Driving Blind: E3 and Charter Cities
A new report from the ESA gives some “essential facts” about the video game industry, including who plays and what their interested in.
We might finally see some action from the courts on unpaid internships.
Ed Kilgore examines Michael Lind’s essay on libertarianism.
Speaking of libertarian utopianism. Also: charter cities.
I love books, and paintings, so this is awesome.
The estate of superman co-creator Joe Shuster intends to take their legal dispute with Warner Brothers all the way to the Supreme Court.
Kyle Buchanan asks if it’s possible to make a blockbuster these days without referencing 9/11.
An open thread on whether Superman is the best superhero (my thoughts: he might not be the “best” but he is the superhero).
More on organ donation from Reihan Salam
Finally, E3 2013 finishes up today. Here’s the entire expo in pictures.
Re: Kyle Buchanan (Actually, it has little to do with the article itself, which is talking about something different, but in between seeing that and reading the article, my mind went in the following direction:
If I recall, 9/11 never happened (or at least was hugely downplayed) on 24. The same for West Wing, though national security was a relatively small part of that show. I much prefer this approach to Tom Clancy and Vince Flynn, both of whom tried to shoehorn it into timelines where it didn’t fit.
We’re actually far enough removed from 9/11, though (this batch of high school graduates barely remember it, if at all) that it’s easier to put it in a historical context. Something that happened in the timeline before it diverged into the fictional one presented.Report
“The same for West Wing, though national security was a relatively small part of that show”
I disagree on two counts. First, they did a ‘very special episode’ as a specific response to it, (“Isaac & Ishmael”) though it was not part of the in-universe continuity. Second, a great deal of the show was a about national security – and a fairly “aggressive” foreign policy – even before 9/11. (I’d guess that at least 2/3 of all the episodes had a least one scene in situation room)Report
They did have the Very Special Episode, outside of continuity, but what I meant was that 9/11 didn’t actually take place within the series. No references to it having occurred.
There was foreign policy on the show, but not in the same sense as 24. It was a part of the show, but I didn’t consider it to be a big one.Report
I agree that West Wing existed in a parallel universe where lots of things happened differently (including no 9-11 – specifically), but I still say a majority of the episodes had Bartlett flex his CiC muscles in one way or another*, and the entire Qumar arc was a huge part of the show – and definitely written with 9/11 and real world 9/11 reactions in mind.
*the worst one of these was when he was personally giving orders to LANTFLT units in a hurricane sortie. My eyes were rolling so hard they needed bearing grease.Report