BioWare and Mythic are merged? This is a good thing.

My initial kneejerk reaction is to say, "gg EA," and roll my eyes. However, reading into the matter and thinking upon it, it's actually a great move.

If you've played Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning (WAR), then you know that the game falls flat. It's not bad, but it's not exactly all that great either. It feels slow and clunky, especially compared to something as fast-paced as Guild Wars (which, I think, captures the perfect pace for a Player vs Player MMO). The art style and general presentation for the game is great. It looks and feels just like the Warhammer universe. As someone who has dabbled in Warhammer for over 2 years, I think I know the nuances of the style pretty well.

The problem with Warhammer Online comes in the gameplay category. It's just nothing to really keep you interested. The PvP scenarios seem generic and to lack any real strategic depth. I feel like I've done it before, and done it better, in other genres and in other MMOs. The pace, as I said before, seems sluggish, which is antithetical to what one would think of a vicious and brutal PvP-oriented MMO. People have trumpeted that WAR is so much better than World of Warcrafts' PvP. Really, though, that's like saying that eating shit is better than eating vomit covered shit. I'm sure it is, but it's still shit and not exactly something to rave about.

Now, getting into the nitty-gritty: What has happened? Why am I talking about how much I don't like WAR (and I really wanted to like the game)? Because Electronic Arts has decided to merge the much-beloved RPG developer, BioWare (Baldur's Gate 1&2, Mass Effect, Neverwinter Nights, Star Wars: Knights of The Old Republic), with Mythic Entertainment, developers of the aforementioned Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

There's several reasons why this is pretty big news. Firstly, BioWare recently opened a new studio in Austin, Texas (their only USA studio (they have 2 in Canada)) to work on the much anticipated Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO. This is BioWare's first MMO, though they do have netcode experience with Neverwinter Nights. BioWare was also bought out by EA, with numerous conditions made to keep BioWare semi-independent. Mythic has well-renowned MMO experience with Dark Age of Camelot and WAR. Both are PvP-based MMOs focusing primarily on Realm vs Realm combat, but that's not really important. What is important is that they have a lot of people who are quite good at doing netcode. Another important tidbit is that Mythic was bought by EA.

The most interesting thing about this somewhat bizarre move is this:

Creating what is effectively a massively multiplayer RPG development juggernaut, EA has tapped Muzyka to become Group General Manager of their new RPG/MMO Group, with fellow BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk acting as Group Creative Officer. With the departure of Mythic's Mark Jacobs, Mythic co-founder Rob Denton will step up as the General Manager of Mythic, reporting directly to Muzukya. BioWare's operations will remain unchanged.
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WAR was touted to be a massive success, and it looked like it. Touted on a fantastic and rich IP (Warhammer) and focused on visceral PvP combat, it seemed like a great game. Even after release, many people touted is an excellent game. However, the hype didn't last. It became mundane and routine. The veneer of hype wore off and you were left with a fairly mediocre and somewhat by-the-numbers MMO. Individuals might agree or disagree with that assessment, and I do not claim to hold some certain truth, but the numbers don't lie. The numbers for WAR are bad. Not terrible, mind you, but not good enough. Especially considering how much time and money was put into WAR. When I did the free trial, I saw zero high capacity servers in North America. There was one in Oceania. There was one server that was medium capacity, but all the others were low capacity. And by "all the others" I mean the eight other servers. It's not like there's 30 servers out there. Even at a relatively modest amount of servers, WAR cannot fill them up. That is not good.

Essentially, this taking Ray and Greg (the founders and big-wigs of BioWare) and putting them in charge of Mythic's flagship, WAR. I can only assume in some kind of attempt to salvage the massive investment that EA put into that game. This allows not only for BioWare to borrow from Mythic in resource management and netcode programmers (BioWare also plundered the laid-off Star Wars Galaxies employees to work in their The Old Republic studio in Austin), but this also gives Mythic access to BioWare's fantastic art, sound, and storytelling resources.

Why would Mythic want BioWare's resources? Why wouldn't they! BioWare is the undisputed king of RPGs. Yes, you can point to Square-Enix and tout Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, and that is certainly valid. However, BioWare is typically regarded in higher standing. This is not a put-down of Square-Enix, as I hold FF7 as one of the best RPGs of all time, but I would be lying if I said that I thought FF7 was better than Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn. BioWare's games are solid. Neverwinter Nights is still regarded as the pinnacle of a new trend in RPG gaming, allowing players to craft their own games using the provided toolset. Knights of The Old Republic is highly heralded as one of the best RPGs during the PS2/XBox generation, and helped push a lot of XBox sales. The Baldur's Gate series is regarded as fantastic and is routinely placed within the top 5 of any RPG fan's list. Mass Effect was received very well and highly regarded. To say that anticipation for Dragon Age is high is a massive understatement. BioWare is an RPG developer that has rarely done wrong and has the strong catalog of high-tier products to prove it.

While I think the merger of BioWare and Mythic is, at face value, quite odd, I also think it makes a lot of sense. Mythic's WAR is floundering, trying desperately to stay afloat. BioWare seems to be growing by leaps and bounds these days, and if anyone can help turn up the quality a notch on WAR, BioWare is an excellent choice. Not only does this allow the two developers to share their vibrantly rich resources, but it makes for a massive juggernaut in the RPG realm, both online and offline. It's never a good thing to see someone who was so integral as Mark Jacobs get canned, but I also cannot think of anyone who could give WAR the truly magnificent makeover that it needs and deserves than Ray Muzukya and Greg Zeschuk.

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Store owner converts would-be robber and gives him food?

Weird, yeah, but pretty amazing. While many probably wouldn't have bothered to give the would-be robber a break, this guy gave him not only a major break, but a bit more.

A potential victim became a compassionate counselor during a recent robbery attempt, changing the would-be criminal's mind -- and apparently his religion.

Storekeeper Mohammad Sohail was closing up his Long Island convenience store just after midnight on May 21 when -- as shown on the store's surveillance video -- a man came in wielding a baseball bat and demanding money.

"He said, 'Hurry up and give me the money, give me the money!' and I said, 'Hold on'," Sohail recalled in a phone interview with CNN on Tuesday, after the store video and his story was carried on local TV.

Sohail said he reached under the counter, grabbed his shotgun and told the robber to drop the bat and get down on his knees.

"He's crying like a baby," Sohail said. "He says, 'Don't call police, don't shoot me, I have no money, I have no food in my house.' "

Amidst the man's apologies and pleas, Sohail said he felt a surge of compassion.

He made the man promise never to rob anyone again and when he agreed, Sohail gave him $40 and a loaf of bread.

"When he gets $40, he's very impressed, he says, 'I want to be a Muslim just like you,' " Sohail said, adding he had the would-be criminal recite an Islamic oath.

"I said 'Congratulations. You are now a Muslim and your name is Nawaz Sharif Zardari.'"

When asked why he chose the hybrid of two Pakistani presidents' names, the Pakistani immigrant laughed and said he had been watching a South Asian news channel moments before the confrontation.

Sohail said the man fled the store when he turned away to get the man some free milk.

He said police might still be looking for the suspect but he doesn't intend to press charges.

"The guy, you know, everybody has a hard time right now, it's too bad for everybody right now in this economy," said the storekeeper.
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Wikipedia banhammers Church of $cientology.

If you've ever read any of Wikipedia's discussion pages for any Church of $cientology, you would totally understand.

In an unprecedented move, Wikipedia has banned edits from an entire religion — the Church of Scientology.

After four months of internal discussion, Wikipedia's top administrators decided Thursday to block Scientology-affiliated computers from changing items on any part of the free online encyclopedia, reports the British tech blog The Register.

Wikipedia famously lets almost anyone make changes to almost any article. Troublesome individuals have been blocked from editing — among them virulently anti-Scientology activists who altered pages relating to the religion — but this is the first time a religious organization has been blocked.

