Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life?
Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against lonliness and methamphetamine addiction in a quiet American suburb.
An essay by Greg Costikyan about the difference between a review and a critique and why the game industry needs more critics and fewer reviewers.
A review is a buyer’s guide. It exists to tell you about some new product that you can buy, and whether you should or should not buy it. A good review goes beyond that, and suggests who should buy it, since not everyone enjoys everything. (E.g., A romance novel may be very fine of its kind, but is quite unlikely to appeal to me, since it is not a genre I enjoy.)
Thus, Ebert is, ultimately, a reviewer; the net result of his discussion of a work is a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Mind you, he is also an informed and intelligent watcher of film, and his discussion of a movie frequently veers in the direction of criticism; but he is not being paid to write critical works. Pauline Kael was.
Criticism is an informed discussion, by an intelligent and knowledgeable observer of a medium, of the merits and importance (or lack thereof) of a particular work. Criticism isn’t intended to help the reader decide whether or not to plunk down money on something; some readers’ purchase decisions may be influenced, but guiding their decisions is not the purpose of the critical work. Criticism is, in a sense merely “writing about” — about art, about dance, about theater, about writing, about a game–about any particular work of art. How a critical piece addresses a work, and what approach it takes, may vary widely from critic to critic, and from work to work.
This is a pretty cool photo of the lunar eclipse from last night.
This is the prototype for the soul of The Sims, which Will Wright wrote on January 23, 1997.
I had just started working at the Maxis Core Technology Group on “Project X” aka “Dollhouse”, and Will Wright brought this code in one morning, to demonstrate his design for the motives, feedback loop and failure conditions of the simulated people. While going through old papers, I ran across this print-out that I had saved, so I scanned it and cleaned the images up, and got permission from Will to publish it.
This code is a interesting example of game design, programming and prototyping techniques. The Sims code has certainly changed a lot since Will wrote this original prototype code. For example, there is no longer any “stress” motive. And the game doesn’t store motives in global variables, of course.
My hope is that this code will give you a glimpse of how Will Wright designs games, and what was going on in his head at the time!
Hand-wringing About American Culture - Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge?
A popular video on YouTube shows Kellie Pickler, the adorable platinum blonde from “American Idol,” appearing on the Fox game show “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” during celebrity week. Selected from a third-grade geography curriculum, the $25,000 question asked: “Budapest is the capital of what European country?”
Ms. Pickler threw up both hands and looked at the large blackboard perplexed. “I thought Europe was a country,” she said. Playing it safe, she chose to copy the answer offered by one of the genuine fifth graders: Hungary. “Hungry?” she said, eyes widening in disbelief. “That’s a country? I’ve heard of Turkey. But Hungry? I’ve never heard of it.”
Such, uh, lack of global awareness is the kind of thing that drives Susan Jacoby, author of “The Age of American Unreason,” up a wall. Ms. Jacoby is one of a number of writers with new books that bemoan the state of American culture.
The basic technique here is multiple regression analysis. I took a look at a whole number of independent variables, and tried to gauge their effect on one dependent variable: Obama’s two-way vote share. By “two-way vote share”, I mean the proportion Obama got of the (Obama Hillary) votes; essentially we’re throwing the Edwards, Richardson, Biden, etc. votes out. So in New Hampshire, Obama’s two-way vote share is 48.3%, and Hillary’s is 51.7% — much higher than their multi-way vote share.
I looked at pretty much every variable I could think of that we can quantify about a state and that might affect the Obama-Clinton vote share. It turns out that there are 8 or 10 that proved to be statistically significant enough for me to include them in my model.
This is a detailed statistical analysis of the votes so far in the Democratic primaries and caucuses. It is a bit more elaborate than what you get from the mainstream media. It also includes predictions, most of which look good for Obama.
Obama Edges Out a Clinton For a Grammy.
Barack Obama, not known for his singing prowess, nevertheless picked up a Grammy Award Sunday for the spoken-word recording of his most recent book, “The Audacity of Hope.”
Mr. Obama, seeking to become the country’s next president, beat out two former Commanders in Chief — Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter — for the honor.
I just finished listening to this audiobook. He’s quite a good author and the book is surprisingly personal.
I’m now listening to the audio recording of Living History.
First ever completely silent presidential debate:
A summary of the candidates’ stances on a variety of science issues.
Many factors can make or break a U.S. presidential candidate in the 2008 race for his or her party’s nomination. The ability to raise millions of dollars is key, as are positions on megaissues such as the Iraq war, immigration, and taxes. Voters also want to know if a candidate can be trusted to do the right thing in a crunch. Science and scientific issues? So far, with the exception of global warming, they are not getting much play.
“It’s pretty hard to find a candidate from either party who is gung ho for science,” laments Representative Vernon Ehlers (R-MI), one of two Ph.D. physicists in Congress and an indefatigable promoter of science and technology.
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