I’ve spoken of how the medium of video games is often underused in regards to storytelling, however there is another oppurtunity where it so often fails in its endeavors. The realm of education. Extra Credits did a great piece on this, which I will link at the bottom, in which they talk about Tangential learning as opposed to the more traditional shove it down your throat education. But my question is, could video games be the future of science experiments in classrooms?
Love, its one of the greatest, the worst, the most obvious, and the most mysterious of emotions in our arsenal. When you’re in love, you just know it. And when you fall out of love, there’s nothing quite as depressing . But why do we fall in love in the first place? There must be some evolutionary reason, it serves a purpose. Is our brain drugging us?
Well first-off let’s discuss love on a chemical level. From what I can tell, the main culprits in this matter are serotonin and Oxytocin. The serotonin patterns produced from love is much akin to those seen in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. This explains how you just can’t get that loved one out of your head.(1)
Oxytocin is the chemical released during orgasm, and is attributed to long-term love, beyond the “Honeymoon Phase” of passionate love.(2) We all know that these relationships evolve over time, but it is fairly interesting that the chemicals involved actually do change.
But why? Occam’s Razor points to our need to reproduce to sustain the species. But why does the initial “passionate” period of love only last for a year or so? Maybe it is due to the highly dependent nature of humans at birth. The chemical attempts to keep the parents together long enough to get the child out of infant stage. This could be related to the immediate bond many parents (especially mothers) feel for their children upon birth. Tell me your theories.
The most interesting thing to me is how much Love resembles a drug. When you first taste it, there’s nothing like it. You’ve never been so high in your life. You need more, you need to be around your dealer (loved one) all the time. If you don’t see him/her for a while, you begin to have emotional withdrawals (loneliness, depression, anger). And perhaps the most interesting correlation, you build up a tolerance to it. Hell me and my friends have had to do pseudo interventions over a buddy not getting over a girl.
I know that sounds silly, but consider it. If you’ve been in a long-term relationship, you know it has changed, on a chemical level. You still love them, but it’s not the same as when you first met. Maybe this is why people cheat, they’re looking for that chemical rush they’ve lost somewhere along the way.
So what can be done? Well that’s a bit above my pay grade, but I have some ideas. The most obvious is keep it fresh. Do new things, exciting things. Take a dance class together, make a comic book, try rock climbing, take a great cooking class, do P90x. Your relationship is like a body. You’ve got to keep it active, or problems will hit you down the line.
Beyond that, spicing up your sex life never hurts. Part of this is both of you staying in shape. I know its shallow, but hey, we’re conditioned. Also when you’re in good shape it opens up some… possibilities in the bedroom. This is also a chance to open up to one another, and express your desires. Just don’t make any shocked faces when they tell you their fantasies. Seriously.
So what do you think? Has your brain been throwing you love rock since you were a teenager, or do you have a different view on love? Let me know.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11758796 (1)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3782434 (2)
Life is a lot faster than it used to be. We can talk to people across the world in a moment, I can get fifty opinions on what would have happened if Hannibal had attacked Rome within a few minutes, hell thanks to video recording, you can see through other people’s eyes. As technology progresses, and our cities expand, we grow more and more interconnected and clustered. So my question is… are we becoming more like insects than mammals?
This is one of the last scenes of Cowboy Bebop, and the last with Spike and Jet. (Spoiler) Julia has just been killed by a Syndicate hit squad, and Spike is going to try and kill Vicious (his former partner when he was in the Syndicate, and now the leader of it.) aware that he’ll die in the process.
He comes back to the Bebop (the ship) one last time, and Jet cooks him up some of his famous Bell Peppers and Beef, without the beef.
I think its an amazing scene, all the more so because they both know its they last time they’ll see each other.
Hope you enjoy it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si7-GBpm1vU
Here is the follow-up scene with Faye.
Video games and narrative, a story as old as… well sometime in the 1970’s. As video games have developed, the possibilities for simulation and imagination have increased exponentially. Gameplay has been refined, A.I. improved, Graphics skyrocketed, Voice acting honed (sometimes). But there is something missing here… oh… it’s a good story.
“A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon.” – Napoleon Bonaparte
War, war never changes, and it seems the gender that wages it doesn’t either.Up until the 20th Century, females almost never served in their nation’s military. There are of course exceptions, such as Joan of Arc, and other brave women who history has forgotten, but by and large, the battlefield has been a place where men killed men. So my question is, do men love war?
Surrealism is a style of dating back to the early 20th century, with roots in post WWI France. It is one of the most easily recognizable styles, even to laypeople like myself, and has had a massive impact on the world of art and entertainment. But is our world on the verge of becoming a Surrealism Masterpiece?
Comprehensive Unity Project Tutorial
This is another set of Unity tutorials, but in the form of a project. It is about 30 hours long, and expects only the very basics from you to start with. By then end you’ll have a working (though not particularly beautiful) multiplayer fps.
It focuses on programming (in c#) and doesn’t really delve into modeling or animation.
All free on youtube.
These are a series of Unity tutorials by JesseEtzler0 that I have found tremendously helpful. They are excellently paced, and provide full scripts that you can either use, or study.
Gun violence has become a big issue lately. With multiple school shootings, rampages, and all sorts of other armed crime, it’s no wonder. In 2009, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 66.9% of all homicides in the United States were perpetrated using a firearm. And the largest portion of this comes from gang violence.
Anyway, I’m not here to talk about whether stricter gun control should be implemented. Personally I think the 2nd Amendment is important, it just doesn’t seem that way until you need it one day. I don’t think the problem is the guns, it’s the people who commit the act. And the society that caused them to go down the road they are on. (this includes you and me.) But that’s a discussion for another day.
Musings of Gleip 