This video clearly wasn't meant for my viewing

This video clearly wasn't made for my benefit, but a loved one forwarded it to me and we got a good chuckle out of it. What entertained us the most was the opening narration--and by "entertained" I mean I found it cringe-worthy to the extent that I just had to laugh before I pulled the rest of my hair out.

Bald Me.

The video illustrates some classic examples of specious arguments and logical fallacies, and because the narration includes the word "history" I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to respond to my loyal reader.[1]

Read my analysis of the narration below the fold, and let me know what you think, but be forewarned: it's about religion . . .

Raw excrement vs. medieval combat

 
From late November 2010 into January 2011 I was quite fixated on playing the game Mount & Blade: Warband. I had been waiting for this game for about twenty years. Though set in the fictional realm of "Calradia," the game strives to emulate Medieval Europe & European kingdoms, sultinates, fiefdoms, etc. At the strategic level of the game, one engages in negotiations and trade and agrees to complete tasks for village elders, town leaders, and various political factions. On the tactical level, one wields a weapon of choice to hack away at and sling arrows at enemy foot soldiers and horsemen. The goal, of course, is to conquer, vanquish, overwhelm, and otherwise find a way to found a kingdom of one's own.

Absent at every level of this game is magic, fantasy, dragons, potions, dwarves, and all of that nonsense.

Very exciting & fun stuff!!!

I will leave it up to readers to evaluate the extent to which my interest in this game provides evidence of patriarchy, warmongering, meaningless game-playing, escapism, moral turpitude, existential shallowness, Generation-X Peter Panism, etc., etc.

What is fascinating to me is

Meaningless SpamPuffery

I opted to check out the quarantined spam messages on my Sustainability History Project website and found a funny pattern that I have not experienced with my email spam.

My email spam is predominately about porn, V!agra, a panoply of other pharmaceuticals, and those ridiculous 419 scams. All of these kinds of spam and scams have existed for so long that I'm surprised that they're still around -- surprised, that is, that there are still enough people among us who are so dense as to fall for these kinds of scams to keep the scammers in business.

One of these days I may write a rant about this ridiculous dynamic, but this post is not going to be such a rant. This post is about the funny theme I noticed in the quarantined spam messages on the Sustainability History Project website . . .

I can throw a football over the North Salem High School football team

In spite of what it may seem like with what I'm about to write, I don't spend my days fixated on the "coulda-woulda-shoulda" regarding my high school football experience. I'm not at all like this guy:

Movie Videos & Movie Scenes at MOVIECLIPS.com

However . . .

Evolution of a video game

Here is an interesting brief historical overview of the development of the Madden NFL video game. I recall playing some of the mid-1990s iterations of this game and having a great time. It looked something like this:

I like this look

Now, something from the Meaningless Files . . .

I gotta say, I really like the look that the Redskins have been sporting through week 2 of the 2010 NFL season:

It definitely beats the all-white nonsense they were sporting last year: