Gerry Canavan

the smartest kid on earth

Posts Tagged ‘Pac-Man

Sunday Night Links!

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* ICYMI: I’ve finally succumbed to the inevitable and started a podcast. Go ahead and listen! We’ve just recorded our first bonus episode, on “Welcome to the Monkey House,” which is a nightmare story about which there is nothing good to say. Watch for the episode next week!

Why Our Economy May Be Headed for a Decade of Depression. The battleground states are getting absolutely hammered. Unions worry Congress is one step closer to a liability shield. Getting back to normal is the last thing we need. I Don’t Feel Like Buying Stuff Anymore.

* You go too far, sir! The Case for Letting the Restaurant Industry Die.

* Jesus Christ.

Why do some COVID-19 patients infect many others, whereas most don’t spread the virus at all? The coronavirus invades Trump country.  Running in the Age of Coronavirus. The Pandemic and the Appalachian Trail. America gives up.

Antimalarial drug touted by President Trump is linked to increased risk of death in coronavirus patients, study says. Low virus rate leaves Oxford vaccine trial with ‘only 50% chance.’ No One Knows What’s Going to Happen.

Hill said that of 10,000 people recruited to test the vaccine in the coming weeks — some of whom will be given a placebo — he expected fewer than 50 people to catch the virus. If fewer than 20 test positive, then the results might be useless, he warned.

“We’re in the bizarre position of wanting COVID to stay, at least for a little while. But cases are declining.”

The coronavirus pandemic is rapidly transforming this year’s elections, changing the way tens of millions of people cast ballots and putting thousands of election officials at the center of a pitched political fight as they rush to adapt with limited time and funding.

‘Hundreds of millions of dollars’ lost in Washington to unemployment fraud amid coronavirus joblessness surge.

* Is Testing Students for COVID Feasible? Obviously not, are you joking? The Complex Question of Reopening Schools. ‘A Dramatic and Unprecedented Contraction’: A Look Inside JHU’s $375-Million Budget Shortfall.  ‘The stakes of doing it wrong is that someone dies’: How coronavirus will transform K-12 schools in the fall. COVID-19 is driving students away from community college – maybe forever, says Bunker Hill president. Moody’s disagrees. 5 Myths About Remote Teaching in the Covid-19 Crisis. Reopening Indiana University? Troubled Reflections of a Wayward Professor. A Note from Your University About Its Plans for Next Semester.

* Huge — if true: Locked-Down Teens Stay Up All Night, Sleep All Day.

* From Camping To Dining Out: Here’s How Experts Rate The Risks Of 14 Summer Activities. A summer without pools in Milwaukee.

As life moves online, gaps in digital accessibility mean millions of disabled Americans are being left behind.

* I Enrolled in a Coronavirus Contact Tracing Academy.

* The Misfortune of Graduating in 2020. The humanities vs. the virus. Teaching African American Literature During COVID-19.

* Today’s fan fiction prompt: 6 months on, Trump hasn’t completed his physical. The White House won’t say why.

* Meanwhile, in Oregon.

The Senate nominee said she was “literally physically in tears ” after reading the statement posted by her own campaign to her personal Twitter account and bucked her own campaign by reiterating support for QAnon.

“My campaign is gonna kill me,” Perkins said. “How do I say this? Some people think that I follow Q like I follow Jesus. Q is the information and I stand with the information resource.”

* The Progressives of Burlington, Vermont.

* Whoopsies.

* Is capitalism racist? Oh god I hope not.

* Behind the scenes of Yesterday. Fascinating look how the industry works.

* The end of Hong Kong.

* Biden man. I mean really.

* 40 Years of Pac-Man.

What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about the Brain.

* Just this article made me more afraid of spiders.

* What to Do When Your Video Game Gets Co-opted by Neo-Nazis.

* Of course you had me at Exclusive First Look at the New Back to the Future Game.

* An Oral History of the Battle of Hoth. Maybe AT-ATs Aren’t as Dumb as They Look.

Homeowners use up 10 times more pesticide per acre than farmers do. But we can change what we do in our own yards.

* After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure: Universal Orlando to re-open with new guidelines, grim reminder that you, too, shall die.

* I truly thought I’d seen everything but Watchmen Noir has shocked even this cynical soul in new depths of despair.

* Picard, the xBs, and Disability.

* This rules.

* Did… did a dark feeling write this?

* And the only other good thing left on the Internet: a thread of Taika Waititi smiling but his smile gets bigger as you keep scrolling.

Tuesday Morning Links!

