Category: Politics

It’s rare that my (mostly useless but endlessly fascinating) academic field of study overlaps with my actual job, but last week’s SMITE fiasco did just that by mashing Indian mythology and comparative religion with video games. So. Hi-Rez Studios is working on a MOBA game called SMITE, in which participants play as figures from various real-world religions as they run…

Ever hear the phrase “common sense isn’t very common”? It’s true. Arguments from common sense are logical fallacies because there’s really no such thing. We’re all terribly susceptible to the idea that the things we find obvious are obvious to our peers. After all, what sort of horrible person wouldn’t agree with me on something so basic and simple? If…

Since the birth of our son this past summer — a bit early but not a moment too soon — it’s taken me a while to settle back into my gaming niche, but it seems to me that there’s been a miniature feminist revolution across the online geek landscape. Geek Feminism framed Slave Leia cosplay at gaming cons as self-objectifying…

Back in October, Paul and I drove through Casper, Wyoming on our way home from the Midwest. A billboard caught my eye: “Support the three percent lodging tax. It’s the tax you don’t pay,” it read. I sat there, stunned, realizing how emblematic of human stupidity that billboard was. Do people believe these things? They must, or politicians wouldn’t try…

It’s one of the first phrases we learned in 7th grade Latin class, and it sums up the fundamental conflict facing the world. Paul and I were recently in Arizona for one of his astronomy conferences. (Ironically, it’s a cheap state to vacation in, since it’s desperate to recoup tourism losses due to boycotting over recent police-related civil rights issues.) Since…