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E3 2005
I just got back from Los Angeles where I was attending the Electronic Entertainment Expo. It's my industries biggest get-together where all the companies show off their latest games and try to convince Wal-Mart and Best Buy to stock them. It was quite a big show for my company, since we just shipped our game a couple of weeks ago and we are the number one best selling PC game in the world right now. My job was to stand in front of one of the demo stations and show people how to play the game and explain how it's different and better than the competition. When I wasn't on duty, I was supposed to be checking out the competition and picking up on trends. This was good for me to do because my finger is no longer on the pulse of the industry like it used to be when I played games a lot. So I had fun wandering around and checking out the latest stuff, getting swag for my kids, and taking goofy pictures. These shows are always tiring, as I'm not used to being ...
Hard questions ~ inadequate answers
Here is a post I made on a forum for fans of Zao. Some guy popped into the Religion section and dropped all the "hard questions" on us. These are the big ones. And I thought it would be fun to have a record of my current thinking on them. So here is my reply… This is probably not the best place to ask the heavy-weight questions you are asking. Most of the people on this board are very young and not terribly educated about Christianity. (We protestants do a horrible job at that.) If these questions are seriously perplexing you, I'm guessing it's because God wants you, but you feel like you would be stupid to go along with it until your logical side is satisfied. Here is something to consider: there are many theories out there that offer compelling explanations to things, yet are incomplete. Think about physics, math, evolutionary theory. They all propose answers, yet even the best and brightest in their field can not answer every single questi...
How to win friends and influence people
Dear Mr. Knowitall, I want to win friends and influence people, but I'm too lazy to read the book. Do you have any advice? People are a lot like robots. But squishier. Everything you need to know about people you can learn from observing Hollywood 's most beloved mechanical characters. The earliest robots in film were played by cowboys on stage at saloons called Nickelodeons in the 1800's. Back then, they didn't have psychologists to inform their performances, so they often acted in an over-the-top, comical manner. Fast forward a few decades and we have the likes of R2-D2, (R2-Day-Towa in Huttesse) in Star Wars, and Mighty Joe Young in King Kong. These robots can teach us a wealth of secrets about humans and how to befriend/influence them. Here is a quick list of 'bots and what they teach us about people: Mechanical Bipeds from Metropolis ~ 19-something: Hard work pays off. Frankenstein's Monster from Franken...
Re-thinking the whole "No Kissing" rule
Just kidding. I'm not. But for some reason no one seems to believe that this is possible. (Our decision to have our first kiss be at our wedding.) Even my pastor called it a "tall order" when I told him I felt that if I felt an uncontrollable desire to kiss my girlfriend than I would know that God is no longer in this. I'm seeing this as Gideon's fleece. Judges 6: 36 Gideon said to God, "If you will save Israel by my hand as you have promised- 37 look, I will place a wool fleece on the threshing floor. If there is dew only on the fleece and all the ground is dry, then I will know that you will save Israel by my hand, as you said." 38 And that is what happened. Gideon rose early the next day; he squeezed the fleece and wrung out the dew—a bowlful of water. 39 Then Gideon said to God, "Do not be angry with me. Let me make just one more request. Allow me one more test with the fleece. This time make the fleece dry and t...
Firing on all cylinders
C.S. Lewis wrote of God: "If He can be known it will be by self-revelation on His part, not by speculation on ours. We, therefore, look for Him where it is claimed that He has revealed Himself by miracle, by inspired teachers, by enjoined ritual. The traditions conflict, yet the longer and more sympathetically we study them the more we become aware of a common element in many of them: the theme of sacrifice, of mystical communion through the shed blood, of death and rebirth, of redemption, is too clear to escape notice. We are fully entitled to use moral and intellectual criticism. What we are not, in my opinion, entitled to do is simply to abstract the ethical element and set that up as a religion on its own. Rather in the tradition which is at once more completely ethical and most transcends mere ethics…we may still most reasonably believe that we have the consummation of all religion, the fullest message from the wholly other, the living creator, who, if He is at all,...