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* CFP: Disasters, Apocalypses, and Catastrophes: PCA/ACA 2018.

* When Universities Swallow Cities.

UC Davis’ Katehi will teach one course per quarter, conduct research in $318,000 position. Ah, so the standard rate.

What appears to be still difficult, even as it gets told in ever finer detail, is the simple and immense situation that America and Nazi Germany are two instantiations of a single history of white supremacist rule.

* The Last Days of New Paris is China Miéville’s novella about a surrealist Paris magically overlapping with our realist Paris. At the back of the book, Miéville offers endnote citations of the surrealist art that inspired his writing. I corralled all the art in this post.

* SF, Down Under.

* Liking What You See will be an AMC series. Interesting!

* Khaaaaaaaaan!

This Is the Way the College ‘Bubble’ Ends.

* I don’t like this: U.C. Irvine Rescinds Acceptances for Hundreds of Applicants. If Admissions guesses wrong it seems to me the college should have to bear the burden of solving the problem.

Border Agency Set to Jumpstart Trump’s Wall in a Texas Wildlife Refuge.

* The Fifty Year Ache: The Milwaukee Housing Marches.

* We seem to be entering a terrifying new moment of Trumpism. This October, Trump Will Try to Start a War with Iran. A Few Reasons to Impeach the President, Just From Today. How the Trump Administration Broke the State Department. You think? The Presidency in Exile. Kleptocracy. Here comes the pivot.

* RNC PR BS — no more! Inside the end of the Priebus era.

* This guy is on-brand. Aaaaaaand he’s gone. It’s gone to be a record.

* A good day for bad guys getting what’s coming to them.

* Has Jeff Flake really, truly had enough? I bet it’s bluster, and perhaps defensive, but we’ll see…

* All these “ha ha loser POTUS” pre-mortems forget that Trump hasn’t faced a crisis not of his own making yet.

* I thought this Russia subplot was over.

* No exit.

Immigrant mother of three with no criminal record to be deported.

Trump’s travel ban keeps orphan kids from US foster families.

Bawitdaba da bang da bang diggy diggy diggy.

The Academic “Success Sequence” – Get Lucky at Birth, Mostly.

* Left with Rage: What Happens When Trump Is Gone.

Democrats Will Do Anything To Win…Except Change. Democrats Can Abandon the Center — Because the Center Doesn’t Exist. Guys, they’ve got this.

Dogs probably domesticated us, not the other way around.

Oakland gives pot convicts first chance to open marijuana businesses as part of reparations for war on drugs.

* And I say 137 years is too good for ’em!

* Oh, so that’s what happened.

* Amazon and anti-trust.

Why millennials cheat less than their parents.

* Class action?

* Of course you had me at pop culture detritus illustrated as abandoned, overgrown ruins.

Close roads so children can play in the street like their parents did, say public health experts.

The Ultimate Playlist Of Banned Wedding Songs.

* A brief history of speedrunning.

* All these worlds are yours, except…

* And I have just one piece of advice for you.

Saturday Morning Links!

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* CFP: (Un)Ethical Futures: Utopia, Dystopia and Science Fiction.

* It gets wetter: Dissent on KSR’s New York 2140.

* Apocalypse Now: Science fiction writers on the end of the world on On the Media.

Not Just Pussy Hats on the Climate March: Feminist Encounters with the Anthropocene.

“I shared my toddler’s hospital bill on Twitter. First came supporters — then death threats.”

* Austerity refugees: “Why I Won’t Raise My Son in Illinois.”

* Billion-Dollar Lawsuit Claims Florida Broke Requirement to Match Donations to Colleges.

Instead, the low income mobility in the United States and Britain is almost entirely due to the part of the parent-son association that is not mediated by educational attainment. In the United States and especially Britain, parental income is far more important for earnings at a given level of education than in Sweden, a result that holds also when controlling for cognitive ability. This goes against widespread ideas of the United States as a country where the role of ascription is limited and meritocratic stratification prevails.

Kobach runs a matching program that appears to have its own high rate of errors. A recent study by political scientists at Stanford University found that Kobach’s Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program had 200 false positives for every actual double registration. The Kansas secretary of state’s office did not immediately return a call for comment on the program.

Untreatable gonorrhoea ‘superbug’ spreading around world, WHO warns.

* What could possibly go wrong? Scientists recreate an extinct virus.

* Being Steve Ditko.

* The Happiest Place on Earth.

A Look Inside Calexit, the Comic That Imagines California’s Secession From a Fascist US.

