If Dr. Laura Schlessinger's slurry outburst on August 10 was hate speech—which it was, and this instance of hate speech is protected by the First Amendment—which it ought to be, then were Schlessinger's First Amendment rights violated by the backlash, as she claimed on the August 17… Read full post »

Picture unrelated: it's Captain Hook's cameo in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood.

 

 

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Shorter Staff, The Official Starcraft Website

The Week of July 26, 2010¹

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• We heard Bobby Kotick ejaculates advertising money.

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‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies, perfe…

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Above: Eggert in his mancave, designing his next revolutionary vidyaweapon.¹

 

 

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Shorter Pascal "Firearms Don't Kill People, Politics Do" Eggert, The Firearm Blog²

On Guns in Video Games

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• I work for Crytek, the world's leading producer of obtuse tech demos, and spend too much time
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Above: Big Perm is his name, permmin' is his game.

 

 

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Shorter Nate Ahearn, IGN LiveBox Jive

 Deadliest Warrior: The Game Review

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• "The notion of having a fighting game that pits a pirate against a viking is just as awesome as it sounds."¹
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Above: AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!!  Oh wait, nevermind.  Phew.

 

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 Shorter Worker Drone #38574, Gawker Sweatshop #12

Inception Review: Video Games Should Be Jealous

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• Video games should be as derivative as possible.  Like this movie.  Also, pointlessly starstudd
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As per.  With my last post I happened to contribute to a topic of discussion during the fact, which is rare for me, but So What.  What is gained by dashing off a post before all the facts are in—a chance to whip Blizzard into a fine froth while, well, everybody… Read full post »

The chief opposition to Blizzard's decision to enforce their Real ID system on the World of Warcraft forums (in the hope that eliminating anonymity will in kind halt trolling and general bad behavior) frequently returns to liberal (not liburl) themes of “privacy” and “choice.&rdq/… Read full post »

I've heard good things about the National Geographic Afghanistan war documentary Restrepo. I've also heard that we watch a soldier die during the course of it; not, boom, oh, he's dead, but really watch the transition from living, breathing, bleeding, to quiet, cold, still bleeding. It's a good… Read full post »

Or, "I Don't Need No Internet Friends."

Anyone to whom I have shown this blog knows that I don't use tags in the conventional manner; there is no ejaculatory stream of keywords underneath my posts meant to dance to ju-ju voodoo beats and attract elusive search algorithms.  Rather, I prefer… Read full post »

Shortly before he died, my grandfather's business joined the handful of others downtown shuttered in the wake of the latest financial crisis. But, the Bamboo Washwright didn't close its doors because of the crisis. My mother and my uncle ended the Bamboo, two of the three children still… Read full post »

The legacy of American foreign policy with regard to the Middle East (see: the Eisenhower Doctrine) has polarized the region into anti-American extremists and sycophantic dependents.  The moderate bloc is the only tool left available to prevent the near-future combustion of the region in a confl… Read full post »

  Crooks & Liars has already singled out Robert Kagan's odious revolutionary daydream for a sound whipping, but it's worth considering his scrawls alongside the flop Richard Haass has penned in Newsweek on the same subject, to which Kagan refers.  Both men have an odd understanding of r… Read full post »

The hardest part of my grandfather's death was that my grandmother kept forgetting he was gone. It wasn't that either of us had to relive some painful re-realization of his death every time she mentioned how well he was doing in the hospital in a show of false optimism and… Read full post »

Commentators on sites I hold in high regard have staunch anti-piracy views, as in, they seem to really believe in staunching the massive blood flow of piracy before the gaming industry bleeds out and are not just parroting an obvious talking point in order to keep their advertisers' business or… Read full post »

Two men stand on a train station platform.  Man One buys a ticket.  Man Two fiddles with an unlit cigarette a short distance down the platform, inside a glass and steel shelter not unlike a bus stop.  Man One, whose hair is almost entirely grayed, finishes buying his ticket and turns… Read full post »

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh.

 

Rewriting now. Read full post »

For those who were/are unaware, there was/is some small controversy (because controversies never heal, the wounds only close momentarily, to be reopened again) over the "No Russian" level of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.  You play a CIA operative placed so deep undercover in the most evil orga… Read full post »

I am apparently the only person among those friends I made in Greece that does not find the concept of hurtling through the air at half the speed of sound in a flimsy metal tube full of liquid explosives paralytically terrifying.  Everyone seems to have some fear of flying.  But…

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 From Richard K. Bett's 2007 "A Disciplined Defense" (boldy bits mine):

Shortly after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, after Saddam's government was toppled, I wrote an article for my then high school newspaper discussing the possibility of a United States-led invasion of Syria as the next step. It was an article meant to satirize Bush Jr.'s “Mission Accomplished”… Read full post »

There is a spider on my bag.  I look at it and consider scale, as we have just considered the contrast of scale between gods and men on the Olympian pediments.  My bag is an entire world to the spider, or perhaps a large continent of the world it knows…

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Santorini is beautiful.  Duh.  It's one of those places that has been photographed in so many ways and showcased in so many tryptophantic post-vacation family slideshows that it's difficult to do anything worthwhile with a camera.  At sunset in a place like this, it is often better to… Read full post »

One of Athens' many paradoxes that I have an ongoing fascination with is that of its kiosks, squat huts with goods hanging off of every surface—snack food, ice cream, cigarettes and beer—like the trashiest part of a supermarket condensed and transplanted onto every street corner.  T… Read full post »

I was doing internet things; emailing, blogging, Googling, Flickring, Skyping, tweaktinkertooling—and then I realized it was Greece outside, so I left.  Worddump and photodump (with words to read!) tomorrow./

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