This choice is often arbitrary, although once someone has chosen a particular faction, their friends will often choose the same one so they can play together. But at the time a player joins, they have no particular love for the side they choose or hatred for their faction’s enemies.

This soon changes, however, especially on game servers that promote warfare between the factions (so called player-vs-player servers, such as the one I played on). A raging hatred exists between players on opposite factions that extends out of the game world and onto forums, blogs and so on, where people insult each other, claim the other side has an unfair advantage, etc.

In other words, people who have a ton of things in common, from their frequently similar personal characteristics (young, male, etc.) to their obvious appreciation for the same type of entertainment, spend hours flaming each other as a result of an arbitrary, meaningless choice when they first started playing the game.

As in the world of video games, so in the world of web development. I’m sometimes dismayed by the attitudes expressed by Python programmers towards Ruby programmers, and vice versa.

Don’t get me wrong: lots of people from these two communities are perfectly civil towards one another, and some of the tension is simply a healthy competitive rivalry. But that is not always the case, which is weird: after all, both languages are dynamic and cutting-edge, both communities are producing fantastic software, and both communities are generally contemptuous towards people who program in PHP. So what’s the problem?

Or check out the massive flamewar on Smashing Magazine because someone had the nerve to suggest that web developers don’t need to use Macs. Five hundred comments (and counting) of Mac users bashing Windows users bashing Mac users, occasionally interspersed by pious Linux users wondering what all the fuss is about.

But all of these people are web developers. Some, of course, are respectful to each other, but others are not: the fact they are speaking to someone who is probably much like them, with the same career and probably many of the same interests, does not matter as much (at least at that moment) as that person’s choice of computer.

When we’re online, we often disagree the most with the people who are just like us. Is this the result of competition, like the conjured up war between the Horde and the Alliance in World of Warcraft or the pressures of the hyperactive pace of web development? Or is it a way of insisting that we are unique individuals, even when presented with evidence to the contrary – our peers?

Offline, the situation changes. Put a Ruby programmer and a Python programmer in a room together at a party and they’re bound to meet at some point and trigger the kind of endless, arcane-to-normal-people conversation that prompts their wives to suggest leaving. Put a couple of WoW players into a room at a party – actually, never mind, WoW players don’t really leave the house.

There’s a simple solution for all of this then: when you deal with people online, treat them the way you treat the people you see every day, in person. Even if they still use PHP. Or they’re Horde. You ganking bastards.

For example, if you were to see Suzanne Somers on Oprah telling women that injecting estrogen directly into their vaginas (don’t worry, that link does not go to a photo) will make them look and feel younger, you may think, “that’s crazy,” and you may even feel compelled to remark to someone near you that you believe “that woman is freaking nuts”.

When you criticize an apparently ridiculous person or idea, however, you open yourself up to a common line of attack, which is to point out that history’s revolutionary thinkers and inventors were usually mocked when they announced their discoveries.

I’m slogging my way through Steven Pinker’s The Stuff of Thought right now and I came across a brilliant counter-argument to that. In this paragraph, Pinker is discussing the radical linguistic theories of philosopher and psychologist Jerry Fodor:

Fodor correctly notes that history has often vindicated unconventional ideas – after all, they all laughed at Christopher Columbus and Thomas Edison. The problem is that they all laughed at Manny Schwartz, too. What, you’ve never heard of Manny Schwartz? He was the originator and chief defender of the theory of Continental Drip: that the southern continents are pointy at the bottom because they dribbled downward as they cooled from a molten state. The point is that they were right to laugh at Manny Schwartz. Extraordinary claims [...] deserve extraordinary evidence.

So the next time someone pulls this one on you when you express skepticism about an extraordinary claim, just ask, “What, you’ve never heard of Manny Schwartz?”

Global food prices continue to rise. United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon has warned that “We risk the spectre of wider-spread hunger, malnutrition and social unrest on an unprecedented scale”.

Food riots in Haiti, rice rationing in India and even the United States, panic buying in Britain: so far, Canadians have been insulated from these phenomena, but not for long. Our rendezvous with rising prices for life’s essentials is on the way.

