Archive for November 2008
It's time to tell the truth about Dungeons & Dragons
Geek hobbies take a lot of heat these days, but it’s hard to think of a hobby that has been maligned as thoroughly as Dungeons and Dragons.
The largest gaming convention in the world is GenCon, originally held in Lake Geneva, Wis. – the birthplace of D&D. Lake Geneva was home to the game’s creator, Gary Gygax. This year GenCon decided to honor Gary by collecting money for his favorite charity, specifically the Christian Children’s Fund.
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Indie Rock Salvation
As I’ve grown older, I’ve grown increasingly neurotic about my taste in music. I have this desperate desire to stay “current” with my musical taste. It’s common for people in their late 30’s to fixate on the music they loved in school and then just kind of freeze, locking themselves into a box made of 80’s hits.
I didn’t want to be like that but I couldn’t seem to break out. My musical taste froze in 1996. In desperation, I started flailing around for Top Hits and Best Of collections, trying to find something that would speak to me.
Last month I gave up and went full 80’s retro for a while. It’s fun to revisit childhood for a while, but I didn’t actually like my childhood, so Prince, ZZ Top and Dire Straights were conjuring up memories that I would rather leave behind.
I dug a little deeper and realized I was trying to recreate a college radio alternative playlist from 1989. This was my first year in college, the year I worked the morning shift at KTXT.
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Twitter and YouTube rock the vote as Obama woos the Internet Generation
America elected some new guy president on Tuesday and the Internet seems to be very excited about it.
People are excited for a lot of important historical reasons, but I’m not going to talk about any of those.
I’m here to talk about the toys.
Every election it’s the same thing. Every election since 1992 has been touted as the first real “Internet” election, the first true “digital” election. Every election year is the “Year of the Internet” or the “Year of the Blogger” or the “First Election of the Digital Age.” And every year some candidate is supposed to be the “Internet candidate.”
The names of Howard Dean, Al Gore and Ron Paul come to mind. All of these guys were media-anointed “Internet candidates” and they all lost.
Al Gore had a special love for the Internet, but was not tech-savvy enough to rig the voting machines in 2000.
Like most Internet geeks he was great with computers but hopeless with paper.
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Michael B. Duff 