The Week in Review: Bill Nye, Bullying and Boycotts

In this week’s edition, the internet rallies round a little girl who was bullied for liking Star Wars, and Black Ops’ Castro-killing level sparks a campaign to get it pulled from stores.

May the Force Be With You, Katie

Some days, the internet deserves nothing more than a punch on the nose, but today is definitely not one of those days. First grader Katie was being bullied at school because she had a Star Wars water bottle and when her mother found she wrote about it for the Chicago Now website. It quickly caught the attention of the denizens of the web, who flooded the comments section of the article with messages of support. Katie’s spirits were so lifted by the comments that she complimented her water bottle with a Star Wars shirt. Well done internet, have a cookie. (Link)

Science Guy Takes a Tumble

Beloved purveyor of scientific wisdom, Bill Nye, collapsed while giving a lecture on climate change at the University of Southern California. Reports suggest that Nye was pushing himself too hard, and eventually exhaustion caught up with him. Nye recovered relatively quickly, and completed his lecture from the safety of a chair. Apparently, the assembled crowd reached for their phones in order to tweet the news, rather than going to help Nye, which is a little sad really. (Link)

BioWare Teasing … Something

BioWare is announcing something at the Spike Videogame Awards, but rather than leave fans completely in the dark, it’s released a series of cryptic clues, hinting at what the mystery announcement is about. The first clue was a snippet of video featuring a guy with a futuristic looking gun, and then barcodes that contained binary information for “-129.5 °F.,” the atomic weight of iron, and the website address for the British Secret Intelligence Service – previously known as MI6. The rumor is that BioWare is making a team-based shooter set in the Mass Effect world, but we’ll have to wait until next month to see if that’s true. (Link)

Activist Group Tries to Get Black Ops Banned

The Alliance for Global Justice – which sounds like a superhero team – has denounced Call of Duty: Black Ops because it has a level where players try and assassinate Cuba’s Fidel Castro. The group claims that Black Ops is part of a culture of “US Militarism” and that children must be protected from its influence. AFGJ is urging concerned parties to go to retailers and demand that the game be taken off the shelves. Sadly for the AFGJ, it started its campaign after Black Ops went on sale, which is perhaps just a little bit too late. (Link)

Kinect Is Not Watching You

Microsoft has issued a statement saying that despite comments made by one of its executives, Kinect was not being used to mine demographic data in order to target ads. The idea that Microsoft might be using Kinect to spy on people came up after Interactive Entertainment Business COO Dennis Durkin said that that was one of the things that Kinect could be used for. Microsoft said that privacy was one of its main concerns, and that Kinect owners had nothing to worry about. (Link)