June 25, 2005

More Corporate Fighting

Microsoft and Sony are really at each other's throats about the next generation of video game consoles, which starts this fall when MS releases the Xbox 360. Recently, Sony rented a hip loft in Paris to show off the PSP, their new handheld gaming system. MS responded by renting the storefront window of the laundry across the street with an Xbox 360 ad. The ad said, "Gardez vos forces pour cet hiver" which translates to "Save your strength for winter" when the 360 ships. Evidently Sony was so pissed off that they offered the laundry owner even more money to take the ad down.

Here are some pics.

Hat tip to Evil Avatar.

EA, Still Major Dickheads

Electronic Arts' website briefly displayed a picture of the cover for the next version of EA Sports NHL Hockey which sported a "Exclusively Licensed" logo. After some activity on the gaming forums the picture was altered to say "Officially Licensed". So the question is, was this just a mistake, were they testing the waters, or did somebody accidently let the cat out of the bag?

Now, I've made my hatred of EA clear in previous posts, but here's the recap if you're just joining us. Back in the days of the SNES and Sega Genesis, Sega was where you went for sports video games. On top of the many third party sports games on the system, Sega itself produced some great sports titles. With the birth of the Playstation, and the begin of Sega's decline on the hardware side of the industry, Electronic Arts took the reigns as the premier company dealing in sports video games, particularly Madden, their football title. Madden, and the other EA sports line, ruled the field with almost no serious competition from roughly the launch of the Playstation in 1995 until around three years ago, when Sega got serious about sports games again.

Sega's sports development house, Visual Concepts, put together an increasingly competitive line of sports games, and in some cases garnered higher scores in the reviews than EA's version. The problem was that most gamers were so used to buying the new version of Madden every year, and the name Madden was just so universally recognized, that Sega just wasn't making a dent in EA's sales. The solution to this was two fold; they licensed the ESPN brand and brought all of their sports games under the well known banner. The second prong came just this last year, with Sega pricing all of their sports games at $20 instead of the industry standard $50. Coupled with the fact that the games were universally getting better and better while EA's had been stagnating or actually getting worse, and Sega finally started making some headway in the market. How would EA react? How would they counter this new competitive force?

Be really huge dicks with barrels of money.

The first volley came when EA announced that they had paid the NFL $300 million for a five year contract for exclusive use of all the players, teams, and stadiums in the league. Now, back in the day, making sports games based on fictional teams was pretty standard, but as the games became more of a simulation, the need to license the teams and players for heightend authenticity increased. Sega could certainly make a football game, but if a player wanted to play as their favorite real life team, they have to go to the substandard Madden. Next EA announces that they've paid ESPN a truckload of money for the exclusive use the ESPN brand for the next fifteen (15!) years. Keep in mind that they still have a contract with Madden for the next several years and will in all likelihood renew it, so chances are they won't even use the ESPN brand, or at least only in a very limited sense. The positive influence on EA's games will be minimal, but this sure hits Sega hard doesn't it? Oh well, at least they can still make another football game, like college, right? Wrong: EA then got exclusive licenses for college and arena football. At this point Sega got out of the game and sold Visual Concepts to Take 2 Interactive, another gigantic publisher like EA.

Take 2 managed to get some kind of limited exclusivity with MLB and the NBA has refused, thankfully, to enter into any exclusivity agreements with anyone, but EA's still in the driver seat. The worst part about this rumor is that while ESPN Football 2k5, the last Sega football game, was pretty widely considered to be better than Madden '05, EA's NHL game has actually been getting worse each year since the 2000 edition and the Sega version was significantly better in most ways. Exclusivity gives the company no reason to improve their game year to year, and EA has precious little competition now. Not only that, but all the money they used getting these exclusivity agreements is sure to be passed on to the consumer, and they've even hinted that next generation games from them might jump to $60.

On a slightly positive note, I suppose there is some hope that Take 2's games, since they are no longer bound to constantly trying to keep their game up to date on how real life players are doing, they might be able to make their nonlicensed games even better. Also, since they no longer have to pay royalties to the various leagues and players associations they might be able to sustain the lower price on their games. Also, this new generation will offer unprecedented customizability and online sharing, so it's entirely possible that though Take 2's games don't ship with official teams and players someone will make them and post them as a download. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if Take 2 employees did that on the sly. Still, when your average gamer is in Gamestop, he's going to see one game he doesn't recognize, and Madden with some real life football player's picture plastered on it.

