Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
"Study Reveals Women Choose Video Games Instead of Sleep"
We in the game industry talk a lot about wanting to expand the player base -- in the end, we want everyone playing games the way everyone goes to see movies or everyone watches TV. It doesn't always look like we're making progress, but this (admittedly small-scale) poll gives me hope.
Link over at Businesswire.
Link over at Businesswire.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Monday, September 8, 2008
“Junk DNA” May Have Triggered Key Evolutionary Changes in Human Thumb and Foot
Results from a comparative analysis of the human, chimpanzee, rhesus macaque and other genomes reported in the journal Science suggest our evolution may have been driven not only by sequence changes in genes, but by changes in areas of the genome once thought of as “junk DNA.”
Cool.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Monday, August 25, 2008
Friday, August 22, 2008
What the hell is wrong with some people?
From the About.com page on animal cruelty:
I get really angry when I see people demonstrating their absence of empathy. Really angry. Or maybe it's some other emotion, but like any good American man, I convert all strong negative emotions into anger.
On March 7, 1997, three youths broke into Noah's Ark, a cat shelter in Fairfield, Iowa. Using baseball bats, they brutally bludgeoned 27 cats, leaving 17 dead and many others maimed for life.
Horrifying? Not so, according to some of the residents of this town, which lies philosophically somewhere between bucolic nostalgia and new-age transcendence.
"I agree what the things did you and I do growing up that we wished we wouldn't have done?", "I think it's a thing that boys have. You used to see them out hunting, targeting cats with .22s," and "If I'd been with him that night, I would have helped," were comments heard from the "old-timers" (the latter comment from a teenage boy.)
As animal advocates raged country-wide, the town split asunder, with pleas from the "old-timers" to "just go away and leave us alone." Many residents considered the event just a "boyish prank", but not so the founders of Noah's Ark and their supporters.
I get really angry when I see people demonstrating their absence of empathy. Really angry. Or maybe it's some other emotion, but like any good American man, I convert all strong negative emotions into anger.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Magpies...
...are self-aware? It really seems like the popular conception of "intelligence", and its distribution among species, is way off the mark.
Monday, August 18, 2008
I heartily endorse this event or product
Charbay Meyer Lemon Vodka. It's hard for me to find any alcohol delicious, but this is damn close.
Monday, August 11, 2008
Ouch
7 in 10 games lose money (i.e. fail to make back their development costs). That's pretty good, actually; I thought it was 9 in 10. In the linked article, Chris Deering talks about how the industry might be able to make up for some of that lost cash.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
What the hell is going on over there at the Washington Post?
Today's editorial is just damn loopy.
Fascinating.
More on this at TPM.
While the United States has an interest in preventing the resurgence of the Afghan Taliban, the country's strategic importance pales beside that of Iraq, which lies at the geopolitical center of the Middle East and contains some of the world's largest oil reserves.
Fascinating.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Highway dreams
Preface: Yeah, I'm making a blog post about a dream I had last night, and that's a little silly.
I rented some videos (tapes!) at a store near Owen's house, and I needed to take them back, but I couldn't remember how to get back to his house. So I was trying phone numbers at random hoping I'd get either him or the video store, and I kept calling the police by accident and I had to hang up before they traced my location. Finally, I was in this warehouse on a computer looking up the address, and Owen walked into the warehouse heading to a bookstore inside. He was with this dude who was installing a new door here at DF yesterday (no idea why). And I was like, "Hey! I need directions to that video store!" And Owen just rolled his eyes, like he knew I'd been having all this trouble with this simple thing, which would have been easy if I'd just remembered where he lived.
So here's the hopefully-more-interesting part: It took place in a specific location, and I've had other dreams in this same setting.
There are two cities connected by a complex array of highways. The two cities are physically separated by something huge and impassable -- a river, or a giant wall, or something similar. There are lots of one-way on- and off-ramps. The signs are unclear, and there are plenty of roads that radiate outward, away from both cities. Those are the navigation worst-cases, because once you're on one of those outbound roads, you're on it for good. (I don't know why that is; it's dream logic.)
The dreams set in this location are always about navigation and confusion. There are hundreds of potential on- and off-ramps, and there's only one correct sequence. Sometimes I've made the trip before and I'm trying to remember the path; other times I'm going some place I've never been before and I'm trying to navigate on the fly using signs.
