NBA Finals

I've watched quite a bit of this year's playoffs; having watched every Pacers - Heat game and up to now every Finals game. The series is now tied at 2-2, the Heat having responded to a 3 point massacre on Tuesday night with a resurgent game from Dwayne Wade. For some reason the popular narrative for the Heat is that Wade is suddenly Methuselah and on the verge of keeling over at all times. Wade is not having a great playoffs but he was still one of the most efficient players in the league by PER. As if to verify this Wade was kind enough to rattle off 31 points just to prove that the reports of his demise were greatly exaggerated.

Overall this has been a strange series to say the least; the first game was superb, very few turnovers on either side and generally smooth play throughout. Parker hit a "dagger" shot right at the end of the game that was awesome. Game 2 was also pretty solid up until the end of the third quarter when the Heat started to dominate; the game wound up having ~10 minutes of garbage time during which Lebron had a beastly block. Game 3 was a blowout for the Spurs in the second half, winning by one of the largest margins in finals history, most of the second half was garbage time here as well. San Antonio won on behalf of their 4th and 5th best players and a ridiculous 3 point shooting performance. Game 4 was back and forth until the last 6 or 7 minutes of once again garbage time though fortunately Tracy McGrady's cadaver didn't make an appearance, the new Human Victory Cigar taking over for Darko Milicic.

The Pacers Heat series went to 7 games and was sort of a back and forth of one team fucking up; in the case of the Finals it's a little better as you see ridiculously good performances from key players instead of just college level play because of Hibbert and separately Miami's suffocating defense. It's certainly more interesting to watch up until the garbage time sequences. The Spurs are incredibly poorly rated historically and if Miami didn't make it to the Finals it could have been the worst rated Finals of all time; they have a really interesting and fluid team that's held together for a decade and been successful the entire time. However they don't really do anything particularly flashy, they pass well and shoot well and lay-up well, but they don't have any absurdly good athletes to do anything ridiculous.

Contrast with Miami who is by far the most interesting team in the league and has several physical paragons and you wind up with a pretty interesting narrative. Instead of pushing the athleticism vs style argument ABC is pushing some weird false dichotomy suggesting that the original "Big Three" were Ginobili, Parker, and Duncan; but while they've been fixtures in that organization most of the onus is on Duncan with Parker playing a very strong supporting role; Ginobili is a good player but far from on par with the other two and aside from Duncan none of these players would rate super highly as Free Agents. It'll be interesting to see how this series continues, hopefully we get more game 1's and less game 2/3's and Wade is more demonstrative of his talents to disprove idiotic critics.

More Rommel

Just a few random quotes from the aforementioned book:

"I don't know which I should admire more, your courage before the enemy or your courage before your superiors." ~ In reference to Major Sprosser, Rommel's CO for much of World War I who was often receptive to Rommel's various suggestions; pretty much the ideal CO for capable subordinates; even if it was counter to overarching orders from command (I know it's called OKH/OKW in World War II, not sure what the equivalent is in WWI).

"In a man to man fight the winner is he with one more round in his magazine." ~ While still on the Western Front Rommel wound up in a situation where he was outnumbered 5 to 1; the 1 being himself alone. He killed 2 men but then his rifle misfired so he decided to charge them with his bayonet and wound up wounded in No Man's Land; one of numerous perilous situations described in the book. Rommel's experiences were in several different fronts so it isn't exclusively about Trench Warfare as one would expect; thus  making the breadth of the novel much more engaging and interesting. I highly recommend the book to anyone interested in military history, while the strategic lessons to be learned are somewhat limited the tactical analysis is almost unparalleled in other modern war memoirs.

Attacks

On to another military post! Rommel is sort of a mixed bag in terms of acclaim; his successes in World War 2 were exceptional for a time but he did eventually lose; the extent to which his losses were due to Hitler's incompetence is not quite as clear. Rommel was the golden goose and thus received much more support than Manstein did on the Eastern front; both had a demonstrated tactical competence of the highest level. However they both fall short when compared to Napoleon, Hannibal, Julius Caesar, and the other "Great Commanders;" and nominally fall into the 2nd category of exceptional military leaders but not quite pre-eminent; alongside amongst others The Duke of Marlborough, Wellington, Cao Cao, and Robert E. Lee. Generals that are worth studying but not necessarily beyond reproach.

However, Rommel's exploits in World War I are absolutely incredible and this book describes them in great detail. His tactical awareness, shrewdness, and efficiency at the front in extremely stressful situations is incredible; and there is no doubt that he had the capacity to become as irreproachable as Napoleon; he simply was never in a commanding enough position to do so. I want to focus on one particular even and contrast it with a few other events and then make a stipulation regarding them.

