Check it out:      NY Times Crohns interviews Aug 2008

For some background on our topic: Science in the new Spore Computer game visit: Spore Official Site, Carl Zimmer: Gaming Evolves, Joan Bushwell's Chimpanzee Refuge and/or the first part of this post.

I'm going to be rather brash and provide some constructive criticism on a game that I haven't played yet, and isn't even released in Australia yet...

The user-driven nature of Spore is going to be very hard to remove in a gaming market. A game isn't a game if a user isn't able to meddle with it. Even Sim-Earth, which allowed you to tweak planetary climate conditions, still allows some lee-way towards IDiots. Hell, IDiots even use computer evolution simulations by proper evolutionary biologists as *proof* of ID. So I'm not going to suggest too many improvements on that aspect, aside from perhaps a version that allows attributes to be generated in a more random fashion than spending points in a shop. I don't think this would float in the market though, modern gamers are very much used to be able to get what they want.

To combat the games "one dimensional march", perhaps mods or sequels that introduce "end-game" style content for the pre-intelligence mini-games in the greater Spore game.

For the beast-stage game, the user could try and make their creature survive in wake of another creature holotype achieving sentience. I think this could have a capacity to have some environmental messages in there. The user would be charged in ensuring their species does not go extinct. This could be achieved in several ways:

• the high road - adaptation - adjusting to threats such as hunting (build up defense like - venoms, quills, mimicry of predators), habitat destruction (adapt to extreme habitats or adjust to city life), and pollution (avoid eating plastic bags, drinking polluted streams) - standard time-based victory
• the middle road - domestication - either by becoming tasty, cute or just generally useful enough that the sentients will actively try not to wipe you out. Be careful though, the balance between being domesticated and being hunted to extinction may be very tricky to reach. Case study: The Aurochs.
• the low road - nature fighting back - why let yourself be hunted to death, having sentience doesn't necessarily mean they have to be top of the food chain - I think this would prove a popular victory path - standard winning by ensuring the other guys (in this case the human equivalents) are wiped out

For the tadpole-stage game. I was intrigued by the NYTimes comment amount the small sea-critter being eaten by leviathans out in the depths, forcing it to go onto land. Why not allow your creature to become the leviathan. Again conservation could be brought in by drawing from the fate of whales, sharks and other ocean dwellers.

The ocean depths being analogous to space in terms of a Final Frontier would really open up opportunities for some very exotic environment and alternative creature animations.

Further discussion below the fold...

My other only niggling negativity about Spore is limitations on victory in the other newstyle stage (civ games being nothing terribly new) - the tribal-stage. This is an almost unique style mini-game. I do not know many games that exist in the post-sentience pre-fixed culture period of civilization development.me its one of the most anticipated aspects of spore.

Unfortunately, in being pioneers, the game designers appear to have streamlined processes and limited culture development to two victory paths: war and music (culture). You either beat up all the other local tribes until they accept your leadership, or impress them with your music tastes.

I think limiting "culture" to just music and dance is a little too much simplification. While all us evolutionists are cringeing at DNA-points, I think their might be a fair share of specialists in fields like sociology, anthropology, and archaelogy cringeing at the idea of reducing tribal relationships to fighting and singing.

Taking some cues from what may be Spore's competitor, the Civilization series*, more aspects of culture such as drama and literature (which could be combined with music), science/technological superiority, and yes, every scientists' favourite pal, religion.

Now you would be able to encourage strong ties by sharing art, through sharing of oral traditions, cave art, sculpture, sagas etc; sharing technological discoveries; sharing religious and mystical beliefs - worship of the same celestial beings, gods, animals and traditions; and of course bashing your neighbours skulls in until they agree with you.

In addition, the antagonistic and synergistic relationship between these cultural pillars could also be investigated on other levels. They do not exist as seperate entities. Even with just war and music - songs are written about wars, and wars can be started from songs (or at least godawful poetry that alikens your neighbours queen to sheep's rear).

Scientific discoveries promote new forms of expression and aggression, religion can start songs just as easily as it can start a war. And the relationship between science and religion can also be synergistic at times - with mystical beliefs such as astronomy, alchemy and even animism fueling human interest to investigate the world around us.

Balancing would be key to this. Too many wars can suppress developments in technology and art. A hedonistic art-crazed civilization won't fare too well in wars. And it's just as plausible for peace-loving^ religious theocracy to arise and suppress creativity in art and technology, as it is for technocracy to do the same to art and theology.

The end result of your tribes method of domination would certainly have effects on your beginnings in the next civ-stage of the game, and also influence your neighbouring cultural civilizations.

