another Onion videogame article

An attempt to create a completely non-controversial game, which involves stacking cardboard boxes in a warehouse:

“To avoid any appearance of suggestive or adult situations, the graphics consist entirely of rectangular polygons rendered in shades of brown against a simulated gray cinderblock wall. The game is free-roaming inside the warehouse environment, meaning that no goals are set for stacking a certain number of boxes, nor is there a time limit for the stacking. The health-level bar remains at a constant peak, and the first-person perspective avoids the problem of players identifying too closely with the main character, whose name is never specified and to whom nothing actually happens.”

raw video of the Reagan shooting

This is really interesting. Never saw raw footage like this; usually it’s all over-edited.

The unsurprising but still rather startling thing about this footage is just how many armed people are guarding the President at any given moment.

March 1981. Reagan had been in office for less than two months:

more “life imitates The Onion”

This real videogame story:

“Plans to let players control Taliban fighters in the highly anticipated ‘Medal of Honor’ video game have been scrapped amid harsh criticism from military officials and others.”

Reminds me of this Onion story from some years ago:

“Video-game developer Pixxel Arts announced Monday that it will delay the release of Beltway Sniper: Silent Strike out of respect for the victims of the recent D.C.-area shootings.”

Jim Anchower is back

One of The Onion’s funniest characters returns with A NEW EDITORIAL.

female taxi drivers appearing in Cairo

INTERESTING STORY, though I have yet to notice such a trend. I did have one woman as a taxi driver once, maybe five years ago, and it seemed like a one-off anomaly. Until a few years ago you almost never saw a woman waiting tables here either (and it’s still a heavily male job).

And I’d have to agree with the story’s point that a woman driving a taxi in Cairo would be in for a tough time until things change a bit. A lot of the male passengers would be horrible to her.

Whitehead

If you’re a graduate student, one of the things you should really revel in is the fact that if you feel like reading something, you’re more or less free to do so. Most likely you have plenty of time on your hands even if you’re busy with your thesis.

What starts happening once you have a job and other obligations is that free reading time begins to decrease. One can still fit it in now and then, but it’s a guilty pleasure. For the most part, only when I am committed to teaching or writing about something do I have the chance to read it.

Which is why I felt the greatest pleasure this morning when I remembered: “I am speaking at a Whitehead conference in early December. I’d better pull Process and Reality off the shelf and reread it.”

What a delight to read Whitehead. I am confident that he will be one of the handful of thinkers who survive from any century, in this case the 20th: a very good century of philosophy, though I wouldn’t say the best.

It hasn’t been too long. I reread the whole thing two years ago, then reread parts of it six months later when finishing up Prince of Networks.

I joined a reading group on the book early in freshman year of college. It seemed immediately impressive, but I didn’t quite get it at that point, and eventually stopped going to the reading group. But I still have the same copy of the book, which is amusing since some of my old notes are still in the margins, with a handwriting that is recognizably the way I wrote at age 18. And a few of the notes are so embarrassingly stupid that I completely crossed them out with ink. It’s easy to embarrass yourself at 18.

Just as funny is the price listed on the book: $10.95. You know you’re getting old when the prices on your oldest books start to look laughable.

seen on a tea packet

“…a perpetual feast of nectared sweets, where no crude surfeit reigns.”

Milton, Paradise Regained