The encyclopedia's administrators found that Scientology computers had been repeatedly changing more than 400 pages related to the Church, deleting negative references and adding positive ones. The volume of changes was overwhelming administrators' ability to reverse them, hence the block.

Representatives of the Church of Scientology did not reply to FOXNews.com's requests for comment.

Wikipedia matches specific Internet Protocol (IP) addresses — every device on the Internet has one — with certain users, and tweaks its servers to prevent those machines gaining edit access. Every IP address linked to the Church of Scientology is now banned from editing.

"All IP addresses owned or operated by the Church of Scientology and its associates, broadly interpreted, are to be blocked," read a statement on Wikipedia, according to WikiNews. "Individual editors may request IP block exemption if they wish to contribute from the blocked IP addresses."
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Red Bull gives you more than just wings.

Red Bull has cocaine in it? Apparently. However, it's not enough to actually get you high.

Six German states have told retailers to stop selling Red Bull Cola energy drinks after a test found a trace amount of cocaine.

The bans started Friday after a sample test conducted by authorities in North Rhine-Westphalia state found 0.4 micrograms per liter in the drink.

Five other states also banned it from shops amid concerns over possible narcotics law violations.

Germany's Federal Institute for Risk Assessment said Monday that the cocaine level was too low to pose a health risk. It planned to produce a more detailed report Wednesday.

Red Bull said its cola is "harmless and marketable in both the U.S. and Europe." It said similar coca leaf extracts are used worldwide as flavoring, and a test it commissioned itself found no cocaine traces.
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Penn Jillette on counterintuition and the Obama economic recovery plan.

Just hit the jump and read it.

Counterintuitive action makes a fellow feel smart. When I first got my driver's license, I took my old Ford Falcon into the Greenfield Public High School parking lot when it was freshly covered with fresh powder on top of wet slippery Western Massachusetts snow and ice. I turned fast, gunned it and lost control of the car in a skid.

I turned into the skid and instantly gained control of my car. Telling someone to turn into a skid, that's crazy talk. It seems so wrong, but my Dad knew it worked. Dad suggested I do it over and over in the parking lot, so I would conquer my intuition to be ready when a real emergency arose on a real road. Counterintuitive actions prove we can trust real knowledge and do the opposite of what we feel makes sense.

I'm a fire-eater. There is some technique to fire-eating, but most of the practice goes into learning that one's mouth is wet enough, most of the heat goes up enough, and cutting the oxygen leg off the fire triangle (it's now a fire tetrahedron, but I learned fire-eating a long time ago) with one's mouth really does put the fire out.

It took watching a professional whom I trusted do it -- a lot of trust and a lot of practice -- before my first reaction, when my mouth started to burn from the lit torch in my mouth, was to put the torch deeper in my mouth, close my mouth around the torch and put it out.

Handling fire seems like a superpower. There are whole seminars and self-help jive centered on fire-walking, which is hustled as "mind over matter," or "empowerment" but is really just counterintuitive physics. As long as the fire walk is set up right and you keep moving, you can even hope and pray to be burned, while yelling counter-self-help slogans such as "I do not have any power to do this" and "universe, please burn my little piggies," and you'll be fine.

Whether it's fire walking or knowing that the Earth is round, everyone seems to dig counterintuitive thinking. Many dig it when our president explains we're going to spend our way out of debt. That's way against all the intuition we've developed in our adult lives. Spending our way out of debt doesn't work often, does it? It's crazy talk. Didn't a lot of people try that spending out of debt thing?

I live in Vegas, and I see people by the side of the road with cardboard signs who seem like they might have tried that spending their way out of debt thing. Or maybe they tried the all too intuitive "crack will make me feel healthy again" thing. I don't know.

Didn't lots of people try piling up debt on credit cards and buying houses they couldn't afford in hopes of solving all their financial problems? I've tried spending more than I was going to earn (remember, I was carny trash, that's why I know how to eat fire), and it way didn't work. Spending more money than I had to spend put me more in debt, just like my silly intuition warned me.

President Obama is so damn smart. He just drips smart. He clearly understands stuff that we could never understand. He's trustworthy. If Obama were teaching fire-eating, we would all learn fast. If he told you that the burns would be minor and the fire would go out when you closed your mouth, you'd believe him. If I weren't twice his weight, I'd fall back with my eyes closed into his caring arms in one of those cheesy '70s church trust exercises. He could talk me into anything.

Obama tells us that we can spend our way out of debt. He tells us that even though the government had control over the banks and did nothing to stop the bad that's going on, if we give them more control over more other bank-like things, then they can make sure bad stuff doesn't happen ever again. He says we can get out of all those big wars President Bush caused by sending more troops into Afghanistan. And I don't know. I really don't know.

I trusted my Dad that turning into a skid would work. I trusted my carny mentor, Doc Swan, that closing my mouth around a burning torch would put it out. They were right. Maybe the United States borrowing more money than I could imagine in a billion years with a billion computers and a billion monkeys typing on them, will get us out of financial trouble. I really don't know. It's certainly true that many counterintuitive things are true, and when you have the guts to do something counterintuitive that works, it's really cool. It's a superpower under our yellow sun.

But there are some things that are just intuitive. Did you know, that if you're going 100 mph, directly at a very, very thick, reinforced concrete wall, and you speed up, so you're accelerating right when you hit the wall that the accident you have is going to be much worse than if you'd jammed on the brakes as soon as you saw the wall at the end of the street? Did you know that? It's exactly what everything you know and feel would tell you, and it's exactly true. Most times when you're driving, or playing with fire, or handling money, the thing that makes sense to you is also true.

I way hope we're turning into a skid and not accelerating into a concrete wall.

Note: Reading this article does not give you the information you need to really eat fire, fire walk or even turn into a skid. Do not try any of it. You really need a trained professional to teach you, and most important you need to sign something that says Penn Jillette and CNN are not in any way responsible for your inevitable injuries.
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Bobby Jindal caught in a spindle. That was bad wasn't it?

Oh, Bobby Jindal. Not only did many of the GOP think your speech sucked, but it turns out that you lied your ass off about your retelling of events in Katrina.

It looks like Bobby Jindal's staff has been trying to do some damage limitation on that phony Katrina story -- with some help from Politico. But it's blowing up in their faces.

Picking up on an earlier post at Daily Kos, we wrote a post yesterday that raised questions about a key anecdote in Bobby Jindal's big Tuesday night speech.

You can watch the key excerpt here, but here's the transcript:

During Katrina, I visited Sheriff Harry Lee, a Democrat and a good friend of mine. When I walked into his makeshift office I'd never seen him so angry. He was yelling into the phone: 'Well, I'm the Sheriff and if you don't like it you can come and arrest me!' I asked him: 'Sheriff, what's got you so mad?' He told me that he had put out a call for volunteers to come with their boats to rescue people who were trapped on their rooftops by the floodwaters. The boats were all lined up ready to go - when some bureaucrat showed up and told them they couldn't go out on the water unless they had proof of insurance and registration. I told him, 'Sheriff, that's ridiculous.' And before I knew it, he was yelling into the phone: 'Congressman Jindal is here, and he says you can come and arrest him too!' Harry just told the boaters to ignore the bureaucrats and start rescuing people.

In our post, we reported -- among other red flags -- that we couldn't find any news reports that put Jindal on the ground in the affected area during the time when a boat rescue would have been needed. As we noted, we called Jindal's office twice before posting to ask them to verify the incident, but heard nothing back.

This morning, Politico's Ben Smith, noting that we and others had raised questions about Jindal's story, posted a response from the governor's chief of staff, Timmy Teepell:

It was in the days following the storm. Sheriff Lee was a hero who worked tirelessly to rescue those in danger, and he didn't take kindly to bureaucrats getting in his way.

