Indignant Desert Birds

Best shot ever.

It’s Sunday morning. Sundays are for talking with a friend until 4:30am, and then scrambling to write a post because you don’t expect to be up until after noon. Alternately Sundays are for cleaning your house because a new baby is on the way.

This week the US President gave a speech. Also: the Egyptian president gave a speech. The opposition response to the Egyptian president’s speech was much more forceful than that given by the the American President’s opposition.

I am in love with my Kindle. I’ve got over 800 hardcopy books, and am running out of space in my house. My Kindle has over 100 books, and shows no signs of getting full. The idea that Ebook readers are not only transforming the way I live, but could also help share the developed world’s store of human capital with the less-developed world is sort of amazing. here’s a story about how that’s happening.

Egypt was big news in the later half of this week. You should become an instant expert and impress your friends and family members. Here’s What’s Happening.

This advice is pitched to the Egyptians, but it’s actually good for everyone trying to overthrow an autocratic regime. Read the article to learn which pun ended up in this paragraph.

One of the major reasons that Egypt is in revolt is that it’s a very poor nation where the wealth is concentrated in very few hands. Income inequality is worse in Egypt than in the US. I’ve said more than once that America is a very rich third world nation. Stuff like this is why I continue to say it.

You want more pie? You WANT MORE PIE?! more equality would help the US economy grow faster.

An American citizen may be harassed for trying to visit a friend in prison. It’s disgusting that anyone would issue such an order. It’s terrible that anyone would follow such an order. Presumption of innocence seems to have gone out the window.

American lawmakers seem to think they’ve solved every other quality of life problem. I find it astounding that anyone would try to combat a .04% rise in pedestrian mortality, but ignore the approximately 46,000 fatal traffic accidents every year. Hint: if the speed limit were lowered back to 55mph, we’d live longer.

Is Virginia becoming less Southern? Maybe it’s the case that the whole country is becoming more homogenized. Or maybe Southern identity is becoming less associated with Dixie.

So many questions in the preceding text block. Here is a tool for helping us choose.

Once we’ve chosen, this tool will help us prove it.

Guess who favored the individual mandate? John “The Man” Adams.

And you know who favored government assistance to needy people? Ayn Rand. Yes, that Ayn Rand. At least: when she was the needy person.

Spider Dan was convicted in connection with his stunt of climbing a building in San Francisco. I say “in connection with”, because the charges are bullshit.

Rob Zachny mediates on information display.

I have been obsessed with Magicka. No, I won’t tell you what the game is, or what it is about. But! The boys at Rock Paper Shotgun will tell you about the mistakes you will make while playing the game. If I were to tell you what the game is about, I’d say it’s about making mistakes. But I’m not going to tell you that.

my life philosophy in one jpeg.

Everything humans do is literally history. Some of the things humans do can’t be talked about, for reasons of national security. That’s fine to an extent, but… what happens when those people die off and that history ends up down the memory hole? Funranium talks about the national security state, and secret history.

Alright kids, Its way past my bedtime. So enjoy your links, and I’ll see you later.

Tags: Sunday, Uncategorized by Punning Pundit
5 Comments »

Even presidents put on their pants one leg at a time.

It’s Sunday. Sundays are for lolling around watching StarCraft 2 pro matches and playing with the cats. Alternately, Sundays could be for for trying to see the difference between “walking pneumonia” and “walking dead”.

This week President Obama meet with his Chinese counterpart to discuss how our nations can get along. Also: Google’s CEO resigned: seems babysitting tech geniuses isn’t really worth the money after a certain point. Also this week: Keith Olbermann once again resigned from a hosting gig. Quell Surprise.

I was helping staff a congressional townhall yesterday. A constituent pigeonholed me and told me that we were killing the medical field with regulations. Left unsaid was that without regulation we’d be killing people. I know, I know, not all regulations are good. That doesn’t mean that the person who holds a knife over your unconscious body shouldn’t be held to pretty stringent standards.

The man who founded the peace corps died recently. Here’s a tribute to his life and work

Also worth paying tribute to: Martin Luther King Jr. The man not only bent the arc of history toward justice, but he also gave us that phrase. This is a fascinating account of the first draft of King’s most famous speech– written by a man who helped write that draft.

White people vote differently from the rest of the country. I find this sort of lingering racial consciousness to be bizarre. I hate to call it racism per se, but I’d like to see a good explanation for it.

Here’s Grant making some obvious points about the right of succession. There are other points, though. For instance: he pretty directly accesses the then-Secretary of War of scattering the US army to make it impossible to stop the CSA from forming. Damning stuff.

reenactment of a slave sale. It’s an emotional gut punch, so I’m not embedding it. But it’s worth watching.

One of the things American history books don’t like to talk about is the “sundown town” phenomenon. Whole stretches of the US were off limits to blacks at any time– and more were off limits at night. One artifact of that time was the “green book”. This book helped black motorists figure out how to avoid such communities. Scarily, I met a (white) guy yesterday who didn’t seem to understand that those were the bad old days.

Speaking of driving: I really want this to be true.

An interesting set of maps about American fears of a NAZI invasion. Most fascinating to me were is the one that depends on an American 5th column.

The American Government doesn’t believe that Wikileaks have done any lasting damage. The Tunisian government would likely disagree. To me, it seems pretty obvious that America is pretty damned transparent. We don’t really have secret agendas or secret opinions. We can’t– America is a country built on the spread of memes. I guess that makes this link roundup the most American thing I can do!

Speaking of the spread of memes: I hate Facebook. Their entire business model relies on getting me to give them my personal information so that they can sell it to the highest bidder. Scalzi hates it for more aesthetic reasons.

Your task this week is to use at least one of these words every day.

I spent yesterday evening hanging out with the author of this post. Did you know that you can tell where a rock is from by licking it? Now you do.

I consider myself fairly well versed in history. I minored in it. So when I learn about an entire war that I knew nothing about, it sort of makes me wonder what else I’m ignorant about. Anyway: the Pacific War. This reminds me: wikipedia is the greatest tool of meme propagation that humanity has invented since Gutenberg got a hand cramp.

The headline is all you need: 26 incredibly bizarre aircraft that actually flew.

On the topic of boondoggles: Several retired US flag/general officers have decided to stay on the payrolls of defense contractors rather than help mentor younger soldiers.

It looks like America and Israel might have committed an act of war by unleashing Stuxnet on Iran. Scary, to me, is that they had to unleash it on the entire world to get it to Iran. The machine you’re reading this on might well be a vector. What if someone were to repurpose that worm to harm something other than a nuclear program?

For your really paranoid fantasies: what if Stuxnet were handed over to an AI? In this case, the AI is one designed to play StarCraft– you may recall that I’m obsessed with this game. Berkeley is teaching computers to be adaptive and creative thinkers. And teaching it by forcing it to wage war. Perhaps we should train our computers using economic, or science simulators instead?

Finally: the world of Video Game Journalism lost an important voice this week, as Troy Goodfellow decided that there was more money to be made as a PR shill than by asking his readers/listeners to donate money. Can’t blame the man at all. I wish him success in his new role, and hope that he continues blogging on awesome games.

This week’s theme is memetic propagation. So: what’s your favorite meme? Try to include an unusual word in your comment.

You have 3 minutes:

Tags: Sunday, Uncategorized by Punning Pundit
No Comments »

Sunday. Sunday never changes. Sundays are for waking up next to your Girlfriend and then waking up the friend on your couch after a day of epic board gaming. Alternately: Sundays are for going to work during crunch time and hating your job.

This week, Tunisia exploded into revolution– it seems Wikileaks mentioned exactly how awful their government is. Also this week: the French “National Front” (neo-NAZI) party leader turned control of said party over to his daughter. Points for not being sexist, but negative points for being aristocratic.

Mumbles is bringing the (Cansei de Ser) Sexy back. Great remixes of songs that will make you smile.

Batman doesn’t use guns. Instead, he has a sweet ride.

The American government is harassing citizens for engaging in civic involvement. My experience is that the legislative branch tends to act as an extension of the will of the citizens, but the executive branch tends to act as a separate entity. Someday I hope the legislative branch reins in the executive.

My first thought when reading this is “smash the system”. As a graduate of a UC, I sort of hate Stanford. But the idea that it’s not automatically first tier? Ridiculous. If America wants to claim that it is a meritocracy, then there can be no such thing as “the right schools”, and personal connections should never help one land a job.

Long time readers know how much I hate car culture. If this is your first time reading: I hate car culture quite a bit. One gentleman decides to take pictures of just how awful it can be in the suburbs. These are design decisions made by our culture– we can make other choices. We should make other choices. Come the days of US$200/barrel oil, we will have to make other choices.