Amid the 12th Battle of Isonzo Rommel led a significant detachment of around 500-600 crack Mountain troops; he was still just a Lieutenant at the time though his accomplishments should have put him on track to much greater success (though oddly his advancement was not especially merit based; where he was meritorious he did not advance swiftly, only being the equivalent of Lt. Colonel by 1933. Instead a fondness from Hitler is what resulted in his eventual elevation to Field Marshal). He led these troops against fortified Italian positions and captured 9000 men over the course of 3 days. At one specific point he breached enemy lines, unbeknownst to the enemy, and held a meandering road, capturing the unaware piecemeal supply trains of the enemy for a time.

Eventually an Italian brigade, 2000 strong, approached his position and he attempted to make them surrender; but they would not and instead attacked. However Rommel's position was so impressive that with only 150 men he was able to greatly depreciate their morale after several failed assaults and eventually capture them. With superior terrain, men, and tactical awareness he was able to improvise and capture a full brigade with little more than a company. Essentially he was able to defeat a foe 13 times his size.

There are other similar tales in history, Thermopylae is often well regarded as a smaller force holding a larger one. But Thermopylae was still a defeat, even if it was a militarily significant one. Much more impressive are those cases where a smaller force defeats an enormous one. Zhang Liao is said to have fought of an army of 100,000 men with a force of 800 at He Fei; Hao Zhao is said to have held off 300,000 with 1,000 at Chencang; both of these victories securing. Now both of these figures are almost certainly apocryphal; so the question becomes; with what size of force can one defeat a much larger force in a realistic circumstance.

We have a clear documented case of 13 times that was done with relative ease, the fighting was fierce but not astoundingly so; can an army of 30, 40, 50 times the size of the other be defeated? Well given enough incompetence I would say almost any military force can fail; but realistically given two opponents of similar technological capabilities 20 times is the cut-off. Rommel's case is probably the best I've found to demonstrate how this is possible; even given not an extensive planning session beforehand.

Utilizing superior troops, terrain, and morale one can force the opponent into a disadvantageous position and cause them to capitulate. While completely eradicating an enemy many times your size is often impossible simply destroying their morale and will to fight is not; destruction of the opponent's morale is what one should focus on. Imply that your force is larger than it is by presenting a fortified front or by using decoys; at the crucial points of impact place the greatest amount of firepower and deliver a sort of lethality only thought possible by an equal or greater force. Deception is of vast import on the military front; and in order to utilize deception the commander must have the "General's Mandate;" a free hand to do whatever he wants with no political machinations to stop him or delay him.

If it takes hours or days to verify a simple military order than any and all efficiency on a strategic level is lost and the only thing that is left is technological advantage and attrition; one does not want to fight attrition based battles in a case where one is outnumbered. Ingenuity is the route to success; not simply brute force. Generals and men of the military should be men of the highest standing in society; so well respected and thought of as some of the most intelligent men of their age; Frederick the Great was a well regarded philosopher prior to his turn as an incredible general; Julius Caesar was an exceptional politician in addition to being a superb marshal. When the term "Military Intelligence" becomes a joke or a pun you've run into quite the troublesome situation; lack of respect and lack of meritorious advancement and competence at the highest level will only lead to catastrophic defeats when faced with an opponent of equal strength.

Thinking

I was just thinking, what person is there that's simultaneously dumb enough to buy into societal systems and functionalities while still being useful and intelligent on an efficient level in their work environment. It doesn't strike me as possible; in other words not only is the correlation between merit and success non-existent it is even reversely correlated; because you can't have someone smart who is also a patriot; you can't have someone truly intelligent who's motivated by something like greed. Wealth at some point becomes a liquid mysterious substance. It isn't actually valuable for anything; it's not like the old days where you had a pile of gold or something; it's literally just a set of numbers and bank accounts containing nothing of physical value. There may have been a few countries who for brief instants in the past were worthy of extended amounts of respect and loyalty but that certainly isn't the case now; even the desired victor is still horribly flawed just a better choice than our end.

So there's two core detectable motivations for someone like me, survival of course and perhaps filial devotion. But the problem is that you are accultured in the United States to dismiss most aspects of filial devotion so I for example am lacking in this field to be sure. Now I do have wide reaching moral structures thanks to having a religious upbringing and those are somewhat motivating but the pure agency of logic still overrules that for the most part. But it doesn't take much to survive in the US so there's really not much of a motivation. It's a cliche that geniuses don't succeed  but I don't actually think this is random chance; there's a few situations to be born in where I would be given power via nepotism sure but if I was born upper middle or even lower end upper class there's still a fair chance that I would be rejected out of hand.

