Aleae Iaciens

I just made changes to almost every post on Aleae Iaciens, so if they all get reposted to the RSS feed, um, I'm sorry.  I'm hoping they don't.  I don't want to flood anybody's aggregator.

(I didn't change any of the existing content, for the record; it's more a philosophical change than anything else.  I've taken the Creative Commons link off the sidebar, and I'm putting the link in each individual previous post instead.  I still like and support Creative Commons, and I may put the whole thing under a CC banner when I'm done with it, but it occurred to me this weekend that I'd really rather have finer control over what's covered by the CC tarp.)

For the record, the only previous post that is not now covered by a Creative Commons license is Fade's introductory post, which I didn't want to tag without asking her first.

Posted by Chris Anthony at 09:24 AM | Permalink

So this is apparently my 200th day of having this weblog.

I should probably post something game-wise, but...

...I got nothin'.

(Well, that's not true.  But I got nothin' that might not be a potential copyright infringement if I post it here.)

We'll see if I got somethin' later in the day.  (God, I hope so.  This dry spell is murdering me.)

Posted by Chris Anthony at 07:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Courtesy of Chad U. (and possibly others, but Chad's was the first link I followed), the new trailer for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (55.7-meg .mov), scheduled for release on December 9 in the US.

I don't think I've read these books in over 15 years.  (The same goes for Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time and subsequent books.)  I really should go back through them again; if nothing else, I have a son who's getting to be just the right age...

Posted by Chris Anthony at 10:45 AM | Permalink

Via Tepes (who posted this more than a week ago, but I've only just started posting here again), we find that Steven Berlin Johnson posits:

Imagine an alternate world identical to ours save one techno-historical change: videogames were invented and popularized before books. In this parallel universe, kids have been playing games for centuries—and then these page-bound texts come along and suddenly they’re all the rage. What would the teachers, and the parents, and the cultural authorities have to say about this frenzy of reading? I suspect it would sound something like this:

...Books are also tragically isolating. While games have for many years engaged the young in complex social relationships with their peers, building and exploring worlds together, books force the child to sequester him or herself in a quiet space, shut off from interaction with other children. These new 'libraries' that have arisen in recent years to facilitate reading activities are a frightening sight: dozens of young children, normally so vivacious and socially interactive, sitting alone in cubicles, reading silently, oblivious to their peers.

...But perhaps the most dangerous property of these books is the fact that they follow a fixed linear path. You can't control their narratives in any fashion—you simply sit back and have the story dictated to you. For those of us raised on interactive narratives, this property may seem astonishing. Why would anyone want to embark on an adventure utterly choreographed by another person? But today’s generation embarks on such adventures millions of times a day. This risks instilling a general passivity in our children, making them feel as though they’re powerless to change their circumstances. Reading is not an active, participatory process; it’s a submissive one. The book readers of the younger generation are learning to 'follow the plot' instead of learning to lead.

Posted by Chris Anthony at 01:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

...Fade will post something of her own. 

Until then, I am posting something of her own!  (Moo ha ha.)

I encourage the four of you to check out Fade's Fallen Novalis writeup for In Nomine.  I mean, if you like that sort of thing.  And haven't already seen it somewhere else.

Posted by Chris Anthony at 12:54 PM | Permalink

(TypePad has now managed to eat this entry twice.  I persevere.)

It seems that my friend Moe (you may remember him from such films as Obsidian Wings or the In Nomine mailing list) has started a new weblog, Weblog Licentiae Moeticae.  Anybody who reads this weblog (all four of you) should probably read WLM, since Moe writes on many* of the same topics that I do and is a better writer than I am.

I'm also kind of hoping that Moe will kick my ass and make me start posting here again.  (Possibly in a passive way - ass-kicking by example, as it were.)

* I would probably not, for instance, write an Ambrosian hymn** on SCA tournaments.

** I make no promises about sonnets or triolets.

Posted by Chris Anthony at 06:11 AM | Permalink