Games of Social Change

Call it a social trend or just a liberal gimmick. Nonetheless, new games focusing on social issues are hitting the Internet in fast numbers and are winning the applause of video-gamers and reformers alike.

The latest game is called “ICED” whose theme is immigration. In “ICED” (short for “I can end deportation”) players are one of five characters weaving around a fictitious American city, doing their best to avoid the ICE (the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement).

Each character is different: an illegal immigrant, a visa-holding college student, a green-card worker, a U.S-born son of illegally immigrated parents, and an African American girl who wrote a disparaging college essay about the Patriot Act. 

The game was developed by a non-profit educational organization in New York and is free to download.

http://www.icedgame.com

At the Newseum

Journalism is often a thankless, overlooked, and underpaid profession. Thomas Jefferson loved the press, but who else?

A lot of people view journalists as icky, side dwellers or sycophants feeding off the tragedy and misery around them. “A shooting on the West Side? I’m on it!” “A plane crash in the Midwest? Let’s do it!” 

You can blame 5 o’clock TV news (and I do) but regardless, aside from the patriotic claim we hold to in having a free press in this society (especially during war), people often look at journalists like they do lawyers—with skepticism, even though journalists average about half their salary.

So how great is it that journalism got its own museum? 

Located across the street from the Smithsonian museums, the “Newseum” is just a stones-throw from the Capital building in Washington D.C. The massive, six-level museum is entirely dedicated to the study and celebration of journalism.

The museum posts the front page stories of newspapers around the world on the outside windows. And on the wall, a large concrete excerpt from the First Amendment hangs, facing the Capital. 

Inside, visitors will see a large HD TV hanging from the rafters which plays re-runs of historical TV news. 

Admission is $20. If you have all day then it’s worth the price, if not, the Smithsonian museums are free and just down the street.

But should you fork up the cash, a great museum awaits.

True to the digital evolution of journalism, the Newseum is also packed full of multimedia exhibits, such as on-demand videos, Q&A’s with virtual instructors, even video games, like the one below (pull a reporter to your corner, correctly answer the pop-up questions and build the biggest newsroom). 

 

 

 

Also, at the Newseum, you can visit a World Trade Center exhibit. The wall beside a piece of the tower is plastered with the front pages of newspapers around the world, declaring the attack. Circling the artifact is a minute-to-minute breakdown of how the news that day unfolded.

 

 

 

Around the corner, read about the tragic assignation of Don Bolles, an investigative reporter for the “Arizona Republic” who was killed by a car bomb planted by the mafia. (That’s his car pictured).

 

 

 

 

There’s also the “News History Timeline” exhibit, teaching visitors about the evolution of journalism, from 1455 onward. 

 

 

 

 

 

And there’s a lot more. Next time you’re in Washington D.C., bring $20 for the door. The Newseum is great for both history buffs and journalists alike.

The Elements of Style – Book Review

 

From every line there peers out at me the puckish face of my professor, his short hair parted neatly in the middle and combed down over his forehead, his eyes blinking incessantly behind steel-rimmed spectacles…       

                                                            - William Strunk on E.B. White

In 1919, E.B. White was a professor at Cornell University and William Strunk a student in his English 8 class.

White handed his students a book he’d written that summer on the fundamentals of writing. Strunk called it the “little book.”

Only 43 pages long, “The Elements of Style” was the professor’s irate treatise on the need for “cleanliness, accuracy, and brevity in the use of English.”

Almost 100 years late, a writing professor of mine told our class we should be carrying it around in our back pocket.

The rules of the book are simple and memorable–and timeless like clips from the Bible: “Keep to one tense!” “Use the active voice!” “Avoid a succession of long sentences!”

And, of course, there was White’s Golden Rule: “…he leaned forward over his desk, grasped his coat lapels in his hands, and in a husky, conspiratorial voice, said, “Rule Seventeen. Omit needless words! Omit needless words! Omit needless words!”

The book is split into five sections, touching on everything from simple grammar (“Do not join independent clauses by a comma” to advanced styling (“Do not explain too much”).

Pick up a copy. You can buy it on Amazon for less than a buck.

Hey, Dr. Suresh: Where You From?

Sloppy art is in the details. 

Here’s what Dr. Suresh sounds like now in season 3:  

But it wasn’t long ago—before he ever combed his hair or whitened his teeth for the camera in season two—when the beloved scientist from “Heroes” was fresh off the boat from India, driving a cab in New York and searching for the man who killed his father. 

