) exercise of religion unless the governmental entity can demonstrate that the burden is necessary for a "compelling governmental interest" and that the burden is the "least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest".

Now for those of you who don't make a habit of reading Supreme Court decisions in your spare time, you may not realize that these two quoted phrases above have special meaning in U.S. law -- specifically they are two of the three 'prongs' in what is referred to as strict scrutiny, which is the most stringent standard of judicial review used in U.S. courts. Interestingly, the law does not include the third prong of strict scrutiny -- that the law must be "narrowly tailored" to achieve its interest. This is an interesting and likely deliberate omission, because it allows the writers of this law to pass other laws which may have wider influences than the actual written text, without those writers needing to worry that a court will find their law overbroad in scope and thus unable to satisfy this section. In other words, it's what tech people refer to as a 'backdoor' -- it allows lawmakers familiar with this law to write other laws that won't be affected by this one, despite not explicitly exempting those laws from this one. They get to have their cake and eat it too. Of all the commentary I've seen on this law, none has addressed this specific point, and if this law is eventually challenged in the U.S. Supreme Court, it is the lack of narrowly tailored analysis that will likely cause the law to be struck down.

Section 9 gives the actual effect of the law. If a person's exercise of religion is violated under this law, that person may invoke the law as a defense against the government action that would restrict that person's exercise of religion. So, for example, if a baker in Indianapolis refuses to bake a cake for a gay marriage and is sued under the city's anti-discrimination laws, the baker can, if he asserts that not associating with gay people is part of his religious beliefs, use this law as a defense against the lawsuit. The city of Indianapolis must then, as part of the suit, successfully argue that their anti-discrimination law meets two of the three prongs of strict scrutiny for the lawsuit to continue to go forward. It also contains a very weird clause that is both necessary for the law to function and makes the law a very powerful tool for those who prefer a specific kind of religious protection -- it says that if a governmental entity is not a party to a proceeding where a law is being challenged by this law, then the government has an unconditional right to intervene in the proceeding to respond to the challenge. In other words, in the baker scenario above, the government would be able to (and must, for the suit to go forward) step into the case and argue that its law passes strict scrutiny**.

** - to all law students out there, yes, the law doesn't actually require the third prong, and so isn't technically 'strict scrutiny'. I'm using a short-cut and am not a lawyer anyway.

(This is the other part of the law that could arguably be what Governor Pence is talking about when he says the law doesn't authorize discrimination, since Pence is himself an attorney. The argument is that any anti-discrimination law that cannot already meet strict scrutiny isn't enforceable anyway, and if the law can meet strict scrutiny, then this law won't stop it from being enforced. The problem with this argument is that it's exactly backward -- if a government action or law is seeking to restrict a fundamental liberty, it must pass strict scrutiny, but if it exists to preserve a fundamental liberty, then it only needs to pass what's called a rational basis test. Equal protection claims are explicitly decided on a rational basis test, which this law would require to be judged on a much harsher basis. So again, either Governor Pence is lying, or he's not very intelligent, because the difference between rational basis and strict scrutiny review is something that's, at least in theory, taught in every undergraduate law college in the U.S.)

The kicker is that the government is given the right to intervene, but not the obligation to do so, and if the government chooses not to intervene, then the suit fails because the defendant's invocation of this law as a defense cannot be overcome. This allows the government to pick-and-choose which kinds of religious freedom they wish to allow. In the baker scenario above, the city of Indianapolis might well choose to intervene, since it's their law that's being challenged, but under a new mayor and/or city attorney, they might well choose not to, allowing the suit to fail. Meanwhile, a different suit involving a Muslim refusing to serve a Christian might well get the state to intervene on the Christian's behalf.

Section 10 is the insult added to injury -- it explicitly states what I alluded to above, that if the state fails to meet its burden of strict scrutiny, the defense provided by this law applies to "all parties" (which means the lawsuit fails). Not only that, but the chapter also explicitly allows the court to provide 'relief' to the defendant, both in the form of specifically allowing the defendant to perform his religiously-motivated activity, as well as possibly even getting 'compensatory damages' (i.e.: money) from the government.

At first glance, Section 11 seems to be a bolted-on extra that doesn't make a lot of sense compared with the rest of the law, but there is method to the madness. Yes, it's another cover-your-ass moment, and the most telling one in the whole law. You see, Section 11 states that this law is not intended to and should not be interpreted to create any claim in law against a private employer.

Why? Because while the U.S. Congress hasn't passed any law making GLBT people a 'protected class' for purposes of Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment protections under the law, it has passed laws specifically forbidding discrimination in employment based on sexual and gender identity. If someone tried to use this law as a defense against refusing to hire or firing an employee because he was gay, this law would fail and be struck down. To avoid this, the writers of the law included this exception -- since if the law can't be used in a legal proceeding regarding employment, then the constitutionality of the law can't be considered in that legal proceeding. Neat, huh?

That's it. That's the law and what it does.

I still don't get it. As long as GenCon doesn't discriminate, why should they care about this law?

Because while GenCon can mandate the behavior of their vendors and volunteers through contracts, GenCon cannot guarantee that other businesses do so. A lesbian couple who is refused a hotel reservation, a gay couple refused service in a restaurant, a transgender person kicked out of a mall store for using the 'wrong' restroom, all of these people will have negative experiences which they will associate with the convention, since the convention is the reason they are there in Indianapolis in the first place. And while GenCon has a contract with the city, it's very unlikely that the contract includes a specific point requiring the city to ensure that convention-goers are treated equally and fairly -- why would such a point be needed, when Indianapolis has laws requiring it? Except that now, under state law, local Indianapolis businesses can ignore Indianapolis law as long as they can make a religious freedom claim under the new law. The more GLBT people who are aware of the possibility of being legally discriminated against, the more likely they are to stay away.

That's the nightmare scenario, and one GenCon is working very hard to avoid -- GLBT people may not be a huge percentage of potential attendees (though given the relative youth of GenCon attendees compared to the general population as well as that gaming itself long was considered an 'alternative' lifestyle, it's likely the percentage of GLBT gamers is larger than that in the general population), but a larger percentage of people know an GLBT person and may choose not to attend in support of their friends and relatives. GLBT celebrities may refuse to serve as Guests of Honor -- George Takei, a high-profile celebrity gay-rights activist, has already announced that he will not attend events in Indiana.

