the aspidistra

Breaking In April

2007-03-30T14:17:00.000-04:00

Amigos: Why blog? Right now, I can't answer that question for myself. I've been coasting here, relying on inertia. My posts this month have been half-assed at best. Maybe I'm moody, but Aspy has become a burden.

I like having a voice, no matter how quiet, in the webby free-for-all. I like the idea of sharing the things I care about. But I've become unsure. Why share this? Why link to that? Those are good questions that I can't answer right now.

So I self-prescribe a blog break of one month. I'll post again on May 1st. I hope I'll return with a backlog of posts to entertain tha peeps. But maybe the break won't matter, and then I'll be sad, because I'll be coming back to say good-bye.

PEACE

Videogames: Metaphors For Your Life?

2007-03-23T05:23:00.000-04:00

The new post-9/11 drama Reign Over Me is getting decent reviews, but what has caught my eye about the movie is that reviewers are mentioning that Adam Sandler's isolated character is wrapped up in Shadow of the Colossus, one of my most favoritest games.

Sayeth Anthony Lane in the New Yorker:

For kicks, [Charlie] likes to sit in his apartment and play a video game, “Shadow of the Colossus,” on a huge screen. Over time, we discover the colossus in whose shadow Charlie lurks and mumbles to himself. He lost a wife and three daughters on September 11, 2001, and then he lost the capacity to admit that he had a wife and three daughters in the first place.

And Scott Foundas in the Village Voice:

Five years on, Charlie Fineman is still in a state of shock and awe, which we know not just because his grooming and social skills have gone to pot, but because he can't seem to stop renovating and re-renovating his kitchen—part of an unfulfilled promise to his late wife—and because he spends copious hours in front of a video game called Shadow of the Colossus, in which he can repeatedly lay waste to the evil forces he was powerless to defeat in life.

Hmmm. What does it say about me that this is a game that I also hold dear? I certainly enjoyed the lonely, melancholic atmosphere of the game. From what I've read about the movie, such loneliness seems to be a central feature of Charlie's life. I can't think that I have any colossi looming over me, though.

Still, it is nice to see games used in movies as emblems of something other than juvenile self-absorption, even though it would appear that SotC is presented as a substitute for Charlie's real life. Can any readers think of other movies in which games were used to illustrate important elements of a character?

Detroit Dying

2007-03-22T12:49:00.000-04:00

I remember stories from my grandmother about a now-vanished Detroit of streetcars and downtown department stores. I've alway held a crazy hope that my hometown will one day bounce back to some of it's former glory. Experience should have taught me otherwise--once, as a teen, I saw a man lying in the middle of Woodward Avenue downtown and I and everyone else ignored him--but like all dreams mine is irrational.

A story in today's Detroit Free Press further diminishes my dreams: Wayne county lost more residents (89,000) between 2000 and 2006 than any other county in the country except hurricane-battered Orleans parish.

Is it any wonder that houses are cheaper than new cars in Detroit?

Joel Stein Really Hates Baby Pictures

2007-03-06T14:05:00.000-05:00

Joel Stein is easy to dislike. He’s got a big head. When it comes to funny, he’s got a bad case of trying-too-hard. I don’t read him regularly, but every once in a while he manages to say something silly enough to generate wide web reverberations that I do notice. Recently, he seems to have launched an attempt to be the surliest columnist in a major paper. For example, he doesn’t want to read emails from readers, so he writes a column about it.

Now he’s on to the not-very-original complaint about baby pictures: they all look roughly similar and parents love to send them to other people. Stein’s not having it! (registration may be required) But not only that, Old Man Grumpus doesn’t even want to see pictures of his friends’ babies!

I know something wonderful has happened to you, and you want to share it with the world, but you've got to be more disciplined about the bragging.

My feelings on this are obviously colored by the fact that a 24-week old fetus is now kicking away in my wife’s belly. I was elated to send sonograms around to friends. I also get excited to see sonograms from pregnant friends. And baby pictures. Sure, being a parent-to-be plays into it, but overriding that is that fact that I love my friends and care about their lives. I like to both learn about them and share with them.

Stein’s problem, as noted in his email column, is that his big head likes things to flow one-way: straight out. Want to listen? Fine, but don’t think he gives a shit about listening to you. (Friends now included, unless they are giving him dinner, apparently.) The guy’s a columnist, so some of that self-absorbed braying is to be expected.

All that’s on record, at least. But I wonder if there isn’t some envy and defensiveness at work in the baby picture example, too. At the Obscure Store, where I first read this, the discussion has degenerated into a breeder/non-breeder brouhaha. Many childless people say they are happy with their choice. I have no reason to doubt them. But Stein sees sharing baby pictures as “bragging,” and that position seems so unreasonable that I can’t help but wonder at the psychology behind it. Why care about “bragging” (and he equates babies with 100K salaries, too) unless you are envious?

I don’t know if Stein has kids. I did some Stein-ian levels of research myself for this post (I looked at his webpage) and read he is married. But he doesn’t have to envy friends' kids for my argument to stand, only their happiness. I actually suspect it is all an act, but such is that type of columnist’s job.

Take This Job And Shove It... I Kid, I Kid.

2007-03-02T13:01:00.000-05:00

Jeffrey Dinsmore links to the very funny website of loseractor, a grumpy, self-deprecating part-time actor and (until recently) conflicted denizen of the Cubicle Zone. I spent a good hour reading through loseractor’s witty posts upon first encountering them, which I would call a pretty enthralled response from this easily distracted web surfer. Anyone who’s tried to come to peace with or find a balance between their unrealized dreams and plain ol’ daily life will probably recognize something of themselves here. A taste:

It was a bad omen. The subway doors opened at 18th St on a large group of kids encouraging a fat girl pulling another fat girl face-down along the subway platform by her hair, like she was vacuuming, except she would occasionally punch the vacuum cleaner in the head. Yaay! School had just let out, and I guess the kids were just letting off a little steam, much in the same way I used to when I was a tween. But instead of watching Inspector Gadget and riding bikes around the neighborhood, they were holding a “bitch fight” on a crowded subway platform.
What I would give to go back to middle school! Not a care in the world, save for a bully lady tossing me by my weave in front of a moving train.

The occasion for Jeff’s post is a goodbye email from loseractor to the test-writing company for which he toiled. Jeff, a very entertaining wit himself, posts his own goodbye email to people at the same company (this is how Jeff knows loseractor). I could never write one of these because I just don’t have the skill to appropriately cover the bile with joking. People would just have hurt feelings and be mad at me.

Got Some Dumb Ideas? Make A Wiki!

2007-03-01T12:36:00.000-05:00

In the comment section over at Pharyngula (and in his own post at Unscrewing the Inscrutable), Jim Downey points to one of the recent examples of creationist idiocy: the CreationWiki. Downey calls it a “self-organizing black hole of stupid.” No one can deny that the know-nothings in the creationist crowd are passionate about their never-ending battle with reality (see also Conservapedia).

I’m just too busy to have the energy to fight these fools. That’s a bad sign, because the science on this issue is settled, so we have a lot of ammunition on our side. This is a political fight that must be fought, but recently I’ve wanted no part of it. I just hope my energy returns.

If your fighting spirit needs a little pick me up, try this gem from CreationWiki’s first page on for size:

The theory of evolution (or general theory of evolution) is a philosophical perspective that stems from an atheistic worldview.

Gamers ≠ Losers

2007-02-22T19:28:00.000-05:00

The stereotype certainly exists, but I would have hoped that as those that grew up playing games became adults, the image of the loser gamer would disappear. Alas, my beloved hobby has a persistent image problem.

Just a silly little note in my really busy week: Leafing through this week's US Weekly (cover date March 5, 2007), I see a quote from sorta-famous person Gabrielle Union in the Loose Talk section. Sayeth Union:

I don't understand men that find much time for PlayStation. If you have bad credit but a great Madden score, clearly there are some priority issues.

It doesn't take a logician to see that someone who makes time for games is not the same as someone who can't be responsible for themselves or their personal finances, as Union implies.

Here's my retort, custom fit for the glossy set: I don't understand women that find that much time for primping. If you can't discuss the state of the modern American novel but have blindingly white teeth, clearly there are some priority issues.

The Dover Demon Returns?

2007-02-16T14:50:00.000-05:00

Has there been a recent sighting of the Dover Demon? The Wikipedia entry for the beast has this simple statement in the “Recent Sightings” section:

Last seen saturday February 3rd, 2007 in Westwood, Mass. behind the parking lot at Xaverian Brothers High School.

That’s it. The lack of detail suggests to me that this could be part of some inside joking, maybe from kids at the school? Or their rivals? I have been looking for more info, checking Cryptomundo, googling, and I have found nothing else.

I have a special place in my heart among my beloved monsters for the Dover Demon. It has stuck with me since I first read about it as a child for two reasons: One, drawings of it are captivating. Two, since it was only seen a few times over a brief period, it hasn’t gathered a lot of crazy and conflicting related sightings and stories. The Dover Demon is pure, in a way. I can imagine the shock, horror, and fascination the witnesses must have felt if what they said they saw in 1977 is true. Of course, the lack of sightings over the years also suggests that there is no being running around the woods in Massachusetts. But a boy can dream.

(Here's a Boston Globe retrospective about the Dover Demon from last year.)

UPDATE: 2/17/07 Sometime between last night and this afternoon the reference to the Westwood sighting was edited out of Wikipedia. We'll have to wait and see if anything about it ever comes back. Until then, here's a screencap of the entry taken on 2/16.

Friday Freenis: Zombie Capping

2007-02-16T05:58:00.000-05:00

As a Lovecraft fan and all-around supporter of putting bullets in zombie dome, I can't resist pointing out Deanimator, a flash game based on Lovecraft's story "Herbert West: Reanimator" (the game site includes a very nice compilation of the serialized story, available here). Put down the never-ending zombie onslaught with some well-placed blasts. This is definitely a short-play kinda game; you'll likely see most there is to see in a few minutes. But it is stylish and clearly aligned with the Axis of Good in the never-ending War on Zombies.

[Thanks to creator Bum Lee and the indispensable games site Jay is Games.]

Teen Murderer Not A Gamer?

2007-02-16T04:59:00.000-05:00

Not long after I heard about the recent shooting in a Salt Lake City mall, I wondered how long it would be until someone blamed videogames. I heard teen shooter, and just took it for granted that the kid would have played games. I have been reading the Salt Lake City papers online ever since, waiting to see if anti-game hysteria would take hold.

Yet, the more information that is released about Sulejman Talovic, the clearer it becomes that games were likely not involved in this shooting. Rebecca Walsh, a columnist at the Salt Lake Tribune, on Wednesday made the first reference to a games connection I have seen, only to dismiss it as she discussed the kid's history as a Bosnian refugee. The excellent games blog Game Politics is following the story, and points to another article in the Tribune which declares that police searched Talovic's home but "did not take any computers or video games."

Walsh's column sites at least one instance of the anti-games perspective: the videogame-hating hysteric Jack Thompson emailed reporters with the clearly ahead-of-the-facts claim, "Salt Lake City Teen Probably Trained on Grand Theft Auto Video Game." Like many gamers, I am no fan of Thompson's, but I am struck by the fact that I expected the same thing. Unlike Thompson, though, I don't think violent games make murderers, but I do think that people who harbor violent fantasies (all of us) can find an outlet in games.

Self-Love On V-Day

2007-02-14T05:13:00.000-05:00

Blogging's been a bit off this week. The reason: Oblivion. This game has me firmly in its clutches, and I have been electing to spend my free time there.

Until I can summon the will power to break free and return to the Aspidistra, I thought I'd engage in a little self-promotion. I've quietly started another blog called Games and Brains devoted to psychology and videogames. The new blog hasn't been a secret, really. You may have even found it by looking at my profile. But I wanted to see if I could get it off the ground before spreading the word. Now I know that I need at least a small audience to keep it going. I'm excited about Games and Brains; I find the focus refreshing and gratifying, although the Aspidistra will continue as a personal blog. I'm also serious about Games and Brains, and I could use help, so please email me any tips or resources you might come across in your web rambles. I hope you enjoy.

Friday Freenis: Mas Shmups

2007-02-09T05:37:00.000-05:00

Last week, I linked to a real old-school space shooter. This week, I want to highlight a stylishly modern shmup called Titanion. The visuals, at least, have lots of modern polish, although the gameplay could have been found in an arcade in 1982.

It's like Rez meets Galaga. Shoot down hordes of "space insects," use your tractor beam to capture them and enhance your weapons, and trance out to some techno music. Or play the "modern" mode: you will lose the tractor beam but gain bullet hell. (Download this Windows-based game here.)

If I Had A Trillion Dollars

2007-02-08T12:43:00.000-05:00

Jeffrey Dinsmore points to an interesting essay at ABC news about the cost of the Iraq war that contextualizes the amount of money being spent on this war of discretion. Attaching a “conservative” estimate that places the total cost at $1 trillion, the essay offers some ways to understand that amount.

• At current rates, $1 trillion could fund the National Science Foundation for 170 years, or the Environmental Protection Agency for 130 years, or the Department of Homeland Security for 28 years.
• The U.S. Treasury could use $1 trillion to send a $3,000 check to every person, adult and child, in the country—or a $150 check to every person on the planet.
• If you could spend $1000 per second, it would take you almost 30 years to blow through $1 trillion.
• 1 trillion seconds is more than 31,688 years.

I don’t often get political or into details of my personal relationships on the blog, but recently I have been fuming about the cost of the Iraq war. The reason: anxiety about health care and child care. Keep reading if you are curious about the worries that keep Comstock awake at night.

My wife and I are expecting a baby at the end of June. We’re both educated and hard working people, yet we are very concerned about how we will pay for our child’s day care. The wife will take some time off, and I’d like to as well. But then we need to get back to work. We couldn’t really live in New York City on one income.

So, put the kid in day care, right? The only problem is that day care will cost almost as much as I make. Why should I spend 10-12 hours each day away from my new baby when I’ll only bring home around $500 a month after day-care costs? It makes more sense for me to do some freelance work from home, where I can also supply child care. (In our modern world, wifey is the primary bread winner.)

That may be an option we select, but it, too, has drawbacks apart from concerns about less income for the family. For example, what if the wife wants to find a new job, one with decent coworkers and a salary in line with her education and abilities? If I was freelancing, we would lose our health insurance until the company plan at the new job kicked in. As an adult in charge of myself, I am willing to risk a few months of no insurance, but I will not put my baby in that situation.

I would love to erase the Iraq war and put some of the money that we can obviously scrape together to use in national health care and childcare systems. I think it is shameful that, as a nation, we run from “socialized” health care or childcare, and yet we have no problem with socialized murder. Actually, the whole situation doesn’t make me fume, as I wrote above, as much as it makes me feel sad and powerless.

When Theory Met RE

2007-02-06T12:24:00.000-05:00

A most unusual paper on videogames is making the rounds, starting on Game Career Guide and eventually being broadcast to the masses at Kotaku. The content is not particularly remarkable game-wise: it is a look at horror franchise heavyweights Resident Evil and Silent Hill. No, the paper is unusual because it brings some dense, psychoanalytically-informed critical theory to bear on a medium which, as far as I know, has remained outside of a lot of such academic mincing.

The paper, Saving Ourselves: Psychoanalytic Investigation of Resident Evil and Silent Hill, by Marc Santos and Sarah White, analyzes the way that the Silent Hill games play on conventions established by the Resident Evil games. Unless you have Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis on your beside table, you might have trouble gleaning much more than that from the article. Try this on for size:

In Resident Evil, we defend symbolic order by killing monstrous zombies. Part of these games' terror stems from approaching that which challenges our own symbolic economies-the Real, the abject vilified maternal that threatens the paternal psychological structures upon which subjectivity is founded.

Does this mean the games are scary because shit jumps out at you? Because that’s where most of the terror comes from, honestly.

Okay, I joke. I don’t want to knock this paper too much because I love academic study of games. That, and I don’t really understand a lot of the content. Plus, I don’t think this paper is meant to inform gamers, seeing as how very few people have spent a lot of time with both Silent Hill and Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle. More likely, the paper is intended for the critical theory circles in which sentences like the above can be read with interest (and comprehension). From my (limited) vantage point, I can say that it is written with humor and affection, so I say more power to ‘em.

The Super Bowl, Monster Brawls, And Your Brain

2007-02-05T18:15:00.000-05:00

This was my favorite of the Super Bowl ads. I've seen funnier/more interesting/more useful ads in my time, but this one had me smiling. I liked the giant monster and robot man-in-suit rumble. The music was fun. Oh, and it reflected my deep malaise and discomfort about the violence of the Iraq war.

Wait, no it didn't. Yet the New York Times today has a ridiculously over-reaching analysis of the Super Bowl commercials which claims just that. The headline says it all: "Super Bowl Ads of Cartoonish Violence, Perhaps Reflecting Toll of War." Every little hint of slapstick humor in last night's commercials is seen as embodying feelings about the war. Although the above ad seems most clearly aimed at a nerdy demographic of greasy dudes who like Grim Reaper and Godzilla, Stuart Elliott, the NYT writer, decides the ad was "reminiscent of a horror movie." Sure, if you're willing to massage the evidence to fit your preconceived conclusion.

Keep reading for a discussion of your brain on Super Bowl ads.

Here's a more interesting analysis of some Super Bowl ads: hook viewers up to a NMRI machine and see how their brains react to the different commercials. I'm not sure about the actual scientific relevance of this. I seriously doubt that you can read too much into these NMRI results. But I found it interesting that one ad that Elliott singled out for praise, a General Motors ad about a assembly line robot with mad Johnny-Five-is-alive stylee, elicited anxiety in viewers.