To markets, food is just another commodity, subject to the same profiteering and speculation as tech stocks, minerals and oil futures.

The difference is that food, like air and water, is the most basic of necessities. Not being able to afford food is a death sentence.

Markets for food used to represent a means to fairly compensate farmers and a motivation for them to keep growing food. Now, global markets have set up a powerful and dangerous competition for a vital resource.

Go read the rest if you’re interested.

Other semi-recent writings on RTH that I haven’t linked to from here include As Spring Arrives, Perennial Issues and Guerilla Gardeners Resurface and Vanishing into the American Gulag.

I hope you’re having a great summer!

Those making this case [for atheism lately] have been dubbed the “new atheists.” They have also been called fanatics who are dogmatic, zealous and intolerant of other views — the mirror image of religious extremists. As one English university dean said in the Guardian, Richard Dawkins is “just as fundamentalist as the people setting off bombs in the Tube.”

Less Olympian thinkers have portrayed strident atheists as hacking away at the bonds of morality, which must inevitably lead to various forms of depravity ranging from the sexual to the genocidal.

Don’t you know Stalin was an atheist? That’s the way it goes. First you read Richard Dawkins. Then you have an abortion. Then you’re putting a fresh coat of paint on the Gulag.

This frames the debate in a pleasingly symmetrical way. Over on that side are the insane religious fanatics who fly jets into skyscrapers and march around with signs saying “God Hates Fags.” Over there are fanatical atheists. Between the two extremes are sensible moderates who take the Goldilocks approach to faith and reason.

He goes on to sum up the famous atheist Richard Dawkins’ message:

If you claim that something is true, I will examine the evidence which supports your claim; if you have no evidence, I will not accept that what you say is true and I will think you a foolish and gullible person for believing it so.

That’s it. That’s the whole, crazy, fanatical package.

Well worth a full read.

During the Vietnam War, millions of gallons of Agent Orange were sprayed across regions of the country to destroy forest cover used by guerillas. It contained the dangerous dioxin TCCD. On this day in 1984, a $180 million out-of-court settlement was announced in the Agent Orange class-action suit brought by Vietnam veterans, who argued that exposure to AO had caused various cancers, birth defects, and other chronic diseases. The settlement came to government benefits of about $1,500 a month until 1997. Yet many Vietnamese victims who also suffer greatly have received nothing from the United States since the end of the war. Magnum and Slate present images of Vietnam’s victims of Agent Orange.

View the photo gallery (contains disturbing – more accurately, sad and tragic – images).

To think that Iraqis will have to endure a similar legacy from the depleted uranium munitions, chemical weapons, destruction of medical facilities and all the associated environmental costs of war…it’s absolutely infuriating.

These are war crimes, plain and simple. And so the three step process for ending the war in Iraq ought to be:

1. Withdraw
2. Pay massive reparations
3. Bring those responsible – Bush, Cheney, and all the others on down – to justice, which, since I oppose capital punishment even when it is well-deserved, means life imprisonment.

Even that would salve only a tiny portion of all this pain and suffering.

After police officers engaged him, he shot himself in the head. Another school shooting rampage had ended, and the search for answers – and the quest to assign blame – began.

Today we are back at the same tragic place. The terrible killings at Virginia Tech ended just hours ago, and already at least one “expert” is pointing to violent video games as the culprit, even though nothing is known about the shooter (or shooters) right now.

Violence on television, in film, and even on newscasts is also sure to be criticized once again, as the Ottawa Sun’s Michael Harris did in the aftermath of Dawson, writing that “Hollywood is an island floating on a pool of blood” and that the pertinent question for video game players considering committing violent acts is not “why”, but “why not?”

The gun industry will also come under increased scrutiny, although it has weathered these incidents many times before.

Some people are even arguing that if Virginia Tech was not a gun-free zone, that if students were allowed to carry weapons on campus, they would have been able to defend themselves and lives would have been saved.

And then there will be the endless examination of the perpetrator’s psyche, his past, his motivations, his upbringing or lack thereof, and all of the other countless factors that go into creating a human being.

In the end there will only be more questions. The friends and family of the victims will have those too, and they will also have a terrible measure of pain and loss.