Over the past few years, GenCon has seen amazing growth in its convention attendance, and fears over discrimination might well stop that growth and even begin a downward trend, one which might well turn into a death spiral if not managed well.

So what? A private business owner should have the right to not serve anybody he doesn't like.

Addressing this one is outside the scope of this essay, but I'll just point out two things:

1. A private business owner is already prevented from discriminating against actual or potential employees through protections in federal employment law. As noted in the discussion of Section 11 above, the writers of this law are aware of this and specifically included language to ensure that this law is not challenged on those grounds by making the law inapplicable to employment issues.
2. Many businesses are operated as 'public accommodations'; if a private entity makes itself accessible to the public, it must abide by laws that deal with public accommodations, including the Civil Rights Act and Americans with Disabilities Act. Reading up on the concept of 'public accommodations' might well enlighten you a bit on what is required of an ostensibly 'private' organization.

Screwtape Writes a Letter

My dear Leadscrape,

Allow me to join the many shades and gentledevils who are no doubt showering you with accolades over your recent success in America. Such a success shows tempting skill of the first order, and suggests a future bright with further opportunities for mayhem and delight. I would not have considered writing you, except that a casual review of graduation records showed that you were in attendance with the graduating class of the Tempters' Training College on the night I gave the commencement address. While I do not recall that we spoke on that occasion, the connection seemed significant enough to excuse my boldness in addressing you in the hour of your triumph.

I also, as the undersecretary of a department, took the liberty of requesting your reports, as well as a copy of the transcript of the post-mortem interview with your supervisor following the processing of your patient. (As an aside, let me say that your supervisor's jealousy of your success was quite obvious from the text of the transcript, and that no intelligent devil will hold that against you.) It was one point in particular -- your question as to whether or not your success might lead to greater difficulties for other tempters in the future -- that convinced me to communicate with you on that subject.

Let me begin by saying that your concern does you great credit. If more devils were as interested in the greater expansion of Hell's dominion on Earth rather than in simply adding souls to their personal larder, our progress against the Enemy would certainly be significantly improved. But I think your concerns are somewhat exaggerated, and while some second-rate tempters may find their patients are a bit more wary of their tactics over the next few months or years, on the whole I believe the situation is unlikely to change in any significant way.

Let us begin with the most basic observation -- the manner of the triumph. While I am not myself an expert on the American sector, the data collected by our investigative arm speaks for itself: violent killing sprees enabled by firearms are endemic to America -- over half of all such events in the entire world over the past 50 years have occurred there -- and so it was very appropriate for you to take advantage of the environment to push another patient into such an outburst. Indeed, the now traditional calls for 'improved mental health treatment' were seen in the media almost immediately following the event, despite the patient having successfully passed the required background check for acquiring firearms in his state. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine how 'improved mental health treatment' would have impacted this specific patient, given that he managed to convince police specifically sent to evaluate him well prior to the event that he was no threat (I imagine you have some uncredited praise coming for that as well), and that the evidence suggesting mental illness was not seen by officers prior to the fatal events themselves. In that sense, you were wise to take advantage of the opportunity that the culture in America allows, and there appears to be no sign that other tempters will be unable to do likewise, if they know what they are about -- I know it would have been far more difficult for a tempter in my region to have succeeded in the same spectacular manner.

Next, the question of misogyny, exacerbated by the patient's apparent presumption that, as a middle-class male of the seemingly dominant culture, he was allegedly 'owed' companionship and sex from whatever woman he found attractive. This is truly first-rate work, building on the labor of many who came before, and there is no reason to believe that this culture, too, will not endure. Though some have identified a sort of 'entitlement' culture in relatively recent stories, the reality is that our cultural arm has been working along these lines for millennia, nearly as long as the human vermin have been telling each other stories. One of their ancient comedians wrote a play in which a human convinces avians to intercept prayers and sacrifices meant for the gods; the audacious human ends up with both a scepter of royal command and a god's former lover as his bride. Perhaps the most famous story from that era involved the knowledge that, instead of the most beautiful woman in the world being allowed to choose her own mate, the men of the era would go to war to decide her fate. While it is true that some recent stories have done better at avoiding these 'sexist' tropes, the truth is that humans, especially those in our sectors of the world, have such a hunger for stories that there will be no shortage of stories recycling these ancient, useful tropes. Even one of the most carefully constructed popular stories of recent vintage, where the protagonist and his distaff companion build a platonic relationship on mutual caring and trust, contains a harried sub-plot where two characters meet and discover 'true love' after communicating for less than a day, and after the male has rescued the female from drowning. There will be no shortage of future tales for future tempters to use to twist male vanity to entertaining ends.

The one part of your argument that seems worth preparing for is that there does indeed seem to be a tremendous outpouring of support for the idea that males have a responsibility to 'stand up' and help correct sexism and misogyny, at least as expressed in male behavior toward females. This does appear very dangerous to our cause; if human society, even one human society, ever succeeded at providing an example of how racist and sexist beliefs could be handled without conflict, it would put centuries of our labour at risk. Fortunately, this appears to merely be a particularly loud echo of an idea which, while persistent, does not seem to be taking root. Similar echoes occurred with the harassment of a woman in 2007 involving prominent Internet personalities, and even a massacre of female science students specifically because they were science students in 1989. There are literally dozens of different ways in which the male human animals violate and oppress their women, some of them so ancient that uprooting them will take far more than just a handful of impassioned pleas on the Internet.

As for you, my good devil, your obvious talent and intelligence would be significant advantages in my own region's ongoing campaign to promote the United Kingdom Independence Party. Would you be interested in stopping by the offices to see if a supervisory role would suit?

With respect and admiration,

Screwtape

My Take On the "Insect Army"

One of the things that has troubled me is seeing women who say that they are apprehensive about entering SFF because they don’t want to attract the sort of bile I did.

It’s not just women, of course. It is any group that has been historically underrepresented.

