metapunk

This:

That is all.

I love the irony of that headline—because today’s post is all about a similarly sensational headline on YouTube. “Did the Vatican Create Islam?” the video’s title asks, enticing, provoking you to watch—whose curiosity can resist such a bold claim?

So watch I did, and after enduring the painfully slow text, slideshow, and ominious music (and the second and third part videos), I was informed that the Roman Catholic Church had secretly trained and guided Mohammed to create a social movement that would wipe out the “true” Christians that the church hated, and re-take Jerusalem from the Jews and deliver it to the Vatican with minimal effort. (continue reading…)

So, the follow up atheism post will have to wait for now.  In the meantime there’s this…

A user on io9 posted a link to something called Lifenaut, which plays with the transhumanist notion of an uploaded or copied consciousness.  The idea is that you store a genetic sample in their cryo facility, and program your virtual avatar with your personality and experiences, and as the technology develops, they’ll be able to make a copy of you long after you die.  They say it’s like immortality—although I think that’s pretty silly, because a copy of a person is not the original person.  Still, the idea of near-perfect simulations of people is intriguing, if somewhat unsettling.

They have created a few historical figures that you can chat with; like primitive AI “constructs” straight out of William Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy.  They’re far from perfect: Lifenaut’s Abraham Lincoln just talks like an encyclopedia; replying to anything you say to it/him by reciting irrelevant facts about himself.  But Gandhi is a lot more interesting:

The conversation I just had with him is really quite hilarious; and even a little spooky.  Spooky, because I recently watched the first episode of “Through the Wormhole,” with Morgan Freeman, in which they talk about cosmology, including the theory that the universe we know is really a clever digital simulation—a matrix of sorts.  So, imagine the gymnastics my mind did when AI Gandhi insisted he was the real human, and I was the program… and that’s only the beginning of the weirdness.

Here’s the transcript: (continue reading…)

A lot of people on the glorious interwebz have raised issue with the lack of subtlety in James Cameron’s recent film Avatar. It’s a fairly derivative plot, featuring a conflict between a heavily stereo-typed military-industrial complex and a fairly contrived native society (which incidentally, is also the central conflict in Martian Cycles, but hopefully with more depth).  In any case, people have brought up the issue of White Guilt and subtle racism. Now, I’m not disagreeing with these articles, exactly. I just think they’re kind of missing the point. (continue reading…)

So it’s been a busy last couple of months, hence the lack of posts. One of my best friends just got married, so there was a lot of gearing up for that. Lots of work hammering out core mechanics for the two games, lots of paperwork and family stuff going on that needed taking care of, plus the onset of the Christmas season…

In any case, I’ve got several topics for discussion lined up, including: A metaphysics of gaming, which is amusing and maybe interesting, if a little far out. I may discuss an intolerant atheist’s misguided outburst on Wikipedia’s Religion article talk page, although I’m not sure it’s worth the time (except for the reminder that no one, theist or atheist, is immune to believing too much in their own bullshit). There’s also a couple of spirituality-related projects (i.e. homework for anyone interested!) that I have in mind, and of course the standard design project updates.

I’ll hopefully be posting one or two of those later on today. So, stay tuned folks, there’s more to come…

Well, I know it’s been a while but Metapunk is back up and running, after a few hurdles. First I decided to move the blog, then the site was hacked and I lost all my comments (not that there were all that many, but…) and had to repost everything from backups. But we’re back, baby and better than ever! Also, I’m going to make ever so much more effort to post on a regular basis, even if it’s only a paragraph or two. (continue reading…)

Yeah…  uh, sorry for not updating in a very long time.  I know it’s bad form for a blog, but what can you do?  My main excuse is that I didn’t want all my posts to be about the RPG.  They were threatening to take over.

Also, I’m currently trying to figure out how to move the blog.  If you’ve been here much, you’ve probably noticed that the page doesn’t load properly. I’ve been borrowing web space from a friend but we’ve had problems setting up the links and other web-type stuff that I won’t pretend I understand.   I just know that it doesn’t work quite right at the present time, and so I’m in the process of setting up a dedicated site with an ISP.

When all is said and done, you will no longer be loading the page in a frame, which seems to be what is happening now.  Hopefully the page will be easier to find, too, as the frame won’t be destroying any hope of search engines finding my content.

So, you have my apologies for the great delay between posts.  Bear with me a little longer and we’ll be back and better than ever.