I think having the religion aspect in their might be a very positive thing. It would give a many number of gamers who have exposure to a single religion, an understanding how religions arise and collapse, and the powerbase they can create. By allowing the user to shape his creature's religiousity - whether it be worship of rocks, animals, ancestors, natural phenomena, activities etc. (slowly leading to anthropomorphic representations of these - the gods/god - oops, one-dimensional progression again...) - and then use such beliefs to influence his tribes power. A tidal wave worshipping cult is hardly going to prove well during an eathquake against a cult that worships giant gophers. And what works better to con the masses than almighty invisible being that does everything that ever happened, happens today and will happen tomorrow?

If you have other feedback, or perhaps your own creative suggestions on what might be done to address the scientific shortcomings of what still promises to be a genuinely kick-ass game, please let me know. That's how the internet works.

*alternatively, I think Spore might be thought of as Civ-killer, akin to iPod-killers.

^you know the kind of peace created by "dealing" with any troublesome types

I really can't remember the last time I was actually excited about the release of a video game*. The countdown until some vague release date in September is still ticking away in my soul. Hopefully my new new job will assist me affording a new Intel-based Mac on which to play it (my iBook is only PowerPC :().

Carl Zimmer's NYTimes article "Gaming Evolves" takes a closer look at the science background story on Maxis' latest creation: SPORE.

What I feel is going to be the opinion of most scientists is best captured here:

Even as scientists praise Spore, they voice concerns about how the game does not match evolution. In the real world, new traits evolve as mutations arise and spread gradually through entire populations. Winning Spore’s DNA points does not work even as a remote metaphor.

“I do hope that it doesn’t confuse people as to what evolution is all about,” said Charles Ofria, a computer scientist at Michigan State University and a creator of Avida.

Spore may also mislead players with the way it is set up as a one-dimensional march of progress from single-cell life to intelligence. Evolution is more like a tree than a line, with species branching in millions of directions. Sometimes species become more complex, and sometimes they become less so. And sometimes they do not change at all. “There’s no progressive arrow that dominates nature,” Dr. Prum said.

These caveats notwithstanding, Dr. Near hopes that Spore prompts people to think about the evolutionary process. “This may be totally off about how evolution works, but I’d much rather be dealing with a student who says, ‘O.K., I have no problem with evolution; I think about it the same way I think about gravity.’ If it does that, it’ll be great.”

The game is an excellent well informed thought experiment. Will Wright has done his homework to bring enough science to make Spore work, but ultimately sacrifices some reality to still make it a user-driven game. This user-drivenness is also just enough to allow some IDiots to take it under their big-tent philosphy into the division of deity-driven evolution. I still think Spore has done quite a lot better than any other "evolution" game I have seen before.

Hopefully further iterations of Spore, or possibly built-up mods will be able to emphasise a bit more on the science and free-reign aspects of Spore. It's a bit hard to criticise a game that has yet to be released, but in my next post I've got some suggestions I've come up for improving modifying the Spore Sim-Life style game to allow more scientific playfulness.

*maybe a little about Warlords IV, which was more notsalgia/patriotism that turned into general letdown as usual

Sarah Palin came out of hiding Wednesday night, and boy, she seemed ticked off.

“Here’s a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I’m not going to Washington to win their good opinion,” said the moose-gutting, polar bear-trashing, aerobics-class-networking vice presidential nominee.

This was shortly after two very prominent Republican commentators got caught trashing Palin’s candidacy when they thought an MSNBC microphone had been turned off. There has been a lot of that going around this year, people. We can do better. In the years to come, let us teach our children that if you can’t say anything nice about somebody, step away from the voice enhancement equipment.

The speech was very well done. The Palin family — who we’re supposed to ignore, but they did sort of seem to be pretty much front and center — were adorable. And she was way more effective than the keynote speaker, Rudy Giuliani, at the red-meat-tossing detail. If you’re going to be really mean for an extended period of time, it’s better if you don’t look as if you want to lunge for the throat of the cameramen.

We had been waiting for a long time to hear from Palin, who went to the mattresses almost immediately after she was introduced to the nation by John McCain last week. What followed was a long line of unexpected revelations, from the fabled teenage pregnancy to my own personal favorite: the threat to fire the town librarian who refused to censor books.

Last night, Palin blamed the confusion and complaints on the news media, which hates her because she is “not a member in good standing of the Washington elite.”

John McCain, the member of the Washington elite who picked her, was temporarily unavailable for comment.

Palin’s speech totally swallowed up all the attention in St. Paul, leaving nothing whatsoever for speakers like Mitt Romney, who celebrated the convention Reform Day by announcing: “We need change all right! Change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington.” Tragically, nobody seemed interested enough to point out that this made no sense. It’s a long way from the golden days when Mitt invented the “Washington is Broken” slogan, and people took the time to ask him exactly who he thought had done the breaking.