For all of you… we have your back. There is strength in numbers. Join our army.

- Mary Robinette Kowal, as reported on John Scalzi's blog, "Whatever"

There is change in the air.

It's been slowly building for a while now, but I've noticed it mainly in the past three years. I first noticed it in SF and fantasy fandom, with the "cosplay is not consent" movement. I then noticed it spreading to the larger SF and fantasy fandom via the adoption of harassment policies and publicly shared stories of verbal and sexual harassment, many of which named names.

However, these things are not as new as I thought they were -- rather, they've been around for a while, but only recently have started to build sufficient momentum to become visible, and in some circles, resented. Here's the thing that made me realize just how long this movement has been in the making:

petsnakereggie: @michaellorg @Paul_Cornell @gallifreyone Without that attitude, @CONvergenceCon wouldn't exist. So I guess some good came of it...

@petsnakereggie is Tim Wick, local geek raconteur probably best known for his leadership of The Dregs, an indescribable band with a fanatically devoted following. "That attitude" Wick is referring to is probably best summed up by the following post from SFF.net, uncredited so as not to give undue attention to the author:

The problem is that the ‘vocal minority’ of insects who make up the new generation of writers don’t scramble for the shadows when outside lights shines on them—they bare their pincers and go for the jugular. Maybe it is a good thing that SFWA keeps them locked up. The newer members who Scalzi et al. brought in are an embarrassment to the genre.

The idea, of course, is that those folks who don't 'fit in' to the existing structure of fandom should keep quiet about it, let the 'grown-ups' speak, and generally not embarrass themselves or the fandom by trying to make things more accessible and accommodating -- because the people in charge (referred to, often derisively, as 'Secret Masters of Fandom' or 'SMOF') like things exactly the way that they are.

This conflict played out in Minnesota years ago, which is what Wick is referring to when he says that CONvergence "wouldn't exist" without it. I won't claim to be an expert here, nor to be providing a detailed history, but the gist is basically as follows:

For many years, the primary science fiction fandom convention in the Twin Cities was Minicon. The convention was inaugurated in 1968 (making it nearly as old as I am) by the Minnesota Science Fiction Society. If nothing else, the organizers of Minicon deserve credit for maintaining the convension over so long a stretch of time, and for maintaining its 'quality' to the degree that the convention, despite existing in a fairly obscure part of the country, has attracted a number of the highest-regarded authors in SF to appear as guests.

Now, according to that Wikipedia article linked above, Minicon grew from a scant 60 attendees in its first iteration to roughly 3000 attendees by the turn of the century, but then made the decision to "downscale[d] dramatically due to a feeling among some organizers that it had strayed too far from its roots and had become unmanageable." There's reason to suspect that, while the strict meaning of that explanation is correct, the actual reasoning behind the explanation incorporates the rise of 'fandom' in the San Diego Comic-Con sense: people who show up with less of an idea to sit in panels discussing SF concepts with authors, and more to celebrate their favorite SF, fantasy, and even anime works and characters through cosplay and fan discussions.

The reason that this is significant is that some of the people who liked the expanded fandom aspect of the old Minicon were part of the organizing staff, and they broke off and started new conventions, the flagship of which was CONvergence. From the beginning, CONvergence has been organized as a 'fandom' convention, not just a SF convention, with guests of honor to match: Harry and Jay Knowles of 'Ain't It Cool News' were among the first guests of honor, and other guests from outside the traditional SF circle such as cartoonists (John Kovalic), fantasy artists (Ruth Thompson, Denise Garner), comic-book writers (Marv Wolfman, Mark Evanier), and even folks involved in the RPG industry (Ken Hite, Jenifer Clarke Wilkes) have appeared at the convention. The convention has made a deliberate effort to promote fandom in general rather than just SF (or even just a specific, preferred form of SF).

The effect, well, seems obviously predictable. Since separating from CONvergence in 1999, Minicon, running over Easter weekend, has averaged anywhere from 700-900 attendees during its three days. CONvergence, which relocated to the Fourth of July weekend, has shown significant growth, expanding both in attendance (the most recent CONvergence drew over 7000 attendees) and size (the convention expanded to four days in 2008 and has not looked back). Probably the most intriguing bit of info I've overheard is that the organizers of Minicon, perhaps finally shamed over the explosive popularity of their unwitting rival, have considered what they can do to get closer to the kind of attendance that CONvergence has been doing.

I'm not the person to answer that in detail, but in general, CONvergence is better-attended simply because more people feel included and welcomed there. This has been a deliberate effort on behalf of CONvergence's organizing staff, from being early-adopters of 'cosplay is not consent' to being inclusive of anime as a fandom. (Anime Detour, CONvergence's sister convention held during the early spring, is nearly as popular as CONvergence itself.) While Minicon can't and shouldn't try to do everything CONvergence does, it could and should go farther into making SF more inclusive, and embracing the 'Insect Army', and not uncoincidentally distancing itself from the old 'SMOF' approach to fandom, would go a long way toward doing that.

Star Trek Into Hackery

So the movie starts, and we see a car chase on a freeway. One brightly-colored sports car is being chased by three menacing-looking dark sedans. Gunshots get fired back and forth. Cars weave in and out through traffic. Cars not in the chase wipe out and get left by the side of the road. It's pretty clear that our heroes are in the sports car.

Then, a stray bullet takes out one of the tires on our heroes' car! It careens to the side of the road, coming to a stop. The heroes get out, open the trunk, and hop on pogo-sticks, taking off down the freeway at 75 miles per hour…

No, they're not rocket-powered pogo-sticks. They're just pogo sticks. C'mon, man, it's a movie!

So they race down the road, still exchanging fire. One of our heroes has his gun run out of ammo! He beats on it a few times with the flat of his hand and then the gun starts firing again!

No, he doesn't reload -- it's a Hollywood gun that never runs out of ammo. No, it didn't jam, he just smacks it to remind it that it's a Hollywood gun. Lighten up, it's a moooovieeee!

Then there's a barrage of gunfire from the pursuing sedans, and suddenly our heroes are in Bullet Time! Yeah, like the Matrix, only cooler. I'm just as good a filmmaker as the Wachowskis if not better, so I can pull this off, I'm sure.

