Friday's Food For Thought - 4/11/08

Welcome to another Friday! and another Friday's Food for Thought! Where we give you a brief examination of what is interesting and unusual about the world for your mental stimulation. We hope you enjoy another thought-filled Friday!

From the BBC NEWS: Animal dung coffee at £50 a cup.

"A gourmet coffee blended from animal droppings is being sold at a London department store for £50 per cup." To benefit cancer research.

They're not completely crazy, just mostly crazy.

Now then, a team quote! This quote supposedly originated with British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, but gained great popularity in the States thanks to the one and only Mark Twain. It is dedicated to all of the scientists, politicians, and statisticians who help make the world go round:

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

And finally, a video dedicated to tv news reporters. What wonderful moments of humor you bring us daily:




Have a great Friday!

Friday's Food For Thought - 3/28/08

Come one, come all! It's a very special Friday's Food for Thought!

We here at Hobson's normally try to avoid matters that are strictly of local importance, but this story is just too good to pass up. As most people who have some knowledge of Harding are aware, almost all students are required to attend a daily "chapel" service which lasts for about a half hour in which there are announcements and then a short Christian worship service of some kind. Since the entire student body as well as much of the faculty gather for this event with such regularity, it becomes the perfect time for students to plan and commit mischievous deeds of one sort or another.

This Wednesday morning, one such deed occurred, and it seems to echo the themes of a previous post on Hobsons. Upon exiting the doors to the auditorium where we meet, I looked down at the ground and was greeted with the sight of fetal pigs. Someone seemed to have strewn them about all of the exits during chapel time, leaving them to be discovered by students on their way to get some breakfast or go to class. Most people were disgusted, but some like me were highly amused at the absurdity of looking down and seeing fetal pigs on the ground.

With that story in mind, here is your fetal-pig themed Friday's Food for Thought!

From USA Today, a slightly older story about a more aggressive prank involving fetal pigs:

Swim team inpales fetal pigs on rivals' car antennas.

From the TV Show Angel, a character named Willow professes her love for fetal pigs:

Willow: It had to be something specific. There's lots of jars in the world. Can't shatter 'em all. Oh, I mean you could, but, good things come in jars - peanut butter, jelly, those two-headed fetal pigs at the Natural History Museum.

[Wesley just looks at her]

Willow: Come on. Everybody loves fetal pigs!

As for a video, I will not bother disturbing you with most of the youtube results I found in a vain quest for an appropriate video. If you really want to see some fetal pig action, just search for it on youtube.

Well until next Friday, keep your mind active, and don't forget to stop and admire the fetal pigs of your life!

Retro Sabotage

An introductory note: I know that this is my second post in a row concerning video games, but you'll have to excuse me because they are a fascination of mine, and the content of this post will be very different from the content of the previous one. Now, on with the show!

Most everyone has played some of the more classic video games: Pong, Breakout, Adventure, Pac Man, Space Invaders, Defender, Asteroids, Tetris, etc. These things have been around since the '70s and '80s and their gameplay is a very pure experience, usually undiluted by things like narrative and control scheme and other such trappings which usually turn people off to the modern samplings of the medium.

In a way they've become archetypal of the conventions we see in modern games. Pong was not only the first video game for a home console, it was also the first game of the sports genre, being a crude approximation of Tennis. Text adventure games such as Zork had been around a while, but Adventure was among the first graphical representations of the genre with which it shares its name.

Tetris was one of the first games of the puzzle genre which has lately spawned sensations in the casual market like Snood and Bejeweled. Space Invaders (along with its relatives Asteroids and Defender) was one of the first of a genre known as shooters which eventually split into several other genres including: top-down (Space Invaders, Asteroids, Galaga), side-scrolling (Defender, Gradius), first-person (Doom, Halo), third-person (Grand Theft Auto) and some other minor genres. Each was based on both the player's perspective of the one doing the shooting, and the freedom of the shooting individual.

Whew, after a little history lesson there, we get to the meat: Retro Sabotage. This site does riffs on classic arcade games and explores some of the symbolism employed in each by presenting the classic games with a twist. For example, a version of Space Invaders, named simply Invasion, questions the futility of the mission of the last defender of Earth. A version of Pac Man, which they cleverly title The Morning After, explores the various psychedelic effects of the Power Pills which Pac Man eats that allow him to go after the ghosts that normally chase him. The version of Tetris they have up, called Compromise, allows the player to experience playing two games of Tetris simultaneously using only one controller. Each screen is given different pieces, and the player has to decide where and how to place them on both screens.

They have several others uploaded right now, and the site promises weekly updates on every Thursday. I am adding them to my bookmarks in the hope that I will soon see a version of the Super Mario Brothers in which each of the mushrooms Mario eats makes him hallucinate and think that he is seeing oversized pipes everywhere and that small brown mushrooms are skulking about, trying to kill him.

- Via Neatorama.

