BioWare’s Facebook game gives to charity, takes $10 off Dragon Age for PC
For those who are thinking about getting Dragon Age:
•December 7, 2009 • Comments Off on For those who are thinking about getting Dragon Age:Protected: Poor Lucy
•December 5, 2009 • Enter your password to view comments.Protected:
•December 3, 2009 • Enter your password to view comments.Incendiary Topic Warning!
•December 3, 2009 • 13 CommentsBefore I ask my question, let’s lay out that I haven’t seen any of my friends do this, and this is an earnest cultural question – it might look snarky, but I mean it.
Is the word “bro”, in context, the new “n*****”?
I first noticed it in a decidedly racist “Offensive Driving book” written by the Bubble Boy dad. There, it’s in the context of “dark skinned towelheads” and “orientals”, referred to as “jam’in bros in cadillacs”. Seems to be clear there.
However, in the midst of an unrelated online discussion the other day, someone I don’t know said (referring to the Starbucks shooter), “One less piece of crap on the streets. And from the looks of it, a couple of his Bros will get some quality time on the taxpayers dime.”
Perhaps he’s not conflating the piece of crap on the street with black people in general (I just checked a photo, and the shooter is black), but I’m more interested in the general concept than in pinning down this one comment.
Is “bros” a new derogatory word? Is it used, you think, like a Fox and Friends host might say, “His ‘homeboys'” (IE denigrating more along class lines), or is it a straight-out, more politically correct racist cover for worse words?
Please don’t use this post to either reinforce or deny the justice of shooting the shooter – different issue entirely.
EDIT: Hmm, I entirely forgot about the “bros” as frat boys reference, which is clearly different.
Scientific American answers 7 counter-claims to global warming.
•December 2, 2009 • Comments Off on Scientific American answers 7 counter-claims to global warming.On November 18, with the United Nations Global Warming Conference in Copenhagen fast approaching, U.S. Senator James R. Inhofe (R-Okla.) took the floor of the Senate and proclaimed 2009 to be “The Year of the Skeptic.” Had the senator’s speech marked a new commitment to dispassionate, rational inquiry, a respect for scientific thought and a well-grounded doubt in ghosts, astrology, creationism and homeopathy, it might have been cause for cheer. But Inhofe had a more narrow definition of skeptic in mind: he meant “standing up and exposing the science, the costs and the hysteria behind global warming alarmism.”
Within the community of scientists and others concerned about anthropogenic climate change, those whom Inhofe calls skeptics are more commonly termed contrarians, naysayers and denialists. Not everyone who questions climate change science fits that description, of course—some people are genuinely unaware of the facts or honestly disagree about their interpretation. What distinguishes the true naysayers is an unwavering dedication to denying the need for action on the problem, often with weak and long-disproved arguments about supposed weaknesses in the science behind global warming.
What follows is only a partial list of the contrarians’ bad arguments and some brief rebuttals of them.
The arguments:
- Anthropogenic CO2 can’t be changing climate, because CO2 is only a trace gas in the atmosphere and the amount produced by humans is dwarfed by the amount from volcanoes and other natural sources.
- The alleged “hockey stick” graph of temperatures over the past 1,600 years has been disproved. It doesn’t even acknowledge the existence of a “medieval warm period” around 1000 A.D. that was hotter than today is.
- Global warming stopped a decade ago; the earth has been cooling since then.
- The sun or cosmic rays are much more likely to be the real causes of global warming.
- Climatologists conspire to hide the truth about global warming by locking away their data. Their so-called “consensus” on global warming is scientifically irrelevant because science isn’t settled by popularity.
- Climatologists have a vested interest in raising the alarm because it brings them money and prestige.
- Technological fixes, such as inventing energy sources that don’t produce CO2 or geoengineering the climate, would be more affordable, prudent ways to address climate change than reducing our carbon footprint.
Check out this polymer!
•December 2, 2009 • 11 CommentsI totally want to see what it can do.
Here’s a useful sort of review on it:
EDIT: They sold out of their first batch of 1,000 in six hours!
•December 1, 2009 • 2 Comments
Some really fascinating comments in my recent LJ posts – thanks, peoples!
Let us talk about me. :) And then you talk about you, and that’s almost like a conversation!
•November 30, 2009 • 9 CommentsMy LJ list is chock-full of both people who’ve known me for a dozen years and people who met me last month… and some of those new people might know me better. So here I am with the get-to-know-me meme, with my own twist on the final Q…
If you’ve had people say things like “Since when were they working there?!”, feel free to do it yourself.
Don’t forget to elaborate, or it’s no fun, I say!