So the chase continues, and the heroes reach the end of the freeway, in a construction zone that dumps out over the bay. They come to a stop, pull the peels off their banana seats…

Yes, these pogo-sticks have banana seats. Why would they be called banana seats if they don't have peels? If they look like bananas then they'd have to have peels like bananas, right?

So they drop the banana seat peels, the sedans slip on them and fly out into the bay, ending the chase. Then our heroes pull off their helmets…

Yes, they've been wearing helmets all this time. Yes, even inside the car earlier. What's the big deal?

They pull off their helmets, and it's Thelma and Louise - the long-awaited sequel!

Dude, calm down, it's a MOOOOOOOOOVIEEEEEEEEE!!

On one hand, if the above was a scene from a movie that parodied Hollywood action films, it might actually be pretty hilariously awesome -- a great way of tweaking the numerous small inconsistencies and short-cuts that go into creating any 'awesome' action sequence.

On the other hand, if the above were being played straight, and were really meant to be part of a beloved series of films, then might you not feel a bit irritated, or worse?

That's pretty much how I felt when watching the opening sequence of 'Star Trek: Into Darkness'; I knew that I was supposed to be enjoying the ride as a summer blockbuster action set-piece, but I couldn't shake the irritation that the movie that I expected to be watching wasn't 'just a movie', but one that tied into some of the greatest stories of my adolescence and early adulthood, and one that had at least made an effort toward scientific reasonableness, even if it sometimes played fast and loose with the actual laws of physics.

But this? Let me count the number of ways that this movie's opening scene alone punished me for having actual knowledge of science:

There's a volcano that's going to erupt and doom an entire planet containing a primitive culture, and the Enterprise is here to save that culture.

Cool! So the volcano is going to spew greenhouse gasses and dust into the atmosphere, causing an ice age that will make the planet uninhabitable by the pre-technological society that lives there, and the Enterprise has to clean up the mess in such a way that the natives don't notice? Shades of 'Insurrection', where the Federation is secretly observing a culture that they believe don't possess warp drive -- this makes perfect sense!

Oh, wait, no. Apparently the actual danger is that lava from the eruption will cover the entire planet (?!), and the solution is to freeze the lava with a 'cold fusion bomb'?!?

OK, for starters, having a 'cold fusion bomb' that freezes things is like having a 'particle accelerator' that you attach to your car engine to make it go faster -- it's a complete misunderstanding of what the science is behind that phrase.

Second, freezing the lava won't stop the volcanic eruption. The caldera of a volcano is not the only place that a volcano can erupt -- see the Mount Saint Helens eruption of the 1980s (I'm pretty sure the director was alive then) as a perfect example. All freezing the lava will do is cause the eruption to happen somewhere else where the local crust is weak.

Third, the eruption of a single volcano simply isn't powerful enough to destroy an entire culture with lava. Sure, primitive cities have been destroyed by lava -- Pompeii is just one example -- but those cities are just cities. If an entire culture was destroyed, it's because the culture was living in a geographically isolated area (like an island, which can be destroyed in an eruption). Look at Mars, which has a volcano (Olympus Mons) far larger than any volcano on Earth. If a single volcano could cause the destruction of a planet, you'd think Olympus Mons would have done it to Mars. Yet the volcano in this movie isn't much larger than a 'typical' volcano on Earth, which is to say, dangerous to an island, but not to an entire planet.

Then, having the Enterprise be underwater nearby the primitive village, so that it can be seen when it emerges from the water? Not only is this pointless -- there isn't anything done during this scene that couldn't have been done from geosynchronous orbit, as far as I can tell, where the primitive culture would have zero chance of detecting the Enterprise -- but it ruins the point made in the previous movie about having to take a shuttle to the Enterprise from Earth because it's being built in space because starships aren't designed to operate inside planetary gravity which is the whole reason they have shuttlecraft and transporters!

Based on other things I've read, particularly this amusing io9.com review of the film, the opening sequence isn't even the most egregious violation of either scientific realism or Trek philosophy that takes place. But watching the Enterprise rise out of the water, and seeing nothing in that but JJ Abrams whipping out his dick and slapping it on the table next to Joss Whedon's (who pulled the same SFX shot in last summer's 'The Avengers'), I decided I didn't want to watch anymore. It's one thing to say that you're flushing the old continuity so that you can tell new, up-to-date stories featuring these beloved characters. It's something else to throw out everything that makes these characters and their world beloved in order to make banal, set-piece action movies that could have been done with any backdrop, but are only going to sell tickets because they're parasitically leeching on the audience's positive identification with the property.

Seriously -- think back to the first 'new Trek' movie. Other than the destruction of Vulcan, which was the big red flag waved to show 'this isn't your daddy's Star Trek', can you remember anything of any significance that happened in that film? Did any of the other major events of that film (Scotty inventing hyperspace transportation, the near-destruction of Earth due to a lack of planetary defenses, premature contact between the Romulans and Federation) have any effect on or were even referenced during this film? No? Can't say I'm surprised.

(As an aside, think for a moment how much more interesting the movie might have been had Benedict Cumberbatch fled to Romulus instead of the Klingon home world -- Romulus still exists in this universe, and the Federation would have to deal with the political fallout of having destroyed a ship full of Romulans (albeit one led by a Romulan who was insanely bent on the destruction of Earth and had already destroyed Vulcan). The events of the first movie might actually have had some impact on the development of the story in the second, rather than just being an excuse to blow a bunch of shit up, summer blockbuster style.)

Before yesterday, I couldn't remember how long it had been since I'd walked out of a movie theater before the film was over. Thanks to 'Star Trek: Into Darkness', I now know. When it comes to Star Trek, 'just a movie' simply isn't good enough.

Kicking the Hand that Starts You

It's pessimistic to rain on everyone's "we can do this" parade, yes, but wealthy celebrities drumming up consequence-free cash for their next projects just doesn't feel like the proper use of a site like Kickstarter. Want to start a campaign to, I dunno, send a dying person on a nice trip? Sure, go right ahead. It doesn't even have to be as serious as that. Use Kickstarter to get a sports team some new equipment, whatever. But when it's used to pay production costs for a Warner Bros. movie, the system seems abused.

