Author Archives: David

New Year, New Game: Dogs in the Vineyard

Today is the Chinese New Year’s Day. Last night’s fireworks have left their remains strewn all around the streets and parking lots of residential complexes here in China, and everywhere one has the feeling that people are having great fun with their families, in spite of the mess. In that spirit of festive messiness, I’ve …

January 23, 2012 – 4:43 pm | By David | Posted in Gaming | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)

A Friendly Foe

This is about challenge, opposition, danger, and fear. Suppose I say to you, hey let’s play this game. You say 1, I say 2, you say 3, and so on, and when we get to 10, then it’s over! Sounds kind of boring right? There’s nothing for you to put your mind to, no challenge …

January 8, 2012 – 10:01 pm | By David | Posted in Gaming | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

The Game World

All good games have power, to inspire, to captivate, and change your behavior. The best way that I’ve found to understand why is to imagine each game as its own world; the process of playing that game involves finding or creating this world, understanding or defining it to some extent, entering it, exploring it, and …

January 4, 2012 – 11:52 pm | By David | Posted in Gaming | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)

I, Cthulhu (Review)

Neil Gaiman’s awesome short story “I, Cthulhu” is filled with his classic humor and irony. I especially like how he humanizes Cthulhu as an ancient semi-omnipotent being with style, making something unapproachable and bizarre by definition come so close you can laugh at it.   In other stories and articles I’ve read about the “Cthulhu …

January 3, 2012 – 5:55 pm | By David | Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Faith & Science

One of my favorite songs is called “The Poetry of Reality,” by the Symphony of Science. In it, the words of various scientists are auto-tuned into a beautiful song about science as “the best tool ever devised for understanding how the world works,” and how “the story of humans is the story of ideas that …

January 3, 2012 – 1:01 am | By David | Posted in Faith & Science | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)

2012, the Titanic, and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá

2012 will mark the centenary of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s historic visit to the US. It actually makes me miss my hometown quite a bit. I wish I could enjoy the special events and festivities. By the way, speaking of apocalypses, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá was given a ticket to board the Titanic at a time when anyone would have thought …

January 2, 2012 – 1:17 am | By David | Posted in Faith & Science | Tagged , | Comments (0)

An End and a Beginning

New Year’s Eve always brings many thoughts about the future, but this year is a special one in many ways. Ever since the movie 2012 instructed everyone about the Mayan calendar and made dire predictions about a coming apocalypse, the arrival of this coming year has felt somewhat charged with apocalyptic fever. In fact, of …

January 1, 2012 – 5:59 pm | By David | Posted in World | Tagged , | Comments (0)

The Value of Games

I’m a firm believer in the power of games. Even before I saw this TED talk about how gaming could change the world, I already knew that there was something special about the way games can affect human lives. They had changed my own. Admittedly, not all that change was for the better. God only …

December 31, 2011 – 11:51 pm | By David | Posted in Gaming | Tagged , , | Comments (2)

A New Start

If you know me, you may remember that I used to write a blog on brightwind.org several years ago. I was young and really excited about living in China, posting photos and blogging about everything in my mind. When my mother got cancer, however, I lost my blogging steam. I found myself in a different …

December 31, 2011 – 12:53 am | By David | Posted in Life | Tagged , | Comments (0)