The researchers behind the NMRI study say people noticed the ad, but their brains showed fear. Particularly, the subjects has increased activity in their amygdala (a brain region associated with anxiety and fear). The researchers guess that the fear is related to people experiencing job anxiety and economic insecurity. Exactly. As I watched that ad with my brother, I said to him, "Remember when we were growing up around Detroit, and everyone was talking about how those robots were stealing people's jobs? Now we're supposed to empathize with them?"

Apparently, the Federline burger-flipping ad had the same effect. I didn't feel anxious watching that one, though. My amygdala must have been hypnotized by his insane flow.

Friday Freenis: Oldest School

2007-02-02T04:26:00.000-05:00

Like I said, I have spaceships and laser weapons on the brain. So here’s the freenis, a Java version of one of the first-ever videogames, Spacewar, made from the original, early 1960s computer code.

Honestly, this game is not that much fun to play. It's pointless with one player, and even with two players crammed together over the keyboard, the appeal is short-lived.

But the game is incredibly important in the history of videogames. And here’s a little of that history for the young’uns:

Spacewar was created over 1961-2 on the campus of MIT. A group of young, rather nerdish men in the school's Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) put it together on what was then amazing high-technology: a computer called the Programmable Data Processor-1 that was about the size of an automobile. (The TMRC was one of the incubators of hacker culture; members coined the term "hack.") One member, Steve Russell, was inspired by the $120,000 computer to create an interactive game. With help and motivation from Alan Kotok, a senior TMRC member, Russell spent six months and 200 hours making a two-player game in which each player controlled a spaceship and fired torpedos at the other player's ship. Other members of the TMRC then added their hacks: Pete Sampson added a background of stars; Dan Edwards helped program a star in the foreground with gravity that influenced the movement of the ships. The final version was finished in 1962.

Some people cite a 1958 game called Tennis for Two as the first videogame. A digital version of tic-tac-toe called OXO or Naughts and Crosses from 1952 also sometimes gets a nod. I suppose it depends on which aspects of games the historian finds important.

(Much of the above information about Spacewar comes from Steven L. Kent's excellent history of videogaming, The Ultimate History of Video Games.

Like Lite-Brite, Only More Terror-ful

2007-02-01T15:41:00.000-05:00

Does this scare you? It damn well shouldn't.

But officials in Boston were pretty much terrified when they saw some of these around their city. As soon as I saw a story about the Aqua Teen Hunger Force ad campaign/bomb scare on last night's news, I was tempted to post something about it because the whole situation is so flamboyantly stupid. But the blog has been weighing me down a bit recently. Fortunately, my good pal Jeffrey D. already gots the shit covered, and he covers it in a way that is probably at least 1.5 times wittier than I would have been, although I think I could have matched him for frustration with ignorant fools.

Wrapped Up In Shmups

2007-02-01T05:10:00.000-05:00

Call me a nerd, but I've recently been thinking a lot about spaceships and futuristic laser weaponry. Specifically, I've been getting deep into shmups (short for shoot-em-ups, for my non-gaming readers). Within the past few weeks, five great doses of retro shmupping arrived on the Wii Virtual Console in the form of Gradius, Super Star Soldier, Soldier Blade, R-Type, and R-Type III.

I've downloaded four of them--I'm holding-off on Gradius because I played that game to death on the NES in 1986--and my love for this dying genre has been reinvigorated. Help me explore why after the jump.

Probably at its most simple level, the subject matter satisfies the science fiction fan in me. If your game, movie, story, whatever, has spaceships and flying robots in it, I'm going be at least a little interested.

Shmups also showcase a relatively simple play mechanic: shoot the enemy while avoiding their bullets and other obstacles. Plenty of today's complex games offer challenges and opportunities for mastery, but I think many shmups were more demanding specifically because they were constrained by a simple dynamic. If you can't engage a player with worlds to explore, they must be engaged with a challenge. As a result, shmups provide an intensely satisfying experience when a player feels they've mastered a game. Haters may complain about twitch gameplay and memorizing bullet patterns, but I find I can get into something like a trance state when I feel in the groove during a difficult shooter.

I think the simple play mechanic also allows shmups to achieve incredible style. Ikaruga is one of the most beautiful games ever. Personally, I like the tension and invention that arises when artists explore the constraints imposed by a particular genre or style. I can see this when I examine the evolution of shmups from single-screen versions (Space Invaders), through side-scrolling and top-down scrolling-screen games (R-Type, Star Soldier), finally to bullet-hell (Ikaruga), a scrolling-screen subgenre that I feel is the pinnacle of shmuppitude. (Ironically, I find I must watch someone else play a bullet-hell shmup to fully appreciate the beauty; when I play one it takes a special kind of focus--that trance-like state I mentioned--in which I lose a sense of the overall aesthetics.)

But the appeal of shmups goes a bit deeper for me. I open myself up to charges of pretentiousness here, but I detect a satisfying existentialist vibe at work in most shmups. One lone spaceship, journeying into dangerous, unfamiliar areas, beset by enemies, with no one else to rely on--I know life is not really so brutal, but the atmosphere of such games is appealing.

I wonder if younger gamers are able to appreciate a good shmup. If you grow up with 3D games and the more complete sense of freedom they can achieve, maybe a 2D scrolling game feels restrictive, or simply old-fashioned. Despite the discussion above, I know that nostalgia definitely plays into it for me. No other genre brings back sweet memories of weekend days spent in dingy arcades and snow-day afternoons in front of the home console like shmups. Sigh.

Hobbit Brains: !La Lucha Continua!

2007-01-30T13:44:00.000-05:00

Carl Zimmer discusses yet more research on the hobbit, the possibly-new species of Homo (H. floresiensis) revealed in bones found a few years ago in Indonesia. Last time I touched on the subject, the research was suggesting that the bones were a microcephalic human.

But new research (PNAS paper not yet online) on a collection of microcephalic human brains indicates that they all share traits that are absent in normal human brains. Features on the H. floresiensis skull suggest that the traits were also absent on H. floresiensis brains. Does this mean the hobbits might actually be a new species? The back-and-forth of the research is really quite exciting, although I wish it could happen in intervals shorter than six months.

Zimmer also mentions research that answers a critical question I had. Sadly, researchers have so far been unable to extract DNA from the bones. But there is still reason to hope. As Zimmer points out, new information about H. floresiensis could be just around the corner, involving new analyses and the hunt for new fossils. New analyses of known bones will probably just draw out the back and forth of the microcephalic/not-microcephalic debate. But new fossils could possibly offer a decisive answer. I’m re-crossing my fingers and hoping for some DNA results, which seem to me to be the surest way to settle the issue.

Japanese Copyright Infringement That I Love

2007-01-27T08:45:00.000-05:00

I saw this at the Little Boy show at the Japan Society a couple of years ago. Nothing to say, really, except that it is super cool.

Web Writing That I Hate

2007-01-26T17:49:00.000-05:00

This is my 100th post. I’m going to celebrate by using my blog to—wait for it—bitch about shit I don’t like. And one thing I don’t like is smug, flashy internet writing. There’s a fine line between fun, clever writing and excruciating, faux-clever cliché, and blogs often sink into the later category while attempting to sound snappy. Here’s my advice: if you’ve read a silly turn of phrase or typographical trick elsewhere, don’t ape it on your blog. Just. don’t. do. it. The best blog writing captivates because it seems genuine and casual, not because it shows how the writer is on the inside of the geek-speak club. Blog clichés make you look like teh lamer.

To be clear, here are three common tricks of blog writing that I find obnoxious. I’m sure I could think of more, but I encountered these examples over just the last day. (I’m also sure that I’ve been guilty of at least one of these, but I’m working on getting better.)
1) The “…wait for it…” phrasing. The self-satisfied gatekeeper voice is not an attractive one.
2) Anyone. who. writes. like. this. drives. me. crazy. I much prefer this or THIS or even *this* to emphasize a point.
3) 13375p34k. Unless you are some greasy, basement-troll hacker, I don’t want to see Leetspeak. On second thought, everyone should give this up. When the establishment is hip to your jive, it’s time to move on. (I realize that the example I gave in the above paragraph is poking fun at Leet, but I just saw it yesterday and it reminded me that I hate such writing.)

McDonald's Ad References... RoboCop!?

2007-01-25T22:24:00.000-05:00

Flipping through channels this evening, I saw a new ad for the McDonald's dollar menu. The ad ends with the announcer saying, "I'd buy that for a dollar." That phrase comes from the dystopian sci-fi movie RoboCop, in which it is a catch phrase for a crass, Benny Hill-esque TV show that entertains the degenerate citizens of future Detroit.

What could McDonald's possibly be trying to say with this ad? Has the phrase filtered out into pop culture so far that it is free of its roots? I could be wrong about its roots, I suppose. This forum links it to a sci-fi short story with the phrase "Would you buy it for a quarter?" But a little google research suggests the "dollar" version is indeed from RoboCop.

Is Guitar Hero Endangering Real-Life Shredding?

2007-01-25T19:31:00.000-05:00

I say no way. But in Newsweek, Steven Levy considers it a real possibility.

If a teenager can easily become a make-believe guitar hero, does that mean he won't ever bother to master the real thing?

Levy goes on to quote the CEO of Gibson guitars, who notes that learning guitar takes a lot of work, but also that guitar manufacturers are hoping to incorporate (unspecified) technology in their guitars that reduces some of the tedium.

"Building calluses and painstakingly learning all the musical fingering is not creative, but is the discipline to get the creative rewards ... In the future we want to reduce the crap you have to deal with to allow people access to that creativity." It sounds great—just as the Devil's offer must have struck Robert Johnson at the crossroads.

Really? Using technology like Guitar Hero to have fun is like making a bargain with the devil? I suggest that the game actually makes non-musicians more sophisticated listeners. I play guitar, and I have been impressed with how Guitar Hero helps my non-guitaring friends learn to distinguish guitar and bass parts in songs that probably sounded like a confusing mix before. I can imagine that enjoying the game might also lead people to pick up a real guitar and try rocking for real. Maybe this Newsweek story is meant to be sillier than it seems, but it kinda comes across like someone being afraid that all the car driving in games will stop people from becoming Nascar drivers. No one has even determined that real kick-ass guitar abilities are dying out--Guitar Hero has only been out for a little more than a year, afterall. But doesn't the popularity of hip hop seem much more likely to endanger shredding than a game that actually encourages fondness for guitar rock?

[via Kotaku]

More Amazing Sea Life From Japan

2007-01-24T10:48:00.000-05:00

More news of weird sea creatures from Japan (another beast here). This time, it’s a frilled shark, an animal normally found in the deep sea. Frilled sharks have very rarely been seen doing their thing in the wild. They have been pulled up in bottom trawls, but this NOAA report on a 2004 deep-sea submersible dive to around 3,000 feet claims video from the dive shows the “first time anyone had ever seen the rare species in its natural habitat.” So this is truly a rare sight. Here’s the brand new footage from Japan.

Reuters reports that the animal was spotted by a fisherman and then captured by workers at a marine park, and that the video was taken in a shallow sea-water pool. The shark doesn’t seem to be doing so well. It looks bent out of shape, swollen around the gills, and cloudy in the eyes. Maybe that is why it was so near the surface? The Reuters story says that the animal died a few hours later.

Nevertheless, it is nice video of an awesome creature. As I noted in the squid post, though, I wonder about the music in the background. Is this normal Japanese news procedure? Not knowing any Japanese myself, I have no idea where this video comes from.

[Aside: To follow up on an idea from another previous post, it has been suggested that the long, eel-like frilled shark could be responsible for old reports of sea serpents.]

Smoke THIS, You Arrogant Dog

2007-01-23T06:00:00.000-05:00

Once, I almost smoked marijuana. I'm glad I didn't, because users are losers and Mary Jane is lame. But then I saw this anti-pot ad in the latest Electronic Gaming Monthly magazine.

If anything, this ad makes me kinda want to smoke pot. First, because good point, it would be cooler if dogs could walk themselves, especially when they bother you when you just want to chill. And second, I've seen many a dog eat poo (their own and other dogs'), so who the hell are they to get all judgmental?

Some online research led me to this video version, which dilutes the pro-marijuana effect a bit, if only because it seems a little more self-righteous. But still, the ineptness of the whole thing shines through when you click the very helpful "read transcript" link. I'll post the transcript here for your edification, and to save you from a life of pot-headery.

Walk Yourself
(Scene opens with a guy lying down smoking weed)
GUY: Can’t you just walk yourself.
DOG: You disappoint me.
(Dog walks away and then raises his flag of independence)

Seriously, do these ads work?. Do you think they're hiring writers?

The Pol Pot Of Global Warming

2007-01-19T12:16:00.000-05:00

I accept the idea that human-mediated changes in the levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide are partly responsible for the fact of global warming. Like all scientific theories, this is provisional. But I trust the data I’ve seen and the collective wisdom of the mainstream climatologists who argue that some causes of climate change are anthropogenic. I see very little to be gained from belligerent skepticism in this case. But not everyone is like me. Check out the reactions to the calmly-worded Weather Channel blog about global warming. Their blogger, Dr. Heidi Cullen, defends the Weather Channel’s acceptance of anthropogenic climate change and attempts to distinguish the scientific data from the political argument. The angry-as-hell anti-warmers ain’t having it! [via SciAm Observations]

Continue reading to catch some rhetorical highlights and examples of reasoned debate that would shame Socrates.

Anonymous says: We have very good evidence of cooling and warming of the enviroment over the past without human involvement. Why many people are so intent to "Blame the human race for Armagedon" always surprises me.

Me, too! People also die sometimes without human involvement. Why many people are so intent to suggest that some people are murdered always surprises me.

Faxis says: Man Made Global Warming is the new religion. It's exactly the same situation as the when Ugg the Caveman watched his buddy Kronk get hit with lightning and tried to understand what Kronk had done to deserve it. Ugg created religion in order to feel like he had a hand in things he couldn't understand and thus, could avoid getting fried by lightning. Same thing today with Global Warming only now we've got grant money funding the priests

Good point, but I think you made a small error. Last May, scientific priests demonstrated that Kronk wasn’t killed by lightning; he was eaten by a tyrannosaur.

Larry Giraradi says: You must be aware that every erupting volcanoe spews more greenhouse gasses and poions into the air that all of the cars and factories ever built or operated in the history of the world. Maybe we should have a volcanoe tax to study this problem and find a way for the U.S to be blamed, thus pay the rest of the world for volcanoe pollution.

Hmmm, interesting proposal. But you must be aware that volcanoes are notorious anti-tax conservatives who think public monies should only be used for invading Muslim countries and helping corporations pay their taxes.

Dave z. says: I hope everybody listens to the weather channel and reverts back to the day when we didn't cause all this climate change - have you seem my horse?

Ah, I remember that day fondly. And maybe you should take a look at those freedom-hating socialist Frenchies. They might have eaten your horse.

Randy says: Heidi Cullen, The Weather Nazi.....believe what I tell you or lose your certification and then we'll ship you off to the gulag. You're an embarrassment to use what is simply supposed to be an informational forum and turn it into Air America.

C’mon, Randy. You’re being a little extreme here. Everyone knows Al Gore is the Weather Nazi. Dr. Cullen is more like the Weather Mussolini.

Hoo-boy. This is fun. I could go on all day. And there’s plenty of material. In the time it took me to type these, the comment total on this Weather Channel post climbed from 152 to 200. Some wingnut sites must be linking to it.

One last comment quote before I stop, though. I like this one because it illustrates how hard it is to tell the difference between actual right-wing ignorant fury and a parody of it.

Anonymous says: Heidi's the POL POT of Global Warming!!!!

I'm sure that everyone noticed that the Learned Dr. Heidi did not respond factually to the logical and scientific rejoinders to her STALINOID, FASCISTIC suggestion that people who disagree with HER lose their jobs??

And I'm sure that EVERYONE noticed that the Learned Dr. Heidi did not ONCE respond "on the merits" to those who challenged her facts and reasoning with facts and reasoning of their own.
Apparently this give-and-take is foreign to her.

Let's face it: this person is to Science what O.J. Simspon is to Truth.

What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is the science version of Seinfeld's "Kramer's" racist tirade. Heidi can explain away, seek wriggle room, try to convince us that our position is " spin" but everyone knows the truth.

SHE IS FINISHED.

Friday Freenis: Point And Click Puzzling

2007-01-19T05:35:00.000-05:00

Continuing last week's reflection upon free games from a few years ago, I bring you Mystery of Time and Space, an adventure/puzzle game with a very old-school point-and-click puzzle solving dynamic. And as with last week's freenis, I think I have MG to thank for pointing this one out to me.

I've been trying to include some adventure-ish games for Mrs. Comstock, who routinely complains about "too much fighting" in videogames.

Although the game is a few years old, two new rooms were added about a month ago.

Space Marines Can't Jump

2007-01-18T06:43:00.000-05:00

Yesterday in Slate, Chris Suellentrop analyzed the popularity of Gears of War for the Xbox 360. He offers some interesting ideas (mainly by looking at the comments of Cliff Bleszinski, the game’s lead designer) about how gamers appreciate pacing and how this can substitute for plot in a narrative game.

But Suellentrop oddly singles out one aspect of Gears gameplay, the inability to jump, for special consideration. Now, I find it just as frustrating as the next gamer that in Gears a player cannot leap over a low obstacle without first ducking behind it to seek cover and then mantling over it. But no-jumping doesn’t strike me as a noteworthy mechanic. Maybe you could discuss it at length if it was 1988 and you were talking about Bionic Commando. But, while I acknowledge that it is not a path that many action games take, no-jumping has an established history in gaming.

