ESPN: Is it All Really News, or is it Just Another Game?

A few weeks ago, a reporter on ESPN named Skip Bayless, whom I'm sure many of you have heard of and most of you can't stand, made a comment about Russell Westbrook who is the point guard of the Oklahoma City Thunder.   He said that he was too shot happy and needed to be more of a team player.  Now when I first heard about this, I took it with a grain of salt because, well, its Skip Bayless.  The man showboats and sensationalizes everything. He'll take a stance on anything or any one just to have an opinion.  For those of you who don't know, Russell Westbrook is the second best player on his team in the NBA. His next comment immediately following that remark gave me a quizzical look.  He compared himself to the great "Pistol" Pete when he was in high school.  He doesn't really look like the athletic type, so I let it sit out there for a short while, and soon enough, I saw an answer to my initial doubts about this.  Skip rode the bench in high school and didn't even make varsity until his senior year, where he averaged less than 3 points per game.  I wondered if anybody would actually call him out on this, and sure enough, Michigan's own Jalen Rose came the the call.

Skip predictably acted sheepish and tried to change the topic as soon as he could.  This kind of stuff is happening all of the media, not just in sports, but I seem to see it more and more often on sports channels like ESPN and personally, it gets really old, really fast.  I'd rather have Sportcenter on 24/7 than listen to some of the people that come on some of their shows and try to act like they now things about sports or have some entitled opinion.  I know that rating are what drive television and marketing and its a failed system.  But when your the self proclaimed "worldwide leader in sports", I'd think you could move that base standard a little higher than everyone else.  ESPN has more leeway than probably any other corporation to not have as much flamboyance on their shows, but it seems like they just fall into the habit of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

Maybe this is just a sports fans opinion of what an ideal sports coverage channel should be like, but I'd like to think that I'm not the only person who gets annoyed whenever Colin from Sports Nation or Skip Bayless or several other announcers say things that make you wish you could just change the channel and wait until they were done talking.  This almost seems like the game of who can attract more viewers and make more of an impression has reduced the standards of television of all kinds.  Maybe ESPN is just moving there more slowly than others, but I just hopes that the like of Jersey Shore and the Real Housewives don't some how get into the ideas of the producers of ESPN as a way to "attract a new audience."  I might just give up my hope for TV altogether and just use websites to get my sports news.

War Games in War Games?

We talked in class about war games recently, but I read an article that put a little different spin on "war games" that I hadn't really given much thought about.  The article is here if you care to read it, but I'll just give a brief summary of what its about to those that don't want to read it.  The article talks about how the U.S. Navy is recruiting video game hackers to start a project in which the hackers will go into video game systems in order to find potential terrorists or the transmission of top secret information.

Courtesy of The Mod Shop

The thought of this intrigued me in more than ways than one.  It first made wonder what kind of hacker would want to send his or her list of hacks that they have done or been able to achieve to the federal government.  The thought of telling the very entity that you are most likely breaking the rules/laws of usually isn't in the best interest of the applicant.  I wonder if there is some kind of amnesty or anonymity concept that would be employed in order to actually be worth the time of someone who is more qualified for the task, even if how they got to be that talented isn't necessarily "by the book." The second thing that came to mind was that this might seem like a breach of privacy, but then I thought about it a little more.  If there are people already capable of doing this on their own through practice on systems that you and I use already, then its not that big of a jump to have some of them working for the government in a productive way that can also be regulated or at least better controlled.  I know the whole idea of Big Brother looking over your shoulder makes a lot of people cringe, but when you are already susceptible to having your information tracked by people that aren't associated with the government, why not at least get some benefit from it?

But back to the games.  The way that these hackers work to get inside systems to either retrieve data, change data, or corrupt files is nothing new to anyone with some knowledge of the technology in today's world.  The fact that the Navy thinks that they could potentially track down terrorists through the video game systems that everyone plays has a touch of genius to it.  Many video games, especially first person shooters are used as a supplement to military training by armed forces around the world.  It's not far fetched to think that terrorists could be using the games that we love to play to actually train soldiers on how to act in war.  I know that our own military uses games like Call of Duty and Battlefield as a way to help hone the skills of soldiers in a cheap and effective way.  The online features of these systems could also easily be used to transfer information either through a typed out message, or a through audio messages, or even during game play.  It seems like it would be very difficult to track and find possible terrorists just because of the sheer immensity of what this would entail and whether or not once something is found if it can even be used to execute a search warrant or the like.  I still think its possible, I just have my doubts about the plausibility of it.

