I don’t play computer games, but my former boss is a real Sim City addict, so I know a little about how that works.
An article posted at Bloomberg.com yesterday reports:
The U.S. military plans a worldwide on-line futures market to help it predict events in the Middle East. Traders could bet on the likelihood of events ranging from the overthrow of a government to the collapse of an economy or the assassination of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
[snip]
The market is to be managed by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. DARPA spokesman John Jennings wasn’t immediately available for comment. The senators said their information came from the market’s Web site.
The site doesn’t make clear the extent to which traders, geopolitical analysts or ordinary citizens actually “bet,” the mechanics of payment if any, and how the Pentagon plans to use the information.
Somwhere along the line these guys and their Dumbya leader have gotten pretend game-playing and real-life confused. (Although certainly this tendency among men hungry for power is not new. I just finished Poisonwood Bible, which reflects all too painfully how most of us have to live our lives staying out of the range of influence of those kinds of evil male-dominated machinations.)
It’s time to hook these infantile guys up to a VR Sim Planet game and let them play out their fantasies of power and persecution to their dark hearts’ content. Then maybe the rest of us can find a way to work together to make the real world the kind of place in which our grandchildren can thrive. Feh on them all!