Butt And More Butt
Mention the word "butt" in a post and just wait for the e-mail to arrive.
Steven Kreuch said that he went to school with a kid named "Chris P. Butt." Ouch.
Mike Plagge went to school with a girl whose last name was Butt. Her first name was Lotta. Seriously.
DQ reader "my mom" reminded me that there was a governor of Texas named
Jim Hogg in the late 19th century, and his daughter was named "Ima." She had
quite a life, actually.
Craig Scarborough sent me a link to an epic MSNBC story titled
Harry Pitts? The worst baby names of all time. Here are just a few of the classics:
Emma Royd
Leper Priest
Lust T. Castle
Ireland England
Audio Science
Al Caholic (Bart Simpson prank, yes, but also a real name)
Seymour Butz
Maya Buttreeks
Superman: Red Son
After reading the post about Iron Man last week, and my reference to Superman as "superbland," Andrew Shih recommended that I read
Superman: Red Son. So I did, and it was tremendous.
In Red Son, the rocketship carrying an infant doesn't land in Smallvile--it lands in the Soviet Union.
If that sounds like an interesting but shallow idea, it doesn't work out that way. Mark Millar writes with a significant amount of nuance, and there is much, much more to to the story than I expected. Superman is so well-established at this point (even shopworn, perhaps) that warping the myth onto another path entirely makes for entirely absorbing reading.
Other superheroes show up, too, but I'm not going to give you any spoilers. If you're interested, here's an Amazon link:
Superman: Red Son.
Eli 6.9
Eli 6.9 came home from school yesterday. Two of his friends at school are named Andrew and Tumello, and they're both seven.
"Andrew and Tumello are starting a CAR COMPANY," he said. "Tumello is going to draw the cars and Andrew is going to build them. If they sell enough cars, they're going to buy a HOUSE--in SPAIN! Can they DO that?"
"Good luck finding a house in Spain," I said. "The tourists have absolutely
ruined that country."
***
We have a local grocery chain in Texas called H.E.B. It's been around a long time--since I was a kid, even--and they've essentially swallowed all the national chain competition in Austin and most of South Texas.
Two weekends ago, after we came back from the store (flowers for Mother's Day), we were sitting together on the couch.
"What does 'H.E.B.' stand for?" Eli asked.
"It's the initials of the man who started the company," I said. "H.E. Butt."
He could hardly get a word out because he was laughing so hard, but he managed to squeak "BUTT?"
"Butt," I said.
"That CAN'T be a name," he said. "Dad, you're kidding."
"Usually, yes, but that was the guy's name."
"I can't believe it," he said. "Butt."
"Can you imagine going to school with that last name?" I asked.
"Argghhh!" he said. "Did he have any kids?"
"He had a son," I said.
"What was his name?" Eli asked.
"Seymour," I said.
"Seymour Butt," he said. He sat there for a few seconds, then burst out laughing. "SEE MORE BUTT!" he shouted, laughing wildly.
Just then, Gloria walked in from her study.
"MOM! There was a KID named SEE MORE BUTT!" he shouted. Gloria shook her head.
"I love introducing him to the classics," I said.
H.E. Butt's real son, by the way, was named "Charles."
***
The Dramatist was making a (flat) house out of popsicle sticks on Monday, and for some reason, part of the roof wasn't adhering properly, so Gloria took out the hot glue gun to help him.
Last night, he carried the repaired house upstairs, but when he walked into his room, the roof separated again. "Noooooooo!" he said, slapping his forehead. "The hot glue has FAILED ME!"
Fruit Bat
Just to clarify, Gloria knows that "fruit bat" is a kind of bat, but she also knows that someone thinking there are fruit bats in Austin is off by, oh, a
hemisphere.Here's an e-mail from Jim Riegel:
I lived in Okinawa for a couple of years and we used to have them regularly in the neighborhood.
Fruit bats cannot be mistaken for your garden variety bat. Fruit bats are more likely to be mistaken for your garden variety 'HOLY SHIT! WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING?!' They've got a wing span of 3 feet plus and a body that's a good ten inches long. Absolutely huge. Oh, and if you're curious as to why 1.5 million Mexican Freetail bats live under the Congress Avenue bridge, here's the
story.
Please Note
Steve Bauman e-mailed me and made an excellent point:
"I've written about this before, but when less than 1% of your customer base is stealing the candy, does it make sense to force everyone to line up and empty their pockets on a regular basis?"
So, publishers don't have any numbers on piracy, but you know it's less than 1% of their customer base? That's a fair comment--I
don't know that. I think that a very small percentage of paying customers are responsible for cracking the game and putting up torrents, but I have no data to support that, and it's not accurate for me to use that number. I assumed that was the case because even a small number of torrents could be responsible for a huge number of pirated copies.
I wasn't trying to minimize the size of the piracy problem for PC games, because it appears to be enormous. It just seems conceptually that PC piracy is a one-to-many relationship because of the digital nature of the content.
