Podcast the Commute: Jean Luc Picard as a Model for a Gamer in Chief

In the second podcast of the mini-backlog, I go way down the geek rabbit hole.   Basically, the premise is this: at some point, the President of the United States will be someone who plays videogames.

And, in wondering whether we can take a person in power seriously if they actively enjoy the act of play, and why that idea seems like such a hard sell, I realized we've already got a perfect example of an authority figure who has no problem playing make-believe in front of his subordinates (and one who is somewhat of a stick in the mud at that):  Captain Jean Luc Picard.   Man in power who shifts seamlessly from dress-up on the holodeck to saving the world from space bugs (or, more frequently, to jabbering on some diplomatic mission).

Delusional nerd fantasy or inevitable paradigm?

Podcast The Commute: Love is a Battlefield (3)

In the first of a pair of overdue podcast posts, I spend an inordinate and potentially embarrassing amount of time musing on why Battlefield 3 may be my favorite multiplayer game ever.

It's like how playing with kittens is basically the cutest thing that you can do on the planet, and so if you don't like kittens something must be wrong with you as a human being, except that instead of kittens, you are playing with pretend explosives.