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Bogost – Obamacare: the Videogame
Bogost – Obamacare: the Videogame dropouthangoutspaceout: The problem is this: neither the Obama White House nor the Obama campaign will make such a game. That’s not because the designs are bad; ironically, it’s because they are good. As I’ve argued before, the representation of policy choices and their outcomes is anathema to politics, because the…
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Academic publishing
barthel: I am trying to get electronic access to an article from 1990. I cannot do so. This is normal. Except it’s ridiculous. Why? Because the article was published in the journal I currently work for. I can’t even get to it through the backend.
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atavist: Inflatable tank dummy as art. Michael Sailstorfer, T 72 (sand), 2008, courtesy Johann König, Berlin, photos Alexis Zavialoff, CVG Bild-Kunst, Bonn
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atavist: Inflatable dummy tank next to a real U.S. Army medium tank Mark IV. Dec. 5, 1945
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Puerility makes everything into a game, even things that are not games, even things that must not be games. Puerility is detailed, nitpicky, often rulebound, but always in the service of play. Longinus detects a formal puerility in writing that evinces a desire to be pleasing. I might revise that: not so much a desire…
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newyorker: newyorker: In 1973, two social scientists, Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber, defined a class of problems they called “wicked problems.” Wicked problems are messy, ill-defined, more complex than we fully grasp, and open to multiple interpretations based on one’s point of view. They are problems such as poverty, obesity, where to put a new…
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jubjubjubjub: I’ve signed up for Code Club, a national project to encourage primary-school children to learn computer programming. Code Club are going to provide a 12-week curriculum based around Scratch.
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notational: oeste: latimes: Little Free Library brings neighbors together through books: A nationwide movement, Little Free Library prompts bibliophiles to put up small shelved structures outside their homes where people can take books and leave some too. The result can be conversation, friendship and a sense of community. In the half a year that Beggs’…
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In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was…
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In order to save the books, they had to threaten to burn them. At least, that’s the story told by Leo Burnett Worldwide, a Michigan advertising company that just won nine awards at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. The kudos were for a P.R. campaign on behalf of the Troy, Mich., public library.…