Mass Effect

An old friend of mine once had a postcard with the slogan 'Use your vote - u know they will' coupled with a picture of a homophobe with a placard. On a similar note several of Al Qaida related sites have been taken down, probably by US intelligence services, though that would be illegal.... Anway, the internet is a rich source for activism. Its key features of (now ever decreasing) anonymity, range of reach and breadth of depth means you can find someone, somewhere who agrees with you even if its about what the rightful colour of a amazonian poisoned arrow frogs shold be, or more commonly about the best place to buy an Ipod. Either way these are often receptive or 1-1 conversations. Even forums which allow many users to post are little more than a modern way of leaving a urine trail across the internet.

Ah But!

"The point is not just to understand the world but to change it."

Most of us work to live, while some live to work we still infuse each sphere of our lives with our personality as much as we think is appropriate. Each of us is aware of the time we have on the earth and wish to spend some of it living out our own take on existance as we see fit. Many of use the internet to chat, arrange and share various things but few of use the internet to contribure to the wider world. We just use the net to find different, pre-determined points of reality to latch on to. A virtual tube that connects us directly to the info we seek, be it in airlines in spain or friends in Nepal.

I ask you to find something via the internet, that requires the internet, that you can do to contribute something towards something that is greater than those around and yourself.  We each have skills and knowledge
Good examples would be:

Become a Wikipedia editor! - Requirements - Internet, brain, lack of axe to grind
Become a Gutenberg Proof reader - Compare scanned pages to text and proof read so that out-of-copyright books can be re-published for download, for FREE! FOREVER!

Search for Extra-Terrestrial Life -SETI- allows you to download programs that speed up the decoding of all sorts of space noise, find an alien, win a cuddly toy...
************
Leave a comment below or email me with your on-line 2nd job or fav pastime and I'll plug it. :)

There are gonna be two types of people who are going to read this. The first are going to know what Spore is, so if you want to know my opinions, come and ask me, but it's the second group who rarely, if ever, play a computer game that this article is for because that is who the game is aimed at.
Spore is a simulation that could possibly double for several chapters of the national ciriculum. Its a game where you guide your player created species through the five stages of Spore evolution; soup, creature, tribal, civilisation and finally, space. Coupled with most of the stages are editors the allow you to design your creature and some of its houses, cars and clothes. The early stages in the primordial soup, and later, the creature stage are cute and endearing but boil down to collection and the repeation of a narrow range of actions. The consistant repeating lets the game down, even in the later and broader, space stage. However they serve as an plesant entry to the game, paced much around 20Mph in a 30Mph zone.

                                                         A Kordita & Family

Stages three and four involve moving your much loved creatures to employ violence, or the power of religion and occasionally music to win over your neighbours. The space stage has you in a trading empire to ally, conquer or buy out your fellow space species.
Have I bored you yet. Suspect so. Spore is a computer game but crucially it is a simulation which means that it owes more to its source material and gengre than normal computer games rules. Spore, on the other hand, has tried to incorporate normal computer gamer achetypes, collect, build, kill etc, and wraped then around year 8 science.
At the core of Spore are two things, its ability to let you create your own creature and follow them as the develop through the five stages and the its concept of evolution that links the experiance together. Keeping with evoltuiton, Spore encourages you to collect items that serve as body parts that can then be added to your creature. Extra eyes, legs, arms and heads can all be placed but the game encourages sensible rules. More teeth and claws lead to a better carnivore where as the ability to sneak is useful for herbivore. Not very complicated or deep but it stops the player making obviously stupid looking animals. Sadly the game lacks any real flying or swimming animals but I expect the former to be included in expansion pack.
So is it fun? Well yes it is. For a regular gamer all the gameplay elements are limited and unoriginal, but the newcomer will probably appriciate the straight forward nature of progressing throught the game. The real joy with Spore is creating your creatures and letting them loose on your galaxy and in other people's.
How?
-Hair Ad moment alert!-
Spore allows you to creature your creature and upload it to Spore.com. When you get to the Space stage of Spore you are in a galaxy with several thousand planets, some with animals. Where do all those different animals come from? They are all copies of other people's creations. As you play the game it quietly downloads them from the web or you can check out the massive selection and find something suitibly wacky or tasteless from the massive database. Somewhere, someone is trying to befriend, bribe or extermiate my dear Jaksters or Korditas.

                             The possibilties of the editors are endless

In fact the game even updates you if someone else encounters one of your creations and commits genocide for example. It means nothing for your game but nevertheless it induces a 'you b'stard' every time you check. (Takamax - I know who you are!)
Spore's space stage revels the masterplan. Each planet can be coloured and shaped as you desire. It can be populated by the plants you choose and the animals you download or abduct. As there are millions of creatures available, the galaxy can be designed as you want it.
Spore tries to tell a story with your creature at its centre and it does this with stylish graphics and groundbreaking animation but is it fun? Yes, but mostly in proportion to how much you care about your creature.

Scoring:
Normally the five elements would add up to a 6 at best. Saying that, the animation and editors are groundbreaking and the great take on the evolution theme can't be ignored. Coupled with Spore.com always providing new creatures, buildings and vehicles, Spores scores a:

8.2/10
Verdict: Good, but not Godlike

Summary: Graphics from Pixar, Gameplay from the Learning Channel.

Jorge Haider, former leader of the right wing Austrian Freedom Party was killed in a car crash, no foul play is suspected. He and the party he led was often seen as anti-european, anti-semitic and pro nazi. Israel pulled its ambassador form Austrian when the party became part of the federal government in 1999. Someone once said that if you can't say anything nice don't say anything at all - so I won't.

Thankfully Stepan Pletz, Haider spokesman and party secetary, filled the gap.
"For us, it's like the end of the world" he said.

                                No beef here!

Not in Caracas.

McDonald's Corporation, purveyor of burgers and chips to millions has been forced to shut its doors in Venezuela for 48 hours. In a drive unrelated to the rise in obesity or yankee imperialism, the Venezuelan authorities ordered the temporary closure for 'irregularities' with their books. For two whole days the country was McDonalds free!
Ten years ago McDonalds exploited children with its advertising, was culpably responsible for cruelty to animals and that Mcdonalds workers did badly when it came to pay and conditions. How do I know? - because a judge said so.
     Then a more important judge said if one eats enough McDonald's food, one's diet may well become high in fat etc., with the very real risk of heart disease."
    Yes, it took a two massive hearings to conclude that eating shit can kill you. Biritish Justice at its best.
Anway that was a long time ago, McDonalds has stopped all that child exploiting advertsing. Look at the their annual report and you can see that they've moved on to adults.