Let Me Tell You Something About Borneo
Robinson: Let me tell you something about Borneo. We have here a kind of an earwig.
Macy: A what?
Robinson: An earwig--a kind of caterpillar. A thing almost as fine as a spider's web. It lives on wax, feeds on the innards of flowers, and it has a decided liking for the human ear. The natives hereabout have a distinct terror of it, they do. You see, it moves and it rests so lightly on a human being that he's practically unconscious of it. Now, if you were to place one of these earwigs in a man's ear...well, once it's in the ear, it's a thousand-to-one chance of it every coming out again. You see, Mr. Macy, it can't turn 'round. Backing out is impossible. So it continues to feed as it goes, and it crawls right inside of the head, and the result--think of it, Mr. Macy, think of it! Ultimately, it reaches the brain, with the result that--(snaps stick)--it's the end of it. The complete end of it.
Macy: But while it's happening?
Robinson: Oh, while it's happening, why sir, it's a living torment, is what it is. Torture. But the net result, Mr. Macy. There's the beauty of it. The net result is what it is we're looking for. When EA announced the copy protection scheme that would be used for
Mass Effect and
Spore, we heard Robinson
. We were outraged to be told that in addition to an initial online activation, there would be
this (from Bioware's Derek French):
Mass Effect uses SecuROM and requires an online activation for the first time that you play it. Each copy of Mass Effect comes with a CD Key which is used for this activation and for registration here at the BioWare Community. Mass Effect does not require the DVD to be in the drive in order to play, it is only for installation.After the first activation, SecuROM requires that it re-check with the server within ten days (in case the CD Key has become public/warez’d and gets banned). Just so that the 10 day thing doesn’t become abrupt, SecuROM tries its first re-check with 5 days remaining in the 10 day window. If it can’t contact the server before the 10 days are up, nothing bad happens and the game still runs. After 10 days a re-check is required before the game can run.For us, recurring copy-protection schemes aren't about the protection of intellectual property.
They're earwigs.
EA "backed off" later in the week to a one-time online activation for Mass Effect, and said
this about Spore:
A few things we wanted you to know:
— We authenticate your game online when you install and launch it the first time.
— We'll re-authenticate when a player uses online features, downloads new content or a patch for their game.Translation: we proposed a shitload of online "authentication." When you got mad, we proposed a
different shitload of online "authentication."
That was my first reaction, anyway, and it reminded me that when it comes to copy protection, we're angry.
Then I wondered why.
When it comes right down to it, we're almost all in agreement that games shouldn't be stolen. We like (mostly) the people who develop games. We
want them to make money.
Here's a question, though: how many time should I have to prove that I'm not a thief?
I think that's the question that publishers just don't want to answer.
To me, there are two fundamental, major problems with what publishers are doing right now, and I'd like to discuss both of them with you. If you want the outline first, the two problems would be
uncertain benefits and
security vs. content. First, off, let's talk about uncertain benefits. Look, I don't want games to be stolen, but how exactly is checking my CD key every five days helping? Or every time I go online? I thought the vast majority of illegal copies of a game were distributed via torrents? What does this have to do with that? What's the actual benefit of using this approach? How much are illegal copies reduced?
Simple questions, I know, but publishers have done a really, really poor job of answering them.
Really, really poor.
I think there's also a simple reason for why they haven't answered:
they don't know. They have only the fuzziest idea of how much their activation schemes reduce piracy. It's more of a faith-based approach than anything else.
That's why we don't get specific explanations: they don't have any. I give EA full credit for at least letting us know the details of the copy protection, but we need more. We need to know why this matters, why it's not just a "well, it can't hurt" idea.
I've written about this before, but when less than 1% of your customer base is stealing the candy, does it make sense to force everyone to line up and empty their pockets on a regular basis? There has to be a more selective, focused approach that would be more effective.
Let's move on to to the second problem: security versus content. Publishers have done an awful job when it comes to influencing our perception of security checks
Why? Because there's nothing in it for us.
Nothing.
Here's an idea. Why not make these security checks beneficial to us in at least some small way? Why not create a thirty second mini-game for us to play while you're shoving a probe up our computer's ass? And if we play the mini-game well, we get a reward--a temporary bonus that could be used in the game we're playing.
In a role-playing game, for example, we might win a special weapon, or a rare item. The vast majority of the time, what we'd win would be a trinket, but there would at least be a small chance of acquiring some kind of rare item. That item might degrade over time, or have limited use, but it would be a reward in the short term.
We could even see several possible rewards, and choosing which one was most valuable would add another layer of strategy to the game.
This could be implemented in a hundred different ways, really--the possibilities are unlimited. I just like the idea of the copy protection check adding more game to the game.
It could also become a new content category: the mini mini-game. Fun to play, and a little reward at the end.
