Another day, another revealing passage from Dibbell’s Play Money, this time about the origins of the infamous Turing Test (pg. 100):
“Designed by Alan Turing in 1950, it was a variation on “The Imitation Game,” a party amusement in which a man and a woman, hidden in separate rooms, take written questions from the other guests and […]

Hello, boys and girls.  Thus begins a series of short reflections on even shorter passages from Julian Dibbell’s new book Play Money, available at an Amazon.com retailer near you–and currently setting my night table aglow with its cheery red exterior.  If you liked My Tiny Life, you’re sure to love… Aw, you get the gist.
Today’s fun excerpt […]

Working on a review of VirtuallyJenna for The Onion A. V. Club, I’ve been thinking a lot about so-called “poke the doll” games that make up a good portion of sex-based titles.  We’ve talked about them before, re: orgasm simulators, but what I’m thinking about at the moment, after x number of hours introducing foreign objects into the […]

Yes, I’m a giant dork. We should get that out of the way.
Like the rest of the known world, I’ve recently become addicted to Lost. I thought it would be silly. I was wrong. I now have crushes on both Sawyer (the character, not the actor) and Evangeline Lilly (the actress, not […]

A few weeks back, I was shocked to open up the paper and find, in the New York Times no less, mention of my own beloved ex-summer camp… as part of an article about safety and MySpace.  The piece talks about camp directors and their fear that info given on the social network could lead “online […]

What it has to do with sex has yet to be seen, but I couldn’t help but mentioning this so-cute-you-could-just-eat-it-up indy game whose shiny colors and adorably groteque graphics caught my eye at The Onion A. V. Club this afternoon.  Perhaps you know it: It’s Eets–catchy subtitle: “Hunger.  It’s emotional”—kinda Chu Chu Rockets, kinda 2D Worms, all […]