Sunday Morning Reading Material: Third Sunday in June 2011: That’s An Important Distinction Edition
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich knows what’s up.
It’s Sunday Morning. Sundays are for spending time with your fathers, thanking them for helping to bring you up. Or just wishing you could be with family- work demanding that you help others celebrate. Alternately, Sunday could be for having a very moving Birthday- with all puns intended. Alternately again: Sunday morning could be for getting some superfluous sleep. And of course, Sunday mornings could be for researching HTML and JQuery scripts
This Syria continued it’s Civil War. President Obama crossed the legally mandated threshold to get congressional approval for his war in Libya. Legendary Saxophonist Clarence Clemons died. And lulzsec declared war on whoever strikes its fancy. In better news: A US bankruptcy court found that federal laws against same sex marriage are unconstitutional.
The big gaming convention E3 was held a week or so back, and there were a whole lot of interesting games about to be released. Oddly, there are very few coming from Japan. During their economic “lost decade”, culture was among the only things that nation exported. It could simply be a bad year for Sony (true), Square (true), and a slow one for Nintendo (semi-plausible). I have no idea what the Japanese indie-gaming scene is like, so that might well be vibrant and invisible. Alternately, it could be the Japanese gaming industry has grown stale and ossified.
E3 also saw a lot of ink spilled about the “core” gamer, and what “he” would be playing in the next year or so. Which is frustrating: the average gamer is a woman in her 30s. I hope the supreme court considers this information when they rule on whether games have 1st amendment protection.
Funranium always brings the awesome. Oh, and this might be a good time to mention: don’t let your kid sister drop your Stein of Science on the floor– they shatter.
A question I like to pose to people who are against single payer health insurance: would you be willing to pay more in taxes if it meant a lower health insurance bill? More money in your pocket at the end of the day, higher quality of care, but bigger government. Me? I don’t care who gets the money as long as it’s well-spent. Hard core libertarians do seem to have that concern, though.
The California Constitution is a mess. I’ve sworn an oath to that hairy old beast, but I do think it’s time to take it behind the barn and shoot it. It’s no shame at all in the recognition that the problems faced by a government have overwhelmed the capacity of it’s institutions to deal with. I hope that when the time comes for California to fix it’s government, we follow Iceland’s methodology.
In case you’re one of 5 people who missed this photo: things to do in Vancouver when there’s a riot.
One of the things rich societies can afford is the luxury of awesome uselessness. Impoverished societies don’t have enough money to allow someone to, say change clothes 40 times in a single day. America is, and has long been, a rich country. We can afford for a certain number of people to simply be, and have no greater purpose than their own existence.
I can’t be the only person to look at this map and think that it represents a significantly conservative part of the country. The cause and effect might be that they’re implementing conservative policies, and therefore are dying sooner. Or it could be that as they see a quality of life deteriorating, they attempt to recapture the previous (better) life by turning my conservative. Or maybe I’m engaging in the post hoc fallacy.
Comcast executives seem to have noticed something obvious: poor people would like cable internet and television, but cannot afford it. The more income stratified America gets- the further behind everyone who isn’t in the top 1% falls- the less money Comcast can possibly make. The less money Comcast makes, the fewer people it can employ. Comcast not being able to employ people is the opposite of the way to fix our unemployment situation. If America started paying poor people to do useful things (fixing schools! fixing bridges! fixing roads!), we’d get a lot of money into the hands of people who want to buy things they cannot currently afford. This would help fix the economy. Just ask Comcast.
Earlier this week, I saw the most recent Xmen movie. It was incredibly good. It’s about a set of aristocrats trying to spark a revolution- and having wildly different ideas about who ought to hold power at the end of the conflict. The truely burning question we audience members are left with: how do magnets work?
American prisons are physically and morally over crowded.
If a company wants to sell beer in the state of Wisconsin, and they’re huge, they are mandated by law to go through a wholesale distributor. I’m not sure why this is the case, but the State of Wisconsin seems think it’s a good idea. Governor Walker seems to think it’s a good idea to expand this regulation to smaller brewers. It seems to me that if there’s a good reason require MillerCoors to use a wholesale distributor, then there is probably a good reason to force the craft beers to do the same. If there isn’t a good reason, then the law ought to be abolished. The large companies didn’t lobby to have the law abolished, though. This tells me that they gain more from being protected from competition than they would lose by having to pay for the wholesaler. And once again, the public interest is perverted for private gain.
Troy Goodfellow talks about Greece. Oddly, Civilization doesn’t include “perpetually dysfunctional fiscal situation” as a faction trait.
I know exactly why this helicopter is hauling a dinosaur.
being against torture is a founding American tradition. Compare that the treatment of Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson Jr by congress after he tried to halt the Mai Lai massacre.
My mother’s mother snuck the Canadian boarder and lived the rest of her life in America. I would like to think that her children (and, ahem, grandchildren) have been a net positive to America. I would like to think that the children and grandchildren of current undocumented immigrants would be, on average, at least as beneficial to America as my mother’s mother. A group of people made a game about the absurdity of our immigration system. Even if you’re not a fan of games, the story of this particular one is worthwhile. The interviewer works for the ACLU.
Cracked has an interesting take on E3: 6 ominous signs for the future of gaming. The writer fails to talk about any games I care about, or franchises I have played. He doesn’t talk about games that the average gamer cares about. Given that (the average gamer’s tastes, not mine personally), there is a huge market opportunity for a company to come along and seize. Given the number of indie studios, it seems likely that someone will come along and find a formula that will appeal to this under-served market. Capitalism truly is an efficient little beastie.
If you read just one thing:
Mr. Coates on Mr Jay. I don’t even have words.
This week’s theme has been about class warfare and video games. Again. Weird how that works.
