Dwelling in MySpace

This is very silly, and very funny. Nothing to do with gaming, but really funny. This guy’s interests include “Fundamental Ontology, Reconceiving the project of western metaphysics, Skiing in the Schwarzwald, Reading archaic German verse, Building, Dwelling, Thinking“. Did I mention that it is funny?

Games and brains

I have been reading Steven Johnson’s book with the wonderful title Everything bad is good for you – How today’s popular culture is actually making us smarter (2005). He has a very interesting perspective on the reception of media such as computer games, looking at the formal structure of things instead of content and context. Although I find this focus on cognitive reception and brain chemistry to be unnecessarily limited in its understanding of the experience of media, he does make some good points. One is that today’s popular culture is much more complex and demanding than it has been before, and, related to this, that it makes no sense comparing e.g. a specific computer game to a classic literary masterpiece – computer games should be compared to other games, television shows to other television shows and so on. Or in general terms, that popular art forms should be judged on their own terms.

New look!

As most new bloggers, I have of course spent a great deal of time and reflection on one very important thing: the look of my blog. So far, I have decided on this design, but don’t be surprised if it changes again.

… Incidentally, the image on my header is from a picture taken in the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont on a very hot summer day in Paris.

New blog on the block

Welcome to my blog! This is my first ever (yes, I am hopelessly behind everybody else) and I am looking forward to playing around with it – work, family and other writings permitting…