- "Anybody Know Of A Better Charity Than the Veronica Mars Movie?", Richard Lawson

So, Kickstarter. I'm not a fan. Let me explain why.

At first, I thought the idea of Kickstarter, or more accurately the generic concept of 'crowdsourcing' -- i.e.: using the Internet to raise funds for something that you aren't able to raise funds for in more traditional methods -- was a cool idea. As I understand it, the proof-of-concept was Dr. Howard Dean's use of internet funding, first in his campaign for President of the U.S. in 2004, and then for the Democratic National Committee as its chairman afterward. (Wikipedia disagrees, considering the Oxford English Dictionary one of the first historical crowdsourced projects, and suggests that what I'm talking about is more precisely a subset of crowdsourcing called 'crowdfunding'.)

Kickstarter launched in 2009 and received some curious media coverage when it did so. It showed up on my radar, though, when it proved its utility in the geek sphere, specifically when Rich Berlew's Kickstarter drive to reprint his out-of-print softcover "Order of the Stick" collections became the first Kickstarter to break $1 million.

At the time, I thought, "Wow, that's impressive."

Some time later, the Pathfinder Online massive multiplayer game, currently in development, launched its own Kickstarter. This time, though, one million dollars was the goal. And, confusingly enough, though many assumed the kickstarter was being organized by Pathfinder IP owner Paizo Publishing, the real beneficiary of the project was the game's developer, Goblinworks, Inc. This, too, succeeded.

I was a bit less sanguine about this success, though. First off, the amount was at least an order of magnitude higher than Burlew's -- he'd only set out to raise a bit over $50k to cover his publishing costs, and the $1 million was a windfall bonus. Goblinworks was setting out to reap the windfall right off the top. In a sense, it was reasonable -- MMO's are expensive, and Goblinworks was a development house with no appreciable experience under their belts -- their 'big deal' was that they were founded (at least in part) by Ryan Dancey, the same man who introduced the Open Gaming License to the world and who basically made Pathfinder possible once Wizards of the Coast decided to stop producing Third Edition Dungeons & Dragons. OK, guys that know each other want to work together (most of Paizo's staff also consists of former WotC staffers, after all), but the whole thing had a bit of a whiff of, well, something not entirely wholesome.

Add to this the realization that Goblinworks and Paizo, gamers all, had apparently cracked Kickstarter -- the secret was to offer incentives for high-money contributors that look cool, and that people would be willing to pay for, but that don't actually cost you much if any of your own money to provide. Examples:

• Pledge $15, and get a PDF!
• Pledge $50, and get the downloadable soundtrack we'll be selling on iTunes after launch!
• Pledge $300, and your character's name will be associated with one of the drinks for sale at the in-game taverns!

You get the idea. A lot of this stuff requires minimal effort, or was being done anyway, but Dancey (who according to his bio linked above is sometimes called the 'Steve Jobs of MMO marketing') figured out how to market these things to be worth many times their cost. Great, right? Isn't that how capitalism is supposed to work?

Now, the news referred to in the quote that leads this essay. The creator of the teen-detective television series 'Veronica Mars' has decided that he wants to make a movie, and he's putting together a $2 million Kickstarter to do it. The kicker? It's already over 3/4 of the way to funded and at the time I write this, there's still a month left in the fundraising period.

Thomas has done his homework well. Consider the rewards for donating at the $175 donation level:

• a PDF of the shooting script
• a limited edition T-shirt
• a digital download of the movie
• a physical DVD of the movie with bonus documentary material on the making of the film and the Kickstarter campaign
• a copy of the official movie poster
• another physical DVD, but this one in Blu-Ray and with stuff not on the other DVD
• all three seasons of the original TV show

In other words, except for the T-shirt, a bunch of stuff we already have or were planning to make anyway! You've got to get up to the $350 level to get somewhere where someone has to put in significant effort -- that's where any member of the cast (except Kirsten, who plays the title character, who's probably the person you'd most want to do this) will record a 15 second voice mail message for you -- which of course the guys at Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me have been doing for years, for free. (OK, you have to be on their show and win one of their quiz games...)

Now it makes sense that Rob Thomas, the creator, would go to Kickstarter for this once he figured out how to package the incentives -- his show was certainly beloved by its fans, but it's a three-season TV show that went off the air six years ago, and any interest in a film from traditional producers probably died within two years of the show's hiatus. Good on Thomas for finding a way to pursue what I'm assuming is either a dream, or a way to keep paying the bills for a while longer -- either is admirable.

What worries me is where this is heading. What if Marvel Studios launched a $250 million Kickstarter for "Avengers 2"? What if the $100k level had a benefit of 'hang out on the set for a day with Joss and the cast'? That wouldn't be at all popular, would it? I think that it would.

More importantly, it would do two other things that would be harmful to the whole crowdsourcing concept:

- It would eat up funds that would otherwise go to worthy smaller projects.

Turns out that not everyone agrees with me on this. John Rogers, the co-creator and showrunner of Leverage, and a guy I admire, got into a brief discussion with me on Twitter where he responded to my Avengers 2 question by saying "That assumes a finite audience. Which is ... wrong, I think." But that's not right, either -- the audience is finite, because there are only so many people. And the portion of the audience that can and will donate to projects is even more finite, because we know there are fans who don't donate. The question is not 'is the pool finite or infinite' but 'how deep does it go'? If it's not very deep, a few big-ticket projects will certainly dry it right up.

But that's only a small part of the problem -- the bigger one is this:

- It would allow 'big content' to subsume the sources of crowdsourcing and treat them as just another profit center.

Kickstarter basically gets paid based on the size of the donations. (The actual mechanism, oddly enough, is just Amazon Payments.) So say Marvel makes their $250 million goal and "Avengers 2" is funded. Marvel would love to put their "Avengers 3" on Kickstarter, too, but they're a little concerned about some of Kickstarter's business practices...

This is why my response to Rogers suggested that he could have written a kick-ass Leverage episode about where this is apparently going.