That didn't really seem to clear things up either way -- indeed it admitted that it wasn't "during Katrina" as Jindal had originally said. Still, the headline of Smith's post characterized the statement as "stand[ing] by" the anecdote.

Team Jindal probably would have been wise to leave things there.

Instead, they went back to Smith, now telling him, in Smith's words, that Jindal "didn't imply" on Tuesday that the story "took place during the heat of a fight to release rescue boats." (Take 30 seconds to read Jindal's actual words, and you'll see that's flatly untrue -- but no matter.) Rather, Jindal spokeswoman Melissa Sellers told Smith, "It was days later .. Sheriff Lee was on the phone and the governor came down to visit him. It wasn't that they were standing right down there with the boats."

Smith added:

She said she thought Lee, who died in 2007, "was doing an interview" about the incident with the boats when the governor described him yelling into the phone.

In other words, Jindal only heard from Lee later that this had happened. He didn't actually see it happening and played no role in it himself. We posted a few hours ago, noting that Jindal's office had admitted the story was false.

But then things got weirder: Jindal's people went back for yet more.

Smith soon posted an update explaining that he had misunderstood Sellers earlier. According to Teepell, Smith now wrote, rescue efforts were in fact still underway when Jindal met with Lee. And Jindal overheard Lee yelling on the phone to justify a decision he had previously made, not giving an interview about the episode, as Sellers' earlier version had had it.

In fact, that whole thing about Jindal overhearing Lee giving an interview? It's now gone from Smith's post (though, thanks to the dangers of syndication, it remains here) as if Jindal's office never said it.

There's more. Amazingly, Sellers then argued to Smith that there is no difference between Jindal's original story as told Tuesday night, and the one her office finally settled on this afternoon. And even more amazingly, Smith added another update in which he transcribed that argument without comment, as if it were reasonable.

Then the capper: With Jindal's office now satisfied with the third iteration of its story -- a version that clearly acknowledged that the first version, told Tuesday night to millions, was false -- Teepell went back to Smith with the following comment:

"This is liberal blogger B.S. The story is clear."

And Smith, in yet another update, published it.

Good work all round!
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Glenn Beck debating marijuana legalization.

You probably know that Glenn Beck is insane as a shit-house rat. But maybe you don't know that Glenn used to do a lot of drugs. I don't know if he "chased the dragon", but he did do cocaine, pot, and was a huge drunk.

Anyways, here's a little vid of Glenn debating Rob Kampia of the Marijuana Policy Project. I don't know what the fuck Glenn was/is on, but he should cut it out. It's making him act like a weirdo. I also like that Glenn can't come up with any arguments against ending marijuana prohibition, but he's still against it anyways. Why the harping of "they shouldn't do it juts to raise money!" Did it ever occur to Glenn that maybe it's not just the money, but actually because of all the reasons why Kampia mentioned?

nothing after the jump

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Robotic arms controlled by human brain.

This is so fucking cool.

A wheelchair-mounted robotic arm controlled by thought alone has been created by scientists at the University of South Florida.

The device could give people with amytrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or full body paralysis the ability to perform simple day to day functions that would otherwise be impossible.

"We aren't reading people's thoughts," said Redwan Alqasemi, a scientist at the University of South Florida who, along with Rajiv Dubey and Emanuel Donchin of USF, helped develop the software and hardware. "This is the first time a person with severe disabilities like ALS can perform daily activities for themselves."

Over time, patients with ALS slowly lose control over their muscle movement, losing the ability to move their arms, legs and eventually all muscles except those around the eye. Patients with ALS have fully functional brains, but have no way to express their thoughts.

EEG scans offer one way for patients with ALS to communicate with the outside world. By fitting patients with a head cap equipped with electrodes and filled with an electrically conductive gel, scientists can monitor particular kinds of electrical impulses coursing through the brain.

In this case, the scientists monitor a particular brain wave called P300, so-called because it lasts about one-third of a second. Reading P300 waves is basically like reading a person's thoughts, but only in the most coarse kind of way.

For the wheelchair-mounted robotic arm, the person in the wheelchair looks at directional arrows flashing across a small screen. When the arrow points in the direction that they want to go, their brain lights up on the EEG, and the wheelchair or robotic arm moves accordingly.

This doesn't happen at the speed of thought, however. Turning the wheelchair or moving the robotic arm takes about seven seconds as the arrows cycle across the screen. The wheel chair or arm continues in that direction until it receives a new command.

The wheelchair or arm could move faster, but it might not move as accurately, said Alaqsemi. The next step for the USF scientists is to refine the model's hardware and software, to increase speed and reliability while cutting down on weight.

"Every pound you take off the robotic arm is another pound of payload that can be lifted," said Alqasemi.

Right now the robotic arm can lift about four pounds, about the weight of a gallon of milk. In the next version Alqasemi hopes to double the payload.

Lifting a door handle or moving a gallon of milk may seem like simple tasks, but according to Jonathan Wolpaw, who builds brain computer interfaces at the Wadsworth Center in New York, using thought-controlled devices is harder than simply just thinking.

"Our normal muscle movements require practiced skill and control," said Walpaw. "Controlling brain activity is also a skill that requires practice."

Reading P300 brain waves is a good system, argues Walpaw, because it doesn't take a lot of practice to train the brain. With only one WMRA built so far and no current plans to commercialize the design, not many people will get the chance for their brain to learn the new skill. But when commercial models appear in several years, even slow brain computer interfaces could make the impossible, possible.

"It would allow patients with severe disabilities the ability to control their own environment and have some form of independent mobility," said William Heetderks, Director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering. "It would be very valuable to these individuals."
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Am I high? DEA to stop raiding medical marijuana clubs.

Holy shit. Am I high? Really, am I? I don't think so... I did drink a pint of Sierra Nevada's Bigfoot barleywine, but I don't think that would make me loopy enough to start seeing things. Apparently Eric Holder has called for a halt on the DEA raids for state-recognized medical marijuana clubs.

Supporters of programs to provide legal marijuana to patients with painful medical conditions are celebrating Attorney General Eric Holder’s statement this week that the Drug Enforcement Administration would end its raids on state-approved marijuana dispensaries.

Federal raids on medical marijuana distributors continued at least into the second week of Barack Obama’s presidency, when federal agents shut down at least two dispensaries in California on Feb. 3.

Holder was asked about those raids Wednesday in Santa Ana, Calif., at a news conference that was called to announce the arrests of 755 people in a nationwide crackdown on the U.S. operations of Mexican drug cartels. He said such operations would no longer be conducted.

“What the president said during the campaign ... will be consistent with what we will be doing here in law enforcement,” he said. “What (Obama) said during the campaign ... is now American policy.”

Obama indicated during the presidential campaign that he supported the controlled use of marijuana for medical purposes, saying he saw no difference between medical marijuana and other pain-control drugs.

“My attitude is if the science and the doctors suggest that the best palliative care and the way to relieve pain and suffering is medical marijuana, then that’s something I’m open to,” Obama said in November 2007 at a campaign stop in Audubon, Iowa. “There’s no difference between that and morphine when it comes to just giving people relief from pain.”

White House spokesman Nick Shapiro hinted at the policy shift shortly after the California raids, telling The Washington Times that the dispensaries were legal in California and that the Obama administration’s stance was that “federal resources should not be used to circumvent state laws.”
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So, with Obama pledging to cut the deficit and taking a strong stance on state's rights, does that mean he's more conservative than Bush?

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Want more Futurama? Buy the DVDs.

And more stuff from Matt Groening.

Sometimes it's a chuckle of uncertainty, as when he talks about the fact that his weekly comic strip, "Life in Hell," is being dropped by its flagship newspaper, LA Weekly, after 22 years. Sometimes it's a snort of mischief, as when he describes working with "Family Guy" creator Seth MacFarlane, with whom he allegedly has a feud.

