Eve Online is one of those games that if I was to start playing I would be sucked in. Eventually I would have to drop out of school and end up living in a basement. Thus I have to content myself to settle by playing X3: Terran Conflict. Unfortunately, I found it slightly alarming when I started to talk to my computer wingman so perhaps playing an online game may be better for my mental health .

In any case, Eve Online is awesome because it not only has a resident economist who produces awesome economic reports it also has some pretty awesome stories of deceit in which players infiltrate an in-game corporation (like a guild) and then assassinate the leader and take money. It has also happened again recently. There are even cases of bank fraud!

I mention these because a media professor from Loyola University (click title for link) ran an experiment on online social culture using City of Heroes. For those who don't know, City of Heroes is a game based on Heroes/Villains. They are supposed to be morally opposed to each other, thus fighting each other to the bitter end. Though when Twixt (alias for the professor) entered, he found that most were idly chatting in the city! Rather than living in some Bizarro world, he chose to smite the evil villains like the scum that they obviously are. In a sad unintentional parody to "Make Love, Not Warcraft," the villains found it impossible to beat Twixt in the game, even after ganging up on him, while Twixt's supposed allies (also known as the French) sat by like the sad pacifists they are.

Real problems arose of course when players posted death threats and other harassing comments towards Twixt, who was only playing the game as the designers intended, unlike one of my college roommates who enjoyed using the flashbang on Counter-Strike on his own teammates until either enemies killed us or it crashed the game server, Thanks Dan.

In any case, I have a message for the players of CoH, go play the Second Life. There you will only have to worry about annoying floating penises.

-Trevor

I was shopping at Albertsons the other day (though as Mike had mentioned when down here, it is not owned by Supervalu) when I came across some rhubarb for only $1.99 a pound. Of course everyone knows what one does with Rhubarb other than to collect its leaves for the toxic oxalic acid, make Strawberry-Rhubarb pie. I was going to originally use a recipe from Grandma's recipe books, but she did not include cook temperatures and times, definitely a no-no for someone just starting out in the pie trade. Instead I came across a rather simple recipe off of the Food Network. The ingredients are shown above.

The preparation was amazingly simple and I was amazed at how the sugar turned the mixture into a quasi-jelly. Even more amazing is my physics lesson on volume. I was certain I messed up my measuring that there was no way the amount in my mixing bowl would fit into my small pie tin (which I was able to by with a graham cracker crust in there.






I found out how unhealthy my pie is as well. I found a neat website at shopncook.com which can create custom nutrition labels so I gathered the nutrition information for my pie and created this label which should give everyone the impact that just one slice can have. Though it is definitely not as unhealthy as Death Pies. Though I suppose one could argue that even the Death Pies can be part of a balanced diet if kept to special occasions though I do wonder how my grade school classmates who had these every day for a snack didn't end up morbidly obese, though this may also be due to the fact that we weren't as slothful back then??

-Trevor