Month: February 2001

In My Day, We Didn’t Have Fancy Graphics…

…computer games were all text and we liked it. We loved it.

Seriously, I’ve seen a lot of sites posting their “Best Computer Games of 2000” lists, and frankly most of the games featured are crap. Several magazines and web sites put Shiny’s Sacrifice on their list. Phuleeeze. The game is incredibly gorgeous, but pretty much unplayable due to interface problems. Diablo II? I guess if you were one of the lucky folks who didn’t have your character nerfed or assassinated.

I don’t know if it was the best game, period, but the best game I played in 2000 was EA Sports’ Front Office Football 2001. You want graphics? Go play Madden 2001. FOF2K1 is almost entirely text. It does have some pretty splash screens and interface, but a lot of fans of the game actually used third party tools to rip out the graphics.

What FOF2K1 does have is the best sports management simulation to date. Draft players, deal with free agents, try to get fickle fans to turn out to the stadium, try to work within the NFL’s impossibly difficult salary cap formula. There’s a great deal of possible automation — you can turn scouting duties over to your scouts, hire coaches to draw up game plans, but realistically if you’re going to get this detailed into football you’re going to want to do it all yourself. This is the sort of game where you’re going to spend 45 minutes in the training camp screens deciding which plays you want your team to concentrate on.

One of the best things about FOF2K1 is the reporting. You want stats? This game has stats everywhere. The only drawback is there is no online version yet so you can’t go head to head with people over a few seasons — EA is developing an online version, however, as part of a content deal with AOL.

The real amazing thing is that the game is largely the work of a single programmer, Jim Gindin. He’s currently at work on a much anticipated college version of the game, and perhaps other sports (suggestion — while there are baseball management simulations, there has yet to be a decent basketball game in this genre). I can’t wait to get my hands on that.

FAO Report on African Food Production

In December 2000, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations released a report on cereal production in Western Africa that highlighted some interesting data on food production in Africa — namely the highly variable levels of said production.

In 1999, cereal production in Western Africa hit record levels thanks to excellent weather and relatively limited problems with pests. As typically happens when food product exceeds records, the 2000 cereal crops are expected to be dramatically lower, with production for the region estimated to decline to up to 15 percent back to average levels for the region.

This region is made of up nine countries, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Chad, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal. Here’s how total cereal production breaks down for these countries as a whole from 1999-2000,

Year Cereal Production (thousands of tons)
1991 – 9,500
1992 – 8,800
1993 – 8,800
1994 – 10,000
1995 – 9,100
1996 – 9,200
1997 – 8,100
1998 – 10,800
1999 – 11,200
2000 (forecast) – 9,500

Meanwhile in the coastal countries of West Africa, which include Benin, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Togo, cereal production is expected to be just under record levels. Cereal production is up everywhere in Western coastal Africa except in countries such as Liberia and Sierra Leone which face ongoing civil wars.

Year Ceral Production (thousands of tons)
1992 – 25,700
1993 – 26,100
1994 – 26,800
1995 – 27,800
1996 – 29,100
1997 – 29,400
1998 – 27,300
1999 – 28,600
2000 (forecast) – 29,200

(The FAO does not explain why it starts this series at 1992 rather than 1991).

Source:

Preliminary Assessment of 2000 Cereal Production in Western Africa. Food and Agricultural Organization, December 2000.

Straw: Some Animal Rights Protesters "Frankly Evil"

Great Britain’s Home Secretary, Jack Straw, announced recently that, in light of the overwhelming level of harassment directed by animal rights activists against the directors and staff members of Huntingdon Life Sciences, the government would seek new police powers to deal with the threat posed from activists. Saying that some of the protesters are, “frankly evil,” Straw said the government was considering introducing a new measure to keep the names and addresses of directors and staff members at animal research facilities secret.

Animal rights activists in Great Britain widely distributed the names and home addresses of HLS staff members, who were then subject to harassment up to and including death threats, fire bombing of vehicles, and assaults. Straw affirmed that the British government believes that animal testing is necessary for medical advances.

“The measures will allow the police to take action to prevent extremists protesting outside people’s homes and will also strengthen the law against the sending of malicious communications,” Straw told Parliament.

