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I recently read Paul Lockhart’s incredible essay “A Mathematician’s Lament” [PDF]. Lockhart, a mathematics teacher at Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn, wrote the piece in 2002, but it wasn’t published until last year, on Keith Devlin’s monthly column. “A Mathematician’s Lament” begins with the nightmares of a musician and a painter, both horrified to see their art forms turned into… read more

When I was a philosophy undergraduate student, I had a life-changing experience in a class on the philosophy of language. It was a good class, as undergraduate classes tend to be: I learned the basics of a subject had known little about previously. The course was taught by a newly minted PhD whose specialty was that subject. She was young… read more

I stumbled upon an article by Atari founder Nolan Bushnell about the educational potential of videogames. It’s not dated, but based on the biographical one-liner I’d say it’s from around 1982. Here’s the first paragraph: The computer, the single most powerful development of the twentieth century, is still puny in comparison to the mind of man. The difference lies in… read more

Over on Larval Subjects, Levi raised some concerns about Nate’s recent post about zombies and speculative realism. Specifically, Bryant expressed a worry that treating humans as zombies might suggest that object-oriented ontology sees humans as lesser forms than other objects, rather than as one of many objects on equal footing. As I mentioned in the subsequent discussion, I didn’t read… read more

Two interesting blogs have come to my attention, and I thought I’d pass along the recommendation to read them. First, Nathan Gale’s An Uncanny Ontology. Gale recently wrote about zombies and ontology, which I talked about here yesterday. He’s also been working on an interesting theoretical frame for object-oriented thinking, an Object Cone. Second, Fabio Cunctator’s Hyper Tiling. The author’s… read more

Over at Un-canny Ontology, Nathan Gale writes a post that responds to and extends both mine on Harman’s conception of cuteness and Bryant’s on the unheimlich. The uncanny valley rears its head, a concept originally developed by Masahiro Mori about the moment when robots cease to seem realistic and begin to seem creepy. It’s an often-cited concept in videogames, and… read more

Via Graham Harman, I discovered the “best name anagram” generator, which does exactly what it sounds like. For example, Graham Harman’s anagram name is HA HA! GRR! MAN AM You may have seen it too, since the site makes it easy to post one’s name anagram on Facebook, so anagrams have been making the rounds. For me, the generator suggests… read more

I’ve just closed Water Cooler Games, the blog about “videogames with an agenda” that Gonzalo Frasca and I started in 2003. I have also archived the site in its entirety here on Bogost.com, and all existing links to pages on watercoolergames.org will forward correctly in perpetuity. When Gonzalo and I first started Water Cooler Games, the very idea of “videogames… read more

Today John Sharp showed me this insanely cute dwarf miniature horse, named Koda. He’s about as big as a cat, so noticeably smaller than a normal miniature horse because he is, well, a dwarf. Click for a bigger image, or see more pics here. One of my favorite sidetrips in Graham Harman’s Guerilla Metaphysics (back in print soon) is his… read more