Just look at Resident Evil 4, a game that Cliffy B acknowledges as the prime gaming influence on Gears of War. Just like the earthbound space marine bad-asses of Gears, Leon in RE4 only jumps with the A button—the Park Place of gamepad real estate, as Cliffy B calls it—in some very specific contexts.

While I really like Gears of War, what I would love to see discussed more is its almost monotonous linearity. A lot of the game environments are sprawling, but the paths available might as well be the spaceship hallways of space marine adventures past. Is this what we want from a next-gen shooter? How much linearity is necessary to achieve the pacing Cliffy B wants? If there is a trade-off between freedom and pacing, as it seems there must be, what kinds of balances between the two work well, and in what kinds of games?

Death Metal And Islam

2007-01-17T18:20:00.000-05:00

This week's New Yorker (cover date Jan. 22) has an interesting article by Raffi Khatchadourian about Adam Gadahn, a lost-soul sort of American kid from California who ended up finding meaning in militant Islam, and now lives as Azzam al-Amriki, an Al Qaeda propaganda tool believed to be in hiding in Pakistan.

I'm very much interested in how relatively normal people can become radicalized, particularly when the radicalization involves the levels of mystical nonsense one sees in religious radicals. On this point the article is interesting but not supremely enlightening.

Before Gadahn became a militant Islamist, he was a geeky kid interested in death metal. In covering this phase of his life, the article makes some intriguing observations but tries too hard to reconcile death metal and Gadahn's version of Islam.

As for the interesting bits, the article quotes a former metal d.j. who notes that "Death metal is an extremist movement." But Khatchadourian wants to make a deeper point about the kinds of people extremist movements might attract. The d.j. continues, "Where heavy metal gets a lot of the guys who lift weights and punch out beer cans, death metal is a really interesting combination of people, but a lot of it is just nerds." True dat.

Khatchadourian also locks on to another interesting facet of metal culture: "Members of the genre generally profess to reject Christianity, but they do so in a religious framework, using the language and imagery of paganism or Satanism, rather than atheism." As an atheist metal fan, I can definitely have fun with Satanist imagery, but I do get sick of seeing one form of nonsense used to counter another.

But then Khatchadorian goes a bit off track. "Fans who outgrow the music, as most do," he writes, "often enough become religious." Whoa. First off, I feel like I've grown into metal as I ditched a lot of silly self-conscious hangups I embraced when I was more into punk or indie (although I don't know a ton about death metal; it's a deep sub-genre populated by a lot of small bands). Second, I would be amazed if there are any data available on the religious feelings of former death metal fans. That bit seems like an obvious attempt to create some sense of order in telling the messy story of Adam Gadahn's change from metal head to turbaned head (oh, I coulda written that much nastier).

I doubt the connection between death metal and militant Islam is any deeper than that they both tend to appeal to people who feel isolated in some way, people who like communities in which they feel they've found a niche. But there's no need to hypothesize deeper connections about religion. And sub-cultures that shelter lonely nerds are hardly rare.

I can't finish without saying that I was impressed that Khatchadourian picked up on an unfortunate tendency among the death metallers: "Onstage, artists often wore sweatpants to demonstrate their athleticism and lack of pretense." I'm not so sure about the athleticism; I heard it was to show how above image they were. Still, if your band is called Cannibal Corpse, I think you have already opened the door to pretense. That's why I tend to prefer the more pretense-friendly sub-genre of black metal. It's totally different from death metal. Well, not really.

Aspy Goes Old Media

2007-01-12T11:38:00.000-05:00

Make your own here.

[via Pharyngula]

Friday Freenis: So Beautiful

2007-01-12T05:08:00.000-05:00

Many moons ago, my man MG sent me a link to a beautiful online flash game called Samorost. In this adventure/puzzle game, players point-and-click to help a little gnome through a bizarre mechano-organic world.

About a year ago, the Czech developers released Samorost 2. Somehow, I never came across it until this week. The new game has the same captivating style, simple gameplay, and engrossing sound/music as the original. Help the gnome rescue his kidnapped dog in this compelling, oddly comforting game.

This first chapter is free. A second chapter can be downloaded for a fee.

In Praise Of Will Arnett

2007-01-10T18:44:00.000-05:00

I hate to admit it, but I'm a really late convert to the genius that is Arrested Development. I never watched it when it was on the air, but over Christmas I got sucked into a rerun marathon and gulped down the first 10 or so episodes of Season One in one sitting. Since then, the wife and I have rented and watched the remainder of Season One and Season Two on dvd.

The writing, the acting, the directing--they're all great. But I wanted to single out Will Arnett, the actor who plays Gob, for particular praise. He is so funny on this show that I almost can't believe that he didn't make a big splash before. Looking at IMDB, it seem he made a living from a string of small TV parts, but now is involved in a heap of movies (one promisingly titled Get 'Em Wet). He is gifted with a wonderful voice, and his timing is amazing. If his future work is half as funny as Gob, it will still be hilarious.

Here are a couple clips demonstrating his abilities. The first speaks for itself.

The second is more subtle (and blurry) and might not work so well out of context, but I laughed for minutes at this scene in the show, replaying his outbursts in my mind until they seemed like absurdist masterpieces. I can't think of any other actors who can make me laugh like this with one word.

Online Gaming With Wii

2007-01-09T12:28:00.000-05:00

Nintendo may still be a ways away from maximizing the online potential of the Wii (imagine Excite Truck with online races!), but at least the online browser is supplying new gaming opportunities. Weeks before the Opera browser even launched, Wiicade was up and running. The site carries flash games designed with the Wii controls in mind. The games are simple, but they are more fun to play on the Wii with the Wii remote than they were on my laptop. Tactical Assassin and Curve Ball are a couple of standouts.

One thing about new game systems that I love but that I wouldn’t have predicted 10 years ago is how they create a niche for simple games. I’d like to see more designers create online games with the Wii in mind. And I still have high hopes that the Wii’s Virtual Console will eventually host some new games with retro flair.

An aside: I wondered when the porn possibilities of Wii webbing was going to make some ripples.

[Thanks, Jon]

My Winter Wonderland

2007-01-05T05:27:00.000-05:00

When I woke up this morning, it was 56 degrees F outside. In New York. On January 5th. Tomorrow, temps are expected to rise to the mid 60s. It has not snowed once in New York City this season, which will make this year's snow the latest snow ever recorded (if it does ever snow, that is). As a northerner, I miss the cold and the snow. Fortunately, I can retreat to Huaraz, my town in Animal Crossing, to hear the snow crunch under my feet. At least virtual nature adheres to expectations.

[UPDATE: 1/6/07 This morning it was 67 degrees at 6:00 AM. WTF?!]

Meteorite in tha hizzouse!

2007-01-04T06:14:00.000-05:00

True story: when I was little, I used to keep myself up at night worrying about meteorites crashing into my house. Then I would panic and call out to my parents, who would come to my room and assure me that we were safe from such a catastrophe. Well, what do you say about THIS, Mom and Dad?

Better true story: A woman living with her adult son in Freehold Township, NJ, heard a thud on Tuesday afternoon. That evening, the son found a hunk of metal, about 3-and-a-half inches long and weighing three-quarters of a pound, lodged in a bathroom wall. They discovered that the object had crashed through the roof of the two-story house, through the ceiling of a first-floor bathroom, bounced off the tiles, and then got stuck in the wall.

Experts say it could be a meteorite. The object apparently has a smoother appearance than other meteorites, but what else could it be? A piece of a satellite? I'll update when the results of analyses are announced over the next couple days.

My adult fears are much more prosaic than my childhood worries, and recently involve money and a bun in the oven. But I can't argue with a woman quoted in this Newark Star-Ledger story, "I don't like things falling from the sky."

[UPDATE: 1/6/07 Sure enough, it's a meteorite, straight outta the asteroid belt.]

Virtual NES Delivers Amazing Retro Freenis

2006-12-31T08:30:00.000-05:00

vNES is an online Nintendo Entertainment System emulator with a staggering number of games available. I don't see how I am going to be able to pull myself away from this amazing free gaming goodness. I've played emulators before, but I like that this one is online. I needed to download a Java update to get it to work, which I found here.

Via Joystiq, which presents the vNES as a good way to demo games you might be considering for the Wii Virtual Console. I have mixed feelings about the VC, mainly because I think it is overpriced, but I do have five games on it already. More thoughts about that later.

Friday Freenis: Best Of 2006

2006-12-29T05:16:00.000-05:00

Don't take my word for it. Take Jay is Games word for it. That kickin free games site has a best-of-the-year feature with lots of gaming goodness. If, like me, you gotta be at work today, make sure the boss isn't looking and try some out. You can even vote for your favorites. Explore and be happy.

First Post FROM The Wii

2006-12-28T20:50:00.000-05:00

The Wii's new web browser launched on the day I left town (and my Wii) for Christmas. I'm back now, and exploring the browser. I'm making this blog post from my Wii, in fact.

Typing with the Wii remote takes a long time. I've also had the browser freeze up twice, both times at gmail. Still, browsing the web from the Wii is a fun novelty for now. Time will tell if it is useful.

I'm Happy Because Of The Squid (Not Christmas)

2006-12-22T16:49:00.000-05:00

I'm travelling for Christmas, so postings might be a bit sparse. But in the airport this morning I saw on the waiting-lounge TV that scientists in Japan pulled a live giant squid to the surface. I felt excited and awed by the world in a way that I have become increasingly out of touch with as an adult.

Last year, the same Japanese scientists took pictures of a live giant squid at close to one kilometer below the surface. I thought that was exciting. Here, the many-tentacled creature is right at the surface! See for yourself here.

Unfortunately, it died soon after it was captured.

[UPDATE: Here's some video from Japanese news--note the stirring music.]

Xbox 360 And The Deal That Brought It Into My Life

2006-12-18T07:05:00.000-05:00

Check out the white-on-black console porn. On top is my newest addition, the Xbox 360. Sometimes I feel guilty about being such a giant consumer, but the itch is finally scratched (y'all knew I was joking before, right?). I know some friends are uncomprehending, but I was a good boy and waited until I got a nice deal on this. The wife has been very patient. Maybe I love her even a little bit more. There's a lesson for you, ladies: Don't be like this guy's chick (who is apparently making her beau shed a truly amazing game collection in order to buy her a gaudy hunk of compressed carbon).

Anyway, if you are interested in getting a $100 rebate on the 360, expand this mofo.

Here's reason 1,023,657 why I love the web: I never would have snagged a 360 for 25% off without it. First, I see this post at joystiq for a rebate offer if you buy a 360 at Micro Center. I think, $100 off is a pretty great deal, especially considering that I had told myself early on that I'd wait for a price drop before getting one. But then I think, what's Micro Center? I've never heard of this store. So again, internet to the rescue. Checking out the store's site reveals that there is a location out on Strong Island. I check the Long Island Railroad's schedule (online, natch) and discover it is a half hour trip. Better yet, Google maps shows me that the store is less than a mile from the train station. A $10 round-trip ticket and two hours later, I'm back in Queens, spraying Locust blood in Gears of War.

How did we function without the web?

Friday Freenis: Goldbergian

2006-12-15T15:39:00.000-05:00

Nerds: recall dominoes. Recall the game Mousetrap.

Do you know Rube Goldberg? Do you like little parts working together? Then you'll like Armadillo Run. You can play some tutorial stages and free levels if you download a demo. It's fun.

[via boingboing]

Guitar Hero Zonks Tiger Zumaya

2006-12-14T12:52:00.000-05:00

The Detroit Free Press is reporting that Tigers pitcher Joel Zumaya injured his arm by playing Guitar Hero. His injuries kept him from playing in this year's ALCS.

The Tigers asked Zumaya to stop playing the video game, and he did. Zumaya then pitched pain-free during the World Series, and went 0-1 with a 3.00 ERA in three appearances.

Umm... Good thing that problem got solved and Tiger pitching returned to form for the World Series.

I've played my share of Guitar Hero, yet apart from occasional, very slight soreness in my fingers on my left (fretting) hand, I've had no pains or problems. Now, with the Wii, it's a different story. My right arm is still recovering from a frenzied Wii Sports session on Monday.

Awesome Dolphin Gone Forever

2006-12-13T14:52:00.000-05:00

The baiji, a species of river dolphin native to the Yangtze River, has been declared "functionally extinct" after a six-week expedition set up to find one of the animals failed, according to an AP report and the expedition's official website. Another story about the expedition appeared in the Wall Street Journal last week (in syndication here). Scientists put the blame on overfishing and shipping traffic.

River dolphins are amazing creatures. First, they look awesome. Second, they inhabit this curious little niche--relatives of ocean-going dolphins that evolved to life on the lazy river. Third, according to scientists, baiji are "shy and nearly blind." Finally, around the world they inspire some cool legends, often sexual in nature. According to the WSJ, the baiji is featured in an old Chinese "love story, where it turned into a beautiful woman like a mermaid." The pink river dolphins of the Amazon have inspired folk tales in which the dolphins turn into men at night, seduce human women, and impregnate them. (Interesting gender differences between those myths.)

Enough fun, though. I was really sad to read this news. Such a great, interesting animal gone forever because of what people do. Even if one or a few individuals turn up over the next few decades, the baiji is effectively lost. There are certainly not enough to constitute a sustainable population.

Planes On A Treadmill

2006-12-12T10:34:00.000-05:00

Boingboing has a post up that gets the pedantic science nerd in me going. I’ll need to reproduce it almost in full so you can understand. It begins:

David Pogue at the NYT has presented this classic airplane on a giant treadmill problem, and people are arguing about whether or not the plane would take off or not.

Here’s the set-up from Pogue, quoting someone else:

”Imagine a plane is sitting on a massive conveyor belt, as wide and as long as a runway. The conveyer belt is designed to exactly match the speed of the wheels, moving in the opposite direction. Can the plane take off? I say no, because the plane will not move relative the the ground and air, and thus, very little air will flow over the wings. However, other people are convinced that since the wheels of a plane are free spinning, and not powered by the engines, and the engines provide thrust against the air, that somehow that makes a difference and air will flow over the wing.” (Here’s Pogue’s original post.)

Continue if you like such thought problems.

Boingboinger Mark Frauenfelder has his say:

I say yes. Let's assume the friction in the wheel bearings is negligible. Putting a plane on a treadmill is like putting it on an icy lake. When you fire up the jets, the plane is going to shoot down the lake and take off just like it would on a runway.

Some commenter then disagrees. But I have to say I’m a bit surprised this is a problem for anyone, really. Jets generate thrust by expelling hot air, which pushes back on the plane in a simple demonstration of Newton’s third law of motion. It shouldn’t matter what’s happening with the wheels; they don’t supply any power in our example. They just let the plane roll.

Now, if the plane sped up via power from the wheels, like a car with wings attached, sitting on a treadmill that matched the rotational speed of the wheel would be a problem. But the plane speeds up by pushing air out. Maybe the wheels would be spinning twice as fast as they would be if the plane were not on treadmill, but so what?

Think of it this way: the plane could be disconnected from the ground all together. Say it has a rotor blade like a helicopter’s that suspends it above the ground. The jets will still push the plane forward. To me, this doesn’t seem hard to understand at all (see? pedantic nerd), so I am surprised this issue generates a lot of online discussion.

25 Days Of (Free) Christmas Gaming

2006-12-11T05:20:00.000-05:00

Before I totally get off my recent music kick, I wanted to point out an interesting little analysis my friend Jeff did of the top and bottom of the pitchforkmedia.com reviewing pile. It has always bothered me that re-issues get rated so highly--critics luxuriating in the safety of hindsight and received wisdom. I gotta say it: Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, not a 10.

Now back to games. Here's some decent Christmas freenis: Nintendo has set up a little advent calendar called Mission in Snowdriftland, featuring the platforming adventures of Chubby Snow. Guide the big-headed snowman through a new level each day, collecting snowflakes and dodging baddies. Who knows what will happen on Christmas day? Maybe you will celebrate the birth of ~~Chubby Snow~~ Jesus by giving or receiving some Nintendo products?

[via joystiq]

Friday Freenis, Wu Edition

2006-12-08T06:33:00.000-05:00

No games this time. I've got music on my mind as of late. Spooky, tense tales of mayhem lie at your fingertips here. The Wu-Tang Clan gives you more than 200 assorted tracks (demos, remixes, etc.) at their official Wu-Tang Corp. website.

Oh, Dirty, how we miss what the fuck your gun do.

[via Salon]

Meshuggah Will Rock You

2006-12-06T20:10:00.000-05:00

Meshuggah is one of my favorite bands currently bringing rock to the masses. Here's the video for their chart-topping hit "New Millennium Cyanide Christ." I've never embedded video from YouTube in my blog before, so I wanted to give it a go. I dedicate this post to my man TZ down in NC.

[Thanks, Marc!]

And since this is YouTube, I give you the real jackassery, as well.

Twilight Princess Glitch Nearly Leads To Wii Murder!

2006-12-06T05:24:00.000-05:00

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for the Wii is an amazing game. It is a long game, an adventure that requires 50 hours or more to finish. It is also a game with a glitch that caused me to become stuck almost 40 hours in with no recourse but to restart.

Let me state this plain: I played for almost 40 hours, the game screwed up, and now I have to restart if I want to finish it.

When I first became trapped, I thought I was just stuck, that I needed to solve a puzzle to continue. I resorted to looking online for tips, and that's when I discovered what seems to be becoming a notorious Twilight Princess glitch. Amigos, I will tell you this: DO NOT SAVE IN THE SKY CANNON ROOM! And keep multiple save files.