Create compelling mini-games and an interesting reward system, and
security becomes
content. Would it change my mind about recurring security checks? On an intellectual level, absolutely not. The issues are too thorny, and this wouldn't fundamentally resolve any of them.
On an emotional level, though, it
would (to some degree) change how I feel
. I'd be seeing content that I couldn't access otherwise. It would be making the game I'm playing more interesting. I'd be getting something special in exchange for an intrusion.
It would also be a little carrot for people buying the PC version of a game, because this wouldn't be needed with the console versions.
Look, games are supposed to be fun. Why not make the copy protection fun as well?
Happy Annniversary, Baby, Got You On My Mind
Gloria and I had our eleventh wedding anniversary on Saturday.
We each picked out two cards to give to each other. Here was the first card Gloria gave me:
Well, that was lovely and incredibly thoughtful. Here was the second card:
Those were all little colored stones on the card, by the way.
It's at this point that I was reminded of the difference between women and men.
Gloria started to open her first card, "Oh...foxes," she said.
"Cartoon foxes," I said helpfully. "He's about to fall off a ladder."
"Um," she said.
"That was the high-brow card," I said.
"High-brow," she repeated. "Foxes are the high-brow card."
Here was the second card:
The look on her face said this (with apologies to Sir Arthur Eddington): men are not only stranger than we imagine, but they are stranger than we can imagine.
We had dinner at Shoreline Grill, which is right on Town Lake, and walked down to the path by the lake after dinner to see the bats come out. Austin has the world's largest urban bat colony from May to October, and at times there are over a million bats living under the Congress Avenue bridge.
If you've never seen a million bats , it's quite impressive. And smelly--or, at least, it's quite smelly underneath the bridge.
This is one of those things that seems to be on every tourist's list of "things I must do," so in addition to the locals, the path is usually jammed with people who are there because it was mentioned in a guidebook. Where we were standing, people were walking down from an ultra-expensive hotel with their glasses of wine held just so, and they turned what's kind of a joyous natural event into a bit of a snobfest.
My favorite lines:
--"what time do they come out?" Quite a few people expected them to keep a by-the-minute schedule, as if a bell would ring and a million bats would emerge on cue.
--"that's a lot of bats." Spoken repeatedly.
--"are they fruit bats?"
"Fruit bats?" Gloria whispered.
Hmm. Fruit bats.
They're actually Mexican free-tailed bats, and they mostly eat mosquitoes, but suddenly I didn't care.
One of the things I've always wanted to do in life is create a thriving urban legend, the kind that becomes so pervasive it eventually gets debunked on Snopes.com.
I know. Other people want to cure cancer. Yes, I look bad in comparison, but I have to play to my strengths, and curing cancer is unfortunately not one of them.
Creating an urban legend, though--right in my wheelhouse.
Let's see. Snobby people + Lack of Knowledge About Subject= Light Bulb.
Strawberries and wine go together, I think.
Here's the prank. First, get a few friends to go down to Town Lake near dark. Have half of them hold strawberries over their heads, while the other half just hold their hands over their heads. When bats swerve near (a few always stray from the main streams), take photographs.
It's an easy Photoshop job to take the pictures and edit them so that it looks like the bats are carrying strawberries.
Oh, yes.
Upload the pictures back onto the camera.
Return to Town Lake near dark--this time, with a few friends (as plants) and a few boxes of strawberries. Start talking about how amazing it is that bats will take strawberries from your hand.
They'll laugh, of course. That's when you say "We got some pictures last time," and you hold up your camera. At that point, they'll be 100% in, because you have conclusive photographic evidence that this actually happens.
Then, just start passing out strawberries.
My dream is to have fifty or a hundred people lining the path at Town Lake, all holding strawberries over their heads.
Waiting for the bats.
When the bats come out, and a few fly near, your friends can pull down their arms suddenly, claiming that a bat took their strawberry. It's near dusk, the bats fly so erratically that they're impossible to follow, and there will be no reason to doubt them.
Then people return to their cities, and they tell their friends the miraculous story about the bats that take strawberries from your hand. Those friends tell their friends, maybe a photograph or two mysteriously winds up online, and someday, people are bringing strawberries with them when they come to see the bats.
"I"m glad you're not in politics," Gloria said.
Friday Links!
A bizarre compendium, as always, so let's get started. You're not going to finish anything at work today.
As part of crow/superhero week, we have links about both.
From Mike Gilbert, a link to a video about
the amazing intelligence of crows. I had no idea.
Sean sent in a superhero link: an essay by Michael Chabon titled
Secret Skin. Chabon wrote "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay," which is a wonderful, wonderful book. And also from Sean, a classic story by sportswriter Joe Posnanski about
his greatest day in sportswriting.
Not a superhero, but close: the crazy "Fusion Man," Yves Rossey, made a successful
public demonstration of his jet-powered wing. And it's homemade.
