1925: John Scopes, an unassuming high school biology teacher and part-time football coach, is found guilty of teaching evolution in schools, in violation of Tennessee law.

Scopes agreed, after some persuading by the American Civil Liberties Union and others, to serve as the guinea pig in an attempt to challenge the law on constitutional grounds.

Famed attorney Clarence Darrow led Scopes’ defense team in what the press quickly dubbed the Monkey Trial. William Jennings Bryan, three-time Democratic nominee for president and a paradoxical blend of progressive conservatism, represented both the state and the fundamentalists who opposed Darwin’s theories.

The trial took eight days in the sweltering Tennessee summer. National newspapers covered it in detail, including dramatic confrontations between Darrow and Bryan both in and out of the courtroom.

Whether Scopes actually taught evolution to his biology class remains unclear. Although he told the court he had done it and would do it again, he later admitted to a newspaper reporter that while he used a textbook that included a chapter on evolution, he skipped the chapter.

Darrow expected a guilty verdict and stood ready to appeal the decision to a higher court. The jury did not disappoint him. Scopes was found guilty and fined $100 (about $1,200 in today's money). The Tennessee Supreme Court later upheld the constitutionality of the statute but overturned Scopes’ conviction on a technicality.

Bryan, meanwhile, died only five days after the conclusion of the Monkey Trial.

The Butler Act, as the anti-evolution law was known, remained on the books in Tennessee until its repeal by the state legislature in 1967.

Source: University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law

Although Love’s environment was created by an army of one — Swedish coder Eskil Steenberg, armed with an algorithm called procedural generation — about 100 players will be able to explore this virtual world together, establish towns, and fight monsters.

Steenberg has a rare gift for both the art and the science of creating modern videogames. The most obvious strengths of his design are the astounding, impressionistic visuals. The world is dusky and smoky, or bright and watery, all within the same mysterious abstract scheme.

By creating landscapes mathematically, Steenberg avoids spending the vast man-hours that are normally sunken into creating immersive game worlds. This means he can get on with tweaking the gameplay.

Steenberg's experience in creating tools software has allowed him to create his own general toolset, which he's using for the creation of Love. One of his main concerns? Making accessible, easy-to-use tools that will work for geeks and artists alike.

Steenberg's 3-D modeling tools allow for playful manipulation of multi-dimensional objects. The clickable interface makes modeling, deforming, and reworking 3-D aesthetics remarkably easy, which ties into Steenberg's personal philosophy: The more fun the tools are to use, the more productive the user will be.

Players will be expected to work together to build and defend small towns, as well as explore the larger world around them. The feel of the play is expected to be as freeform as the look of the game. The story will seamlessly unfold through the choices players make as they interact with the monsters and in-game items.

Love players will be able to carve out caves, build stairways up mountainsides, and generally interact with their world on a “physical” level.

How Love will develop once the game begins will all depend on the players’ actions. Steenberg is eager to see what they come up with.

Steenberg's auto-generated game world looks more like a Monet painting than one of the heavily hand-crafted worlds gamers are accustomed to.

Steenberg's work is entirely open source and will be available to be downloaded from his site (quelsolaar.com).

We can safely stop calling Star Wars a movie and recognize it for what it really is: a virulent media infection.

It's a great movie to be sure, but there are many superior movies, and none of them have inspired, say, thousands of people to dress up as faceless, nameless secondary characters. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was a great movie, but you don't see 200 sanitarium orderlies marching in the Rose Parade.

Nowhere can you witness Star Wars' contagious qualities more clearly than in the realm of fan-made videos that, to one extent or another, retell the story of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, the movie formerly known simply as Star Wars. Here are some of the best.

Left:

Star Wars Sweded

Modern computing gives the average middle-class American a level of graphical processing power that would have made a '70s-era special effects engineer pant continuously. But that's no fun! Why render lifelike X-wing starfighters when you can build one out of cardboard and run around the park?

