Mass Effect, More Realistic than Call of Duty?

Now you may be asking, how is a game about aliens, ancient evil robots quadruple the size of the Titanic, and spaceships more realistic than a modern-day war shooter set firmly in our level of reality? Well, to answer that, one must look into how we as gamers define realism.

Do we simply refer to realism as making the game look as photo-realistic as possible, à la Crysis? Or maybe you define realism by gameplay that faithfully represents the laws of reality with no hint of supernatural elements, like the current Call of Duty games or the Uncharted series. I keep hearing that people want games to be more realistic, and the vibe I get from this rallying call is that this statement basically means "less Ratchet and Clank, more Heavy Rain," and if that's the case... I hope that never fucking happens. Ever.

Since simple visual photo-realism is simple enough to understand, let's focus instead on physical realism in games. People who want these types of realistic games want things to react just as they would in real life. This not only extends to certain materials acting as they should, whether it be wood breaking or metal bending as it should, like in The Force Unleashed, but it also means that the human character you play as must feel human. Their abilities must be based in our current reality, so no superpowers or futuristic tech that doesn't exist in our world. I don't know about you, but to me, that sounds boring as hell.

I'm not saying realistic games are bad... well, not completely... but if you look at it, their attempts at realism push them further away from the goal. The more things they do to make the games seem more realistic, the more noticeable it is when they overlook something. Take Uncharted 2 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 for examples. Both games go to lengths to make themselves more realistic. They both sport art styles firmly within the boundaries of real life with no artistic deviations, neither one lets you do anything supernatural like shoot fireballs from your eyes, use biotics or fly with the power of dreams, and both games are set on our quaint little planet Earth complete with real-life locations such as Moscow and Washington D.C.

And yet, they are both completely unrealistic.

"It's Just Business"- An Innocuous Phrase, or a Symptom of a Sick Culture?

We've all heard the phrase. It's usually uttered in an apologetic tone along with a slight shrug of the shoulders (as if to say, "eh, what can you do?") which makes it that much worse when you stop and think about it- It's simultaneously being treated with ambivalence/an air of meek acceptance (the shrug) and an implicit admission of the phrase's darker undertones (the apologetic tone).

"It's just business."

You can bet that if someone is saying it, someone else, or a group of someone else's, has just been (or is about to be) hurt. Maybe a thinly veiled bribe has been delivered by a lobbyist to a government official, gaining favour for a corporation in a manoeuvre that, whether the parties involved want to think of it this way or not, violates the entire premise of a democratic government. Perhaps an entire town's/state's/countries' water supply is sold to a company who then sells it back to the community at prices they cannot afford and/or utilizes it in less than ideal ways (things that maximize profit (logging, let's say) but not availability of fresh water to the community) causing serious water shortages and causing massive health problems.

Whatever it is, something has been done that would be unacceptable in  a non business context but because the context in which it occurred is the wonderful leviathan we lovingly refer to as "business" it becomes acceptable. If you examine this for but a second the extent to which it is clearly a symptom of a system gone awry becomes glaringly obvious. So much so that I struggle to understand how this notion has pervaded for so long without really being deconstructed in the public consciousness. At it's core, "it's just business" is a euphemism for something that, once faced without prejudice, bias or the desire to defend, justify or diminish, is shockingly sinister. If we were being honest with ourselves, we would recognize that "it's just business" is a less obviously disgusting way of saying "I know it's wrong but I'm getting paid to do it."

Having said that, let's now consider an example from my personal life, first using the euphemism, then replacing it with a more appropriate, more accurate and non obfuscating statement like "I know it's wrong but I'm getting paid to do it." This example is not nearly as obviously immoral as some of the examples I mentioned above (especially the water supply one, which, by the way, happened in Chile) but it struck me at the time as being wholly unfair and really started the process of opening my eyes to the reality of business practises (working for a few doctors and seeing the relationship drug company reps have with the medical establishment definitely accelerated that process, but I digress).

Two Quick Questions For Christians

1) Is there any non biblical, supporting evidence for what you believe ? If so, what is it? If no, and your beliefs are based solely upon what is contained in the bible, what then compels you to believe the book, especially as opposed to all of the other similar books upon which other religions are based, if, and I assume this is true, you believe that none of those other books are supported by extraneous evidence?