Kickstarter rewards content creators with recognizable, popular intellectual property that can be leveraged in ways that don't cost the IP owner much in order to attract attention and funding. Big Content (Marvel, Disney, etc.) can do this way more efficiently than independent creators, and Big Content has a vested interest in squishing ways that independent creators can get made outside of their gatekeeping. How long until you *have* to be doing a million dollar project to get on Kickstarter? How long until the minimum becomes $10 million?

So what, you may ask. If Kickstarter stops doing small projects, some other startup will come along and fill the void, right?

Oh, my friend, you know so little about how the real market works.

The real problem is, I'm not at all sure what to do about this situation -- it seems inevitable, like watching a cute baby gorilla slowly grow up until it's large enough to terrorize you and everyone else in your home.

Oh, well -- the Kickstarter era was fun while it lasted, anyway.

Ireland Trip - Day 2

Remember what I mentioned about Ireland being an ideal country for sleeping, if you find rain relaxing? The environment was so relaxing that I actually didn't get out of bed until about 5pm, by which time Eddie and Bethany were preparing for a trip back to the UCC campus, this time for a meeting of WARPS, the wargaming and role-playing group that would be putting on WARPCon over the weekend.

We arrived a little late after a quick dinner at an Irish Burger King to find a number of games already going on. Eddie, who is still something of a Magic fiend, quickly got into a match, while Bethany and I mingled a bit, and I got to meet a couple of the folks organizing the weekend's convention. We finished up playing a game of Ticket to Ride: Marklin -- Bethany, Eddie, myself, and a shy Irish fellow with a very serious tremor but who otherwise was bright and as amiable as his shyness allowed.

Back home again -- this time without a stop at a pub on the way. Back to sleep to prepare for another day.

Ireland Trip - Day 1

Bethany and her fiancee Eddie met me at the train station in Cork, and after a short bus ride, we ended up at their cozy condominium. They showed me the guest bedroom where I'd be sleeping, then gave me the chance to clean up a bit. I'd been awake at this point for about 23 hours consecutively, but with the chance to freshen up and the fact that the sun was still up (and I was told that the sun actually being visible is a rarity in Ireland, so I shouldn't waste it), I decided to head out with them for a brief walking tour of Cork City.

We ended up at a semi-enclosed market called the English Market, which reminded me very much of International Market Square back home, except with much more 'staples'; plenty of butchers, fishmongers, and vegetable sellers abounded, with only a few touristy-type shops that sold chocolates or other delicacies. My first purchase in Cork proper was a bottle of apple juice laced with blueberry juice, while Eddie picked up pork chops (more like steaks to my eyes), potatoes, and cabbage for that evening's dinner. We stopped briefly at Tesco (the only supermarket in Cork City) to pick up some more staples and snacks, then headed back home.

Dinner was simple and very tasty, and afterward I finally indulged in sleep. Turns out Ireland is an ideal country for sleep, if you find rain relaxing -- by the next morning, a steady drizzle was falling and I ended up sleeping well past noon. Eddie headed into work at about 2pm, and Bethany and I planned to meet him later at the college's Med-Ren group (basically a re-enactment/SCA type group). Bethany took me on a more tourist-oriented walk of Cork City, showing me some of the local architecture, and we stopped in a pub for a drink to rest and wait for the Med-Ren meeting.

Med-Ren basically consisted of a bunch of college folks learning how to wield medieval weaponry -- the spear was on particular display, but some dagger training was also available. I begged out, on the pretence that since I'd had a beer earlier, I shouldn't wield weapons while under the influence of alcohol, so instead I ended up spending much of the evening talking with an amazing Irish woman named Rosheen, who'd been a practicing archaeologist for the better part of two decades and had a seemingly inexhaustable store of tales about things that happened on various dig sites and expeditions, mostly in Scandinavia and Northern Europe. She joined us on another pub trip following the Med-Ren meeting and we ended up eating dinner there (having taken it out from a nearby fish-and-chips place) and talking until midnight.

Back home, back to sleep and the promise of another day.

Ireland trip - Day 0

If you've read the blog about my GenCon trips, you know that travel days can be just as eventful as vacation days. My recent trip to Ireland was no exception.

The plan started taking shape back in September, after it was finally clear that a long-promised raise was coming through which would allow me to afford the trip. Then it was simply a matter of booking the flight, applying for a passport, and waiting for the departure date to arrive. Which, eventually, it did.

I slept better than I'd expected to, rising early enough to do one last load of laundry containing the nightclothes I'd worn. Then Senior drove me to the airport -- arriving at 2:00 for a 4:00 flight, I'd finished checking my bags and passing through security in about fifteen minutes, I then discovered, sheepishly enough, that the place I needed to be to do currency exchange was back outside the security area.

The theme of the series of flights from Minneapolis to Dublin was 'early'. I was early to the airport, but karma repaid me by having my flight to Chicago land fifteen minutes early, and the flight from Chicago to Dublin not only left 10 minutes early (all ticketed passengers had checked in), but with a 70 mile-per-hour tailwind for much of the first half of the flight, we ended up landing in Dublin nearly an hour early.

How did I know we had a 70mph tailwind? Turns out international flights are cool. Aer Lingus, which I flew on, had monitors where the flight conditions flashed throughout the flight, interspersed with maps showing the GPS position of the plane. But it turns out, no matter how cool the flight is, international travel takes longer than it takes for the cool to wear off -- I am not at all looking forward to the flight homw.

Culture shock didn't really set in on arrival -- all airports pretty much look alike and are festooned with signs so that it's very difficult to lose your way. My problems began upon leaving the airport and looking for the bus that would take me to the Heuston train station. I didn't really get any sleep on the plane, and so had been up for about 20 hours consecutively at that point.

"I'm not really sure what to do," I told the driver as I climbed aboard the bus.

"First thing is, you pay me."

So I did. I had gotten 150 euro in Chicago, since the booth that did the currency exchange was convenient from the international terminal, but I wasn't yet prepared for a currency where everything below 5 euro was transacted in coins.

