This week we wonder: will Duncan Jones' Source Code be as good as Moon?
If last week's festivities took a toll on your fragile human body, then perhaps you'll this week's relaxing blend of music and poetry. On the flipside, you could continue to party hard with a variety of comic, phantasmogoric and pseudo-pornographic delights.
In two years, the zombie apocalypse will be here. By 2013, two-thirds of the planet has been wiped out by Ataxic Neurodegenerative Satiety Deficiency Syndrome (ANSD), the zombie virus that kick-starts Armageddon. It's all right here in The Zombie Autopsies -- the new book by MGH faculty/Harvard Medical School psychiatry professor Dr.
Image from our "Stan VanDerBeek: The Culture Intercom" slideshow.
Turns out, you don't have to look very hard to find the geeky bits of any given issue of the Phoenix. Here are a few choice morsels for your lazy-Sunday perusal.
[tech] Peace, love and QR codes: South by Southwest Interactive plots a course to a better world
In ancient Greece, you could count on everybody knowing that Odysseus was a well-traveled Ithacan king, and that it's a bad idea to sacrifice Clymnestra's daughter. This Greco-Roman pantheon carried over into the Industrial Age. In addition, we had the Bible: a common cultural touchstone from Birmingham to Baden-Württemberg.
Now that we've been Supermooned and vernally equinoxed, it seems that Boston's geek events are in full bloom. Which means you folks are going to have to make some tough choices this weekend -- do your loyalties lie more with Tolkienian mythology? Or steampunkery? Or tapas of terror? Burlesque? (This looks like a job for Blernsday
In many role-playing games, townspeople instantly recognize you as a hero, even if they don't know you. It can be nice, living in a world where everybody thinks you're the coolest and needs your help -- but Dragon Age 2 takes it a little too far.
Following the trail of cute was like a secret pass to the best games of PAX. From the tiny undead samurai of Skulls of the Shogun, to the chipmunk-headed weirdos of Slam Bolt Scrappers, we got a showcase of everything indie and quirky and new by avoiding the overblown ad budgets of the center floor. Our best stop, however, was to Warp, tucked away in a corner of the convention floor.
So PAX East has come and gone -- and left behind a trail of broken hearts. One has only to check out the "Missed Connections" section of Craigslist to sense the palpable longing of nerds who almost -- but didn't -- get laid.
PAX East tf2 female engineer cosplay - m4wI was dressed up as Monkey D Luffy from One Piece, we posed for a picture together (which is completely awesome and you have to see it).
Let's face it, Boston is a deeply nerdy city. You can be walking along the street, and suddenly you're talking to a guy cross-dressed as the latest Dr. Who companion. (This actually happened. If you're reading this, buddy, you looked great in that miniskirt.)
And as you may know, we nerds are never happier than when we're arguing.
Best possible week: After learning about mushrooms, Nazi ciphers, and cancer, I explore the depths of the human condition in Frankenstein, and chill for a couple hours with Bruce Campbell and some Maltese puppies. Then my Freestyle Full Beard wins top honors; and the next day, Singularity happens at Oberon, whereupon nanomachines invent themselves and cure hangovers, just in time for Spring Break 2011.
Be sure to check out my PAX East recaps for the first half of Friday, the second half of Friday, and all of Saturday.
When I woke up this morning, my gamer-filled Twitter feed was full of condemnations of Daylight Savings Time. Poor PAX attendees are typically short on hours to sleep as it is, and taking away an hour really did a number on us all.
My second day at PAX East began in the expo hall with an intense, emotional video. The Gambit Game Lab of MIT gathered some data about hate speech in gaming communities, and then they recorded actors performing the collected comments out loud. The video doesn't analyze the data collected or attempt to argue with the hate speech in any way, and the presenters at the booth told me they considered it to be more of an art project to increase awareness rather than an official study.
Read my recap of the first half of Day 1 of PAX East here.
After writing about my busy morning of gaming in the expo hall and rocking out to chiptune DJs, I headed back to the jam space again around 3:00 to see some non-chiptune music. I had hoped to play a little myself, but the atmosphere of the room is simultaneously intimidating and welcoming.
I've been at PAX East, over at the Boston Convention Center, since early this morning. I'd like to tell you my convention experience began with Jane McGonigal's keynote speech about her new book, Reality Is Broken. Unfortunately, I missed her keynote because the line for press passes was far longer than I anticipated.
Follow us on Twitter for updates and links to general coolness