There is a large metal container marked “Dangerous Goods” and “Explosive” on the end of my desk. Just so you know.
Uncategorized
I’ve been inundated with spam lately. Most of it is annoying, some of it is laughably pornographic, and some of it is just…well, I don’t know:
“As recommended by the Robot Guidelines, this email is to explain our system and to let you know about the broken link on your site.” That’s an odd thing to say. Robot Guidelines? It sounds downright Asimovian.
They’re right, though. There are too many broken links on my site. I keep meaning to work on that and start updating the sections other than this weblog — the bio, the webzine, the caption gallery — but I never seem to get around to it. But if I’m going to start getting pressure from robots…
From today’s Salon:
On April 19, Judge Stephen N. Limbaugh Sr. decided that games weren’t speech at all, and thus deserve no First Amendment protection.
At issue was a St. Louis ordinance that requires parental consent before children under 17 can buy or play violent or sexually explicit video games. The Interactive Digital Software Association had asked for a summary dismissal of the ordinance, arguing that it violated the First Amendment. Limbaugh disagreed.
The court reviewed a video tape of four violent games including the (by industry and gameplayer standards) ancient “Doom” and, on that, decided that video games don’t deserve protection under the First Amendment. Salon quotes Henry Jenkins, director of MIT’s Comparative Media Studies Program, who I think best sums up just why this decision is idiotic, ill-informed, and deserves to be overturned on appeal. He says, “Imagine if I took a look at four books, all within the same genre, to determine whether literature was worthy of First Amendment protection.”
It’s a deplorably small cross-section, and it hardly reflects the totality of what games have to offer. To condemn an entire medium based on no other evidence — to say, as Justice Limbaugh did, that there is “no conveyance of ideas, expression, or anything else that could possibly amount to speech” in the realm of video games — reveals just how out-of-touch and reactionary our lawmakers can be.
Sharon writes, “There was none of that ‘Look what I can do with my silks and balls.'” A less mature man would probably make a joke about that.
