make love, not war

I was working yesterday on adding fighting behavior to my procedural character animation.  In particular, I wanted the kids to be able to shove one another around.  But due to a bug they kept approaching one another rather than stopping at “shoving distance.”  So they grapple in what looks like a particularly comical make-out session.  Possibly useful, but best saved for the parent characters…

what is anxiety anyway?

I’ve been trying to think about anxiety recently.  I want to argue that anxiety is part of a broader meta-level control system involved in risk assessment.  The obvious scientific response to this would be something along the lines of “well, duh.”  But I’ve had a great deal of difficulty articulating exactly what I mean to my friends.  So I’m writing this overly long post to try to work through it.  I’ll try using two different analogies, but first I’ll try to give some motivating background.