* Baltimore Sun plans to close City Paper.

* This seems normal and fine: Ivanka Trump takes her father’s seat at world leaders’ table during a G-20 meeting.

Utah Ag-Gag Law Declared Unconstitutional.

Grandma’s coming to live with you.

* What is best in life, Neoliberal Genghis Khan? American Holocaust (artist Andrew Spear, 2015). “At the Oxymoron Museum” was always my favorite Borges story. Ended after just one issue, I reckon. And this guy knows almost nothing about trucks.

 

Saturday Night Links!

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* Writing Advice to My Students That Would Also Have Been Good Sex Advice for My High School Boyfriends.

* CFP: The Handmaid’s Tale: Gender, Genre Adaptation – a one-day symposium. Race and The Handmaid’s Tale. Margaret Atwood Annotates Season 1 of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale.’

* A Dangerous Business: Being a Female Professor.

* Two Americas: Those Who Leave Home, and Those Who Stay.

A Brief History of Violence Against Members of Congress. The start of a disturbing new chapter.

But now we have legislation that will change the lives of millions, and they haven’t even summoned the usual suspects to explain what a great idea it is. If hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, Republicans have decided that even that’s too much; they’re going to try to pass legislation that takes from the poor and gives to the rich without even trying to offer a justification. More at Vox.

American Health Care Tragedies Are Taking Over Crowdfunding.

The Senate health care bill is expected to allow states to relax the Affordable Care Act rules only on benefits, not on pricing as the House bill does. But that change could impact people far beyond those states, according to anew analysis by the liberal Center for American Progress — because it could lead to a return of annual and lifetime benefit limits, and not just in the states with the waivers. Don’t stop working those phones.

* Trump buckles on the Dreamers. But: Border Patrol Arrests Immigrants Seeking Medical Care During Desert Heat Wave. Trump’s move to deport Iraqi Christians stirs outcry. ICE nabs teenager hours before his senior prom, days before his graduation ceremony.

Trump is likely to get much, much worse. Here are a few big things to watch for.  A Very, Very Dangerous Situation. The WaPo Obstruction Blockbuster and the World of Hurt To Come. Robert Mueller chooses his investigatory dream team. Here we go.

Donald Trump’s Cabinet members, ranked by their over-the-top praise of Trump.

* Now That’s What I Call #TheResistance.

* It’s very slowly happening here.

That’s part of a far broader story: Republicans have a coherent and awful vision, while Democrats have a better but confused vision. Republicans want to cut taxes all the time; Democrats want to sometimes cut some taxes and certainly aren’t committed to raising taxes on principle. Republicans want to ban all abortions; many Democrats favor certain restrictions on abortion, depending. The ur-Democratic legislation is Obamacare, which undoubtedly improved the status quo but which is a tangled mishmash of public and private and which does not offer anything like a simple and coherent policy like “Medicare for all.” Republicans are the party of small government; Democrats are the party of jury-rigged quasi-entitlements via convoluted tax credits. Is it any wonder conservatives win so often? An evil but directly and unapologetically stated policy platform beats a better but cowardly and convoluted one any day, politically.

If social compacts without any leeway for idiosyncrasy or dissent tend toward dictatorship, untrammeled individualism tends toward nihilism. The once-again great America Trump envisages is a fusion of the worst of both, and you can’t say our movies didn’t predict him. Wherever America’s right stuff now elusively resides, its wrong stuff in right-stuff disguise is on display for all the world to see—at multiplexes everywhere, not just on Fox News.

* This is fine.

* This though I’m not crazy about: Brain-Eating Parasites Thrive As Global Warming Heats Up U.S. Lakes.

“People who claim we’re in the sixth mass extinction don’t understand enough about mass extinctions to understand the logical flaw in their argument,” he said. “To a certain extent they’re claiming it as a way of frightening people into action, when in fact, if it’s actually true we’re in a sixth mass extinction, then there’s no point in conservation biology.” But that doesn’t mean we can’t still get there if we all just chip in.

Number of people serving life in US prisons is surging, new report says.

US credit card debt to surpass $1 trillion this year, report says.

* A scholar of the Ku Kux Klan explains how the KKK used the same trolling tactics as the alt-right.

Five officials will face manslaughter charges for Flint water crisis. PA supreme court: was illegal to steal elderly woman’s home because her son sold $140 of weed. Revealed: reality of life working in an Ivanka Trump clothing factory.

Robot puts all of humanity to shame by achieving perfect score in Ms. Pac-Man.