But mostly it's a big, rollicking guffaw, the sound of a man who still can't quite believe how much fun he gets to have at work -- work that includes "The Simpsons," still going strong after 20 years, "Life in Hell" and "Futurama."

It's the latter that's the ostensible reason for a phone interview with Groening. "Futurama," which aired on Fox from 1999-2003, then in reruns on Cartoon Network and Comedy Central, has apparently concluded its run with a new DVD movie, "Into the Wild Green Yonder" (Fox Home Entertainment), which came out Tuesday.

As with the three previous "Futurama" DVD films -- "Bender's Big Score," "The Beast with a Billion Backs" and "Bender's Game" -- "Yonder" will be split into four parts and aired on Comedy Central, which has the rights to the series. But Groening's not willing to say goodbye -- yet.

"We have a great relationship with Comedy Central and we would love to do more episodes for them, but I don't know. Maybe," he said. "I think one of the factors will be how well this DVD sells, because of these troubled times where everybody's gnashing their teeth and biting their nails."

Along with "Futurama," Groening ("rhymes with 'complaining,' " as he's often pointed out) also talked about "Life in Hell," "The Simpsons," MacFarlane and pretty much anything that tickled his fancy. The following is an edited version of the interview, with some laughs included.

CNN: I feel like Comic Book Guy talking to Jack Kirby -- or perhaps Jack Davis.

Matt Groening: (huge laugh) Well, I've met both of them -- Jack Kirby and Jack Davis! They're both heroes of mine. So I can relate. They're definitely part of my pantheon of great artists.

CNN: Let's move over to "Futurama." Is this the end?

Groening: We hope not. If it is, we feel we're offering an emotionally satisfying conclusion to this epic science fiction saga. But we did leave the door open just a bit in case we get renewed. iReport: Tell us your favorite "Futurama" moments

CNN: Is that in the offing?

Groening: We're having discussions and there is some enthusiasm but I can't tell if it's just me. (laughs)

CNN: With all the insider references in your work, do you still think of yourself as a subversive in an industry that doesn't exactly prize subversiveness?

Groening: I don't know how subversive you can be when you've been on the air as long as we have. But we try to sneak some stuff in here and there, and gladden the hearts of sensitive viewers. ...

I always thought that television was the way to go in my goal to invade pop culture (laughs) because it got to towns in which there were no bookstores. That's how I used to think of it: How do I reach kids who not only don't read but probably have no access to much in the way of books?

And "The Simpsons" basically -- and "Futurama" -- are really smart shows. They're kind of disguised as these goofy animated sitcoms, but the references within the shows, if you're paying attention, are pretty smart and pretty sophisticated. And if you don't get it, it's OK -- you have a nice entertainment experience -- but if you've gone to college and seen a few movies, you can appreciate the shows on a much more satisfying level. Listen to Groening talk about his recent favorite films

CNN: How did the plot to this film come together?

Groening: The set of four movies were done by the core writers of "Futurama" headed by David X. Cohen ... [who's been] my partner on "Futurama" from the very beginning. We [planned] these four movies -- one was time travel, next was sword-and-sorcery, third was a space monster movie and the last one is a grand ecological science fiction epic which also has some emotional payoffs for the characters if you've been following the series from the beginning. ...

In a way there was a checklist component to this -- well, let's do this, we haven't done that yet -- and then just great ideas. Ken Keeler, who wrote the script, is very, very smart, and very rarely will concede a factual point, even if it means that we (laughs) postpone getting work done for hours. (laughs) And when you have writers as smart as the "Futurama" writers, you can waste two days on scientific tangents. Listen to Groening talk about the writers' cleverness

CNN: Seth MacFarlane has a role in this.

Groening: Oh yes! That was a real treat to work with Seth and confound the people who want to believe there's some kind of feud between Seth and myself.

CNN: How do you feel about the children of "The Simpsons" -- MacFarlane's "Family Guy," "South Park"?

Groening: I'm a fan of animation and so, the more stuff that doesn't look like the other stuff that's out there, I'm in favor.

There's a staggering array of completely wild animation on TV now ... Adult Swim on the Cartoon Network is unbelievable. And "South Park" continues to do great stuff. And "Family Guy" and the various other Seth MacFarlane projects are amazing.

And I want more. Good! Cartoons! Cartoons that don't look like anything else. Very good. Listen to Groening talk about the animation boom

CNN: To the root of animation, cartooning: You're still doing "Life in Hell," correct?

Groening: Um, yes, but ... well, I feel like the floodwaters are rising.

CNN: Really?

Groening: Yeah, the alternative newsweeklies are really struggling. In fact, this coming week will be my final week after 22 years in the LA Weekly. I and all the other cartoonists are being dismissed because they can't afford to pay.

We'll see. I'm still in a bunch of other papers, so I may continue to do my strip, but it doesn't look good. Listen to Groening talk about the poor treatment of comics

CNN: Have you considered just doing it online?

Groening: Yes! Yes, I'm toying with that. But it's very strange. I've been doing the weekly comic strip for 29 years, "The Simpsons" weekly for 20 years, the "Futurama" weekly for five years and then a little break and then the four movies, and then the "Simpsons" movie, ... so I have a series of ongoing deadlines. So the idea of establishing a Web presence that I'll have to feed on an ongoing basis doesn't give me a lot of pep. (laughs) One more treadmill.

CNN: Let me finish with the traditional "Simpsons" question: Is it going to continue for the foreseeable future?

Groening: Yes. I'll be surprised if we close up anytime soon. I don't see it. The popularity of the show all over the world continues and it is gratifying, and the show's still fun to do. That's always been my ultimate deciding factor: Is it still fun? And it is. ... I get to go in and listen to these brilliant actors make funny lines written by geniuses even funnier. It's a totally entertaining experience from my point of view -- in the middle of it.
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The future of marijuana legalization.

According to some interesting figures over at FiveThirtyEight.com, it may not be too long before marijuana becomes legalized. Figures overwhelmingly show a massive shift towards support of marijuana-lenient policies.

We all know that Michael Phelps was on something. But perhaps he was also onto something. Three recent polls show that Americans are more sympathetic to the idea of legalizing marijuana than ever before.

The first poll, conducted last week by Rasmussen Reports, has 40 percent of Americans in support of legalizing the drug and 46 percent opposed. The second, conducted in January by CBS News, has 41 percent in favor of legalization and 52 percent against. And a third poll, conducted by Zogby on behalf of the marijuana-rights advocacy group NORML, has 44 percent of Americans in support of legalized pot and 52 percent opposed.

That all three polls show support for legalization passing through the 40 percent barrier may be significant. I compiled a database of every past poll I could find on this subject, including a series of Gallup polls and results from the General Social Survey, and could never before find more than 36 percent of the population (Gallup in October, 2005) stating a position in favor of legalization:









Several cautions and caveats apply, however. Firstly, although support for legalization has grown, it remains the minority position. Secondly, although there has been a long, slow-moving upward trend in favor of legalization since roughly 1992, there is no guarantee that public sentiment will continue to move in that direction: support for legalization had grown to about 30 percent in the mid 1970s before dropping significantly during the Just Say No years of the 1980s.

Still, the position no longer holds the stigma that it once did. About as many Americans now support legalizing marijuana as do de-legalizing abortion. The past three Presidents have admitted, more or less, to marijuana use. Thirteen states have some form of decriminalization on the books, while fourteen permit medical use of the drug, although it is not clear how robust those provisions are as they are superseded by federal law.

The pro-legalization position may have some generational momentum as well. According to an AARP poll conducted several years ago, while just 8 percent of Americans aged 70 or older had ever tried pot, lifetime usage rates grow to 58 percent among 45-49 year olds.

This is probably not one of those issues, however, where Washington is liable to be on the vanguard. When Barney Frank introduced a bill last year to decriminalize pot, it got only eight co-sponsors, one of whom subsequently withdrew her name. And President Obama has steered clear of any suggestion that he might move to legalize or decriminalize pot, in spite of some earlier statements on his record to the contrary.