Also in the near-superhero category,
wheelchair racer Josh George, who weighs 98 pounds and can bench press 220. When sprinting, he can hit his rims 140 times a minute.
And one more near-superhero: double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius, who has been linked here before (watching him run with carbon fiber "blades" is one of the most amazing things you'll ever see),
won his appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport and is now eligible to compete in the Olympics. His 400 meter best (46.56) is still above the Olympic qualifying standard of 45.55, but he could be added to the 1,600 meter relay team.
Several of you sent me this link last Friday:
Great Tits Cope Well With Warming. I'm sure they do, but would "good" tits do as well?
Sirius, appropriately following that link, sent in a link to a story at Newsweek about
the quest to build the perfect bra. Also from Sirius, a link to a story about a
remarkable feature inside Westminster Abbey, and here's an excerpt:
The wraps have come off one of Westminster Abbey's least known treasures, a medieval marble pavement foretelling the end of the world, while conservation experts consider how to preserve the ancient stones for the next 740 years.
Few modern visitors have ever seen it, although since 1268 kings and princes, queens and cardinals have walked across a symbol laden mosaic as intricate as a piece of jewellery.
It is made up of rare marbles and gemstones, including some recycled from monuments 1,000 years older, and pieces of coloured glass, set in complex allegorical patterns into a framework of Purbeck marble cut as intricately as a jigsaw puzzle.
Finally, the hat trick for Sirius this week, and it's a link to a discovery by ex-Monty Python member Terry Jones of a 17th century conspiracy to invade Wales by the French. And a
map is what tipped them off.
From Nathan Carpenter, a link to a strange and sad episode in history: the "display" of a Congolese pygmy at the
Bronx Zoo. It's an entirely surreal story, with plenty of disgrace to go around.
From Jesse Leimkuehler, a link to an article outlining the mission of the
Phoenix Mars Lander.
From Scott Zimmerman, a link to the
GEN H-4 one-man helicopter. It weights 155 pounds.
From Jarod, a link to an excellent list over at Esquire:
The 75 Skills Every Man Should Master. I think I had forty-two of them--I believe that's an "F."
From the Edwin Garcia Links Machine, a link to
Kyraben: Japanese Character Lunch Boxes. I know, it's motherhood out of control, but they still look fantastic. Also, a link to a photo essay titled
In The Time Of Trees, and it's quite striking.
Crazy rasberry ants:
look out. On the plus side, though, at least they eat fire ants.
From Fong, a link to a segment on the Star King, a Korean talent show. It features a five-year old blind girl who plays piano, and she's
remarkable.
MLB Power Pros 2008
MLB Power Pros was an interesting game on the Wii last year. It used the super-deformed style, but it was a very strong baseball simulation, and it had an official MLB license as well. This year's version was recently announced, and Blog for the Sports Gamer has a
ton of screenshots.
NPD Spin
I was going to put a post up about the promotional spin put on the April NPD numbers, but
Chris Kohler did it for me.
Console Post of the Week: They Said What?
NPD numbers for April:
Wii: 714,200
Xbox 360: 188,000
PS3: 187,100
PS2: 124,400
That has to be one of the biggest ass-kickings in the history of consoles. It's the biggest game release of the year for "next-gen" consoles, and the Wii outsells them by almost 2-1 COMBINED?
Here's what must be the frightening point for Microsoft: they weren't supply-constrained in April. Here's what must be the frightening point for Sony: they weren't, either.
This is extremely compelling evidence for Microsoft that they have to cut the price in the U.S., and quickly. Last year in April, the 360 sold 174,000 units. This year, with a
lower price, and the biggest game launch of their year, they sell only 14,000 more units? That's a horrific number for them.
For the last year, I've thought that the Wii would dominate, but that there would be a clear second place, and the second-place console would still do very, very well. Now, though, it's looking like both Microsoft and Sony might be completely overwhelmed.
Here are a few data points before we get to (for me) the shocker of the week, which doesn't even involve the NPD numbers.
First off, I mentioned a few weeks ago that GTA IV was going to be an interesting test case to compare the 360 to the PS3. It's been speculated by many (including me) that a portion of the PS3's installed base is "dead" when it comes to gaming. So a ballpark test would be to compare the percentage of installed base purchasing GTA IV by platform.
N'Gai Croal was given access to Gamestop's GTA IV sales by platform, and here's what
he found:
According to sales information that GameStop has released exclusively to Level Up, 64 percent of the copies of Grand Theft Auto IV sold during the first week were for Xbox 360, while 36 percent were sold on PS3. Put another way, that's a roughly 2 to 1 sales advantage for Xbox 360.