The important properties of this setting as you move it into metaphor-space:
*You can't get from one city to the other on foot, on the ground -- you can't brute-force the problem of travel by simply walking the distance. The only way to travel between them is in a car, on the highways.
*You can almost always see your destination. You can see one city from the other; if you could fly, you'd be set. Thus, you get the essential frustration of seeing your goal and being unable to easily reach it.
*Highways are one-way, and there's a minimum speed. This imposes time pressure. You can't stop at signs or off-ramps to evaluate the situation.
*There's a cold indifference to this world; you're part of a system that's running because it must, and the world can't afford to let you hold it up.
All that said, in last night's dream, I actually broke the rules. I found a place to pull off, a small patch of earth along the side of a looping skyway. There was an old man asleep in his car there, and just enough room for me to stop and figure things out. That's when I located the warehouse which would eventually provide the solution to my problem.
That seems to happen often in my dreams -- I'm following a certain set of rules for the bulk of the dream, only to realize near the end that I'd been needlessly constraining myself, and that the rules were intended for someone else, or that they were never intended to be taken as seriously as I'd been taking them.
I rented some videos (tapes!) at a store near Owen's house, and I needed to take them back, but I couldn't remember how to get back to his house. So I was trying phone numbers at random hoping I'd get either him or the video store, and I kept calling the police by accident and I had to hang up before they traced my location. Finally, I was in this warehouse on a computer looking up the address, and Owen walked into the warehouse heading to a bookstore inside. He was with this dude who was installing a new door here at DF yesterday (no idea why). And I was like, "Hey! I need directions to that video store!" And Owen just rolled his eyes, like he knew I'd been having all this trouble with this simple thing, which would have been easy if I'd just remembered where he lived.
So here's the hopefully-more-interesting part: It took place in a specific location, and I've had other dreams in this same setting.
There are two cities connected by a complex array of highways. The two cities are physically separated by something huge and impassable -- a river, or a giant wall, or something similar. There are lots of one-way on- and off-ramps. The signs are unclear, and there are plenty of roads that radiate outward, away from both cities. Those are the navigation worst-cases, because once you're on one of those outbound roads, you're on it for good. (I don't know why that is; it's dream logic.)
The dreams set in this location are always about navigation and confusion. There are hundreds of potential on- and off-ramps, and there's only one correct sequence. Sometimes I've made the trip before and I'm trying to remember the path; other times I'm going some place I've never been before and I'm trying to navigate on the fly using signs.
The important properties of this setting as you move it into metaphor-space:
*You can't get from one city to the other on foot, on the ground -- you can't brute-force the problem of travel by simply walking the distance. The only way to travel between them is in a car, on the highways.
*You can almost always see your destination. You can see one city from the other; if you could fly, you'd be set. Thus, you get the essential frustration of seeing your goal and being unable to easily reach it.
*Highways are one-way, and there's a minimum speed. This imposes time pressure. You can't stop at signs or off-ramps to evaluate the situation.
*There's a cold indifference to this world; you're part of a system that's running because it must, and the world can't afford to let you hold it up.
All that said, in last night's dream, I actually broke the rules. I found a place to pull off, a small patch of earth along the side of a looping skyway. There was an old man asleep in his car there, and just enough room for me to stop and figure things out. That's when I located the warehouse which would eventually provide the solution to my problem.
That seems to happen often in my dreams -- I'm following a certain set of rules for the bulk of the dream, only to realize near the end that I'd been needlessly constraining myself, and that the rules were intended for someone else, or that they were never intended to be taken as seriously as I'd been taking them.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Trust on my mind...
...and an interesting article over at Scientific American.
