What's really going on in Iraq? Watch the street theater performed by the troops.



I like the line about "we're not being brutal enough [with our representations]". I should have arranged to bring someone from the Madison chapter to speak with my ninth graders while we were doing All Quiet on the Western Front. ("A hospital alone shows what war is.")

Teaching

Thanks to Christie for linking us to xkcd, a webcomic about teaching. In addition to that one, I really like this one about conspiracies.

I'm nearly done with school -- a week and a half left, many many papers to grade. This summer is going to be crazy busy. I'm getting married, buying a house, moving, going to Italy, planning a new class, and buying some new dress shoes. It will be fun and I'll get to see a lot of people I haven't seen in a while, but I'll also be glad when August gets here and I can have some serious downtime.

You Don't Know the Power of the Dark Side

Thanks a lot, Jon! Your stupid generous invite for video game playdates showed me how cool Gears of War is, and that -- combined with the increasing agony my crappy PS2 was giving me by not playing DVDs -- made me trade up for an XBox360. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I've gone to the Dark Side of Microsoft.

There are many cool things about the XBox360 -- I can play music from its hard drive while playing BattleFront II online. (This eliminates the need to operate an additional CD player beside my Playing Chair.)

The biggest headache with the XBox360 is the teeny tiny little writing on the screen. Attention Microsoft! Not everyone who buys your game system has -- or wants to have -- a gigantic wall-sized television! My normal human-sized low-definition TV works fine for everything I want to use it for. Until now.

The PS2 version of BattleFront II had normal large writing which allowed me to see who I just shot, which map is coming up next, and which flag the enemy just took. Now I have to squint and scoot up right in front of the TV in order to read the little itty-bitty letters on the screen.

Why not offer an option? You can customize the freakin' background color of the XBox360 menu screens, for crying out loud! Why not give us another option screen:

- Use cool futuristic tiny little 5 pt. type
- Use normal less-futuristic 12 pt. type

You could even offer a large-print option for the over-50 crowd. You're missing a huge potential market here, Microsoft! (They'll have to start introducing this when we gamerz reach old age.)

Microsoft sucks! (I won't even spend the time to give them free advertising, especially since The West Virginia Division of Tourism showed itself to be dishonorable jerkbags. Any lawyers out there? Do I have a case?

TimeWaster™

Check out the winners of the Neural Correlate Society's Best Visual Illusion of the Year Contest.

Today I'm listening to: X-Clan!