He seemed different then. Maybe it was his accent…?

…as crazy as it sounds

Austin’s “House of Torment”

Arnold Van Gennep, a 20th century Belgian anthropologist, once wrote that all cultures use similar rites of passage.

In East Africa, the Barabaig tribe shave the heads of their pubescent “warriors-to-be” and cut lines in their scalp with razors. Other cultures circumcise.

In suburbia, we smoke our first cigarette, dance at the prom, or take off the training wheels.

And when we’re brave enough, visit a haunted house. 

There’s always three stages in a rite of passage: separation, liminality, and incorporation. Big words but simple concepts.

In terms of a haunted house, when you pull into that parking lot, buy your ticket and enter through the squeaky, spider-webbed door, that’s  the “separation”—you exit the Old and enter the New.

Tumbling over your friends laughing and pausing to notice that heartbeat of yours slowly pumping back out of your ears at the end is the “incorporation”. 

But the fun part is the middle—the “liminality” phase. It’s where anything goes. And it awaits you at the House of Torment.

www.thehouseoftorment.com

The Scary John McCain

Watching John McCain at this week’s town hall meeting was like watching the emperor from “Empire Strikes Back” or a smiling cadavour.

Slouched or upright, teeth strained and blinky-eyed, the war hero looked more like an uncomfortable soriority girl hit by a bout of ADD and rigor mortis than a world leader in-waiting. 

And what’s more, his roll-the-eyes, don’t-forget-to-wink-at-the-audience debate strategy was so badly acted out it wouldn’t make the cut at a high school play. 

He wasn’t smarter than the other guy, so he elevated his chin, puffed out his chest and pretended to know-it-all. 

It was almost sad to watch.

A Longer Review of “Heroes”, Season 3

Poor Heroes. 

First, the actors go on strike and now the muse has too. How did it happen? In the beginning is was all so simple: Save the Cheerleader, Save the World.

Now the show is all over the place, scattered and frantic like Britney Spears at a coke party.

…so what happened? (To save a “!SpOiLEr AlERt!”, I’ll stick with abstracts)

I have two guesses.

First, the strike. It threw off the timing (and plot direction) of the show in mid-flight. The writers were forced to wrap-up it up prematurely (I mean, how else were they to sell the DVD’s over the summer?).

If you watch the bonus features on the DVD set, you know that originally, the bad guys won. The vile containing the virus breaks on the floor of the vault at the paper mill, slips into the ventilation system and spreads to the town. Within hours (or a few shows really) the result is mass death, yelling, screaming, (cats and dog making love) and millions dead, bleeding out of their mouths in cities everywhere.

 

Getting sick of his "oh, gooly gee!" yet?

 

But then, the actors walked and screwed the plan, leaving producers tripping over their shoelaces for an alternate ending–one that would make due ’till Fall when a new plot could be drawn in the sand. The result was last year’s nicely-packaged but anti-climatic Disney World finale where (ta-da!) the vile lands–not on the ground–but softly in the palm of the all-around nice guy Peter Petrelli. And the world is saved. For now.

My second guess is the writer’s got lazy (too many off-season piña coladas by the pool).

Part of the charm of Heroes is its balance of fantasy and emotional realism–sure people can fly, but the characters are developed. They have believable investments in the plot. Their reactions to situations are consistent with their background. Their goals are reasonable, etc. 

But now, the fantastical is so far outweighing the realism that viewers with any self-worth are catching on (and tuning out). Character development is a-bye-bye and Coincidence is God almighty. 

The show has lost 20% of its viewers since the premiere a month ago, but luckily for Heroes, TV is bad everywhere. Even with the loss, the show is the fifth-most watched on TV. But it’s still not a reason to care about a cheerleader. If NBC wants a loving audience it’ll have to save the show first.

Mogulus – Online TV

 

mogulus, online tv

Wouldn’t it be nice to own your own TV station? Play marathons of “Back-to-the-Future”? Re-runs of “Fraggle Rock”? Maybe some old-school MTV? 

That’s your choice at Mogulus.com

Should you want to produce a station, all you need is a computer, a web cam and a high-speed connection. Already more than 100,000 users have launched.

As a viewer, you can browse a variety of stations in over 30 languages—including in (thank God) Gujarati—within 26 categories.