Riding through Dublin on a bus while sleep deprived, you get the idea that this is what would happen if some Brobdingnagian creature devoured all of human culture, then selectively vomited some of it back out over two square miles. Riding down a street with a mishmash of buildings of various sizes and colors, the bus would then turn right and drive down a stretch of two straight blocks of bed and breakfasts. Then a left turn and we were driving through a square surrounded by posh department stores. Another right, and we were driving past Trinity College and a bunch of ecumenical buildings well over a century old. It was vaguely phantasmagoric -- I almost expected at some point to see flames bursting from the roofs of tall towers like in 'Blade Runner'.

Arriving at the train station, I discovered I'd just missed a train and would need to wait an hour for the next one to leave, so I went looking for a "pub" that the person I was coming to see had said was in the station. It took me about five minutes to find it, as it was the only thing indoors in an otherwise open-air train station. It was called the Galway Hooker, and oddly enough, especially for someone now on 21 hours without sleep, it appeared to be run by Poles. The big Polish cook was waiting for me order at the breakfast buffet, but I recognized very little, and the little I did recognize made little sense. There were, for instance, beans that looked like pork and beans, but with no pork. (Turned out everything else was pork, though.) There was a pair of puck-like meat-looking things, something that looked like a boiled hot dog, a very oddly-shaped bacon-like thing that, if I'd had to guess, I'd have called a 'rasher', and a container of sautéed mushrooms. Last, and most confusing, was a bunch of deep-fried potato wedges, which I'd have thought were invented by Arby's rather than being part of a 'traditional' Irish breakfast. I let the old couple behind me go ahead while I puzzled out the offerings, and once it was my turn again, the cook took pity on me.

"Full breakfast?" he asked.

"Yes, please," I breathed out in thanks.

'Full breakfast' meant one of everything -- one each of the pucks (the darker one was 'black pudding' while the lighter was 'white pudding'), one hot dog (which was actually a lightly packed sausage), a rasher (and it was actually a rasher), a scoop of beans, a scoope of mushrooms, and the potato wedge in the middle of it all. And a fried egg and two slices of white toast. I ate it all, greedily, then relaxed for a few minutes before heading out to the train.

Trains in Ireland are astonishingly modern considering some other parts of the country. (I'd have this same weird feeling many times over the course of the trip, such as being shown a smart-chipped ATM/debit card used by pretty much all Irish banks, while walking to that bank on a cobblestone street following a patch first laid out in the Middle Ages.) They all have free Wi-Fi, and while it's not fact, it exists, which kept Sophie (my iPad) useful. I ended up sitting across the aisle from a girl who didn't look to be over 16, and who had an iPad mini and an Android smartphone, but who got off the train at Limerick with a bunch of other folks looking for all the world as though they were heading back to college. A beverage truck staffed by two attractive Polish girls rolled up and down the length of the train; I spent over 10 euro on snacks and beverages at least partly so that I had an excuse to keep talking to them.

The weirdest part of the Irish trains, though, was the restroom. Not because of the facilities - there was a commode, a sink, all the regular stuff - but because the restroom was circular, complete with a sliding door that was controlled with buttons and spoke to you to remind you to lock it.

Upon arriving in Cork, Bethany and her fiancee Eddie picked me up, and we all rode another bus back to their condo. About which, more later.

Top Ten Classic Rock Intros

OK, so I was in the process of putting together evidence to show just how much the presence of Monte Cook on the D&D Next design team was going to result in a cool-yet-unplayable game experience, when, shock of shocks, Cook announced he was leaving WotC due to differences of opinion with "the company".

Mind. Freaking. Blown.

The new lead designer appears to be Mike Mearls, the guy who put together the most punishing scenario in the Age of Worms adventure path, and while I still don't think D&D Next is going to end up being the Golden Apple of RPG gaming, I'm less worried that it'll be a giant gaming turd.

So moving on...

At about the same time, I was participating in a pub quiz, and during the music round one of my teammates responded to the opening of The Hollies's "Long Cool Woman In A Black Dress" with the comment, "Best rock song intro ever."

Really? I thought. That's the best we can do? So I've spent the last six months dutifully listening to KQRS and trying to put together a slightly more accurate accounting of best rock song intros.

Right away, of course, I ran into a definitional problem. What constitutes an 'intro'? Well, it's the part before they start singing, isn't it? (Forgive the rhetorical flourishes -- I've been watching a lot of Zero Punctuation lately.)

So does that mean the single chord that opens The Beatles's "Hard Day's Night" or Elton John's "Rocket Man" counts as an intro? Sure, why not.

OK, then what about "Crazy Train", which opens with Ozzy Osborne shouting "All aboard!" and cackling maniacally? Well, maybe.

And how about songs where there isn't any singing, like the Edgar Winter Group's "Frankenstein"? Where does the intro end and the song begin there?

Well, OK, clearly we need some ground rules here:

1) The song must have vocals.

This avoids the whole existential 'where does the intro end and the song begin' problem referenced above.

2) The start of the vocals indicates the end of the intro, unless such vocal consists of what is now termed a 'rock utterance'. The 'rock utterance' is any vocalization like 'hmmm', 'yeah', 'ooh', or the like which is basically just an excuse to treat the singer's voice like just another instrument. (For examples, see about 2/3rds of the intros to the songs on Aerosmith's "Big Ones". Steven Tyler loves him some rock utterances.)

Now I fully admit that someone could put together a list of the top ten rock intros that violate one of my two rules above, and that some of the songs on that list would be objectively better than some of the songs on my list. When that alternate list happens, I'll worry about responding to it, because for now, I've got my own list to do.

10) Bon Jovi, "Dead or Alive"

Right off the bat we start off with controversy -- most folks would probably recommend "Livin' On A Prayer" as a better rock opening. However, starting the list off with this song lets me begin explaining the concept of 'style points'.

There's nothing specifically wrong with "Livin' On A Prayer", but it is fundamentally very similar to many other rock intros -- I could probably just have gone with Autograph's "Turn Up the Radio" as number 1 and saved myself a lot of research time -- but uniqueness counts. So too does the idea that the purpose of the intro is to introduce a song, and "Dead or Alive" definitely invokes the 'Old West' feel that the song will then mine for semiotic references. Plus, it's pretty damned cool -- if a rock intro makes you think, "Hey, something cool is about to happen," then it's done its job.