I was boiling mad for hours when I figured out I had to restart. My Wii is lucky that it is not a heap of broken plastic and electrical components this morning. The honeymoon period is over, Wii.

[UPDATE: 12/12/06 This is for the unlucky gamers who are coming to this post after getting stuck themselves. I just talked to Nintendo about this glitch, and they say there is no trick to get out, and no fix is available. Don't believe tips you might read elsewhere.]

On The Popularity of The Aspidistra

2006-12-04T06:24:00.000-05:00

I tell myself that I blog for myself. I tell my wife that, too, when she complains about too many videogame posts.

But see that counter down there on the right, below the links? Would I really be counting visitors if I was only blogging for myself? No, of course I want as many people as possible to read what I post. Maybe a fuller description of how I blog is that I decide what to write about based on my own interests, but I hope you like some of the same things and otherwise get seduced by my coverage of the things you didn't know you liked, and in the end you love me.

Anyway, this is all a way of saying I’ve been relatively pleased with the traffic over the past couple months. I’m no engadget, but I’m doing a lot better than might be indicated by a recent statement from Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, who suggested that the average blog has only one reader. (That has to be rhetorical, right?)

Alas, as the wife suggests, the videogame posts rarely bring readers. Here are the top five posts that bring people to The Aspidistra, with some examples of real search terms.
1. dog humps cat
2. wii shopping channel
3. skepticism must be a component of the…
4. hobbes vs. rousseau state of nature
5. manpanzee

Honorable mentions: religious idiots, Freud haters, how-to-make: hovercrafts

A Muscle Myster-Wii

2006-12-01T11:23:00.000-05:00

I’m no 90-pound weakling. I’ve never been very muscular, but I go to the gym regularly. I lift the weights. I do my push-ups and pull-ups. Sure, I’m probably tucked closer to the weak side in a normal distribution of adult male arm strength, but I’m in shape.

So why is my right biceps sore? Over the past few days, I’ve been struggling with a small mystery: I’ve noticed that the half of my biceps closer to my elbow is just a bit tender. I’m not doing anything new at the gym. I’ve not lifted anything particularly heavy, or carried anything unwieldy recently. So what’s different?

The answer hit me this morning: It’s the Wii! I feel a bit wussy making this confession, but I believe using the Wii-remote has made my arm sore. And I haven’t even been playing Wii Sports, which encourages spazzed-out flailing, all that much. I’ve mainly been playing Twilight Princess. I’m slightly amazed, but I think making all the little sword swipes, just shaking and stabbing with the Wii-remote as I sit on the couch, has engaged my biceps in a way that my regular life does not.

That controller sure does promote immersion. It has immersed me in un-manliness.

Friday Freenis: Terraforming Edition

2006-12-01T06:34:00.001-05:00

I had to do some digging for this one--wait, that's a pun you'll understand if you play the game. Seriously, though, I played this a couple of weeks ago and had to dig around on the web for a while to find it again.

It's a free flash game called Grow Cube. I would describe it as a cutesy, terraforming puzzle game. I recommend just jumping in and learning how to play by experiment. One thing I love about these little, free puzzle games is how I can go from baffled to understanding by exploring and experimenting.

[via kotaku]

A Game For The Religious And Ignorant

2006-11-30T12:29:00.000-05:00

The real-time strategy game based on the Left Behind books has been generating interest on the web for some time and it is finally out. When I first heard about this game, I was willing to keep an open-ish mind. I love plenty of games that draw their stories from crazy, nonsense mythology (Legend of Zelda, God of War), so why not dig on some crazy Christian myths?

Well, Gamespot has a review up, and they suggest a good reason not to play the game: it sucks. I can't say I'm shocked. But I was a bit surprised to see that the game delivers some totally ignorant, intelligent-design-friendly nonsense. Check out this screenshot from the Gamespot review. I guess if you are willing to entertain the idea that the Rapture is possible, well, all bets are off when it comes to a reasoned, rational understanding of the world.

Could this be the first game that I would never want my children to play?

[UPDATE: In order to reduce the smugness level of this post a bit, I thought I'd point out that some Christian groups oppose the Left Behind game because it "mangles biblical prophecy and promotes religious intolerance and violence," according to this story from the Florida Times-Union.]

Third Is The New Black

2006-11-30T05:46:00.000-05:00

Nintendo dominated my childhood. Atari was my first love, but Nintendo swept me away to new, vibrant game worlds. I’m still a little sad that a Nintendo console is not at the top of the videogame pile. Although I gots love for all the systems, I guess I have a little bit of a fanboy lurking within.

In this week’s New Yorker (12/4/06), James Surowiecki devotes his Financial Page column to Nintendo’s lucrative spot at third place in the console “wars”. The essay, “In Praise of Third Place,” declares Nintendo a “cool third-party candidate” in the console contest. So what does that mean for Wii?

Surowiecki sees Sony and Microsoft as being locked in a “classic arms race” for more sublime graphics and more non-game functionality like next-gen video, a race that Nintendo has dropped out of. Sony loses something like $250 on every PS3 it sells due to the expensive super-technology inside, while Nintendo, apparently, makes money on the Wii.

The question for me is: what will the gamers gravitate to, better graphics or innovative controls? Because where the gamers go, so do the games. More dreck, sure, but more good games, as well. Can the Wii pull something like that off? Surowiecki writes:

Nintendo knew that it could not compete with Microsoft and Sony in the quest to build the ultimate home-entertainment device. So it decided, with the Wii, to play a different game entirely. Some pundits are now speculating, ironically, that the simplicity of the Wii may make it a huge hit.

After the Gamecube, I’m a little skeptical about the huge hit. But the DS has been great, so I have my fingers crossed.

The Monsters Of Nostalgia

2006-11-29T11:57:00.000-05:00

Friends and regular readers of The Aspidistra (I really think those categories are completely overlapping) will know I have a strong nostalgic streak and I love monsters. Can I possibly describe the pangs of sweet nostalgia this website elicits? Scores of wonderful monster toys from the '60s through the '90s. My brother and I owned more than a few from the '70s and '80s.

I'll try to compile a list of those I either had or played with when I was little and put it in the comments. Readers are invited to do the same.

[via boingboing]

The Sky Was Not Falling

2006-11-28T13:51:00.000-05:00

Andrew Revkin, a science reporter at the New York Times, writes about a new analysis of the recovery of ocean life following the Permo-Triassic extinction 251 million years ago. This extinction is often called the “Great Dying” because more species winked out then than in any of the other great extinctions that have walloped life on Earth. As Revkin writes in his lede:

At least five mass extinctions, most presumably caused by asteroids that struck the earth, have transformed global ecology in the half-billion years since the emergence of multicelled life, lopping entire branches from the evolutionary tree and causing others to flourish.

The problem is, apart from the end-Cretaceous extinction that killed the dinosaurs, no mass extinction has lots of evidence to support an impact-killer theory. In fact, in the case of the Great Dying, the impact theory is more of a minority opinion, albeit one with some very vocal supporters. I’m surprised that a reporter like Revkin would gloss over this. I have NEVER seen it suggested anywhere nor talked to any evolutionary biologist or geologist that felt most mass extinctions were related to asteroids. Many are willing to entertain the hypothesis, but acknowledge that the data don’t support it.

New York Mag: No Wii For You!

2006-11-27T18:28:00.000-05:00

I’ve told myself that I should stop looking at New York Magazine just as I have stopped looking at Gawker.com, but as you’ll see, I can’t yet kick the habit. Well, this week’s issue (November 27th) offers the annual Gift List, helpful tips for what rich New Yorkers can give to other rich New Yorkers for Christmas.

Teens should be given the Playstation 3 (good luck finding one!) the magazine declares. And husbands/boyfriends should get the Xbox 360—hey, New York, you made the same recommendation last year. Yet the Wii is nowhere in sight. I suppose that’s better than seeing it on the gift ideas for a child page (that space is reserved for a $500-$800 stuffed horse, natch).

Midway's Quest For "Better Games"

2006-11-27T18:24:00.000-05:00

It is always interesting for me, a videogame guy who approaches the medium almost entirely as a player, to get a peek behind the glowing screen and see the business gears turning. Today’s New York Times has an article about game maker Midway and Sumner Redstone, a billionaire investor who owns a majority of Midway’s stock.

Apparently, Redstone has been holding the shares tightly even as Midway’s share prices have been falling. As many a gamer could tell you, apart from Mortal Kombat, Midway doesn’t have a lot going on. (That said, I did enjoy The Suffering.)

I wonder if the business reporter consults with gamers or the Times’s game writers when working on such a story. Most of the discussion of videogames in this piece seems reasonable to me. But surely a gamer would challenge this assertion: “We are focusing on fewer and better games, and we have positioned ourselves very well for the next cycle,” Shari Redstone, vice-chairman of Midway and Sumner’s daughter, told the Times. So what are these “better games”? The Times reports:

So far this year, Midway has introduced Mortal Kombat: Armageddon and it is set to introduce Happy Feet, based on the new Warner Brothers movie.

Coincidentally, I was just reading 1UP.com’s comparison of console launch games last night. Guess which game sits alone, stinking at the bottom of the launch-game barrel. It’s Happy Feet, the Wii’s worst launch game, and one of the worst launch games of all time, according to 1UP’s analysis. Maybe it will sell due to the movie tie-in—and according to the article, this seems to be the real core of Midway’s overall strategy—but the game still looks like typical licensed garbage.

Here’s my business strategy for Midway: make fun games.

Wii Impressions

2006-11-26T06:47:00.000-05:00

I've only been Wii-ing for three days, but I've checked out most of the features. These, my friends, are my impressions:

Overall, I think the Wii is going to be a very nice system. The set-up was easy. The games have been fun. The controller is striking and it works better than I had begun to fear. This post is a bit long, but I wanted to get it all out in one go. Please read on.

Getting the Wii up and running was simple, as might be expected from a Nintendo product. The unit is slim, roughly the size of the re-designed PS2, and can be positioned horizontally or vertically. The infrared sensor bar is the one noticeably unique element in the system set-up. The bar sits either just below or just above the TV screen. It works in conjunction with the Wii-remote in triangulating the position of a pointer or crosshairs on screen.

When I first fired up the Wii, I was impressed with how responsive and accurate the pointer was. The Wii-remote is used to navigate the system's main menu screens, using a little hand with a pointing finger. Moving the Wii-remote moves the hand, and the controls are very responsive: even little things like rotating the remote causes the hand to turn. Overall, at least in menu navigation, the controls felt tight and right-on.

The Wii interface takes the form of different "channels." The first channel is dedicated to whichever game is in the Wii. Another channel houses the Miis, cutesy little characters or avatars that users create, use in some games (like Wii Sports), and share with other gamers. There is a calendar/planner channel and a digital photos channel that I expect will get very little use from me. There is also an online Wii shopping channel, which is where virtual console game are purchased, and online weather and news channels, although these last two won't be operational until late December. Each virtual console game that is purchased also occupies a new channel.

Clicking the pointer on a game channel starts that game. I'll just briefly touch on the games:

Wii Sports is fun but a bit too simple. Clearly, it is meant to demonstrate the motion sensitive controller, and it has an aroma of the tech demo about it. That said, bowling with the Wii-remote works really well. On my first play-through I bowled a 129 (it wasn't as easy for me as the oddly negative pro-Wii writer at Slate suggested), which is about as good as I can manage in real life, too. Golf, baseball, and tennis were rather fun, but many aspects of play, like the running controls, were taken over by the computer. This diminishes how deeply I can really get into these games. So far, boxing has felt a bit unresponsive and wonky, because I naturally try to punch faster than the game allows and the motion-sensing feels out of touch with my motions. That said, each sport has a training mode which can deliver a short-but-sweet blast of fun, like the bowling training in which you hurl the ball at a wide-ass lane with 91 pins. Wii Sports is sure to please casual gamers and even non-gamers, though from my perspective hard-core types are likely to want more from a sports title.

The only other Wii game I have now is Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. I'm about 5 hours in at this point. The game seems solid and unmistakably Zelda-ish. If you've played any Zelda game since Ocarina of Time, which this game resembles in some ways, you will be very familiar with the style of play. I feel like I am only scraping at the surface of Twilight Princess, I've explored just a small piece of the game world, and I've read it takes upwards of 40 hours to finish. So far I'm having a great time, and enjoying the Wii controls more than I expected. Like many Wii games, this Zelda uses the Wii-remote and the nunchuck attachment, which consists of a motion-sensing controller (with a thumbstick and two triggers) for the left hand that connects to the Wii-remote via a cable (hence the name). Shaking and swinging the controllers to make Link swing his sword feels very natural. Likewise, aiming the slingshot with the Wii-remote is easy, and the crosshairs feel fluid and responsive to movements in the remote. I must say I expected less. Twilight Princess was born as a Gamecube game, and some reviewers have felt that the Wii controls seem tacked-on. For the most part, I disagree: from my perspective, the controls felt natural and took good advantage of the motion sensing. My only gripe is that the most powerful attacks come from locking on to a target with one button and pressing another button, with no use of the motion controls at all. When I play, I am almost inclined to use less powerful attacks that use the motion controls because swinging the Wii-remote to make Link deliver a sword slash really is fun and more immersive than pushing buttons.

Just a short note about graphics: as you've likely heard, the Wii graphics are nothing special. At least for the games I have, they are not much above the Gamecube. The lighting and water effects look really nice, true, but the characters are still blocky, lines are a bit jaggy, and some textures are muddy. To be completely honest, this saddens and worries me a bit. I'm not a big graphics whore, but I must admit I enjoy the eye candy some, and seeing what the Xbox 360 and PS3 can do leaves me envious. I worry because, although the Wii clearly has a lot of casual gamer appeal, producers will need to keep putting out fun and innovative titles to keep the system interesting to serious gamers--they can't rely on sweet graphics to carry the weight--and this is a tall order. Of course, I also think this is exactly what designers should do all the time, but my years as a gamer have taught me that interesting, unique, well-designed games are rare.

With that said, I've must say I really love the simple, dated graphics and old-school gameplay of the Wii Virtual Console. There are something like 13 games from the NES, SNES, Genesis, Tubografx 16, and Nintendo 64 available for purchase online right now, and the list will expand as time goes on. So far, I've bought Solomon's Key for the NES and Bomberman '93 for the Turbografx. I'm waiting on Gunstar Heroes for the Genesis, which was supposed to be available at launch but hasn't shown up yet. From the two I have, I can say that these games look and play just about exactly like the originals. I was psyched and a bit surprised to see Solomon's Key on the games list. That was one of my favorite NES games, but I think it was less popular than Gyromite. It is an odd choice for a launch game, but I am grateful.

I think the virtual console has a lot of potential. I'm not sure how much young or casual gamers will get into it, but for a gaming fogey like me, the VC will likely be a big $$$ sink. Right now, I am looking forward to Super Metroid for the SNES, Devil's Crush for the Turbografx 16, and Excitebike 64 for the N64. I'm sure I'll encounter all sorts of games I haven't thought about in a while, and I expect a fair number of impulse purchases to take place. Nevertheless, I think the pricing on the VC is to high. Right now, games are around $5 for NES, $6 for some Turbografx 16, $8 for Genesis and SNES, and $10 for N64. Sure, those prices are fine if you just want a couple games. But I want dozens of these games, and I find the prices to be just outside of impulse range, particularly for the Genesis, SNES, and N64. Most of these games are available online for free if you have an emulator. I'm willing to play by the rules and purchase them, but I expect a good, and by good I mean cheap, price. I would like to see top prices around $3 NES, $4 Turbografx, Genesis, and SNES, and $5 N64. And assorted cheap-ass games ($1 or less) would also be appreciated. Maybe this will happen eventually when the market is more saturated. Right now, though, $8 for Altered Beast is crazy; maybe I would plunk down $2 for nostalgia's sake. (An aside: I see no reason that new, original games should be excluded from the VC. I would love to see some new games in the old style. And look how popular Geometry Wars is.)

To (finally) sum up: I have mostly good things to say about the Wii. The controls work better than I was beginning to fear, although they haven't been really tested for me yet, which will probably happen when a compelling first-person shooter comes out. The graphics are nothing special, and for me this means developers have to work extra hard to come up with unique games. I hope it is a challenge they rise to, rather than seeing the Wii as a casual-gamer junk heap that they can throw any half-baked game onto because the audience is not discerning. It would be nice if Nintendo beefed-up the online functionality, but I don't think Nintendo totally gets this yet, so I expect it to be only half-realized like on the DS. Finally, the virtual console is solid, and I hope it grows into a vibrant, nostalgia-heavy marketplace (with some new games mixed in).

So far, I am quite smitten by my new friend. I hope this crush can grow into a full-blown love affair, and there is no reason as yet to think that it won't.

After PS3 Hate Comes Wii Love

2006-11-24T21:07:00.000-05:00

Seth Schiesel, the games writer at the New York Times, ripped the PS3 a bit last week. Today he reviewed the Wii, and was much more positive about the console. Sure, he admits, the hard-core gamer is likely to still be focused on the Xbox 360 or the PS3. But Schiesel enjoys the pick-up-and-play sensibility of the Wii, which led to--and this approach seems to be becoming a game-reviewer cliche--EVEN HIS MOM playing the Wii. To sum up his review: "over all the system left a big smile on my face."

I'll just say that I generally agree with his impressions. I'm not going to get into my take on the Wii just yet. But I'll put up a long-ish post this weekend after I've gotten in a bit more play time.

