Sunday Morning Reading Material: First Sunday in January 2011
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.