Speaking of design choices: food could be cheaper. That last sentence is among the most depressing I will ever read.

The rich are very different from you and me. We could make the decision to design a tax code with more tax brackets, and higher tax rates in those brackets. It would help fix this problem. Not to mention solve the budget deficit.

Feminism helped change the world. Want pictorial proof? here you go. Imagine being a little girl in the world as described by picture 1, and then being a girl in the world as described in picture 2. Picture 2 girls can do anything. They’re American girls.

How is it possible that the most effective speaker of the House since Cannon was never featured on the cover of Time? Seems Time is a “picture 1″ sort of organization.

In the wake of the Giffords shooting last weekend, some secret service members have suggestions about how Congress members can protect themselves. Helping implement some of this stuff at a townhall is how I will be spending my next Saturday.

This Gigantic Robot Puns: robot plays Jeopardy, bests humans. I have been replaced by a machine…

Not much to say here about how the Antebellum South was founded on the idea of a landed aristocracy. It’s fascinating to read that an contrast it with the American ideal of social mobility.

In all of game’s journalism, Troy Goodfellow is probably the person most capable of talking about balance of power theory in International Relations. So when he talks about the English National Character, and how it has implications for game designers, that’s going to be interesting.

Headline says everything.

A while back I made a pact with a London-based friend. He would root for the San Jose Earthquakes, and I would become an Arsenal Fan. Based on this map of soccer fandom, I have a good idea where in London he lives.

This week’s theme: Eating the rich. What’s the best thing you’ve eaten? Leave a comment!

Tags: Sunday, Uncategorized by Punning Pundit
1 Comment »

Nice to see where her priorities are!

It’s Sunday. Sundays are for hanging out in New Vegas until 4am and not getting out of bed until well after the post is due to go up. Alternately, Sundays are for… hell if I know. I’ve been spending all week in New Vegas, and neglecting my friends.

This week: history restarted itself– a crazy man heeded the overheated rhetoric of an awful human being, and murdered a judged, a little girl, and several others while attempting to assassinate an American Congresswoman. Also this week: The Southern Sudanese learn the value of democracy as they vote their way to freedom.

For years, it was “known” in some circles that vaccines caused autism. If you are a responsible parent, you learn about this, you do the requisite research, and you discover that there is “controversy”. So now you have to think. The choice is to either take a risk that the study is correct– and that there is a chance your child will “contract” autism– or not. Turns out that this is a false dilemma; the autism research is a fraud. Get your kids vaccinated.

Remember life before Google? Me either. I think Google sharply delineates the line between information and intelligence. Google can tell you about anything within the current grasp of human knowledge– it simply cannot make you draw interesting or useful conclusions from that knowledge.

Google truly does know everything

Facebook, on the other hand, knows everything about you, and says nothing about itself. This, to me, is a very scary combination. It’s why I barely use their service. I do hope that someone comes up with something better.

I think Twitter is significantly better. It does all the interesting things that Facebook does, and I’ve never been poked, asked to join a game, or had my boss read my tweets. Here is a map of New Year’s Eve Tweets. I love maps.

Regular readers probably know that I’m a huge game player. I used to hate board games because when I was a kid they sucked. This is the best-possible game of monopoly. Why? Because it only lasts 21 seconds. Do yourself a favor: if you hate boardgames because you only ever played them as a kid, pick up a copy of Settlers of Catan and enjoy a good game.

You know what else you can do in less than 30 seconds? Make a “that’s what she said” joke Turn a profit on a stock. Back in the day, you’d own stock as a way to own a company. Today it seems like just another form of gambling. This system prizes fast reflexes over the longterm viability of a company. In Starcraft terms: the US economy praises microgame over macrogame. I don’t find it coincidental that we have severe and entrenched macroeconomic problems.

Having said all that, it should come as no shock that economists are terrible human beings. I would love to see the breakdown between Chicago (Neo-Hooverite) economists, and the Neo-Keynsian economists. Is it possible that the Neo-Keynsians are better humans? They certainly seem to be better economists.

The very phrase “child sex slave” should make any human being roil with barely contained rage. It makes me want to put on my hulk-shorts and go smashing all those who would dare treat members of my species that way. That’s just me, though. “Concerned women for America” believe that child sex slaves should be tried as prostitutes and thrown in jail. Senator Sessions of Alabama agreed with the logic to the point where he blocked legislation that would would have helped get those children free. He’s a monster.