It’s been one big reunion in Minnesota for the old gang — Rudy and Mitt and Fred and Mike. Together again, for the first time since those primary debates. Reliving the golden days in which they managed to convince Republican voters that no matter what John McCain’s defects, he could not possibly be as bad a candidate as they were.

Did you see Fred Thompson? We had forgotten the electricity that is Fred until his speech on Tuesday, when he railed at the Democrats for overplaying Americans’ economic woes. (“Listening to them, you’d think we were in the middle of the Great Depression.”) It was that same instinctive connection to the common man that had caused him to refer to the problems of unemployed Detroit factory workers as something that “you always find in a vibrant, dynamic economy.”

Reform Day was, of course, tailor-made for Palin, who is all about reform. Particularly, reforming the Republican party. Normally, in a democracy, the way you reform a party is by tossing it out of power until it learns its lesson and gets its act together. But the McCain-Palin plan is to reform Republicanism by keeping Republicans in control of the White House and most of the powerful posts in the federal government. That’ll show them.

Also fiscal reform. How many times have you heard McCain promise to slash taxes and pay for it by eliminating unnecessary programs? And who better to help carry out that agenda than the governor of a state whose residents pay less taxes than anyplace else in the union due to their genius in making the federal government pay the tab for virtually everything?

“Taxpayers have an advocate in Sarah Palin!” said Giuliani in his keynote speech. Rudy had been extremely busy all day. In a stroke of genius, someone picked him to run around to the TV shows before Palin’s address to defend McCain for picking her after having met her only once. When he was mayor, Giuliani hired people who had been in his inner circle since about the third grade. And most of them were terrible! So you see, there are lots of ways to screw up a big hire besides not thinking about it until the last minute.

For all her great skills at presentation, many people, including some Republicans who think the microphone is off, believe that Sarah Palin is a terrible choice for running mate. But you have to remember who the other options were.

This was hitting the nail on the head for me.

"Se esiste una base legale per incriminare qualcuno per reati penali, questa andrebbe perseguita - ha detto Biden, parlando a Deerfield Beach, in Florida - non si tratta di una vendetta ma della necessità di garantire che nessuno, che si tratti di un ministro della giustizia o di un presidente, è al di sopra della legge".

In passato anche Obama aveva parlato di distinguere tra "errori politici" e "crimini" nell'operato dell'attuale presidente. In particolare i democratici rimproverano a Bush il trattamento dei detenuti del carcere di Guantanamo a Cuba.

A 8 settimane dall'Election Day lo speciale del New York Times che segue passo dopopasso l'evoluzione dei 2 candidati.

came across an article in the NYTimes about Pax World Funds.  Apparently they are being sanctioned by the SEC for

failing to comply with their prospectus.   The article states that Pax invested in companies involved in "alcohol,

ambling and military contracting." Their website states that " we believe sustainable investing is a better,

smarter way to invest, and helps us identify more forward-thinking, better managed companies"  I have not read

their entire prospectus, but I have looked to their website as being one of the leaders in SRI (Socially Responsible

Investing)  This a reminder to us all to vet every thing that comes our way.

peace, nyenye

Schiller, who was a background in television both at CNN and Discovery Times Channel (now renamed Investigation Discovery), seems to think that the news industry is on the right track and that this technology change is just like any other. Like radio and television before it, the Internet, she writes, won't supplant newspapers, at least not yet. She sees the Internet as just another part of the "media menu."

"Wherever news is consumed, The New York Times is committed to being there," she wrote.

As the general manager of NYTimes.com, Schiller is one of probably hundreds, if not thousands, of people in the field whose positions, ways of thinking and skill sets have been forced to radically change over the past several years. The background information on her, aside from her career in television, shows that she did her graduate and undergraduate work in Russian.

This Q&A and Schiller's background raises the question: What background and skills does a journalist need today to adapt to the changing face of the media?

This is one of the questions I hope to explore.

Article

This is from a New York Times article a few weeks ago in response to the John Edwards Mistress ordeal, but that's not the reason I'm posting the article. I think it has something to do with the phrase "my favorite American president when it comes to sex scandals," and the newspaper headline "Moral Monster", though, the two have nothing to do with John Edwards... wait.

Ken Doll in Lust

By GAIL COLLINS
Published: August 8, 2008

All this is weirdly reminiscent of the saga of Grover Cleveland, my favorite American president when it comes to sex scandals. He had barely been nominated in 1884 when a small, scurrilous newspaper from his hometown of Buffalo accused him of being the father of a love child born to Maria Halpin, a store clerk. She later took to drink, and Cleveland, a bachelor, arranged to have the baby adopted by friends.