John Tierney's "Mild, Mild" West

Tierney's latest sounds reasonable:

Roger McGrath, a historian who studied dozens of Western mining camps and towns, found a high rate of homicide in them mainly because it was socially acceptable for young, drunk single men to resolve points of honor by fighting to the death. But other violence wasn't tolerated, he said.

'It was a rather polite and civil society enforced by armed men,' Dr. McGrath said. 'The rate of burglary and robbery was lower than in American cities today. Claim-jumping was rare. Rape was extraordinarily rare - you can argue it wasn't being reported, but I've never seen evidence hinting at that.'

It sounds like the utopian visions of the NRA: arm everybody, and no-one will dare attempt a violent crime. Because, of course, there's no justice like angry mob justice.

The town I grew up in is about eight miles from the site gold was discovered in California in 1848. In the 1850s and 1860s, Placerville was one of the largest white communities in what is today the state of California. At the time, it was known as Hangtown, and it was just the sort of law-abiding little gold rush boomtown Tierney's contrarian Ph.D is talking about. You see, if anyone was suspected of committing a crime here, they were hanged from a large tree at one end of Main Street.

The first lynching in the camp, a triple hanging, came after a gang of five tried to rob a miner of his gold dust. They were caught and each received a whipping of nearly 40 strokes. Then someone in the crowd of 2,000 said he recognized three of the five (two Mexicans and one Yankee, or was it two Frenchmen and a Chilean?) as being wanted for involvement with a murder on the Stanislaus River. At that the three suspects, who were still weak from the flogging they took, were immediately tried, sentenced and hanged by the crowd. There was one dissenter, E.G. Buffum, who stood on a stump and protested on behalf of the accused, saying they were too weak from loss of blood to either stand or speak in their own defense. His valiant efforts were in vain, however, and he himself was threatened with lynching by the angry mob if he didn't 'shut up'. Buffum escaped with his life and later became the senior editor of the Alta newspaper in San Francisco. The three suspects were hanged together from the huge oak tree in camp. The location of this well-used hangin' tree is marked by a dummy dangling from the second story of the Hangman's Tree Historic Spot in downtown Placerville.

Now that's mild!

The dummy actually got taken down three or four years ago. The Chamber of Commerce decided it was giving tourists the impression that the town had a history of mob violence.

Due process? Rules of evidence? Psh! Someone in a crowd says you might be guilty, that's all the evidence John "Let God Sort 'Em Out" Tierney needs!

June 24, 2005

Bitch. Ph.D.: Somehow I missed these posts, but they're great

Bitch. Ph.D.: Somehow I missed these posts, but they're great: "Telling rape victims--including drunk 18yos in Aruba--that they ought not to be flashing the goodies reduces women to, well, to goodies to be flashed. Dude, if I get drunk off my ass and stumble down the street, I'm not flaunting 'goods' to be 'stolen.' I'm getting drunk and stumbling down the street. If you see it as anything else then bingo, baby: that's what we call rape culture."

Internet's being "amusing", so that's all you get for the time being.

English is the university classroom

An interesting article in today's Unclear New York Times:

With a steep rise in the number of foreign graduate students in the last two decades, undergraduates at large research universities often find themselves in classes and laboratories run by graduate teaching assistants whose mastery of English is less than complete.

Of course, the article offers nothing but anecdotal evidence to support that 'often'.

Naturally, I would like to chalk up these complaints to racism. But almost every account given in the article includes praise for the teacher in question: they're called brilliant in their field, but completely ineffective teachers. Furthermore, almost half the grad students in my old department were from China or Taiwan, so I know firsthand that occasionally accents will be quite thick.

The best approach, if departments really feel this is an issue, would be to gather hard data: Are complaints about impenetrable accents clustered around a few TAs? What percentage of a TA's students report problems understanding their instructor? Then maybe a semester in a class designed to improve English diction would be advisable.

June 22, 2005

Introducing "Superdickery!!" No kidding!

Here is a very funny link to old comic book covers featuring Superman, hero to all, last son of Krypton, defender of truth, justice, and the American Way acting like, well, um...a complete and total ass.

Courtesy of thismodernworld.com.

