A cultural anthropologist, with an

A cultural anthropologist, with an interest in computer games, wrote an article about Civ 3’s implementation of culture. It’s a fascinating read. It focuses on Civ 3’s Western notion of culture. The article briefly asks the question about what if the Iroquois had defeated the European migrants. Then I found a comment on plastic which has a fantastic, and brief, description of how the Iroquois could “Win”.

Of course no blog would

Of course no blog would be complete without an illustrated history of Christian Contemporary Music by a secular humanist

Oh my, this is certainly

Oh my, this is certainly disturbing. If you don’t like seeing surgery or blood this is not for you. It’s a series of TV ads for the Beauty Kit for Little Girls

That music is kinda catchy though.

My server emailed me this

My server emailed me this morning with 262 lines of Limiting closed port RST response from 253 to 200 packets per second. While I don’t know what the purpose of the was I’m pretty sure it wasn’t anything noble like ending hunger or bringing about world peace. That wasn’t my first. Any net security virginity I’d had was lost just a couple days prior when I opened access to my G4 Cube so people could get to the web server on it. Within two hours of opening it people were already scanning it for IIS vulnerabilities.

Alright, I've figured out the

Alright, I’ve figured out the cause of the “economic slowdown.” It all ties in with the US Mint’s 50 State Quarter program. If you check the 10 year schedule they started this January 1, 1999. Is it coincidence that in a year dotcoms began collapsing? You’ve seen the quarters. They memorialize some aspect of each state. I think it’s kinda neat. Till the big revalation dawned on me.

These new quarters have engendered a coin collection compulsion in me. If I’m at a vending machine I now check my quarters and conserve the special ones. I then squirrel them away in a special, secret place that I won’t tell anyone about because you would break in and steal my collection. It dawned on me that if I’m hiding these quarters then they aren’t in circulation anymore. Well we still need quarters so more quarters are minted. Thus the value of a quarter is diluted because there are more of them.

Yesterday at 14:56 the following

Yesterday at 14:56 the following words showed up in my email:

Wow, thanks for the comments. I am glad you remembered the film after all
this time. I will keep you posted on upcoming stuff and the DVD release.

Mark O

That is THE Mark Osborne who made the brilliant and wonderful short More. I had gone to moreshort.com and registered my interest to buy a DVD of it when it is published. When I registered my interest I blurted something like “I saw More in 1999 at the Boston Science Museum and it exceeded all my expectations for a short film and has set the bar for short films since.”

Good times at the Angelika

Good times at the Angelika Roundtable last night. Shawn handed out Hedwig and the Angry Inch posters. He also handed out Gosford Park character cards and a board game. Then for the truly discerning movie fan he had the actual film trailers for a couple of films. Mark went home with one or maybe both of those. Aside from the conversation the real gem that night is the list that Chris made of the top 30 films of 2001.

Music Goodness

Okay, I try to encourage people to diversify the music they listen to. However, I rarely offer more than a band name to remedy the situation. Well I’ll drop things in matt.csbgroup.org from time to time to encourage listening.

The following items were

The following items were included in this shipment:

Old and New Testament stories told with Legos

If only the bible stories had been told with Legos I might have stayed in church. Link Props to