[UPDATE: The Wii beats the PS3 in a friends-test from the Washington Post.]

An Early Visit From Santa

2006-11-22T07:06:00.000-05:00

Look what is in my house right now! Yay!

I'm glad I live near the Nintendo World Store, where the Wii is in relative abundance. I got lots of holiday obligations, but I plan on getting some impressions up over Thanksgiving weekend. Stay tuned and we can hopefully answer some of the criticisms that I addressed yesterday.

Premature Wii-jaculations

2006-11-21T04:53:00.000-05:00

The disappointed press has its say again. This time the self-consciously oppositional Slate hates on Wii.

I'm down with the criticisms. Certainly it is a little painful to see the fawning coverage of the launch of these consoles. They are consumer products, after all, not the second coming.

Yet from the start of this Slate piece, I have to question the author's ability to offer fair criticism. "I'll admit it—I was in love with the Nintendo Wii long before we'd ever met," writes Erik Sofge. Yet when he gets a chance to meet-up in real life, like an internet dater after a flirtatious email build-up, reality lets him down.

I get that way too, sometimes. I build up high expectations and when they aren't met I feel very negative. Yet in these situations, the negativity is related to fantasies, not reality. It's a very human reaction. But it is a problem for critics, since unmet high expectations shouldn't count against something.

Still, Sofge's criticism has me worried. "The ugly truth is that the Wii's already-legendary motion-detection system doesn't work very well," he writes. Specifically, he has trouble aiming in-game crosshairs with the motion-detecting controls. Playing first-person shooters was one of the things I was most looking forward to with the Wii-mote. I knew the new Metroid for the Wii would have the same old lock-on feature of the Gamecube's Metroid Prime games. I worried: maybe the Wii-mote is not as accurate as had been suggested. This Slate piece seems to validate that fear.

Slate is running this as a pro/con sorta thing, so they also have a more positive review from Chris Suellentrop. This dude is glowing, even though he doesn't have exclusively great things to say about existing Wii titles like Wii Sports and the Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. It seems his excitement and positive feelings are pinned on how much he expects to love Wii games in the future. High expectations, as we have seen, have a way of not being met.

(Okay, no more cutesy Wii-related post titles for a while.)

Poo Poo on Playstation 3

2006-11-20T06:21:00.000-05:00

As I recently posted, I've been having lustful thoughts about the PS3. Maybe this is partly due to how scarce the thing will be over the next few months. But the games look gorgeous. And Sony has such a massive base from the first two Playstations that I expect PS3 will also become the dominant system of this generation, which means the best games selection.

So I was surprised to read this bluntly negative review of the new Playstation in the New York Times this morning. There was a fair amount of grumbling when the PS2 dropped five years ago, and it eventually evolved into a great system. Maybe the PS3 will just need some time. In any case, I am sure I won't be getting one until well into next year at the earliest.

Happy Birthday Aspy!

2006-11-17T15:43:00.000-05:00

The Aspidistra is one year old today! Check out the first post. Have I lived up to my promises? Actually, if you browse the archives you'll see that, in early December 2005, The Aspidistra went to sleep and didn't wake up until June 2006, when it really got crackin'.

Still, this is the real birthday. What else has happened on November 17? Check this shit: Martin Barre, guitarist for Jethro Tull, was born in 1946. John Glascock, bassist for Jethro Tull in the late '70s, died in 1979.

It is in the humble opinion of this narrator that this is not just something that happened. This cannot be one of those things. This, please, cannot be that. And for what I would like to say, I can't. This was not just a matter of chance.

HIPY PAPY BTHUTHDTH THUTHDA BTHUTHDY, Aspidistra.

Wii-mote creates Wii-motions?

2006-11-17T09:38:00.000-05:00

Um, maybe you heard the Playstation 3 launches today. I know the local news was all over the “story.” On my TV I saw hundreds of young men standing in line all night in the rain to probably not get the console, since Sony is shipping an underwhelming 400,000 to North America.

I doubt the Nintendo Wii, which launches on Sunday, will generate the same sorts of scenes. The Wii will have 1,000,000 units available at launch, with maybe 1.4 million through the end of the year.

Still, I have to admit those sexy PS3 graphics have had me lusting after the rarer machine, even though I’m a big Nintendo fan and I’m looking forward to the Wii-mote. Friends like Jeff have been coveting a Wii for a little while, but for me I didn’t really start to get cravings until I read this unusual essay by Jonah Lehrer on Seed about the increased emotional resonance from Wii games. (This is the first Wii review I have read that quotes William James.) I knew the Wii was supposed to increase immersion, but I had mainly thought of this to mean plain-old excitement, simple stimulation. But now, as I ponder whether a Wii will really create more emotional gaming, I find I want one a lot more. Oh, and it also costs less than half of what the PS3 costs. Goddamn Sony.

Dog Humps Cat, Cogs Born?

2006-11-16T12:56:00.000-05:00

C'mon. What the hell is this doing on Reuters? Sure, it's a cute picture: a cat between two puppies.

But read the caption. The owner claims that those puppies are really half-cat, born after a dog humped that cat. Not possible. At least the caption uses scare quotes to say that the owner "claims" those are the offspring of a dog-cat mating. Still, I'm surprised Reuters gave it any play. I can't understand why a geneticist would even bother testing this. Those are either cats that just happen to look dog-like, or puppies that are mixed in with a cat litter. Those two animals can't hybridize.

Oh, here's another cool interspecies-fucking story, with a super twist: dude FUCKED A DEAD DEER!

You may need to register, so if you don't want to bother, here's the nut from the Duluth News Tribune:

Bryan James Hathaway, 20, of Superior faces a misdemeanor charge of sexual gratification with an animal. He is accused of having sex with a dead deer he saw beside Stinson Avenue on Oct. 11.

A motion filed last week by his attorney, public defender Fredric Anderson, argued that because the deer was dead, it was not considered an animal and the charge should be dismissed.

[Thanks, Carlin!]

Videogame Snob? Moi?

2006-11-14T18:17:00.000-05:00

My amigo Jeff, keeper of the eponymous and often hilarious jeffreydinsmore.com, sent me an interesting question yesterday. Are there such things as video game snobs? he asked. My first response was, Of course, and I am one! But then I thought about it some more, pondered an example he gave, and realized it is a more complex question than it first seemed.

Jeff wondered if liking Katamari Damacy, a quirky and original game, as well as liking Ratchet and Clank (Part Whatever), a fun but perhaps hackneyed platformer, indicated that snobbery, here understood as considering one’s tastes as superior to someone else’s, didn’t work for games. Maybe other elements of games, like how much fun they are, contributed a new variable to an old equation, and rendered a common style of criticism and connoisseurship obsolete.

Do you want to know more?

A snob, or course, is not just someone who would say some games are better than others. A snob would say despite the fact that many people think X is a good game, it is really bad and their tastes are poor.

The clearest case in which to examine this sort of snobbery is when a game that is critically lambasted ends up a big seller. 50 Cent Bulletproof is generally considered to be crap. Yet it sold more than a million copies. Here, critics and many gamers are at odds, and to suggest that the masses who bought the game have skewed and poor criteria for judging games seems justified to me. People bought the game because they think 50 Cent is cool.

Call it snobbery if you like, but it is an inevitable result given that a portion of the game audience (reviewers, hard core gamers, etc.) plays lots of games and devotes lots of thought to games while a much larger portion of the audience doesn’t play as many games and just wants a kick. Put simply, a big part of the audience is unschooled and naïve, and they will have different criteria than critics to judge a game. I am a game snob when it is defined this way; I think naïve opinions are inferior.

But it gets trickier when you begin to explore the different genres and traditions in which games exist, and here Jeff’s example of Ratchet and Clank seems apt. Certainly, there are game formulas that work well. I consider these the videogame equivalent of Michael Bay’s movie The Rock. I wouldn’t argue that The Rock is a great cinematic achievement, but I loved it when I saw it in the theater. It performed its genre duties in an exciting and entertaining manner, and I enjoyed what I first thought would be formulaic garbage.

Lots of games fit in this category. They might be polished, like New Super Mario Bros. for the DS, but critics could make a fair argument that the Mario formula is too overdone to truly produce anything great. I’m talking about more than the fact that we gamers have put Mario through his paces many times before. I think the genre has deep problems, like the mindless collection of coins, that were fine solutions to the problem of making an interesting game in a previous console generation, but ripe for critical analysis now.

Still, I enjoyed New Super Mario Bros. because I am a fan of 2-D platformers. Here, I think the concept of fun and play enters into the critical equation and changes the way I, at least, evaluate games. Another good example comes from sequels (I’m talking about you, Guitar Hero II). I don’t mind sequels that do the same as the original in games as much as I do in movies. Good gameplay can go a long way towards erasing some of the critical scorn that might come from the lack of originality.

Critics do argue that originality is a legitimate demand, of course. I just think most gamers don’t listen and don’t agree because of their limited experience. So a break between the critics and the majority of the buying population develops and leads to accusations of snobbery.

As a seasoned gamer, I put a high value on originality. I’m usually willing to overlook problematic gameplay in favor new concepts. So here I will admit to being a partial snob. But for me, damning a solid game because it is formulaic or derivative is going too far. The interactivity of games increases my tolerance for things I’ve seen, thought, and felt before, and I don’t indulge in the snobbery I might if I was evaluating something that wasn’t a videogame. After GTA III and Vice City, San Andreas didn’t blow me away, but it is still a great way to spend a weekend afternoon.

Has Freud Really Fallen?

2006-11-10T11:13:00.000-05:00

Writer Denyse O'Leary, a specialist in religiously-motivated critiques of established science, has started a new blog, the awkwardly titled Mindful Hack. She had recently teamed with William Dembski on Uncommon Descent, the blogospheric home of Dembski's religiously-motivated attack on evolutionary biology. Her new blog promises the same quality "science journalism" in the realm of neuroscience.

O'Leary's first post is a premature celebration of the "fall" of Sigmund Freud. Creationists love to group Freud, Darwin, and Marx as some imaginary super-team of materialists. According to their logic, Marx and Freud have been discredited, and Darwin will soon join them. Any educated, reasonable person would of course object to this. Darwin is unimpeachable today. Furthermore, although every nominally Marxist country is truly a mess, Karl Marx the political philosopher is by no means discredited. And certainly Sigmund Freud is alive and kicking in the world of psychology. Please read on.

Freud-haters love to point to excesses that have been committed in his name, things like the recovered memory movement, and gleefully declare Freud is dead. The problem is, they are simply wrong. I know plenty of working psychologists, both in hospitals and private practice, who trace their theoretical orientation directly to Freud.

Of course, many of Freud's theories have been changed over time. He even tinkered with his ideas over his lifetime. Personally, I feel like Freud erred in being too explicit in his theories. He really felt like he was coming up with a universal science of the self. Most psychologists now consider things like penis envy to be silly elaborations of Freud's own fixations.

Yet Freud laid the foundation for a theory of personality that has yet to be surpassed. Does anyone really doubt that our emotional reactions to people and situations come from a mess of internal conflicts, some of which we are unaware of at the time? Does anyone doubt that infants approach the world and in particular their parents with a tangle of needs and desires, and that their early experiences with having these desires met or not met create expectations--again, many of which are unconscious--that shape a personality for life? These are contributions from Freud's thinking.

Psychology, practiced as such, is not a science as much as a working philosophy based on a practical understanding of the brain, namely that any process of mind is rooted in the biological brain and what happens to it. Religious people, of course, hate this because it conflicts with their absolutely unsupportable belief in god-given spirit. So, like O'Leary, they latch on to straw-men arguments, blaming Freud for excesses like the satanic-abuse/recovered memories hysteria (which, ironically, was very popular in populations suffering from the god delusion).

I wonder: do religious types have any viable alternative theory about how personalities form and develop? And would those believers in the immaterial spirit really be happy if neuroscience, the real academic challenge to Freud, were to replace social/developmental approaches with a more genetically-based one?

The Sounds of Space

2006-11-07T04:53:00.000-05:00

Forbidden Planet has been called the greatest of the 1950s-era sci-fi movies. By Pauline Kael, no less. It is a sentiment with which I agree. But one of the things I always found most appealing about the movie was the music. The entire soundtrack was created on electronic instruments by married composers Louis and Bebe Barron. It is a masterpiece of bloops, bleeps, and squeals. "We were delighted to hear people tell us that the tonalities in Forbidden Planet remind them of what their dreams sound like," the composers write in the liner notes to the soundtrack.

Sadly, electronic avant-garde music of this sort never really caught on. Mucho props to Scar Stuff, an excellent blog run by a fellow named Jason, for making more space-age sounds from the past available to fans. Check out Music For Robots, a record from 1964 that features electronic soundscapes in the same tradition as Forbidden Planet. The first track is a spoken-word essay about robots. But the second track, Tone Tales from Tomorrow, is the good stuff, the 40-year-old sound of the future. Some days I like to listen to this and the Forbidden Planet soundtrack as I gaze out of the window on the commuter train. It makes the dull and familiar commute feel like a fantastic voyage.

[UPDATE: Check out the real sounds of space here. Some sound remarkably like the sounds of the space-age imagination above, like this one from Saturn's radio emissions.]

[via boingboing]

1000th Visitor

2006-11-06T12:42:00.000-05:00

The Aspidistra got its 1000th visitor yesterday. I’m quite pleased, although this number must be taken with a couple heaping spoonfuls of salt. First, I didn’t put my sitemeter counter up right away and I also lost a week when I was updating the layout. Second, and more importantly, like the self-googling guy that I am, I check my blog a lot and rack up visits that way. I have this crazy hope that someday I’ll get enough traffic that my visits will be overwhelmed by hits from others, but until then I just have to live with the knowledge that my count is noticeably inflated.

Still, this is the best way to count, so I’ll happily take number 1000. I’m also happy to report that this wasn’t a webcrawler bot. This was a person brought here from a google search for “religious idiots.” Here's the relevant post. I take some pride in the fact that that term brought them here. I’m no friend of religion. Expand the post for the sitemeter data.

Here’s a link to the info. Or just read the excerpt below. They didn't stay long, but what the hey. I'll take what I can get.

Domain Name aol.com (Commercial)
ISP America Online
Location
Continent: Europe
Country: United Kingdom
Language English (United Kingdom)
Operating System Microsoft WinXP
Browser Firefox
Time of Visit Nov 5 2006 10:19:34 am
Last Page View Nov 5 2006 10:19:34 am
Visit Length 0 seconds
Page Views 1
Referring URL http://www.google.co...ts&btnG=Search&meta=
Search Engine google.co.uk
Search Words religious idiots
Visit Entry Page http://theaspidistra...eligious-idiots.html
Visit Exit Page http://theaspidistra...eligious-idiots.html
Visitor's Time Nov 5 2006 3:19:34 pm
Visit Number 1,000

Will Wright in New Yorker

2006-11-01T12:39:00.000-05:00

Last week, after I mentioned Harper's and the Atlantic giving serious coverage to games, I wondered where the New Yorker was. Well, I should have just waited a few days, because this week's issue of the New Yorker has a profile of Will Wright centered around his new game, Spore.

You can read the article online here, so I'm not going to do a summary, but I did want to discuss a couple points of the profile that I found interesting. Expand, if you please.

First, the story covers some of the same topics as the Harper's serious games discussion, namely what role games can serve in education. John Seabrook, the author, explains how Wright showed him an email from a concerned professor. The professor writes:

Most of us are in agreement that this younger generation--raised on video games--has learned to be reactive, instead of active, and worse, they have lost their imaginative abilities and creativity because the games provide all the images, sounds, and possible outcomes for them.

Wright, of course, disagrees. He sees games as potentially more useful learning tools than the traditional lectures-and-schoolbooks model. He says:

I would argue that as the world becomes more complex, and as outcomes become less about success and failure, games are better at preparing you. The education system is going to realize this sooner or later. It's starting. Teachers are entering the system who grew up playing games. They are going to want to engage with the kids using games.

I think Wright is correct here and the professor sounds like a stodgy old grump. I don't have that professor's teaching experience to tell me what games do to imagination, but I have my own life experience, an experience that has been filled with videogames but is not lacking for imagination or creative endeavors.

I might also point to people like Wright, who live lives suffused with games but show the creativity to produce new and exciting things all the time. But I notice that Seabrook puts Wright in a strange category here, and by implication Seabrook seems to side with the grumpoid professor. Wright grew up before games, Seabrook points out a couple times. For example:

The enormous success of The Sims means that children today can grow up without having the hands-on model-making experiences that Wright enjoyed as a child, and that inspired him to make games in the first place.

So Wright didn't start off his life playing videogames--they didn't exist yet, after all--but that doesn't mean he has found the only path into making creative games. The implication is that model-making and play in the real world inspired Wright, yet the products of his inspiration will rob today's kids of the same thing. Bullshit, I say. I was a child of the videogame age. I had an Atari by the age of five and a NES at age 10 or 11. But I still played outside, built castles with bricks, played tag, had fantasy wars in the woods, played with action figures, and all the other imaginative games of a typical late '70s and '80s suburban childhood.

Otherwise, I thought the article was quite good. What I found particularly interesting was Seabrook's distinction between Wright's fascination with games and play, and a more stereotypical version of a creative type as being an author of grand ideas.

Wright is not a visionary, in the sense that he is not the author of a world view; he tailors his ideas according to the technical parameters of the simulation and the logic of games.

This sounded harsh to me at first, like Seabrook was saying that Wright should not be celebrated like Zola or Joyce, creative figures Seabrook name-drops at the beginning of the article. Maybe that is indeed what Seabrook intended.