My guess is that we'll need to see a supermajority of Americans in favor of decriminalizing pot before the federal government would dare to take action on it. If the upward trend since 1990 holds (and recall my earlier caution: it might not), then legalization would achieve 60 percent support at some point in 2022 or 2023. About then is when things might get interesting. But I'd guess we'll see other some other once-unthinkable things like legalized gay marriage first.
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Omega 3-rich diet may help you live longer.

This is a rather long article, even though I've slimmed it down considerably. Still, it's very informative and incredibly interesting.

At the end of a residential cul-de-sac in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, a driveway winds up a hill to the headquarters of Ocean Nutrition, a complex of buildings of mid-century vintage overlooking the tall-masted schooners and gray-hulled Canadian Navy destroyers in Halifax Harbour.

Down the road, semi-trailers loaded with drums of oily yellow liquid pull up outside a newly built factory. Inside cavernous galvanized-steel hangars, the oil is blended with deionized water in 6,500-gallon tanks. The resulting slurry of micro-encapsulated oil is then pumped through a five-story spray-drier to remove the moisture.

The final product is a fine-grained beige substance that looks like flour but is, in fact, a triumph of technology: smelly fish oil, transformed by industry into a tasteless, odorless powder. It will be used to spike everything from infant formula in China to the Wonder Bread and Tropicana orange juice on our supermarket shelves.

After seven years and $50 million of research, the company's 45 technicians and 14 Ph.D.s have found a high-tech way of getting a crucial set of nutrients back into our bodies — compounds that, thanks to the industrialization of agriculture over the past half century, have been thoroughly stripped from our food supply without, until recently, it being realized by anyone.

Now, an ever-growing body of research is showing that the epidemic of diseases associated with the Western diet — cancer, heart disease, depression, and much more — might be curtailed simply by restoring something we never should have removed from our diets in the first place: omega-3 fatty acids.

[...]

Omega-3 molecules are a by-product of the happy meeting of sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide in the chloroplasts of terrestrial plants and marine algae. Not long ago, these fatty acids were an inescapable component of our diet. Back in the early 1900s — long before the arrival of bovine growth hormone and patented transgenic seeds — American family farms were perfect factories for producing omega-3s.

Bucolic, sun-drenched pastures supported a complex array of grasses, and cattle used their sensitive tongues to pick and choose the ripest patches of clover, millet, and sweet grass; their rumens then turned the cellulose that humans can't digest into foods that we can: milk, butter, cheese, and, eventually, beef, all of them rich in omega-3s. Cattle used to spend four to five carefree years grazing on grass, but now they are fattened on grain in feedlots and reach slaughter weight in about a year, all the while pumped full of antibiotics to fight off the diseases caused by the close quarters of factory farms.

Likewise, a few generations ago, chickens roamed those same farms, foraging on grasses, purslane, and grubs, providing humans with drumsticks, breasts, and eggs that were rich in grass-derived omega-3s. Today, most American chickens are now a single hybrid breed — the Cornish — and are raised in cages, treated with antibiotics, and stuffed full of corn.

Our animal fats were once derived from leafy greens, and now our livestock are fattened with corn, soybeans, and other seed oils. (Even the majority of the salmon, catfish, and shrimp in our supermarkets are raised on farms and fattened with soy-enriched pellets.) So not only have good fats been stricken from our diets, but these cheap, widely available seed oils are the source of another, far less healthy family of fatty acids called omega-6s, which compete with omega-3s for space in our cell membranes. Omega-6s are essentially more rigid fatty acids that give our cells structure, while omega-3s are more fluid and help our bodies fight inflammation. Our ancestors ate a ratio of dietary omega-6s to omega-3s of approximately 1:1. The Western diet (the modern American and European eating pattern characterized by high intakes of red meat, sugar, and refined carbohydrates) has a ratio of about 20:1.

"The shift from a food chain with green plants at its base to one based on seeds may be the most far reaching of all," writes Michael Pollan in his prescriptive manifesto In Defense of Food. "From leaves to seeds: It's almost, if not quite, A Theory of Everything."

[...]

Okinawans, of Japan, once had the longest life expectancy in the world. But with postwar American administration, which didn't end until 1972, residents of the Japanese prefecture switched to a Western diet rich in meat and seed-based vegetable oils (think Spam, McDonald's hamburgers, and margarine). As a result, they experienced a precipitous rise in cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases. Western eating habits proved hard to shake, and 47 percent of Okinawan men are still considered obese, twice the rate of the rest of Japan.

According to a 2003 study published in the World Review of Nutrition and Dietetics, urban Indians who have adopted seed-oil-rich diets succumb to heart disease and chronic illnesses at a much higher rate than village dwellers who eat a "poor man's diet" that is high in mustard oil, which is relatively high in omega-3s. It is believed that, in the 1960s, Israelis enthusiastically adopted an ostensibly heart-healthy diet rich in polyunsaturated fats from vegetable oils; now heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes are ubiquitous, and rates of cancer are higher than in the United States.

In 1970, intrigued by reports that Eskimos rarely die from heart disease, two Danish scientists flew to Greenland and charmed blood samples from 130 volunteers. Hans Olaf Bang and Jørn Dyerberg discovered that the Inuit people still got most of their calories from fish, seal, and whale meat. Despite their high cholesterol intake, the Inuit had a death rate from coronary disease that was one-tenth that of the Danes, enthusiastic pork eaters who have been known to butter even their cheese. And diabetes was almost non-existent among the Inuit.

[...]

Among the Japanese, who each eat an average of 145 pounds of fish a year, rates of depression and homicide are strikingly low. Meanwhile, men who live in landlocked nations such as Austria and Hungary, where fish consumption is respectively 25 pounds and nine pounds per capita, top the global charts in suicide and depression. Despite the fact that the Japanese smoke like fiends, struggle with high blood pressure, and eat a hundred more cholesterol-rich eggs a year per person than Americans do, they boast enviably low rates of cardiovascular disease, as well as the longest life span on the planet, an average of 81 years... three years longer than that of Americans.

And while it's true that the Japanese consume soy in the form of tofu, miso, and soy sauce, the way it is prepared — precipitated or fermented — is far healthier than the raw, mineral-blocking phytate estrogen and omega-6-rich versions consumed by Americans.

Dr. Hibbeln is convinced that the key to the average Japanese citizen's longevity is omega-3 fatty acids; levels in Japanese bloodstreams average 60 percent of all polyunsaturates. After half a century of favoring seed-based vegetable oils, the level of omega-3s in American bloodstreams has fallen to 20 percent of polyunsaturates. "We have changed the composition of people's bodies and brains," says Dr. Hibbeln. "A very interesting question, to which we don't yet know the answer, is to what degree has the dietary change altered overall behavior in our society?"

Lately, the answers have been coming in thick and fast. In one study of 231 inmates medicated with fish oil in a British prison, assaults dropped by a third. Comparing homicide rates in five countries, Dr. Hibbeln found that the rising consumption of omega-6 fatty acids correlated with a hundredfold increase in death by homicide, even though access to firearms went down in all the countries surveyed except the United States. A paper published in the Journal of the American Medical Association concluded that even a modest increase in the consumption of omega-3-rich fish reduced the risk of coronary death by 36 percent. A 2007 study by the National Institutes of Health found a positive correlation between mothers' consumption of omega-3s during pregnancy and the fine motor skills and verbal IQs of their children.

[...]

"Men in their forties and fifties can nearly reverse their risk of dying from sudden cardiac death by eating fish at least three times a week," says Dr. Hibbeln. "And if they want to live longer and happier lives, there's substantial data that they should increase their body composition of omega-3s." Your family doctor can test your ratio of omega-6 to omega-3, or you can do it yourself. (Your Future Health sells test kits on its Web site, yourfuturehealth.com.)