This New Museum Imagines a World Where Capitalism Is Dead.

* If there is no real economic recovery forthcoming—and there is not—and if the university cannot be restored without one, do any possibilities remain? They do. We would have to imagine a world that did not peg public funds to private profits. Our current understanding of “public” presupposes a thoroughgoing privatization of the world that shortly preceded the appearance of the modern university. There is no going back. But if there is to be something ahead, an emancipation of learning, it will not be discovered in the hearts and minds of administrators and legislators persuaded to see the error of their ways, but in a transformation of the society beyond the edges of campus. Who Can Save the University?

For graduate students fighting to unionize, time is running out.

* Salvage on Corbyn.

Today’s horrific fire in London’s Grenfell Tower is a symbol of a deeply unequal United Kingdom.

* Bob Dylan, Nobel Prize Winner.

Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cars R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.

Ok, I’ll try this: 1 like = 1 unusual condition for killing the big baddy at the end of your book/movie/game.

Why is TV awash in afterlives, hells, and purgatories?

* There’s just one story, and we tell it over and over.

Witchcraft and dueling are now legal in Canada.

Meet the First Woman to Draw Wonder Woman: “I Never Ever Gave Her Breasts That Were Bigger Than Her Head.”

* Abolish Netflix.

* Abolish the trucking industry.

Why It Was Easier to Be Skinny in the 1980s.

* Estimated Number of Injuries and Reported Deaths Associated with Inflatable Amusements, 2003-2013.

* Retconning Guardians.

* Duck Tales, woo ooh.

Bruce Springsteen is headed to Broadway.

* I’m sorry, I don’t think I understand the objection.

* Presenting the best of Hello from the Magic Tavern.

Salo University is a friendly cloud space for thinking about Kurt Vonnegut and why his writing matters today.

* What real words are actually valid CSS HEX colors?

Alarm clock dropped inside wall still going off daily after 13 years.

* Why Bill Cosby Walked Free.

Why It’s Impossible to Indict a Cop.

* “Rakka” is the first sci-fi short film by Oats Studios, directed by Neill Blomkamp (District 9 and Chappie), featuring the aftermath of an alien invasion that has enslaved millions of humans. The free 22-minute film, which features the amazing Sigourney Weaver, is available to stream for free on Steam, YouTube and the Oats Studios website.

* And guys, it’s official: I’m a bestseller.

Written by gerrycanavan

June 17, 2017 at 4:27 pm

Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet

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Wednesday Links! No Fooling.

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* Keywords for the Age of Austerity 17: Brand/Branding/Rebrand.

Jackson was paid $7.1 million in 2012, more than any other college president in the nation, and continues to be paid at that level. Just in case you don’t click through, the headline to that piece reads “Report: R.P.I. facing $1 billion in debts, liabilities.” So you know she’s worth every penny of that salary.

But did you know the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee gets less than half the public money per student that Madison Area Technical College gets and less than a third of what goes to Milwaukee Area Technical College?

* And speaking of UWM: After Extinction, at UWM April 30-May 2.

* Meanwhile, at Duke: Response to President Brodhead and Provost Kornbluth. The original incident is described here.

Unsettling the University, at UCR April 2-3.

But what also became clear was that she and I have radically different visions of what constitutes the well-being of the University of Wisconsin System and how it might be preserved and protected. Through the course of our conversation it became increasingly clear to me that in the current situation in Wisconsin we find ourselves in what French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard called “a differend,” a case of conflict between parties that cannot be equitably resolved for lack of a rule of judgement applicable to both. In the case of a differend, the parties cannot agree on a rule or criterion by which their dispute might be decided. A differend is opposed to a litigation – a dispute which can be equitably resolved because the parties involved can agree on a rule of judgement.” Despite all parties–Regents, chancellors, faculty, staff, students, and alumni–being committed to the well-being of the University of Wisconsin System, it seems impossible to agree upon a rule of judgment or any set of criteria by which to adjudicate our different visions of what that well-being would look like.

Dept. Names More Than 550 Colleges It Has Put Under Extra Financial Scrutiny.

Salaita lawyers: ‘No doubt’ that UI, prof had agreement for employment.

Over time, however, more and more departments failed to meet that standard; last year some 60 units were out of compliance, according to information gathered by the union. At Bridgewater State University, one of the worst offenders, for example, adjuncts taught more than 15 percent of courses in 16 large departments in 2014-15. Some 50 percent of classes in the English department were taught by part-time faculty, along with 40 percent in math and computer science. In philosophy, it was 63 percent of classes. Bridgewater officials did not respond to a request for comment.