So how does that split compare to the Xbox 360 and PS3's respective installed bases? As we said above, the NPD group reports that 9.9 million Xbox 360s and 4.1 million PS3s have been sold through the end of March 2008. (NOTE: these installed base figures do not include the month of April, so our back of the envelope calculations will be slightly off.) That's a total of 14 million units, of which 70.7 percent are Xbox 360 and 29.3 percent are PS3. So when we compare this to GameStop's split of GTA IV sales--64 percent on Xbox 360 and 36 percent on PS3--it's clear that GTA IV underperformed on Xbox 360 relative to Microsoft's pre-April installed base, while it exceeded expectations on PS3 relative to Sony's pre-April installed base.That is absolutely not what I expected. There were
fewer copies of GTA IV sold for the 360 as a percentage of the installed base? And this is after signing a deal with Rockstar for exclusive content?
Sure, that's not an exact comparison, and Microsoft's already lobbing excuses out there, but it's still a bad, bad number for them.
Another bad number for Microsoft emerged from this weeks earnings release from Electronic Arts. In the "Platform Next Revenue Mix" of their earnings statement, there was this:
Look at the change in PS3 revenue versus 360 revenue. Again, that's a horrible trend for Microsoft.
So on the face of those two data points, and Sony's bellowing about their European sales last week (even though Microsoft responded and Sony suddenly shut up), it would be easy to believe that the PS3 is doing much, much better.
There's really only one party who doesn't believe that the PS3 is gaining strength.
Sony.
In yesterday's earnings report, Sony included a shocking bit of forecasting: for the current fiscal year, they project that they'll be selling 10.0 million units into retail worldwide.
Why is that so shocking? Because in the fiscal year just concluded (ending March 31, 2008), they sold 9.24 million units into retail.
Unit sales growth projected for this fiscal year? 8.2%.
Wow.
Even allowing for Sony having totally jammed the channel in the last year, that's a stunner. Sony is projecting that on March 31, 2009, 28 months after launch, the PS3 will have sold 22.81 million units into retail. Remember, those aren't even actual consumer sales. That represents actual consumer sales
plus all retail stock.
8% year-over-year unit growth for the console that succeeded the most successful console in history is a disaster. A flaming, bellowing disaster. And that growth is off a crap base to begin with.
To see just how bad this is, let's compare PS3 and PS2 sales as closely as we can.
First, a quick explanation of methodology. Since consoles launch in different territories at different times, there has to be a method of valuation to gain equivalent "sales opportunity" numbers. Based on the last generation, here's how the sales broke out:
U.S.--40%
Europe--40%
Japan--20%
That's not exact, but it's a reasonable comparison base. So for a quarter where a console was available in all three territories (for every day of the quarter), the "sales opportunity" would be equal to 1 (.4+.4+.2). If a console was available in the U.S. and Japan, but not in Europe, the SO for that quarter would equal to .6 (.4+.2+0).
What about partial quarters? That's easy. Let's say, for example, that during a product launch quarter, a console was available in the U.S. for 60 days out of 91 days in a quarter. To get the SO for that quarter, you'd use this formula:
.4*(60/91)
I know, that seems extreme, but I want to get as accurate a comparison as possible between the PS2 and the PS3 at similar times in their lifespans. And I'm going to briefly go through the actual calculations here so that you can see what I'm doing.
Here are the launch dates for the PS3 in the three major territories:
Japan--November 11, 2006
U.S.--November 17, 2006
Europe--March 23, 2007
Here are the sales opportunity numbers:
Q3 2006, end December 31, 2006 (U.S. and Japan launched): (.2*(51/91))+(.4*(45/91)=.30989
Q4 2006, end March 31, 2007 (partial Europe added): .2+.4+(.4*(9/91))=.63956
Q1 2007 and forwards (full sales opportunity in all three regions): 1.
At the end of the current fiscal year for Sony, which will be March 31, 2009, the total SO number will be 8.9494. And they're projecting 22.81 million units sold into retail.
So at the same "sales opportunity" point in the PS2's lifespan, how did it compare?
One caveat here is that Sony has changed their accounting method in the last year. So with the PS2, Sony's historical numbers are "production shipments of hardware," while the PS3 is "unit sales of hardware." Like I said, though, those "unit shipments" just represent inventory sold to dealers, not actual consumer sales.
Here are the launch dates for the PS2:
Japan--March 24, 2000
U.S.--October 26, 2000
Europe--November 24, 2000
Here's the tedious math stuff:
Q4 1999, end March 31, 2000 (Japan launch):.2*(8/91)=0.01758
Q1 2000, end June 30, 2000 (Japan only): .2
Q2 2000, end September 30, 2000 (Japan only): .2
Q3 2000, end December 31, 2000 (Japan, plus U.S. and European launch): .2+(.4*(66/91))+(.4*(38/91))=.65714
Q4 2000 and forwards: 1.
What's the closest calendar point as an equivalent to the PS3 8.9494 SO total? On December 31, 2002, the PS2's SO totals 9.0747. That's very close.
What was the total of PS2 production shipments at that time?
49.59 million.
