The humans call is magic. But it's not magic. There are energies and forces in the universe that simply can't be explained. But the Drath  know it. They have lived it.  On the planet Altaria they have seen it.  Long ago, the Drath were the supreme sentient species on the planet Altaria. They were self-aware on a world with no rivals.  Then, the skies became lit with a fire that lasted for years. It was just light but they knew it foretold of a doom.  The world...

The Korx home world was united long ago by a single corporate conglomerate. What humans might call libertarianism was the way of the Korx in its purest form. Its unregulated capitalistic system eventually allowed a single mega corporation to emerge that effectively owned all of the resources of the Korx world including the military.  As a result, technological and cultural progress stagnated for generations. Without competition, Korx society moved forward on inertia from its past achiev...

Tragedy of the commons is a game theory that helps spell out why socialism always ultimately fails. It can be summed up with "nobody ever washes a rental car". Private ownership is the key to prosperity in a society. John Stossel has an excellent article that discusses this. For anyone who believes that the government should raise taxes so that it can "help people" more, this article will help show the error in such thinking.

I know it's not nice to say that some people are losers. But that doesn't mean it isn't true. Awhile back I wrote an article on this topic . Now, I'd like to put together this simple test that if someone I know or work with blatantly shows these signs I can just print it out, highlight and hand it to them. Are you a loser? Do you leave a given situation worse than you found it ? For instance, if you borrow something do you bring it back damaged? Loan a loser a car and it'll come back w...

There's something wrong with me. I know it. I can pretend otherwise but I just don't get excited about Christmas anymore. And the reason? I'm selfish. I like getting stuff. I am not really big on personal consumption. I'm notoriously cheap. And thanks to my wife, we (as in she and I) tend to be quite generous on gift giving. And why not? We're blessed to be able to afford to give to our family and friends. But I like getting presents. Not just any old presents, but presents that have th...

The sad narrative of our galaxy is that races seem inclined to commit genocide against other races on their home worlds. The Altarians and Drath once shared a home world. The Yor and Iconians once shared a home world. The Drengin and Korath once shared a home world. The Arnor and Dread Lords used to share a home world when they were known as the Precursors. Even the diplomatic humans shared a home world with the Neanderthals who were exterminated prior to the rise of modern human civilizatio...

Tonight's late late game is a test of the Iconians.  In theory, the Iconians should be quite impressive to play as. They have access to Precursor technology which no one else in the game does. However, they can't trade that tech so that hurts them diplomatically.  They also are relatively weak on weapons technology. On the other hand, Iconian ships can be a lot tougher than other ships and they have access to self-healing armor.  This game is a brief game I played this evening/...

Tomorrow the Iconians will be introduced in Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor Btea 3. In the creation of the Galactic Civilizations universe (when it was just a series of unpublished stories), the Iconians were one of the first named civilizations.  A race of beings who were nearly wiped out of existence by their malevolent creations, the Yor.  Even in Galactic Civilizations I, the home world of the Yor was known as Iconia (even though the Iconians were not in that ...

I just got back from the future in my time machine. Lots of cool stuff and not so cool stuff too. But one of the things that surprised me was how eBooks ended up succeeding in ways one didn't expect and failed utterly in the areas it was expected to do well in. It all started with the Kindle .  The Kindle was the first mainstream (seriously mainstream) attempt to get eBooks going.  With Amazon getting behind it (just like the did the Segway incidentally) the Kindle became pretty...

At home, when I'm coding or playing games I do it on my trusty Dell XPS Gen 3 PC.  It's blue, it's loud, and it's powerful.  Or at least it was in 2005 when I bought it. But this weekend, when I benchmarked my various PCs , the trusty machine came in last. By far.  My new laptop is much faster. Heck, my OLD laptop is faster. So now I'm in the position of trying to decide whether I should retire the Dell home mega machine (not mega anymore) and instead simply get a docking s...

CO2 produced by humans is causing the recent increase in temperature is a hypothesis. But it has no evidence to support it. It's not even what one would label as a theory. It could be correct, it might not be correct.  I have about the same opinion of it as I do for the hypothesis of "intelligent design".  Maybe it's true, maybe it's not. But there isn't evidence.  Given the movement's spotty record for yearly temperatures (it's actually gotten cooler since 1998 incidentally, not ...

Does Joeuser.com feel faster to you? It just moved to a new mega server this past week.

I recently did an interview with USA Today Weekend Edition regarding my preemptive purchase of a Porsche 911 Turbo in order to be ready for my midlife crisis.  It never hurts to plan ahead... (see article below).

On Friday we released Beta 2 of the new expansion pack, Twilight of the Arnor.  From a game play point of view, Twilight of the Arnor is a massive enhancement to the Galactic Civilizations experience. For one thing, each civilization gets its own technology tree which means its own unique planetary improvements, ships, and abilities.  For the beta of Twilight of the Arnor, we're working on having weekly updates so that we can re-introduce the various civilizations of the galaxy and...

Lifelong meterologist and the founder of the Weather Channel has written an article denouncing the "global warming" movement as nothing but the "greatest scam in history". Read the whole thing.