Google Maps turned your streets into Pac-Man yesterday, though I can’t imagine how anyone could have missed this news.

The Entire History of ‘Doctor Who’ Illustrated as a Tapestry.

24 Rare Historical Photos That Will Leave You Speechless.

California Snowpack Hits All-Time Low, 8 Percent Of Average.

Ring of Snitches: How Detroit Police Slapped False Murder Convictions on Young Black Men.

* Chomsky: The Death of American Universities.

* There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

* The Trevor Noah train wreck.

* “Lutheran pastor resigns after being linked to threatening email.” That’s… something.

Italian grandmother causes illness with cocoa expired in 1990.

* Why You Should Really Be Afraid of the Zombie Apocalypse.

Gas Siphoning Coverup May Have Caused East Village Explosion. Jesus Christ.

But there’s at least one unforeseen upside when all episodes are released at once: The writers don’t get the chance to self-correct in the middle of the season.

The Long And Terrible History Of DC Comics Mistreating Batgirl.

* The Americans renewed for season four. Hooray!

Pokémon and philosophy.

Study: Not Many Disco Songs About Daytime. But of course more work is required.

I Followed My Stolen iPhone Across The World, Became A Celebrity In China, And Found A Friend For Life.

Oh my God, Becky, look at this vigorous debate among scholars about the true origin of the straight male preference for a curvier backside.

* I can”t believe they’re bringing this thing back: The X-Files Could Have Ended With a West Wing Crossover.

* And Paul F. Tompkins picks his best episodes from a prolific podcasting career. My tragedy is I’ve heard all these. Perhaps you’ve heard he’s got a new one out today…

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Midweek Links!

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Sunday Morning

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Earlier link dumps this week: 1, 2, 3, 4.

CUNY Administration Declares War On Rebel English Department. This is stunning. Here’s just a little bit more.

Education is a political act. For over half a century, the conservative movement has waged a political war on liberal arts education. They have waged this war because they know that without the skills we are provided by a liberal arts education citizens must abdicate our power.

* Well, I certainly wasn’t going to be the one to say it.

* The FBI has successfully thwarted another bomb plot they organized and outfitted. Promotions all around!

* Old games are horrifying.

* Portraits of Sad Superheroes.

* …for the vast majority of the 500-plus students who graduate each year in Kalamazoo, a better future really does await after they collect their diplomas. The high-school degrees come with the biggest present most of them will ever receive: free college.

Science!

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Written by gerrycanavan

December 3, 2010 at 4:16 pm

Saturday Night

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We finally moved into our new apartment today. Everyone is exhausted. Here are some links.

* You had me at interactive map of Middle-Earth. Via MeFi.

* Kottke celebrates the metaphysics of Pac-Man.

* How to message: why are we still talking about the “Bush” tax cuts?

* Barack Obama, middle school civics teacher. “I think I’ve been pretty clear on my position here,” he said. “And that is, is that this country stands for the proposition that all men and women are created equal, that they have certain inalienable rights; one of those inalienable rights is to practice their religion freely. And what that means is that if you could build a church on a site, you could build a synagogue on a site, if you could build a Hindu temple on a site, then you should be able to build a mosque on the site.”

* And Harry Reid is still promising a climate bill 2.0.

Monday Night Various

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* Rethinking the humanities Ph.D. in the wake of the permanent job crisis.

We are beginning to acknowledge that the graduate training we offer in the humanities is simply not fair to our students, the vast majority of whom will never get tenure-track jobs in their disciplines. But the worth of humanities graduate education need not depend on the number of tenure-track humanists it produces. Graduate education in the humanities is an excellent preparation for many, many careers. But our students should not have to find those careers on their own, and they should not have to think of those careers as “non-academic” careers—the jobs we take when we can’t get the jobs we’ve been trained for. Humanities education needs to take itself seriously. We believe that undergraduate humanities programs produce thoughtful, informed, global citizens. Now we need to decide what we really want graduate humanities programs to produce.

* Finally, an end to DADT.

* Protests against Chris Christie in my beloved Garden State.

* BP, terrible in every way.

* Huffington Post piece on the student protests in Puerto Rico.

* And Google Pac-Man might’ve cost us $120,483,800. It was worth it.

Friday!

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* Presenting the best Ask MetaFilter thread of all time.

* Marginal Revolution had my favorite comment on the Craig Venter artificial life story: The Slartibartfast Principle.