Why? Well the people in power want to stay in power but the problem is even if they were meritorious in the first place natural replacement dilutes the intellectual capacities of those in power. In essence, they give power to their sons who may be competent for one generation (this is a typical occurrence throughout history, the first son of a great man is often the most competent, the next generation is a crapshoot and so on); men who are otherwise competent overrate their capacity to parent and pattern their children after themselves and fail to simply find or tutor a non blood relative meritorious successor. At this point we're 7, 8 generations in and there is almost no clear cut competence at the top; the financial disaster of 2008 is more than clear evidence of that. They fear someone like me, that I might be disruptive or revolutionary; and to be fair this is a reasonable assessment of my capabilites and tendencies. However to resist change in this fashion actually destroys the creative usefulness of our society and deteriorates our position on a global scale.

So basically there's I don't know several hundred to several thousand people like me out there that could potentially secure the US as the world power for years to come but the people in power are either too stupid or too fearful to embed us in effective positions and instead we're left to twiddle our thumbs. This isn't conspirational bullshit it's just a set of obvious facts aligned in the most logical fashion; I, for being born too smart, am selected against because of it. Not only is being smart not particularly useful in American society it is in fact a detriment to your success. Sure if I was in position of power I might be able to do all sorts of wonderful, interesting, and innovative things but as I am not and likely will not become so I have nothing except for my philosophical insights to show for it. Of course at this point I'm supposed to blame God or something since I do have a strong religious background and continuous faith. But I have respect for God as an experimenter; God throws a lightning bolt down like Zeus and is curious what will happen. I am a functional thought experiment trying to figure out a way to break out of said experiment, even though the boundaries are seemingly limitless. I suppose I could write a book about this in the off chance that someone vaguely intelligent reads it; of course it probably wouldn't get through publishing and editing.

Mud

Mud is a limited release picture (so far) which I was fortunate enough to have released in my city. If perchance it is in your area I highly recommend seeing it as it is easily the best film that’s going to come out for another 4-6 months and could well be the best film released this year. It centers on Matthew McConaughey playing a would be homeless person on an abandoned island in the middle of a water moccasin infested river; a dangerous place to be sure. He’s visited by 2 young strapping middle schoolers and he immediately begs them for food. Yet, Mud is a mysterious individual and intrigues the boys who continue to help him for the rest of the film.

I won’t spoil the rest of the plot but suffice to say it deals with numerous powerful themes and has multiple extremely well done father-son relationships that contrast with each other remarkably. The film’s other message is basically “don’t trust women,” but it isn’t done heavy handedly and it’s not universal. Obviously the director or writer or someone had issues with a divorce as either a youth or an adult and this is his way of dealing with that period of his life.

This movie could have been bad for a huge number of reasons, the subject material is difficult, the acting had to be good from almost everyone, and it still delivers. The script is excellent, several of the scenes are extremely memorable and scream “Oscar worthy performance,” and the film ends well even though it easily could have gone off the rails. Even the one mediocre scene in the picture is used to tie up another loose end and teach another morality lesson; while that entire subplot is perhaps unnecessary it does serve to better flesh out the teenager’s character (who is the protagonist).

In addition to the basic more obvious thematic elements there are also very strong rich vs poor, urban vs rural, and law vs vigilante dichotomies that play out in the picture. One of the last fringe elements of rural American life is  being threatened both internally and externally; but it is wisely constructed in the sense that there is no over-arching political message that the film embeds here (as would usually occur); it’s simply a sort of mournful look at the late game impacts of Manifest Destiny gradually destroying the locals’ way of life. Mud is superb, well-acted, well-constructed, and badly advertised; I can only hope someone goes to see it as a result of reading this.

Iron Man 3

Ah summer movie season begins. Actually this year had a pretty loaded pre-May slate, the best of the bunch was Oblivion and that is probably the best movie that’s going to come out; so go see that before it goes away. Iron Man 3 is the best Iron Man movie, but eh it’s sort of dicey describing why that is. The movie is a very solid action flick with good CG, excellent acting, and superb usage of humor. But it doesn’t have anything that elevates it over Avengers and certainly nothing that scrapes the surface of the Dark Knight. Guy Pearce could easily deliver a “Joker” performance but this movie didn’t want to do that quite clearly. Trust me when I say Guy Pearce is a better, or at least more proven, actor than Heath Ledger was and probably one of the top 5 working actors around; it’s a shame that he wasn’t in more mainstream movies to this point but at least he finally seems to be getting his due.