On this issue, Stephen Colbert speaks for me

If America were a Christian nation, what would that mean? Who was that “Christ” dude? Slactivist talks a bit about the feast of the Epiphany. Why do Christians know that the “old” testament is superseded code? The Epiphany. Why does Jesus tell his followers to love their neighbors? The Epiphany. Go read it.

Go have some music.

Have some more music.

I’ve been having a lot of fun exploring New Vegas, as alluded to in this post and as stated in a previous post. Matthew Belinkie has been enjoying Call of Duty: Black Ops. It’s not a game I own or have played, but I know that a whole hell of a lot of people have. Belinkie begins to wonder– as I did– about the ethics of first person shooters. What’s interesting to me is how mechanics can shape morality. Fallout rewards non-murderous solutions to in-game problems. As a result, I go looking for them. Call of Duty is a heavily scripted game that demands players kill everyone in their path. As a result, players look for efficient ways to commit murder.

There’s something about a life-sized Brachiosaurus which gives pause to bureaucrats.

Alright gang, I’m going back to New Vegas. See you on the other side.

Tags: Uncategorized by Punning Pundit
No Comments »

Jamelle Bouie has some thoughts on atheists in Congress. Specifically: why there are none. The whole thing is worth a read, but I’ll just yank a sample section:

For an “unaffiliated” House candidate, the landscape is a little less harsh. Since nonbelievers tend to live in urban areas, it’s conceivable that an openly atheist candidate could find a large enough base to support a primary or general election run against more religious competitors. Even still, given the relatively small number of unaffiliated, this isn’t very likely.

I think this partially ignores– or forgets, or is ignores of– the mechanics of running for office. I don’t think Jamelle is wrong, but I think there’s something he fails to consider.

People don’t simply decide one day that they’d make a great politician. They see a problem, they talk about it, they fume about it, and eventually one of their friends and neighbors tells them to shut up and fix it already. But to get there, they need a network of friends and neighbors. Politicians are invariably the most connected members of their community. The major function of a religious organization? Connecting people. Churches are a major source of community building. Synagogues will hold singles mixers. Churches do charity dinners, and mosques will, um, do music nights*. Even most of the pagans and atheist I know will choose to get married in a Church (usually Universalists Unitarian) because the infrastructure is pre-existing.

It’s not that atheists and agnostics don’t have strong networks of friends, but campaigns- especially local ones- are won and lost by meeting people. If a church attender and a non-church attender square off for city council, the attender will have just a few more people to meet every week, one more avenue of attack, one more tie to the community. That adds up. And who tends to win congressional elections? People who hold local office. A small difference in community support can utterly demolish someone’s chance for higher office.

All of that, before we even mention the self-described anti-atheist bias of the American electorate.

*Yeah, I stretched that alliteration to the breaking point. Sorry.

Tags: free speech, human rights, liberal, politics by Punning Pundit
No Comments »

War. War never changes. Those are the first spoken words in all of the canonical Fallout games. Which is a bit odd seeming. The war is over. The nuclear apocalypse came and went, taking humanity down to the basic survival level– in many cases below it. Even in the story presented by the narrator, the war for the Hoover dam ended about 4 years previously.

The government was– all governments were– smashed to atomic rubble. In the absence of government, Hobbes tells us that we are left with “A war of all against all”. There are those who take this as a good thing, and those who take this as a warning. The inevitable, bloody war between those philosophies is the focus of the Fallout games.

As alluded to in the introduction cutscene above, your character is a courier. You’re not sure what you were carrying, nor it’s importance, nor why you were shot for possessing it. The main quest of the game is trying to track down the person who stole it from you, though your motivations for this are entirely dependent upon what sort of character you wish to play.

One of the interesting things the game does mechanically is to give players a reputation ranking with various factions. Do nice things for a town, and that town will like you. If the New California Republic (NCR) sees you as an ally, they will give you a radio with which you can call for help. When the NCR representative told my character “you are not alone out here”, I was moved; the Mojave Wilderness is a lonely place. Alternately, if you go on a killing spree, your reputation will greatly diminish and factions will be ordered to shoot on sight.

One way or another, a player will choose a faction. The game pushes players towards the democratic New California Republic. If you don’t like the NCR, but want to go the “good” rout, the humanistic Followers of the Apocalypse offer another alternative. Players who want to be rewarded for slaughter, yet align with a government can play nice with Caesar’s Legion– an organization which sees physical dominance as the just reward of the strong over the weak. And anyone who wishes to devolve into simple thuggery makes a de facto declaration that they are a raider.