…the evidence for intelligent design ought to be readily available in the graffiti of DNA. “Slartibartfast was here,” or perhaps “3.14159265,” or given what we know of economics, “All rights reserved, MegaCorp. Call for a free estimate.”

The fact that, as of yet, we don’t see this kind of signature in the data is evidence against intelligent design.

* Fellow HTC Hero users may be interested to know that we can finally download Android 2.1.

* Laughter shall be penalized by the deduction of one point per episode of frivolity. Laughter after the conclusion of the game will be met with retroactive penalizations and may alter the game’s outcome. Rules and Regulations for Benehmen!, the German Board Game of Discipline.

* Krugman threatens us with a lost decade. If we vote in Gingrich we get two.

* Rand Paul on Deepwater Horizon: “Accidents happen.” Rand Paul on the Massey coal mine collapse: “Accidents happen.”

* Undercover at the Apple factory. Via Vu.

* Happy birthday, Pac-Man. Happy birthday, Empire Strikes Back. (A little surprised the one and not the other scored the Google doodle.)

* And last but not least: Lost: The Radio Drama. (Thanks Kate!)

Friday Night Links

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Friday night links while I wait for Jaimee to get home so I can watch some science fiction and turn my brain off.

* George Will is in the news this week for his latest stunningly dishonest column on climate change, which the Washington Post has perversely decided to stand behind. The statement from the paper’s ombudsman is here.

* The EPA under the Obama administration will finally be able to take carbon seriously.

* Secure website authentification questions.

* Howard Machtinger looks back at his participation in the Weather Underground to acknowledge the group’s failures. Via MeFi and Matt Yglesias.

While “New Morning” signaled the WU’s commitment to taking greater care after the accident to target property and not people, it did not acknowledge the WU’s own responsibility for the politics of the Townhouse collective.

WU leaders––then and since––failed to reckon candidly and directly with what it meant, politically and humanly, that core members of the organization had planned to use fragmentation bombs to kill attendees at a dance.

* The complete Pac-Man dossier: everything there is to know about the game, from ghost logic to how to play the kill screen. Via MeFi.

* Hard to believe we’ve all outlived Late Night with Conan O’Brien. I haven’t watched the show in years, but it was formative to my sense of “funny” as a teenager. Here’s Colbert saying goodbye the only way he knows how.

* Wither Burris? It doesn’t look good for the man nobody wanted to be Senator anyway.

Link Dump #4, Son of the Mother of All Link Dumps

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Link dump #4, son of the mother of all link dumps.

* Still another Pac-Man text adventure. (Previously.) See also: Guitar Hero as text adventure (1, 2).

* It turns out the Bush administration didn’t bother to keep case files on many of the prisoners in Guantánamo. Via Pandagon.

* Cultural treasures of New Jersey.

* Make Something Cool Every Day makes something cool every day.

* Crooker Timber had a Charlie Stross book event today with tons of links.

* Also at Crooked Timber: Should you delay parenthood till tenure?

* And Obama gets it.

Written by gerrycanavan

January 28, 2009 at 4:25 am

Three from MeFi

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Three from MeFi:

* “There’s Something About Mary,” the amazing story of Mary McFate, a nationally known anti-gun activist who turned out to really be Mary Lou Sapone, mole for the NRA.

* Don Hodges looks at the kill screens from Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, Ms. Pac Man, Dig Dug, as well as the Defender Extra Life Bug. Bonus: The Duck Hunt kill screen.

* Another set of videos that’s been hanging out neglected in my bookmarks for way too long: David Harvey’s twenty-six-hour lecture series on Capital, Vol. 1.

Written by gerrycanavan

July 31, 2008 at 3:06 am

Springsteen, Pac-Man, Bad Smells

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Thursday morning links.

* For my people, the right to listen to Bruce Springsteen is literally a matter of life and death.

* Also in the news: a “sniff-squad” of qualified experts is being brought in to determine whether the landfills in Northhampton, Massachusetts, are “bearable” or “foul beyond belief.”

* Retro Sabotage has a 100% true documentary on the secret origins of Pac-Man as a tool for mass manipulation and brainwashing.

Very early in its development, it was decided that the game itself should also, at a symbolic level, carry consumerist values. The main character was then reduced to a mouth eating everything that came across its path. At first it would be chased by a stylized specter, symbolic of guilt, but, during play, the guilt itself would be overcome and swallowed.

The North Korean version of the game, towards the end of the documentary, is actually sort of fun…

Written by gerrycanavan

March 13, 2008 at 2:18 pm

Posted in Uncategorized

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