In my first-year writing seminar “Self & Cyborg in Japanese Animation” we have quite a few philosophical discussions about virtuality, simulation, fake memories, and the like. Most of it functions on a theoretical level, as philosophical puzzles to think with, to pose liminal scenarios, to defamiliarize common knowledge. Given that it tends to be theoretical [...]

I’ve recently taken up casual play of Call of Duty (the original version that was recently ported for download to Mac Intel machines) and it occurred to me whether or not such WWII games, especially first-person shooters targeting virtual Germans, are sold and played in Germany. The thought was actually more specific: what would it [...]

I came across this video and just had to share it. To me, it is a revelation, life-changing, paradigm-shifting, and — as our host says — mind-blowing: I want to go buy a bunch of bananas now to try this.

I didn’t intend to bid for a Dell Mini 10v that was souped up with a 320GB hard drive, 2GB RAM, WiFi-N, and OSX 10.5.7 preinstalled and all the necessary tweaks to the 10v already done to make it work all right with OSX, but, well, I felt sorry for the guy who posted it [...]

“Welcome to Google Voice! Google Voice gives you a single phone number that rings all your phones, saves your voicemailonline, and transcribes your voicemail to text. Other cool features include the ability to listen in on messages while they are beingleft and the ability to make low cost international calls. To start enjoying Google Voice, [...]

At long last I watched the film 300 last night. I had been avoiding it because of all the hyped up criticism of its depiction of the Persians as decadent monsters and the Spartans as Abercrombie and Fitch poster boys with swords. Yes, the Persians are depicted as decadent (transsexual) monsters and the Spartans could [...]