“Moral Monster,” said my favorite headline, in The Cincinnati Penny Post. “Grover Cleveland’s True Character Laid Bare. A Boon Companion to Buffalo Harlots. A Drunken, Fighting, Roistering Roué.” The scandal almost cost him the election, and the baby inspired a famous political slogan: Ma, Ma, where’s my Pa? Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha.

I really loved this reference. I can't imagine that headline ("Moral Monster") making it through today's editorial process. Plus, it's hard to imagine these kinds of things outside of modern times, which is not to say it's not expected, just.... Grover Cleveland seems so ancient. The 22nd (1885-1889) and 24th (1893-1897) president in a sex scandal. I don't know, late 19th century society seems so far removed from Roman Empire orgies and modern sex tapes. It just goes to show you. What, I don't know though.

Quote

Theses two quotes come from Flannery O'Connor, author of the such works as the novel Wise Blood, and the short story A Good Man is Hard to Find. Before I quote her, I issue a challenge to anyone who might read this: Find me a better character than Hazel Motes (Toole's Ignatius Riley excluded, of course). Anyway, here's two quotes from her, the first can be seen as a warning to potential writers, the second is in response to a question about drawing entertainment from reading. Both can be found in Conversations with Flannery O'Connor, pages 13 and 15 respectively.

On the vocation of writing:

"If you want to write well and live well at the same time, you better arrange to inherit money."

On entertainment:

Question: How much entertainment should a critical reader get from a novel? How much of the entertaining should be in the novelist plan?

Answer: If you mean pleasure of the mind, the answer is 100% in both cases. If you mean amusement, none is necessary.

I have just started this book, published in 1987, which is the reason there are two from her and why they are so close together (because I haven't gotten that far yet). I Just wated to point them out because they are both very indicitive of the kind of person I hoped she would be. But in the context of the whole book, all the interviews and lectures and articles, she is unfolding as a mean old grandmother rather than the tough, outspoken, warmly sarcastic Southerner I thought she was.

Also, the south is so predominate a figure in her work, yet, in her interviews, she almost refuses to recognize the sole connection to the region. "My people can come from anywhere," she says. WHAT!$@? Anyone above the Mason-Dixon can keep their minds off of claiming our authors. You can take our Crunk, but you can never take our Faulkners.

Funny Quote

Any one who listens to David Sedaris can immediately understand his trademark dry delivery and unique ability to poke fun of himself, so this last quote I want to throw out there is from him on This American Life, reading a story about falling in love with the theater (the Episode is "#23: Drama Bug" and his is the first act after Ira's prologue, I'm not sure if it's from one of his books or not, though):

"You know you're living in a small town when you can reach the ninth grade without ever having seen a mime."

I was listening to this episode from the TAL archives and heard Mr. Sedaris while I was typing the first part of the post, so i thought I'd share it.

Song of the Day

This one is brought to you thanks to my new found dependence on Pandora Radio. I created an Instrumental Hip-Hop station and, after a week or so of thumbing up and thumbing down songs (a process that helps the site figure out what music you want to here), I was introduced to a song and artist that has become a recent obsession. Its from the artist Danny Breaks of his album "The Outer Dimension".

"Uh, Whut, Yo, Yeah, C'mon, Word!" 

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="143" caption="Danny Breaks, "The Outer Dimension""][/caption]

Unbelievable when it comes to Instrumental Hip-Hop! Very calming, but still driven. I can't get enough of this one sample that underlies the whole thing, some kind of soft reed intrument capped off with a smooth string bit that twitches at the end. For me, it's so pleasurably reminiscent of the music from the Jungle Book (create a music video in your head of Mowgli making his way through the jungle). Right now, it's the first song I play on my computer whenever I start listening to music, and the first one I play when I get into my car or put on my headphones. This tune is bad news bears. (listen)

...and last, but not least:

Crossword Clues of the Day

That's right. I'm a crossword addict. A real "it takes me 17 minutes to do the Monday New York Times, 13 minutes to do the USA Today, don't even think about timing myself on Sunday's" crossword junkie (i do the LA Times and the Commercial Appeal [Memphis, TN] one, too).

I might not be skilled in the art, but I've only been doing any crossword religiously for about six months, so I haven't built up the repertoire of stock words (answers that appear religiously in crossword puzzles, i.e ALOE, FAA, FDA, and recently, NANU) that usually help with the harder crossings that these 4 and 5 minute solvers have at their disposal. At any rate, this doesn't mean I can't enjoy creative clues that match fills, or for that matter, balk at terrible ones.