I thought this was a interesting way that games can be used in real life to possibly save lives and that this could potentially be a way to locate terrorists that are hard to find and might overlook something as simple as a gamer tag.  I'd be interested to hear what everyone else thinks about this.

How Can We Improve UC-256?

Recently, Ryan and I gave our minor quest IV presentation on imagining the University of Michigan in the 21^st century. However, I felt that it would be interesting to explore the other option, ways to improve UC-256, through a blog post.

            To begin, I think that the structure behind “guilds” should be altered. Currently, working within guilds is encouraged, but it’s not necessary at all to receive a top grade. In fact, the only assignment that actually requires some sort of group work at all is the book quest, which only consists of 1000 points. Everything else is individual work. In fact, nearly all of the guild points are merely the cumulative individual scores for certain assignments, including blog posting, minor quests, and major quests. Thus, I believe that there should be more assignments where group work is required since guild points are really just the sum of individual points.

            Additionally, guilds should only be created after the initial drop/add deadline. Smaller guilds are required to do more work for the same amount of points. For instance, in an 8-person guild, each individual only needs to receive 750 points from blog posting to max out the guild’s score. However, in a 4 person guild, each individual would need 1500 points, which requires at least an additional 3 blog posts per group member. The same applies to all of the other assignments including minor quests and major quests since the guild score is merely the sum of the few highest individual scores. Therefore, bigger guilds have more of an opportunity to receive the maximum amount of points because of their strength in numbers. An 8-person guild can have twice as many attempts to receive a high major quest score compared to a 4-person guild.

            Furthermore, one of the main themes in UC-256 is competition. I think that guilds should compete against each other for bonus points in certain assignments because it would foster more of a team mentality within a guild. Also, competition is a tool for motivation, and it would make the class more interactive. In the class that Ben taught, guilds competed against each other for bonus points in a debate about certain NCAA basketball topics. This was a fun and interactive way of guilds competing against one another, and I think there should be other, similar activities introduced into the course.

            Finally, I think that there should be a requirement for participating in lectures where guest speakers talk. Some of these lectures can get a little awkward because there isn’t enough participation by us students. This is partly because some speakers perhaps aren’t as engaging as others, but that shouldn’t be an excuse for the lack of class discussion. Perhaps each guild should be required to contribute to the discussion each class (it would get too out of control if each individual student was required to do so).

            What do you think of these proposed changes to UC-256? Do you have any ideas to make this class even better?

Is Facebook a competition? I was looking at my friends on Facebook the other day and noticed that I didn't really know 75% of them. They just happened to be people that I passed at some point or know me through a friend or I know them through a friend. But I don't personally know this many people. As discussed in lecture that one time, we discussed social networking and how many people you could be connected to. It only took a few to then be connected to many. Is this the reason we desire to have the highest number of Facebook friends possible?

Everyday I seem to get a new friend request. Sometimes I have no idea who they are or where they are from. Sometimes, it's people that went to my high school whether I was in the school at the same time or not. I am always more inclined to accept those from my school even if I have never heard their name before. I think we need to start realizing games are games and we need to separate that from the internet. Trying to have as many friends as possible to seem cool may hurt you in the end. You never know who you could be accepting.

This picture is a good representation of everyone compiling together because they may have one mutual friend. Don't let this fool you; you may not know the same people, everyone might just be accepting and so it is a false mutual friend and you are left with a stranger--just like the person in the picture. 

Entropy: What does it mean and what does it say about our lives?

Let me start by saying that I know very little about chemistry.

Last week in class, we heard Professor Brian Coppola discuss how the way in which chemicals combine and form is all based on statistics, on the probability that a group will be “same” or “different.” according to Professor Coppola, in most cases, the probability that a group of molecules, atoms, or materials will be “different” or disorganized is much larger than the alternative. In effect, chemical compounds are likely to be disorganized.

This conclusion caught me off guard. Last week I attended TEDx, and a speaker, Dr. Sharon Glotzer, talked fully about entropy, what it means in chemistry but also how it could relate to our lives. She continued to repeat: “There are more ways for the objects to be ordered than disordered.”