Even allowing for the difference between production shipments and sales into retail, that is an incredible gap. By Sony's own projections, over twenty-seven months into its lifepsan, the PS3 will be selling, at best, at roughly
half the rate of the PS2.
That's a wipeout, no matter what Sony claims.
Here's something else those numbers probably mean: forget about a price cut this year. Just based on the projection of 10 million units, it seems inconceivable that Sony would have to cut prices to reach that level. Plus there's an excerpt from the conference call transcript call posted at
NeoGAF that suggests the same (thanks Matt Matthews):
Nobuyuki Oneda - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
...And the pricing itself, basically we don't disclose any pricing strategies for the coming year, but as I said that the... we don't aggressively adjust the price for the coming year. And to maintain the 10 million level of the quantity this year, I don't think that we really have to adjust the pricing so much.
It seems like Microsoft has been screwing up in epic quantities since the beginning of the year, but Sony doesn't seem to care--they're not going to ratchet up the pressure by cutting prices. Although it's possible, based on the April NPD numbers (and their total wipeout in Japan), that they'll have to cut prices just to get to 10 million, which would be quite embarrassing.
So the next time you hear a Sony executive bellowing about their brilliance, just remember that he's wearing a t-shirt underneath that says "8.2% unit growth."
Tomorrow
Sony put something that was absolutely
jaw-dropping in their earnings report, and I'll tell you about it in the console post tomorrow.
The Escapist Goes To Epic
The Escapist is all about
Epic Games this week, and for the first time, they have a
video as well.
Here's a vote for Bethesda as their next stop.
Superheroes (part two)
Pete Thistle sent me an outstanding story about childhood and superheroes.
When I was 4 and 5 years old, I had a red sleeping bag. It was cool, slippery nylon on the outside, and warm, fuzzy flannel on the inside, just like many sleeping bags now. It had a zipper that went up the side, from the feet, to the opening where your head sticks out. Again, very normal. Then, at the top of where the zipper stopped, there was a Velcro tab that pulled across the front of the opening and secured on the other side of your neck, so that you stretched it across, secured it tight, and your face stuck through an opening held air tight below your chin to keep you warm. I believe this also is very common. It was an ordinary, regular, plain old, run of the mill, mild mannered red sleeping bag.
Until you unzipped it.See, then it transformed into a flowing, fluttery, magical sheet, that if secured around my neck by that seemingly normal Velcro strap, would enable me to fly. Or so I believed. I'm not sure what first gave me the idea to tie this thing around my neck with the Velcro, but once I did there was no stopping me. I would climb up a few steps of the stairs in the front of my parents house and leap off with a yell of "SUUU-PER PETER!!!" and the faith of a child who believed that if he tried hard enough, and practiced a lot, he could learn to fly. At one point as Christmas neared, I believed that Santa Claus was going to teach me.
It was 20 years ago now, and I was just a little boy, so my memory is a little fuzzy, but I recall jumping off those stairs for what seemed like hours. Eventually I would get the courage to move up one more, from two steps to three. Then from three to four. Suddenly the distance to the bottom was still manageable, but the height was beginning to hurt my little legs. But I had to get higher! Yes, that's all I needed, just more air time! So I gathered all of the couch cushions and pillows I could find to soften my landing. Four steps became five, and then six. I don't know where it stopped, but thinking about it now, I can still remember the rush and fear of crouching down like a tiny spring, releasing suddenly, flying into the air, falling a distance of what must have been twice my height, and then BAM!, right into the floor.
Santa Claus never came to give me lessons, but he did give me something. When I awoke that Christmas morning I found two interesting presents under the tree. One was mostly green, and it was a box shaped like an army Jeep. The other was mostly red, and was shaped like a biplane. The boxes themselves were essentially toys themselves, but they had one side in the back where you opened them up to take out whatever was stashed inside. In the Jeep, Santa left me a bag of a wooden train set. I don't know what happened to those, but I loved them a lot. Inside the biplane was something that immediately became my favorite item in the world, and I still have it today. See the attached pictures. Thanks, Mom.
That picture isn't Pete (I know him), but it's definitely his cape. Pete's mom sounds like she is many kinds of awesome.
Crows
I posted a link to an article titled
Japan Fights Crowds of Crows last Friday, and Bill Trinen sent me a story about when he was living in Japan.
I spent a year studying in Tokyo between 1993 and 94, and as is often the case when you first arrive in a foreign land, there were more than few things that I found to be surprising, if not downright startling. One of these, for me, was Tokyo's crows. I don't know what kind of crows there are elsewhere in the U.S., but in the Pacific Northwest where I grew up, crows are not very menacing. Sure, they're quite a bit bigger than your run of the mill robin, but they are still just birds. In Tokyo, they are beasts.