Soon we will think as little of this event as we do about Anastasia now. And then it will happen all over again, because nothing will have changed much in the meantime.

Even if definite answers are found, established interests will prevent action from being taken. It’s a truism that every school shooting involves guns, but guns are a constitutionally-protected sacred cow in America, and Harper’s Conservatives are dismantling the long gun registry in Canada.

Measures to limit violent entertainment will be equally controversial. In fact, I can’t think of a single frequently-cited “reason” for these rampages that is likely to be implemented, or guaranteed to have success if it were.

Humans are imperfect and complex creatures. Human societies are even more imperfect and complex. People kill each other for a million different reasons, it seems.

If we were serious about fixing this problem, there’s really only one way to do it: take all of the best, most-cited, most reasonable and most likely to work ideas and implement them all at once.

Meanwhile, we should tell our loved ones how much we appreciate them, and renew our determination to do whatever it takes to make the world a bit of a better place.

There are a few reasons for that, including impending fatherhood and the sudden demise of the business I formerly co-owned (my lawyer has advised me to refrain from getting into the details surrounding that demise, so all I will say is that it wasn’t my fault). But one of the major reasons is I’ve shifted focus from writing here to writing for Raise the Hammer.

Writing for RTH continues to be a satisfying experience. I love writing posts here, and it’s my hope that when things settle down a little, I can get back into the rhythm of blogging. Blogging is a freer experience than writing for RTH, since RTH’s focus is more on urban issues, and more on local issues, while here I can write about whatever I want.

On the other hand, writing for RTH is in some ways a more meaningful experience. I greatly appreciate readers of this blog and the dialogue we engage in.

However, writing on just one of the many millions of blogs that are out there is akin to shouting from the bleachers of a football stadium: the people sitting next to you can’t help but notice your yelling, and they may even be slightly annoyed with you, but the course of the game and the opinions of the spectators remain unaffected.

I believe that Raise the Hammer, however, has a genuine impact on Hamilton. I know that we are able to get the attention of some Hamiltonians, some city councillors and even the mayor, and there’s an ongoing conversation with Hamiltonians that is hugely rewarding.

Had someone told me a few months ago that at some point I’d be sitting in city hall, having a meeting with the mayor and two of his aides, I’d have laughed. But Ryan, the editor of RTH, contacted the mayor’s office shortly after he was elected, and not long afterwards we were having a relaxed conversation with him about Raise the Hammer and his agenda for his term in office.

This all sums up to that famous activist phrase, “Think globally, act locally.” As a blogger writing about international events, I’m just one of millions. As a citizen of Hamilton writing about local affairs, I’m one of thousands or maybe even hundreds. Better odds, better audience.

So if you miss reading my posts, maybe you’ll enjoy the writing on Raise the Hammer instead. I wrote an article for the new issue called As Spring Arrives, Perennial Issues and Guerilla Gardeners Resurface, there’s lots of other articles in this new issue, and the Hammerblog is always hopping.

The Hammerblog includes great material that covers national and international issues as well, so it’s not all just Hamilton-based.

Thanks for reading and don’t step checking back in – I’ll keep writing, even if infrequently.

As support for action on climate change continues to grow, some influential people are carefully cultivating what they call “climate change skepticism” in order to make meaningful progress on the environment politically impossible.

These climate change “deniers”, as an impatient public in the mood for change has started calling them, fall into three categories: those that maintain climate change is not happening, those that say it is not our fault, and those that say there’s nothing we can do about it.

Actually, these are not really categories. They’re more like stages that fit neatly into the “denial, anger, acceptance” model.

The National Post’s Lorne Gunter was in the first stage a mere five years ago. In 2002 he wrote Five things every Canadian should know about Kyoto, starting with “The Earth isn’t warming”.

Then he hedged his bets by following up with number two (“If the Earth is warming, it is not necessarily a bad thing”) and three (“Even if warming is real, there’s a good chance humans are not the cause”).

Mr. Gunter clearly knows his own mind, because his article of 2002 neatly predicted where he would stand now, in 2007: global warming is real. But it’s not our fault.

You can read the full article here.