Maybe I’m looking at this all the wrong way, or maybe I just don’t understand chemistry and misheard her, but isn’t this conclusion the opposite? I specifically recall her showing a simulation of a bunch of molecules being thrown into a box. She showed that as the box was shaken, the molecules began to assemble geometrically, limiting the amount of extra space between molecules and compacting the volume of the group (if anyone can find a video of this, please post. I'm out of luck.)

How does this relate to the simulation that Professor Coppola showed yesterday with the marbles? As he shook the vile, the marbles didn’t form any sort of pattern or form. Instead, they were displaced randomly and remained so.

A potential conclusion could be that his demonstration wasn’t attempting to show the geometric organization that could or could not result, but rather how there was no organization in where the red or green marbles would end up. If someone clear this topic up for me, that would be great.

For now, I’m going to take Wikipedia’s stance on entropy:

“In classical thermodynamics, the concept of entropy is defined phenomenologically by the second law of thermodynamics, which states that the entropy of an isolated system always increases or remains constant. Thus, entropy is also a measure of the tendency of a process, such as a chemical reaction, to be entropically favored, or to proceed in a particular direction. It determines that thermal energy always flows spontaneously from regions of higher temperature to regions of lower temperature, in the form of heat. These processes reduce the state of order of the initial systems, and therefore entropy is an expression of disorder or randomness.”

“In statistical mechanics, entropy is a measure of the number of ways in which a system may be arranged, often taken to be a measure of "disorder" (the higher the entropy, the higher the disorder). This definition describes the entropy as being proportional to the natural logarithm of the number of possible microscopic configurations of the individual atoms and molecules of the system (microstates) which could give rise to the observed macroscopic state (macrostate) of the system.”

In general, I’m reading that entropy is more associated with disorder rather than order. What was Dr. Glotzer referring to?

I think this concept of organization is relatable to not only molecules and materials, but to our everyday lives. “There are more ways for the objects to be disordered than ordered.” This could be the philosophy behind our instincts to organize our days, organize people, and organize games. Just as molecules are statistically more likely to be disordered, so are our lives (maybe a stretch, but maybe not). I guess, all I’m saying is that next time you have no idea what’s going on and feel like you have no control over the chaos surrounding you…blame entropy.

Here is a very entertaining mix on entropy and with a very cool trick that may involve entropy:

(hint: the trick is not real.)

Growing up with a brother, he was always into the newest game station or video game. I however did not find that stuff as entertaining. I loved to play with dolls and stuffed animals with the occasional board game. I also loved going on the computer to play games. When I found out about this website, it was everything I loved.

Neopets was a site in which these cute animals lived in their own world. As their owner, I had to feed them and keep them warm and healthy. In order to do this, you would have to play games on the site. With these games, you would win coins. These coins represented money. In this virtual world for the neopets to live in, I would go shopping for all of the necessities that my neopets would need to survive. Often, my neopet would not like my food of choice. The goal would then be to pick out the best snacks so that my neopet would be as satisfied as possible. Under each neopet, there would be a status stating if the neopet was ok or hungry or anything else.

It would get very competitive too. I would compete with all of my friends to see who could have the most neopets and who could keep their neopets alive and happy the longest and who had the most coins and highest scores in the games. In the game, it was an alternate reality for us to have interesting animals as pets and they could have anything they wanted as long as I earned enough coins.

 

This is somewhat similar to Second Life or SIMS. Both of these are online virtual worlds where you can create who you want to be and how you want your life to be. Only with neopets, it was with exotic, cute animals. I thoroughly enjoyed playing with my neopets. Sometimes, I wish I could remember my login information so that I could experience a part of my childhood all over again.

UM Education System: Are We Really "Doing It Right"?

Over the past two class periods, many ideas have been presented to reinvent the education system at UM. Yesterday, the Colbert Report on Comedy Central highlighted the University of Michigan among other school as "doing [higher education] right." If you haven't seen the video, check it out:

The Colbert Report
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What do you make of this claim? I have no doubt that UM is an incredible school. I mean, we all chose to go here. But many of the presentations in class examined the problems with education on campus, and offered feasible and innovative solutions to these problems. Is Richard Hersh wrong?

As a side note, I wonder if there is a way to present our class' ideas to the university. Maybe we could actually affect the way in which education on campus is carried out. There is a student group on campus called rEDesign (check out their Twitter feed) that is setting out to change the education system, however, it only deals with K-12. Is a similar group present on campus with a goal to change higher education?