Why? Why not?

For those of you who don’t know, America’s Army is a first-person shooter game that is being developed, strangely enough, by America’s Army. Now when I first thought about this, I was undecided to negative about it. However, Tycho from Penny Arcade made a good case that most of the objections that one would raise to this game are, well, crap.

Basically, his thesis is that if you’re going to argue that games aren’t to blame for all of the crap that they get blamed for (increased violence blah blah blah), then you can’t really be all that worried about this sort of game being ‘propaganda’. He also makes the point that if the games are intented to be some sort of recruiting/training tool, the best way to stick it to the MAN is to download the game, play it, learn whatever they want you to learn, and then don’t join the army.

Ahhh, he puts it with a lot more humour than I do.

The net is a strange place.

Evidence:

Here, you can by pottery by Lance Henriksen, of Millenium and the Aliens series. Pottery.

The real world is stranger.

Evidence:

Amorous dolphin targeting swimmers.

When dolphins get sexually excited, they try to isolate a swimmer, normally female. They do this by circling around the individual and gradually move them away from the beach, boat or crowd of people.

Do I really need to explain any more?