Ever since getting the demo of this game a couple months ago, I’ve been quivering with anticipation in a manner not unlike the game’s main characters. It finally arrived today (thanks to Amazon’s efficient pre-order service). I’ll try to post some comments once I’ve played it a bit, if I can tear myself away.
Archive for June, 2006
Reuters reports that at least 13 new episodes of Futurama will be produced, to air on Comedy Central in 2008. This is awesome.
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates having dinner at the D conference. See, they’re best friends really! (0 comments)
It’s Proms season soon. It’s not uncommon for people to get quite excited about the festival, but I thought this post on the BBC message board was just wonderful.
O Happy day! My Friends, this will be my first visit to the proms. I am a great fan of the classics and I shall most certainly be amongst that merry throng who, bedecked with the regalia of pomp, behatted, scarved, drunk on that heady spirit, clap at every break and pause.
What glory to share in common the joy of happy light classics!
Here at last all of Britain is united in Hope. All past cares left behind, even the unfortunate masses, gathered around their DAB radios, drowsy amongst their consumer durables, can for fleeting hours forget the misery of class oppression.
I shall be there!
Mr. Laurent Mpeti Kabila
What happens when you hold apart two halves of a critical mass of plutonium with a screwdriver — and the screwdriver slips? A scary tale from Los Alamos. (1 comment)
An ever-so-slightly obsessive discussion of the typography of the digital clock in 24. The shock conclusion? “The onscreen time sequences are dictated partly by the typographic limitations of the clock font.“ (0 comments)
Ever wondered why the musical notes on the £20 note are in such a weird pattern? Or why the Euro bank notes have so many little circles on them? It’s the EURion constellation, a standardised repeating pattern that can be detected by computer, and which is used in modern colour photocopiers to stop you from copying bank notes. A similar thing happens in software like Photoshop, but some clever detective work indicates that in this case there is more hidden secret imagery going on than just the EURion constellation… (0 comments)
The Judge Rotenberg Center is a special needs school in Massachusetts that uses electric shocks to discipline its students. The school claims that the electric shocks (which they tastefully call ‘GED treatment‘) are a valid form of medical ‘aversive’ treatment that helps young people with severe self-harm and behavioural problems, and cite a number of success stories (1, 2).
However, a recent report by NY education officials paints a far less rosy picture. Rather than being a carefully managed treatment administered by medical professionals, it appears that shocks are administered for range of minor, everyday offences, such as ‘nagging, swearing and failing to maintain a neat appearance’, and that even ‘newly-hired staff with little to no training’ are allowed to shock students.
I can’t comment on the potential benefits of a proper medical programme that includes electric shock aversion therapy. It may well be a good treatment. But it’s not what’s going on here, by a long shot. If the report is accurate, then what’s going on here isn’t medical treatment. It’s just plain fucking disgusting.
The center can trot out a handful of ’success stories’, but that doesn’t justify putting these young people through what amounts to a daily life of fear.
(As an aside, how would you respond if you started a new job supervising students, and without any training were told that you could and should administer electric shocks to the children when they misbehaved? I think I’d be horrified at the suggestion, and I think I’d be too worried about the wrongness of the situation and my inexperience and lack of understanding to actually do it. But then we all know about the Milgram experiment.)
Milestones in Film History: Greatest Visual and Special Effects A chronological walk through technically groundbreaking films. Everything from La Voyage Dans la Lune (1902) to The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005). (0 comments)