But a bit later in the profile, this vision of Wright seems more nuanced.

When I asked Wright about Second Life, he said, "I think what you're going to see now on Second Life is people who will start to develop games--someone will invite other people to kick a soccer ball around, and it will go from there."

After this, I began to see how even if you granted Seabrook his point about visionary status, there was still something really great about Wright's world view. The guy really loves games. There's something about that that strikes me as very pure and admirable. Maybe he doesn't go on about the philosophical or psychological features of online life, but he sees ways to create games where people are and encourages people to explore and interact in those game spaces. I might just be interested in checking Second Life out if there was something like that there.

Halloween Movies: Enough With The Torture Porn

2006-10-29T10:25:00.001-05:00

At a Halloween party this past weekend, the conversation turned to horror movies. Our host had set up a video projector and was showing Halloween-appropriate movies in the background. I brought my copy of Dead Alive on dvd, and one friend had to cover her eyes on occasion because of that film's crazy gore. "I like scary movies, but I don't like gory movies," she said. I happen to love both, but if I had to pick one, I might chose gore.

Yet it was with some frustration that I read a story on the state of horror cinema in last week's Time magazine. Actually, I'm quite happy that in the past few years, horror has been in one of its periodic renaissances. I just wish the genre would get over its torture jones. I get it. It is kinda weird to get your kicks by watching people get chopped up. But I'm sick of movies like Saw and Hostel that revel in their ability to make audiences uncomfortable. It is much too self-conscious, and it is just one part of what gore is about.

Saturday Freenis: Winter Games

2006-10-28T05:43:00.000-04:00

Let this help you get ready for winter: Line Rider, a flash game at ThorGaming.com. It's not a traditional game, actually, more like a virtual physics toy. Maybe it invents the genre of sledding simulator? In any case, I find it terribly addictive. I never get tired of getting my little sledder up to speed and then launching him up a ramp into a ceiling directly above the jump. Take that!

I'd recommend looking around at some of the other games at ThorGaming. Lots of fun stuff there.

Tigers, You Break My Heart

2006-10-28T05:04:00.000-04:00

What happened? They defeated the Yankees, destroyed Oakland. We were riding high. Everyone back home was proud of Detroit. Then they look like a bunch of amateurs when it really matters. So many errors. I know it's just a game, but it feels like getting dumped.

Ghosts In The Machine

2006-10-26T12:34:00.000-04:00

The November, 2006, issue of the Atlantic has a feature about videogames called Sex, Lies, And Videogames, written by Jonathan Rauch. (What’s with the thoughtful magazines coming out with videogame pieces? Where are you, New Yorker?)

The article is an interesting take on the attempt to broaden the appeal of games, mainly by improving characters. Most of the article is taken up with a discussion of Façade, a conversation-based game, or what the article calls “interactive drama.” As a version of the “are games art?” discussion, this one has a lot more reporting and details than most, which is nice.

However, the big problem of games like Façade is the AI, which, right now, promises much more than it delivers. And I’m skeptical it will reach the levels necessary to make a good game anytime soon. The article is not available to non-subscribers, so I’ll pull some choice bits for examination after the jump.

Here’s the main thrust of the article:

In certain rarefied circles of AI academia and video-game design, people sometimes theorize about a computer program that would combine the graphical realism of a modern video game with the emotional impact of great art. “Interactive drama,” the concept is called. It might contain artificial people you could converse with, get to know, and love or hate. It might engineer dramatic situations, complete with revelations and reversals. Entering this world, you would feel as if you had been thrust into the midst of a soap opera or a reality-TV show.

Apart from a minor quibble—I think a number of games have already achieved the emotional impact of great art—I think this is a fine goal.

As Andrew Stern, one of the Façade designers, says in the story, “There’s no drama genre, there’s no comedy genre … What exists right now are action movies, basically.” More comedy, more drama, nothing necessarily wrong with that. Rauch continues:

If videogames seem inhuman, that is because they lack humans. Their esoteric syntax is an artifact of a stunted environment in which blasting someone’s head off is easy but talking to him is impossible.

I have to admit: I’m immediately struck by a defensive impulse. Why do we need deep drama from games? The background assumption seems to be that games are limited. Why can’t we let them be as they are and do what they do best? People don’t bemoan the lack of comedy in sculpture. Are we trying to shoehorn things into a medium in which they don’t fit? I’m inclined to side with people like Steven Johnson, who have argued that games can’t and shouldn’t be judged with the same criteria that we judge, say, novels.

But I recognize games often have humans undertaking actions in a world filled with other humans, and in that case we can link it with drama. And I want to see games evolve to be as broad, popular, and varied as possible, so let’s explore all possible game designs at this early stage in game history. If some games had realistic characters that responded to players, that would be swell. I’m all for “redefining the meaning of video-game ‘play,’” as the story puts it. (Although I still want to be able to race cars and blow heads off.)

I know more non-gamers would get into videogames if they could talk to the characters. I’ve been playing Façade over the last few days, and my wife snatched the computer away from me. Talking with characters is just what she wants in a game, and the simple interactions of Animal Crossing and Knights of the Old Republic only go so far with her.

The problem is, the conversations in Façade are very poor. When players aren’t being led by the nose by the characters of Façade asking yes or no questions, at best it seems like the characters in the game pick up on mood words like “angry” or exciting terms like “sex” to steer the conversation. Often, the meaning of conversations feels like a result of pattern seeking on the player’s part.

It seems to boil down to a problem of AI. If you’ve ever talked to a chat bot online, you’ll know what I mean. The most successful ones seem to be those that give ambiguous answers that you can imagine were related to your statement. And talks I have had with people who work in AI tend to be pessimistic, almost suggesting that even seeking a virtual intelligence that you can talk to is a silly task, and the goal of passing the Turing test an out-dated fantasy.

But I’m out of my depth here. Maybe I’ve just heard from the pessimists. Maybe there are revolutions just around the corner. Michael Mateas, another designer of Façade, predicts it will be “totally doable within twenty years.”

Ultimately, I’m a wishful pessimist when it comes to believable AI in videogames. As someone from Electronic Arts tells Rauch in the article:

A lot of people have worked on it. Every year we’re like, “We’re going to design incredibly intelligent, fluid humans who act realistically.” We try to take this huge step—and we fall all the way back down. At least [Mateas and Stern] ended up somewhere new. It doesn’t all work, but at least it is a step.

Who Needs the Xbox 360?

2006-10-23T05:25:00.000-04:00

If you've followed this blog, you may have noted that I've lusted after an Xbox 360. Well, no more. No, I haven't convinced the Mrs. that we should spend $400 on a new system. Instead, I got an even newer Xbox. A portable one even.

Well, honestly, this thing is a piece of junk. It makes Game and Watch look like a next-gen miracle. I found it in a box of Cocoa Krispies. It plays only one game, called Robo Blast. Robo Blast is a bad game. These odd little smudges move across the screen, and the d-pad controls a cursor. Place the cursor over a robot and push the button to pull the trigger. Beep! The robot disappears. Here's a closer look at one of the robots.

The game has four levels. The goal is to prevent the robots from making it across the screen. They speed up a higher levels. Let too many get across the screen, and it's game over. I'll be frank: this game is not fun. It is part of a series. Looks like there are four more "Xboxes" to get from Cocoa Krispies. They are 1) Motorcycle Madness, 2) Mystic Castle, 3) Disco Mania, 4) Space Blaster. Not one seems promising. At least they're portable.

Friday Freenis, Chess Edition

2006-10-20T05:21:00.000-04:00

I'm no good at chess. Too impatient. It is fun enough to play, so long as I'm challenging a fellow bumbler.

One thing I do like about chess, though, is the way the knights move about the squares with their L-shaped hopping. It must light up regions of my brain that enjoy seeking patterns in the world.

Troyis, an addictive puzzle game you can play for free online--although for only 15 minutes a day without ponying up some duckets for a full version--taps into this pattern-loving part of my brain. How about you? MG?

[Via Evolutionblog]

Why Is It Raining Rain Men?

2006-10-18T05:56:00.000-04:00

What causes autism? TV? Havin’ smart parents ‘n’ stuff? A couple of crazy new theories dropped this month to explain the spike in autism diagnoses we’ve been seeing over the past couple decades.

On his relatively new Discover-based blog, John Horgan covers the hypothesis that the qualities that make successful science-y types can lead to autistic children. In Slate, Gregg Easterbrook says TV might turn kids autistic.

As for the first idea, first reported in IEEE Spectrum, a British researcher hypothesizes that autism is an extreme version of a normal human trait called systematizing, the tendency to focus on grouped things and patterns in the world. Scientists and engineers have this trait, and they are meeting and mating more than ever, suggests Simon Baron-Cohen.

In the Slate piece, Gregg Easterbrook—who can always be counted on for a blood-pressure-raising crazy piece of science journalism—trumpets new research suggesting that watching TV before age three is linked autism. However, a quick glance at the new research reveals that it is a non-peer-reviewed work by some economists. This is not immediately damning, but raises those red flags. I’m no fan of Easterbrook, so I did appreciate the wild take-downs in the Slate comments. Actually, many of the comments rip into what seems like pretty shoddy research. I’m not surprised Easterbrook is giving high-profile attention to such problematic stuff. He’s a quite poor science writer.

For my part, I’m still not convinced that autism is one thing, biologically speaking. As I say in the comments section of Horgan’s blog:

Autism seems to be a bit of a trash-can diagnosis. I've often thought that so-called high-functioning autistic people were just extreme types of normal human ways of being. This would be consistent with the systematizer theory. However, some people classified as autistic seem to be so disabled, unable to talk, unable to live independently, that I wonder if their "disease" has different underlying causes than the higher functioning individuals. It is harder for me to see the more severely disabled folks as just being outliers in a normal distribution. This is a problem I have when trying to understand possible causes for all sorts of spectrum disorders.

Modern-Day Book Burners Ban Blankets

2006-10-16T18:53:00.000-04:00

The modern-day equivalent of book burners have struck again in the heart of conservative and ignorant America (a previous attack here). As reported at the Comics Reporter, and then picked up in local and blogospheric media, a library in Missouri has pulled from its shelves two graphic novels, Fun Home by Alison Bechdel and Blankets by Craig Thompson. I haven't read Fun Home, but Blankets is probably the most emotionally resonant graphic novel I have ever read. Of course readers will find drawings of boobies, a couple penises, teenage sexuality, sexual abuse, and a community of closed-minded religious conservatives in the book. They will also find a very moving and honest portrait of a young man growing up, and a thoughtful analysis of the way we make meaning in our lives through art.

Defenders of comic books and free expression generally have written to the library board in Marshall, Missouri, asking them to protect First Amendment rights. The letter also points out what seems like a no-brainer in this case: Blankets, at least, is not pornographic as the one complaining moron in Marshall claimed. Why closed-minded and conservative types will forever seek to deny aspects of the world around them is beyond me. To deal with difficult things that young adults face in their lives is noble, and literature that does this should be embraced by honest people everywhere.

The library has only temporarily removed the books from its shelves. I'm hoping they wisely decide to replace them. Stay tuned, as more meetings are expected this week.

[Thanks Marc!]

Aspidistra Update

2006-10-09T09:45:00.000-04:00

I'm swtiching The Aspidistra to Blogger Beta. This means my whole template got scrapped and I have to beautify the new one.

On top of that, real life demands my full attention this week, so expect the changes to roll out slowly. I hope to be back to normal by next weekend.

Big $$$ Ads Targeting Gamers?

2006-10-06T13:07:00.000-04:00

Last night I was watching TV, and I see this ad for Travelers Insurance. I know the snowball rolling out of control is an old staple in cartoons and such, but to a gamer like me images of a ball rolling around the city picking up chairs, people, lamposts, and cars calls to mind one thing: Katamari Damacy. Is it possible that this commercial is NOT based directly on that game?

Then on the train to work this morning I'm daydreaming and looking out the window, and a billboard at the Pelham station catches my eye: "Make Rupees" it says. The ad is for Bloomberg. Now, I know rupees are the name for currencies in some south Asian countries--and this is clearly a play on "Make Whopee"--but rupees are also the currency in the Legend of Zelda games.

So I make a connection. And I begin to think. Can these ads be targeted at gamers? Both Travelers and Bloomberg serve people with lots of money. Like, you know, grownups and such. Not gamers. If these ads are at all related to games, I think it is because the creative types who make the ads are in fact gamers.

Two Kinds of Art

2006-10-05T05:41:00.000-04:00

1UP.com has an interesting essay up about the evolution of videogame box art that manages to stay clear of the nostalgia-drenched tone that normally permeates such features. Judging a Game By Its Cover traces some interesting trends over the years, including the de-Japanification of box art that used to be routine when a Japanese game was released in the US. In the case of Ico, the US changes completely erased the lonely atmosphere of the Japanese and European versions. This example doesn't seem as much de-Japanification as dumbing-down to me.

Props are given to the US version of the Legend of Zelda art, while the universally derided Mega Man box is held up to ridicule yet again. This obviously got me thinking of my favorite art. When I was little I was quite captivated by box art from Imagic. Faxanadu for the NES was classy. You may have noticed that I am a fan of Golgo 13; this includes the box art for the first game (check out the sequel for a study in contrasts). Recently, I've enjoyed the art for Katamari Damacy and Pikmin 2 (although I think I like an alternate version more). Feel free to get nostalgic and list some favorites in the comments section.

A Connecting Principle Linked To The Invisible

2006-10-04T05:53:00.000-04:00

The end of last week found me investigating the large extra dimensions model of the universe for work. Then in my internet ramblings I stumbled as a Sally-come-lately into the cryptozoological phenomenon of rods. Next, I was paging through Carl Sagan’s The Demon Haunted World, again for work. Finally, yesterday morning on the train I read H.P. Lovecraft’s “From Beyond.” Clearly, I am in the midst of a full-blown synchronicitous event, directing my attention to considerations of the reality of things we can’t see. Join me in ruminations on unobservables after the jump.

The large extra dimensions model, or ADD model, is an attempt to understand the relative weakness of gravity compared to the other four fundamental forces. It posits extra dimensions, folded up very small, which are filled with gravity. We can’t see or feel these dimensions because they are so small, but the high-energy Large Hadron Collider may test the model when it starts up next year.
Rods, also known as skyfish, are cryptozoological entities that can only be seen with video cameras. Enthusiasts suggest that rods move too fast to be seen without these tools. The pictures are real, believe it or not. But critics make an utterly convincing argument, suggesting the rods are motion-blurred insects captured mid-flight with long exposure times.
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark is Sagan’s defense of scientific rationality against all forms of superstition, religious and otherwise. He charts the fine line good scientists must trace between skepticism and acceptance of new ideas.
We humans have a talent for deceiving ourselves. Skepticism must be a component of the explorer’s toolkit, or we will lose our way. There are wonders enough out there without our inventing any.
Lovecraft’s short story “From Beyond” involves a mad-scientist-type who invents a machine that stimulates dormant senses in human beings, allowing people to see normally-invisible entities in the world. Quoth the mad scientist:
You see them? You see them? You see the things that float and flop about you and through you every moment of your life? You see the creatures that form what men call the pure air and blue sky? Have I not succeeded in breaking down the barrier; have I not shown you worlds that no other living men have seen?

Interesting, no? But I’ll admit right away that I’m enough of a skeptic to doubt the reality of synchronicity. I would subscribe to a soft version of the idea, one in which we give synchronicitous events meaning, one in which our behavior patterns create a pattern in events in our lives. But a harder version of the theory, in which we tap into a dynamic that is bigger than ourselves and directs history, seems impossible to me.

Skepticism, as Sagan points out, is a necessary tool for people trying to understand the world. Too little, and people will end up thinking that blurry insects on video are a life form that is all around us but has never been detected in the thousands of years of recorded human history. Simple logical exercises fail these people in their desperate wish to believe (Where are the dead skyfish?).

Maybe they were sucked into extra dimensions?

Seriously, though, some very smart scientists do suggest the world is queerer than we had previously imagined, and may include invisible dimensions. I’m less comfortable saying these ideas are BS, but I’m still inclined to doubt. Sure, I accept other things no one has seen, like electrons, but those entities are based on innumerable experimental observations. Extra dimensions seem to pop up as predictions of equations nestled in often-untestable models. But maybe the LHC will test at least the large extra dimensions model. I just expect this model to fail.

So, considering this flood of skepticism and my doubt of deep synchronicity, I’m content to simply wonder why these events struck me now. Obviously, science deals with a lot of unobservable phenomena, so the fact that I work in a science-related field means I’m going to encounter a lot of this. As a committed materialist, I’m convinced my experience is just coincidence. But I think that, as is the case with Lovecraft, my materialism spawns a fascination with supernaturalism. Part of me wishes the world was a bit more magical than it seems to be, and yet another part of me delights in putting the smack down on magical thinking.

Free Rock!!!

2006-10-02T14:35:00.000-04:00

The Hold Steady, a rockin NYC band that is releasing a new album tomorrow, has made the songs from the album available for streaming here, for free! I thought their previous album was pretty good, but I am still really impressed by and loving these new songs. I detect something decidedly Springsteen-esque in the way these guys can make music that has so much energy and real emotion, and still have it be so accessible. Hey, I'm still in the midst of a months-long metal phase, and even I'm taking a break to get goosebumps to this album. The site was up on Saturday, down on Sunday, but seems to be working again today.

[UPDATE: By now (11/18/06) it looks like this streaming business is over. So sorry to see it go. If anyone comes by, they can at least see the Hold Steady rock out live on "Stuck Between Stations" on YouTube.]