Think of it like watching your neighbors TV over his shoulder through the window—only you have a lot of neighbors.

There’s thousands of stations to choose from: over 5,000 stations in Politics, 13,000 in Music, and 7,000 in Sports and Hobbies. 

You can also search under “Most Popular” and “Featured”.

Unfortunately, 2 of the 3 most popular stations were in Spanish and the other one was airing a high school football game in St. Louis which pretty much sums up the experience. More often than not, user stations are obscure niche-market American TV or else foreign language shows. 

It’s a “beta” version though. So, stay tuned.

 

www.mogulus.com

The John McCain Campaign, The Debate – Review

John McCain, giving a thumbs-up to his campaign manager

In case you didn’t read the news on-line, John McCain did what everybody expected.

He smiled, boarded a plane, and headed to Mississippi after all.

His altruistic publicity stunt didn’t help legislators complete the bailout, but it did help his campaign–sort of.

It portrayed McCain as a man (a Leader if you will) so indebted to his country, he’d let his own future go in jeopardy.

Though the story is no story—”Make no mistake: John McCain did not ‘suspend’ his campaign,” said Obama spokesman Bill Burton—it was the lead everywhere—the Washington Post, the New York Times, CNN and NPR to name a few.

McCain said he suspended his campaign—mind you not off-the-cuff, out-of-breath running to a helicopter, but rather from a carefully penned script off a teleprompter aimed to squeeze as much sweaty drama from his political socks as possible—but really what did he suspended?

Fundraising?

He took 84 million in public financing and the Republic National Committee donates money to his campaign. Not a big sacrifice there.

Advertising?

Is there any better advertising than free advertising? Some news stories even hinted at ideas his commercials trumpet: John McCain: Patriotic, Unselfish, Great Leader.

(I’ll add: Politician).

But you have to give it to him. He snagged a great campaign manager: both stunts—this one and the Sarah Palin hiring—really wooed voters. Or at least tried to.

How to Track Blog Stats for Free — SiteMeter.Com

Tracking hits to your blog is easy—with WordPress.com. You log-in, hit “blog stats” and get a nice little summary. Like this:

Or maybe you want a global scope of your WordPress blog?  Alexa.com will tell you where you rank in the world:

The best-selling blog Margaretandhelen.wordpress.com, which is run by two old ladies with a 60 year-old friendship, for instance, is at spot 246,001 in the world. 

And the equally popular (though not as-of-yet “best-selling”) WordPress blog crowdnoise.wordpress.com is at spot…well, never mind. 

Nonetheless, as a WordPress blogger, I can check my global rank at Alexa.com. Not so for Blogspot folks.

Type in your blogspot web address on the Alexa search engine (such as, www.myblog.blogspot.com) and you only get stats for “www.blogspot.com” (ranked 9th).

But there are alternatives for Blogspotters. 

Such as Sitemeter.com, which will track your blog stats for free. After you register, you’ll see a summary of your hits, updated immediately. 

On the left side of your account page (see pic below), click “by detail” and get a look at each individual hit with summary of the visit, which tracks things like “page views” and “length of visit”:

You can also see each hit by its world location with a nifty little globe:

However, sitemeter is not without its flaws. For instance, though you can theoretically track a hit by its “referring URL”, most times the referring URL will be labeled “unknown”:

In fact since Friday, Sitemeter has yet to identify a single referral by its URL. 

Sitemeter will also track your own blog visits, which is another flaw. But that’s easy to fix. To do that, click the “Manager” tab at the top of the screen. Then, click “ignore visits” tab on the left. This will allow you to toggle between tracking or not tracking your own visits, either by IP, browser or cookies. 

Once you register, embed Sitemeter on your blog by clicking “Manager” and then “Overview”. Under “Adding Site Meter to your site”, you’ll see instructions by blog site.

After clicking “to a Blogger.com site”: 

1. Copy the HTML code (below) onto your clipboard
2. Login to Blogger
3. Click on the Layout link on your dashboard
4. Click on the Add a Page Element link on the page titled Add and Arrange Page Elements 
5. A window titled Choose a New Page Element page will pop-up
6. Click on the Add to Blog link 
7. Paste the Sitemeter HTML code into the Content section
8. Click Save Changes and you’re done. 

Sitemeter HTML code: <script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://s41.sitemeter.com/js/counter.js?site=s41MyWebSite“>

www.sitemeter.com