June 21, 2005

More on our culture of rape

Great post at DED Space:

The American culture absolutely supports the sexual assault and rape of women and girls. I no longer have any doubt about that. The rapists have the public on their side (though the public is probably willing to capitulate if the victim is white and the perpetrator is of color), and women and girls who report rape--and thousands of them don't--are shamed just as much today as they were thirty years ago.

Be sure to read the comments, too.

Maxim advertising

Via feminist blogs, some links on the lastest advertising fad to target 18-34 males: the 'bad-boy' or 'Maxim' style. Examples include Axe and Carl's Jr. spots. Note the way this is characterized, as rejecting 'effeminate' 'metrosexuality', a 'return' to 'masculinity'. And, of course, treating women as fuck objects to be pursued, captured, and physically abused (pressed against steering wheels and such so hard it leaves imprints on their backs in the Axe commercials).

These ads have apparently been remarkably successful. And my friend Annie wonders why I don't think well of most men my age.

Yes, I can combine feminist bitching with Batman ... watch ...

Stephanie Zacharek basically pans Batman Begins in her review for Salon. It's pretty clear that she didn't understand the background of the film very well, but she's entitled to her own opinion of the film qua film:

But neither Nolan nor, unfortunately, the usually superb Christian Bale seems to recognize that darkness takes on many shades and colors: "Batman Begins" is a dull monotone of heavily theatrical, and yet wholly unmoving, angst. Nolan obviously didn't want his picture to be too cartoony, and that's a good impulse. But "Batman Begins" needs much more energy and kinetic flow -- less dolor and more dolomite. Bale can't seem to find an anchor for the character of Bruce Wayne; at times he's mildly affecting, but he can't locate that elusive hairline at which a character's self-absorption becomes engaging for an audience. His Wayne is so deep inside himself we can barely bring ourselves to care about him.

I don't agree, and I suspect really connecting to Christian Bale's character requires more familiarity than she has. But, in any case, we have this letter to the editor response, with my emphasis:

Such pissing and moaning. And coupled with phony intellectualism, to boot. I know it's gonna get me rapped, but that doesn't make it any less true: Never send a woman to review what is obviously a Guy's Flick. Especially when the flick in question is based on an adventure strip. We're not allowed to have our wish fulfillment fantasies anymore.

Oh, look ... Here comes "Bewitched." An acceptable fantasy. Where's my exploding batarang?

I have nothing to say to this but: WTF? She was criticizing the film as a piece of art, you neanderthal. The presence or absence of a vagina is independent from evaluating a work of art, as evidenced by your own apparent inability to see anything more in the film than an articulation of your own stereotypical fantasies of beating people up.

June 20, 2005

I Got A Fever, And The Only Prescription...Is More Batman!

I've had Batman on the brain lately, so here's Grayson, the best fan film ever. Now you'll always know where it is!

Da-na-na-na-na-na-na-na

The new Batman movie kicks much ass. Do I really need to say much more? Go see this movie.

Okay, a little more. I recently read Superheroes and Philosophy, which prompted me to follow up with the excellent graphic novels The Dark Knight Returns, The Watchmen, and Kingdom Come. Drawing loosely on Batman: Year One, Begins offers as much as these highly acclaimed graphic novels, including fodder for reflections on many of the topics discussed in Superheroes, including the ethics of vigilantism (and thereby ethics in general) and the way the secret identity ties into issues of personal identity.

Some of you might also be interested in looking at the comments on the City of Heroes forums thread on Begins, with pretty unanimous praise for just about every aspect of the film except the fight cinematography.

Brand-new flowers in Chicago this April. Bonus posting because my internet access will be sporadic for the next two weeks.  Posted by Hello

June 19, 2005

An Opportunity

Since Casey got that phat load of Ra points for writing the review below, I thought I'd give you all the chance to catch up a little. (2 points per)

1) What with Batman Begins out now, who is Batman's (the comic, not the character) creator?

2) An updated version of Pirates! comes out for Xbox in a few months; who is the mastermind behind this game (as well as the various Civilization games)?

3) Advent Rising was just released for Xbox, with the story written by what creator of Ender's Game?

4) What actor/special effects whiz appearing in George Romero's soon-to-be-released Land of the Dead cut his teeth with Romero on Dawn of the Dead and also appeared in From Dusk Til Dawn? Extra point for his character's name in From Dusk Til Dawn.