September 3, 2008

•Here's the one I was most recently delighted to see, David J. Kahn's puzzle appearing in the New York Times:

28a: Carnival food on sticks (CORN DOGS)

First, I'll note that the theme answers for this Wednesday Puzzle were pretty fun, but outside of the theme, I liked this one. Not the most impressive. Actually, it's pretty straight forward and ridiculously easily, but at the same time its a highly enjoyable fill and you don't very often to get a chance to write in CORN DOGS on any crossword puzzle. Plus, seeing as I have had a recent craving for Pronto Pups (a Southern corn dog stand at many fairs, don't know if it's a national thing or not), this puzzle only serves as an omen for a mission I must undertake. But that's not it for the New York Times....

•Now for a few that stunk the worst.....

From the same NYTimes puzzle, we have two across clues that sit on top of each other:

63a: _____ shooting (SKEET)

66a: Bit of sleepwear (TEDDY)

I'm not embarrassed to say that I had the middle (EDD) of 66a. I even knew that the last letter was Y from 53d, but hadn't filled it in. The worst part about "Bit of sleepwear" is that you don't wear a TEDDY (bear) to bed. I understand the "bit" portion, teddy instead of teddy bear, but TEDDY doesn't make sense as "sleepwear". Once I filled in the down clues and got TEDDY, there was no "aha! nice clue!" moment, more like an "are you freakin' serious!!!" one. (just pull out the stock Roosevelt clues and move on)

The other clue, 63a, got me too. I know I'm not the best solver, and mabye SKEET pooped to the rest of the solvers, but not to me. Maybe I could understand "It's game for shooting" or "It's shot for sport", and then knowing the "breakfast table" rule, I would assume the puzzle wasn't refering to the slaughter of animals... must be SKEET. But fill-in-the-blank? Those are reserved for "The ___ ____ fox jumped over...." (QUICK BROWN). Try this fill-in-the-blank: "____ Smith" (4 letters, famous person)

And finally, an annoying one from the otherwise okay USA Today puzzle by Timothy Valet (Theme: "Parts Inventory"):

71a: Altercation (SET TO)

I have never heard of a fight or a spat, or an altercation for that matter, as being referred to as a SET TO (a noun). Since the clue refers to the answer as if it were a noun, try using SET TO in a sentance as one. "I got into a SET TO with him because he was talking about me behind my back." Or, "Two guys got into a SET TO over some girl last night at the bar." No, I dont think so!!! It's not a noun, it's a verb. The free online dictionary says so:

This one wasn't as bad as the New York Times.

Thats It

I probably won't make a habit out of writing posts this long, but seeing as this is my first post, I figured it couldn't hurt to see how much I could actually put into words, or, for that matter, how many things I latch onto on any given day and how long I'll go on about them before I realize that almost no one made it all the way through the post.... oh!

The New York Times has the RNC arrest count at 295, so far.

Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations.

-ADAM LIPTAK NYTIMES

Because of this very lukewarm national response, the Blog Talk Left is offering a prize to whoever can guess most accurately what day Sarah Palin will drop out.  

Many are comparing the McCain-Palin ticket to the ill-fated 1972 McGovern-Eagleton Democratic ticket,  when the press uncovered Eagleton's psychological past, Eagleton stepped down from the veep position in a move that was widely considered to cost the democrats the election that year.

Maureen Dowd wrote a very good article in the New York Times about Palin: Vice in Go-Go Boots?

It turns out that 17-year-old Bristol is, in fact pregnant, with a child of her own.  According to the Huffington Post, the father, who Bristol plans to marry, is 18-year old Levi Johnston, who is on the local high-school hockey team.  The New York Post has quotes from Johnston's MySpace page, where Johnston says he's in a relationship, but also says, "I don't want kids."

While I tend to agree with Obama when he says the press should back off of the families of political figures, I also think that a political figure's interaction with his or her family is very representative of how that person will function in their capacity as a civil servant.

Before the RNC has even truly began, the intensity of the protests has outshone those at the DNC.  First-hand accounts note that police presence at the DNC was more obvious, and that perhaps that difference alone might contribute to the differences in protests.

Depois de alguns verões de turnê, haviam 60 horas de riffs gravados para escolher. Todos os membros compartilharam os créditos de composição de cada música. "Foi bem colaborativo", disse Trujilo. "Ninguém foi egoísta. Foi como ir a melhor escola de música que você pode imaginar".

Os riffs foram fundidos em músicas, compostas pelo todo conhecimento da banda. (Hammett disse que ele pensou nisso como "recuperar a posse" do antigo vocabulário do Metallica.) Elas tem velocidade de thrash e solos de guitarra de novo, tanto no antigo estilo modal de Hammett quanto no seu novo som de blues com pedal de wah-wah. O Metallica mais recente não foi completamente apagado: peças menos rápidas aparecem aqui e alí como conectores de seções.

