September 1, 2009
Prepare to die! No seriously, prepare to die over and over and over again ...
After over eight months of beta releases, Spelunky version 1.0 has finally been released. If you missed it previously, Spelunky is a exploration platform game with random levels, so it plays different each time. Its random layout, interesting interactions with items, destroyable scenery, and robbable shops have earned it comparison with Nethack, the classic roguelike game. Currently Windows only, but announced for XBox Live Arcade.
Japan's Media Environment
Dunny
Dunny - an eleven-year-old boy tries to give a love letter to a girl that doesn't like him and winds up at dinner with her suburban family. This is one of those short films that you either love right away from the opening scene or....well, demand you 10 minutes back. If you are not sure, try other works by the same director: Phillip Van.
It doesn't matter who's wrong or right. Just beat it.
World appears slightly less bad due to supply and demand
The government of Delhi is claiming success in reducing female infanticide by a recent scheme to pay the school fees of poor girls. [more inside]
Gestalt: Director's Cut
The sublime fractal-based short film Gestalt (previously) has been re-rendered in high definition. Go forth and iterate.
Also, don't miss Fleischfilm's newer, and similarly unnerving Energie! - also in HD. In case you lose patience, it really starts to blow up around the minute mark. [more inside]
Also, don't miss Fleischfilm's newer, and similarly unnerving Energie! - also in HD. In case you lose patience, it really starts to blow up around the minute mark. [more inside]
What Can Your Womb Do For You?
What bleeds [Flash], grows babies [possibly NSFW], and "functions so efficiently that a full understanding of its processes may lead to novel treatments for a plethora of medical disorders?" The Uterus! Jacqueline Maybin, a PhD student at the Centre For Reproductive Biology at Queen's Medical Research Institute, University of Edinburgh, discusses her research into "the secrets of the womb" and its incredible ability to heal and repair in her essay, "The Best A Man Can't Get."
The U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan is guarded by gross perverts.
Bollywood Gastronomy
Kuchh Kook Hota Hai is an all singing, dancing (and possibly epileptic fit inducing) Indian cookery show (without much cooking), featuring two sassy assistants 'salt' and 'pepper'. To whet your appetite – Mutton Burger and Carrot Roll.
Der ewige Jude
The day after Kristallnacht, Hitler said: "It was necessary not to make propaganda for violence as such, but to explain certain matters of foreign policy to the German people in such a way, that the inner voice of the people all by itself gradually would call for violence." Towards that end, Goebbels commissioned and closely supervised the production of a propaganda documentary titled Der ewige Jude - "The Eternal Jew". Few if any of the inhabitants of the Łódź Ghetto who appear in its footage survived the war. [more inside]
Island on the edge of the world
The evacuation of the abandoned island of St. Kilda has been commemorated after 79 years. [more inside]
Asserting Your Social Status With Your Facebook Status
There are five key rules to using your status update to maximum status-signifying effect. Learn from the masters: "(to the dude on the A train who said he was NYLON's digital director, attempting to impress some girl 1. Nice try but that's my job 2. And I'm flattered but that's some wishful thinking, babe, because it's an amazing job but it's sadly never gotten me laid!)" By placing her bragging in the lying mouth of a subway stranger, this updater covertly asserts the prestige of her position and at the same time insulates herself against similar claims. Particularly masterful is the covert assumption here that her position is one sufficiently grand to be the ethereal stuff of A train boasting.
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.
SLYTFilter: MC Frontalot - "It is Pitch Dark"
You are likely to be eaten by a grue. / If this predicament seems particularly cruel, / Consider whose fault it could be, / Not a torch or a match in your inventory.
Directed by MeFi's Own™ Jason Scott for his documentary about text adventures, GET LAMP. [previously] Featuring MC Frontalot [previously] and Steve Meretzky. More grues on MeFi.
You are likely to be eaten by a grue. / If this predicament seems particularly cruel, / Consider whose fault it could be, / Not a torch or a match in your inventory.
Directed by MeFi's Own™ Jason Scott for his documentary about text adventures, GET LAMP. [previously] Featuring MC Frontalot [previously] and Steve Meretzky. More grues on MeFi.
One button parkour
You ran 245m before hitting a wall and tumbling to your death. Canabalt is a one button, randomly generated parkour game. (via) [more inside]
"The Categorical Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts and Industries"
The University of Michigan's collaborative translation of Diderot and d'Alembert's Encylopédie has completed some 650 selections from the Enlightenment keystone, including articles on California, vanilla, werewolves, the English language, beauty, and the complete structure of human knowledge.
