Before I go to to sleep I want to share this pretty cool video that imagines a possible future in which our every action is integrated into games that are sponsored by corporations or states. I know it sounds rather far fetched and stuff, but parts of the idea will definitely exist in one form or another.

Jesse Schell, CEO and Creative Director of Schell Games, imagines a future where every aspect of our daily lives are integrated with video games.

Games perpetually revolutionize computer use toward denser interaction with the human mind. To do that, they perpetually revolutionize themselves. Understanding the next frontiers of the genre is one way to understand where society is going.

In this talk Jesse Schell explores the social, cognitive, and technological trends in computer game design and use. This program was recorded in collaboration with the Long Now Foundation, on July 27, 2010.

Watch the video below.

The United Nations said that the Pakistan disaster, where over 14 million people have been impacted by the flooding and over 1,600 have lost their lives, is on a bigger scale than the 2004 tsunami. They also estimate that at least 20% of Pakistan is underwater. And as if those numbers weren’t shocking enough already, they are expecting more flooding.

The trend of extreme weather events is expected to continue in the future. Here’s what NASA has to say:

What we can say is that global warming has an effect on the probability and intensity of extreme events. This is true for precipitation as well as temperature, because the amount of water vapor that the air carries is a strong function of temperature. So the frequency of extremely heavy rain and floods increases as global warming increases.

At this rate, by the time I’m 80 years old we’ll probably have floods that will wipe out whole countries in a matter of days. I’m so not looking forward to that.

d'oh!

A 45-year-old advertising executive from New York was asked by a beggar for some money, and because she had no cash on her and wanted to help him, she let him borrow her American Express Platinum card.

The man then disappeared down the block and everyone who saw her give the card to him “said they thought that was the dumbest thing, that there’s a fine line between charity and stupidity,” Harris, global business director for the JWT advertising agency, told the Post.

The beggar did return with the credit card after around 10 minutes, but that does not make her action any less stupid. It just makes her lucky. Lucky that he didn’t ask for her apartment keys.

And isn’t it surprising that a person who made such a dumb decision is the global business director of a company? You’d think she would be brighter.

[via: UPI]

Rare 2,200-year-old gold coin found in Israel.

CNN writes that a combined university research team in Israel discovered the coin embedded in a stone wall “separating the northwest storeroom of the Hellenistic administrative building from a room currently identified as a kitchen.”

I found the article interesting for two reasons. The first one, obviously, is related to the value of the discovery. The second reason is that with all those Jewish people living there, I’m surprised it took them over two thousand years to find it.

Oh snap, see what I did there?

rawr

In Sweden, the level of the fine for driving over the speed limit is determined by two factors: the wealth of the driver and the speed recorded. And that is just brilliant!

I know I wrote in another post that deterrents usually don’t work and often times create results opposite of their intentions, but the way this Swedish law works (probably) bypasses that. Why? Because if you’re filthy rich and you break the law, the fine is absolutely insane.