Iran is displeased with Frank Miller.
My favorite recap of the hoofrah is probably this snippet from another Iranian news outlet:
In contrast to the reaction in Iran, 300 has earned largely positive reviews in North America, despite multiple decapitations and battlefield carnage.
I don’t think they really understand young American males.
Shortly before midnight (CST) on Monday, February 26, a group of republican Second Life users, some sporting “Bush ’08″ tags, vandalized the John Edwards Second Life HQ.
Well, then. Clearly the use of MMOs as a political platform needs some work.
Posted in SecondLife, Tyrants, _
John Edwards campaign invades Second Life, sort of.
Wonkette’s take is too ribaldly funny for words. As are the comments, such as
I hate the Internet.
Yes, yes, this is something every party can agree on.
Posted in SecondLife, Tyrants, _
As found on a SomethingAwful.com forum thread, and courtesy of YouTube, this is in its entirety, “The War Game”.
“The War Game” is a British mock documentary from 1965 that was never shown on television at the time because it was deemed too horrifying. It describes in loving detail the impact of a nuclear strike on a completely unprepared UK. Since it wasn’t aired until 20 years after its filming, it’s somewhat hard to find, so I suspect for most of you this will be the first time you’ve seen it. More modern films that have followed such as The Day After, Testament, Threads and the recent Children of Men all borrow liberally from this movie, though The War Game is far more intense than any of these. For those of us that grew up in the 70s and 80s, this was our future.
Below the cut, the hour-long “The War Game”, in five parts. You may want to see something lighthearted afterwards. I recommend Shrek.
An interesting game was released today to the public.
The goal of the player as the leader is to establish a stable resolution to the [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict and win the Nobel Prize before his or her term in office ends. The difficulty level can range from calm to violent.
Any resemblance to Hidden Agenda, up to now the penultimate simulation of politics, is no doubt very non-coincidental. The player picks a side (Israeli or Palestinian) and lists their views on the ongoing crisis. The game is designed to teach people some of the issues facing each side, mostly involving bullets flying into things. So how well did it do?
This just in: Pope Benedict XVI dislikes video games. Who would have guessed?
Any trend to produce programmes and products – including animated films and video games – which in the name of entertainment exalt violence and portray anti-social behaviour or the trivialization of human sexuality is a perversion, all the more repulsive when these programmes are directed at children and adolescents. How could one explain this ‘entertainment’ to the countless innocent young people who actually suffer violence, exploitation and abuse? In this regard, all would do well to reflect on the contrast between Christ who “put his arms around [the children] laid his hands on them and gave them his blessing” (Mk 10:16) and the one who “leads astray … these little ones” for whom “it would be better … if a millstone were hung round his neck” (Lk 17:2).
No word on if Pope Benedict plans to ever take any action against members of the clergy who “lead astray these little ones” in ways slightly more destructive to their psyches than GTA 3.
“You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from the other person’s eye.” (Matt 7:5)
Just in case Joel Stein’s search for his special purpose wasn’t enough of a PR hit for the Lindenistas, another one may be brewing, at least in Europe: The French National Front’s Moselle youth league‘s opened up a recruiting office. I suspect this will be met with considerably less fanfare than Mark Warner’s flyby.
As the article notes (translation assisted by Google and twenty-years-old French class):
A priori, nothing prohibits a political party, even an extreme right wing one, to use Second Life. The general conditions of use specify that it is forbidden to behave in a manner that is \’e2\’80\’9charmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, causes tort, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of another’s privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable\’e2\’80\’9d there, but does not defend the ability to create political propaganda.
Of course, the surrounding lots immediately sprouted impolite derision in French. Perhaps they should have joined an Anshe Chung subdivision. Here’s one Messr. Le Pen may fit in with comfortably.
And you thought Marx wasn’t relevant to daily life any more.
Unlike Ubiq, I’m not going to bravely come out and be the lone voice of liberalism in the game industry.
Suffice to say that I was pleased at the result, but only because the Republican majority has been anything but conservative in its actions. (Note: invading sovereign countries and raising spending while cutting taxes is not a conservative platform, just in case there were questions to that effect.)
I’ve also been pleased with the Democratic tacking to the center in an attempt to move beyond their base, something the Republicans haven’t seen the need to do since Bush’s first election campaign. (Remember “compassionate conservatism?”) The rhetoric of the GOP operatives has been far more shrill as they try to appeal to their base in the face of a drumbeat of news from Iraq, New Orleans, and Washington.
However, I’m also old enough to remember Dan Rostenkowski and harbor no illusions that a Democratic-led congress will be a magical land of propriety, bipartisanship and moderation. About the best we can hope for: oversight and gridlock. And that, I have every faith our new Congressfolk can deliver!
Mark Warner visited Second Life as part of his presidential bid.
Really… can I add anything else? I mean, I could ask if he ended up wearing a box on his head or if a blue fox tried to cyber him, but really… nothing I say could top the surrealness of a presidential candidate flying into a graphic MOO chat to, due to technical limitations, talk to about 40 people, some of whom may have been wearing kitty ears.
In other words, he’s practicing for the Iowa caucuses.
