bodily weirdness

Been playing a lot of Bejeweled lately. One thing that has become a bit annoying is the way the larger explosions have an "after ring". That is, they go "boom" and part of the sound "echoes" in a diminishing series.

Sort of boom-oom-oom-oom. With each "echo" being progressively quieter. Doesn't help that it's the higher frequencies, either.

I think part of the reason it bugs me is that is has the same timing/spacing as something I experienced as a kid and young adult. When I was *really* ill, sounds would do that for me. Like I'd go "uh" and it'd do the same sort of diminishing echoes.

When that happened I knew I was *really* sick.

Anybody else have this Is there a term for it?

Bejeweled and philosphy

Another aspect of all the playing of the game is that I've noticed some annoying bits in the programming.

As those who've played it know, it has a voice that calls out encouragement ("good", "excellent", "outstanding", "amazing" etc) when you get cascades of explosions. It also assigns you badges and rewards for things.


Normally I'm ok with that sort of thing. What jolted me was when I got them for clearing *six* jewels in a *row*.

Why? Because there's absolutely *no* way you can do that on purpose. It can *only* happen when you have the right pattern of removed jewels on the top row *and* you get just the right matching jewels falling into the gaps in that row.

So *I* had nothing to do with that. Pure random chance. Getting praised and rewarded for something like that is just wrong. Doesn't have a thing to do with skill or planning.

And then I started noticing how much of the praise stuff was happening due to new jewels falling into place after I'd cleared a nice chunk of the board. again not something I could have planned.

This is especially bad in the Zen game because I think that one has the algorithm for replacing jewels "tuned" to make sure that you'll always have some matches.

The philosophy comes in because thinking about this got me to realize that this happens in real life and may be responsible for a number of problems.

Rewarding someone for good decisions, planning, etc is a *good* thing. But too often it's rewarding people for results that weren't do to what they did as to pure luck.

Say, executive salaries?