[more inside]
Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.
"Then there are the classification errors, which taken together can make for a kind of absurdist poetry. H.L. Mencken's The American Language is classified as Family & Relationships. A French edition of Hamlet and a Japanese edition of Madame Bovary are both classified as Antiques and Collectibles (a 1930 English edition of Flaubert's novel is classified under Physicians, which I suppose makes a bit more sense.) An edition of Moby Dick is labeled Computers; The Cat Lover's Book of Fascinating Facts falls under Technology & Engineering. And a catalog of copyright entries from the Library of Congress is listed under Drama (for a moment I wondered if maybe that one was just Google's little joke)." —Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg on Google's little metadata problem.
Living Small
With the economic downturn and a steady downward trend in family sizes, the end of the McMansion could be at hand. Some people are living in and building tiny houses (previously) to decrease their impact on the environment, while others can't afford more (or wish to own something small instead of paying off something big). Sergio Santos saw his small budget and limited space as a challenge (gallery), maximizing his 77 square foot space as a bedroom, office, and mini-kitchen. Claire Wolf lists the four pieces of living small: building, gadgeting, decorating, and coping. If these spaces are too small for you, Dan Maginn suggest 900 square feet for a 2 bed, 2 bath house, and outlines how to design your own small home (his tips: think "events" more than "rooms," and don't forget the cupboards and water heater closet).
Watch the skies!
Who Goes There - the John W. Campbell short story which inspired the movies The Thing from Another World and, closer to the original, The Thing (which, apparently, was horribly critically mauled upon release but has since become as much as a classic as the 50s film). The story is now being reprinted alongside a treatment by Logan's Run author William F. Nolan for an unmade 1978 screen version.
Prop 8 : CA :: Ref 71 : WA
On May 18, 2009, the Governor of Washington state signed into law SB 5688, granting near-equal legal standing to state registered domestic partners, meaning mainly (but not exclusively) same-sex couples. This new law, nicknamed the "everything but marriage" law was to go into effect at the end of July. Due to efforts made by some conservative groups, the measure will now be up for a public vote on the November 3, 2009 ballot in the form of Referendum 71. [more inside]
One Way Ticket
In the next few weeks, NASA will present President Obama with options for the near-term future of human spaceflight. A manned flight to Mars is one possibility. But if we do send astronauts to Mars, do we really need to bring them home again?
Loosening up locked-down corporate IT
Over on Slate, Farhad Manjoo writes that corporate IT ought to allow users more freedom in web browser selection and installation rights on their work computers. John C. Welch responds.
Snow Leopards
Out of the Shadows: The elusive Central Asian snow leopard steps into a risk-filled future. [more inside]
Where'd I put that nuclear recipe again?
Did America Forget How to Make the H-Bomb? Nobody in the general public knows exactly what it is, though there are guesses, but it seems the bombmakers themselves forgot how to make a crucial ingredient in US thermonuclear weapons, FOGBANK.
Former Ontario Attorney General Michael Bryant involved in death of Toronto cyclist
Late last night, a cyclist was killed in Toronto. "Ontario's former attorney general Michael Bryant ... will be charged with criminal negligence causing death and dangerous driving causing death, a police source tells the Globe, after a collision left a 33-year-old cyclist dead." Accounts vary, but the sequence appears to be 1) Some collision and argument between the cyclist and the driver; 2) The cyclist grabs the driver's door and hangs on (or he may have been caught on the car accidentally) while the Saab convertible drives on; 3) The car drives into the opposite lane, across a construction zone, and the cyclist is battered against mailboxes and light posts; 4) The cyclist falls under the car's back wheels and is killed. [more inside]
We are all Madoffs
Murdoch v. the BBC
Borderline Human Experimentation
PHR (Physicians for Human Rights) have released a new report (pdf) that details the extent to which doctors were involved in monitoring and recording data on detainees subjected to waterboarding and other techniques [via] [more inside]
Good enough or just cheap crap?
Robert Capps, Wired senior editor, has an article up called The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple Is Just Fine. It explores what happens when an established product meets a competitor that has most of the features at fraction of the price. Think hi-fi vs MP3s, A-10 bombers vs Predator drones or landline vs Skype. [more inside]
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