9) The Doobie Brothers, "China Grove"

On the other hand, sometimes just some kick-ass guitar riffs make for a great rock intro. This one definitely invokes 'fun time' as part of its intro promise, and the song doesn't disappoint.

One thing learned while looking for the YouTube reference for this sone -- the intro loses something significant when performed without the keyboard part.

8) Roy Orbison, "Oh, Pretty Woman"

The sabermetric study of baseball statistics (you were just waiting for me to sneak in that reference, weren't you?) has a concept called "era adjustments" -- the purpose of an era adjustment is to take into account that some times in baseball history were especially favorable to or hostile to a particular kind of player. Without era adjustments, we'd think all the great pitchers pitched in the Dead Ball Era and during the mid 1960s, and all the great hitters played during the 20s, 30s, and the Steroid Era.

You can do something similar with rock songs, particularly with respect to 'covers', where one band re-makes a song originally made famous by another band or, more rarely, where a band makes a song famous that wasn't originally famous when done by another band.

When making an era adjustment, it's a good idea to have a baseline in mind, and in our case, we're going to use Van Halen as the baseline. For instance, when Van Halen covered the song "You Really Got Me" by the Kinks, Ray Davies of the Kinks mentioned that he prefers the Van Halen cover to the original song, comparing the original to a prop plane and the cover to a jet fighter. (Later, when informed of this, Eddie Van Halen said he was flattered but that he preferred the original, saying "Ray, that prop stuff is the shit.")

On the other hand, Van Halen also did a cover of Roy Orbison's classic "Oh, Pretty Woman", and the result is pretty much what Van Halen called his cover of "You Really Got Me" -- modernized, but not really improved.

By the way, you will not find a Van Halen song on this list, not even the intro I judge the best of all Van Halen intros, "Hot For Teacher". I feel the same way about this as I feel about Jack Morris for the Hall of Fame -- someone has to serve as the equivalent of the 'you must be at least this tall to enter this ride' sign, and I have no problem with Morris being that guy among baseball pitchers or Van Halen being that band for rock intros.

7) KISS, "Detroit Rock City"

I'd be willing to bet that, if you surveyed people about what specific song they thought of when you said the words 'classic rock', this song would be in the top 5, and maybe the top song overall. It might not rate as my best rock intro, but it's arguably the ur-example of a classic rock intro.

6) Golden Earring, "Radar Love"

If a song was going to challenge #7 above as 'classic rock intro you think of when you hear the words 'classic rock'', this would be the one.

This song also does the 'intro to the intro' thing -- the opening guitar riffs don't seem to have a lot to do at first with the drum and bass riff that composes the actual intro to the song, but then you realize that the guitar riffs are meant to invoke 'the road' (which is why this sone also makes some great traveling music).

Golden Earring as a band is a really interesting story -- their two well-known US hits, "Radar Love" and "Twilight Zone" came out more than a decade apart, suggesting to some that this is a band that came within one song of being a 'one-hit wonder'. In fact, the band is Dutch and has had multiple hits on the Dutch charts in its over 50-year career.

"Twilight Zone" was disqualified from the list, of course, because of the spoken-word component of its own intro:

Somewhere in a lonely hotel room
There's a guy starting to realize
That eternal fate has turned its back on him.
It's two AM.

That would rate very highly on a follow-up list of 'best rock song intros with words'.

Finally, you haven't lived until you've done 'Radar Love' on Rock Band 2 as the drummer and gotten the 'great solo!' pop-up.

5) Joe Walsh, "Life's Been Good"

Joe Walsh's career as a rock star was predicated on his ability to build songs around awesome guitar riffs, and this song is no exception. Though other riffs might be more complex, this one is, in my opinion anyway, the most classic.

If I ever end up writing a TV series featuring a lottery winner as wandering private investigator, this song will be its theme.

4) The Police, "Synchronicity II"

Some might be offended by the inclusion of a synthesizer riff on my list, but two things:

First, the riff presages the 'weirdness' that is the dual-story in the song's lyrics (though I disagree that the 'something' that crawls up from the depths of a Scottish lake is actually Nessie -- even in the 70's it was presumed that Nessie was a dinosaur, not a humanoid creature).

Second, the traditional guitars and drums come in quickly enough, with what for the era, was a thrashing dance beat. (Kids these days probably consider it tame, though.)

In these ways, the intro to "Synchronicity II" definitely hits the style points meter, and hard.

3) The Rolling Stones, "Gimme Shelter"

Probably the most influential rock intro on this list, and in a depressingly ironic fashion -- the song itself is pretty clearly anti-war, given the lyrics, but it's best known for being used in Vietnam war-era depictions of the combat itself. It was used in the TV series "China Beach", and eventually found its way into the "Call of Duty" soundtrack. Ultimately it's all cash for the Stones, and the song is good enough to warrant being recognized by the current generation of gamers, but it's more than a bit sad that some folks who know the song only from gaming might not actually pick up that it's not really the song they might think it is.

2) Molly Hatchet, "Flirting With Disaster"

Take "Detroit Rock City" and add a fifth of Jack and you get this.

Another ironic twist, given the title and the chorus, is that the song is really just about the singer's ambiguous feelings about his musical career, not about any deep political or philosophical issue.

1) Supertramp, "Take the Long Way Home"

Style points. And it's my list.

Depressingly, Roger Hodgson (who is now billed as a singer-songwriter) does this song on his tours, but only with the piano part. Without the synth opening chord and especially the harmonica, the intro just isn't the same. The version linked above is a cover that nails the intro, but doesn't carry that energy through to the song. The original Supertramp version remains definitive.

A few other honorable mentions, more to show that I did my homework than anything else:

Deep Purple, "Smoke on the Water"
Def Leppard, "Pour Some Sugar On Me"
Guns 'n' Roses, "Welcome to the Jungle"
Tom Petty, "Runnin' Down A Dream"
Night Ranger, "Sister Christian"

and of course, probably the best-known rock intro of all:

Led Zeppelin, "Stairway to Heaven"