Participants who were given a placebo prior to playing the game decreased their rate of trust (that is, how much money they were willing to invest) after they discovered their trust had been violated. Participants who received oxytocin, however, continued to invest at similar rates regardless of whether or not their trusting behavior had been taken advantage of. These behavioral group differences were accompanied by differences in neural responses, as participants in the oxytocin group showed decreases in responses in the amygdala and caudate nucleus. The amygdala is a region of the brain involved in emotion and fear learning, and is rich in oxytocin receptors, whereas the caudate nucleus has been previously linked to reward-related responses and learning to trust . Thus, the authors hypothesized that oxytocin decreases both fear mechanisms associated with a potential aversion of betrayals (via the amygdala) and our reliance on positive feedback that can influence future decisions (via the caudate). This in turn facilitates the expression of trust even after breaches of trust have occurred. Notably, the behavioral and neural results observed were only apparent when participants played the trust game, but not the risk game, suggesting that oxytocin’s effects on trust are exclusive to interactions with real people.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Saturday, July 12, 2008
FDIC at work
In light of IndyMac's collapse, here's an interesting article about how the FDIC steps in and prevents disasters from becoming disasters.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Zack Kim plays the theme from "The Piano"...
...also known as "The Promise"... on two guitars at once.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
This just in!
"Being slightly evil ensures a prolific sex life".
We rugged loners who play by our own rules have known this for years. Personally, I like to manifest my slight evil by using kindness to lull people into a false sense of security.
And... that's pretty much it. Just kindness. But I might turn on you at any moment! Very dangerous. Well, slightly dangerous.
We rugged loners who play by our own rules have known this for years. Personally, I like to manifest my slight evil by using kindness to lull people into a false sense of security.
And... that's pretty much it. Just kindness. But I might turn on you at any moment! Very dangerous. Well, slightly dangerous.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
I learned something today
I'm deuteranomalous. That means I am "poor at discriminating small differences in hues in the red, orange, yellow, green region of the spectrum." I'm likely to make errors in the naming of hues in this region because they appear somewhat shifted toward red.
So basically, mild red-green colorblindness. You'd think that might've come up before last Winter, when I was arguing with Claire about the colors in a painting and we realized that I was missing some of the subtleties. I mean... wouldn't you expect that to come up at some point during 4.5 years of art school or 2 years of grad school?
So basically, mild red-green colorblindness. You'd think that might've come up before last Winter, when I was arguing with Claire about the colors in a painting and we realized that I was missing some of the subtleties. I mean... wouldn't you expect that to come up at some point during 4.5 years of art school or 2 years of grad school?
Strange animals: Stubble?
"Women prefer men with stubble for love, sex and marriage"
At the same time, it's not unusual for women to prefer a smooth shave when it comes to intimate physical contact, so there's a hidden core to this question -- if you prefer stubble visually but smooth tactilely, which wins out?
At the same time, it's not unusual for women to prefer a smooth shave when it comes to intimate physical contact, so there's a hidden core to this question -- if you prefer stubble visually but smooth tactilely, which wins out?
Monday, June 30, 2008
Year-old article...
...on the barbarism that is circumcision. Come on, people, why are we even still debating this?
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Next candidate for self-awareness: The octopus
http://www.slate.com/id/2192211/
Who need opposable thumbs when you've got all those tentacles? Now they've just got to evolve those land-gills...
Who need opposable thumbs when you've got all those tentacles? Now they've just got to evolve those land-gills...
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Sunday, June 8, 2008
2002-2005 archive dump: Urban Exploration
February 14, 2003
November 28, 2002
November 20, 2002
October 09, 2002
August 21, 2002
July 19, 2002
Oh hell yeah! Urban exploration!
I knew it wasn't just me!!!
Zone-Tour : Database of Urban Exploration
and
Infiltration: The zine about going places you're not supposed to go
And while we're in the neighborhood:
Salon.com: Infiltration
and finally...
Urban Exploration index at Yahoo
2002-2005 archive dump: Strange Animals
December 11, 2003
August 12, 2003
Differences between male and female sexuality
This article conceals a subtle misandry, but it's an interesting read nevertheless.
March 18, 2003
January 21, 2003
Birth control pill changes womens' taste in men
Wild. Women on the pill are more likely to go for "macho" men, while those off the pill are more likely to go for "sensitive" men.
January 03, 2003
November 27, 2002
November 22, 2002
August 30, 2002
August 26, 2002
August 16, 2002
July 21, 2002
June 08, 2002
Animals, but not so strange
Environmental Predictors of Geographic Variation in Human Mating Preferences, by Kevin J. McGraw
HTML version, through Google's PDF-to-HTML service
Press release -- a good summary of the paper
June 04, 2002
May 23, 2002
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