Haiti officially unluckiest country, gods declare war.

So everybody knows about the earthquake in January this year that pretty much owned Haiti.
But, as if that wasn't enough, while there are still thousands living in makeshift homes and trying to fix their country, over 2,000 Haitians contract Cholera leading to 200 deaths; severe diarrhea  kills "over 134" more; and this week at least 12 die from flooding as a result of heavy rainfall...

"God dude, seriously. The old testament was over like a few thousand years ago... Give it a rest."



BBC coverage 
Canadian global news coverage 

More gaming...

On a similar theme to yesterday's post, I wanna talk a bit more about gaming.


This talk on TED is, I think, rather inspiring. Especially if the story about the Lydians is true.


But even if it isn't, her point is still a pretty good one. The amount of time we spend on games is pretty huge, and people have already cottoned on to advertising and marketing inside games (e.g. Second Life) as well as using the easily accessible online community to conduct social and philosophical studies. Online games are proving their usefulness beyond ther simple capacity to entertain. I've met people through games from the other side of the world and kept in contact with them even when we're not blowing eachother's heads off.

My defense of gaming.

So i was snooping around Cracked.com yesterday, as you do, when I came across an article about Robert Ebert, who posted this article a while ago. Suffice to say, I raged hard. If you can't be bothered to read the page then I'll summarize: Ebert argues that games and gaming are not, and will not until maybe in the very distant future, become art. His main arguments for this are that the interactivity and the ability of the gamer to affect the outcome of the experience negate games from becoming a form of art. His articel is in response to Kellee Santiago's TED talk in which she argues against his statement "games are not and will never be art" which he made public a number of years go.