Historian-Based News

You know what I'd watch? A news program run by historians. They'd tell me what's happening currently, then provide examples of similar events from history and detail the downstream effects of those examples.


I hear people talk so much about how things are "worse than they've ever been" in this way or that way on this topic or that topic. With a few exceptions, no, they're not. Politics have always been ugly and brutal. Humans have always been selfish and tribalistic yet capable of greatness.


Give me a news program whose mandate is to tell me all the ways in which the news isn't new. Give me a detailed historical context, and maybe I can learn a little something in the hopes of avoiding the mistakes of my grandparents, and their grandparents, etc.


(In a better world, I would've absorbed more history in school. In a better world, I'd have more time and focus to read history books as an adult.)

Letters from 1991

In 1991, I was in art school, and one of the things that interested me was making comics for a living.  That summer I wrote letters to three folks in the comics industry whose work I admired - Dave Sim, creator of Cerebus; David Mazzucchelli, who'd illustrated Batman: Year One (among other things); and Chris Oliveros, who published a comics anthology called Drawn and Quarterly.  In my letters I asked for advice on self-publishing.  Much to my delight, all three responded.  I've scanned their replies on the off-chance that they're of historical interest to anyone.  (Some addresses have been grayed out.)

RageQuit Scale

Working toward a computer game RageQuit Scale:

1. Main Menu->Exit
2. Alt+F4
3. Ctrl-alt-del->Task Manager->Kill Process Tree
4. Ctrl-alt-del->Task Manager->Shutdown Windows
5. Throw mouse/keyboard/controller across the room, stomp off.
6. Rip power cord from the back of the computer.
7. Throw computer out of window.
8. Stomp to circuit breaker, cut power to house.
9. Scramble up pole outside house, manually cut power cables to neighborhood.
10. ?

Alternate career list as of mid-2011

Current career: Game designer/artist

Alternate list, unordered:
1.High school history teacher
2.Orangutan conservation worker
3.Miniature golf course designer
4.Massage therapist
5.Stay-at-home dad

Semifreddi's Cinnamon Twist Bread

Product endorsement: Semifreddi's Cinnamon Twist Bread. Easy to find in Northern California, hard (impossible?) to find in Washington.

http://www.semifreddis.com/products.html

Balanced Budget Amendment

Okay. Politics.

I'm a good, solid liberal. I've found I tend to disagree with conservatives on both issues and process.

I also consider myself to be a fiscal conservative. Not in the sense that you often hear that phrase - synonymous with an anti-tax, pro-business, small-government position. I believe that it's unwise to spend more money than you have. Personally, I have no debt except for my house - it would simply have taken too long to save the money to buy a house outright. That mortgage debt makes me uncomfortable, but I've accepted it.

When I read about a hypothetical Balanced Budget Amendment, there's an assumption that the "pro" position belongs to conservatives and that the "con" position belongs to liberals. I don't really understand this, but I can write it off to the difference between talk and action - just looking at the federal budgets across the span of Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush tells you who was actually fiscal conservative.

What I don't grasp is the liberal argument *against* a Balanced Budget Amendment. I see a mass of lawmakers (and a few executives) who have demonstrated over the course of *decades* that they're incapable of fiscal responsibility. That is to say, they've shown that they can not be trusted to spend less than they have. With such a clear pattern, why would we permit them the leeway to continue?

An honest argument about a Balanced Budget Amendment is not along party lines as far as I can see. And it's not equivalent to an argument over small government/big government. I pay taxes to support the communal infrastructure and services we all depend on, and I'm fine with that. But let the national discussion be about how to allocate the resources available. For as long as I've been alive, U.S. politicians have been publicly fighting over their fiscal positions, but as citizens we've gotten the worst of both sides - excessive spending with insufficient taxation.

Why on earth wouldn't we tie their (and OUR OWN) hands at this point?

Modified herpes virus identifies (and may kill) cancer cells

Badass.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=altered-virus-calls-out-hidden-canc-2011-05-11

Product endorsement: "Everything is Going to Kill Everybody"

"Everything is Going to Kill Everybody" by Robert Brockway. Hilarious, informative, and deadly.

Grover Norquist

I want to do a small video installation called "Portrait of Grover Norquist".

It's just a TV with a looped clip of Chris Kattan from 1999's House on Haunted Hill screaming like a child, "It's MY MONEY! GIVE it to me!"

Documentation

Claire says that teachers are the worst people to give lectures to, because they're impatient, inattentive, and don't listen. Similarly, game designers are the worst people to write documentation for - they don't read docs. And when they do, they skim and walk away with wrong impressions, yet have complete confidence that they understand the overarching points.

I'm fully guilty of this myself...

David Mamet writing a screenplay for Diary of Anne Frank

Three interpretations of what that might sound like:

Salon

Village Voice

New York Magazine

The player experience

Trying to keep the direct player experience at the forefront of my mind often feels like falling asleep while driving. It's so easy to get lulled into a meta-design space where the systems and abstractions take precedence. And that's not to say that the systemic design isn't important, but it tends to suck up all the oxygen in the room because it's familiar, safe, and above all, clean. Comparatively, the player experience is dirty, filthy business, all wrapped up in interface and challenge and learning and boredom.

So I end up with a lot of marks on my arm from pinching myself. Stay awake, man!

Surprise! Komodo dragons are... venomous?

Apparently so.

I forgot I had a blog!

Oops. I gotta get back to this.

Write to Marry Day

My favorite new blog

Photoshop Disasters

"Study Reveals Women Choose Video Games Instead of Sleep"

We in the game industry talk a lot about wanting to expand the player base -- in the end, we want everyone playing games the way everyone goes to see movies or everyone watches TV. It doesn't always look like we're making progress, but this (admittedly small-scale) poll gives me hope.

Link over at Businesswire.

Oh, man.

I totally had this idea. Except my plan was to sell beer made with NY tap water. Oh well.

“Junk DNA” May Have Triggered Key Evolutionary Changes in Human Thumb and Foot

Results from a comparative analysis of the human, chimpanzee, rhesus macaque and other genomes reported in the journal Science suggest our evolution may have been driven not only by sequence changes in genes, but by changes in areas of the genome once thought of as “junk DNA.”

Cool.

Monogamy gene?

Very weird.