The crows there are big. As the article points out, a three foot wing span is not uncommon, but they also have massive beaks--up to a foot long--more akin to that of a Toucan than the crows I was used to from back home. Long, tall beaks that curve down to a menacing point. The crows in Tokyo are also fighters. Nasty fighters. It's like on every block there is a crow Fight Club going on, from which only the meanest and nastiest crows survive. They also have much deeper caws than you hear from the crows back home, making them sound all the creepier. Just about every night I would hear their caws and cries from their crow fights, and every day I would see crows with mangled wings, scarred faces, and sometimes even fresh wounds. Like I said, these things are beasts.
So, one bright sunny day in the summer of '93, I was walking down the street through Nishi-Azabu with an Australian friend of mine. We were talking about something or other, and as such, weren't paying whole lot of attention to what was ahead of us. We hit a stretch of sidewalk with a fence alongside it, with fence posts that stood about six feet six inches tall. I was walking between my friend and the fence. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed one of the Tokyo crows sitting atop one of those fence posts, but by this point I'd been in Tokyo for many months and was over my initial fear of things, so I didn't pay it any attention. Being Tokyo, there was a fair number of people on the street going in both directions both ahead of us and behind us, but for some reason that still baffles me to this day, jus t as my friend and passed the crow, it leaned its head and monstrous beak down from atop the fence post to within about four inches of my ear and it let out the loudest, deepe st, most gutteral "CAWWWW!" I have ever heard in my life. FOUR INCHES from my face. It scared the crap out of both of us. First we jumped about three feet to the side, and then we ran down the block. From there we watched the crow for the next ten minutes. But it just sat there, letting everyone else walk by unmolested.
My friend looked at me and said "That crow was talking to you. I think you're gonna die." The first rule about Crow Fight Club, obviously, is that you don't caw about Crow Fight Club.
The Dramatist
Eli 6.9 has been having intermittent stomach pain for over a month now. It's one of those things that's very difficult to figure out, and his "less than accurate" reporting makes it much more difficult. The doctor has him on Prevacid now, but that only seems to help sporadically.
In an attempt to gather some data, we're asking him his pain level on a 1-10 scale. He will say "10" most of the time, even though he's still able to run around the house at a hundred miles an hour and hasn't slowed down one bit in general.
Last night, after he got out of his bath, Gloria asked him how his stomach felt, and he said "Oh, it's a ten."
"It is?" she asked.
"Oh, yeah," he said. "It feels like Cupid shot a fiery arrow into my heart."
Interview (part two)
Part two of the interview with Vic Davis is up now, and you can read it
here.
Iron Man
Gloria went with me to see
Iron Man last weekend. I think it's fair to say that her interest in superhero movies is "low," but she's a fan of Robert Downey Jr. (me, too), and that was enough to get her into the car.
There are parts of Iron Man that I really, really dislike, but that's not what matters. What matters is that there's a scene that lasts about two minutes where Tony Stark (Downey) is flying over the city as he tests his power armor, and it's two minutes of sheer exhilaration. That moment somehow captures the essence of what it would feel like to be a superhero.
After the movie, we were having our usual debriefing, and I mentioned that scene. "I looked over at you, because I knew you would totally get into that, and your face was lit up," she said.
"That moment was
being a superhero," I said. "Haven't you ever wondered what it would be like?"
"Not really," she said.
I was shocked. I thought that everyone on earth had wondered what it would be like to be a superhero. I'm forty-seven and I
still wonder about it.
"Is it a girl thing?" I asked. "Do all guys think about it, but girls don't?"
"Not completely," she said, "but that's probably a big part of it."
"You really are part of a strange, alien race," I said.
"As previously mentioned," she said.
"So who is your favorite superhero?" I asked.
"Superman," she said.
"See, he's my
least favorite," I said.
"Why?" she asked.
"Because, to me, a real superhero has to battle the demons inside himself. Superheroes do great good knowing that they could do great evil. Without that conflict, there's no tension. He's Superbland."
Batman is probably the prototype superhero for that struggle of light versus dark, at least for me. He's angry. He feels rage. It always feels like Batman is one step away from being on the other side, and he has to make the decision whether to take that step every day. That, to me, is far more heroic than someone who eats their vegetables every day and always sits up straight in their chair.
This discussion with Gloria made me wonder whether wanting to be a superhero is just in the DNA of men. Have any of us gone through life without wondering, even once, what it would be like?
Interview
In spite of the surreal nature of it all, I have another guest column at Level Up, which you can read
here. It's a two-part (second part published tomorrow) interview with Vic Davis, creator of
Armageddon Empires.
In another development, which will surely tear the spacetime continuum asunder, I'm now a monthly guest columnist at Level Up. And if you just did a spit-take on your monitor--well, so did I.