Lightsabers portrayed by: Red and blue wrapping paper

Star Wars Remake

Balanced precariously on the line between impressive and ridiculous, this silent, late-'70s remake stars a micro-encephalic Darth Vader and a 10-year-old Han Solo. While not as self-consciously goofy as "Star Wars Sweded," cardboard is still vitally important to the oeuvre. They managed to recruit an impressive Mark Hamill "Luke-alike," though. Yes, I just made that pun right in front of you.

Lightsabers portrayed by: Transparent plastic dealies

Hardware Wars

Take the do-it-yourself sensibility of the previous two Star Wars tributes, add some hand puppets and jokes, and what do you get? The best Star Wars parody of all time, and yes I've seen Spaceballs. Toasters! Vacuum cleaners! Awesome. (Warning: brief fuzzy nudity at the end of the second part.)

Lightsabers portrayed by: Flashlights

Lego Star Wars

The Lego Star Wars games are a couple of the best co-op games out there, especially to play with younger children or friends who aren't really into videogames. As an added bonus, they're chock-full of amusing cut scenes portrayed with the sort of mute humor that only plastic bricks can provide. Even with the actual game parts removed, the resulting video is still fun to watch.

Lightsabers portrayed by: Legos, duh.

Star Wars in Three Minutes With Action Figures

I'm sure I'm not the only one who thought of trying to play out the entire Star Wars movie using the little action figures with the uncomfortable-looking embedded lightsabers as a kid. So I find it satisfying that at least one person has made an all-figure reinterpretation of the movie. Plus, it's brief.

Lightsabers portrayed by: Glowing, computer-generated lines. That's actually kind of disappointing.

Star Wars Shortened

The George Lucas Appreciation Society -- I'm not sure if the fact that there are only three people in the society is supposed to be a backhanded slam -- covers all three original movies in just less than 10 minutes. Twice. Using one stage, some impressive vocal imitations, poetry, puppetry and interesting headgear.

Lightsabers portrayed by: Mime

Star Wars in Thirty Seconds With Bunnies

You can't really argue with the fact that bunnies make things good. For instance, any given piece of chocolate can be improved by being melted down and formed into a bunny shape. So it's natural that Star Wars with bunnies (or, in some cases, aliens with bunny-ear implants) is head-devouringly amusing. Although Princess Leia's tied-up little bunny ears look painful.

Lightsabers portrayed by: Flash animation

Star Wars Movie Mistakes

What better way to appreciate a classic film than by going through it bit by bit, nit-picking all the small errors? If you're the sort of person who always notices when a movie character's cigarette keeps changing length from shot to shot, you'll enjoy this. You'll also enjoy it if you like seeing widescreen movies squashed into YouTube dimensions.

Lightsabers portrayed by: A remote control and some digital effects

Store Wars

If you prefer your comedy served up with a side dish of heavy-handed social moralizing, this is the film for you. All the characters are portrayed by veggies and other edibles fighting over the concept of organic food. However, seeing R2-D2 portrayed as a block of tofu is worth being lectured by an Italian dessert.

Lightsabers portrayed by: Little lightsabers. Come on people! Ever heard of carrot sticks?

Thumb Wars

This little tribute combines comedy and nostalgia with intensely disturbing creepiness. All the characters, most of the spaceships and many of the props are thumbs, but what makes this particularly notable are the little faces the filmmakers digitally superimpose on the thumbs. The faces combine the eeriness of upside-down chin puppets with staring wide-eyed marionettes, creating creatures that would claw at the dream centers of my brain if they weren't, you know, thumbs.

Lightsabers portrayed by: You know, thumbs.

Star Wars According to a 3 Year Old

This isn't the shortest summary of Star Wars in this list, but it may capture the essence of the film better than anything else. I think the sublime apex of the Star Wars experience lies in her description of what the nerdiest among us call The Battle of Yavin: "The big thing that blowed up stuff, we blowed it up together." Yes, little girl, yes we did.

Lightsabers portrayed by: The phrase "little light-up sword."