Remember I also distribute points at random for posting in comments.

Review - Dream Theater: Octavarium

Here is the first of what I hope to be many posts that I get to post, but which I have done nearly no work on. Remember that submitting reviews, stories, cool links or anything you think other people would like to see gets you Ra points. This is a pretty long review, so I think it's worth a hefty 20 Ra points. This one comes via Casey:

Dream Theater's eighth studio album, "Ocatavarium," returns to what most die-hard DT fans have come to love the band for: compositions that challenge the listener both lyrically and musically. Beyond mere dork rock, this band has symbolism strewn about the album that is all worth studying. Consider Green Day's new album a crappy 99 cent cheeseburger. Use the same analogy for this album and you get two tables full of Thanksgiving dinner. Every time one truly LISTENS to this music, and doesn't just hear, they'll find something new that contributes to the whole.

Dream Theater uses the time tested method of theme and variation often found in classical music. Thankfully, they do it with much heavier riffs along with solos that, as a musician, make me cringe with contempt for their musical aptitude. Their song writing includes elements of U2, Pink Floyd, ELP, Tool, Holdsworth, Pantera and Zappa, but it all sounds like DT because all those bands can't pull off what this band can. On top of that the songs discuss issues that MATTER in life. They're not just complaining about mean parents, talking about kicking someone's ass or getting someone in the sack; nothing is trivialized.

Now for the actual songs. The first tune "The Root of All Evil" is a continuation of two other songs spanning the two albums previous to this, in that the lyrics are all part of one person's struggles and revelations. The song starts familiar enough - w/ the final note from the last song on the previous album - a familiar trick of DT. From there the album is off in many directions, dealing with breaking down communication barriers in "These Walls," clashes w/ ungratefulness in "Never Enough" and even the events of 9/11 in "Sacrificed Sons." Though dubbed a progressive metal band, several songs are conventional in structure, but there's something more - the drum fills, the brief time signature changes and layered textures keep things interesting. Furthermore, the mood of the music coincides with the lyrics so well that it's evident how much effort these guys put into a song. "Panic Attack" exemplifiies this by the opening bass riff.

As for the title track, I don't want to over-analyze, because the rewarding part about music like this is finding the answers on your own. Let me just say the artwork reinforces the song lyrics, and the song lyrics reinforce messages from every other song (listen to the countdown during "Intervals"). Theme and variation of course come into play (tastefully) and the use of orchestral instruments is quaint but powerful. Epic, thick work. It took me a while to understand the "5" in the heavy "5/8" imagery, but turn the back cover 90 degrees and it all becomes clear. Look at where the birds are on the cover. On top of that, look at the back cover and observe where each song title is written. I love this band.


A Couple Links For You

Ever wish you could find an old tv ad for a video game? Here.

For the GTA players out there, here's something that was cut from San Andreas. Not work safe.

One of the first projects I did with Photoshop.  Posted by Hello

June 17, 2005

winterson.com: episode iii, the backstroke of the west

winterson.com: episode iii, the backstroke of the west

Just go. Read about the thrilling battle between the west and the Presybterian Church.

Behold adorable kittens! Well? Go on! Make with the beholding already! Their names are MJ (on top) and Spidey (below), and while I didn't take this picture, I'm doing the Friday Cat Blogging thing with my future cat -- Spidey is going to be mine as soon as I can get down to St. Louis and take him off of Manda's hands.  Posted by Hello

FR10 to the EXTREME!!!

  1. Santana - Evil Ways
  2. Yann Tiersen - Amelie Soundtrack - Le Banquest
  3. BtVS Once More with Feeling Soundtrack - Suite from Hush
  4. Patricia Barber - Pieces
  5. The Real Group - Come Together
  6. The Polyphonic Spree - Reach for the Sun
  7. BtVS Once More with Feeling Soundtrack - What You Feel
  8. Rachmaninov - Symphony No. 3 in A Minor, part 2
  9. Moby - Procelain
  10. Miles Davis - Birth of the Cool - Budo


I like this; I think it captures my rather wide taste in music quite nicely.

June 16, 2005


Some of the members of the gypsy-swing ensemble that played at my dad's wedding about six weeks back. The sringer actually sang just like she's shown in this photo: hands in pockets, eyes closed, completely immersed in the music.  Posted by Hello