Nigel's Not Well: A Blog

The funniest, and most horrifying, commercial I've seen in a while:

In the warm afterglow of this crazy, historic election, I found myself remembering one of the few criticisms John McCain's campaign leveled against Barack Obama that seemed to have any resonance: the "celebrity" ad that compared him to Paris Hilton and called him "the most famous person in the world." I thought about that. You know what? Barack Obama probably is the most famous person in the world, and he probably was even before he won the election. I certainly can't think of any real contender. So, dutiful geek that I am, I went to Google to compare the hit counts of searches for famous names.

"Paul McCartney" - 12 million

"Tom Cruise" - 17 million

"Hillary Clinton" - 23 million

"Michael Jackson" - 32 million

"George W. Bush" - 43 million

"Sarah Palin" - 56 million

"Jesus Christ" - 26 million

Drum roll, please...

"Barack Obama" - 119 million

Wow. Let's try just "jesus" - 187 million

OK, now just "obama" - 244 million

Crazy.

Nearly two years after I posted some cautiously optimistic thoughts on the beginning of Obama's run for president, I'm floored that he - and the country - made it this far. I've rarely approached American politics with anything but cynicism. If anyone had left a comment on that post predicting an Obama landslide, I would have clucked my tongue at their unchecked enthusiasm. If they'd said that Obama would emerge from a long and grueling primary not battered but strengthened, with a calm and measured and spectacularly well-organized campaign that could shrug off wave after wave of fear-baiting attacks that were vicious even by Republican standards, I'd roll my eyes. And if they'd put forward that his opponent would finally prove H.L. Mencken wrong by underestimating the intelligence of the American public and going broke, I'd probably stop listening altogether. You don't win elections in America by talking to your supporters like adults, and presenting intelligent ideas with an unfailingly positive tone.

Or at least, you didn't used to.

It's hard, much harder than I would ever have guessed, to put a cynical spin on this incredible election. It's hard not to feel real hope, and pride, one the eve of an Obama presidency. Some will do their best to paint this moment in history with negativity. But I won't be among them.

It's Google's 10th birthday, but they're giving us a present ("us" being Internet-addicted geeks) by opening up their earliest archive, from 2001. Go here and you can scour the historic Internet wilderness of the early 21st century. Some examples of the highly nerdy amusement to be had...

"Subprime mortgage"
2008 hits: 2,800,000
2001 hits: 2000

"Sarah Palin"
2008 hits: 20,900,000
2001 hits: 0

"September 11"
First hit 2008: Wikipedia's entry for "September 11th attacks"
First hit 2001: The Annotated Galactic Calendar's Picture of the Day for Sept. 11, 1999

"2 girls 1 cup"
First hit 2008: Not gonna try it.
First hit 2001: "1998 FYSA President Cup Scores and Standings Girls"

"Who let the dogs out"
2001 hits: 94,900
2008 hits: 15

The last one is a complete lie, but it doesn't seem there's anything with fewer hits today than in 2001, at least not that I've found.

It's been nearly two days since I started playing with Google's new, inevitable web browser, Chrome. And I feel a lot like I did once I'd nestled into consistent Gmail use: quite comfortable and content, except for that nagging sense in the back of my mind that Google will soon own or control all my computers, the Internet, and my apartment. But maybe I just haven't gotten used to my new GoogleHive brain implant yet (it's still in Beta, of course).

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Don LaFontaine has died at the age of 68. You probably don't know the name, but you definitely know the voice; he was That Trailer Guy. It feels like the end of an era. R.I.P.

After nearly four decades of penning and sometimes drawing those little cartoon pamphlets explaining exactly why you are going to Hell - yes, even you, saintly missionaries who didn't say the magic words - you might think that Jack Chick would be running out of ideas. After all, how many times can you reiterate the fact that you really out to get converted before those sweaty, hairy, homosexual evolutionary biologists team up with the Vatican to form a One World Government and the Tribulation begins?

Well, never let it be said that Jack Chick is just retreading old ground, because his latest track is about a clean and proper young Christian lady who leads a vampire to Christ. No, literally, this guy is a vampire. Normally I would approach this as some kind of an analogy, but Jack Chick is an ardent biblical literalist*, and I really think he believes in vampires. What's more, he believes that a tract like this might just save some of their souls. I think the world through Jack Chick's eyes is a lot more interesting than the one I see through mine.


* Chick is a biblical literalist in the same sense as Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, authors of the Left Behind books; which is to say, he doesn't seem to know what "literal" means. As evangelical-smart-guy blogger Fred Clark puts it, "There is nothing literal about [LaHaye's and Jenkins'] reading of the Book of Revelation. They interpret that book through a convoluted and contradictory allegorical scheme that treats it as a secret, coded mystery understandable only to the initiated. For decades, Tim LaHaye has insisted both A) the Book of Revelation must be read "literally," and B) the Book of Revelation is impossible to understand correctly without the help of experts like himself. Getting away with that is a neat trick." I recommend checking out Clark's further writings on Left Behind for a more detailed explanation: slacktivist.typepad.com.

I just found out that The Endless Forest existed, and I'm greatly intrigued. I've been saying for a while now that an MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online game) somewhere between World of Warcraft and Second Life could find the happy medium that would get me to play and enjoy it regularly, and I think that developers Tale of Tales are on the right track. A simple game geared around exploration and very basic communication, with just a touch of magic thrown in, is something online gaming is tailor-made for. I haven't tried it yet, but I'm looking forward to doing so.

After a few recent discussions about life, personal fulfillment, and the fear of missing out on that fulfillment, I was glad to come across this little piece of Alan Watts wisdom, nicely illustrated by the South Park guys:

In my previous post about Grand Theft Auto IV and the boy-this-looks-familiar controversy that accompanied its release, I spoke a bit about how difficult it can be for someone to understand the real themes and tone of a videogame when they've never played it. This gap in understanding, not just of individual games but of the medium as a whole, has led to a whole lot of controversies that might otherwise have been avoided.

But some controversies aren't simply a matter of misinformation or jumping to conclusions. There are plenty of legitimate concerns to be had about videogames that allow players to engage in disturbing acts. My question is, when someone performs an action in a video game, how do we delegate responsibility for that action? How does the player's complicity compare to that of the game designers, or even of the math-driven artificial intelligence controlling the in-game characters?

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