1. Name: Skennedy. I picked up the nickname a long time when I was 17 (aka Scott “Not Yet 18” Kennedy), and it disappeared for years. The funny thing: I respond easily to it, but I’m still really irritated by someone calling me “Kennedy”. You’d think, working in journalism where everyone does it, I’d be used to it by now.
2. Age: 31. A few months from celebrating 32 with my favorite peoples at SkennCon. It didn’t bother me before, but now that we’re on the 3rd annual trip, I feel a certain warmth to my birthday I never had before.
3. Location: Plymouth, MI. It’s a mile away from all sorts of stuff, and yet kind of feels like the middle of nowhere. I live in a complex with winding roads, hills and plenty of trees.
4. Occupation: Video Director / Editor. Also videographer, graphic designer, occasional photographer, CG/chromakey/compositing, hardware support, web template manager. I work for a national journalism company with 30 different publications. We recently built a 3,000+ sq ft studio space, which means I’m no longer trying to edit inside the newsroom.
5. Partner?: blue_lucy is my soon-to-be wife. We’re planning our May wedding while she’s in the midst of studying for her board exams, in the midst of externships, planning for her residency and our future from there. No pressha. Sometimes she’s bombastic, but we giggle, cuddle, and play together a lot, and she is always taking care of me in ways subtle and obvious.
6. Kids: None yet. We haven’t decided on kids vs pets. Weird to think we’re at or near 30 and still feel like there’s growing up to do. I like to think I’d be a good dad.
7. Brothers/Sisters: One sister, or half-sister if you care, Rachael. We share a father in common, and she’s ten years younger than me. I never knew about her, since I didn’t keep in touch with that side of my family. She hunted me down on the internet when she was 10 – I knew that kind of geek had to be my family. ;) She lives on the east coast, far closer to the rest of my family than I.
8. Pets: None yet, but I’ll be inheriting rats, for however long, and inevitably we will get pets. I’m marrying a vet, I’ll count myself blessed if, five years from now, I’m not trying to bottle feed a black bear or an emu.
9. List the 3-5 biggest things going on in your life:
– The Wedding. We have lots of stuff figured out – the cake, the dress, the location, the colors. But the things we don’t have figured out are looming.
– The Job. I tend to work a lot, and they want me there even more. I’m pleased at the professional and personal growth I’ve had through this job, but it’s hard to feel fulfilled when the holiday party is now “potluck in the office” and the christmas bonus doesn’t exist this year.
– The Girl. She’s living at my place for 3 weeks while she finishes her externship in Ann Arbor, and then we have the holidays coming. Afterward, she’ll be off in externships outside the state an awful lot, so we’re getting in time while we can.
– Other Video. I sometimes take contract jobs to edit video. More often I collect video myself I want to edit, or I offer to put something together for a close friend. They, uhm, pile up.
– Gaming. I believe in gaming as a powerful way to bring people together, to express creativity, to laugh, and to tell stories in a collaborative way. I haven’t done an Alternate Reality Game lately, but I am playing all sorts of games when I can find the time. I almost cried the other day when Fable II rewarded my hard work with a free house for my wife that I stole from a vindictive ghost.10. Parents: Mom lives nearby in Berkley, my father died a year or so ago. He’s always been my counter-rolemodel – someone I could look at and say, “don’t be that guy.” I feel bad that he dissembled so thoroughly, but maybe I wouldn’t be a person I’m as proud of if I hadn’t had him as a cautionary tale.
11. Who are some of your closest friends? No. I’m not really a fan of this question… I think it’s probably more important for you to know the names you’d see most frequently in my journal. So I ran the top commenters program, and I thought I’d describe them for you. This is “of all time”, so some people comment less now than others. :)
The H-bomb personality
•November 30, 2009 • 36 CommentsHave you ever had to associate with someone who has a clear knee-jerk response to contrary opinions and responds in a truly emotionally unbalanced way to the slightest provocation? Have you asked someone to relax and had them bring out the nuclear warhead?
Oh, I’ve had a few experiences with this, but I’m thinking of a circumstance not directly related to me. I’m interested in your stories – successful and unsuccessful ways of dealing with this. Did you directly confront them about their problem? Did you get drawn into the specific issues instead of talking about the irrational response? Did you push them out of your life immediately, or tell them to seek help, and if the latter, did it help (and could they take you seriously?) Or did you duck and cover, and hope they didn’t put you in the position to make that choice?
Everyone has their emotional pushbuttons, me included, but some people can’t seem to control themselves no matter what is at stake. Heck, maybe that is you, and you’ve had some tough experiences because of it.
Tell me your story!