The Simpsons is dead. Long live The Simpsons!

2006-09-27T22:17:00.000-04:00

I'm of the camp that holds that The Simpsons should have called it quits about 10 years ago. At some point, the show stopped working as the smartest sitcom ever and became a loosely connected series of winking pop-culture jokes. Still, I suppose even a tired Simpsons episode is still better than many shows out there.

Nevertheless, I'm dazzled by this website that provides online access to every episode. Relive the good ol' days with seasons one through seven, or so. You can even check out every Futurama episode here. The Scrubs-y pop culture riffing in Futurama doesn't grate on me the same way it does in The Simpsons, maybe because it had a nice run and then packed it in before it began a long, moldering decline.
[Thanks Marc!]

[UPDATE: Well, that didn't take long. Both sites are gone as of 10/2/06, after pressure from some bullying lawyers from Fox, apparently.]

I H8 Preorders--And I Have Serious Problems With Gamestop, Too

2006-09-25T19:29:00.000-04:00

I just spent 14 hours this weekend playing Okami. It was a beautiful little burst of gaming that reminded me of the marathon playing sessions of my youth. I started Friday evening, but I wish I could have started earlier because, from what I hear, I’m only halfway through this gorgeous game. According to Capcom, Okami was released on October 19th, and I was at the local Gamestop, ready to get it then. But Gamestop, really the only option in my area for day-of-release purchases, told me they wouldn’t have it until the 20th. No biggie, I thought. Shipping problems, maybe. So I returned on the 20th, and it was then that I faced the beast of Gamestop idiocy head-on.

“I’d like Okami, please,” I tell the clerk.
“Okay,” he says, and begins bending down to retrieve it from behind the counter.
“Did you preorder?” asks the manager, standing nearby.
“No,” I say.
“Then you can’t have it yet,” the manager says, making no eye contact.
“When can I get it?”
“Two days.”
“So you have it but I can’t get it because I didn’t preorder?”
Silence.
“Can I preorder it now, then?”
“No, we’re not taking any orders, you have to wait until Friday.”

I walk out, surprisingly mad. Then I return on Friday, get the game, and hear a different Gamestop monkey pushing every kind of preorder on customers in line in front of me. Just bought Madden ’07, maybe you’d like to preorder Scarface? Or, how about rumors that Gamestops in Hawaii are asking for $50 in trade-ins (at least a few games) to preorder a PS3? This place is so fantastically committed to locking up customers, taking advantage of their excitement about games and forcing consumers into stupid arrangements. I’d love to purchase games somewhere else, but outside of Gamestop and EB Games, I don’t have many choices.

Billy Madison Declares This Friday Freenis "Clack-tastic"

2006-09-01T05:50:00.000-04:00

Jay Is Games has been running a competition for flash puzzle games and they have just announced a winner. It is a truly engrossing and quite pretty game called Clack, designed by one Sean of Lousiana. I suggest jumping in and experimenting to figure out how it is played. I actually stayed up past my bedtime last night after getting hooked on this game.

Make sure to check out the other entries in the competition, which you can access by mousing over the lower part of the window on this page. There's lots of fun to be had, and it makes me wish I could make games instead of just being a writing parasite.

Nap Time for Aspy

2006-08-31T12:08:00.000-04:00

This week is a busy one. I'm preparing for a two-week vacation to start next week, so work has been nutz. It's time to announce a blog break. I might throw up a bit of freenis tomorrow, but don't expect any real posts until the third week of September. I think I'm going to miss you, Aspy. Sleep well.

You Don't Know Me

2006-08-29T11:27:00.000-04:00

I'm busy this week. (Definitely too busy for long or thoughtful posts.) Busy and stressed. This makes me anxious, and anxiety makes me depressed. I'm glad I can count on the books I read to let me know I'm not alone, or rather, that I am alone and you are too. Together in our aloneness.

From Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession by Janet Malcolm, a writer I admire very much.

The phenomenon of transference—how we all invent each other according to early blueprints—was Freud’s most original and radical discovery. The idea of infant sexuality and of the Oedipal complex can be accepted with a good deal more equanimity than the idea that the most precious and inviolate of entities—personal relations—is actually a messy jangle of misapprehensions, at best an uneasy truce between powerful solitary fantasy systems. Even (or especially) romantic love is fundamentally solitary, and has at its core a profound impersonality. The concept of transference at once destroys faith in personal relations and explains why they are tragic: we cannot know each other. We must grope around for each other through a dense thicket of absent others. We cannot see each other plain. A horrible kind of predestination hovers over each new attachment we form. “Only connect,” E.M. Forster proposed. “Only we can’t,” the psychoanalyst knows.

New Book For Religious Ignoramuses

2006-08-25T10:35:00.000-04:00

Jonathan Wells, a Moonie tool in the religious conservatives’ war on science, has written a new, ridiculous, and quite retarded book about evolution. Wells is a notorious creationist ideologue who used Moonie funding to attend graduate school in biology, earn a PhD, and then use those credentials to bash evolution. (Read that link above, my developmental biologist friends. Just be ready for a spike in blood pressure. And yes, the “Father” he refers to is Sun Myung Moon.)

Wells’s previous book, Icons of Evolution, is a well-refuted collection of misrepresentations and outright lies that is endlessly parroted in creationist/fundie/intelligent design arguments. Panda’s Thumb is organizing a smackdown of the new book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design. PZ Myers has suggested a google bombing campaign, so here’s Apsy’s volley in the war.

Friday Flash Freenis: Ikaruga!

2006-08-25T05:50:00.000-04:00

If you checked out the last free games post, you probably discovered that many flash games are a little on the dull side. But this week at Kotaku I found a link to a great flash version of the first boss fight from Ikaruga. As a game it's short, but also very impressive for a free flash game. It's all there: lots of bullets and polarity flipping.

I don't think the controls are in English. It should be easy to figure out if you've played Ikaruga before. Z: shoot. X: switch ship polarity. C: Energy release special attack. The arrow keys move your ship. Polarity flipping lets you absorb bullets that are the same color as your ship and charge your energy attack, but being the opposite color of your enemy increases your firepower against it. You may want to reduce the screen quality, even to its lowest setting, to prevent some slow-down and play the game at something like the real speed.

I'd love to see more flash versions of levels from Ikaruga. That game is one of the best Gamecube games and a contender for best space shooter of all time. It is certainly one of the most beautiful games ever. Long live shmups!

Brain Age: I Don't Believe The Hype

2006-08-23T06:40:00.000-04:00

This week at the Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival, the UK games magazine Edge and the gave their Edge Award to the DS game Brain Age. The award is intended to recognize innovative games that, according to the awards panel, "celebrated the willingness to aim higher and try something new."

Brain Age was going up against some tough competition, and I am surprised it won. I really don’t think Brain Age is that impressive a game. It’s a mini-games collection wrapped up in a lab coat. My biggest gripe, though, is that it claims to test and improve your mental abilities in ways other games don’t. It certainly makes these tests more obvious and explicit, but a lot of games are mentally challenging and a lot more fun to play.

Consider grown-up games, explore the dubious claims, and meet the competition, all after the jump.

All considered, I’m glad that a DS game won. My months-long love affair with the DS cooled this summer, but we’re still good friends. If you talked to me in April, I would have raved about innovative games like surgery puzzler Trauma Center: Under the Knife and the spazz-tacular dating-themed minigames collection Feel the Magic: XY/XX. I looked forward to series of quirky and fun games on the DS.

Brain Age, and its sillier cousin Big Brain Academy, seem to fit into this quirky category, yet even on first impression the hype surrounding these games made me skeptical. Overall, I applaud Nintendo for aggressively pushing what they call their Touch Generations games. I’m happy to see engaging games that don’t stress fighting and competition, and I think it’s great to see games being marketed to, and appealing to, people outside of the normal gamer demographic. But Brain Age in particular claims to do more than appeal to pacifistic gamers of all ages. It claims to make you smarter. And I claim that is BS on the DS (sorry, couldn’t resist).

We all know as we grow older our bodies change and it becomes important to regularly exercise to maintain health and fitness. Our brain is no different. "Use it or lose it," as the adage goes. New research indicates mental acuity may be strengthened, like muscles, with brain exercises.

That's where Brain Age comes in.

Dr. Elizabeth Zelinski, dean and executive director of University of Southern California’s Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, says games like Brain Age can help keep older generations of Americans’ minds active. “Americans can do a great deal to maintain and even improve their mental abilities,” Zelinski explains. “Aging is about taking on new challenges for our minds. Nintendo’s Brain Age is a great way to do that.”

So says one Brain Age website. I’ll issue a disclaimer here: I don’t know the research that well in this area. I’ve heard many times that staying mentally active helps older people fight age-related declines in cognition. I’m prepared generally to accept Brain Age’s claim. However, I don’t think Brain Age is very special in this regard. I think a lot of games could help people “flex their mental muscles.”

As Nintendo claims in the Brain Age promotional text: “Solving simple math and logic problems quickly, and reading aloud, have been proven to be effective methods of [stimulating your brain].” Fine. But apart from reading aloud, most good games ask players to solve simple math and logic problems. It happens every time they run through a corridor in a Halo 2 team deathmatch, guns blazing, while they quickly count up how many players the see from their team, their opponents’ team, and they calculate a strategy based on those numbers. And fragging doodz is a lot more fun than, say, doing a math problem on a game console.

One day I’ll get around to reading Steven Johnson’s Everything Bad Is Good For You (read a positive review here). I’ve had some personal issues holding me back (including envy), but I think I’ll probably agree with most of his arguments. In his own words (I think) from amazon.com:

In general, my argument is that over the past thirty years, the popular culture has grown increasingly demanding in terms of the mental labor you have to do to make sense of it: the number of puzzles you have to solve to complete a video game, the number of separate plots you have to keep track of to follow your average television show, and so on.

Agreed. But Johnson is talking about a game like The Sims, not some specially designed mental gymnasium.

Overall, I think Brain Age rests on a puffed-up gimmick. As games, both Brain Age and Big Brain Academy are just okay. I think they’re good for folks who like minigames, but Nintendo makes some much better minigame collections. They are probably also good if they appeal to people who didn’t think they liked videogames.

But if you accept that the mental exercise is a gimmick, Brain Age is just not that innovative. I personally find it a touch dull as a game. I can’t help but wonder if giving the award to Brain Age was an attempt to stand up for games in a way, to show they are not all about beating up prostitutes or decapitating foes with point-blank shotgun blasts. Brain Age is positively opposed to this image of games. It is clean and nice and already has swirls of media hype around it claiming it makes you smarter. Might the award be an appeal to the non-gaming population (including politicians) to say, see, we value games that are much different than those that support your prejudices?

Why else overlook some of the seriously awesome games that were in the running for the Edge Award? Of the eight nominees, I’ve played six: Brain Age, Dragon Quest VIII, Electroplankton, Indigo Prophecy, Guitar Hero, and Killer 7. Most of these are innovative, but they might not stand out to someone who thinks games are just antisocial boys’ toys. And none of them come pre-packaged with positive press hype about making you healthier.

Five of those six I think are awesome games. I’ll grant that Dragon Quest was not particularly innovative, just very well made. And if you wanted to get technical, we can point to Guitar Freaks and say Guitar Hero, while ginormously sweet, wasn’t exactly trying something new.

Personally, my pick of those I’ve played is Electroplankton. Unprecedented gameplay that many gamers even refused to recognize as gameplay. Perfectly fit to the DS platform with excellent use of the touchscreen. And a simply beautiful graphical style. I wouldn’t call Electroplanton the best game of the last year—I love you SotC!—but for me the game was refreshing and totally original. I’d love to see an Electroplankton sequel (with a save feature!) before I see the third brain training game. Based on the hype, though, I doubt that will happen.

Now The Hobbit's A Deformed Human Again

2006-08-21T10:47:00.000-04:00

A story from The Sunday Times in Britain covers new research on the Hobbit, the hominin discovered a couple years ago in Indonesia that was orginally claimed to be a new species of Homo. The research, to be published in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences, claims the bones, previously categorized as a new species related to Homo erectus (called Homo floresiensis), are really a Homo sapiens that suffered some form of microcephallic disorder.

The PNAS research paper doesn't seem to be available yet, so there hasn't be too much online commentary. But I wonder: can anything short of a genetic analysis settle this question definitively? If there are morphological characteristics that are distinctly sapiens or erectus, why haven't they resolved this issue yet?

[UPDATE 8/21: News reports are starting to appear. Check out NYT.]
[UPDATE 8/23: The paper is finally available. Get the pdf here.]

After the break, read the PNAS announcement that followed the Times story.

Homo floresiensis Remains Appear to Be Homo sapiens

A skeleton uncovered in Indonesia in 2004 does not represent a separate hominin species but is a Homo sapiens individual who had developmental deformities, researchers report. In 2004, skeletal material was discovered in Liang Bua Cave on the Indonesian island of Flores. One nearly complete specimen’s odd shape and small skull led some researchers to believe that these remains were from a distinct hominin species. An early interpretation was that Homo erectus reached Flores 840,000 years ago and, living in isolation, evolved to a species distinct from Homo sapiens, termed Homo floresiensis. A joint Indonesian, Australian, and U.S. research team questioned this interpretation and showed that the remains are of a H. sapiens and not a distinct species. Geographically, Flores had at least two migrations of ancient elephants from nearby islands, making it highly unlikely that hominids arrived only once and evolved in isolation. Also, the island was not large enough to have supported isolated hunter-gatherers with a population adequate enough to maintain genetic diversity for long-term survival, the team says. The Liang Bua skeletons’ structures appear to fall within the range of H. sapiens variation. The only known skull simply had signs of a developmental abnormality, including microcephaly, according to the researchers.

Article: “Pygmoid Australomelanesian Homo sapiens skeletal remains from Liang Bua, Flores: Population affinities and pathological abnormalities” by T. Jacob, E. Indriati, R. P. Soejono, K. Hsü, D. W. Frayer, R. B. Eckhardt, A. J. Kuperavage, A. Thorne, and M. Henneberg

A Little More Freenis

2006-08-17T18:31:00.000-04:00

You know I like free games. Here are some links to free games that have been floating through those internet tubes this week. I've caught them (mainly at Kotaku) and brought them to you, not necessarily because they're great, though they're pretty alright, but because they are free, and free makes okay turn good and crap turn fine.

Wolfenstein in 5K!

Ropin' monsters, cowboy style!

Pitfall meets me in 8th grade!

The middle one can also be found as one of many freetastic flash games at Jay is Games, a super awesome time waster of a site that I recommend to all my non-traditionally employed amigos (you know who you are). You might also want to check out a list of 101 free games from 1up.com from earlier this year. I hate my exposed cubicle!

I ♥ Werner Herzog

2006-08-16T05:20:00.000-04:00

No one I know who has seen Grizzly Man has found it less than interesting. Part of the appeal is surely the character of Timothy Treadwell: his spacey, mystical outlook on life, the glimmers of an everyday American that peek out from beneath his bizarre personality and lifestyle, and the tragic irony of his death.

Yet what sticks with me even more than Treadwell is the character of filmmaker Werner Herzog, in particular his comments about his disagreements with Treadwell’s view of nature. As Herzog says in the only lines in the movie to stay with me:

What haunts me is that in all the faces of all the bears that Treadwell ever filmed, I discover no kinship, no understanding, no mercy. I see only the overwhelming indifference of nature. To me there’s not such a thing as the secret world of the bears. And this blank stare speaks only of a half-bored interest in food.

This weekend, I watched a documentary about one of Herzog’s films and found him speaking again and at length about merciless nature. I can’t but love a man who speaks of nature’s “harmony of overwhelming and collective murder.” Please do read on.

The documentary I saw is called Burden of Dreams, and it follows Herzog as he made his movie Fitzcarraldo in the early 1980s. Fitzcarraldo tells the story of a man at the beginning of the 20th century who is obsessed with opera and who dreams of building an opera house in Iquitos, a city in the jungles of Peru. To fund the construction, he attempts to harvest rubber from trees in a remote part of the jungle. To get to the trees, he drags an enormous steamship over a hill between two rivers.

Herzog insisted on enacting the scene for real in order to film it. No models. It is no surprise that dragging an enormous boat over a muddy hill in the jungle is not easy, no matter if it is 1901 or 1981. Burden of Dreams documents Herzog’s frustration as he deals with the elements, labor, and engineering challenges in steamy, remote jungle locations.

Speaking of the jungle, Herzog at one point in the documentary launches into a rambling monologue that makes the views he expressed in Grizzly Man seem reserved. Yet when I heard Herzog speak it was like hearing a reflection of my own thoughts and feelings. Me an’ Herzog are on the same page re: animals and nature, I think. Here is my transcription of Herzog’s speech:
(It is 10 times better to see his tired, sad eyes and hear his Teutonic accent and flat delivery as he speaks)

Of course, we are challenging nature itself and it hits back. It just hits back, that’s all. That’s grandiose about it and we have to accept it.

Kinski always says it’s full of erotic elements. I don’t see it so much as erotic. I see it more as obscenity. It’s just—nature here is violent, base. I wouldn’t see it as anything erotical. I see fornication and asphyxiation and choking, fighting for survival and growing and just rotting away.

Of course, there is a lot of misery, but it is the same misery that is all around us. The trees here are in misery and the birds are in misery. I don’t think they sing. They just screech in pain.

It’s an unfinished country. It’s prehistorical. The only thing that’s lacking is the dinosaurs here. It’s like a curse hanging on the entire landscape and whoever goes too deep into this has his share of that curse. So we are cursed with what we are doing here.

