“Now, if I fight on, in my campaign, all the way to the convention … I want you to know, I’ve given this a lot of thought – I’d forestall the launch of a national campaign and, frankly, I’d make it easier for Senator Clinton or Obama to win. Frankly, in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror” (Mitt Romney’s withdrawal speech).
Is this a glimpse of the upcoming Republican narrative (voting for a Democrat = aiding Osama) for the race to the Whitehouse or is every human being outside Utah happy that Mitt “today’s media are a cesspool of doom and dismay” Romney dropped out?
The race gets more & more interesting with two candidates vying for Popular Culture’s attention. There’s Huckabee’s Conan O’brien/Colbert/Stewart appearance (funny stuff if you ask me) and there’s this groovy clip for the Obama campaign (below). The only reason I would want to be a US citizen is to vote, only one time, in December. If there’s a US non-voter out there, I want to change citizenship for one week in exchange for one week of universal health care. Good deal right?
For all you gamers out there a kind request. If you have a Xbox Live gamertag or a Playstation ID, please add me to your friends list. All too often I am looking for someone to play, let’s say Burnout Paradise, Gears of War, or Call of Duty 4 with and there’s nobody there. Well, there are people online, but getting chewed out by a 15 year old from South Alabama is a little annoying.
My Xbox gamertag is: D33F (yes I know…)
My PS ID is: ZeroAchievements
My Wii number?? Hell until they implement a user friendly system I won’t swap ‘friend codes’ (the name itself… commonnn).
The Dutch Ministry of Internal Affairs is looking for ways how to strengthen its ties with the general public through virtual worlds. They need the help of you (the creative people) to envision how such a cooperation would look (or feel or sound) like. Sounds like a noble cause right? There is more information on the Virtuele Overheid website. There’s also a Youtube clip. You can win some prizes and the options to enter the contest are manifold:
Het ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken en Koninkrijksrelaties (BZK) schrijft een prijsvraag uit voor innovatieve en bruikbare toepassingen in virtuele werelden voor de overheid. Uit de inzendingen wil BZK een beeld krijgen van de mogelijkheden voor de overheid om zich te manifesteren in, dan wel gebruik te maken van virtuele werelden.
De vorm waarin de inzending kan worden ingediend is vrij. Dit kan met een filmpje, een blog (eventueel met video als vlog), of als tekst. Het is niet nodig dat het idee daadwerkelijk is uitgewerkt in een virtuele wereld zoals Second Life, al dient de inzending wel voldoende duidelijkheid te geven over de mogelijkheden van uitvoering.
This is too funny (imho) to go to waist in the big bin that is the internets (a.k.a. a series of tubes). Yesterday the Dutch RTL 4 19:30 evening news blundered. Media scholars rejoice!
Ignorant news lady: “Within a few months the U.S. elections will commence. It seems that it will be a struggle between Hillary Clinton, a democrat, and Rudy Giuliani, a republican.
Ok, didn’t know that they already decided on that. Commonnn, it’s not that simple. I say Barack, you say Mitt, I say John, you say John. About that Rudy “911911911” Giuliani, didn’t he say:
“Hillary and Obama are kind of debating whether to invite them [i.e. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Osama bin Laden] to the inauguration or the inaugural ball”.
Wew, that would be an interesting sight to behold. Ignorant news lady goes on:
“Even so, Clinton at least gets the most attention in the media, according to a Harvard University study. But for a candidate media attention alone is not enough. Voters are also bombarded with text messages and emails”.
Right. Well that’s if for my Media Studies department then. Thanks news lady, maybe it’s time to become a film or television scholar. You know, those are real media (Check out the footage @ 17:00 .wmv).
If you want a game related PhD position, lecturing job or full professorship related to games (or new media in general) in the Netherlands, the time is now. There are a lot of open PhD positions, so come on over to Amsterdam!
As I said on this blog before, there are quite some positions lately for PhDs (both at Utrecht University and in Amsterdam) as well as lecturers (in Amsterdam). And not to be outdone we are LFP (looking for professor):
Professor of New Media and Digital Culture: The duties associated with this chair comprise teaching and research in the field of the new media and digital culture. The chair will be part of an academic and cultural network within the city of Amsterdam. This includes the Waag Society for Old and New Media, De Balie (Centre for Culture and Politics), the Mediagilde and the Netherlands Institute for Media Arts (NIM), as well as the other parts of the UvA concerned with information studies, the Hogeschool van Amsterdam and the institutions of higher education in the arts, such as the Rietveld Academie, the Rijksacademie and the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten. (Check out the full text).
What happens when the ‘the YouTube Generation Goes to War’? Interesting post by Washington Post‘s military expert-blogger William Arkin.
At military bases throughout the world, the .mil domain filters out and restricts access to blogs and other “personal” Web sites such as Yahoo! Mail. The theory is that blogs and Webmail applications are not “official,” and thus users of “official” networks don’t need access to them. It’s one of those military rules that remind us that if the military didn’t have annoying and nonsensical rules, it wouldn’t be the military. The Pentagon cites the need to preserve bandwidth and protect against viruses as the justification for its new ruling restricting soldier access to social networking sites such as YouTube and MySpace. (…) Currently 13 sites will be blocked from government computers: YouTube, myspace, Metacafe, IFilm, StupidVideos, FileCabi, BlackPlanet, Hi5, Pandora, MTV, 1.fm, live365 and Photobucket.
How’s that for a blog entry title? I contributed to a play by Sanja Mitrovic. She produced the play “Books once read make a good bullet proofing” which will be in theatre May 24 to 26 (9 pm) at the Gasthuis Theatre in Amsterdam-West. My contribution (which is not that big to be really honest) consists of reading a speech which is displayed in the background during the play. She asked me to do this in my role as an academic. The poster is here (.jpg).
About the play:
De voorstelling Books once read make a good bullet proofing gaat over terrorisme en de culturele performativiteit daarvan. Iemand kan in extreme omstandigheden totaal veranderen qua gedrag en overtuigingen: hij kan extremistisch worden en heel anders gaan denken en doen dan in een ‘normale’ situatie.
Check this out. A dude from Kewaunee, Wisconsin is selling of his Super Nintendo collection on Ebay, which includes “every game COMPLETE IN BOX with manual and most inserts!”
“Up for auction is a once in a lifetime opportunity. I used to be an avid collector of video games, but as times changed I decided to sell off my collection. The majority of it I have sold of piece by piece, but I no longer have the time or energy to do that. Many of you remember me from selling my NES collection a few months back and that was very good, but this collection is definitely my pride and joy.”
So please forward donations to davewantsall794SuperNintendogames @ gamespace.nl. There’s a picture after the break. Read the rest of this entry »
February 8th, 2008 by 
David
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