Meanwhile, police in Britain believe that a series of letter bomb attacks on shops in Great Britain could be the work of animal rights activists. In January, ten nail bombs were sent to farms, pet food stores, charities and other animal-related enterprises. On January 31, for example, a letter bomb was sent to the British Heart Foundation, and the woman who opened the letter had to be treated for shock. In all, four people have been injured including a six-year-old girl who suffered serious leg injuries and an estate agent who had a bomb explode in her face and may lose her sight as a result.

Sources:

British police link letter bombs, blame activists. Tom Armitage, Reuters, February 1, 2001.

Straw vows protection for animal research staff. Ananova, February 5, 2001.

IWF Finally Brings Some Data to MIT Sex Discrimination Case

A little less than a year ago, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology published a report, A Study on the Status of Women Faculty in Science at MIT, that claimed there was institutionalized discrimination against women at MIT. The university followed up that report by increasing the salaries of female professors and took other actions to remedy the discrimination.

But was there really ever any discrimination occurring at MIT? This question was raised by conservative groups who noted that the MIT report was a) written by the very same people who had filed complaints of sexual discrimination, and b) was completely devoid of any actual evidence of sexual discrimination. The MIT report essentially said that merely asserting sexual discrimination was enough to prove it.

The lengths to which the report went to avoid presenting any evidence was bizarre. Even such data such as average salaries for male and female professors was removed from the final report.

Unfortunately nobody but MIT has access to the salary data so the issue of how women and men are paid can’t be addressed, but the Independent Women’s Forum has released a study that does answer another question — assuming that men and women are compensated differently, is it possible that this is because men and women on MIT’s faculty perform differently?

Since this whole episode was kicked off by the allegations of biology professor Nancy Hopkins — who was also the chief architect of the MIT report — the IWF examined the productivity of biology professors. Specifically it looked at publications, citations and grant money by biology professors.

The results eerily mirror the claims about sex discrimination at MIT. For older professors who earned doctorates from 1971 to 1976, there was a wide disparity in publication and citation for men and women, while for younger professors who earned their PhDs between 1988 and 1993 there was a rough parity between the productivity of men and women.

There were 11 professors in the older group (six men, five women). Of those, three of the men had published more than 100 papers from 1989-2000, but only one of the woman had done so. Only one out of the six male professors had published fewer than 50 papers, but four out of five women had published fewer than 50 papers. When it came to citations, the disparity was even more dramatic. Three of the six men had more than 10,000 citations. The most widely cited female had a little under 3,000. When it came to federal grants, there was relative parity by gender except for a single male professor who had almost three times as many federal grants as anyone else in the group.

For the younger group, who had recently earned their doctorates, there was far more parity. There was a single male biologist who had published 120 papers and was cited 14,000 times — far more than anyone else in the group — but the second highest publication count was by a woman, and the second most widely cited individual was female. Similarly the top performer for citations per paper was a woman, and several women had more citations per paper than their male colleagues.

Based on this data, it would be expected that there would be wide disparities in salaries and resources devoted to the male scientists than female scientists in the older group, while we should see roughly equal salaries and resources among the younger scientists. Since MIT has refused to release the data it used, it is impossible to say for sure whether or not this is the case. However, when the MIT report first broke it was widely reported that younger associate professors reported much higher satisfactions with their salaries and available resources than female professors who had been at MIT much longer (and the younger professor’s views were routinely dismissed as being a result of inexperience or naivete).

Source:

Confession Without Guilt? Patricia Hausman and James H. Steiger, The Independent Women’s Forum, February 2001.

PETA: Puffy Combs Guilty of Murdering Animals

At the moment, rap mogul Sean “Puffy” Combs is on trial for allegedly discharging a handgun in a New York City club. Combs claims he didn’t have a gun on him the night of the shooting, but several witnesses say they saw him fire off a round.

Regardless of how his trial turns out, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals maintains that Combs is guilty of murdering poor defenseless animals, and PETA activists have been protesting outside of the courthouse where his trial is taking place.

Among other ventures, Combs produces his own line of clothes under the brand name “Sean John” that prominently features Fur. Combs also regularly wears fur. According to PETA, its members have been showing up at the trial with signs reading, “Puffy: Accessory to Murder of Animals” and “Animals Killed for Your Fur Got the Death Penalty.”

No word on what Puffy thinks of his PETA protesters.

Source:

PETA To Puffy: You’re Guilty!. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, February 2, 2001.