The plot of this film is odd to say the least, it’s just not very good. However the writing (or improvised dialogue) is excellent and almost all of the character interactions are done extremely well. Basically there’s some DNA magic that makes people into Superheroes, but they’re evil superheroes so Iron Man has to stop them! It uses worldwide style of events and scale but then uses Ironman to save the world when the Avengers had just done so only recently; I don’t think the choice of villain type really fits. Another tech genius, sure, but just plain old superpowers is weird.

The pacing of the film is also just a bit off, there’s an extended sequence with only a few action scenes and even though that section of the film is well constructed and superbly well-acted (the best kid – hero interaction bar none) it just doesn’t fit with a big blockbuster action flick. It’s mature and intelligent comedy crossed with “dumb” action, almost every scene has at least some humor and some of that is ridiculously great. Ben Kingsley is awesome, Guy Pearce has incidental dialogue that is amazing, Robert Downey Jr. has the best “Troll” humor line maybe ever; but the design and character of the action doesn’t jive with it. As someone who can appreciate mature humor (it’s much less over the top humor as was in the previous Iron Man films) as well as dumb action movies I can’t say I desperately wanted both in the same picture.

Lastly the final battle sequence is a bit anti climatic in how it ends, the action itself is fine; above average CG combat with odd fighting game parallels; but it doesn’t have a Terminator 2 style ending equivalent scene to punctuate it. Not to say the action is as good as T2 in general but the villain(s) are basically terminators and you have to deal with them as such.  This is a good action movie that will make you laugh, and for a lot of people that is really all they want out of the first week of May. I re-iterate: go see Oblivion, it’s a cross between 2001, The Truman Show, Tron Legacy, and Star Wars; what could be better?

Injustice: Gods Among Us Impressions

Amazingly I bought a game for $60, in appreciation of Netherealm's previous efforts in MK vs DC (okay) and MK9 (awesome); and the community is fairly enjoyable for the time being. I imagine it'll grow tiresome within a month or two, but until then I shall enjoy myself immensely. To quote myself (from a forum post):

Speaking of Se... err Lex, I went like 26-12 in ranked matches including a 10 streak, sadly after the 9th win I had a player disconnect upon joining a match (not midmatch just in the joining phase, even prior to reaching the character select) and that somehow broke the streak. Lex's charge/air charge is a noob killer and that seems to be a majority of players, there's noobs, crappy deathstroke users (3-3 sadly, Lex isn't great against the stroke), people that have clearly been playing the game for 50+ hours, and a few average guys like me. It's also not too hard to combo into Lex's super with some triangle juggling.

I did run up against a 100-40 guy that I destroyed though so who knows. As far as fighting games go I play extremely smart but I have little or no interest in memorizing extended button sequences so I'll be good for a while here until people start dishing out longass combos one after the other (Superman seems to have a ridiculous one for starters). I also went up against a dude who was 160 and 40 with 100 disconnects, kicked his ass twice and he d/c'd both times, I guess it's nice that it shows the number but his rating was still like 1650 (no clue what mine is thanks to the presently broken player card system, at least for checking your own), one of those times was mid streak but it didn't break the streak nicely enough.

After that I went and got the King of the Hill trophy, and wonder of wonders this game actually has intelligently designed trophies so more than 0.5% of the playerbase will be able to 100% it! No ridiculous combo challenges as far as I know (though difficult challenge tower stuff instead, way more interesting) and no ranked streak trophies (but you do get ingame rewards for doing so). I went 10-0 without a sliver of challenge in the room I was in but people started asking me to switch characters so swapped to Wonder Woman and promptly lost to a horrible player; couldn't remember her moves only the square square triangle lasso whip combo of doom for beating the demo on hard.

Turns out there's a 25 streak reward which I could've gotten I imagine but will be tough to get a few weeks in the future; damnable niceness (albeit this saved me having to sit in that room for another 30 minutes). There's separate ones for ranked/KoH/player match streaks, but KoH and player match overlap. Ranked 25 I've got some mild chance of getting for about a week and then that's all over.
Good lex maneuvers: Jump in heavy, back forward heavy still in midair, or jump in heavy, ground heavy, back forward heavy (or down back heavy). Lex's air charge will hit ground targets unless its at the peak of the jump, though this does make it easy to get hit with fast projectiles as well.