It’s an interesting way of meshing game mechanics with an overarching philosophy. As a player, I only spend a small fraction of my time thinking about this in mechanical terms. As I gaze into the wilderness, seeing people with problems that need solving, I ask myself what kind of world I want to build. This has lead me to siding with the New California Republic. They’re doing their best to create an orderly society– but one grounded in some principles of justice and self determination. They can be a bit heavy handed and tone deaf, but where the NCR has control, people are free to live lives, trade, and be fear from slavery.

Naturally, because I side with the NCR, I’ve been trying to clean up their mess with the escaped convicts known as the “Powder Gangers”. My policy is simple: shoot on sight.

After seeing Powder Gangers storm into several towns, killing the innocent, I decided to get more proactive. My friend Boone and I wandered into their base and started shooting. Some of them tried to flee, but we chased them down and coldly murdered them where they hid. We were methodical, we were quick, we were merciless. Every last one of them died at our hands.

As I started looting their hovels, the game informed me that I had lost Karma. As the blood-fury left me and I finally looked around at the bodies of those I’d slaughtered, the full gravity of what I had done hit me.

How was I any different than them? For all my vaunted morality, for every notion of fair play, for all that I wanted to build up a society… I walked into these people’s homes and destroyed their society. I offered not peace, but the gun.

Is that all I am? Am I just a bulldozer hoping that someone will come along behind me to build a better future after I knock down the rotted old infrastructure? Must I become a monster in order to protect people from evil?

I’ve got dozens of hours left to go in this game; I don’t have answers. I do know that I won’t consider this game over until I get an answer to those questions that I like. War never changes, but I cannot believe that the memes that push us towards armed conflict are the strongest ones.

Tags: Games, war, zombies by Punning Pundit
1 Comment »

The full text of the first section of the 14th Amendment reads as follows:

Section. 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

That seems fairly straightforward, right? It defines American citizenship, and says that any right granted to citizens are granted to all citizens. In fact, given the language used (“persons”), I’m not sure that the US could refuse citizenship to sentient robots, vampires, or extra-terrestrial aliens.

Section 2 contradicts Section 1 a small bit, in that it specifically sets aside voting rights to males over the age of 21 and who haven’t “participat[ed] in rebellion, or other crime”

Sections 3 and 4 also stick it to the confederate veterans of the Civil War.

The 19th Amendment gives women the right to vote.

Both the 14th and 19th amendments have the following words as their final section “Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

A plain reading of the basic text of the US Constitution would thus mandate that any law that demands employers treat employees a certain way applies to men and women. And straight people and gay people. And people of any color or ethnic background humanity cares to invent. If the Federal, or a State, government wants to allow a pair of people to form a union and become a single legal entity (marriage), then a plain reading of the Constitution demands that such a right is granted to all citizens.

Antonin Scalia doesn’t like this. He doesn’t like this at all. I won’t read his mind to state his motivations for not liking this, but Scalia reads the minds of voters 1868 and decides that “if indeed the current society has come to different views, that’s fine. You do not need the Constitution to reflect the wishes of the current society. Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn’t. Nobody ever thought that that’s what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that.”

None of them, eh Scalia? That’s a big statement. It’s also irrelevant. Their minds are now dust, but their words are eternal. If they wanted to codify gender or orientation discrimination into the Constitution, they should have done so. They specifically outlawed religious*, ethnic, and racial discrimination. Our ancestors have had 235 years in which to do so. They didn’t, and now we’re finally realizing that they didn’t.

I’ll even perhaps agree with Scalia that this was an oversight on the part of centuries of voters. Their blindness left a huge breach in the firewall of bigotry. Americans of the 21st century have the choice now about how much to exploit that breach, and how quickly we may be able to burn the edifice of hate. Scalia has decided to throw himself against the oncoming surge of human happiness. Oddly, he seems to give his own fears more weight than the text of the Constitution.

*Good thing for Scalia that they did so. Many people feared that by not insisting on a religious test, we might end up with a Catholic (like Scalia) as a holder of high office.

Tags: conservative, politics by Punning Pundit
3 Comments »

It’s Sunday. Sundays are for hustling through your chores so you can head to your Father’s place to celebrate the his Birthday. Alternately, Sundays are for waking up late and meeting with your S/O at his parent’s place. Or Sundays could be for sewing clothes for the infant you’re expecting soonish.

