The Italian Renaissance: an MMO I'd Like to Play

Categories: Good Ideas

Sunday, August 9. 2009

Picture it with me: an MMO based in the Italian Renaissance. Races could correspond to the various city-states of Italy, or to foreign nations, perhaps. Play as:

  • Merchants (sea voyages out of Venice, perhaps?)
  • Unscrupulous churchmen
  • Stiletto-armed assassins
  • Scheming Medicis
  • Your typical painter-sculptor-scientist-architect renaissance genius (should be a epic roll, this!)

Imagine riding into battle atop some Leonardo-designed war machine! Fencing with rapiers! Imagine going on quests:

  • Steal the head of John the Baptist for the glory of Florence
  • Dissect executed prisoners to level up in Anatomy
  • Bring back exotic goods from around the Mediterranean
  • Earn yourself an equestrian statue in your city-state's palazzo with military exploits

There's something very appealing about this, at least to me. It would be just the thing to finally get me to play an MMO.

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Carbon Nanotubes are Made of Virtue

Categories: Good Ideas

Sunday, May 31. 2009

It's true: you can sprinkle them on anything to make it better. Some examples:

  • Structures (obviously)
  • Reverse Osmosis membranes
  • Semiconductors
  • Fuel cells
  • Solar panels
  • Scaffolds for nerve regeneration

Certain technologies seem to have this magical quality of near-universal applicability to engineering problems. They not only make possible what would have been fantasy otherwise (space elevators, in the case of nanotubes) but also have a knack of improving everything they touch, or of being applied to a breathtaking variety of already-familiar applications.

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