For deathstroke it depends how good the guy is really, have to get in close where you can mostly dominate but have to be wary of the spinny sword retarded shit, if he spams nonstop then duck low until he starts doing low shots; then jump and do an air charge and repeat as necessary until you're on top of him, trying not to get blocked. If the guy's great (unlikely) then you'll probably lose but the same could be said for every other character.

What makes this game great relative to MK9 is there are very few "stun" moves; which really hamstrung non Scorpion/Sub-Zero et al users and made it very unappealing to play with them, near as I can tell the only stuns are environmental or things that burn super meter. Personally I find R2 + button to be terrible to reach for doing EX moves so I rarely do them; but doing the super itself isn't too bad and is generally worth saving for at least for Lex. Out of 50ish matches I saw a grand total of zero stage transitions, if that gives you an idea of how obfuscated and difficult to pull off those moves are; plenty of R1 chucking stuff though. Beating the demo (4 fights) on Very Hard took 2 hours, beating a whole bunch of random people 35 times took less, and I was able to bring even the pre-release combo champions down a round for the most part.

If anyone wants to spar on PS3 let me know, PSN is Valgresas; would be interested in getting good at someone other than Luthor after 100 wins; won't take too long at this rate.

(Another forum post)

Ended the day at 50-18, guess mid game DC's do count. Only had one mirror match, Lex seems like a top 5 character though so wonder when that'll change. Lex vs Green Arrow is an incredible amount of fun since Green Arrow's projectiles aren't instantaneous but still generally powerful and Lex is excellent at closing the distance. I've seen a fair number of Aquaman projectile spammers even though his strength seems to be up close, they're mostly terrible but I thought it odd. Rating is at 1502, the disconnect champion I was talking about earlier is number 5 on the leaderboard, 240-40 but it doesn't list his D/Cs, not entirely clear how D/Cs affect anything considering, but I guess technically I can say I beat a top 5 player twice, even though he sucked.

A really good Green Arrow that was 200-40 was the best match all day. I've played 4 or 5 of the top 20 players, only about half of them seem to know bullshit combos due to pre-release nonsense, the rest are pretty legit. After a bunch of relatively easy matches earlier I had a lot of close calls that were tons of fun to end the day.

(Yet another forum post)

Almost up to 100 wins with Lex now, one of the first in the world based on how few Lex players there are, still just the one mirror match. Only Killer Frost seems more unpopular somehow. Ordinarily a character having tits is enough to make them at least vaguely popular in any multiplayer game but huge props to the Injustice community for shunning Catwoman and Killer Frost, and even though Raven is a bit overpowered she's pretty rare too. Probably switching to Frost for player matches after Luthor, she has the best on demand projectile in terms of damage though there's no EX version, somewhat limited moveset but certainly seems to be a decent character, granted Lex is way better but evidently no one likes his sexiness yet.

Got another 10 ranked streak, this time appropriately rewarded and I think the little icon you get for it is one of the best I've seen so get it while you can gents, will be a tough one in a month or two. Projectile spammers appear to be about 20% of the playerbase, if all of those were Deathstrokes that'd be an issue but it's varied; the only character that seems thoughtfully designed from a pure projectile perspective is Green Arrow, rest just spam the same couple of moves over and over; granted I'd almost prefer it if there were no projectiles but this is a fighting game after all.

Superman and Aquaman appear to be the best two characters, and Superman spammers are probably the most annoying, Lex is probably 4th or 5th due to how incredible his air-charge is. If you want to expedite matches using the environment Watchtower's main area seems to be the most reliable source of things to chuck on a regular basis, particularly if you start on the left and gradually move to the right as the match goes on. I had a 4 streak and a 7 streak in survivor mode but for some reason the leaderboard recorded it as an 11 streak with 1 loss, hurray. That's probably the most fun if you're playing against average players and you're competent, not quite as stifling to them, they can't bitch at you for not switching characters (you can't), and there's always a chance they take you out over the course of a few rounds or you die to too many environment hits or something.

In other news I completed the tutorial and did a few stage transitions! Batman is the most popular character by far though not really annoying in any way so I don't have a problem with that, Green Lantern is second and he has that lame instagrab at range, but aside from that not a particularly annoying character. Joker, Superman, and Deathstroke round out the top 5, but fighting 8 or 9 Deathstrokes out of 120ish matches isn't that bad, he's no Ken/Wesker/Scorpion. Superman is not as overpowered as he was in MK vs DC but probably still slightly better than Aquaman.