I knew the day would come, it had to.

For a long, long time I have accused console games and the overlords who control them of ruining everything that was once sacred in video games. In a rush to make more money the big console companies would blitz right past all of the important things in games: fun, originality, playability, FUN; and instead focus on the quick fix items such as graphics and speed of play.

While graphics and speed of play are a necessary component to any great game, losing the fundamentals of what a game is, by definition, loses the purpose to have a game in the first place.

Then Nintendo decided to change everything. More after the flip…

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I stumbled across an article hosted on Slate today written by Jacob Weisberg. The article, entitled “Where Have All the Flower Children Gone?” does a really good job of outlining some of the reasons we’re not seeing as many anti-war protests lauding our presence in Iraq in comparison to the many protests that were seen during the Vietnam era.

In a time where the war in Iraq is often compared in many ways to the war in Vietnam I thought it was nice to see some fairly objective observations as to the differences between then and now in both the wars and our personality as a society. Enjoy!

This article actually started about three years ago, when a coworker and I were discussing the move by the French government to outlaw the word “e-mail.” At the time, in 2003, I found it very odd that a government would be taking such drastic measures against a seemingly low payoff end (there’s no way to enforce it and people are going to call it what they call it, regardless of what they should call it). During our very casual lunch conversation, I mentioned how odd I found this and a discussion began that intrigued me even more than the French government’s seemingly misplaced energy.

As it turns out, this coworker’s father was a very, very high ranking official in the U.S. military (yes, I verified it). As part of his responsibilities he maintained contact with officials from all European countries, including France. Not long before our discussion my coworker’s father had been discussing with his son the sad shape the French government was getting itself into.

According to him, France was losing all cultural identity. The constant concessions shown to special interest and minority groups had begun to give those groups powers which far outweighed their position within the society. In turn, the majority of the society was bearing the brunt of the loss of their power. The minority and special interest groups were holding much more sway than would normally rightfully be theirs.

After our discussion, my coworker revisted the issue with his father and mentioned our discussion. His father’s take on the issue was… again… interesting.
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