Friday's Food for Thought - 2/29/08

Welcome to a special Leap Day edition of Friday's Food for Thought here at Hobson's. Random fact: The average American will experience fewer than 20 leap days in their life. This day is better than a holiday, because it only comes once every four years and is used to help make up for the inaccuracy of humanity's timekeeping system! Feel free to celebrate the day by pondering the briefness of human existence and the inability of humanity to accurately quantify the world in which we live. Let's kick off the festivities!

We'll begin with a brief look at the news today.

From WCBSTV: Students Punished After Buying Lunch With Pennies.

"29 N.J. Eighth-Graders Get 2 Days Detention After Forking Over Nearly 6000 Coins."

These students were given detention for holding up the lunch line when they each payed for their $2 lunch in pennies. Legal U.S. tender = against school policy.

Next we'll use a quote from good old Ben Franklin. I'm not sure if this ever appeared in Poor Richard's, but it is very fitting for the image of American culture that is thrust upon us by many major media outlets today.

A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.

And finally, everyone has seen the number one Youtube video of all time, Evolution of Dance. We know it, we love it; it's much better than the music video of some mopey punk-rock group being on the top. Some man (because no sane woman would do this) has made a parody of Evolution of Dance in which the comedian/dancer is replaced with an animated Optimus Prime.

Steven Spielberg's Video Game

Good ole' Steven Spielberg. We've learned so much about life through watching his movies. Such as never ever go into water above your knees because monstrous sharks are always lurking just a little outside of your vision. We also learned that aliens are adorable and should be kept in closets and protected from the all-seeing eye of an uncaring national government. Also, Nazis make the perfect bad guys.

One could make the case that Steven Spielberg knows a lot about what makes a good movie. He's been nominated twelve times for Academy Awards and has won three of those times. Not only has he racked up the nominations, but he has done it across four decades: from Best Director for Close Encounters of the Third Kind in 1977 to Best Producer for Letters from Iwo Jima in 2006. This man literally has a lifetime of experience in story-telling through cinema under his belt.

But now, the great film director has decided to try something new. It was announced some months ago that Steven Spielberg had contracted with one of the largest publishers of video games in the world, Electronic Arts, to direct two video games to be published under their label. One was to be a dramatic, narrative-driven game for the Microsoft XBox 360 and the Sony Playstation 3, and the other was to be a physics-based puzzle game for the Nintendo Wii. Few details were given, and much speculation abounded.

Could Spielberg make not one, but two great games that live up to his legacy as a director? Would he be able to direct a game that had very little narrative focus? Would EA shoehorn him into a budget and time frame that were impossible to accomplish like they have done for other developers? Would his games wind up looking like one of the many other craptastic games based on movie narratives?

The essential question derived from all of this is: Does Spielberg's directorial genius translate from the medium of moving pictures and narration to the medium of interaction, competition, and user-creativity?

I will admit, I was highly skeptical about this question for quite some time. No knocking Spielberg, but game design is hard work that few people can do with any success. However, now you can be the judge for yourself as to Spielberg's talent and ingenuity. Below is the very first video for his Wii game. It was released recently with little other information than its title: Boom Blox.

Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion, so feel free to leave it in the comments. I believe that the video shows great ingenuity, and that Spielberg will prove he has a medium-transcending eye for design. If the game is released at a lower-than-normal price point, it has the potential to tear through the market as a must-have casual game.

Little is known of the progress of Spielberg's other game, but I'm feeling much less skeptical about both of them after viewing this video. Who knows, maybe he will even go the extra mile in his other game and throw in some Nazis!

Friday's Food for Thought - 2/8/08

This edition of Friday's Food for Thought is brought to you by caffeine. I wouldn't have made it through this week alive without this wonderful little drug. And now for the amazing, the weird, and the just plain interesting!

First, from the San Francisco Chronicle:


British Stores Halt 'Lolita' Beds

"Woolworths stores in Britain have stopped selling "Lolita" beds for young girls after a parents' organization complained because of the name's association with the famous novel about a pedophile."

Second, a quote in honor of Super Tuesday happening this week in the US political scene:

"In the course of my life, I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet."
- Winston Churchill

Spoken like a true politician!

Last, but certainly not least, an incredibly interesting video! This video, entitled "The 1K Project II", it is a video collage of 1000 different replays of a car running on the same track in the PC stunt racer, TrackMania. I must admit to never having played this particular game, but the beauty in the presentation of this video transcends mere racing games!



See, wasn't that cool?

Puppy Bowl IV

Last night, most of you watched at least some part of one of the biggest annual sporting events on American television, the Super Bowl. While I caught the beginning and the end of the game and was delighted with the results, the football game could not keep my attention for very long because I had very little interest in either of the two teams. So as my disinterest grew and not wanting to do any school work yet on that evening, I turned to the trusty TV Guide channel. Most of the entries were pretty dull - what can you expect when competing against the Super Bowl for ratings? - but one particular show caught my attention. Animal Planet's Puppy Bowl (Those with weak stomachs may want to abstain from following that link. It contains ridiculous amounts of nausea-inducing cuteness).