How could a simple change in dietary fat have such a huge impact on so many aspects of our health? The answer lies in the nature of two specific forms of omega-3s, docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), which are especially rich in seafood.

Not all omega-3 fatty acids, it turns out, are created equal.

[...]

While it's true that terrestrial plants are good sources of omega-3s, the fatty acid most present in land-based species is alpha-linolenic acid (ALA). Essential for good health, ALA can be found in fruits, vegetables, and some seeds, among them lettuce, leeks, purslane, kale, broccoli, blueberries, hemp, chia, and flaxseed. ALA is especially rich in plants that grow in intense light, and the fatty acid is thought to help the plants recover from sun damage. Though the human body is capable of turning ALA into DHA and EPA through a series of enzymatic reactions, it is not particularly good at it: Less than 1 percent of the ALA we get from vegetable sources ultimately becomes DHA and EPA. The ocean is the world's richest source of DHA and EPA, particularly from plankton-eating oily fish such as sardines, mackerel, and herring.

Recently discovered archaeological evidence suggests that around 2 million years ago, early hominids, the ancestors of modern humans, left the forests to live on the wooded edges of huge brackish lakes and estuaries in what is now Africa's Rift Valley. Prehistoric middens found in Kenya and Zaire are filled with shells and headless catfish skeletons, evidence that these proto-humans were taking full advantage of the easily gathered protein — and, incidentally, omega-3 fatty acids — at one of the world's first all-you-can-eat seafood buffets. Around the same time, hominid brains began to grow, swelling more than twofold from 650 grams in Homo habilis, the first tool-using hominid, to 1,490 grams in the early ancestors of Homo sapiens. "Anthropologists usually point to things such as the rise of language and tool making to explain the massive expansion of early hominid brains," says Cunnane. "But this is a catch-22. Something had to start the process of brain expansion, and I think it was early humans eating clams, frogs, bird eggs, and fish from shoreline environments."

[...]

Cunnane shows me a photo of an image carved into buff-colored sandstone. "This was found in a cave in France. It must have been one of the Sistine Chapels of the drawing world at the time." It is a highly naturalistic rendition of a salmon, down to gill flaps and hooked mandible. Evidence of early fish eating, jaw-dropping in its technical sophistication, the image is 22,000 years old. An interesting footnote to Cunnane's theory is that our seafood-eating Cro-Magnon ancestors, including the master sculptor responsible for this bas-relief, might well have been smarter than we are. Fossil evidence shows that the Cro-Magnons, though their bodies were smaller than those of Neanderthals, had brains about 200 grams heavier than modern humans'. Humanity's relatively recent creep away from seafood-rich shorelines, Cunnane believes, explains everything from the 20 percent of American women who are iron deficient to the dangling goiters of people living in mountainous regions. (If iodine hadn't been added to table salt 80 years ago, cretinism, a deficiency typified by severely stunted mental growth, would be endemic in most developed countries.)

Until the American Revolution, 98 percent of the population lived along rivers and oceans. Leaving the coasts might be a slow-motion public-health disaster. Deficiencies of DHA and the brain-selective minerals abundant on shorelines, speculates Cunnane, affect the performance of the modern human brain and, uncorrected, might eventually cause brains to shrink.

[...]

Colin Barrow, PhD, Ocean Nutrition's vice president of research and development, has any number of ways of getting omega-3s into his diet. He could, he points out, spread specially formulated Becel margarine onto DHA- and EPA-spiked Wonder Bread and wash it down with omega-3 supplemented Danone liquid yogurt. Instead, he prefers to take his omega-3s neat: He stirs a tablespoon of pure powdered fish oil into his morning juice.

A tall, soft-spoken New Zealander with a ginger beard and a long-toothed smile, Barrow has used the expertise gained from a PhD in chemistry and marine natural products to develop the process that allowed Ocean Nutrition to reintroduce omega-3s into packaged foods.

"The process is called microencapsulation," says Barrow, "and it was originally used for delivering ink in the cartridges of ink-jet printers." If you increased the size of a grain of Ocean Nutrition's microencapsulated powder to that of a basketball, it would be filled with Ping-Pong-ball-size agglomerations of oil encased in gelatin. Each particle is like a microscopic fish-oil capsule, allowing the powder to be added to food without changing the food's taste. Without a protective coating to prevent oxidation, the omega-3 in a glass of orange juice would stink like a sardine tin left out in the sun. Ocean Nutrition has taken any hint of fishiness out of fish oil — an essential move in the notoriously seafood-averse North American market.

The source of Ocean Nutrition's meticulously deodorized oil is, ultimately, a fish. Namely, Engraulis ringens, the Peruvian anchoveta, a small schooling species that lives in the relatively unpolluted waters off the west coast of South America. The process starts when fishing boats encircle the vast schools with purse-seine nets and bring the catch back to barges. Under the close supervision of rabbis, who are there to ensure that no squid, shellfish, or other nonkosher species remain in the nets, billions of fish are sucked through a pipe to onshore processing plants. There, the anchoveta are heated to 85 degrees Celsius, ground with an auger, and pulverized with a hydraulic screw to extract the oil. The oil is then distilled and filtered through clay to eliminate all traces of mercury, dioxins, and other persistent organic pollutants, those nasty toxins that can cause developmental and long-term neurological problems in consumers of tuna and farmed salmon. Transported by container ship through the Panama Canal, the oil arrives in Nova Scotia, where it is further concentrated and refined. Some of the oil ends up on the shelves of Walmart, Walgreens, and other major retailers that package it in their house-brand capsules. The rest, in powdered form, goes to the likes of PepsiCo and Unilever, who mix it into packaged foods. Ocean Nutrition now supplies 60 percent of the North American fish-oil market.

For anybody concerned about the future of the oceans, Ocean Nutrition's sourcing policies are good news. With big predatory species such as tuna, sharks, and swordfish already fished to 10 percent of their former abundance, and marine ecologists predicting the collapse of most major fisheries by the year 2048, conservationists have expressed concern about what kind of impact the widespread use of omega-3 supplements could have on the world's remaining fish stocks. Fortunately, the Peruvian anchoveta fishery — one of the world's largest — is in no imminent danger of collapse.

"These fish have been harvested in a highly regulated way, in very pristine waters, for more than 50 years," says Ian Lucas, Ocean Nutrition's executive vice president of marketing, "and the biomass is actually expanding." Fish oil is an industrial by-product of the fish-meal industry, which supplies feed for livestock and farmed shrimp and salmon. "It's going to take a long, long time before the fish-oil industry actually causes more fishing to happen," says Lucas. But according to Daniel Pauly, PhD, a leading authority on the decline of the world's fisheries at the Fisheries Centre at Vancouver's University of British Columbia, stocks of Peruvian anchoveta can fluctuate wildly; there was a temporary collapse in the 1970s and again in the 1980s. To forestall future problems, Pauly believes the fishery needs to be even more strictly monitored and regulated than it is today.

As word spreads of omega-3's benefits, so does fish-oil consumption. Lucas says that the share of omega-3 fatty acids in the supplement market has been growing by 30 percent a year for the past five years. Though alternative sources of fish oils exist, some are clearly more ecologically questionable than Peruvian anchoveta. A Virginia-based company called Omega Protein nets a schooling fish called menhaden off the mid-Atlantic coast; its -menhaden-based fish oil may now be added to 29 different categories of food. The fishery has been criticized because menhaden is a keystone species in the food chain of the East Coast; the fish feed by filtering algae from the water, and, in their absence, microscopic plankton have proliferated, creating the harmful algae blooms and dead zones that plague places such as Chesapeake Bay.