2) Do you think you'd be a Christian if you were raised in say India, or would you be a follower of the Hindu religion? Does the fact that religiosity is so highly correlated with culture/geography ever occur to you and if so, does that not strike you as a fairly compelling counterargument to your claims of truth?

Haunted Attic? (Demons?) Scary Sounds!

Please tell me there's a natural explanation for this......

Fun Experiment: Take an Atheist. Get Him High. Place Atheist Inside Church.

Wow, I thought, bracing myself against the freezing cold wind as I exited the car, I'm really doing this. I'm going to church. Church. I walked in to the same Catholic church that I attended (on a very infrequent basis) as a youth (but never before with the ol mj in the system) and as I passed from the hall to the main part of the church itself, skipping the 'holy' water anointing station and hoping I didn't look like an extra on the set of Half Baked I entered what felt like an entirely new dimension- a sense of deja-vu mixed with a rather strong feeling of I don't belong here and they will know it immediately. I mean, for one thing, the place was packed and so trying my hardest to not feel completely out of place standing in front of what looked like 200 people, all of whom I was certain were all thinking the same thing (*hiss* an interloper *hiss*).

....And then there's the fact that I was stoned. Not exactly the most comfortable place to be when you're high but man did it amplify the experience. I'll get to that in a bit though. My cohorts and I took a seat. I hadn't sat in one of those seats for years, and it was a church of all places, but I did experience a small sense of a faint whiff of welcoming. My ass recoiled and sighed with familiarity at the same time, but I digress.

We were a few minutes early so I took the time to look around and take in the scene. Like most catholic churches, the place is a strange mix of welcoming and foreboding. The architectural design is aesthetically pleasing and it's clear that the workmanship was solid and finely detailed, but I cannot deny the fact that it did strike me as also being intentionally designed in such a grandiose fashion that it ventured beyond "look how grand this is" to perhaps a small (and possibly imagined on my part, sure) hint of "and look how small you are." It could be simple cynicism on my part, but as you will soon read, the mass itself also seemed to be designed with the intention of engendering in those in attendance a sense of less than. There certainly was a lot of prostrating oneself involved in the actual mass itself.

HILARIOUS!!!! Bill Burr promotes Shari's Berries

The World Would Be a Better Place If We All Studied Psychology

I'll (briefly, for both your sake and mine) present my case and you then tell me if I'm deluded or onto something here (it can't be anything else; I like my thinking black and white, like a coffee made by a supernatural barista):

Psychology as an academic discipline deals with many things. A few of those things are pertinent to this discussion, the first of which is introspection, the art of internal investigation. A process through which we examine our own minds and come to learn about and then manage, if we so choose, our reactions, emotions, thought processes, and even, ideally, our biases and our pride. Our ego. I could spend hours talking about how terrible a role the ego plays in this world on a daily basis, but I digress so let's move on.

Psychology deals with interpersonal relations. How we deal with others and why we do so. How we relate to them- and they to us.

So basically you study psych and you learn about us, humans, and yourself, both as standalone entities and in relation to others. Well, it seems like a good time to ask what it is in life exactly that these things are made relevant by? Hmmm....emotions, biases, thought processes, pride, relations with others....oh ya, how about damn near everything? Relationships with family and friends, dealing with people at school. People at work. Dealing with loss, success, competition, grief. How we handle and react to day to day life. How we assess the, as we see them, motives and desires of others? Hell, how about diplomacy?! And I don't mean as a mediator in a divorce. I mean foreign f'n policy!

All of the above is heavily related to the psychology of humans and their understanding of both themselves and one another. Yet almost none of us receive education in the field of study that deals with this- psychology. I only got the opportunity to do so in university. Now imagine if everyone on Earth that received a primary education studied psychology as part of their curriculum? Ah.....better relations, better understanding of ourselves and one another.....better everything. A better world.

Call me crazy but I really am concluding that I think if we studied psychology throughout our formative years we would be more adjusted and in control of our emotions, our thoughts....our minds. Ourselves. And if this were the case, then it would naturally follow that things made up of people, like say corporations, or even *gasp* governments, might function at a higher level than they do now, with a net effect of more positivity in this world, and consequently, less of the opposite.