This was not just Puppy Bowl, however: this was Puppy Bowl IV. It is the fourth in a series that is presented as an alternative to the testosterone-infused, high-contact sport of football. It features about a dozen puppies in a football stadium-themed playroom with some toys and not much else. They are let loose to run around and play with one another while a "referee" looks on and cleans things up every once in awhile. In post-production, an energetic soundtrack is added and commentary is provided by Harry Kalas, the legendary voice of the NFL films. My description does not fully convey how mind-numbingly cute this show allows itself to stoop to being.

The action doesn't end when the play clock runs down though. Fans were able to vote online for a Most Valuable Puppy award, and a halftime show was provided by the BISSELL kitties. This whole affair really is something that has to be witnessed to be believed.

In a way, it is not surprising that this show has carved a small niche for itself beside the gargantuan audience of the Super Bowl. I know there are many females (and some males) who have absolutely no taste for football, but could watch puppies run around in circles all day without being bored. In a way, this is a brilliant and successful move by Animal Planet, and I think this point is emphasized by the fact that this is their fourth year running with the program.

In a way, I also think that its just a bunch of dogs running around a box; miniature football helmets or not.

On This Day - 1/30

On this day in history, many incredible things happened. I have compiled a short list (only twelve points!) of some of the more bizzare, cool, or just plain awesome historical events that happened on various January 30ths throughout history. They are in chronological order as follows:

- Oliver Cromwell is formally executed after having been dead for 2 years (1661).

- Antarctica is "discovered" by Edward Bransfield (1820).

- The first attempted assassination of a US President is carried out against then current President Andrew Jackson (1835). Both of the assassin's pistols misfired, and the man was quickly subdued by a 68-year old Andrew Jackson, his favorite walking cane, and the onlooking crowd.

- The most famous seamstress in the world, Betsy Ross, dies (1836).

- Future US President Franklin D. Roosevelt is born (1882).

- The Royal Canadian Navy is inaugurated (1911).

- Adolf Hitler is sworn in as chancellor of Germany (1933).

- Future US Vice-President and founder of the fourth branch of the government, Dick Cheney, is born (1941).

- Mahatma Ghandi and Orville Wright both die (1948).

- The Beatles last public performance is broken up by the police (1969).

- The first computer virus is written (1982). It was given highly meaningful name: "Elk Cloner."

- Future author of this blog, Drew Spickes, is born (1987).

21 years later, here I am. Harding, being the wonderful university that it is, did not allow me to make any stupid decisions that involve alcoholic beverages. Instead, I made a stupid decision that involved a mustache and wore one all day. It felt very empowering and very ridiculous.

3D Mailbox

Email is boring. Yes, I like some of you am easily excited by a late-night communique from Facebook telling me that someone has posted a one word message on my wall, but not all people revel in electronic communication with the same vigor that we do. Email has become a dry, uninteresting wasteland where only business people and the occasional nearly-illiterate relative trying out their new computer dare to tread. Or at least, so believe the people over at 3D Mailbox.com.

Showing an unnatural knack for what the youth of America consider "keen" they have taken the exciting concept of a three-dimensional virtual world and applied it to your email inbox. Popular Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) games such as World of Warcraft use this concept to bring together thousands of players at once to roleplay that they are wizards, elves, or some other fantasy hero fighting against a greater evil that threatens to envelop the land, all while collecting more powerful weapons and piles of gold. 3D Mailbox uses this concept to help you check your email.

Yes, by downloading and installing 3D Mailbox you will be able to interact with each of your emails as if they were individual people. The first “level” of the program features a Miami resort with a beachside pool which acts as your inbox. Each of your new messages is portrayed as a poorly-rendered, swimsuited beach-goer who is bent on entering the resort. To do this though, they must first go through the bouncer, your spam filter. If they gain entrance, they dive into the swimming pool, waiting for you to join them in the water and "read" them. After they are "read" they towel off and sunbathe at the poolside. If the bouncer rejects the poor person as a spam message, however, they are sent to the beach outside of the resort compound to await being eaten by a great white shark.

This is not a fake website.

This is a real program that real people really use; just not for any practical purpose, say, like actually catching up on your email. I’m sure though there is a fourteen year-old girl somewhere who is probably quite enamored with the new hunk named “Re:Thank You” that her character met by the poolside yesterday.

So if you, like me, are bored and frustrated with regular old email, download 3D inbox* and interact with your email in ways that are beyond your wildest imagination! This video preview gives you a brief glimpse of the exciting world that is waiting for you!



The website also boasts of second and third levels which allow you to both take control of LAX and fight off a zombie infestation in a peaceful rural hamlet. I can hardly wait.

*I would never under any circumstances recommend this program for any sane, productive human being.