It is a land that God—if he existed—has created in anger. It is the only land where creation is unfinished yet. Taking a close look at what is around us, there is a sort of harmony. It is the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder.

And we, in comparison to the articulate vileness and baseness and obscenity of all this jungle, we, in comparison to that enormous articulation, we only sound and look like badly pronounced and half-finished sentences out of a stupid suburban novel, a cheap novel. And we have to become humble in front of this overwhelming misery and overwhelming fornication, overwhelming growth and overwhelming lack of order. Even the stars up in the sky look like a mess. There is no harmony in the universe. We have to get acquainted to this idea that there is no real harmony as we have conceived it.

But when I say this, I say this all full of admiration for the jungle. It’s not that I hate it. I love it. I love it very much. But I love it against my better judgment.

Getting Serious About Games

2006-08-14T18:19:00.000-04:00

All games are supposed to be fun. But some games are also designed to teach something, whether it's how to kill and be killed for Uncle Sam in America's Army, or how to be a good capitalist and get paid in Lemonade Stand. These so-called serious games get a good overview in the form of a roundtable discussion in the September 2006 issue of Harper's. In an article called "Grand Theft Education: Literacy in the Age of Video Games," some teachers, writers, and game-world luminaries like Raph Koster and Steven Johnson discuss how games might teach reading and writing. It's got it's crazy bits, but over all it is a good introduction to a more intellectual side of gaming.

Take your medicine after the jump.

The article is not online yet, so I'll just pull out a few of the more interesting bits. The panelists start talking about the easy stuff: how games can teach grammar, spelling, and the like. As Harper's editor and discussion moderator Bill Wasik notes, "Rote learning is where video games would naturally excell." I was glad to see Koster, game designer and author of A Theory of Fun, give a nod to Typing of the Dead, the most ill typing tutor ever.

Koster says one thing games can bring to pedagogy is the concept of a "magic circle," a space in which play and experiment is encouraged and the pressure to succeed is reduced. The goal would be to make it clear that failure was okay, because learners would be working in a game world, not the real world.

Yet all participants acknowledge that games have a harder time teaching things like argument and plot. Koster and Johnson suggest that writing game FAQs and guides is one way games can teach logical, sequential thinking, but obviously this is somewhat outside of games proper.

Games also suffer compared to literature in teaching things like plot construction. Yet I was suprised and happy to see a very keyed-in teacher named Jane Avrich from St. Ann's School in Brooklyn bring up Indigo Prophecy as a game that might teach narrative structures in terms of a writer's (and story character's) choices.

But, as Koster points out, many "games aren't trying to teach you to assemble stories; they're trying to give you the story experience." He adds that games have trouble with complex story elements. "All nuance is lost in games," he says, because games depend so much on plot over something like rich characterization. Fair enough point. But Johnson throws out the baby when he states, "I doubt that video games are capable of dealing with psychological depth at all." What? Check out my recent post on stories in games for my feelings about this.

The discussion wraps up with the age-old are-games-art? discussion. If you've followed this debate elsewhere, you'll know it will probably go nowhere and get really frustrating along the way. Moderator Wasik drops some weird statements that no one follows up on ("insofar as video games might soon rise to a kind of art, they will do so by changing the nature of art itself"; "It seems then, as if video games might serve ideas better than they will serve art").

But although the article ends on a very positive note by writer and teacher Thomas De Zengotita, he mixes it with a silly dig at games.

Everyone in the overdeveloped world will have the tools they need to create this amazing stuff, whether it be blogs or films or games. None of it will rise to the peaks that we associate with names like Joyce or Proust, but a great deal of it will be fantastic ... Everyone will be an artist, but the price is that no one will be a great artist.

Wait, this has been a really interesting discussion about games that takes them seriously and gets deep without getting too obnoxious, so why is it ending with this obnoxious statement? Does Joyce need defending against games? Give me Koster again.

America Is Full Of Religious Idiots

2006-08-11T18:34:00.000-04:00

Positive Posting Week is ending a couple of days early. Here’s why: some just-released research from the journal Science about the acceptance of evolution in a number of countries. You may need to scroll down a bit to find our enlightened nation.

Witness the crumbling of Positive Posting after the break.

Here's a bit more detail on some of the countries involved, showing degrees of certainty. Allowing that some religious fundies consider evolution only "probably false" rather than "definitiely false" does little to change my mind: they are wrong either way.

Shit. Where do I start? I’m not going to get in to anything elaborate. I just don't have the energy. Read full coverage at Pharyngula or Panda's Thumb. At Pharyngula, PZ Myers points out some interesting discussion in the research about the politicization of science in the U.S.

You know, I'm sick of going over these sorts of things again and again. I'll just put up a quote from Richard Dawkins that gets a lot of religious people mad. Dawkins can say some things that seem designed simply to provoke religious people, but this quote is 100 percent true. If fundies get hurt feelings, that's their problem. They should stop being such ignorant fools.

It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that).

For Tappie, In Praise of Mysterious Beasts

2006-08-11T05:46:00.000-04:00

On Monday, I saw TV news reports claiming that a manatee was swimming up the Hudson River. The New York Times also covered the story on Monday (probably where the TV news got their info), although a little research turned up smaller, local papers that were covering the story last week.

Manatees are wonderful creatures, not so much because they seem all blissed-out and gentle, but because I find them exotic and a bit mysterious. A big part of this is that manatees have been considered a possible cause of mermaid sightings among early colonial-period sailors.

Fortunately for grown-up monster nuts like me, our NY manatee, which is being called "Tappie" for the Tappan Zee Bridge that spans the river, is even a bit mysterious because no one has taken a picture of it yet. A follow-up “color” story in the Times certainly included a lot of hand-waving in its coverage as to what Tappie actually is, although I can’t tell if this was to inflate the mystery or to cover journalistic behind.

More on the wonderful world of monster-hunting after the jump.

Creatures like manatees still excite the 11-year-old in me precisely because they connect the familiar world of zoology with the more exciting world of cryptozoology (the study of creatures whose existence is uncertain). Please, if you have anything like that monster-loving kid in you, check out the super-excellent cryptozoology blog Cryptomundo.

Mermaids were never exciting monsters for me, but I did like the angle that we might have an explanation for what caused sightings: Mermaid sightings weren't total fantasy, they were a combination of human imagination and this exotic creature. Manatees are like lenticular clouds that way.

Yet I still wish all those monsters that fascinated me in my youth were real: aliens (of course), Bigfoot, the Yeti, the Loch Ness Monster, the Jersey Devil, the Dover Demon, Champ, Ogopogo. That’s just off the top of my head. The list could go on if I just refreshed the memory some with Google.

Yes, I also like vampires, ghosts, wolfmen, and the like, but even as a kid they seemed too supernatural to me. I think it was because they are all very people-like. I knew people and didn’t see any way they could become vampires or ghosts. I preferred monsters that hovered just at the edges of biological understanding. Maybe if we just explored the world a bit more we could find these beasts, I hoped.

So manatees still excite me because they are emblems of a time when the world was full of monsters, when the Americas seemed to hold beasts to terrify the European imagination. And they keep me in touch with that boy who just wanted life to be a little more exciting and mysterious than it seemed to be shaping up to be.

It's Yours To Do With What You Like!

2006-08-09T09:28:00.000-04:00

This past weekend I spent more than an hour paralyzed in a book store. I had a $50 gift certificate to spend. I had in hand just one book that I knew I wanted. Otherwise, I spent time holding and replacing three others that I just kinda wanted. I ended up leaving with nothing.

I’ll be back, of course. This time with a plan, knowing what I’ll get. And I’ll definitely get that one book I knew I wanted: CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, by George Saunders.

I discovered Saunders a few years ago after one of his stories, “Jon,” was published in the New Yorker. It is the best story I have ever read in the New Yorker, and one of the most exciting short stories that I have read in years. I’ll paste an introductory section after the jump, and link to a full version.

The New Yorker used to have a link to the story up, but it no longer works. Unfortunately, the only online version I could find is in a terrible format for reading. If you’re interested, I’d recommend copying the text and pasting it into a word processor for easier reading. Here’s the teaser:

Jon
By George Saunders

Back in the time of which I am speaking, due to our Coördinators had mandated us, we had all seen that educational video of "It's Yours to Do With What You Like!" in which teens like ourselfs speak on the healthy benefits of getting off by oneself and doing what one feels like in terms of self-touching, which what we learned from that video was, there is nothing wrong with self-touching, because love is a mystery but the mechanics of love need not be, so go off alone, see what is up, with you and your relation to your own gonads, and the main thing is, just have fun, feeling no shame!

And then nightfall would fall and our facility would fill with the sounds of quiet fast breathing from inside our Privacy Tarps as we all experimented per the techniques taught us in "It's Yours to Do With What You Like!" and what do you suspect, you had better make sure that that little gap between the main wall and the sliding wall that slides out to make your Gender Areas is like really really small. Which guess what, it wasn't.

That is all what I am saying.

Also all what I am saying is, who could blame Josh for noting that gap and squeezing through it snakelike in just his Old Navy boxers that Old Navy gave us to wear for gratis, plus who could blame Ruthie for leaving her Velcro knowingly un-Velcroed? Which soon all the rest of us heard them doing what the rest of us so badly wanted to be doing, only we, being more mindful of the rules than them, just laid there doing the self-stuff from the video, listening to Ruth and Josh really doing it for real, which believe me, even that was pretty fun.

And when Josh came back next morning so happy he was crying, that was a further blow to our morality, because why did our Coördinators not catch him on their supposedly nighttime monitors? In all of our hearts was the thought of, O.K., we thought you said no boy-and-girl stuff, and yet here is Josh, with his Old Navy boxers and a hickey on his waist, and none of you guys is even saying boo?

Because I for one wanted to do right, I did not want to sneak through that gap, I wanted to wed someone when old enough (I will soon tell who) and relocate to the appropriate facility in terms of demographics, namely Young Marrieds, such as Scranton, PA, or Mobile, AL, and then along comes Josh doing Ruthie with imperity, and no one is punished, and soon the miracle of birth results and all our Coördinators, even Mr. Delacourt, are bringing Baby Amber stuffed animals? At which point every cell or chromosome or whatever it was in my gonads that had been holding their breaths was suddenly like, Dude, slide through that gap no matter how bad it hurts, squat outside Carolyn's Privacy Tarp whispering, Carolyn, it's me, please un-Velcro your Privacy opening!

Then came the final straw that broke the back of my saying no to my gonads, which was I dreamed I was that black dude on MTV's "Hot and Spicy Christmas" (around like Location Indicator 34412, if you want to check it out) and Carolyn was the oiled-up white chick, and we were trying to earn the Island Vacation by miming through the ten Hot 'n' Nasty Positions before the end of "We Three Kings," only then, sadly, during Her on Top, Thumb in Mouth, her Elf Cap fell off, and as the Loser Buzzer sounded she bent low to me, saying, Oh, Jon, I wish we did not have to do this for fake in front of hundreds of kids on Spring Break doing the wave but instead could do it for real with just each other in private.

And then she kissed me with a kiss I can only describe as melting.

So imagine that is you, you are a healthy young dude who has been self-practicing all those months, and you wake from that dream of a hot chick giving you a melting kiss, and that same hot chick is laying or lying just on the other side of the sliding wall, and meanwhile in the very next Privacy Tarp is that sleeping dude Josh, who a few weeks before a baby was born to the girl he had recently did it with, and nothing bad happened to them, except now Mr. Slippen sometimes let them sleep in.

What would you do?

Seriously. Read more here.

Tell Me A Story

2006-08-07T19:07:00.000-04:00

After last week’s grumpathon, I’ve decided that this week will be Positive Posting Week. I will not put up snark. I will not belittle. I will not bitch, whine, or tease. Blogs are already way too full of that… oops. I’m just not going to do it.

I’m going to kick off PPW with a post celebrating what on other days and in other moods I might disdain: story and plot in videogames. My thumbs have been known to grow twitchy during many a cutscene; it is so easy to skip ahead with “start” or “A.” I’ve played and enjoyed four Castlevania games in the last five years without knowing what the hell was going on (20th anniversary, BTW).

Yet some blog comments from David Jaffe, director of the excellent God of War, from a couple weeks back are really what’ve focused my thinking on this. Jaffe is sick of making games with stories. (His blog seems to be gone; here’s a link to coverage of his blog post.)

I’m sympathetic to many of his arguments, but in accordance with my decree of positiveness, I’ll skip right to the glories of game stories: Stories enrich many game experiences and they are the only way games can connect to our most complex and human emotions.

Clearly not all games need stories. Many board games don’t have stories. Most puzzle games don’t. But even games that are strong on simple, self-explanatory gameplay can benefit from including some story. Take Katamari Damacy, for example. This game certainly could have existed without context. You coulda been just a big ball rollin’ up littler things. But adding the story about the King of All Cosmos, who breaks the stars in a drunken accident, and having players’ missions be to collect enough stuff to make new stars ratchets the craziness up to more giddy levels.

I would even argue that simply giving games context, like putting the katamari on Earth, creates story. Human brains crave narrative and stories to contextualize experience. If a game doesn’t spoon feed it to us, we’ll fill it in if only hazily. Only very abstract puzzle games might be said to be without story, in my opinion.

But I also want to lavish praise on Shadow of the Colossus, a game that provided the single most profound experience I’ve had with a videogame. I’ve played games that were more exciting. I’ve played games that were more challenging. But I don’t think I’ve played a game that was more thought provoking. And I know I’ve never played a game that moved me, as Shadow did, before.

Shadow of the Colossus is an atmospheric game, suffused with mystery and dread, about a young man killing massive beasts in an attempt to bring a dead woman back to life. His mission is desperate. As players, we’re not even sure if the woman can be saved. The beasts we kill are magnificent. The first time I brought one crashing to the ground I felt that familiar sense of triumph. Besting enemies in games does that reliably. But I felt something new: a sense of regret, of real sadness. Maybe this quest isn’t all for good, I thought. What if my character is being tricked? What if I’m making a devil’s bargain?

Such feelings are rare in games, and they came about because of story. It helped that the land in Shadow of the Colossus was beautiful and living yet empty, making the player feel isolated. But I think all of these touches that create atmosphere are part of the story.

The story was also nestled in the rich history of game narratives. I was saving the princess—I hoped—but feeling less heroic about it than ever before.

This essay is really a plea in favor of moderation. As much as I love hearing game makers dedicate themselves to thinking about gameplay first and foremost, I also think we should remember the power of story. Let’s not cut off Mario’s big bulbous nose to spite his face. He may still platform just as well without a story, but where would we be without Peach, one of the archetypal princesses in need of rescue?

Well, this was a good, positive start. Maybe I’ll declare next week Short Post/No Jumps Week, to honor one of Mrs. Comstock’s requests.

But How Do You Feel? Part 2: The Kookiness of Qualitative Calculations

2006-08-05T07:02:00.000-04:00

Think the 102ºF temperature in Queens on Wednesday was hot? Well, that may have been the actual temperature but my weatherman told me it really “felt like” it was 115ºF.

I hate TV weather forecasts. Like most people, I watch them almost every day so I know what to wear, but a few things about them enrage me all out of proportion. 1) Endless talk about “what the temperature should be today” when they mean average. 2) Hyping weather extremes; how predicted snowfalls, for example, become less and less as a storm nears. 3) Eyewitness weather. If we’re getting lots of rain or snow, I can see it from my window. You don’t need to hustle your reporters to seven local communities to show me the weather there.

And, the subject of this post, 4) Wind chills and heat indices. That is, “what it feels like,” according to the weather folks. These distortions of the temperature just drive me fucking crazy. I suppose they are just a special case of point 2, but they are so common and so aggravating, that I am giving them their own special category.

Smack the link for the smackdown. GRRRRR!

I understand the point of these hand-waving distortions of the outside temperature. Both are designed to capture some of the effects related to the dynamism of the weather system, particularly as it relates to moisture. When the cold wind blows, it strips away the insulating layer of air that surrounds us, bringing new, cold air into contact with our skin; the wind also speeds up evaporative cooling. When the heat that surrounds us is extra-steamy, the humidity slows down that evaporative cooling.

But the fact remains that they don’t change the objective temperature. The wind can whip up as high as it wants, but that air is the same temperature as it would be if it was still. Really, wind chill is an indicator of rate of heat loss; windy days just reduce the temperatures of things faster. But those things can never go below the ambient temp. Likewise, humidity doesn’t change the air temperature when it is hot, it just slows down how your body cools itself.

My biggest gripe is that these measures are so subjective. Let’s say it is 15ºF outside. Like anyone, I cringe when the teeth of a cold blast of air bite into my cheeks and they feel like they are in 0ºF weather. But maybe then the gust dies down, and my cheeks feel—still cold, mind you—a bit better. Then maybe the clouds part, and the sun warms my face, and I find it “feels like” it is warmer than the actual air temperature. Yet the only measure of subjectivity we gravitate to is the scary extreme one.

My second complaint is that these measures are unnecessary. When the temperature is either really hot or really cold, a reading of the air temperature contains enough information. Pulling down the low or pushing up the high doesn’t really matter. In the above example, 15ºF is still damn cold. No one should go into that weather without some attention to protecting themselves against it. Dramatizing the cold by making it seem colder helps no one.

Finally, I simply hate that drama, the self-importance of the weatherman who tells you that, although it is 95ºF, [now looking into the camera with concern in his eyes and authority in his tone] it really feels like it is 100ºF. So be careful out there, in that complicated world that has just been simplified into a hype-tastic extreme.

[/grumpy old man mode]