Barrow escorts me into a lab and shows me a 10-liter glass fermentation tank bristling with hoses and filled with a cloudy, swirling, foam-topped liquid. In its search for alternative sources of omega-3s, Ocean Nutrition has gathered a DHA-rich alga from an undisclosed location in Canada. In the United States, a company called Martek has already patented its own DHA-producing alga called Crypthecodinium cohnii, which is grown in massive multistory tanks in South Carolina; much of the infant formula in North America is now supplemented with Martek's patented Life's DHA.

"The product is good," says Barrow, "but it's really expensive, and they can't get their microorganisms to produce EPA. Our organism is a really good producer; we can get it to express about 8 percent EPA." This may be the future of omega-3s: an essential nutrient grown in tanks, sparing the world's fish stocks from overharvesting.

[...]

And now, full disclosure: As part of the research for a book I was writing about the sustainability of seafood in our world's oceans, I have radically increased my intake of omega-3s over the past two years. I've been taking three fish-oil capsules a day (a combined total of 1,800 milligrams of DHA and EPA), and having at least four fish meals a week. Early on, I saw a marked change in my alertness and capacity for sustained attention. But it wasn't until I started diminishing the amount of omega-6s in my diet that I started to lose weight. In the past year, I've shed five pounds and reversed the first swellings of a nascent potbelly.

The goal is not to "nix the six" completely, as the writer of one diet book puts it; after all, omega-6s are essential to good health. But getting an adequate supply is hardly a challenge; they are omnipresent in our food, and we would all be better off if our diets were closer to the 1:1 omega-6 to omega-3 ratio of our hunter-gatherer ancestors.

[...]

Omega-3s aren't a quick fix like Advil, or even, for that matter, Prozac, which takes several weeks to change brain chemistry. Omega-3s take at least three months to harness themselves into heart cells, for example. I can't be certain about improvements in my cardiovascular health, but since I started loading up on DHA and EPA, I feel as if I've upgraded my brain. My energy is high, and I feel strangely unflappable, like I've gained some kind of unbeatable equilibrium. My body feels different too, as though my fat and muscle have been redistributed to more useful places. Navigating among the omega-6-fattened hordes, I feel lean and swift, like a tuna darting among sea cows.

So, by all means, keep swallowing those omega-3 capsules. But here's an even better idea: Seek out grass-fed beef, free-range chickens and their eggs, the best olive oil, canola oil, and butter you can find, and lots of fish and shellfish, preferably small wild-caught species from clean waters. In other words, if you are looking for a guiding principle, keep it simple and eat like your ancestors ate.
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New species of frogfish approved, has "human-like" features?

Well, it certainly is clumsy, that's for sure. And it does somewhat resemble a human face. Still, pretty cool looking, and it's "psychedelica" name is certainly warranted.

Most fish have eyes on the sides of their heads, but a scientist now has confirmed a new and elusive species of carnivorous frogfish with eyes that face forward, like ours. The creature also has a fleshy chin and cheeks, adding to its strange appearance.

The bizarre new species, Histiophryne psychedelica, made a brief splash a year ago when sport divers about 30 feet offshore of Ambon Island, Indonesia, photographed a shallow-water fish not seen before in 20 years of diving there.
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Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

^ Frogfish video

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I don't even drink coffee, but I'd go to this cafe.

Topless cafe? Sure, why not.

VASSALBORO, Maine — Cup size has more than one meaning at a new central Maine coffeehouse.

Servers are topless at the Grand View Topless Coffee Shop, which opened its doors Monday on a busy road in Vassalboro. A sign outside says, "Over 18 only." Another says, "No cameras, no touching, cash only."

On Tuesday, two men sipped coffee at a booth while three topless waitresses and a bare-chested waiter stood nearby. Topless waitress Susie Wiley said men, women and couples have stopped by.

The coffee shop raised the ire of dozens of residents when it went before the town planning board last month. Town officials said the coffee shop met the letter of the law.

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Take that you fucking puritan bastards!

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Boy with the cat eyes.

This is just weird.

A Chinese boy who has eyes that glow in the dark has stunned doctors with his ability to see and read in complete darkness.

Doctors have studied Nong Youhui’s eyesight ever since his father took him to a hospital in Dahua, which is located in southern China.

Tests conducted in complete darkness concluded Nong can read perfectly without any light and can see as clearly as most people do during the daytime.

Experts believe the boy was born with a rare condition called leukordermia, which has left his eyes with less protective pigment and made them more sensitive to light.
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nothing after the jump

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Why scientists don't care to debate "Intelligent Design."

In a bit of intellectual smacktalk, Nicholas Gotelli, a Biology professor at University of Vermont, delivered a scathing rebuttal to a request for him to debate at the Discovery Institute. The DI is a conservative think tank (and I use the term "think" very liberally here) that is ardently seeking to institute creationism into the science curriculum of public schools. Gotelli explains why he, and many others in the scientific community, have no interest in such a public fiasco.

Dear Professor Gotelli,

I saw your op-ed in the Burlington Free Press and appreciated your support of free speech at UVM. In light of that, I wonder if you would be open to finding a way to provide a campus forum for a debate about evolutionary science and intelligent design. The Discovery Institute, where I work, has a local sponsor in Burlington who is enthusiastic to find a way to make this happen. But we need a partner on campus. If not the biology department, then perhaps you can suggest an alternative.

Ben Stein may not be the best person to single-handedly represent the ID side. As you're aware, he's known mainly as an entertainer. A more appropriate alternative or addition might be our senior fellows David Berlinski or Stephen Meyer, respectively a mathematician and a philosopher of science. I'll copy links to their bios below. Wherever one comes down in the Darwin debate, I think we can all agree that it is healthy for students to be exposed to different views--in precisely the spirit of inviting controversial speakers to campus, as you write in your op-ed.

I'm hoping that you would be willing to give a critique of ID at such an event, and participate in the debate in whatever role you feel comfortable with.

A good scientific backdrop to the discussion might be Dr. Meyer's book that comes out in June from HarperCollins, "Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design."

On the other hand, Dr. Belinski may be a good choice since he is a critic of both ID and Darwinian theory.

Would it be possible for us to talk more about this by phone sometime soon?

With best wishes,
David Klinghoffer
Discovery Institute




Dear Dr. Klinghoffer:

Thank you for this interesting and courteous invitation to set up a debate about evolution and creationism (which includes its more recent relabeling as "intelligent design") with a speaker from the Discovery Institute. Your invitation is quite surprising, given the sneering coverage of my recent newspaper editorial that you yourself posted on the Discovery Institute's website:

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/02/

However, this kind of two-faced dishonesty is what the scientific community has come to expect from the creationists.

Academic debate on controversial topics is fine, but those topics need to have a basis in reality. I would not invite a creationist to a debate on campus for the same reason that I would not invite an alchemist, a flat-earther, an astrologer, a psychic, or a Holocaust revisionist. These ideas have no scientific support, and that is why they have all been discarded by credible scholars. Creationism is in the same category.

Instead of spending time on public debates, why aren't members of your institute publishing their ideas in prominent peer-reviewed journals such as Science, Nature, or the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences? If you want to be taken seriously by scientists and scholars, this is where you need to publish. Academic publishing is an intellectual free market, where ideas that have credible empirical support are carefully and thoroughly explored. Nothing could possibly be more exciting and electrifying to biology than scientific disproof of evolutionary theory or scientific proof of the existence of a god. That would be Nobel Prize winning work, and it would be eagerly published by any of the prominent mainstream journals.

"Conspiracy" is the predictable response by Ben Stein and the frustrated creationists. But conspiracy theories are a joke, because science places a high premium on intellectual honesty and on new empirical studies that overturn previously established principles. Creationism doesn't live up to these standards, so its proponents are relegated to the sidelines, publishing in books, blogs, websites, and obscure journals that don't maintain scientific standards.