As composições são formidáveis e complexas, com mudanças de tempo nos ritmos, guitarras gêmeas e solos harmonizados e algumas melodias que lembram o álbum preto. Na "The Day That Never Comes", "All Nightmare Long", "My Apocalypse" e outras você pode pensar que a música chegou ao climax ou ao final e então, uau: uma nova porta se abre, uma nova torre começa a surgir.

O Hetfield gosta das ficções de terror de H. P. Lovercraft que Cliff Burton costumava compartilhar com a banda. E ele pegou o desafio do passado ao cantar mais agudo: Rubin pediu que a banda tocasse na afinação padrão, ao invés das guitarras meio tom abaixo, como tem acontecido desde 1992.

Hammett se preparou bastante para seus solos, passando meses emprestando idéias de guitarristas de rock e jazz como Pat Martino, Sonny Sharrock, Michael Schenker, Eddie Van Halen e Jimi Hendrix. Então no estúdio ele tocou mais rápido que o usual. (Ele relembra que seus solos no "Death Magnetic" são 3/4 improvisados.) "Como a maioria dos músicas, eu sou um pouco inseguro com meu modo de tocar", disse ele. "Mas eu fui de forma vulnerável. Então eu ouvia ao playback e dizia, 'como eu fiz isso e o que eu fiz?'".

Em "Some Kind of Monster", Hetfield acaba de retornar da reabilitação, preocupações se ele só escreveria sobre músicas de recuperação. Ele escreveu algumas aqui: "Broken, Beat & Scarred", por exemplo, com sua chamada para "mostrar suas cicatrizes" ("show your scars"). Mas na maior parte do resto do álbum, o tema da morte está de volta, livre de pensamentos positivos.

Antes do show de Bucareste, eu perguntei a Hetfield se não foi difícil voltar a pessoa que ele costumava ser, tendo recuperado recentemente.

"Sim", disse ele. "Eu diria que aquela era uma pessoa diferente. Eu sei mais agora. Neste disco, eu precisava tomar as rédeas de novo, e ser pesado e ter medo de mim de novo. Eu não preciso ter medo da raiva. Eu acho que é muito mais fácil de atingir isso agora. Eu sei o quão longe eu quero ir com isso, e eu fui longe e ainda estou bem. Eu tive essa dualidade a minha vida inteira. Há a pessoa que eu escondo e a pessoa que eu mostro".

Ele continuou e ergueu seus braços. "Eu sou o animador por aí!" ele berrou. "Eu sou o mestre do palco!". Ele então se encolheu. "E quando isso termina, eu preciso ir e sentar sozinho", disse ele. "Então eu sou ambos. É este ou aquele que eu quero ser? Provavelmente nenhum", riu. "Mas viver no meio parece muito apático".

Nós queremos que o Metallica seja um pouco ingênuo: rebeldes, loucos e fascinados pela fantasia da violência, lutando contra suas limitações. "Death Magnetic", por outro lado, é conhecimento. Mas não é presunçoso.

O álbum aposta no fato que estes músicos amadureceram e podem provar através da música que isso é mais complicado do que aquilo que eles estavam acostumados, mas ainda é deles. Nesse antigo estilo cavalgado e barroco, eles soam como se estivessem se ampliando e não se limitando.

Fonte: Metallica Remains

I'm sure I did overdo it but since I need to read one for a book club and I've already written about my interest in all the others, I don't feel too silly.

I checked out:

• The Moviegoer by Walker Percy (National Book Award for Fiction winner 1962)
• Are We Rome?: The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America by Cullen Murphy (click here to view all my posts about this book)
• In Defense of Food: an Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan (click here to view all my posts about this book)
• Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics by Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (click here to view all my posts about this book)
• The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker by Steven Greenhouse (click here to view all my posts about this book)
• The Uncertain Art: Thoughts on a Life in Medicine by Sherwin B. Nuland (click here to view all my posts about this book)
• White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters by Robert Schlesinger (click here to view all my posts about this book)

I first heard about Cullen Murphy's Are We Rome? about a year ago at the Harvard Bookstore in Harvard Square and my interest in this book was renewed when someone in I.O.U.S.A. compared the United States to Rome. As a loyal reader of The Atlantic, I have great respect for Murphy who was their managing editor for two decades. I have high expectations for this book and hope I will not be disappointed. Click here to read an excerpt.

And I suppose the Democratic and Republican National Conventions have once again piqued my interest in speechwriters, so naturally White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters by Robert Schlesinger caught my eye.