This week the Gregorian-calender-using-world decided that fifty-one weeks was more than enough for 2010 and we would therefore decide not to do anything. Except that the Australian state of Queensland had a major flood. Nature doesn’t seem to have a calendar. Most of us just held our breath waiting for the calendar to turn.

If you were very lucky, you danced to some of this on New Year’s Eve. If you missed it, go listen now. You can read the rest of this while you listen. Also: RSS that blog.

One of the interesting things that separates the modern gaming experience with most other mediums is the evolutionary arc of the product. A game is released and a few months later, a patch can be rolled out which substantially changes the way the game is experienced. Rob Zachny explores Civilization 5 in light of it’s recent patch.

I think today is going to be fairly game-heavy. It’s basically the only news that got made last week.

Games are exploring more an artistic space. I’ve seriously spent more hours than I care to think about talking about government and identity through the lens of one of Bioware’s epics. In a few months, Bioware will be releasing another huge opus. Once again, they’ll be including some gay/lesbian romance options. This is important for gaming, I think, more than for society. If a game is going to try and model the human behavior-space, it needs to try and create authentic relationship options. Letting characters be of different orientations is a huge step towards that end.

Granted, the best game design in the world is meaningless if the UI is terrible. I think there’s a reason that at Google they call it “User eXperience (UX)”– because the vast majority of people simply cannot get past bad AI to get at even the best of content.

That last link was courtesy of Troy Goodfellow. He did a year-end strategy game wrap up. I won’t insult Troy by saying the man knows what he’s talking about: he’s the best in the business.

Game Shark offers it’s top board games of 2010 I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve only heard of one of these games.

By contrast: I can recommend each of the top 10 RPGs that MTv lists. I’ve either played it, or have a friend who has. BTW: the Dresden Files RPG is kind of amazing. I was at their launch party.

The writing in this article is fantastic. So good I won’t even sample it, just click that link and prepare to literally vocalize your laughter.

Speaking of unicorns: the Kentucky Creation Museumwill have both Dragons and Unicorns in an exhibit. This is what happens when you take the philosophy of biblical inerrancy, and keep reductio-ing ad absurdum, and don’t update your translation in 400 years. And also don’t go back to the original text to learn what they mean by “unicorn”. Also: if you don’t get why the last article segued into this article by way of “unicorn”, shame on you. Go click that last link.

The only times the Constitution mention anything about religion, it specifically forbids us from talking about religion. It’s like Fight Club, but better. This lack of god pissed people off back when the whole thing was up for a vote.

For over a century, the US prison system has been used as a tool of apartheid and slavery. In 2010, the US congress addressed a bit of the cocaine/crack sentencing disparity, but that’s one small example of how race tends to make Americans ugly.

Also in 2010, America finally passed a healthcare bill. It was truly spectacular, and we should all give Nancy Pelosi some cookies. In addition to universal Healthcare, here are 5 other things the bill does

Some sad news? 2010 is the year that Rosie the Riveter died

The difference between adulthood and childhood? Being able to say about yourself: But when a lot of people misunderstand you at once, the fault is usually yours.

I don’t know much about the national Film Registry, other than that it is a project of the Library of Congress. The films selected by the 2010 committee.

Did I mention Troy Goodfellow earlier? It seems like the sort of thing I would do. He’s been amazing with his “National Character” series. As a reminder: he’s looking at how video game mechanics portray civilizations as a lens through which to examine how those societies are remembered. Social history for the win! This week? Egypt.

Interestingly, it looks like Michigan State University is going to be creating a mod for Civ5 to teach Egyptian History. I wonder how that will work out?

In 2010 I helped push an alcohol tax through the SF board of supervisors. It would be easy to overstate my involvement, but it was fun times. Anyway: it turns out that San Francisco is the 3rd drunkest city in America. I’m sure we can do better in 2011, guys!

This week’s theme? Games! So leave a comment about a nerdy moment of 2010.

Below is an amazing video of Bob Dylan and Donovan having a semi-friendly guitar-off. Donovan is really good. Like: once in a generation good. But Bob Dylan? For as long as the human species draws breath, we’ll remember that Bob Dylan was a master.

Tags: Sunday, Uncategorized by Punning Pundit
3 Comments »

Tags: music, Uncategorized by Punning Pundit
No Comments »