Alright it's been long enough that it's time for me to just acknowledge that and get on with it. So this is me just trying to get this recap out of the way. I need to clear my mental pathways, so let's do dis. I know for sure that I want to explore at least one topic separately in a later post, but perhaps I'll reflect on others at a later date as well. Apparently I have some sort of superhuman capacity for delayed gratification, because it took me months to finally buy and build a gaming PC. With a friend to help pick out the parts, I started to purchase them as they came on sale after Christmas, completing the full set of purchases weeks later. Having a gaming rig is pretty great! I'm really enjoying the Firefall beta. It's nice to feel myself getting better at shooters. My...

My brain has been in crazy overdrive lately but it's been a jumble for weeks. Hey, wait a minute, didn't I start a blog specifically to mitigate that? To-do lists don't fix a messy "augh I can't concentrate on just ONE amazing thing" head, but idea extraction does!So for the first extraction procedure: I've become obsessed with the concept of "experience over information" lately. It's really an amalgamation of my previous big essay posts. As such, I'm going to start with some of the same material in order to explain the concept. Heh, this whole blog is just going to end up one giant extended essay in itself.Rhoulette characterized the concept through the common idea of "pix or it didn't happen" and its relationship to "a picture is worth a thousand words." This is easy to mentally skip over because we hear the two phrases so often, but there...

This is kind of a lengthy addendum to my previous post on Tone. I started including some bits of it there but I realized this topic is best appreciated in its own post. For those that know me, yes, I realize that I'm only JUST BARELY not writing about both FUoS and Lady Gaga's gender-twisting project here, too.Today, I want to focus on teh funnay. I've come to really appreciate the way a humorous approach can be a great way to discuss feminist topics. The following are all projects that I see as positive and very accessible ways to bring gender issues to light. I also find them pretty hilarious -- which is, of course, tied in with their accessability. They're not part of 'gaming' per se, but the influence and parallels are quite clear.Men-ups is a photo series from photographer Rion Sabean that depict men in classic 1940s-1950s pin-up...

I've long disliked the caustic methods of Richard Dawkins. I've had similar issues with Christopher Hitchens. Dawkins has a very arrogant, abrasive tone. Fans of Dawkins love his biting wit and his haughty yet matter-of-fact smackdowns. Okay, sure, I also love me some smackdowns. The youtube clips of some of his best lines can be a rare guilty pleasure.In contrast, Neil deGrasse Tyson has a very open, understanding and personable way of speaking that engages everyone who listens. The man is fucking pumped about astrophysics and he's absolutely delighted to help you understand why. You can feel it bursting out of him all-at-once and you start to get frustrated on his behalf at how the slowness of language is obviously mistranslating his intensity of feeling. He's a favourite guest of Stephen Colbert's and the two have a great rapport even out-of-character. This video is old, but it's a brilliant moment...