With all the talk of tough times, economically, for the average American and the outrage over the recently released GAO data that most U.S. Corporations pay no income tax, I just couldn't resist picking up Steven Greenhouse's The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker. I hope it provides new information and doesn't overlap too much with David Cay Johnston's Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill) and Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everybody Else.

And like most Americans, all I know about Joe Biden I've learned from reading the news (in my case the New York Times) these past few weeks. It hasn't added up to much. I hope to get a better sense of the Democratic Nominee for Vice President from his 2007 memoir Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics.

I tried to keep myself to just five books but when I saw Nuland's The Uncertain Art sitting on the shelf, I had to borrow it -- it's been a few months since I've read any books related to medicine or the human body and as a scientist I am compelled to reading science books. And all the talk about our nation's broken health care system makes this book about medicine from a doctor's perspective all the more irresistible.

And as I was about to leave, I saw Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto which I've wanted to read since January when I read Janet Maslin's review titled "Obsessed With Nutrition? That’s an Eating Disorder" and published January 3, 2008 in the NYTimes Book Review). I suppose my new gardening hobby (influenced by reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life and Bill McKibben's Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future) has made me even more interested in learning about food and nutrition. Click here to read the introduction of In Defense of Food on the author’s website or here to read the first chapter on the NYTimes Book Review website.

Alright, I think I've spent enough time trying to justify my borrowing way too many books -- I've got to get to reading now! My book club's discussion of Walker Percy's The Moviegoer is scheduled to start in three days!

The NYTimes went on a quest for the best chocolate chip recipe ever. This recipe by Jacques is what they settled on and deemed as superb. I just had to jump on the bandwagon and see if its worth all the hype. The special thing about them is the part cake and part bread flour mixture . It's also sprinkled with salt to enhance the flavors and kept in the fridge for 24 hours.

So, right off the bat I was lazy and used all-purpose flour. I did my research and apparently mixing the two different flours would cancel out and amount to almost the same thing. Either way, whatever... I'm pretty sure everyone else did the same substitute. I did go to my local supermarket for the different flours, but here in Queens we have these little independent marts and I'm pretty sure they'd laugh at me if I asked for something so specific.

That's what it looks like with just the basic ingredients. Now Mr. Torres calls for his high grade chocolate, which I say 'DUH!' Of course any chocolate chip recipe is good with high grade chocolate. I happen to have cabinet filled with things, so I scrounged around and I found some fancy dark chocolate bar and crushed it up into pieces.

This wasn't enough for the batter, so I was also forced to put in an equal amount of regular Nestle chocolate chips.

It looks pretty good, much paler then other recipes I've used. It sure tasted like good batter to me. I was tempted to just throw it in my vanilla ice cream.

Now this doesn't look like a lot in the picture, but it was. This recipes makes large cookies and I had to spread them out over two days period of time because I had too many. Again, I live alone, so who knows why I keep baking all this stuff?!? Anyhow, next is to plastic wrap and refrigerate for 24 hours before scooping them on baking sheets.

As stated in the recipe, best served warm (another DUH!). Overall these were the best looking choc. chip cookies I've ever made. They looked almost perfect. I made a couple of cookies with salt on top and it was ok. Truthfully I could take it or leave it.

It definitely was one of my favorite chocolate chip recipes. I'll probably use this one from now on. It had that nice crispiness on the outside, but soft and chewy on the inside. That's something I have had problems acquiring at home. I've always had to have it one way or the other. This was a pleasant surprise to have it be such wonderful versions of both worlds.

Now, readers of my posts here will know that I strongly supported Obama's candidacy during the primaries, and obviously support him for the general election.  But even I think that this quote goes too far:

He developed a self-discipline so complete, friends and aides say, that he has established dominion over not only what he does but also how he feels.

What!?  What does that even mean?  I never bought into the complaints, primarily from the Clinton camp, that the press gave Obama a pass when it came to objective reporting.  But I really think that with a quote like that, the paper went too far.  There are others, but I think this is the most outlandish.  Read in the context of the rest of the article, that quote seems to suggest that Obama is a transcendent glorious figure - precisely the stereotype that the GOP has been trying to paint him with, unfairly I would add.

I don't take issue with the idea of an article that tries to distill what Obama think or how he thinks.  Quotes like the one above are a great way for the reporter to understand his thought processes, no doubt.  But to publish that?  Kantor could have avoided the theatrics and just said that Obama has learned to be self-disciplined and methodical, or something else along those lines.  But to suggest that he has "established dominion" is, frankly, just inappropriate.

