Gamer's Manifesto

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As someone who has wasted numerous hours of my life playing video games, I have to link to this Gamer's Manifesto, with which I totally agree, especially number 10:

10. And while we're at it...

Let's rid games of all arbitrary barriers.

Don't show my character casting magic meteors that smash mountains in one scene and in the next send me all over the dungeon trying to find a single key to a rickety wooden door that looks like it could be knocked in with a strong shoulder. Make it a magic door, a huge door, fine, but don't make it an arbitrary door that only remains closed because that's what the plot requires.

Also, don't have me toting around 500 pounds of high explosives, 2 different kinds of missile launchers and a nuclear fusion cannon and still make almost every pane of glass I come across totally unbreakable. It was cute that I could shoot Coke cans off the tables in Doom III. But then I shoot the magazine sitting next to it and it doesn't even show scuff marks. It's 2005! Give me environments that realistically react to what I do! Yes, it matters. It's immersion, bitch!

[via Slashdot]

Scarborough Country

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Karen's SleepingFor those who haven't gotten their daily dose of the Republican Talking Points, my sister-in-law, Karen Kaufman Salic, is going to be on Scarborough Country tonight on MSNBC. They'll be discussing this case which made the national media. Karen is the County Attorney (aka Prosecutor) in that county, and she was on the Today show already this morning, where Katie managed to mangle her name twice, much to our amusement.

Update: Due to "late-breaking" Michael Jackson news, Karen's appearance has been canceled for tonight, though she may be on tomorrow.

Godwin's Law

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Ahh, Rick Santorum, always the voice of reason, when he's not fantasizing about man-on-dog sex, that is:

"What the Democrats are doing is the equivalent of Adolf Hitler in 1942 saying, 'I'm in Paris. How dare you invade me. How dare you bomb my city? It's mine.' This is no more the rule of the senate than it was the rule of the senate before not to filibuster."

-- Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), quoted on the Senate floor

So, according to Usenet tradition, the discussion is over, and Rick has automatically lost.

Many people have extended Godwin's law to imply that the invoking of the Nazis as a debating tactic (in any argument not directly related to World War II or the Holocaust) automatically loses the argument, simply because the nature of these events is such that any comparison to any event less serious than genocide, ethnic cleansing or extinction is invalid and in poor taste.

What's even better is that Santorum lambasted former KKK member (that one is for you, Mark), and senior West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd for the same tactic on March 1.

As long as we're tinkering with the Senate rules, howabout we rein in the wackos in both parties? I call for the adoption of Godwin's law in the Senate, and if you don't agree with me, you're obviously a Nazi.

[via Scripting News]

Not faking it

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I stayed home from work yesterday, since I didn't feel all that great in the morning, which progressed to feeling awful by the afternoon. I made an appointment to see the doctor this morning, and after a chest x-ray in which he saw some "haziness", he thinks I've got pneumonia, but it's going to the Radiologist for confirmation. Great, just great. So, I'm at home on Doxycycline now, where I'll probably remain for the next several days, as the diagnosis pneumonia jives with what I think I've got.