Console Post of the Week (Unusual Friday Update)
Microsoft (Aaron Greenberg, specifically) has
responded to Sony's claim of leading in Europe (thanks Kotaku):
Today Xbox 360 has a 5-million-unit console sales lead on a global basis based on most recently public reported data from both companies. This includes more than double the installed base in the US according to actual NPD sell-through and over a 1-million-unit lead across Europe also based on reported sell-through from Chart Track and GfK.He's correct about the U.S. numbers, and it's actually closer to 2.5 (9,898,000 to 4,053,000).
Europe? Who knows? Reeves made two original claims:
--"we have sold more PlayStation 3s throughout Europe than Xbox 360"
--Sony has been outselling the 360 in Europe since October of last year, and is still outselling them after the 360 price cut.
If Sony basically pulled this out of their ass by talking about "sold to retailers" (meaningless) as opposed to "sold to customers" (meaningful) then they're still partying like it's 2007, aren't they?
Friday Links!
This week there are links on the Cuban revolution and Mikhail Gorbachev and fascism.
And the platypus.
Four out of five doctors recommend Friday Links as a way to both improve your health and ruin your productivity, so let's get started.
Leading off this week is an article sent in by Cibby Pulikkaseril, and it's about The Third Wave, a social experiment performed by a high school teacher in 1966. It's about (to me) the dangers of collective identity, and it's completely fascinating. The
original article by the teacher is remarkable, but even more interesting is an
interview with one of his students.
The co-lead this week is from Sirius, and it's a video of a working version of Charles Babbage's
Difference Engine #2. It's nothing short of astonishing.
Here's a mind-blowing link from Brian Witte: birds sense magnetic fields with the help of
quantum mechanics. Bacteria can also sense magnetic fields, and here are some
incredible pictures of magnetosomes inside bacteria.
The New York times had some stellar articles in its Tuesday Science section, and here's an assortment:
Redefining Disease, Genes and All is about the process of creating a map of disease based on genetic relationships. It's fascinating reading, and the map is a stunner (click on "multimedia").
Platypus Looks Strange On The Inside, Too is an article about the decoding of the platypus genome.
Researchers Seek to Demystify the Metabolic Magic of Sled Dogs shares some amazing facts about sled dogs--in particular, that they somehow burn calories at a daily rate 2.4 times that of a Tour de France cyclist, yet somehow they don't deplete their glycogen or fat reserves.
Lots of Animals Learn, But Smarter Isn't Better, which is a discussion of the biological cost of learning.
Japan Fights Crowd of Crows is right out of "The Birds," and here's an excerpt:
Blackouts are just one of the problems caused by an explosion in Japan’s population of crows, which have grown so numerous that they seem to compete with humans for space in this crowded nation. Communities are scrambling to find ways to relocate or reduce their crow populations, as ever larger flocks of loud, ominous birds have taken over parks and nature reserves, frightening away residents. It is a scourge straight out of Hitchcock, and the crows here look and act the part. With wing spans up to a yard and intimidating black beaks and sharp claws, Japan’s crows are bigger, more aggressive and downright scarier than those usually seen in North America.Finally,
Family Science Project Yields Surprising Data About a Siberian Lake is the story of the Kozhov family, which has been studying Lake Baikal in Siberia for 65 years. Lake Baikal is "the deepest and largest body of fresh water on earth," and for 65 years, the Kozhov family has done this:
Every week to 10 days, by boat in summer and over the ice in winter, he crossed the lake to a spot about a mile and a half from Bolshie Koty, a small village in the piney woods on Baikal’s northwest shore. There, Dr. Kozhov, a professor at Irkutsk State University, would record water temperature and clarity and track the plant and animal plankton species as deep as 2,400 feet.
From Chris Meyer, a story with one of my favorite headlines ever:
Parachuting Dog Helped Win WWII. I'd just like to know of the dog helped more than the bear (+10 if you remember that article).
From the Edwin Garcia Links machine, a remarkable
story about an American journalist who flew to Cuba to cover the revolution. Next, a link to a story about
gene therapy and how an experimental trial has been a "major advance in the treatment of blindness." Finally, and you really need to watch this video, it's
El camino del Rey, a walkway to the climbing section of
El Chorro. If I could use one word to describe how I felt watching the video, it would be "nervous." Then there's
Luncheon Meat With Faces Just Tastes Better.
Only Edwin could send in links about the Cuban Revolution and faces in lunch meat in the same week.
From Sirius, a link to an article about a glass chip that
spins silk--like a spider. Also, a fascinating article about how
air pollution impedes the ability of bees to find flowers.
From Pete Thistle, a link to
No Country for Old Communists, an article about Mikhail Gorbachev and a talk he gave--of all places--in Hollywood. At the Hard Rock Live.
From Jesse Leimkuehler, a link to an article about the
Phoenix Lander as it nears Mars. Also from Jesse, an article about how scientists believe
sand grains form on Titan, and it's not what you might expect.
From Jason Price, a
video of TNT analyst Kenny Smith attempting to duplicate Kobe Bryant's digitally-enhanced jump over an Aston Martin. It's a classic.