Finally, isn't it sort of pathetic that your large, well-funded institute must scrape around, panhandling for a seminar invitation at a little university in northern New England? Practicing scientists receive frequent invitations to speak in science departments around the world, often on controversial and novel topics. If creationists actually published some legitimate science, they would receive such invitations as well.

So, I hope you understand why I am declining your offer. I will wait patiently to read about the work of creationists in the pages of Nature and Science. But until it appears there, it isn't science and doesn't merit an invitation.

In closing, I do want to thank you sincerely for this invitation and for your posting on the Discovery Institute Website. As an evolutionary biologist, I can't tell you what a badge of honor this is. My colleagues will be envious.

Sincerely yours,

Nick Gotelli

P.S. I hope you will forgive me if I do not respond to any further e-mails from you or from the Discovery Institute. This has been entertaining, but it interferes with my research and teaching.
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Matt Hazard: worthy of a comeback?

If you haven't heard of Matt Hazard yet, then shame on you! Matt Hazard has a been a hilarious romp of fictitious parodies as the press releases have been slowly romping up for the launch of Eat Lead: The Rise and Fall of Matt Hazard. The "Unofficial" webpage for Matt Hazard is hilariously low-tech, reminiscent of how nearly every webpage looked back in late 90s. Once you begin looking at the boxart for Hazard's previous works, the nostalgia begins setting in. At least, it should. The Doom parody, Mario Kart, Duke Nukem 3D... Even if the nostalgia factor isn't enough to draw people in, the announcement that Matt Hazard will be voiced by Will Arnett from Arrested Development and the villain will be voiced by none other than Neil fucking Patrick motherfucking Harris should be able to win a few people over.

If you haven't heard anything about the game, I suggest you hit the jump and check some of the vids to get yourself acquainted. Eat Lead: The Rise and Fall of Matt Hazard comes out March 3rd.





^ Early gameplay footage. Is that a Wolf3D level and Nazi guards? Yes. Yes, it is. :)





^ Behind The Games trailer.




Making sure to keep with the entire cheeky experience, even the achievements are hilarious.

I'm still not entirely sold on the Eat Lead (as I haven't really seen it running), but there's a humor to the game's achievements that I can certainly appreciate. Xbox360Achievements has posted up a list, and here are a few that jumped out at me...

• It's HAZARD TIME! - Start your first game. - 15 points
  
• Take 5. - Pause the game for the first time. - 5 points
  
• ...Where Credit Is Due - Watch the credits from beginning to end. - 60 points

It's worth noting that aside from a secret 100 point achievement, that 60 pointer for the credits is the highest-scoring achievement in the game. That's pretty good. It'd be really funny, though, if that achievement was practically impossible to get. Like, maybe the credits are six hours long. Or maybe there's some stupid-hard gameplay associated with the credits. I'd be way into that.
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I am somewhat disappointed that this isn't coming to the PC, especially considering that many of the parodied games are PC-centric titles. It is coming out on the 360 and PS3, so owners of the 2 "hardcore" consoles can get a taste of Matt Hazard. Maybe the PC will eventually get a port, but I suppose that's mainly going to rely on whether the console versions sell at all. While we'll have to wait to see if the game is actually any good, it contains enough goofy elements and nostalgia moments that it seems at least worth a rental.

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Bioshock-esque case mod is huge! And awesome!

Apparently this thing is over 8 feet tall. That's a bit bigger than I'd want to ever have my computer case be, but if I was running a server rack I'd totally case it in this thing. It looks like something out of Bioshock with its abundant use of copper coils and old-timey gauges. And if all that by itself isn't cool enough, it has a bunch of green LEDs to glow in the dark!

Despite being a bit impractical due to its huge size, this case mod is still abso-freaking-lutely amazing.

Pics after the jump.

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Fixin' the glory days.

The good old days of the NES. Remember 'em? Sure you do! Curled up, playing away at Super Mario Bros. Those were the times. Remember the almost OCD-like rituals people would go through to get their NES games to work? Everyone had a different technique, but nearly every single one of them involved huffing a pressurized stream of air into the cartridges and/or the console. Sometimes it would work. If it didn't... well, you'd just keep on doing it until it eventually did work. Another popular technique was to rapidly push the cart caddy up and and down and then power it back up.

None of these little tricks actually ever fixed the real root cause of the flashing red light of despair, though. Often, people would think that it was dust inside the NES that was causing all of these problems. That is rarely ever the case.

The real culprit? There's a 72-pin connector inside the NES. This connector has loose, springy pins in it that make contact with the cartridges chipboard. You might remember how, when you first got your NES, the games would almost snap in there. A few years later, after heavy use, the games would loosely slide in and out with ease. That is the problem.

After a while, these pins would become depressed. No, not "sad" depressed, but bent down. These pins relied on having a bit of spring in them so that they would make a proper connection with the contacts on the cartridge chipboard. Over time, much like any kind of spring, these pins would get pushed down so often that they would lose their proper position and would no longer make solid connections with the cart contacts.

Now, there's a few solutions to this.

• Send your system into a place like The Nintendo Repair Shop, who will go ahead and repair your old NES and get it working like brand-spanking new.
  
• The slightly more DIY route and order a 72-pin connector from (once again) a place like The Nintendo Repair Shop or from ebay. They should run you roughly $8-$10.
  
• Go all-out DIY and fix the pins yourself. This isn't all that hard to do, as you just need to push the pins up slightly so they form a more narrow slit for the cartridges to fit into.

I'm not going to give you a rundown on how to do the final two solutions, as there is already a very well done video that can guide you through the whole process. If you have ever put RAM into your computer or even built an entire computer, then you'll be right at home. Even if you haven't done either of those, replacing the 72-pin connector is really easy to do. You just have to remove some screws, pop off the pin connector, pop on the new one, and then put the case back together. Just watch the below vid and you'll see.





^ Macrogeek tells you how to repair and replace the 72-pin connector and how to clean your carts!




One of the things you might encounter while putting your NES back together is accidentally locking the caddy. What I mean is, the caddy that slides up and down will either get locked in the up position and not lock in place when pushed down, or it will be locked down and will not slide up. This is because you have tightened the screws too tight. The screws you need to look for if this happens to you are the two front screws of the caddy where you insert the cartridge. See the pic below if you're confused as to which screws I'm referring to.



^ click for full scale image ^


If you wanted to get your NES back in action but kept getting the dreaded flashing red power button, hopefully this will help you solve your problem and get you back to enjoying some of those games of yore. Keep in mind that lifting the pins on the connector will only go but so far. Eventually they will get bent back down again, and will eventually just wear out altogether. When that happens, you'll have to get a replacement. However, in most cases the only problem is the pins being bent down from prolonged use. To help keep your system healthy and keep grime from building up on the connectors, I highly recommend you clean your games before playing them. I also recommend storing them inside those little black sleeves. These can be bought at places like the aforementioned Nintendo Repair Shop.

If you're looking to buy some old NES games, JJGames is a great place to order from. They have cheap prices, their games list tells you the condition, whether it has rental stickers on it, and if it includes the box and/or manual. Shipping is free if you order $25 or more worth of games, which is a nice bargain. They are kind of small, so their selection isn't as big as some of the others out there. If you're looking for a bigger selection, Videogame Central has a great stock of titles as does 8-Track Shack. My only personal experience is with JJGames, so I can't attest to the other mentioned two. However, they do have great ratings on Google Shopping. They are also highly regarded and came recommended to me by many retro gamers. Just remember, don't take their word that the carts are clean. Go ahead and clean it yourself before playing just to make sure. It only takes a second, is easy to do, and it'll help keep you from wondering what's wrong with your system.

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More Penny Arcade D&D. Now with Wil Wheaton!

Penny Arcade did a D&D podcast a while back and they're back at it again. Gabe, Tycho, and Scott Kurtz (of PvP) are joined this time by Wil Wheaton. Y'know, Stand By Me and stuff.

Anyways, Part 1 is up.


nothing after the jump

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