You can check out Ann Althouse's sarcastic critiques of the piece over here.  This post probably should be both longer and more analytical, but to be honest, I am utterly confounded by both the actual meaning and intent of this article to attempt to write more.

From eMarketer:

eMarketer projects that local online advertising spending in the US will reach $2.9 billion in 2007...[and] is set to become a significant growth area for the maturing Internet ad space. 

College students return this week with good wishes - and ample fun money - from Mom and Dad.

Several local businesses are turning the corner by advertising online to reach prospective buyers.  And the dollar is on the mend.  

The Dollar

* Full Disclosure:  Generating increased sales and revenue for your local, greater Burlington business is the main focus of this publication.  More information available upon request: joe.mescher@gmail.com

Am Ende der Entwicklung, bedeutet meist, wenn auch nur kurz, vorn zu sein. Die NYTimes hat ein herzhaftes Online-Projekt im Rahmen ihres Online-Portals ins Leben gerufen, dass sich "Going to the End of the Line" nennt. Dank dessen es nicht mehr nur New Yorkern vorbehalten bleibt, sich einen Eindruck von Orten der Stadt zu machen, die man im Allgemeinen auf Reisen durch die Metropole ausspart - die Endstationen der Bus- und Bahnlinien - es geht um die Bronx, Queens etc. Klingt erst einmal dämlich banal, ist insbesondere vom technischen Blickwinkel gesehen aber für Tageszeitungen und deren Online-Präsenzen von, wir möchten behaupten, inspirierender Bedeutung. "Going to the End of the Line" zeigt längst nicht nur die Einsamkeit, das Mysteriöse und die unbekannten Schönheiten jedweder vom Tourismus fernen Plätze in einem, sagen wir, das Herz des saturrierten Internet-Users erfreuenden Online-Repertoire aus fulminanten Fotografien, Audioschnipseln und Videos, die zudem auch noch ohne langes Gesuche direkt anwählbar und, auch das ist nennenswert, bei Missfallen kurzum wieder zu "schließen" sind. Der Content besticht durch Ästhetik. Als wäre das aber nicht genug, ist gar die - sonst bei derartigen Angeboten meist miserable - Architektur der Website herzallerliebst und lässt zu wünschen nicht viel übrig. Glasklare Bedienbarkeit. Selbst die regulären Artikel, die geografisch naheliegend scheinen, sind - All the Things together - im entsprechenden Umfeld gelistet. Besuchenswert! ]]> http://rhealitycheck.wordpress.com/?p=67 Mon, 25 Aug 2008 17:58:19 +0000 rhealitycheck http://rhealitycheck.wordpress.com/?p=67 I have always wondered why it is such a shock to have evolution be required in the public school curriculum. I find that most people I know are thoroughly shocked that in my high school (in Texas) it was unimaginable to not have evolution in the curriculum. I truly believe that not learning about evolution is the equivalent of allowing our country's youth to be uneducated. I mean the public school system has enough flaws in it already, we don't need to help detract from anyone's education any more so than we already do. Imagine my shock when I read this article in the Times. To me it is simply mind-boggling to blindly say that evolution is not real when it has clearly been proven over the course of many decades. In fact it is the only theory we have as of yet for how humans came to exist. The universe has gone through many changes and it is just a little ludicrous to believe that *poof* God created humans overnight and well here we are. Does God explain what happened to the dinosaurs? Or all the other historical creatures that we have fossil records for? I just think we should be a little more practical about the whole thing. God and Evolution can exist in the same world. Also, who said you have to "believe" everything you learn at school. I may learn it but I can disagree with it. But to cut it out of the education system altogether is just unimaginable. After reading the article I am glad that it is now required in the Florida schools. You do not have to agree with everything you learn but you choose ignorance when you choose not to learn at all. And that just makes for a country full of ignoramuses and who really wants that? Certainly not me.

“I think he would have been a blogger,” said Jean Seaton, a professor at the University of Westminster in London who administers the Orwell writing prize and thought up the idea of publishing George Orwell's copious diaries every day in blog form, exactly 70 years after they were written.

Noam Cohen's August 24, 2008 New York Times article "What George Orwell Wrote, 70 Years Later to the Day" writes, "The scholars behind the project say they are trying to get more attention for Orwell online and to make him more relevant to a younger generation he would have wanted to speak to.

A similar blog is made up of transcripts from Harry Lamin's letters from the first World War, posted exactly 90 years after they were written by Bill Lamin a retired mathematics teacher in England and grandson of Harry Lamin.

I'd never heard of this concept before but it intrigues me. I wonder if there will be a flood of similar blogs in the next year.

And while I may not read the Harry Lamin blog or other blogs in this format, I plan to follow the Orwell blog.